Work Text:
The Time Engraver snaps his fingers. A laughing woman in a red dress, a cocktail in her hand, vanishes from his workshop with new crinkles around her eyes.
He smiles, satisfied with a job well done, and walks over to the clock face that dominates the tower. Leaning his arms on one of the wrought iron bars separating the segments of its glass, he looks out at the city beyond. Time never falters, never pauses, but he is a craftsman and an artist, and contemplation is part of the process. The world outside the tower always changes; only he remains. It"s for him to bring out the commonality of all human life, no matter the surface trappings.
Tick-tock. The clockwork moves. He returns to his work.
Another snap of his fingers; another woman appears - and the workshop changes around him. This young woman is wearing a white suit, and the room in the clock tower goes white as well: white walls, white ceilings, white-and-blue tiles.
His eyes widen. Even before he takes a further look around, he leans in closer, studies the woman with interest. It"s not the first time his workshop has taken on a new appearance - not even the hundredth - but when it happens, the first person to appear in it is always worth taking note of.
He remembers well the bearded young man, so long ago, who"d come back with strain on his face from yet another injury, from stubborn risk-taking - he who first provoked the Engraver into snapping at him out loud for hastening his own time. It was the first time he spoke to a mortal, though he"d known he wouldn"t be heard. Or the old woman with the beads woven into her hair whose lessons for her granddaughters he"d witnessed when he"d rewound her life for his viewing. She"d made him realise the words he"d spoken while he worked on her, though not heard, had still filtered through into the mortal"s mind. What will this new woman teach him?
Her expression is blank. He studies her face, tries to see her through the surface of her skin, discover who she is. Where is he meant to carve, what expression should he shape? For once, he doesn"t know.
He frowns at her, puzzled, then turns to investigate his new surroundings first after all.
The last person he worked on, before the change, stood on a marble platform in a busy workshop filled with cabinets and tables of dark wood, with clocks and globes and a telescope filling up every corner, lamps and lanterns lighting a warm, cosy space. This woman stands on cold octagon tiles in a room bright with natural light, with white-washed walls and ceilings, white statues and slabs of rock, sparse furnishings of light wood. The knick-knacks are all missing.
The clock face, which has been a constant on the tower in one form or another since humans invented such things, has grown starkly minimalist, clear glass and steel: a sleek, modern look. Looking down at himself, he finds a white button-down shirt in place of flannel, his cuffs unbuttoned.
A new place. A new version of himself. Who will he be here?
The Time Engraver"s workshop is his world - it"s always been. There is a tower, invariably, and a workshop within the tower. He doesn"t go outside, but with every snap of his fingers, the outside comes to him. Every now and then, with a new arrival, his workshop changes, and he changes with it. Time, after all, does not merely happen to people - people change it, too. Sometimes he is a scrivener, faithfully recording life with his burin. At other times he is a sculptor, his chisel bringing out what is hidden inside the raw material of life, giving it shape. At yet other times he paints, his palette knife adding colour and texture to the face of a human life.
The clock, at first, had a single hand only, holding still while the clock face rotated; then the face stayed in place while the hand began to move. A minute hand was added; a second hand. Time moved and moves with the times, will always move, with the sun and the seasons and the turn of the years, the slow circulation of constellations in the sky.
The time before workshops and towers and clocks, before engraving tools, was not the Time Engraver"s time. Back then, another must have, in their own way, impressed time"s passage into human skin. That time, even to him, is a time of myth.
What he remembers, before the first burin, the first snap of his fingers, the first laugh-line and the first frown, is climbing, ascending a staircase, entering the tower for the first time. Who was he before? Did he know what he would become? He"s pulled before his eyes the past of countless humans, but his own eludes him.
If he could, he"d much rather see his future anyway.
Few people appear in his workshop more than once, but the ones who have something to teach him usually do. Besides, he doesn"t carve on the woman"s skin, that first time, so it"s not a surprise when soon, on one snap of his fingers amidst a dozen that day, she returns. She is wearing dark trousers and a white top this time, much like him, but her face is pale and still as ever.
His workshop is no longer new in its current form, and he"s examined all its details - the statues and plinths, the large domed window, the rows of mirrors where human lives are reflected for him. There is little by way of decoration - some prints pasted on the wall, a single framed picture, a lamp in the corner. Empty picture frames have been waiting to be filled by him in most versions of his workshop, snapshots of time to be taken, but only here has he found a window leaning against the wall, frame and glass ready to be installed somewhere. Only here is are there stairs leading nowhere, sometimes above his head and sometimes not.
It"s sparse and unfinished, this place, still waiting to take full shape.
The Time Engraver reaches for his burin - is he an engraver here, or a sculptor? will it become a chisel when this place fully develops? - and lifts it to the woman"s face. He pauses.
Her face tells him nothing, inspires no creation, gives him nothing to do.
He turns away, scratches his head. Why can"t he think where to carve?
Zooming through the hall of mirrors that is the woman"s past: how did her stillness grow?
They call her Sunny, and she was a sunny child once.
Don"t cry, said her father, helplessly. You"ll ruin your pretty face. It was meant as comfort. And it was, because it was something she could do. Don"t forget your sunscreen, said her mother. You"ll be all wrinkly by twenty if you"re not careful. It was good advice, if exaggerated. The ideal of youth, the failure of age. A thousand images hammering home the message that lines of life on a face should be a mark of shame.
Now, Sunny works hard on fighting time, on preventing even the smallest line or wrinkle on her skin. Laughter is not permitted; tears are not permitted; worry is not permitted. She has locked them all up in hear heart, tries to make her surface calm and still as a lake"s.
The Time Engraver wrinkles his nose. Humans have always chased youth. But it"s not youth they preserve with all their efforts, with make-up and lotions, with muscle relaxants and scalpels: time draws its passing onto their faces all the same. The history of their efforts, too, is inscribed on it.
And for Sunny?
The wind and the rain will come, will whip and ripple her surface into expression, no matter how hard she tries. Everything she strives so hard not to feel - if she won"t let it free, it will shatter her from the inside. As surely as the young man he once knew, a wide stretch of human history ago, she"s destroying herself, though the risks she"s taking are not with her body.
When it happens, when time catches up with her, will this workshop change along with the change she will undergo? Will he?
It"s too soon, isn"t it? He hasn"t come to know this version of himself yet. Surely time ... will take its time.
"Growth or withering," the Time Engraver tells Sunny"s frozen face, exasperation coming out, "you"ve rejected both. What you call peace, isn"t it numbness? If you deny yourself joy and sadness all your life, if you try not to change - won"t it all become deathly plain?"
Soon, Sunny appears in his workshop again. Time, after all, passes, and he must carve, must he not?
Tick-tock. Tick-tock. The second hand ticks forward. The minute hand. The hour hand.
Above him, a white, winding staircase flickers into existence once more. There are Roman numerals on every other step, the numbers of a clock face - starting, for some reason, with VII on the first step up. Then VI on the third, and V on the fifth, and so on, anti-clockwise, spiralling upstairs, though there"s nothing above.
The Time Engraver mimes a grin for Sunny, demonstrating, though she can"t see. Perhaps like his words, this, too, may filter through.
"Can you still feel," he snaps at her, even as the stairs above him vanish once more, "through the thickness of your frozen skin?" If she could hear him, truly hear - but living things can"t live in this tower; humans remain frozen in time.
He paces, frustrated. Scratches his hair. What is he to do with her? He still doesn"t know where to carve.
Tick-tock. The sun rises and sets. Rain falls; the clouds part; drops of water glitter under the streetlights.
The Time Engraver tosses his tools aside, presses his forehead against the white-washed wall. Sighs.
"You try so hard to preserve yourself," he mutters. He wants to shake her, wake her up. He can"t. "Can"t you see you"re withering?"
Tick-tock. Tick-tock, like every day in this workshop, every day in his life, a constant comfortable rhythm for his work - but now it"s grown ominous, and for the first time, he truly understands the feeling of being late.
He grows short with others, and not only the careless ones: the man in hospital pyjamas with swollen eyes and pain lining his weary face, the harried woman with three jobs just to make ends meet, the person who works in the searing sun all summer long.
What does Sunny fear? His burin. Him.
"Time is not your enemy," he murmurs into her time-frozen ear. Something must change, but what? "Who are you? Who can you become? Let people see."
There"s a knotty, shivery feeling in his stomach. What does she fear? Change.
"Don"t be afraid of changing," he tells her. "You"ll only become more yourself."
The Time Engraver looks up into the stairs leading nowhere. They mean something, don"t they? They must. He looks down, and for the first time, he sees the stairs stretching that way as well, dizzyingly - winding up and down both, into places he"s never been.
Something changing, something new. Somewhere he could go.
The Time Engraver stares: up, down. He"s never left his workshop before. If he"d wanted to, could he have? He"s never let himself think about it. If this is what Sunny is teaching him, the things always held at bay - he"s not sure he wants the lesson.
His eyes are drawn up, drawn down, but the depth of space is disorienting. He makes himself look at the first step instead, each way: VII, one step up; VIII, one step down. It"s not a hard choice, is it? Eight, for luck, clockwise like time. So why does it feel more daunting?
The city outside - the one he"s been watching, from his tower and through the pasts of a long line of people coming through his workshop, day after day - is a foreign world for him. Seen, witnessed, studied, but not experienced. He never thought he could. Setting foot in it, is that really something he can do?
What do you fear?
He swallows. If living things can"t live in this workshop, must he, then, be unliving? Does he not change, too?
You"ll only become more yourself, he told Sunny. He meant it - for her. For himself ... he has work to do.
The Time Engraver looks back to the clock face, to the rows of mirrors facing each other, where he has turned back the clock, rewound time, seen the past. Unlike humans, he can. If he takes this step - forward in time, down the stairs, from eight to nine to ten and beyond - can"t he then simply climb back up again?
A craftsman, an artist - though they may return to their workshops every day, they all know a life outside their place of work, too.
The Time Engraver presses his lips together. In his throat, his heartbeat hammers. Choose, he tells himself.
He moves: one step, the first. He sets his foot down next to the number VIII. For the first time, he"s going somewhere new.
Across the city, a tear falls from Sunny"s eyes. For the first time, she doesn"t fight it: she leans her face into her hands, and cries.