An Excerpt from “The Eternal Clockmaker”

An Excerpt from “The Eternal Clockmaker”

The following is an excerpt from “The Eternal Clockmaker” by Martha Wells, available on MixCache.com.

Introduction

Time may be the most faithful companion or the slyest of tricksters. For Evelyn Hawthorne, it was, for as long as she could remember, a gentle and precise melody—the measured tick of gears in her grandmother’s clock shop, the soft clang of a carriage clock’s bell at noon, and the hum of promise each dawn in Brackenridge, her sleepy hometown hemmed in by silver mists and ancient woods. The granddaughter of Rose Hawthorne, the most respected horologist in three counties, Evelyn grew up with the scent of oil and brass polish, and the wonder of unraveling the language of timepiece innards. It was a life of gears, dials, and spring-driven mysteries.

Evelyn never anticipated inheriting the shop so soon. Rose’s passing left her heart cracked and her future uncertain, yet the responsibility rested naturally on her shoulders. As she swept its creaking floorboards and tended the familiar faces of grandfather clocks along the paneled walls, Evelyn’s sorrow lent way to a quiet determination to continue her family’s work. The shop was more than just a business; it was a haven of memory and tradition, filled with secrets nestled in the faces of countless ticking guardians.

But not all secrets lie silent. Amidst a neglected shelf, covered by layers of time and dust, she discovered the Hourglass Pendulum. An oddity, even by the standards of her seasoned eye—it ticked backward, its sands flowing up, challenging the very logic she cherished. The longer she studied it, the more she felt something ancient stirring, as if the pendulum’s steady swing summoned echoes from beyond the world she knew.

Brackenridge held its own mysteries, and the Hawthorne legacy ran deeper than the townsfolk ever guessed. When the Hourglass Pendulum revealed its power—drawing Evelyn out of her ordinary existence into a realm where night and day warred endlessly, and time was both ally and adversary—nothing would ever be the same. Old stories rushed forward, whispered warnings at the edge of sleep, and the faint suspicion that her grandmother’s life had been lived on the knife’s edge of two entwined destinies took root.

To survive, and to protect all she loved on both sides of the clockface, Evelyn would have to master more than the mechanics of gears and springs. She would need to uncover the truths long buried by her ancestors, embrace allies and face adversaries both human and magical, and, most of all, come to terms with her unique place as a keeper of the timeline. This is her story—a saga that spins outward from a small, shadowed shop into the winding halls of eternity.

Read “The Eternal Clockmaker” on MixCache.com →