The funeral was small, as Horatio Quill would have wanted. The priest spoke briefly; the fog did the rest. A handful of townsfolk stood with hats in hand among the crooked stones of Haverleigh Cemetery. Every so often, one of them glanced toward the bell tower on the hill, perhaps hoping it would sound a farewell. It did not.
Elias kept to the edge of the crowd. He was not there to be seen. Quill had never been a man of sentiment; he would have laughed at the idea of eulogies. "Time will do the speaking," he used to say. "It always does."
When the last shovel of earth was thrown, the mourners drifted away in pairs, voices low. Only Mara Finn lingered beside the grave, her shawl drawn tight.
"He left everything to you," she said when Elias approached. He stared at the headstone. Horatio Quill, Master of Hours. 1851 – 1891. "Everything?" "His shop, his accounts, his debts – what there is of them. And that thing on the bench. The backward clock." Elias let out a short, humorless breath. "That should probably be buried too."
Mara frowned. "He said you'd say that." He looked at her. "He said what?" "That you'd want to destroy it. But he also said you'd be the only one who could finish it."
She pressed a small brass key into his hand. It was old and worn smooth, shaped like a question mark. "He wanted you to have this." Elias turned it over, feeling the delicate weight. "What does it open?" "I suppose you'll have to find out."
That night, the rain came back, soft at first, then drumming against the windows of the workshop. Elias lit a lamp and unfolded the letter sealed with the wax key.
Elias,
If you are reading this, I am no longer able to explain myself in person. You once accused me of building machines for my own vanity. Perhaps you were right. But this last clock is different. It does not measure hours – it remembers them.
Every gear is a confession, every spring a regret wound too tight. I tried to stop it, but time has its own hunger. If you finish the design, you may understand why the bell will not chime. If you destroy it, do so knowing what you lose.
Whatever you choose, know this: the past is not gone; it is merely waiting.
— H.Q.
The words blurred as the lamp flickered. Outside, the bell tower loomed through the rain, a dark pillar of silence.
Elias folded the letter again and stared at the backward-ticking clock. "Remembers them," he murmured. "What does that even mean?"
He reached for his tools. His hands remembered the weight of a screwdriver, the way metal gave beneath the edge. Quill's handwriting danced in his head like a metronome. He loosened the casing. Beneath it lay an arrangement of wheels so delicate they seemed alive. At the heart of the device, something shimmered – a drop of liquid light suspended in glass.
For a moment he thought it was an illusion. Then it pulsed. Once. Twice.
The air around him shifted, and he could smell the coal smoke of seven years ago, hear Quill's voice from another night, sharp and disappointed: You cannot bend time by breaking it, boy!
Elias stumbled back, heart hammering. The glow subsided. The room was only a room again.
He slammed the casing shut and pushed the clock away. "You're dead," he whispered, "and I'm done."
But as he reached for the lamp, he saw that the shadows of the room no longer matched his movements. When he lifted his hand, they followed half a second late.
By morning, the town had changed in small, impossible ways. A window that had been cracked for years was suddenly whole. A signboard spelled Quill & Co. in fresh paint though no brush had touched it. The baker swore he'd seen Elias the day before, though Elias had just arrived. The air itself seemed to carry an echo, as if every sound left a trace of its younger self.
Elias stood in the square, looking up at the motionless clock face, and wondered what part of time had slipped its chain. Then a voice behind him said, "It's you."
He turned. A woman stood in the fog – tall, wearing a grey coat and a look that belonged to someone who had been waiting a very long time.
"You're Elias Maren," she said. "Horatio told me you'd come."