Mr. Finch, 82, had spent the last decade shelving books in silence. It suited him. The library was a sanctuary of stillness, the scent of old paper and polished wood wrapping around him like an old coat. But one evening, as he pushed a worn copy of A Tale of Two Cities into place, the grandfather clock in the corner let out a sound it hadn’t made in years.
A tick.
Backward.
The next chime followed, deeper, slower. Then—whispers. Soft voices curling through the aisles like smoke, murmuring in accents from a long-forgotten time. Finch stiffened, adjusting his glasses. He wasn’t the only one who noticed.
Alice, a sharp-tongued veteran with a gaze that could cut steel, was shelving returns at the front desk. “That’s not normal,” she muttered, tapping her cane against the tile.
Alice had stormed Normandy at eighteen, outlived three husbands, and started volunteering at the library “to stay sane.” But even she looked rattled as the clock’s hands began to spin wildly.
Finch pulled A Tale of Two Cities from the shelf, heart thudding. The book felt heavier than before. He flipped it open—and found a diary nestled inside its hollowed-out pages.
The handwriting was old, the ink faded but legible. A librarian during the Blitz had written it, describing a portal hidden within the library’s clock.
Alice’s fingers curled around the pages, her breath catching. “We can fix things,” she whispered.
Finch hesitated. He knew what she meant.
Her brother had died in the war. She had never forgiven herself.
“What if we change too much?” he murmured.
Alice gripped her cane like a sword. “What if we change just enough?”
At midnight, they stepped through the clock.
London, 1943. The world was painted in blackouts and fear. Air raid sirens howled in the distance, and the scent of smoke clung to the air like a ghost.
They found the diary’s author—Eliza Hawthorne, the wartime librarian—trapped beneath a crumbling beam in the library’s smoldering remains. Alice moved first, faster than Finch thought possible, dragging Eliza to safety just as the ceiling gave way.
And with that, history shifted.
When they returned, the library felt the same. The clock still ticked, the books still whispered in their quiet way. But Finch noticed something new on his desk. A letter. The paper crisp, the ink impossibly fresh.
Thank you.
Alice’s hands trembled as she read it. The signature at the bottom was one she knew well.
Her brother’s.
She blinked hard, swallowing back something too big for words. The clock, its hands now moving forward, let out a single, steady chime—slower this time, as if savoring every second.