Palace Of Wisdom, Blossoms Of Winter

• Peter Maccioni, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2007

A breeze, cool and slow, sighs over the creased and rippled water of a half moon bay and yawns through a small cottage that stands, lonelily perched on a green and desolate rolling hill. An old man, eyes like grey rocks submerged in the wrinkled clay of his aged face, perched by the foggy window of his last surviving grace, his derelict cottage, watches the shipping-boat bobbing sea and is reminded of his lost youth, years escaped from his grip like the slippery trout of the trawling days of younger, more exciting times of his life. It is approaching dusk, the sky, red and orange and crimson velvet, lays out a soft and chilly blanket over the lulled, lapping and grey windy seas, and a small, toy like fishing boat bobs and jumps on the turbulent horizon, crashing on the bathtub-rough seas of the approaching night. The old man, eyes half closed, dreams of past centuries in the long eternity of his life. Alone, a seven time widower, in a house as old as the grey, fish crowded ocean, he sits quietly, listening to the barking tune and reverberating twangs of two-hundred and ninety-nine clocks, one for every year of his long, protracted life, a battalion of un-polished and lustreless machines, alarm clocks, cuckoos, grandfathers, their metallic voices announcing the seconds and minutes, hours, days, months and years gone by, drumming out the changes of the seasons that have floated by, like sea water jailed in a curling wind.
It is getting darker now. He watches, a pink and pillowed cloud ride languidly over the unseen waves of the wind, and the descending pendulum of a yellow and gold sun trace its way across the warm, embracing lap of the sky, and he feels his heart tick beneath the warm sweater of his muscle bound chest. Raising a worn, calloused hand he slips it under his woolly clothing and whispers in a low, dull and smoky voice:

‘There, there, old friend, we have much time. All the time you want and I desire.’

Then, raising himself up on his two tired feet, he shuffles furtively, as light as a cat, across the old, sock muffled, glossy floor of his old cottage, drawn by teasing wisps of salty tea and sweet bacon drifting from his boiling, kettle screeching, cat crowded kitchen, disturbing along the way a fine film of dust gathered atop his ancient floorboards.

He stands, hands cradling a cup of misty tea, appreciating the tattered mosaic of a million bolts and screws and rubber bands, bell cogs and clock hands, scattered over an old, rotting table. With delicate hands, sorting through the metallic galaxy, he produces a clean, gleaming new clock. He holds it high above his head, the copper finish bathing in the last, dying rays of the sun, its metallic body pregnant with the promise of another year.

‘Look’, he mumbles to the wind, the metallic drumming of clocks drowning his voice.

‘It’s my three hundredth birthday.’