Awakening.

He heard it before he saw it.

The deep, rounded tocks of a grandfather clock. They cut through his gauzy dream and filled his head like smoke. 

He tried to ignore it, and kept his eyes squeezed tightly shut, drawing out the last dregs of sleep for as long as possible. Unconsciousness was better than the nothing that came with awakening. But a grandfather clock was a rare thing and he knew he must the make the most of it.

Slowly, slowly, he lifted his lids and was met with the same sight as ever.

Grey.

 Uncurling himself from his position on the ground which had served as a bed, and indeed a home, he stretched and yawned. Then he stood and brushed off the dusty chalk that clung to his tattered hemp tabard, and he walked.

I shall take a moment to set the scene. After all, what good is a story if you cannot picture it?

The boy, our boy, woke up at the edge. I suppose now we would call it a beach, but that suggests a picturesque, dramatic or at the very least, interesting location. The edge was none of these things. The edge was simply where the land, white gravel that stretched flat for miles and miles and miles, met the water. Our boy’s entire world consisted of nothing else but this formulation. White against wave, white against wave, white against wave, all the way around.    

And that was it. The only intrigue was what lay beyond the water. The flat, dark, dark blue liquid seemed just as never ending and empty as the chalk ground. You could walk all day and all night, and then another day and another night, and never meet a soul.

It’s hard to say how many years he had now been alone. But it had been long enough for him to grow tall, for his voice to drop to a growl, for knowing lines to appear on his forehead. He had a crop of sandy hair, roughened by the salty sea air and coarse with grit from sleeping on the ground each night. His eyes were the colour of the mist that often rolled in from the ocean, a wispy silver that darkened according to his mood. Though his body was spindly and awkward, occasionally letting him down by doing things of its own accord, he was strong, and could walk for days without feeling tired.    

He had been walking for a long time even now, making his way steadily along the edgiest edge of the edge, eyes keen on the horizon for the sight of the grandfather clock that had awoken him.

 Sometimes, not regularly but perhaps once every month or so, various time-telling devises would float in the direction of the land and rest on the shore. It was and still is a mystery as to where they came from, and we must simply accept that it happened.

The grandfather clock was the ultimate treasure to find however. It was rare and had many uses; one could open the door at the front and sleep in it. The noise it made was pitched perfectly to keep away the night beasts. If you got desperate in the winter, it could be burnt for heat unlike any other.

But our boy had a different plan for this clock, if he could get there before something else did. He had spent a lot of time thinking over the last years of his life, and had devised an idea.  Perhaps, just perhaps, it would be possible to turn the clock into some kind of craft. After all, if it had floated to the edge, it must be able to float away again. And that’s what he wanted more than anything. To get away.

He was kept up night after night with an ache in his very depths that he did not understand. It plagued him constantly and he was desperate to be rid of it. The answer, he was sure, lay in breaking free from the land that he had been stuck on for his whole life.

 What he didn’t know, but what I know and what you now know too, is that this ache was nothing that could be healed. This ache was determination. And it was driving him to escape.