David C. Hughes, Writer

The Clockmaker (Part 2 of 3)

“Aye, madam. Are you looking for anything in particular? Perhaps a watch? An hourglass? A candle clock? All are handmade on premises; many are resurrected from the choicest materials.”

The woman cocked her head. “Resurrected?”

“Aye, madam,” said Horace. “I believe that even rubbish can be turned into something useful in the hands of the right individual.” He hefted a clock off the wall behind the counter. “Take, for example, this clock. The face is crafted from a pewter plate found in a gutter. Note the crack running from the numeral one to the numeral five.” He carefully opened the crystal and ran his knobby finger across the surface. “It maintains its integrity, but the very flaw which caused it to end up in my hands gives it a certain character.”

“May I?” Horace passed the clock to her. She peered at it closely. After a long minute she handed it back to him. “Beautiful,” she said, “but it does not suit me.”

“Very well,” said Horace, closing the crystal and remounting the clock to the wall. He steadied the weights and turned back to her. “These watches,” he said, sweeping his hand across a case. “They are throwaways, every one of them. All have been restored to fully-working order, but I have taken care to leave them a bit tarnished, somewhat worse for the wear. Time has not been kind to them, but they continue to keep it to perfection. I believe those who respect time will eventually master it.”

As the woman studied the watches, Horace spied the small wooden bird again, the crown of one of the many thick pins holding her mass of hair away from her head. In the dim lamplight the bird appeared to be gray with a mottled chest. Its body was long, as were its wings and tail, and it perched in her hair on short legs. Horace’s eyes grew wide. It was a cuckoo. He had carved dozens of them for his hidden clocks, all patterned after the one his mother had owned, but none of those he had made had turned out as lovely as the original. The one standing on the end of the mysterious woman’s pin was a true masterpiece, its execution equal only to the one he had hidden away.

The woman sighed. “These do not suit me, either, I am afraid.”

Horace stepped from behind the counter and began to lead the young lady around his shop, somewhat embarrassed by the quantity of dust that had settled upon the surfaces of the clocks. It was if he was seeing the shop for the first time through a new set of spectacles. She did not seem to mind, however, and as he spoke, he noticed her gaze turn toward him more and more often.

After an hour, which seemed like an eternity in an instant, Horace led the woman back to the counter. He stepped behind it and crossed his arms. “What is your desire, madam? Have you found what you are looking for?”

“Aye, I believe I have, but tell me, kind sir, do you have anything else that may rouse my interest?”

“I do not believe so,” said Horace. The woman stood patiently before him, a look of anticipation dancing on her face. His eyes again fell upon the small bird perching in her hair. “Upon second thought, perhaps there is something,” he said. “Wait here, my lady.” He bowed and took his leave.

Horace, his heart keeping time with the choirs of angels, departed the shop for his bed chamber. He snatched up a lamp, trimmed the wick, and swung open the door to the vault. Ducking inside, he spied the dozens of cuckoo clocks hanging from the walls. None ticked. He chose a delicate one and returned to the shop. With trembling hands he held up the timepiece and tugged one of the weights, shaped like a pine cone, to set the works in motion. The woman stood fascinated, her brilliant blue eyes round with amazement.

He carefully rotated the minute hand around the face toward the twelve. “My lady,” he said, and nudged the hand the rest of the way. The cuckoo flew out of its hatch in response and called three times: cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo! After the bird returned to its perch and the tiny door closed, the woman shifted her gaze from the clock to Horace. A tear ran down her cheek, which blushed as pink as foxgloves blooming in a spring meadow. “Well, madam,” Horace said. “Does it please you?”

The woman clasped her hands to her face and giggled. “Oh, yes, it pleases me. And it shall please the king and queen as well when I show them what I have found.”

Horace started. “The king and queen?”

“Why yes, my parents. My name is Sarah,” she said. “I do not like to be called ‘Princess,’ but that is, alas, what I am. Sarah. The princess.” She offered him a hand. He grasped it and put it to his lips. His knobby fingers trembled, but at the touch of her glove he felt for a moment no pain, only joy.

“And I am Horace. The clockmaker.” He smiled. Then he laughed. And for the first time in his life he did not mind that word rolling off his tongue. For indeed he was a clockmaker. He always had been, and he always would be. And she was a princess. The princess. He looked at the pin in her hair and knew his life had changed in the ticking of a clock. Carefully wrapping the timepiece in a strip of black fleece, he placed it in a burlap bag and presented it to the princess. She curtsied and tucked the package under her arm.

“We shall meet again soon,” she said.

“I pray,” said he, making his way to the door and opening it. As the princess departed his shop and headed into the night he could not help but admire her. Suddenly time had revealed to him another facet of itself, and this time its countenance had looked upon him favorably, even if it was wrapped in a fleeting hour now contained in a memory. He sighed, snuffed out the lamps and retired to his chamber where he prepared for bed, but not before stealing one last look at his collection of cuckoo clocks stowed in the vault.

(continued)

Copyright ©2015 by David C. Hughes

The Clockmaker (Part 1 of 3)

NOTE: The following short story took 1st place in the 2015 Oklahoma Writers Federation Incorporated (OWFI) “Short Story–Adult” category. Thank you all for your continued support–you are all a blessing, an inspiration and the reason I keep relentlessly pursuing this crazy vocation. Happy reading!

THE CLOCKMAKER

A long time ago in a faraway kingdom there lived a clockmaker named Horace. Horace, the last of a long line of clockmakers, spent most of his days and much of his nights alone, bent over his worn table crafting exquisite timepieces. With skill and patience he constructed gears and springs, cases and weights, pendulums and faces, for that was his lot in life and he had long ago accepted his fate. True happiness eluded him, but he found a sort of restless contentment transforming bits of metal, strips of wood and touches of longing—the rubbish of mankind plucked from heaps piled along the cobblestone roads—into art that guarded mankind’s most desired possession. Time.

Customers came and customers went, never looking twice at his melancholy form but always gasping with delight when he brought out from behind the counter a pocket watch or pendulum clock, an hourglass or a candle clock fitting their exact needs, wishes and means. The patrons left without uttering a word, their timepieces secure in their purses or packed neatly into sturdy crates nestled in their carts. In this manner, Horace lived day-by-day, catering to man’s need to know precisely where he stood in relation to time’s unstoppable advance. Obsession created time, time the necessity and necessity the provision, a belief Horace could never argue against and was content to uphold.

As days ushered in the nights and nights swept in the days, Horace forged these gatekeepers of time. His foot tapped a steady beat and all of his creations ticked, chimed and rang to the pace of that accurate foot. But his toe tapped most enthusiastically while his fingers were engaged in building a cuckoo clock. Time, it seemed to Horace, danced most gaily while employed in the art of crafting this invention originating from the dark forests to the east. His hands, misshapen since he was a young child from some disease of the knuckles and joints, worked less painfully as he constructed the pipes and bellows to give the bird its voice, a voice he remembered well and with tenderness.

Time swirled around him, elevating him as he whittled the casing, cast the iron weights and carved the cuckoo itself, its head turned without exception to the right. And time held its breath as the minute hand swung toward the twelve for the very first time and released the bird from behind its hatch. Horace allowed for a moment a tiny smile to ply across his lips each time the sorrowful notes filled the shop upon the newest cuckoo’s hatching. Once satisfied, he froze the works, set the weights and hid the clock away in a vault hidden behind the walls of his bed chamber.

Thus Horace had labored for more than twenty-two years, since he was a wee lad of ten, time showing no mercy, it seemed, despite his dedication to its worship. It began to sprinkle silver into his hair whilst keeping silver from his pockets. It lengthened his beard and forced him to wear spectacles at a very young age. It etched lines upon his face and painted dark circles under his eyes. His smiles came less frequently while his pain, especially in his fingers, took more and more pleasure in his company, extending its stay like a tiresome guest in the boarding house of his flesh. And as time took its toll, glances his way—rare to begin with—became even less frequent.

Patrons continued to bring business, but as he grew toward middle age he could not help but peek longingly at the handsome young ladies hanging onto the arms of their dashing young men as they entered and perused the shop. His mother had passed away young, bearing his father only himself, and in his angst his father had spent his remaining years and energy training his son in the art of clock making.

He did not remember much about his mother, but one memory in particular stood out: the look on her face when his father presented her with a cuckoo clock built by the hands of an old Black Forest clockmaker passing through the kingdom. He never saw the clockmaker again. Horace’s mother delighted in imitating the plaintive sound of the bird even as her illness stole away everything but the memory of her voice, which still called out to him when he was most tired. Despite a sudden and mysterious increase in means, his father died a short time later of a broken heart, but not before successfully marrying Horace off at the age of eighteen to the same fickle bride that he and his forefathers had embraced. That is why he at first did not realize what overcame him when the princess walked through his shop door one evening.

That night began as any other. The day had turned into dusk, the dusk flowed into twilight and twilight fell into evening. Not a single customer had entered the shop that day despite the pleasantness of the weather. As he laid in place the last gear of a large clockwork for an equally magnificent clock tower, the door flew open. Startled, he dropped the gear and allowed a curse to escape his lips, one he regretted the moment he lifted his eyes and gazed upon the woman standing in the doorway. Time froze. His heart did likewise. She was radiant, like no other he had seen before.

The woman, wearing a maroon dress trimmed in white lace, began to move through Horace’s shop like mist rolling across a still pond, sure and mysterious. As she drifted from clock to clock, she gave him a quick glance, highlighted with a slight smile which burned into his memory. Around her neck she wore an elaborate necklace decorated with the most brilliant stones. Her raven hair rose above her perfect white face into a mound pulled together at the crest and decorated with a spray of blood red primroses. A bird, possibly carved from wood and roughly the size of his thumb, rested in the nest of her abundant hair. She spoke not a word while admiring the clocks, caressing their faces with gloved fingers, opening doors and peering into their workings.

When she approached the case containing the watches, the woman looked up at Horace. For the first time in years he was given the opportunity to gaze into the soul of another, and what he found there turned the hands of the clock backwards. He stood a little taller and shifted his feet.

“Kind sir,” she said, her voice resonating with the joyfulness of a woodlark. “I am looking for something special.”

“Aye, madam.” Horace stroked his beard. “How may I be of service?” His heart thudded as the woman’s blue eyes pierced him.

“I desire something … unique.”

(continued)

Copyright 2015 David C. Hughes