The Christmas Faerie and the Clock

     Suddenly, there was a knock on his heavy wooden door. It was unusual for customers to arrive this early in the morning, but Donny slowly rose from his chair to assist whoever stood outside his shop. When he opened the door he was surprised, since no one was there. He grunted mildly irritated, but then there was a squeak coming from below him, and he looked down. There stood a young Kacheek staring at the shopkeeper with large, appealing eyes.

     ‘And what may I do for you on this cold December day?’, asked Donny with a light smile.

     However, there was no answer from the Kacheek, just a continued appealing look at the toy repairer. Then he noticed that the Kacheek was holding something in his hand. Donny pointed to the mysterious object brought by the visitor, which was revealed to be an old toy clock. The Kacheek handed the artifact to Donny, and quickly thereafter took off without a word. Perplexed, Donny went back into the warmth of his shop as he sat down to examine the clock he had received.

     It was an antique wind-up clock, at least a century old and about the size of an orange. You could tell from its neat size and playful decorative colours that the item was dedicated to children. Yet its fine details and perfectly weighted shape indicated that it had been made by a master of his or her craft. It was very seldom the toy repairer received objects of such high quality and he was certainly impressed and curious about the clock. However, there was one obvious fault with the clock, namely that its hands were not turning and no tick or even a tock could be heard. Thus Donny, fascinated by the curiosity, put his other tasks to the side and went on to dismantle the clock in order to find the problem. Although after having exposed the inner clockwork, he could find no faults in the clock’s mechanics and the cogs were moving just as they should. In fact, he had never seen a clockwork of such meticulous standard.

     Donny spent the whole day examining the clock, but could not find out why it wasn’t ticking. After a long and tiresome day, the repairer decided to head home to get a good night’s rest. As he woke up the next morning, he impatiently went to his shop to get another look at the clock. He found the clock lying on his workbench, but to his surprise, something very strange had happened. The clock was still not ticking, however, the hour and minute hands had turned and the clock was showing a different time than before. Flabbergasted, Donny scratched his head as he pondered about the strange events. The toy repairer decided to once again look at the inner clockwork, but everything seemed in order with the cogs, springs and arbours. Another long day passed as Donny tried to get the clock running, but once again he had to give up his efforts and head home after the sun had set and darkness had fallen over the mountain.

     The next morning, Donny went back to his shop as usual, and as it turns out, he again found that the hands of the clock had turned, yet it was still not ticking. Frustrated, he dismantled the clock’s inner movement but as he expected, everything was in perfect order. To figure out what was going on, he decided that he would stay the night in his workshop, to see if anything out of the ordinary would occur. So as evening approached and the peak of the mountain lay in shadows, Donny hid behind a large armchair in the corner of his shop. He patiently sat there waiting, and as the small hours approached he almost fell asleep when he suddenly saw a small light coming out of his iron stove. The light was no ordinary light, since it was glimmering in multiple, beautiful colours with vibrant intensity.

     The light grew stronger, and all of a sudden, there came a small faerie floating out of the stove into the room. She swirled rapidly in circles, and landed on Donny’s workbench. There she happily saw the beautiful old clock, and sprinkled some grains of faerie dust onto it. She then jolted into the air in a pirouette, and flew out through the stove, through the same way she had entered. Donny had heard of the faeries before from his grandmother, but he thought they just existed in the legends. Fascinated, he crawled out from his hiding place and went to his table. To his wonder, the clock was now streaming out a faint “tick” followed by a round “tock”, and the clock was running perfectly. Weary from having stayed up the whole night, he went home and plumped into his bed as he fell asleep in the blink of an eye.

     The next day, he returned to his shop excited, but to his disappointment he found that the clock had again stopped running. He realized that the clock was somehow magical and that he had no chance of making it work without the help of the faerie. So he reminisced his days as a child when his grandmother used to tell him stories on Christmas in her large armchair. Travelling back in his memories, he started to remember the story about the Christmas Faerie. The story was about a faerie who lost her shoes in the snow, and could not find them however hard she looked. He considered that the story he heard as a small boy might have been true after all, so he decided to visit the shoemaker in the valley.

     The shoemaker was slightly taken back by the strange request from the toy repairer, but nevertheless made Donny a tiny pair of silken shoes, since it meant a good profit for such a small job. Donny returned to his workshop and laid the tiny shoes next to the clock on the table. He then proceeded to open the clock, leaving its inner clockwork exposed. The same evening, he once again hid behind the large armchair. Around the same time as the night before, the magical light appeared in the stove and the faerie elegantly looped out of it. She landed on the table and it was with a big smile on her lips that she found the tiny pair of shoes lying next to the clock. She put them on and made a somersault in the air to see if they fitted. Grateful for the gift, she went to the clock and sprinkled some of her dust into the clock and its inner parts.

     The next day was no other than Christmas Day, and Donny woke up earlier than usual. With an elevated spirit, he went to his workshop, and to his joy, he found that the old clock was ticking with a soft and warm sound that was like music to his ears. About an hour later, there was a knock at the door. As the toy repairer opened it, he once again found the young Kacheek standing in the cold staring at him. With an amiable smile, Donny handed him the clock, and the Kacheek accepted it, smiling back at the shopkeeper.

     A few years later, Donny would be sitting with his niece in his large armchair in the corner of his shop, telling her about the story of the Christmas Faerie and the Clock.

     The End.