The Curious and Extraordinary Case of the Reclusive Clockmaker
Of course, Kira hated it.
There exists, among otherwise sensible people, a curious conviction that remarkable inventors ought to be immediately recognizable. One expects the hair to misbehave, the waistcoat to have surrendered some years earlier, and the workshop to contain at least one machine whose purpose has become obscured beneath an excess of polished brass and optimistic engineering. Steam, while not strictly required, is generally considered advantageous. It reassures visitors that Progress is occurring somewhere, even if no one can identify precisely where or to what end.
Thaddeus Bell fulfilled enough of these expectations to preserve the reputation others had so thoughtfully constructed on his behalf. His beard appeared to have entered into a private disagreement with the notion of grooming sometime during the previous decade. His spectacles were forever in the wrong pocket until they were discovered resting upon his forehead. More than one distinguished gentleman had departed his atelier convinced he had glimpsed the future of civilization, though whether this conclusion had been prompted by the inventions themselves or by the remarkable quantity of exposed gearing remained a matter of polite disagreement.
The bells above the door had scarcely finished announcing him before Mrs. Abernathy looked up from her ledger. She closed it with the practiced reluctance of someone abandoning work that was both necessary and infinitely preferable to customers.
She had managed the public side of the establishment for nearly twelve years, during which time she had developed the enviable ability to distinguish between customers wishing to purchase clocks, customers wishing to repair clocks, and customers wishing merely to meet the celebrated Mr. Bell in hopes that genius might prove contagious at conversational distance.
“Good morning, Mr. Bell,” she said, bright enough to convince an unsuspecting passerby that selling clocks represented one of life’s quieter joys.
“Has anyone attempted to purchase the regulator in the window?” He asked.
“Twice.”
“And?”
“I explained, once again, that it was not for sale.”
“Excellent.”
Mrs. Abernathy produced a different ledger from beneath the counter and opened it, resting it on the sales ledger.
“Your appointments begin at ten,” she said. “Reverend Collins has returned with the carriage clock. He insists it loses seven minutes every Sunday.”
“It attends church.”
“I suggested as much. He was unconvinced.”
“Most clergymen are.”
She sighed with the patient resignation of someone who had long ago accepted that working for extraordinary craftsmen required occasional accommodation of extraordinary answers.
“I’ve also ordered more lamp oil.”
“I thought we had lamp oil.”
“We did.”
“What became of it?”
“You used it lubricating the prototype pigeon.”
“I maintain the pigeon flew beautifully.”
“It burst into flames.”
“Ahh. Only briefly,” Thaddeus replied.
Mrs. Abernathy pinched the bridge of her nose, though only lightly. She had discovered years ago that genuine exasperation accomplished very little with Thaddeus, whereas ceremonial exasperation improved both their mornings.
“I’ll fetch the invoice.”
She disappeared through the rear doorway. During this practical undertaking, the hem of her skirt rose just enough to reveal perhaps an inch of stout leather boot and, by the most unforgiving standards of respectable society, the suggestion of an ankle. Civilization survived the incident without measurable injury. Thaddeus, whose attention had wandered toward an eight-day mantel clock abandoned on the counter by a forgetful solicitor sometime in March, remained blissfully unaware that propriety had so narrowly escaped catastrophe.
Mrs. Abernathy returned with the invoice, found him examining the clock instead of the paperwork, and quietly placed both into his hands with the efficiency of someone accustomed to redirecting rivers by means of teaspoons.
“The workshop?” she asked.
He nodded. “I don’t imagine I’ll be interrupted.”
“Only if Parliament catches fire.”
“They’ll likely send for me afterward,” he said with a smile.
He crossed the narrow passage separating the shop from the atelier and closed the door behind him. The sounds of the street softened at once, leaving only the quiet ticking of clocks that never agreed on the same second.
The atelier occupied the greater portion of the building and, by every reasonable measure, considerably more ambition than the remaining walls had ever intended to contain. Shelves climbed from floor to ceiling beneath the weight of clocks in every imaginable temperament. Some announced the hour with admirable restraint. Others insisted upon small musical performances before conceding the time. One, having been designed during what Mr. Bell later referred to as “an unnecessarily optimistic fortnight,” displayed the movements of the known planets with astonishing precision while remaining only moderately reliable at informing its owner whether it was half past three.
Between these more practical accomplishments stood machines whose purposes had become progressively less obvious with each passing year. Brass arms folded and unfolded over empty benches. A bank of polished flywheels turned with patient determination despite no visible connection to anything requiring their efforts. Somewhere overhead, steam escaped with a soft, resigned sigh. It did so every morning. The matter had once been investigated thoroughly by both Mr. and Mrs. Bell, who had ultimately concluded that the pipe responsible was buried behind sufficient masonry to discourage curiosity without entirely defeating it. The steam remained. So, eventually, had the conclusion.
Thaddeus crossed the room without acknowledging any of it. A visitor might have paused before every shelf, asking after the function of one remarkable contrivance or another. Thaddeus reached the coat stand, removed his overcoat with the absent efficiency of long habit, and hung it beside the hat he had forgotten he was wearing until the brim brushed the hook. His watch joined the small collection of objects already resting upon the bench: a brass caliper, three screwdrivers, a loupe whose handle had long since lost its lacquer, and a porcelain teacup that had somehow acquired two escapement wheels without noticeably impairing its ability to hold tea.
The workbench itself had been rebuilt several times and repaired so often that very little of the original oak remained visible. Fresh wood sat comfortably beside old, darkened by years of oil and polish until the distinction scarcely mattered. Small burns marked the edge nearest the soldering lamp. A narrow groove ran the length of the front where countless files had overreached their intended work. There were deeper scars as well, acquired honestly over decades in the company of springs determined to remind their maker that compressed steel possesses opinions every bit as vigorous as its inventor.
He rested one hand upon the bench before sitting. It was not a gesture born of age so much as familiarity, the unconscious acknowledgement one grants a threshold crossed often enough to lose the appearance of ritual while remaining one all the same.
The room settled around him. The clocks continued their quiet disagreements. Somewhere near the western wall a regulator gained a fraction of a second that another, across the room, immediately surrendered. The ticking had never quite become silence, though after enough years he found himself noticing its absence more readily than its presence.
He reached into the inner pocket of his waistcoat. The locket emerged with the practiced certainty of an object that had occupied the same place for so many years it no longer required thought. Gold. Heavy enough to pull gently against the chain. The hinge had been repaired once, perhaps twice. He could no longer remember which repair belonged to the mechanism and which belonged to memory, only that he examined it every morning before laying a hand upon a clock, and that beginning work without doing so had become as impossible to imagine as winding a movement before fitting its mainspring.
He turned it over once in his fingers, tracing the faint engraving worn smooth beneath his thumb.
He held the locket for a moment before opening it. There had been mornings, in the first years after her death, when he believed the hesitation meant something, as though delaying that single movement might preserve whatever remained inside. Time had cured him of that particular superstition, though not of the habit itself. Some rituals survive long after the reasons for them have departed.
The clasp yielded beneath his thumb with the same soft resistance it always had. He had repaired the hinge once after dropping it onto the workshop floor, an accident that had distressed him less for the damage than for the realization that he had gone nearly an hour before noticing it was no longer around his neck. He had never repeated the mistake.
The portrait had faded again. Not enough to surprise him. It had been fading for years. The pigments had never possessed the permanence of the gold surrounding them, a decision that had puzzled him from the day she presented it to him. Octavia understood materials too well to make such an oversight. She had argued about alloys with jewelers, about varnishes with painters, about adhesives with cabinetmakers who had spent twice her lifetime at the trade. She had once returned an entire shipment of imported enamel because the color would not survive prolonged exposure to sunlight. She would not have entrusted her own likeness to paint that surrendered so easily.
He found himself studying the place where the blue of her dress had once been richest. The color lingered only in traces now, no longer quite blue, no longer quite anything at all. He tried, not for the first time, to remember whether the portrait had ever truly resembled her or whether the years had replaced it with memory. It had become increasingly difficult to tell where one ended and the other began.
He let the locket close again without looking away from it. The click was scarcely audible beneath the steady argument of the clocks, yet he heard it all the same. There had been a time when he believed every mechanism announced its condition if one cared enough to listen. Age had not diminished that conviction. It had merely taught him that people were considerably less obliging.
The box occupied the highest shelf above the drafting table. It had remained there for so many years that the wood beneath it had escaped the slow bleaching of the afternoon sun. Dust had gathered around its feet rather than upon it, as though even neglect had learned to work around its presence. It was not large. Walnut, brass-bound, its corners protected by fittings that bore the unmistakable economy of Octavia’s hand. She had never embellished what precision could accomplish unaided.
He had finished the hinges. She had insisted his were stronger. She had been right.
His eyes lingered there longer than they usually did. For three decades the box had belonged to the room in much the same way the regulator against the eastern wall belonged to the room, or the soldering lamp, or the window that refused to close properly each November. He had trained himself to pass it without thought, and habit, once cultivated over enough years, acquires a dignity that can resemble conviction.
He remembered the afternoon she had placed it in his hands.
“It isn’t finished,” he had said.
“No.”
“You’ve forgotten the key.”
“I haven’t.”
He had turned the little box over twice before admitting defeat. There had been no keyhole, no winding arbor, no visible catch of any description. The seams fitted together so cleanly they scarcely admitted the possibility that the lid might ever open at all. He had accused her, not entirely in jest, of presenting him with an exceptionally well-crafted block of walnut.
She had laughed.
“The key is already yours.”
He had frowned at that.
“And where am I keeping it?”
“Around your neck.”
He had reached instinctively for the locket. She had nodded.
“It only works once,” she said.
“I don’t understand,” he replied.
“You don’t need to.”
She had taken the box back from him then, resting one hand upon the lid as though calming an impatient machine.
“When you finally decide to use it, the locket will become part of the mechanism. You won’t get it back.”
He remembered asking whether that had truly been necessary. She had considered the question with the seriousness she reserved for engineering problems. There had been no further explanation.
She possessed an irritating confidence that he would eventually arrive at the same conclusion she had reached hours earlier. Most of the time she was correct. On the occasions she was not, she usually admitted as much before supper.
He had never asked about the box again. Not after she died.
He rose, the movement surprised him less than the absence of argument. For years he had imagined that, if this morning ever came, it would demand courage of a sort he no longer possessed. Instead, it felt oddly similar to reaching for a familiar tool after searching every drawer in the workshop for something that had been resting in plain sight all along.
The box was heavier than he remembered. He carried it back to the bench and set it carefully upon the worn oak between the calipers and the untouched teacup. For a long moment neither he nor the machine appeared inclined to disturb the silence.
His thumb found the edge of the locket once more. He rested it above the shallow circular recess worked into the walnut lid, close enough that the polished gold reflected faintly in the brass surrounding it, but not yet close enough to let go.
He lowered the locket until the gold rested within the circular recess.
It fit with a precision that admitted no accident. The worn edge settled against the brass as though both pieces had been machined from the same drawing, years apart but always intended to become neighbors. His fingers lingered upon it a moment longer than necessary before finally releasing their hold.
Nothing happened. He found himself smiling despite everything.
“Well,” he murmured. “Perhaps I was right after all.”
The words had scarcely left him before something deep within the box answered. The sound was not loud so much as absolute. A single metallic report echoed through the workshop, sharp enough to send a small cloud of dust drifting from the shelf above the bench. Across the room, a pendulum faltered before recovering its rhythm. Every other clock seemed, for the briefest instant, to hesitate.
Then came another click. Lower. Closer. A series of hidden catches released one after another with the measured cadence of an escapement finally allowed to complete a movement it had been denied for decades.
The walnut beneath his hand shivered. Fine seams appeared where moments earlier there had been uninterrupted grain. They widened by scarcely the thickness of a knife blade before slender brass arms emerged from within the mechanism. Not claws. Not grasping things fashioned to seize by force, but delicate articulated spindles, each tipped with polished rollers no larger than pinheads. They moved with the slow assurance of a clock’s hands, crossing over one another in a sequence so economical that Thaddeus recognized Octavia’s work before he consciously understood why.
“No...”
The word escaped him before reason had caught up. The first spindle found the edge of the locket. A second steadied it from beneath. A third rotated it no more than a quarter turn until the hinge aligned with an opening that had not existed a heartbeat before. The machine drew it inward. Only an inch.
Thaddeus reached instinctively. His fingers closed around the locket just as the mechanism tightened. He pulled, not violently but with the measured confidence of a craftsman who knew precisely how much force a delicate assembly ought to withstand.
It did not move. He adjusted his grip and tried again, feeling for the slightest suggestion of play within the mechanism. There was none. Whatever held the locket did so with perfect, unwavering pressure. Not enough to mar the gold. More than enough to resist him.
He stopped. Not because he had surrendered, but because he recognized the feeling beneath his fingertips. It was not the resistance of a lock. It was the resistance of a completed assembly.
He had built mechanisms like this himself. Once engaged, they ceased to be collections of individual parts. They became a single machine.
Very slowly, he withdrew his hand as the machine continued to work.
The brass arms withdrew one by one until only the locket remained visible, suspended halfway within the walnut case as though the box had accepted it without quite consuming it. Beneath the polished lid, a governor found its speed. A flywheel gathered momentum. Springs that had spent decades wound against themselves surrendered their stored strength with a succession of soft metallic sighs.
Then, with a measured certainty that admitted no interruption, hidden bolts withdrew.
The lid rose. Not quickly. Not theatrically. Simply because it had finally become time.
The inside bore no gears. No brass. No miracle of engineering. Instead, mounted beneath a thin sheet of glass, was a different painted likeness of Octavia seated upon the stool by the workshop window, violin resting comfortably beneath her chin. She was not looking toward the artist. She was looking somewhere beyond the frame, her mouth drawn into the faint, knowing smile he had spent half a lifetime trying—and usually failing—to interpret before she spoke.
Beneath the portrait, engraved into a narrow brass plaque with the unmistakable confidence of her own hand, were only three words.
Finish the song.
For a long while he did nothing. The violin stood exactly where it always had, resting in its stand beside the drafting table. Dust had settled upon the case but not upon the fingerboard. He found himself crossing the room before he had consciously decided to move, lifting the instrument with the same care one affords an old friend after too long apart.
The first notes came easily. They always had. His hands remembered what the years had not managed to erase. The melody found its way through the workshop, weaving itself among the clocks until the room seemed to breathe in time with it.
Then he reached the place where he always stopped. For thirty years the music had ended there. Not because the composition ended. Because that was where Octavia entered. He had never played beyond it.
At first because he could not bear to. Later because it had become impossible to imagine otherwise.
His bow remained suspended above the strings. The words upon the lid waited.
Finish the song.
He closed his eyes and began to play. The ending returned not as memory but as habit, lying somewhere beneath grief where grief itself had never managed to reach. His fingers found the next position almost of their own accord. The final measures emerged hesitantly at first, then with growing confidence, until the melody resolved exactly as she had always insisted it should.
Inside the box, reeds awakened beneath the pressure of hidden bellows. Tiny valves opened and closed in careful succession. The mechanism breathed once, softly, as though testing lungs that had never before been asked to speak.
Then came a laugh, small and warm, and unmistakably hers.
“That’s better.”
He did not move as the voice continued, tinny, not perfect, but her.
“You always hurried the ending.”
There was the slightest pause, filled only by the whispering rhythm of the machine.
“If you’re hearing this,” she said, “you finally trusted me.”
A quiet click answered the last word. A narrow compartment eased itself from beneath the portrait. Inside rested a folded packet of papers, bound with a faded length of blue ribbon. He recognized the paper before he touched it. The crease. The weight. The uneven edge where he’d once trimmed the sheet with a carpenter’s knife because he could not afford proper stationery.
He unfolded it carefully. His own handwriting greeted him.
My dearest Octavia—
The letter ended halfway down the page.
Everything below it had been transformed into immaculate drawings in Octavia’s hand: gears, governors, bellows, reed chambers, timing cams, each dimensioned with the quiet certainty that had always distinguished her work from his. She had apologized for drawing over the letter only once, in the smallest script imaginable, tucked into the corner beside the title block.
I knew you’d forgive me. We always did our best work together.
I know Kira’s finished before she says anything. She has this habit of rereading the last page whenever she’s trying to decide whether she dislikes the ending or merely dislikes me. It’s an important distinction; one generally leads to a discussion about story structure, the other usually ends with an uncomfortable amount of psychoanalysis conducted by someone who, despite technically existing inside my own head, has somehow appointed herself my therapist.
She closes the manuscript with unnecessary care and looks at me over the top of it.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
She waits. I’ve learned not to fill silences around Kira. She uses them the way Thaddeus might use a tiny screwdriver.
“The Victorian prose is insufferable.”
“So is steampunk.”
That actually shuts her up. For a moment, at least. She studies me for a second, apparently trying to determine whether I’m being glib or accidentally honest. Meanwhile, Chuck shifts slightly in his nest. He’s had two full drafts of this story to chew on so far.
“I’m borrowing the aesthetic,” I explain. “Not the worldview. If I have to spend three thousand words in a workshop full of brass, steam, and improbable engineering, I’m at least going to have a little fun with it.”
She concedes the point with visible reluctance. “Fine.”
It’s less satisfying than it sounds. Every concession from Kira is simply the runway for her next attack. She opens the manuscript again, skimming the final pages. I know exactly where she is without seeing the paper. She’s reached the point where the narrator disappears and I changed the prose from that Victorian nonsense into a register I usually write, and I can almost hear her deciding whether she hates it.
“You stop performing.”
“I wasn’t performing, though. The story stops performing, so the narrator stops, too.”
“Hm.”
That particular “hm” has been responsible for more emotional damage than two hundred agent ghostings. She taps the final page with one finger.
“You never explain the invention.”
“I don’t need to.”
“It changes the world.”
“Probably.”
“And you don’t care.”
“I care exactly as much as Thaddeus does.”
She lets that sit between us for a moment before nodding once.
“So it isn’t about the machine.”
“It never was.”
“It’s about the locket.”
“No.” I shake my head. “It’s about him realizing it wasn’t about the device or the locket. It was about him.”
She doesn’t answer immediately. Instead, she leans back in the chair and looks at me with the expression she reserves for moments when she’s about to become profoundly irritating.
“Is your prom picture supposed to be the locket?”
“...Kira.”
“I’m asking.”
“No. You’re accusing.”
She smiles. It’s a tiny smile. The kind I’ve realized is the dangerous kind from her.
“You’ve kept that photograph around for—”
“Stop.”
“I wasn’t even going to say how long.”
“You were thinking it.”
“I was.”
I sigh. She’s impossible to argue with because she cheats. Normal people require evidence. Kira requires only an unhealthy interest in my emotional blind spots.
“Should we examine your search history?” she asks sweetly.
I stare at her. She stares back.
“...That’s inadmissible.”
“It isn’t a courtroom.”
“It should be.”
She laughs, slides the manuscript back across the desk, and stands.
“I still think the Victorian prose is insufferable.”
“I know.”
“But...”
There’s always a *but*.
“I forgot it was steampunk.”
I can’t help smiling.
“Yeah.”
She reaches the door before stopping just long enough to glance back over her shoulder.
“I think that’s because you finally stopped writing about the workshop.”
The door closes behind her before I can ask whether she meant that as criticism or a compliment.
Chuck stirs again, its voice manages “Victorian ankle smut” before diving back into the nest he’s made of my drafts.
This is a response to Bradley Ramsey’s Power up Prompt #36: 7.12.26
I think Bradley may have a point. 😁