Speaker 1: Athos to the US. There is a shop on Hawthorne Lane,
Speaker 1: wish between the Bookbinder and the tea Merchant, where time
Speaker 1: itself seems to slow down. The window is narrow and tall,
Speaker 1: and through its wavy glass you can see dozens of
Speaker 1: clocks hanging on the walls. Some are grand, with dark
Speaker 1: wood cases and golden faces. Others are small and simple,
Speaker 1: like the kind you might find on a bedside table.
Speaker 1: But every single one and the ticks, and together they
Speaker 1: create a sand like a gentle rain falling on a
Speaker 1: tin roof. The clockmaker's name is mister Aldric Finch. He
Speaker 1: has been mending and making clocks for longer than anyone
Speaker 1: in town can remember. His hair is white now, and
Speaker 1: his hands shake just a little when he holds the
Speaker 1: tiny screws, but his eyes are sharp. He can look
Speaker 1: at a broken clock and know what is wrong with it,
Speaker 1: the way a doctor can listen to a heartbeat and
Speaker 1: know what the body needs. He sits at his wet
Speaker 1: pedg each morning, long before the sharp opens, surrounded by
Speaker 1: the soft chorus of ticking. He drinks his tea from
Speaker 1: a cup that has a chip on the rim, and
Speaker 1: he listens not to anything in particular, but to everything
Speaker 1: at once. The clocks speak to each other in their
Speaker 1: quiet way, a conversation conducted in ticks and talks and chimes,
Speaker 1: and mister Finch understands every word. And then theither is
Speaker 1: the apprentice. Her name is Clara. She arrived three summers ago,
Speaker 1: a quiet girl of seventeen, with ink stained fingers and
Speaker 1: the habit of tilting her head when she listened. She
Speaker 1: had come from a town further up the coast, where
Speaker 1: her family had run a bakery. But Clara had never
Speaker 1: been drawn to flower and sugar. She was drawn to gears,
Speaker 1: to springs, to the precise and patient art of making
Speaker 1: something keep time. Mister Finch had been reluctant at first.
Speaker 1: He was old and his joints ached, and he thought
Speaker 1: perhaps it was time to simply close the shop and
Speaker 1: let the clocks wind down for good. But Clara had
Speaker 1: stood in his doorway on a Tuesday morning and said
Speaker 1: I would like to learn, and something in her voice,
Speaker 1: some quiet certainty, had made him not. Now she worked
Speaker 1: beside him every day. She would arrive just after dawn,
Speaker 1: hang her coat on the hook by the door, and
Speaker 1: settling into the small wooden chair at the work bench
Speaker 1: nearest the window. Mister Finch would already be there, a
Speaker 1: clock faced down on a square of felt, a loop
Speaker 1: pressed to his eye. He would not look up when
Speaker 1: she came in, but he would say good morning Clara.
Speaker 1: Then she would say good morning, mister Finch, and then
Speaker 1: they would work in silence for hours. The shop was
Speaker 1: their shared world. In the afternoons, when the light slanted
Speaker 1: through the wavy glass and cast long shadows across the floor,
Speaker 1: they would sometimes talk. Clara would ask questions and mister
Speaker 1: Finch would answer, and the clerks would tick around them
Speaker 1: like an audience listening to a quiet conversation. Clara had
Speaker 1: learned to listen. That was the first thing mister Finch
Speaker 1: taught her. Not to look, not to touch, but to listen.
Speaker 1: Every clock has its own voice, he said. A healthy
Speaker 1: clock ticks with a steady rhythm, like a heartbeat at rest.
Speaker 1: The clock that is struggling will skip or drag, or
Speaker 1: make a sound like a sigh. You must learn to
Speaker 1: hear the difference, Sir. Clara would hold a clock to
Speaker 1: her ear and close her eyes. She would listen to
Speaker 1: the tick, tick, tick, and try to feel the rhythm
Speaker 1: of it. The way you might listen to music and
Speaker 1: try to find the beat beneath the melody. Sometimes the
Speaker 1: clock would sound strong and sure, and she would smile.
Speaker 1: Other Times he would sound thin and uneven, and she
Speaker 1: would frown, and mister Finch would nod and say, now,
Speaker 1: opened it up, find a place where the sound goes wrong.
Speaker 1: She had gotten very good at it. She could take
Speaker 1: apart a clock, clean every gear and spring, put it
Speaker 1: back together, and have it ticking true within an afternoon.
Speaker 1: Mister Finch had started leaving the simpler repairs for her
Speaker 1: to handle on her own, and she had never once
Speaker 1: returned a clock that was not better than when it
Speaker 1: came in. But to day was different. To day mister
Speaker 1: Finch had placed something on the workbench that Clara had
Speaker 1: never seen before. It was a clock, yes, but it
Speaker 1: was unlike any clock she had worked on. It was small,
Speaker 1: no bigger than a man's palm, and made of a
Speaker 1: meazzle she did not recognize. It was not brass, and
Speaker 1: it was not steel. It had a warm, dark color,
Speaker 1: like the skin of a plum, and it was covered
Speaker 1: in tiny engravings stars, moons, rivers winding through. Where did
Speaker 1: this come from? Clara asked? Raining closer. A traveler left it.
Speaker 1: Mister finchered. He was standing by the window looking out
Speaker 1: of the lane. He said it had stopped working twenty
Speaker 1: years ago, and he had been carrying it ever since,
Speaker 1: waiting to find someone who could fix it. Clara picked
Speaker 1: it up gently. It was heavier than it looked. She
Speaker 1: turned it over and found the winding key on the back,
Speaker 1: a small silver lever shaped like a crescent moon. She
Speaker 1: tried to turn it, but it would not move. It
Speaker 1: is locked, she said, not locked, mister Finn, and said,
Speaker 1: still looking out the window, frozen. The main spring has sat.
Speaker 1: It has been still for so long that the metal
Speaker 1: has forgotten how to move. Glara looked at the clock face.
Speaker 1: There were no numbers. Instead, there were symbols, tiny and delicate,
Speaker 1: painted around the edge, her sun, her crescent moon, a star,
Speaker 1: her cloud, a drop of water, a flame, and at
Speaker 1: the very tug where the twelve would normally be, there
Speaker 1: was a small open hand. What does it tell time for,
Speaker 1: Clara asked, there are no numbers. Mister Finch turned from
Speaker 1: the window and looked at her. His eyes were thoughtful.
Speaker 1: That is a very good question, he said, I believe
Speaker 1: it tells time for things that cannot be counted. Clara
Speaker 1: did not understand, but she did not ask further. She
Speaker 1: set the clock on the felt and reached for her tools.
Speaker 1: The work took her three days. The first day she
Speaker 1: simply sat with the clock. She held it to her
Speaker 1: ear and listened, the way mister Finch had taught her.
Speaker 1: At first she heard nothing. It was utterly still, as
Speaker 1: silent as a stone, but she was patient. She held
Speaker 1: it closer, she slowed her own breathing, and eventually, deep
Speaker 1: beneath the silence, she heard it, a faint vibration, so
Speaker 1: subtle it was more a feeling than a floud. The
Speaker 1: clock was not dead, It was sleeping. She sat with
Speaker 1: it all morning, holding it, listening, waiting for the vibration
Speaker 1: to grow, And slowly it did, like a person waking
Speaker 1: from a deep sleep. The clock began to stir. The
Speaker 1: vibration strengthened, became a pulse, became a wisp of movement.
Speaker 1: Clara could feel it in her fingertips, a tiny rhythmic trembling,
Speaker 1: as if the clock were breathing. The second day she
Speaker 1: opened it. The inside was extraordinary. The gears were impossibly small,
Speaker 1: each one no bigger than a grain of rice, and
Speaker 1: they were arranged in a pattern she had never seen.
Speaker 1: It was not the standard layout a mainspring driving an escapement.
Speaker 1: It was more like a web, with dozens of tiny
Speaker 1: gears connected by hair thin springs, all radiating outward from
Speaker 1: a central point. And at that center there was something
Speaker 1: that looked like a small crystal, clear and smoothed, now
Speaker 1: bigger than a peppercorn. She cleaned each gear one by
Speaker 1: one gently with a brush so fine it was almost
Speaker 1: just a whisper against the metal. She oiled the springs
Speaker 1: with the lightest touch of her finest oil. She worked
Speaker 1: in silence, her breath held her hands steady. The shop
Speaker 1: was quiet around her, the other clocks ticking their patient ticks,
Speaker 1: and Clara felt as if she were tending to something sacred,
Speaker 1: something that had waited a long time for this moment.
Speaker 1: And when she reached the crystal at the center, she
Speaker 1: held it up to the light and saw that it
Speaker 1: was not perfectly clear. There was a tiny bubble inside it,
Speaker 1: and the bubble seemed to move, drifting slowly from one
Speaker 1: side to the other, like a thought passing through her mind.
Speaker 1: The third day she put it back together. He worked slowly,
Speaker 1: carefully matching each gear to its place, each spring to
Speaker 1: its connection. She checked and double checked a bar fur road,
Speaker 1: her lips pressed together in concentration. This offense watched from
Speaker 1: his bench, but it did not interfere. This was Clara's work, now,
Speaker 1: her puzzle, her responsibility. When the last piece was in,
Speaker 1: she turned to the winding key. This time it moved.
Speaker 1: She felt the main spring catch, felt it coil tight,
Speaker 1: and then she heard it, a tick, soft as a
Speaker 1: heart beat, then another and another. The clock was alive.
Speaker 1: She held it to her ear and listened. The ticking
Speaker 1: was not like other clocks. It was not a steady,
Speaker 1: mechanical beat. It was more like breathing. It would tick, tick, tick,
Speaker 1: and then pause, just for a moment, as if it
Speaker 1: were thinking. Then it would tick again. She looked at
Speaker 1: the clock face. The cymbals had changed. The open hand
Speaker 1: at the top was now closed, as if it were
Speaker 1: holding something. The sun had moved slightly to the left.
Speaker 1: The crescent moon had shifted downward. In the tiny bubble
Speaker 1: inside the crystal was now on the opposite side. Clara
Speaker 1: set the clock down and stared at it. She did
Speaker 1: not understand what she was seeing, but she understood that
Speaker 1: it was important. Mister Finch came over and sat down
Speaker 1: beside her. He looked at the clock for a long time.
Speaker 1: Then he smiled, a small and quiet smile, and he said,
Speaker 1: you have done well, Clara. What is it she has?
Speaker 1: What does it do? It does what all clocks do,
Speaker 1: he said. It marks the passing of time. But this
Speaker 1: clerk marks a different kind of time, not hours and minutes,
Speaker 1: not days and years. It marks the time of small things,
Speaker 1: the time it takes for bread to rise, for a
Speaker 1: letter to arrive, for a child to fall asleep, for
Speaker 1: a memory to fade. Killera looked at the clock again.
Speaker 1: The sun had moved again, just slightly. It is counting something,
Speaker 1: she said, It is counting everything. Mister Finch said, everything
Speaker 1: that matters. That evening, after Clara had gone home and
Speaker 1: mister Finch was alone in the shop, he sat in
Speaker 1: his chair by the window, though and listened to the clocks.
Speaker 1: Most of them tick in their usual way, steady and reliable.
Speaker 1: But the small, plank colored clock on the work bench
Speaker 1: ticked differently. It ticked and paused, ticked and paused, like
Speaker 1: a conversation between two old friends who do not need
Speaker 1: to fill every silence with words. Mister Finch smiled. He
Speaker 1: had been a clockmaker for fifty years and he had
Speaker 1: learned many things. But the most important thing he had
Speaker 1: learned was this time is not something you measure, it
Speaker 1: is something you feel. And the best clocks are not
Speaker 1: the ones that keep the most accurate time, They are
Speaker 1: the ones that remind you to pay attention. Clara would
Speaker 1: learn this too, in time. She would learn that the
Speaker 1: art of clockmaking is not about gears and springs and
Speaker 1: precise measurements. It is about patience, about listening, about understanding
Speaker 1: that every moment, no matter how small, is worth keeping.
Speaker 1: And the little clock on the workbench would keep taking,
Speaker 1: marking the time of small things for as long as
Speaker 1: there were small things worth counting, which mister Finch thought
Speaker 1: would be forever. He closed his eyes and listened to
Speaker 1: the ticking tick tick tick pause, tick tick tick pause,
Speaker 1: and the night settled gently over Hawthorne Lane, and the
Speaker 1: clocks kept their watch, and time moved on, soft and unheardy,
Speaker 1: the way it was always meant to