The Clockmaker’s Apprentice

Every morning at exactly 6:00 a.m., Elian unlocked the door of the clock shop and swept the sawdust from the wooden floor. The walls ticked softly—more than forty clocks, each slightly off from the next. The noise was constant, like a thousand hearts beating out of rhythm.

The shop’s owner, Mr. Halden, rarely spoke. He wore thick glasses and smelled faintly of copper and varnish. He once told Elian, 'A clock is a memory in motion. Fixing one is like restoring time to its rightful path.' Elian never quite understood what that meant, but he repeated it to himself anyway.

At school, Elian blended into the corners of classrooms and walked the halls unnoticed. But in the shop, he mattered. When a pendulum swung unevenly or a gear slipped, he could feel it—like a quiet imbalance in his chest. He learned to listen before he touched anything.

One day, Mr. Halden didn’t arrive. Elian waited an hour, then another. He called the landline—no answer. The clocks kept ticking, their sound suddenly too loud. That afternoon, a man in a gray suit arrived and told Elian the shop would be closing. Mr. Halden had passed away.

For weeks, the windows stayed dark. Elian passed the shop without looking inside. He imagined the clocks slowing down, one by one, as if they knew they had been left behind. Then, one day, he stopped in front of the door. He pressed his palm to the glass, closed his eyes, and listened.

A faint tick echoed through the silence—offbeat, persistent. He turned the knob and stepped inside. It smelled like dust and memory. Elian reached for the key under the register, unlocked the back cabinet, and wound the smallest clock first. He didn’t need permission. Time, it seemed, was asking to be remembered.