Today's Reading
On the finely polished surface, an extraordinarily long-winged, graceful bird had been etched into the wood. Something about it drew me. "My little bird," Father had always said of Mother. Even years after she'd flitted away from us.
I touched the etching and ran my fingertips over the fine casing, then I wound the little key in the side. Gears sprang into motion. The mechanism whirred and spun, harder and louder until the thing grew warm.
'What in heaven's name...?'
I dropped it on the counter, expecting an explosion, but a beam of light shot from it. An exact likeness of the clock's face shone out beside me but magnified and hazy, a large ghost clock dancing on the air, haunting the wall it lay against.
Mouth hanging open, I reached out and sliced my hand through the beam of light, the shop's grime dancing like fairy dust in it. "Magic," I whispered, touching the wall where the clock face was projected, but I felt only plaster.
"Fifty-three degrees two," said the clock, in a gravelly voice.
I jumped back. "How—?"
The woman's solemn gaze studied me through the veil. Evaluated.
Then she touched a trigger on the back and the light vanished, the ghost clock on the wall disappearing. It shrank back into a regular mahogany clock that clicked innocently through the seconds, then died out again. My heart pounded twice that speed.
"I thought you might like to see what you're turning down...before you make your decision. That is, if you are still deciding." She clung to the counter. "You are, aren't you? I received no reply to my letter."
I gripped the clock. Secured the back in place. "Who are you? What is—"
The letter. That letter! It came back in a rush, an odd feeling settling over me just as it had when I'd opened the missive from the unknown "Mrs. Holligan." Me, inheriting a property. What a lark! It had seemed a silly prank, coming into the post office box with all those letters from my mother's jilted lovers. A trap, perhaps.
But now it inflamed my imagination, stark and real and full of untold possibilities. "You're the one who wrote to me. About that...that place. With the clocks." No, this woman was definitely not my mother.
"There's far more to Blakely House than clocks." She smiled behind the veil. "And now you've had a taste of it. Here's another." She slipped a metal object from deep within the folds of her gown and set it on the counter. It was a key. A long, elaborate one that shone with fresh polish. Birds encircled its stem and formed the handle, hinting at the marvels and beauty awaiting me.
I took that key, turning it over. Surprised at its weight. I used to believe I wanted adventure, as does every girl who buries her nose in books. Except for the part about leaving home. That was what novels were for—having adventures without any of the discomfort. I clutched the counter, the same one I'd once grasped as a small, terrified orphan, and stared at that key. And all I could think about is what it might unlock.
"The master said you were to have this when he was gone." She pressed it toward me. "That you'd know exactly what to do with it. And...I hope you do. I hope you'll come."
"I'm not certain I can get away." Or that I wanted to. But I desperately needed to know what the key unlocked—and why the late master thought I would know. My mother's family had always been shrouded in mystery, as had the woman herself, and I hadn't any idea who any of them were.
She laid her black-gloved hand on my bare one. "We need you, Sydney Forrester. Please come."
I looked at her face behind the thin veil—so lovely with rounded contours and bright eyes, inviting me into something extraordinary. Yet for one accustomed to fighting uphill battles, striving hard to eke the bare minimum out of life, I hardly knew what to do with good fortune simply being held out to me.
She turned to go.
"Wait! Your clock."
She smiled. "See if you can work it out. Then bring it back."
That notice. That rotten advert in the personals that had put my insignificant name in print. Who would have thought anyone would be hunting for a throwaway orphan with no connections?
But they had come, all those letters...and her too. This Mrs. Holligan, who had startled me with the information she'd given in the letter, and troubled me with what she'd left out. This wasn't a typical inheritance, this Blakely House. But she didn't explain what that meant.
I perched on my stool, curling over the clock she'd brought and opening its back, laying bare its intricacies. No nameplate advertised the designer, but each metal surface had been black polished to perfection until the gears, which few ever saw, shone like ebony. The corners had been neatly rounded, and tucked inside the inner frame was a tiny little hummingbird, carved in relief. The finish was its own sort of maker's mark.
...
