short fiction · 2026-10-31

The Clockmaker's Daughter

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

The clocks kept different times. Not by accident — her father set them so: one to the sun, one to the tide, one to the breath held between heartbeats. As a girl she pressed her palm to each face, feeling the pendulum swing like a second pulse beneath her skin. She learned to read the spaces between ticks, the silence that stretched when two clocks aligned and the world held its breath.

After the funeral she stopped winding them.

The first week the house rang with their dying — long slow groans as springs unwound, the tick growing sluggish, irregular, each clock surrendering at its own hour. She sat in the kitchen with her tea, listening to time unravel. The tide clock went first. Then the sun. The heartbeat clock lasted longest, its rhythm fading into a final uneven thump against glass.

Now the house is quiet. She keeps her own time.