The Book of Lost Hours

1

1938, Nuremberg, Germany

IN THE CITY OF Nuremberg in 1938, a man told his daughter a bedtime story. The man was a clockmaker, the son in a long line of clockmakers who lived in the city's Jewish neighborhood. Keeping time as his ancestors had for two centuries.

"Time for bed, Lisavet. You've had enough stories for tonight," the clockmaker said when his daughter asked him, for the third time that night, for another story.

Out the window, the streets had long since gone dark and chill with November winds. The clockmaker's mind was on the work he had to finish downstairs in the shop. And more specifically on the letter from America that sat on his desk, delivered earlier that morning.

"I'm not tired," Lisavet pouted. "I want to stay up until Klaus comes home."

"Your brother won't be home until late," the clockmaker scolded.

The smile on his face foiled his attempts at discipline. He ran a hand through her hair, already knowing that she would wear him down. His daughter was his late wife reborn, with golden hair and caramel brown eyes.

When she was alive, his wife had often teased that they had replicated themselves into two miniature versions, him in their son and her in their daughter. It was true in the physical sense but beyond that, Ezekiel Levy and his son, Klaus, could not be more different. Klaus was like his mother with his high society taste and dreams of attending school in the capital. It was Lisavet who was most like Ezekiel. She could often be found perched on the stool beside him in his workshop, watching him coax the gears and springs of old broken watches until they shuddered back into life. She was the one who wound the clocks in the front of the shop each morning, watching with quiet reverence as the wood and metal masterpieces sang to the tune of time. And she was the one who would one day inherit his shop and the family secrets that came with it.

"Tell me about the magic watch again," Lisavet said, clutching his wrist tightly as he tried to stand.

At eleven years old, Lisavet was almost too old for bedtime stories at all, and the clockmaker knew it wouldn't be long before she stopped asking. He settled himself on the edge of the bed.

"Once upon a time in Germany, a clockmaker named Ezekiel lived with his two children in their happy little home above the shop that his family had owned for generations," he began in a deep voice that crackled like flames in a hearth. "The family were world-renowned for the magnificent clocks that they sold in their store, made from the finest materials. Gold and gems and carved wood that gleamed in the candlelight by which they did their work. Large grandfather clocks, small table clocks, and everything in between. But among all these wondrous masterpieces was the most precious timepiece of all. A simple brass pocket watch, passed from father to son for over a hundred years. That watch was not special because it was laden with silver or gold, but because-" He broke off, bushy eyebrows raised, waiting for his daughter to finish the line. It was a game they played with all his stories, but especially this one.

"Because it let them talk to Time itself," Lisavet said in a hushed voice.

"That's right." Ezekiel smiled and tapped her on the nose. "Time is the axis on which the world spins. Humans count their lives in months and weeks, as if calculating the cumulative measure of their existence will somehow earn them more of it. Accidents occur in three clicks of the second hand. Hearts stop in a moment of time. But there are things that happen in the space between seconds. Worlds are built. Planets burn. Souls fade into the space between one instant and the next and memories fall to depths, lost to the silence and flames."

He dropped his voice lower, hissing like the shadows. Lisavet's eyes went wide.

"It was not always this way. Centuries ago, the things that fell from our world and into the silence were hidden. Closed off to humanity. Unwitnessed. Unknown. The most devoted sensed something more, seeking it in meditations, brushing against it in dreams, never fully grasping what it was they were reaching for. As Time became more tangible, more precious, so did the shadows. With the invention of sundials came the ability to count the hours, and with clocks, the seconds. What can be counted can be mastered, and soon the veil between our world and what falls beyond it became thinner. Those who learned the language of Time called themselves timekeepers."

The clockmaker whispered the word timekeeper with a devotee's reverence. Outside the window, the winds began to blow.

"Like Ezekiel," Lisavet said, right on cue. "He was a timekeeper."

"That's right. It was a secret that the family had carried for decades. Until one day, things started to change . . ."

"A storm was coming," Lisavet prompted.

Ezekiel furrowed his brow, his tone deepening. "A storm was coming. The world began to grow darker and in crept a cold fierce enough to blow out every hearth. People stopped coming to buy clocks from their shop. Ezekiel could feel the darkness lurking out on the streets, advancing. The men who brought the storm were ruthless, full of hate and fire. Some came to Ezekiel's shop one evening in the summer and asked him about his secret. They wanted the power for themselves. They demanded that he give them the watch that let him speak to Time."

"But Ezekiel tricked them," Lisavet said, full of pride.

"Yes, he did. It was his job to protect the secret, so he gave them a fake. They left his shop alone then, but Ezekiel knew that they would be back as soon as they discovered his deception. Time was in danger, and so was the clockmaker's family. So he wrote a letter to an old friend. Another timekeeper who might be able to help him."

"Why didn't they just leave?" Lisavet asked, frowning slightly.

He bit his lip, thinking. "Because the men who had brought the storm might catch them. So Ezekiel asked his friends to help his family escape by other means. You see, the timekeepers knew of a place hidden in the folds of Time where they could disappear. A place where his family could hide, and with the help of another timekeeper, where they could escape into other lands far away from the storm."

"And did it work? Did they help him?" Lisavet asked with a sleepy yawn.

Every other time he'd told this story, Ezekiel had ended it with a promise to tell the rest of the story another night. But tonight, there was a letter on his desk from his friend in America. Tonight, he kissed Lisavet on the forehead and smiled.

"Yes, they did. His friends wrote back and promised him help. Ezekiel and his family waited for the right moment. They talked to their closest friends and neighbors about the dangers of the coming darkness and brought as many of them with them as they could. It took some convincing. Not everyone believed in this tunnel through Time, and many were afraid of it. Still others didn't want to leave home no matter how strong the winds got. Those who would come settled on a day: the first night of Hanukkah when they would all be together with their families." Here the clockmaker paused. Lisavet had begun to close her eyes. The last part of his story came in a whisper. "So by the light of the full moon in December, they escaped through the shadows and into freedom."

As soon as he said it, two dozen grandfather clocks in the shop below all chimed eleven o'clock. Ezekiel fell silent, listening. As the chimes faded, echoing deep into the night, another sound met his ears. Shouting out on the streets, followed by the crash of breaking glass.

"What was that?" Lisavet asked, eyes wide open once more.

He went to the window, pulling aside the curtains. On the cobblestones below, coming up the street like a gale, a mob of angry faces was blowing in with the wind. Shattering glass drew his attention to another shop down the street and he watched in horror as his neighbors rushed out of their apartments, the children barefoot in their nightgowns.

"Papa, what's happening?" Lisavet said. She was climbing out of bed.

"Put on your shoes, Lisavet," he said. "I'll be right back."

He ignored her cries for him to stay and bolted down the stairs to his shop. The crowd was drawing nearer. He could hear the pounding of their hands against the doors. The crunch of glass underfoot. He had seen such sights and heard such sounds carried in the memories of the dead. He knew what happened next. First came the shouting, the breaking, the anger. Then came the fire, the fighting, the killing.

The last clock in the shop let out a final chime, sounding like a name. Klaus. Ezekiel's heart rose to his throat as he thought of his son down at the synagogue. He stood frozen on the last step, panicked.

"Papa?" Lisavet's voice came from the top of the stairs.

"Stay up there!"

They were coming. The first of them was at his shop, beating on the door. They locked eyes through the window, steel gray and ice cold. Coming for the watch. Then the knocking became kicking, and the shouting became jeering. Ezekiel rushed for the letter on the desk. He stuffed it into his pocket and emptied the drawer below of other letters. Letters that spoke of the timekeepers and those complicit in his attempts...