So, tonight was the night. Now or never, and all that. That’s the thought I kept try­ing to push to the front of my mind, to keep back the dis­ap­point­ment that I’d started feel­ing even now, before I even knew.

She’d been a drinker, our mum, though she swore blind to us she’d never touched more than half a glass. When we were kids, we never knew what it was that made her weird, but Dad did. They fought a lot after we went to bed. But when dad was away, some­times, she’d come back from the pub all calm and thought­ful. What thoughts she had were no good, of course, the not-quite-sane bub­bling of a pick­led brain. But one thought she went back to night after night, and some­times even when she was sober, was this old grand­fa­ther clock. It was her mother’s, she’d slur, and her grandmother’s. “Heir­loom” must have been the word she searched for but never dis­cov­ered. Which meant, I sup­posed, that it was now mine.

Except that it wasn’t. Because our mum didn’t just drink away our money, she drank away other people’s too, and now them peo­ple wanted it back. So tomor­row, the debt col­lec­tors would be com­ing. Dad said we couldn’t stop them tak­ing any­thing they wanted, so we fig­ured that meant our life was about to involve a lot of sit­ting on the floor and no TV. Any nor­mal kid would be out­raged. At any nor­mal time, so would I. But since our mum passed away, nothing’s seemed real any­way. Like it doesn’t mat­ter whether we have a sofa and a telly, because something’s changed that’s beyond that, like some­thing the TV and dad and the col­lec­tors and the rest of them could never understand.

The clock clicked, its minute hand advanced. Eleven fifty-eight. Now what was it that mum used to say about this thing? That at mid­night… some­thing. She was never very clear about what hap­pened if you watched this clock strike mid­night. We were never allowed to stay up and watch it any­way. But mum was gone, and if the col­lec­tors took her clock no-one might ever watch it at mid­night ever again! We owed it to her, really. It was like a trib­ute to her, to find out whether what she said about it was true.

Click-click. One minute to midnight.

Tommy had fallen asleep on my lap, so I shook him awake. Poor thing, hav­ing his big sis­ter keep him up long past his bedtime.

“‘stelle,” he mum­bled. “What’s…”

“Look,” I said, and pointed. “The clock! It’s nearly midnight!”

“Oh.” He rubbed his eyes. “Oh, I remember.”

“Shush, look.” I’d been tim­ing the sec­onds in my head. Tommy looked up, his eyes widening.

Click… bong. Bong. Bong.

It was just chim­ing like it always did. Maybe it hap­pened after the chimes?

Bong, nine. Bong, ten. Bong, eleven. Bong, twelve.

Noth­ing.

We sat there watch­ing it for two sec­onds, three, four. Nothing.

Bong.

Thir­teen.

Slowly, very slowly, we turned to face each other. His eyes were wide.

“Don’t be scared,” I said to him, though really it was aimed at me just as much as my brother. I’m not sure either of us were con­vinced. But still, we waited and waited, and noth­ing hap­pened! Min­utes passed, and our hearts sank.

“That was it?” I asked nobody in par­tic­u­lar. “All mum was going on about, all those times, is that the clock’s like… a bit bro­ken? It goes thir­teen times instead of twelve? Shit. Come on Tommy, we’re going back to bed.”

But that was when I heard it, heard the music. It sounded like it was com­ing from out­side, but it weren’t the usual hip-hop or trashy dance that every kid on the estate cranked up on their car stereos. It sounded like a whole orchestra!

Ner­vously, I made my way to the front door, and opened it just enough to peer through. Com­plete lack of musi­cians. Just the dim orange glow of street­lights, light­en­ing and dark­en­ing as the one just up the street flashed on and off.

I went back to the liv­ing room to tell Tommy, but as I did, the music just got louder and louder! I found him star­ing at the old clock, like he hadn’t heard a thing.

“It’s get­ting slower,” he said.

“What?”

“The tick­ing. ‘s get­ting slower.”

I turned, and I lis­tened, and it was! Every tick and every tock, the time between them was get­ting longer, longer still, until…

Tock.

The clock stopped. And from where its pen­du­lum lay stuck, light appeared and expanded and sur­rounded us until all I could see was white in every direction.

“Lady Estelle Lloyd and Mas­ter Thomas Lloyd!” announced a voice that sounded like it was in front of me, though I’d long since lost my sense of direc­tion. With­out me will­ing it, I stepped for­ward and crossed the thresh­old. Light con­tracted and flew away behind me, leav­ing Tommy and I at the top of a flight of red-carpeted steps. And beyond them, at the bot­tom of them, lay a sight the like of which I’d never seen before and I’ve never seen since.

All kinds of Lords and Ladies pranced about like some royal ball cen­turies ago, but it was all… weird. Like what Greg from the year above reck­oned trip­ping was like, though we all reck­oned he’d never done drugs in his life. Some of the women had long pointy ears, and some dressed all in black like it was fash­ion to be a witch. And some of the men had horns, and hooves — women too, now I looked closer! There were all kinds of strange ears and feet and hands going on, and I felt out-of-place just look­ing, you know, nor­mal.

Tommy fol­lowed me down into the spin­ning, pranc­ing mass of peo­ple — of things, what­ever they were. Elves, I guess, or faeries, strange glit­ter­ing hybrids of human and ani­mal and other things. They nod­ded and smiled and made way for me, and even com­pli­mented me on my out­fit. Out­fit! I was wear­ing pyja­mas, and being com­pli­mented on my dress sense by crea­tures wear­ing gem-studded ballgowns!

A waiter came and offered us drinks in tall glasses that would taste of wine if wine were made of oranges, and was blue. Tommy had some too, and hic­cuped to the great amuse­ment of every­body nearby. Then he must have wan­dered off, I sup­pose, but I found myself with a sec­ond drink in my hand and for some rea­son I didn’t seem to mind. I should have, I know I should — the poor boy is only ten — but it was so obvi­ous then that it was a dream, and in dreams that kind of thing doesn’t really mat­ter, right?

So I drank and I danced, waltzes and tan­goes and all kinds of things that I didn’t really know how to do, and there was a feast full of impos­si­ble dishes, of suck­ling pea­cock and spit-roast blue­berry, and giant steaks of dragon that some­one said Tommy had slain. And there were speeches and cheers, and fire­works that turned into golden birds, and danc­ing, danc­ing, danc­ing on and on and on until the world was a blur that melted into gold…

We woke up, col­lapsed in a hud­dle together on the living-room floor. Dad was star­ing out the win­dow, look­ing depressed. The room was bare. No TV, no sofa, and as we came to, we thought we heard the sound of the debt col­lec­tors’ van dri­ving away down the road.

But the clock was still there, show­ing quar­ter past ten like noth­ing had hap­pened at all.

“Why not the clock, Dad? Thought mum said it was worth a few bob.”

“Nah,” said Dad with a sigh. “Noth­ing. Besides, ain’t really mine to sell.”

“Oh,” I said, won­der­ing if he meant it was Mum’s or mine. But I looked up at its slowly swing­ing pen­du­lum, and its hands tick­ing on towards another mid­night, and I realised it didn’t really mat­ter. What mat­tered was that every­thing was going to be okay in the end, and some­day, we’d dance again.