The Clock Tower Keeper

More about The Clock Tower Keeper

It is said that in a city whose name has long since been blown from its clock faces, there stands a tower that strikes unlike others. Its hands move not by the hour, but by moments—those rare moments that stop the world for a fraction of a breath. Up there, among the steam and the bells, lives the Clock Tower Keeper. He sits on a stone platform, high above the rooftops, where the fog swallows the streets and the moons hang large like old debts over the city. Around him, gears clink, tireless and ancient, each bearing a pattern of lines reminiscent of the veins in a leaf. The clock tower itself, it is said, is alive. Its pendulum beats the pulse of the world, and if it were to stop, the memory of time would collapse. The Keeper knows no sleep. Wearing a red robe that has seen many winters, he crouches night after night on the steps, listening to the breath of the gears. With each revolution they complete, he hears a whisper—quiet voices rising from the depths of the hours. Some are songs of lost days, others warnings from futures that will never come. He jots them all down, with a quill spun from the pendulum's thread itself. On parchment kept damp by the fog, he writes words legible only in the haze. When the wind picks up, they disappear, yet somewhere they remain—in the air, in the rust, in the breath of the city. Once, so the story goes, the clock tower was the heart of a great workshop where time was forged like metal. Masters and apprentices cast moments, hammered minutes, smoothed hours into shining gears. But one day, the main pendulum stopped. The workshop fell silent, and everyone who lived there forgot they had ever been a part of it. Only the Keeper remained. No one knows if he is human or the remnant of a mechanism. His hands are steady as if still, his gaze bears the gleam of ancient habit. Sometimes, when the moon rises above the rooftops, one sees him speaking to him—as if they were sharing a secret. And the moon answers, with shadows on the clock faces. One night, as the wind blew from the south and the mists cleared, the pendulum stopped briefly. The whole city held its breath. Not a dog barked, not a wheel rolled. Only the Keeper moved, slowly, deliberately. He placed his hand on the clock's heart, and a single note sounded—deep, clear, like the sound of a memory. Then the hands began to move backward. First timidly, then steadily, as if in a dance. The city lights flickered, and for a moment everything seemed younger, brighter, unspoken. Then, as suddenly as it began, time returned as if nothing had happened. But on the platform, the keeper had disappeared. The clock continued to tick.