The Clockmaker’s Apprentice

The first time Elias pushed open the door to the shop, he thought he had wandered into a cathedral disguised as a clockmaker’s. Dust motes floated in shafts of golden light like incense, and hundreds of ticking hearts whispered from every shelf. Some clocks stood taller than him, their carved wooden cases glowering with brass-rimmed eyes. Others were small enough to vanish in his palm, delicate as bird bones. But every one of them ticked. Together, they sang a shifting, uneven hymn.

Behind the counter sat a man whose face seemed carved from oak. His beard was a braided river of white, and a monocle gleamed in one eye like the lens of a telescope. Without looking up from the pocket watch he dissected, he said, “You’re late.”

Elias blinked. “I—late for what?”

“For your apprenticeship.” The man snapped the watch shut, its lid engraved with a constellation Elias didn’t recognize. “You’ve been listening for weeks. Standing outside. Telling yourself you’ll step in tomorrow. Well, tomorrow has finally caught you.”

Elias stammered something, but the man rose, extending a thin hand. “Master Rooke. Clockmaker.” His handshake was firm, as if he were winding Elias into place.


---

The apprenticeship was not like anything Elias imagined. He expected to learn gears, springs, cogs, oiling and polishing. And he did, but only in passing. Rooke’s true lessons circled stranger subjects.

“Time isn’t kept,” Rooke said once, placing a delicate movement into Elias’s palm. “It’s persuaded.” Another day, while teaching him to reset the pendulum on a battered grandfather clock, Rooke muttered, “Each clock is a cage, and each cage holds a different bird. You must feed them differently.”

The strangest task of all was the one Rooke gave at nightfall. “Listen,” he would say. And Elias would stand among the hundreds of ticking throats, closing his eyes until their dissonant chatter aligned into patterns—sometimes urgent, sometimes soothing, sometimes sounding like words just beyond hearing.

He began to dream in ticks and tocks.


---

One evening, weeks into his apprenticeship, Elias lingered after Rooke extinguished the lamps. The shop glowed faintly from the phosphorescent paint on a few dials. The chorus of clocks was softer now, as if they knew it was night.

He wandered to a far corner where an object stood beneath a heavy velvet cloth. The air around it felt colder, and when he brushed the fabric aside, he revealed a clock unlike any other. It was a tall case, carved from black wood veined with silver. Its face bore no numbers, only twelve empty circles. The hands were motionless.

When Elias touched it, a sound filled his head—not ticking, but a deep heartbeat, slow and inexorable. He stumbled back.

“Not that one,” Rooke said quietly from the shadows. “Never that one.”

Elias swallowed. “What is it?”

“A promise,” Rooke said. Then he turned away, as if the subject were closed.


---

Curiosity gnawed at Elias until one storm-soaked night, he could not resist. Rooke had left the shop, muttering about needing herbs from the apothecary. Alone, Elias approached the forbidden clock again. The black wood seemed to absorb the lightning flashes from outside. He laid a trembling hand on the cold brass pendulum.

The heartbeat filled him once more. But this time, it carried words, slow and deliberate.

Your time. Or his.

Elias snatched his hand back. The pendulum twitched, though no weight had touched it.

The shop door banged open, and Rooke stood there, rain streaming from his cloak. His eyes narrowed. “You heard it, didn’t you?”

Elias couldn’t speak.

Rooke sighed and locked the door. “Every clock in this shop holds a fragment of time—an hour, a day, sometimes a lifetime—gifted, traded, or stolen. But that one…” He nodded toward the black clock. “That one is bound to me. It counts down the last promise I made. A master must give his apprentice a choice: inherit the shop, or walk away unchanged. But inheritance comes at a price.”

Elias whispered, “What price?”

“Mine.” Rooke’s expression was weary. “To take my place, you must take my years. The clock will choose how many.”

The storm outside rumbled like distant gears grinding.


---

Days passed in uneasy silence. Elias returned to polishing, repairing, listening—but everything seemed sharper now. He noticed how Rooke’s hands trembled when holding the tiniest screws. How shadows deepened beneath his eyes. The old man was winding down, like a clock at the end of its spring.

And Elias began to understand: every apprentice before him must have faced the same choice. Rooke had survived this long not by refusing it, but because none had taken his place. Was that cruelty? Or mercy?

The question plagued Elias.

One morning, Rooke collapsed. The watch he had been repairing clattered to the floor, still ticking. Elias caught his master’s shoulders, panic surging. “I’ll do it,” he said hoarsely. “I’ll take your place.”

Rooke’s lips curled in a faint smile. “Then go to the clock.”


---

The velvet cloth was gone. The black clock loomed, its empty circles glowing faintly. The pendulum hung motionless, waiting. Elias stepped close, his reflection pale in the polished brass.

He touched it.

The heartbeat thundered, stronger now. The twelve circles flared one by one, filling with light. Elias felt something tearing inside him, as though years were being unspooled like thread. He gasped, his childhood flashing behind his eyes, then his youth, then his uncertain present. At the same time, strength surged into Rooke—he stood straighter, his hands firm, his eyes brightening like freshly wound lanterns.

The pendulum swung once, twice, then stilled. Only six circles remained lit. Elias staggered, clutching the counter. He was not old, not yet—but he felt decades older than when he entered the shop that morning. Rooke placed a steadying hand on his shoulder. The lines in his face were softened, his body renewed.

“It chose fairly,” Rooke said softly. “It left you years enough to live—and to keep the clocks.”

Elias could not answer. His throat ached with unshed words.


---

From that day forward, Rooke was no longer the master, but a man released. He left the shop one dawn without farewell, stepping into the city streets with a spring in his stride. Elias never saw him again.

The shop, however, remained. Its hundreds of clocks continued their strange music. And Elias, gray already at his temples, listened with new ears. He began to understand their language—their subtle bargains, their whispered requests. Some customers came seeking repairs, but others arrived with hushed questions: could time be borrowed? Could grief be shortened, joy prolonged? Elias learned to answer with careful honesty.

Every night, before extinguishing the lamps, he walked to the black clock. Its pendulum was still. Six circles still glowed. They were his now, his own promise ticking silently in the dark.

And sometimes, when the shop was quietest, Elias thought he heard a faint voice within the heartbeat. Not Rooke’s, but his own, older and wiser, whispering to the next apprentice yet to come:

Tomorrow has finally caught you.