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Original fiction written for Revision Library; no external source reproduced.
Elsie Bhandari had never much liked the attic. It smelled of dust and old varnish, and the single cobwebbed window let in only a grudging strip of light. But on the wet Saturday afternoon that her grandmother asked her to fetch the box of Christmas decorations, curiosity got the better of her caution.
She found the box easily enough, wedged between a rusted birdcage and a stack of yellowing newspapers. It was as she turned to leave that her torch beam caught something glinting beneath a dust sheet in the far corner: a tall wooden cabinet, its doors slightly ajar.
Elsie hesitated. Grandad Bhandari had died three years ago, and nobody had touched his workshop things since. Still, the beam of light seemed to beckon her forward, and she crossed the creaking floorboards to peer inside.
The cabinet was crammed with clocks, dozens of them, in every state of repair, their faces pale and their hands frozen at different hours, as though each had stopped at the precise moment it had given up hope of ever being wound again. On the middle shelf sat one clock unlike the others: a small carriage clock with a brass case, tarnished but unmistakably beautiful, its glass front etched with a pattern of ivy leaves.
She lifted it carefully. It was heavier than she expected, and when she turned it over she noticed a tiny drawer set into the base, so cleverly disguised that she might easily have missed it. Inside lay a folded scrap of paper, brittle with age, and a small brass key.
Her heart quickened. She unfolded the paper with the delicacy of someone handling a moth's wing, terrified it might crumble to nothing between her fingers. The handwriting was cramped and old-fashioned, but still legible: "To whoever finds this clock, wind it fully, then wait. Patience is the apprentice's truest tool. - E.B., 1962."
E.B. Elsie stared at the initials. Her own name was Elsie too, after her grandad's mother, though she had never known that until this moment.
Downstairs, her grandmother was singing softly to the radio, unaware of what her granddaughter had discovered. Elsie knew she ought to call out, to share the find immediately, yet something made her want to test the instruction first, quietly, just for herself.
She found the tiny keyhole beneath the clock's face and turned the key, feeling the mechanism resist and then give, click by click, as the spring tightened. When she could wind no further, she set the clock on the floorboards and waited, exactly as the note had instructed.
For a long moment, nothing happened. Then, with a whirr and a soft chime, a hidden panel beneath the clock face slid open, revealing a second, smaller compartment. Inside was not treasure, not gold or jewels, but something Elsie found far more astonishing: a stack of photographs, curling at the edges, of a young man who looked remarkably like her father, standing proudly beside a workbench in what was unmistakably this very attic.
Elsie sat back on her heels, the rain drumming steadily on the roof, and finally called down the stairs for her grandmother to come and see.