Master Thorne was ninety-three years old, and he was the last clockmaker in the city.
He had learned the craft from his father, who had learned from his, in an unbroken chain stretching back to the days when clockwork was still magic. Not the pretend magic of stage shows and holiday parties - real magic, the kind that made time itself sit up and take notice.
Now, of course, everyone had devices that told time. Phones, watches, tablets, the screens embedded in everything from refrigerators to billboards. Why would anyone need a clock that ticked?
Thorne knew why. But he was running out of time to explain it to anyone.
His shop sat at the corner of Harrow and Vine, between a coffee shop that sold overpriced lattes and a vintage clothing store that had somehow survived the decades. The bell above his door still rang - an actual bell, not an electronic chime.
One Thursday, a young woman pushed open that door.
She was perhaps twenty-five, with paint-stained fingers and eyes that seemed to see more than they should. She looked at Thorne's clocks - the wall of them, each one a different era and style - and her expression shifted through several emotions before settling on wonder.
"My grandmother gave me this," she said, placing a small clock on the counter. It was old, clearly old, with a cracked face and hands that had stopped years ago. "She said it belonged to someone important. That I should bring it to you."
Thorne took the clock. He felt its weight, its silence, the shape of its stopped gears.
"Where is your grandmother now?" he asked.
"She passed last month."
Thorne nodded slowly. He understood.
"Your grandmother was right," he said. "This belonged to someone important. It belonged to everyone, once. It kept time for the whole city, long ago."
"Can you fix it?"
Thorne looked at the girl. At her paint-stained fingers and her too-old eyes. At the clock in his hands.
"I can try," he said. "But it will take time."
The girl smiled. "That's the whole point, isn't it?"
Thorne had not smiled in months. He smiled now.
"Yes," he said. "Yes, it is."