The Watchman

By Hannah Robinson

If you’ve never had the misfortune of being tasked with finding a needle in a haystack, allow me to summarize the experience for you in four words: I’d rather eat dirt.

Regrettably, I don’t have that option.

Case 43b has been my strangest yet. The file includes a black-and-white photograph of a remarkably average-looking pocket watch and the words “London. 1903.” That’s all.

Judging by the dreary weather, I’ve come to the right place. The incessant ticking in my ears tells me I’ve got the year right, too. Here in London, 1903, every fool in the city has a pocket watch. Any of them could be my target. They might not even know it.

Now, Mr. Narrator, you say, why target an unsuspecting chap simply for carrying a pocket watch?

The answer lies with Herr Drosselmeyer, an inventor who lived over a century ago. He made all sorts of nonsense—talking dolls, walking toys, magical clocks—but the worst of it was these watches.

Pocket watches. That tamper with time.

See, what happens is, some innocent bloke thinks he’s winding up his brand-new watch, and next thing he knows, blam, he’s in a different century, disrupting the timeline. Then he tries to get back, and not knowing how the watches work, blam, he’s lost again.

With forty-three watches in the wild, that makes quite a few baffled chaps trying to blam their way home, unleashing ever more chaos along the way.

Drosselmeyer’s experimental invention wreaked so much havoc that a secret society, the Watchmen, had to be formed to control the damage. And Drosselmeyer himself? He destroyed his clock shop when he realized what he’d done. Swore he’d never invent again. Disappeared from history.

Leaving behind forty-three pocket watches.

For decades, I’ve been tracking them down. It’s why I formed the Watchmen. Why I’m considering every person in this city my potential target. Why I’m searching for a needle in a haystack.

Why I’m the one with Case 43b.

Because we’ve already got forty-three of Drosselmeyer’s watches. We thought we were done. I thought I was done. Thought I could finally retire, kick up my feet, try to forget all the harrowing times I’ve tried to stop innocents from destroying their own timelines with watches they bought from a lunatic.

Then we got wind of another watch. And we didn’t have the heart to call it Case 44.

Mostly because we have no idea where this one came from.

My Watchers couldn’t pin down a more specific location than “London, 1903.” I don’t blame them, though. Tracking time anomalies is like looking through a clear bowl filled with thick soup; you’ve got an idea what you’re looking at, but you can’t really tell if that’s carrot or yam.

So here I am, master of the Watchmen, trying to crack our most peculiar case with nothing more than a fuzzy photograph and a city name.

Above the patter of a thousand raindrops, the tick of a thousand watches, I try to follow my ears. Drosselmeyer’s watches always tick differently. It’s a higher, tinnier sound that gives the impression time’s ticking faster than it should.

It’s almost indistinguishable amid the bustle of the London crowds, but I’ve had years of practice. I follow the sound through alleys. Across streets. Past carriages, vendors, pickpockets. It leads me right to an old clock shop.

My stomach flops. I know this place. I knew it long before I founded the Watchmen. But it’s 1903. It shouldn’t still be here.

I open the shop door and nearly drown in a wave of nostalgia. Clocks everywhere. Some I recognize and some I don’t. Children’s playthings, too. Talking dolls. Walking toys.

And the insistent, high-pitched tick-tick of 43b.

“Herr Drosselmeyer,” says a rusty voice. “I knew you’d come.”

A shudder shakes my soul. I turn toward the speaker. An old man stands behind the counter, his face crinkled into a smile.

How can he recognize me? I’ve never given my name, even to the Watchmen. No one knows the founder of the society dedicated to restoring time is the same man who broke it.

“Noble of you, spending all these years trying to clean up your mess,” says the old man.

He knows what I’ve done. What I unleashed. What I couldn’t quite restore. How?

“I couldn’t do otherwise.” I clutch my own watch—from case number one, the watch I use to travel—my guilt choking me. “Once I saw the effects of this invention… the pandemonium I caused…” All the anomalies I couldn’t fix by destroying the watches… all the families torn apart… “It was an experiment. I never meant to fracture time.”

He nods. “Creation is a dangerous power, isn’t it?”

Bold of him to inform me!

“But it is also beautiful.” He picks up a doll I made years ago, for the granddaughter I haven’t seen in decades. It’s then I realize: the ticking noise is coming from him.

“Give me the watch.” I thrust out my hand. “You’ve no business keeping it. It’s time for me to end this, once and for all.”

“Certainly. Although, you should know…” He meets my gaze. It’s like looking into a mirror. “Things turn out alright. You can’t fix it all, but you start to forgive yourself.”

He pulls out a watch. 43b. Except, seeing it in person, not in a photograph, I realize it’s not 43b at all. It’s my watch, just a little more battered.

How?

“You rebuild the shop,” he continues. “Start to invent again. Beautiful things, helpful things. You keep the first watch, to remind you. And to prevent your younger self from giving up in 1903.”

The gears are clicking into place. I think I understand.

He winks. “Time is a funny thing. Use it wisely.” He places the watch in my hand… and vanishes.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hannah Robinson is a YA fantasy author who loves spinning tales of royal intrigue, assassins, and, of course, dragons. She has won several writing awards through Florida Christian Writers Conference, including 2019 Writer of the Year. When she’s not writing, she enjoys exploring nature, making music, reading old books, and drinking lots of tea.

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