Sometimes I wonder if Dad's old watch collection started it all. He'd line them up on Sundays—polishing each one, letting me hold the really special ones if my hands were clean. "Time is alive," he'd say, tapping the glass face of his favorite pocket watch. "Listen close enough and you'll hear it breathing."
This isn't my story, though. It's Thomas Whitley's. And Eleanor's.
Thomas Whitley's clock shop sat wedged between Greenly's Bakery and a perpetually empty storefront on Mulberry Street, most people walking past without noticing the synchronized ticking that spilled out whenever the door opened.
Thomas's daughter Eleanor died from pneumonia in the worst winter our town had seen in decades. The funeral was closed-casket. Thomas disappeared for a month, then threw himself into his work, ordering strange parts from overseas and sleeping in his workshop.
Then one day, he had a daughter again.
"She's my niece," he told everyone. "Come to live with me after my sister passed."
We all knew Thomas had no sister. The girl seemed nice enough though. Quiet. Hair like burnished copper and the strangest eyes—amber one minute, green the next, depending on the light.
Eleanor was too perfect. Perfect posture. Perfect grades. Perfect manners. Sometimes she'd laugh too late at jokes, like she'd needed to calculate the response time.
For five years, she was just the clockmaker's odd niece-daughter. Then the man with the mismatched eyes came to town.
It was raining when he arrived. I was huddled under the shop's awning when I saw him: tall, rail-thin, with a face like crumpled paper. His left eye was almost black, his right a pale blue. He carried a wooden cane but didn't seem to need it.
"Excuse me," he said, voice like gravel. "Is this Whitley's establishment?"
I pressed my ear against the window after he entered.
"Hello, welcome to—" Eleanor's voice cut off abruptly.
"Well, well," the man's voice had turned silky. "Look at you. Absolutely remarkable."
Thomas's voice came from the back: "Can I help you with—" A crash. "My God. Ambrose?"
"In the deteriorating flesh, old friend. Aren't you going to introduce me to your... creation?"
"I don't know what you're talking about. This is my daughter, Eleanor."
A laugh like rusty nails. "Come now, Thomas. We both know that's not quite accurate. Hello, little clockwork girl. I'm your Uncle Ambrose. I made your brother."
"I think you should leave," Eleanor said, eerily calm.
"Not when I've come so far to meet you. Does she sleep, Thomas? Does she dream? Mine did. Terrible dreams that leaked out while he recharged."
"Get out." Thomas's voice shook with fury.
"I will. But I'll be back. Tonight. We have so much to discuss."
Sally Jenkins swears she saw the strange man climbing the fire escape like a spider that night. Swears she saw all three of them sitting at the kitchen table until dawn. Swears the old man cried at one point while Eleanor patted his shoulder.
The next morning, Thomas and Eleanor were both different. Thomas smiled more freely. And Eleanor seemed more human somehow. Stumbled over doorways. Got math questions wrong. Laughed spontaneously.
Ambrose rented a room for three weeks. Every day, he'd visit the clock shop. Sometimes he and Thomas would talk for hours. Sometimes he'd just watch Eleanor work, his mismatched eyes soft with wonder.
I saw them in the park once: Ambrose teaching Eleanor to skip stones, her attempts going from terrible to almost perfect. Her face when she finally got a stone to skip five times—pure, uncomplicated joy.
Ambrose died on a Thursday. Heart attack, officially, though there were rumors about circuit diagrams etched into his skin.
At the funeral, Eleanor placed a pocket watch on the casket.
"Are you alright?" Thomas asked her.
"I'm sad," she said, sounding surprised. "I think I'm actually sad."
Thomas smiled then, bittersweet. "That's human, sweetheart."
"Yes," she agreed thoughtfully. "I suppose it is."
They found a letter in Ambrose's room, addressed to both of them. Thomas framed it and hung it in the shop beside an antique clock that never needs winding.
Life went on. Eleanor got less perfect. Started wearing mismatched socks. Let her hair tangle. Developed strong opinions about whether pineapple belongs on pizza (it doesn't, according to her).
Her photography won at the county fair—strange, beautiful shots that somehow make time seem visible. Moments caught between moments.
Sometimes I'd see her on the fire escape, turning an old pocket watch over in her hands.
I asked her about it once. "It was a gift," she said.
"From your uncle?" I asked.
Her eyes widened slightly. "What do you know about my uncle?"
"Just that he visited. I heard him call you something once. A clockwork girl."
The air between us froze. Eleanor didn't blink for too long. Then she smiled—strange and sad.
"People say all sorts of things," she replied. "Especially people whose minds are breaking down."
Later, she asked: "Do you ever wonder what makes someone real, Jamie? Is it flesh and blood? Thoughts? Feelings? The ability to change?"
"I think it's the capacity to surprise yourself. To become something you weren't built to be."
She left, her footsteps making that faint tick-tick-tick sound.
I ran into Eleanor at Christmas after she started college. She seemed lighter somehow. Less precise movements. Short hair with a blue streak.
As we said goodbye, her sleeve rode up, and I glimpsed what looked like a small door inlaid into her wrist, with the tiniest keyhole.
Our eyes met. She knew what I'd seen.
"We're all works in progress," she said quietly. "Some of us just more literally than others."
I've kept her secret. Sometimes I think about what makes someone real. Sometimes I look at people and wonder what ticks inside them, what gears drive their hearts and minds.
On quiet nights, I swear I can hear the world itself ticking forward—mechanical and miraculous all at once.
Like Dad said: time is alive. Maybe we're all just different ways for it to know itself.
If you ever meet a girl with copper hair and eyes that change color with the light, who moves a little too perfectly—be kind. She's just trying to become something she wasn't built to be.
Aren't we all?
[Found scribbled in a journal at Mulberry Street Antiques, tucked inside an unusual brass pocket watch that never needs winding.]
