Chapter Text
"How does it work?" Jon is perched in the window of his godfather's workshop, fidgeting with the pages of a book he hasn't bothered to read since he got here. The winter sunlight, low now, bowing its golden head towards the horizon, spears past Jon and spills across the floor. It carves a perfect line between his perch and the workbench.
"You'll have to be more specific," his godfather says, barely glancing up from his work. He stares through a magnifying lens on a stand, down at the work in his hands - tiny gears, even smaller tools, the scooped out innards of a clock that doesn't work. Or maybe it does, and he's just making it better than it was before. He has a way of doing that - carving out the hearts of old, forgotten, useless things and making them new.
Jon pushes the book off his lap and slides out of the window seat. "The dolls. How do they work? You said you would show me." He creeps to the edge of the workbench and leans on it with folded elbows, intently peering into the lens. Beneath it, through it, like a window into another place altogether, the clock gears are like glistening, bronze wagon wheels, huge and sharp and shining between the fingers gently coaxing the mechanism back together.
"Jon."
"Yes?"
"You're blocking the light." Jon huffs a sigh and steps away. The sharply angled sunlight falls back into place, gleaming off the magnifying lens, picking out the flecks of silver in his godfather's otherwise blonde hair. People bemoan that sort of thing, but Jon thinks it looks quite distinguished. He sways on his feet, anxious to keep talking, afraid to say the wrong thing. Most of the time, he is good and quiet. Has to be, really - that's the deal. He is only permitted to spend his afternoons here in the workshop if he can maintain a level of quiet decorum appropriate to the workshops of the great Magnus & Sons, Horologists.
Not that there's any other workshop but this one, and not that Mr. Magnus actually had any sons during his lifetime. As far as Jon knows, the company has always been passed down to apprentices and in all the long line of someone-or-others, there has never been a second Magnus. Sons. Horologists. Plurals where there really are none. There is only Elias Bouchard with his graying temples and his distinct lack of apprentice and his not-so-well-behaved-as-he-should-be godson, Jon.
Jon, who sways again and again, rocking from side to side as quietly as possible. His shadow intrudes just the slightest bit on the beam of sunlight, on each sway. "If I bring the lamp, can I watch?"
"I suppose," Elias mercifully agrees, "but you're supposed to be reading."
"I'll finish it later," Jon says, already running for the lamp and the matches on the shelf by the door. "It doesn't really matter." The match flares to life in his hands, the wick following shortly after. Delicately, Jon lowers the glass chimney over the flame and brings the lamp back to the workbench. "I'm finished with school reading."
"Are you? What is it, then?"
Jon slides the lamp close to Elias's work and his body close to his side, and scowls. "You don't want to know. You just don't want to keep your promise."
His godfather pulls the body of the clock towards him and Jon's scowl dissipates. "Thank you for the light, Jon," he says, and Jon wants to be angry that he's right, Elias is purposefully denying him. But the anger melts, smoothed over by the motion of the other's fingers nesting the repaired gears into place. There is a neat little click as they find purchase, followed by a series of careful little taps as he tightens the screws that hold it in place. Jon's breath stalls. He leans too close, over Elias's arm. He wouldn't be any good at this, himself. He's too impatient, his limbs and digits move too quickly. Everything about Jon is a bit too haphazard, but when he watches his godfather work, he knows every motion by heart, can predict every move, and then he can imagine doing it himself. In his mind's eye, it's his own fingers, smaller, darker, replacing the back of the clock, hiding its metal viscera away.
"You're welcome," he breathes, far too late. "Can I wind it?" In lieu of a verbal answer, Elias passes Jon the key and turns the clock over in his hands, exposing its face. He thumbs over the winding point, a near-invisible opening in its black-lacquered face. Jon's left hand covers his godfather's, bracing the clock, while his right hand winds. "This one is weird," he says, and Elias laughs.
"Do you think so? That's a shame."
Two more twists of Jon's hand. The turning is so smooth, and when it's done, Jon gently turns the equally black hands to match the clocks on the wall across from them. "Why? The whole thing is black, you can't even read it."
Elias takes the clock from Jon, sets it upright where the shimmering sunset light brings out a bloody undertone in the wood. But the face and the hands barely catch the glow; their dull shining seems all their own, internal. "Of course you can, you just set the time."
Jon rolls his eyes. "You know what I mean. Not from far away."
"Don't roll your eyes," Elias says, and Jon only rolls them again, when his godfather gets up from the bench and turns away from him for the moment it takes him to stretch out the knots in his spine. Jon's face is right again, when Elias turns back to him. "It's a desk clock. It isn't meant to be far away. In fact, it's your desk it's meant to be on."
"What?"
"It's yours," Elias says, like this is the most obvious thing in the world. It's anything but obvious. Jon frowns. The clock ticks and still its black metal hands refuse to reflect the setting sun.
"It's a gift?"
"Well, it's more of a gift for me, if you must know." He crosses the room, takes a wooden box from the shelf. Jon recognizes it immediately - a set of tool's like Elias's. His spine whips straight. He doesn't dare move, other than to reach for the workbench with one hand and dig his fingers into the wood until they hurt, so he can be sure he's not imagining things. Elias is still speaking; Jon almost misses it. "Take it apart, bring it back to life, and I'll show you how the dolls work."
He places the box on the bench top and slides it towards Jon. Eyes round and heart thundering, Jon looks up at him. "I can't."
"If you want to see the dolls badly enough, then you will." There's a flatness in his voice that Jon knows means this is some kind of final decision. But what kind, exactly? Nothing in Elias's face tells Jon if he always meant to take this path to keeping his promise, or if he intends to keep the dolls a secret and this is his excuse, his reasonable escape route.
Slowly, Jon's vice grip releases the wood. His hand slides over the lid of the box, over the blank metal plaque on top. No name. Perhaps he has to earn his own name, too. He imagines Elias's deft fingers carving it into the plaque for him - the scroll of his handwriting, the flourished way he always writes the J in Jon's name, but never in anyone else's. Or perhaps he'll make Jon do it himself - practice it on paper, practice it on wood, practice it until his fingers bleed, before Jon is allowed to carve into the metal.
He lifts the box from the table. He draws it to himself. "I will."
"Good," says Elias, giving Jon's shoulder a satisfied squeeze before he begins tidying up the bench, putting his own things back in their proper places. "See to it that you finish before Christmas."
Jon balks. The edge of the box digs into his chest that seizes on the idea of a deadline. "That's just two weeks. I - there's - Why?"
"The dolls won't be here, after Christmas. I have every confidence you can manage it. You said you were finished your reading for school, anyway." He looks imperiously down at Jon, daring him to reveal himself to have lied, as he holds the magnifying glass in the fading light, checking it for smudges to polish off with the soft cloth in his opposite hand.
Beside Jon, the little clock tick-tick-ticks away. It sounds restless - or perhaps nervous at the thought of being torn apart again. Jon watches its second hand, needle-thin and near as sharp, almost invisible against the clock face. "But you'll make more."
"Not like these." The polishing cloth is replaced in the caddy by the bench, along with the rest of the tools, but Jon isn't looking. He can only tell by the familiar rattling and then, all too suddenly, Elias is in front of him, turning Jon's face towards him with one finger bent under his chin. "These are the ones I promised to show you. Finish it by Christmas."
The light from the window is so low now. It sinks so rapidly, this time of year. Elias's shadow splits and bends across the floor, a bit cast by the fading window light, a bit cast by the lamp. Even if the new dolls were like the ones he's spent the past few months perfecting, he won't start real work on them for a few months, anyway, when the days are longer. Jon holds his gaze. When he swallows, the soft skin under his jaw bobs against Elias's finger. Anxiety burns behind his eyes. Anxiety and something else - the smallest imaginable welling up of pride. If Elias is putting him to the challenge, it means he believes Jon can do it. "I'll, um. I will. I'll finish it."
"Good." Elias smiles, sharp-toothed and satisfied. "Now - with that out of the way, we should get you home."