By the river, which remembered the names of the bridges, stood the workshop of "Clocks of Rose and Sons". The young journeyman Natan arranged the screws according to the sheen, listening for two ticks every second. One belonged to the clock on the wall, the other to the rain, which had been gone for weeks. In Rose's family, it was said that time and rainfall were brothers related by echo. The Clockmaker of the Seasons could tune the seasons like strings, using a drop instead of a key. That morning, the postman brought an envelope with a blue seal in the shape of a drop, cool as the shadow of a well. Inside was Rose's card: "Natan, today at the Ninth Gong you must feed the Heart of the Tower." "Only the first drop, for the rest will awaken the Dryad; you will find the key in the drawer on the left." Rose had been gone since spring, and the city was beginning to breathe more shallowly and unevenly. Natan put down the piece of paper and turned the brass vial in which the one drop that had not fallen was waiting. Waiting on the stairs of the tower was Ika, a cat with a feathered tail and a habit of posing questions. "Don't be late for your own shadow," she muttered, hopping onto the railing and looking down. The town sounded empty; the market was silent and the smell of a disturbed storm wafted from the river. Each step shook slightly, as if the wood was counting years, not nails and beams. Natan rolled up his sleeves, tucked the vial in his waistcoat and climbed the last platform. The mechanism resembled a garden: the brass gears had spikes, and the pendulum was a suspended, heavy drop. In the milky glass of the dial, the letters of the months trembled, like leaves rearranged by invisible hands. On the door of the heart was a rhyming castle, the words of which Rose had taught him when he was a child. "The season is a vessel that is filled with hearing," he whispered, and the lock clicked on a single note. There was a whiff of spring and rust from within, and then a voice as dry as fieldstone rang out. "Give a drop, or the morning will break at the edges of the day," said something that was out of breath. Ika steepled her moustache and hissed, though she didn't like words of bad omens. The letter warned of Drought, who speaks in other people's voices and likes to substitute the meaning of sentences. Natan lifted the vial; the pendulum swung back a hair, and the whole town trembled in the same instant. The glass in the window turned the rain upwards as a figure with eyes like sand slid out among the circles, smiling in Rose's voice. "You're late," the figure whispered, and held out a hand on which sand piled miniature dunes. The rain over the city began to rustle back, and the vial in Natan's fingers suddenly became lighter. Ika jumped on the pendulum, and all three hands turned towards him at once.