The Clockmaker's Children (Free PDF Ebook)

The Clockmaker’s Children. There was something strange about Grandpa Elric’s attic. It smelled of old gears, musty wood, and forgotten stories. Dust floated like tiny ghosts in the slanted sunlight, and ancient furniture stood like statues covered in sheets. But what truly caught siblings June and Theo’s eyes was the giant wooden clock standing in the farthest corner — tall, carved, silent. It hadn’t ticked in years. Until the day

it did. It was summer break — hot, lazy, and boring. June (10) was a planner, a thinker. She liked rules. Theo (8) was a question machine who talked to frogs and believed pencils could be magic wands if you sharpened them just right. Their parents were repainting the living room downstairs, so the attic was off-limits — which, of course, meant they had to go there. When they pulled

off the sheet from the clock, both kids gasped. The hands started moving. Tick. Tick. Tick. “The clock’s alive!” Theo whispered. June touched the glass. The moment her finger brushed it — the clock chimed once… and the attic vanished. Suddenly, they were outside. But it wasn’t the 21st century anymore. They stood in a cobbled street surrounded by wooden buildings, knights on horseback, and people in cloaks. “We’re in

the past!” June whispered. A man shouted, “To the castle! The Queen’s jewels have vanished!” Theo tugged her arm. “I think… we’re in medieval times.” A loud clank echoed as guards marched past. The clock had transported them into another era. June pulled Theo behind a hay cart. “This is crazy. We need to get back!” But the clock was gone. Where it once stood was now a symbol carved

in a stone: a gear with twelve notches. One notch glowed faintly. “One hour here,” June muttered. “Twelve notches... like twelve hours on a clock.” A local girl approached them with tears in her eyes. “My brother was taken. They think he stole the jewels. But he’s innocent. No one believes me.” Theo looked at June. “Do we help her?” They did. In one wild hour, the siblings solved the

case using June’s logic and Theo’s knack for spotting tiny details. They proved the thief was a knight’s squire, not the girl’s brother. The gear glowed fully. The wind shifted. A ticking sound grew louder… And the world melted away again. Back in the attic. Both kids landed with a thud. June checked the clock face. One hour had passed. But the hands had jumped ahead by two hours. “That’s

weird,” she whispered. Next to the clock’s base was now a tiny glowing symbol that looked like time slipping. Every day after that, they were drawn back. Each tick took them to a new hour, a new world, a new mystery: A snowy village during a New Year’s Eve in 1924, where Theo helped a lonely boy reconnect with his war-scarred father. A neon-lit future city where June cracked a

code that stopped a robotic drone from taking over a school. An underground railway in 1863, where they helped a mother and her child escape to freedom. Each place lasted exactly one hour — and with each return, the clock’s hands jumped faster than time should. One day, June counted the ticks and gasped. “The clock’s skipping an hour every time.” Theo’s face turned pale. “Where’s that missing hour going?”

That night, the clock whispered: “When the last hour is lost… so is your way home.” The next tick sent them not to a time they could recognize, but to a void. Everything was dark — but not like night. This was empty. Blank. A place without color, without warmth. Then they heard footsteps. A girl their age stepped out of the shadows. Her eyes looked exactly like June’s. “You

came late,” she said coldly. “Who are you?” June asked. “I’m the hour that was skipped. Forgotten. Left behind.” Theo blinked. “But… that’s not possible.” “Oh, it is,” the girl whispered. “You used me. You borrowed me. You lost me.” Then the shadows behind her formed into faces. Dozens. Hundreds. Children and adults — blurry and flickering. June’s heart ached. “Are they… all lost hours?” The girl nodded. “Every minute

not cherished. Every moment wasted. Every sibling not hugged, every ‘I love you’ not said. This is where they end up. Forgotten.” Theo stepped forward. “That’s not fair. We didn’t mean to lose time.” “But you did,” the girl said. “And soon, the last tick will come.” A chime echoed. Only one notch was left glowing. Back in the attic, the air felt… wrong. The sky outside was darker than

usual. Thunder growled low. The clock groaned like it was in pain. June touched the glass. Nothing happened. Theo tried winding the gears. Nothing. Then he whispered, “What if we don’t go anywhere?” June blinked. “What?” “What if the last tick… is now? What if this hour is the one we’ve been wasting, rushing to escape? Maybe we don’t travel. Maybe we just… be here.” So they sat. They told

each other things they hadn’t said in ages. Theo admitted he was scared all the time, but liked acting brave because he didn’t want to be a burden. June admitted she missed their old house, their friends, and that she sometimes felt responsible for fixing everything. They laughed. Cried a little. And hugged. For one whole hour… they did nothing but be present. No clocks. No time jumps. Just the

tick… tick… tick… of hearts that were finally still. At the end of the hour, the clock began to glow. Its hands spun once… then stopped. All twelve notches gleamed. From the center gear, a new marking appeared: “infinity”. Theo leaned in. “What does that mean?” June smiled. “It means… we found the missing hour.” “How?” “We didn’t skip it.” The clock no longer ticked. It didn’t need to. The

attic was quiet again. But not forgotten. June and Theo never forgot the places they’d seen, the people they’d helped, the hour they almost lost. And from that day on, they made a little promise: Every week, for exactly one hour, they would do something real together — no phones, no screens, no rushing. Just time. Because they’d learned the one truth no time traveler should ever forget: Time isn’t

just what passes. It’s what you share. And once it’s gone — you can’t always get it back.

The End