Tag: fiction (Page 2 of 2)

“I don’t understand,” the man said, eyes wide, mouth open, lost in the winds of the market. He rolled other words around on his tongue, in his head, but nothing else sounded intelligent. He waited while the watchmaker looked at him. The two men sat there, neither wanting to make the first, wrong move.

The watchmaker was, at first, overwhelmed. He was unsure where to begin, how to explain a lifetime of a confidences to a man he had only known a half hour. The watchmaker felt a feeling he had not often experienced; doubt. He was unsure of his role, uneasy at being thrust into the middle of a story he did not know the ending of.

“Have you ever heard of the recipe?” the watchmaker asked, testing the waters. He searched the man’s eyes for recognition. There was none. The watchmaker let out a little sigh. This was going to be an uphill battle.

“It does make sense,” the watchmaker mumbled. “The Morse, the recipe, and all on the final night market of the season.” He looked up at the man. “You are the messenger of the revolution.”

“I am…I am not,” the man stammered. “I’m just a delivery man. I usually deliver food. Today, I delivered a watch. I am not a revolutionary.”

“You will be,” the watchmaker said, with sudden force. “You’ll have to be. If I am to reveal the recipe to you, as the message on the watch tells me, then it has already begun.”

“What is this recipe?” asked the man. He was still fearful, still confused, but the watchmaker’s confidence in him had given him a jolt. He was suddenly curious about the recipe, wanted to know this secret that had been trusted to him.

“The recipe is a map. It is a hidden series of landmarks spread throughout the city.” The watchmaker rose from his chair and went to one of the many file cabinets scattered around the workshop, taking a small keyring from his pocket.

“It leads to a building. A bit of a…hideout, if you will. It was constructed after the Great War, as a bit of a…ah! Here it is.”

The watchmaker finished flipping through the series of colored folders he had in the cabinet, and pulled out a solid yellow one. He glanced inside quickly, confirmed his selection, and returned to the man. He slid the folder across the surface of his workdesk, and the man reached for it.

“Ah, not yet, my friend,” said the watchmaker, pulling back on the folder slightly. “Just a few more important things. First, these papers are still a recipe. The answers are not spelled out – getting to the hideout will still require a bit of thinking on your part. But, they would not have sent you if you were not the right person for this.”

The man nodded, understanding. The watchmaker released his hold on the folder, and the man instinctively placed his hands on top. “Second, there will be others at the hideout. You may arrive before them, they may arrive before you. These others – you must trust them. There cannot be dissension among you. There must not.”

The two shared one final moment of silence, this one filled with mutual respect and the smallest sliver of hope. “Now go,” commanded the watchmaker, standing up from his chair. The man arose at once, secreting the folder into the darkness inside of his jacket. He wondered whether he should shake the watchmaker’s hand, wondered what the proper protocol was. But the watchmaker had already turned away, was looking in the cabinets along the back wall of his workshop.

The man left, as silently as he could, although the small bells attached to the top of the door announced his departure. The watchmaker’s eyes were still focused on his cabinets, where among his many tins of tea, he spied what he was looking for: a small vial, with a small handwritten label that read, “For When My Work is Done.”

Slowly, he pulled it out of the cabinet, closed the door, and twisted open the small cap. “Godspeed, Leonard Kinsman,” he said, softly, and emptied the contents into his mouth.

“Godspeed.”

As the man set down his teacup, a small smile crept over his face.  While the workshop was not warm, it did not have the blistering autumn winds that howled down the outdoor market alley, funneled and focused by the concentration of booths on either side.  And the tea was good, soothing, comforting.

The watchmaker was still bent over the timepiece, his hands making adjustments that resulted in tiny movements at the ends of his calipers and tweezers and other small instruments of the trade.

The man looked down at his cup, nearly empty, and gazed at the pattern of leaves on the bottom.

“It looks like you might be mistaken.  I may require another cup.”  The man’s voice was chiding, not aggressive, and the watchmaker looked up amused.  His eyes twinkled for a second before he trust his head down onto the timepiece, finding its voice, its song.

From this position, he spoke plainly to the man.  “I am not often mistaken, and it’ll take a trickier watch than this.”  He lifted his head and, in a final triumphant move, snapped the back onto the watch.

Tick.  Tick.  Tick.  Tick.

The ticking still seemed irregular but it was undoubtedly louder.

“Do you hear it?” the watchmaker asked.  The two men sat in silence for a half minute or so, the watchmaker looking eagerly at the larger man who’s face was crinkled in concentration.  Finally, the man shook his head.  No, he didn’t hear it.

“Ah, well, it’s a bit archaic.  Not used much anymore because it takes such a long time to say anything.  But it’s telling me right now that your name is Leonard Kinsman.  And that I’m to give you…”

The watchmaker trailed off, his face turning to confusion.  He looked down at the watch, then back at the man.  “That can’t be right,” he blurted.  He immediately looked ashamed at having said it, as if he had stepped outside the bounds of his purpose in this exchange.

“Do you know why you came to me?” he finally asked, after an awkward silence.  The other man was glad to have a question to answer, glad that he had not needed to provide words to fill the silence.

“No.  I was just told that I had to deliver this watch to you, and only you.  And that you would tell me what to do next.”  Even this brief sentence exhausted the man, and a look of fear began to enter his face.  He had so little knowledge and so little experience in these matters – or in most matters, for that matter – that he had felt lost every step of the way.

He had trouble finding the market alley, even though it was one of the busiest streets in the city.  He had not wanted to attract attention by asking other shopkeepers about the watchmaker, so he had wandered around aimlessly, looking for the telltale sign hanging above the workshop window.  He had been told that time – expecting that which the watch he carried told – was unimportant, but he was now worried that he had come too late, too early, too on-time.

The watchmaker, with more experience than he wanted, understood the man’s fear and said, “There’s no need to worry.  It’s just that…”  He trailed off again and thought.  “It’s just that you’ve become a very important man.”

Tick.  Tick.  Tick.  Tick.

The watchmaker held the timepiece up to his ear and listened.  The ticking was erratic, unstructured.  He smiled and motioned for his guest to take a seat.

“This will just take a moment,” he said in his soft voice.  In the outdoor markets, he was often misheard, asked to repeat himself.  But here – in his studio, surrounded by nothing but quite ticking and the odd chime – he did not need to strain his voice to be heard.

His guest did not speak, but everything about him indicated that his voice was not quiet, that nobody would have trouble hearing him in the outdoor markets, even on the holiday eves when shoppers streamed through the booths like ants following a trail.  The medium brim of his expertly crooked hat hid enough of his face to mask his identity without making him look sinister and his overcoat was large and gave him a geometric appearance that indicated a concealed power.

None of this mattered much to the watchmaker, who rarely looked at people.  His eyes were trained for smaller things, for gears and pins that worked together in quiet concert to create secrets that only he could hear.

“Do you want some tea?”  The question was a piece of conversation with no owner.  The watchmaker threw it out into the space between the two men like a rock on the surface of a stream: with purpose but with no expectation of return.  The larger man grunted, neither an affirmation nor a declination, but he shifted slightly and began to pour himself a cup with the set that the watchmaker had indicated with a nod.

Meanwhile, the watchmaker nudged the loop into the familiar crevice in his eye, a ship docking into port, and peered into the timepiece, whose back he had expertly pried off a moment ago.

There it was: a rogue pin, hampering the natural workings of the cogs and gears, keeping the rotations just a sliver off of perfect.  He pulled it up with a simple tug on his tweezers and put the watch up to his ear.

The ticks had stopped altogether.  He grimaced.  Of course, it wouldn’t be that easy.  He was no amateur, fresh from the halls of one of the institutes on the coast who churned a dozen watchmakers every six months.  A watch with an extra pin was something that could have been handled by anyone.  He should not have been so eager.

“I suggest you pour yourself another cup,” he said, noticing that the other man had gulped down his first cup of tea.  “And I shall have something for you by the time you finish drinking it.”