“The Clockmaker’s Daughter”

By Riya Yadav

The clocks had stopped the day her father died.

Elara stood in the dim shop, surrounded by hundreds of silent pendulums and glass domes, their brass hearts stilled mid-tick. The smell of oil and dust lingered — like time had paused to mourn. On the wall, above the counter where her father once smiled without really smiling, a single clock ticked backward.

Tick… tock. Tock… tick.

At first, she thought it was broken. But every night at midnight, the hands reversed, spinning gently against the grain of the world. And from somewhere deep inside the gears came a whisper — soft, like breath against her ear.

“Elara…”

She froze the first time it said her name. The second night, she lit a candle and sat before it. “Father?” she whispered. The pendulum swung once, twice, then stopped — as though listening.

That was when the memories began to stir.

As a child, she’d fallen asleep to the sound of his clocks — a thousand steady heartbeats of metal and time. But as she grew, the rhythm turned heavy, suffocating. Her father had grown quieter after her mother’s death, his hands trembling when he worked, his eyes fixed on invisible hours only he could see.

Now, in the silence of his absence, Elara felt him everywhere.

She began repairing the clocks, one by one. Each night she wound the gears, polished the glass, and whispered apologies into the brass — to no one, to everyone. And still, at midnight, the backward clock would stir.

One night, unable to bear the not-knowing, she pried open its back. Inside, etched faintly into the copper, she found a name — Mira.

Her mother’s name.

The next tick felt like a heartbeat returning.

“Elara…” the whisper came again, clearer this time. “I couldn’t fix her time.”

Tears blurred the gears before her. She understood now — he had tried to build a clock that could turn time backward, not for profit or glory, but for love. To return a moment that had already slipped away.

“Father,” she whispered, “you don’t have to keep trying.”

The candle flickered. The hands shivered. The whisper sighed — long and low, like a breath finally released.

When morning came, the backward clock was still. But sunlight poured through the dusty windows, warm and golden, touching every clock in the shop. One by one, they began to tick again — not in unison, but in a quiet, living rhythm.

Time moved forward once more.

Elara smiled faintly through tears, resting her palm against the glass. “You fixed it, Father,” she murmured. “You fixed us.”

Outside, the church bell chimed noon — steady, sure, and heartbreakingly alive.

And in that moment, the shop no longer felt haunted. It simply felt… remembered.

By Riya Yadav