The Clockmaker's Door – Part 1: Stopped

The watch stopped at ten past nine, on Veronika's first morning in Prague, in the middle of a bridge.

It had been her grandfather's. She shook it, held it to her ear, and felt a little panic. A woman selling postcards pointed along a lane. "Adam," she said. "He fixes everything. He is not fast."

The shop was a crooked doorway under a painted sign of a golden clock. Inside, hundreds of timepieces ticked out of step with one another, like rain on a tin roof. A man sat behind the counter with a loupe screwed into one eye.

"Dobrý den," said Veronika.

He lifted the loupe. He was thirty-three, with untidy brown hair and ink-dark fingertips, and an expression of careful attention. "English?"

"Yes. It's my grandfather's watch."

He took it, turned it over and was silent for a long time. "Swiss. 1958. Very good." He glanced up. "It does not want to be rushed."

"I'm only here for a week."

"Then we have six days." He smiled slightly. "Come every afternoon. I will show you."

So she came. He let her sit on a stool by the bench, and told her about escapements and balance wheels in a low, gentle voice. She learned to hold the tiny tweezers, to breathe out before placing a screw. On the third day she dropped one, and they spent twenty minutes on their knees on the floor with a torch, laughing quietly like children.

"Can I ask you something?" said Veronika.

"Yes."

"Why do you work so slowly?"

"Because broken things are sad enough," said Adam. "They should not also be hurried."

Her heart gave a funny little skip. "Green?" she said, unexpectedly.

"Green," said Adam, with a puzzled smile. "I do not know what that means. But yes. Very green."

Continue the story: Part 2 – Wound.