Beastly Beauty

Ninety-One

The clockmaker looked up at his clockworks. Its hands had stopped, yet time ticked on for Arabella. For Beau. For all the people around them.

For now.

He would meet them all again one day. When the handful of hours and minutes that made up their human lives finally ran out. It was his task and their fate, and nothing could change it.

There were all different kinds of death, most of them hard and wrenching, yet the ones that hurt him most—for he had a heart, no matter what some might say—were the mortals who died long before he came for them. Those who had been taught more about fear and anger than love.

He walked across the clock’s mechanical track now, where, until only moments ago, the figures had stood. Only the props were left. His fingers floated over a chessboard, a mirror, the back of a chair. He paused once, to look back at the thief, the brave baker, at the three little girls, and Arabella.

He hoped she would find a way back to life—a life she chose, not one chosen for her. And he hoped, very much, that before they met again, she would choose—every single second of every day left to her—to be passionately, unapologetically who she was: a builder of bridges, an architect of ideas, a woman who saw not what was but what could be.

The clockmaker smiled. He walked past the tall, golden columns of his masterpiece, through the clockworks doors, and was gone.

As the doors closed behind him, the enormous golden clock sighed and shuddered, like a living creature drawing its final breath. Its golden surface dulled. The hour and minute hands wound backward, then fell to the floor. A network of cracks opened along the dial and spread across the clock’s surface. There was a rumbling, like the sound an avalanche makes. It grew to a roar. Then the golden clock crumbled. Numerals fell from the dial. The pillars toppled. Pieces of the facade hit the floor and shattered. As everyone in the great hall watched, the rubble of gears and wheels, of strike and chimes, collapsed into a fine shimmering dust.

A winter wind blew open a window. It rushed inside, swirled the dust up off the floor, and carried it away, into the dark, starry night.