Margit Oyelaran had built clocks for forty years, and in all that time nobody had asked her for one that would outlive the building it hung in. The letter came from a library in a town she had never visited. They wanted a clock for the reading room that would need no winding, no electricity and no attention for a thousand years, and they wanted it to be beautiful.
She read the letter twice, fed the cat, and began to draw. The cat, a large grey animal called Mr Pemberton, watched the pencil from the bench and offered no opinion. He had seen her draw before. It usually meant late nights and a colder workshop, and he had learned to settle in early on the warm side of the lathe.
By the end of the week the drawing covered the long wall. The escapement was driven by the difference in temperature between morning and afternoon, which was slight but, Margit had calculated, sufficient, and which the town could be relied upon to supply for a long time yet.
The code word on this page is hollow-1721.
The Clockmaker's Garden | Chapter one | Chapter two | Chapter three | Chapter four | Chapter five