The Clockwork Kingdom | Calming Bedtime Story For Adults

Hey Jeffrey here and welcome back to Knife Falls. I hope you're well. I've had a super day and are already

for a lovely night's sleep. I've got a quick favor to ask if you're enjoying the show please do recommend us to family and friends. Your support helps the show a huge amount and hopefully we can help them to get a better night's sleep. I'm currently sitting at my desk and I can hear my dad's old clock chiming in the distance. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Give me a sense of nostalgia and reminds me of how I'm fascinated by the concept of time.

The fourth dimension and illusion, a human construct, whatever you may believe. I often find

I'm having the best time when I forget all about it and I'm simply here and now.

“Yesterday's history tomorrow was mystery and today's a gift. That's why they call it the present.”

Kung Fu Panda. Join me here and now tonight. I have a story for you that takes place in an old dimension where an ornate grandfather clock stands softly tick, tick, ticking away. The clock keeps time perfectly but when it's chimed strike midnight it opens a portal to a mysterious mechanical world. Before we begin here's the quick ad break that keeps this free content possible to go ad-free, subscribe, vinyl link in the show notes. For a lot of us, making time to take care

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Thomas Tattarol had always known he had a great hand family, a distant relative who lived in the country,

somewhere where the hills met the mountains, somewhere where even in spring and summer, the highest peaks were always dusted with a sprinkling of white snow. She lived in pendulum hall. The hall had been in the family for generations. The name, pendulum, was perhaps an odd to the

“family trade. Thomas's great, great, great grandfather had been an eminent clockmaker as had many”

of his descendants. That was all in the past though. Thomas had been brought up in the city.

His father hadn't carried on in the family business. The part from a few seldom told stories

about distant relatives in the country and a very elaborate mental clock that sat above the fireplace in his childhood home. Thomas knew very little about his distant relatives and even less about the craft of clockmaking. And then, a message, great hand family had passed away. And pendulum hall had been left in her well to Thomas. The legal documents had arrived at Thomas's home in due course, deeds and documents and records. Everything that Thomas needed to know about the

“running of the houses, nothing out of the ordinary, except for the note written in spidery handwriting,”

which fluttered out from between the pages. It said that Thomas should journey to pendulum hall as soon as possible. There was something wrong with the kingdom inside the clock. Thomas assumed that it was Emily who had written the note, said she was too frail to attend to it for herself. But only someone in the family, someone with a feel for a clockwork, would be able to fix it. Thomas frowned, the kingdom inside the clock.

Emily must have made a mistake, unless kingdom was some technical term he wasn't aware of. Either way, there wasn't very much he could do about it. He knew nothing of clockmaking. Nevertheless, he made a note to look the grandfather clock over when he reached pendulum hall.

He could always call a clockmaker out to fix it if it was in dire need of repair.

Despite not being bothered about the functioning of an old clock, the urgency of Emily's note must have left some kind of impression on him. He found himself acting out of character. He cancelled his meetings and cleared nearly a week from his calendar. Thomas wasn't usually the spontaneous type, but he had made up his mind. He wanted to get to pendulum hall as soon as possible.

The drive from the city was long. Thomas left before it was light, and by the time he drove through the gates of pendulum hall, dark was falling again. But even in the dusk, the house was beautiful. The raw tire and gates caught fine glints of the setting sun. The gardens were pleasantly rambling. Ivy and roses climbed the walls of the big stone house, which was sprawling without being imposing. Behind the hall, hills rolled like ocean waves.

Behind the hills, the mountains. Thomas excels. He hadn't registered until now, how nervous he had been feeling. Nervous that the house would be grim and gothic, nervous that he would feel out of place in the country. But it was quite the opposite.

the well-worn house and garden. They were all perfect. He walked to the front door,

grey tantamalise liars had sent him the keys. He'd almost laughed out loud when he saw them. Huge grass wring of old fashioned keys that looked like a prop from a period film.

“Now he fitted the front door key in the lock. It turned easily, and the doors swung open.”

Inside the house was rather grand. A wide entrance hall led to a sweeping spiral staircase that wound its way up through four spacious floors. Thomas went from room to room. There was a billiards room, a library, and all kinds of lounges and parlors and bedrooms. Through the windows he saw a conservatory, a sundial, an orchard. There was so much to see that he nearly forgot about the grandfather clock. Reminding himself that it was the reason he

had traveled here so hastily. Thomas traced his steps back down to the entrance hall.

“Once he was standing before the clock, he wondered how he could have missed it.”

He'd noticed the clock when he first arrived. It was impossible not to notice.

The things stood nearly nine feet tall. Its dark wood case carved with such elaborate detail, but it seemed less like furniture, and more like a cathedral rendered in miniature. Every surface held some small wonder, a fox pursuing a hair through wooden undergrowth, an owl with wings spread wide. A bear standing on its hind legs beside a flowering tree. Higher up, human figures appeared, a blanksmith with his hammer raised, a woman carrying water,

“a child flying a kite, and at the very top, where the pediment rose to its beak,”

the sun and moon faced each other across a field of stars. Each celestial body

rendered in brass that had long ago tarnished to a soft, dusky gold. The clock's face was equally remarkable, with numbers formed from delicate brass groul work, and three sets of hands that tracked not just hours and minutes, but something else entirely, perhaps the phases of the moon, or the turning of the seasons. Thomas inspected the clock carefully, nothing seemed out of order.

He knelt down and pressed his ear to the clock's trunk. From inside, he heard a soft, regular tick, ticking, sending his regular as a heartbeat. There was nothing wrong with the clock as far as he could tell, and as for the kingdom Emily had mentioned in her note, Thomas still had no clue what she was referring to. Unless she was talking about the castle carved into its case.

Thomas had just noticed it now, a top-adistant carved hill beneath the carved sun and moon, circling each other in the sky. He tapped the castle with an outstretched finger. Nothing happened. Paramelly, he thought, she must have been confused when she wrote that note to him. After his long day of travel, Thomas was eager for bed. He chose a room with an old fashioned four poster bed, spread with an enticingly comfortable looking comforter, and a host of

plump pillows. Sleep should have come easily after the long journey, but Thomas found himself weakful, listening to the unfamiliar sounds of the house. Somewhere below, a pipe knocked gently against wood, a window rattled in its frame.

of the grandfather clock in the entrance hall. Strange that even up here, on the halls

“up her most floor, he could still hear the ticking. Thomas lit the lamp by his bed,”

and scanned the bookshelf in the corner of the room. Surely one of the volumes here would be boring enough to put him to sleep. He pulled down a leather-bound book titled, "A family of clockmakers, a historical survey of the Tatarol families in chanting clock designs." Thomas turned to the front pages, which showed a black and white photograph of an end-wordian family.

The men and boys wore stiff suits, the women and girls wore gowns.

The photograph was captioned, "Temacy Tatarol and family."

“Thomas didn't know very much about his family history. As he flipped through the pages,”

he learned how his great, great, great-grandfather, Theodore Tatarol, had started working as a watchmaker's apprentice. The young Theodore had a nag for watchmaking, and was soon making and selling his own designs. A watch that chimed the hour in Bartsong instead of bells. A pocket watch that kept perfect time in any weather, even at sea. A lady's timepiece small enough to wear on a ribbon. It's case decorated with real butterfly wings,

preserved under glass. Theodore's son Tobias had expanded the business with older designs.

“A desk clock powered entirely by sunlight. A travel clock that needed no winding. It's mechanism”

driven by the motion of walking. A tall case clock with a face that showed both the time and the current face of the moon. There were musical clocks that played different melodies for mourning, noon, and night. There were clocks designed for a specific profession. A beakers clock that chimed before dawn. An astronomer's clock that tracked the movements of planets. Tatarol clocks were so inventive set the book, so ingeniously designed that some people said

they could only have been made by magic. Thomas put the book aside. It was interesting reading about his ancestors' knack for clock making. Two interesting. He was trying to sleep after all. He switched the lamp off, and settled back down to sleep. But once again, sleep did not come. And if anything, the take, talk, if the grandfather clock in the entrance hall, was growing louder. Perhaps this was while Tantamily had meant when she said it wasn't working properly, he thought.

He dawned his slippers and dressing again, and started downstairs. halfway down the stairs, Thomas heard the clock begin to chime. One, two, three. Thomas came to them all the way up to twelve. When the final chime faded, he heard something else. A sound like a ledge lifting, like a door swinging open, unwell-oiled hinges. He asin to the bottom of the stairs, the entrance hall was painted in shades of silver by moonlight

streaming through the tall windows. And there, in the grandfather clock, a door stood open. It was set into the lower portion of the case. It didn't so cleverly among the carved figures

that Thomas had never noticed it before. Warm light spilled from the opening, and with it,

the sense of brass and oil. Thomas approached it slowly.

and gears of a clock. Instead, he saw landscape rolling hills stretched away

“under a sky that seemed caught in perpetual sunset, all amber and rose and soft purple.”

In the distance, he could make out the shapes of buildings, a village perhaps, with smoke rising from chimneys. Further in the distance, he saw the outline of a castle, and everywhere, turning and spinning and gleaming in the golden light, were gears and wheels, springs and escapements. The visible mechanisms of some vast clockwork

seemed to form the very foundation of this strange kingdom. Thomas did not decide to

step through the doorway so much as fine that he already had. One moment his feet were on the marble floor of the entrance hall, the next moment they were on the soft grass that seemed to

“grow from soil made of fine brass filings. One moment the mechanical world that lay on the other”

side of the door in the clock had seemed miniature. The next moment, he found that either it had grown larger, or he had shrunk to its size. He might have spent longer puzzling over just exactly how he had stepped seemingly from one world into another, if the new landscape that stretched out around him wasn't so beautiful that it made his chest ache. Everything seemed to exist in that perfect hour, when day hovers on the edge of evening.

When light becomes precious, precisely because it was soon fade away. A gleaming cobblestone path led deeper into the world. His eyes adjusted. Thomas began to recognize the figures from the clock. There was the fog sitting beside the path with his tail wrapped around his feet. The owl parched in a nearby tree, her brass feathers ruffling in a breeze, and walking toward him down the path, king the woman with her water jug,

the blacksmith with his hammer, and the child who had flown the kite. They were not quite human, and they were not quite mechanical either, though they moved with astonishing precision. As the king closer, Thomas noticed how tired all three looked, though they greeted him with warm smiles.

But those speaking, they directed Thomas to the nearest hill, and began to walk up it. He followed them. From the top of the hill, he could see the kingdom with even greater clarity. It spread before him gleaming and orderly. Why then, among all this beauty and precision, did Thomas suddenly sense the things in the

“clockwork kingdom were not all exactly as they should be?”

The blacksmith, gesture toward the sky, and Thomas looked up to see what was wrong.

The sunset was just as brilliant as it had been when the door in the clock first opened,

and perhaps this was the problem. The sun had not lowered in the sky at all. It hung fixed above the horizon, neither rising nor setting, holding the world in an endless moment that should have been temporary. The woman pointed toward the distant hills, where a large and complicated structure rose against the sky. It was a tower of sorts, though it seemed to be constructed entirely of clockwork wheels within wheels.

Giant discapements, rocking back and forth, pendulum swinging through complicated arcs. Even from this distance, Thomas could see that its movements were uneven. Some parts stood frozen while others spun too quickly, throwing off the rhythm of the hole.

The sky mechanism had failed, and without it, day could not become night.

“The sun could not said, the moon could not rise, and all the inhabitants of this clockwork kingdom could not rest.”

They'd been awake for too long, caught in a permanent sunset. The king of the structure, Thomas felt a tingle in his fingers. They itched to adjust the mechanism, as if they knew exactly what needed to be done, to set it in motion again. Thomas began to walk toward the tower.

The fog stood and padded along beside him, a silent companion.

The owl lifted from her branch, and flew ahead, her brass wings catching the light.

“Others joined the procession as he went.”

The bear from the clock's carvings, the deer with antlers made of delicate silver filigree. A rabbit whose mechanical heart he could hear, taking softly, as it hopped along the path. Along with his clockwork companions, Thomas made his way through the village he had seen from a distance. Like the rest of the kingdom, the village was a mechanical marvel, where buildings seemed to be constructed from music boxes, and the clockwork flowers grew in grass gardens.

But its inhabitants were weary. Children sat on doorsteps, their mechanical toys wound down, and still in their labs.

“People watched Thomas from their windows, hiding their yarns behind their hands as he went by.”

The tower grew larger as he approached, revealing more of its complexity. Giant wheels turned inside frameworks of raw tire, thick chains carried force from one level to the next. Escapments larger than houses, rocked back, and forth, governing the movement of the clockwork, sun, and moon. At the very top, where the mechanism should have connected to the sky itself, something had come loose.

Thomas could see the problem now, a mean drive shaft had slipped from its housing, and without it properly seated, the entire mechanism sat spinning freely, where it should have connected to the sky. The shaft was high up, accessible only by spiral stair that wound up through the tower's interior. He began to climb, the stairs were narrow, and through the gaps between them. He could see all the way down to the ground. The fox waited below. The owl had

flown up to a perch near the top, her eyes tracking his progress. Thomas could feel the vibration of all the moving parts, the hum and tick, and whir of the great machine. At the top, he found himself in a small platform. The drive shaft hung loose, swinging in the breeze. It's housing waited a few feet away, circular opening, lined with brass teeth that would catch and hold the shaft. If only he could guide it home.

Thomas reached out and grasped the shaft. Carefully walking his hands along its length, he began to guide it toward the housing. He pooled and the shaft moved.

Inch by inch, he wrestled it into position, until finally, with a satisfying click,

it seated itself in the housing. Immediately the tower's movement changed. The spinning parts found their rhythm, and high above in the golden sky, the sun began to move at last. Thomas climbed back down quickly, eager to see what would happen.

It's like it was changing, deepening. Shadows began to stretch out across the ground.

“As the sun finally disappeared below the horizon, the moon rose on the opposite side of the sky.”

It's like it was cool and gentle. From the village came the sound of shutters being closed, of doors latching, of silence falling. The clockwork creatures began to settle.

The bear lumbered off toward a den in the hillside. The deer picked her way delicately into the forest.

The rabbit yon, and hopped away into the tall grass. The owl tucked her head beneath her wing.

“The fox remained beside Thomas, and together they walked back toward the village.”

Lights went out in the windows as they passed. The shops were now closed,

in the houses, Thomas could see family settling into beds that looked remarkably comfortable,

all soft pillows and thick blankets. Everything was winding down, settling into sleep. The kingdom itself grew quiet. It's ticking and worrying, softening into something like silence.

“Thomas went back down the path with the fox beside him, until he reached the doorway.”

It still stood open. The fox sat down beside it, then bowed its head, and what Thomas understood was a farewell. He stepped through the doorway. Behind him, he heard the soft click of the door in the grandfather clock closing, sealing the clockwork kingdom away once more. Thomas looked at the carved figures on its case, and saw them differently now.

The fox seemed to be smiling. The owl's eyes held a knowing gleam, and the sun and moon at the top were positioned just so, with the moon ascendant, and the sun at rest exactly as it should be. There was nothing left for Thomas to do, but climb the stairs up to his own bed, where the moon streamed through the windows, and go, but last,

to sleep. We'll leave our story there for tonight. Time waits for no man after all. Sleep well, and sweet dreams. [Music] [Music] [Music]

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