Freya MacOwen paused in order to take in the majestic sunrise that was beginning to spill over the valley. Her job was both dirty and dangerous, but it was only from high in the bell towers of The City that one could see such a sight in its full glory. Her sense of humor came close to convincing her that it would be a great shame if her twin brother Bruno slept in and missed the sight, and she almost called him. Unfortunately for her mischievous side, her practical side overruled the former. They had a rule that they'd never speak mind-to-mind when one of them was up in one of the towers, as distractions could cause fatal accidents.
Oh well. Having reasoned it out, she next had to admit that, given a choice, she'd also still be in bed clinging to the last dregs of sleep. Even the most generous person would be hard-pressed to call her anything other than a night treader, yet here she was hard at work at such an ungodly, early hour.
Her thoughts continued in that unaccustomed, honest path, presumably due to her extreme fatigue. She admitted to herself that while the view was indeed incredible, she was also inordinately pleased that she only needed to be up so early every other month, on the mornings before the Festa, which was why Bruno was sleeping in today. He had the duty on the months she was off.
As always, thinking of the arrogance of the churches that insisted that THEIR chimes not be even one second behind any other's on Festa evenings made her stomach knot. Every time one of them sent a messenger asking one of the twins to fine-tune their clocks, immediately if you please, she wanted to yell at them about their hypocrisy when they preached patience and forbearance but had none of either themselves.
She took a deep breath to calm herself. Her time-sense wouldn't work if she were tense. Even after all these years, she still laughed when she thought of how the two of them had arrived at such a lofty state.
When she and Bru had discovered, at age seven, that their "talent" consisted of nothing more than always knowing the exact time, they'd been incredibly disappointed. It hadn't helped that their "friend" Sera's talent was one of the most prized. She knew exactly which stud crossed with which mare would produce the highest quality foal. She, and those with a like talent who had preceeded her, were responsible for horses bred in the valley being so highly valued throughout Italy. She also had a habit of mentioning it, frequently, when she was anywhere near Freya and Bruno.
Their depression had lasted until they were nine. One day they'd been in a clock shop with their father and one of them, she didn't remember which any more, had objected when the clocks chimed the half hour. "That's not right. The clocks are all 19 seconds fast!"
Their father had tried to shush them. But, being as young as they were, they didn't understand how rude it was that they were essentially telling a master clock-maker that she'd got it wrong.
However Master Sullivan hadn't been offended. Rather she had been curious. She'd stopped their father's apologies with a question. "Tell me child, how do you know that they're fast?"
The answer had been a dejected, "Cause that's our talent, if you want to call it one. It's not a real talent that actually means something. It's just that we always know exactly what time it is."
Master Sullivan had straightened and cast an accusatory glance at Father, who put his hands up and shook his head. We didn't understand at the time, but hindsight told us that he was denying that he'd said any such thing to us. Which was true by the way. He'd never said anything one way or the other.
Master Sullivan had thought for a while than her face lit up. She'd bustled into the back of her shop and brought out a table clock that had a second hand as well as the ones for minutes and hours. She wound it, then set it in front of us. "Go ahead, set the time then start it."
One of us had done so, then she'd had us wait for five minutes. Next she'd asked, "Is the time correct?"
Freya remembered that part. She'd answered in a disgusted tone, "No it's not. It's already 11 seconds slow!"
Father had looked from us to the Master, and back again.
Master Sullivan picked up the clock and tossed it into a box that had a sign over it that said: "Use for Parts".
She looked at Father and said, "She's right. There's something wrong with the torsion spring that I haven't been able to sort out. It runs slow, about 10 seconds every five minutes."
She'd turned back to me and said, "In this case 11 seconds, as this fine young lady has just told us."
Next she'd looked at Bru and asked, "And you child. Do you agree with your sister?"
He'd nodded and said, "Yes Ma'am, almost. It was 11.3 seconds slow."
I'd turned to him and said, "I knew that. I was just rounding to the closest second Bru."
He'd nodded, "Oh. All right. I guess that's OK then."
The next thing Master Sullivan did was blindside father. When we were older, we understood why, after she'd taught us that old adage: "It's easier to ask forgiveness than permission."
She'd turned to us and asked, "Would you children like to make some pocket money? But it will have to be after you've finished your homework, or on weekends and holidays.
"I'll pay you to make sure that every clock is set properly before it leaves the shop. I'll also teach you about how to make them, if you're interested in that."
My memory of what we did next is still crystal clear. We'd jumped at each other, wrapped our arms around each other, and laughed, cried, and cheered. FINALLY. We'd no longer have to be tortured by the clocks at home, and, hopefully, also those at school, being off all the time.
Master Sullivan had smiled at Father. As for him, he'd just shrugged his shoulders. One of his best traits was that he was always quick to admit when he'd been bested. Not that he'd ever let that keep him from trying to win the next time, which he did.
They negotiated for a while, both about our "work hours," but mostly about our pay. Within a few minutes Master Sullivan realized that in that particular arena it was our father who was the master. Finally Father had asked, "Done?"
Master Sullivan's expression was on the sour side, but she'd replied, "Done" and stuck her hand out to be shaken.
Bru and I were a bit worried about that look, but when she turned to us she was all smiles, "I'll see you two on Saturday at 10:29 sharp. So, before you leave, here..."
She handed us a small table clock. "This one should work just fine. You go ahead and set it, and also that wall clock by the door so that they match. Then you take the small one home with you. That way all three of us will know exactly when you're to arrive."
That elicited an excited, "Yes ma'am," and "Thank you ma'am," from the two of us.
If father hadn't been with us, we'd probably have run all the way home even though it was over a kilometer. Yep, we really were that excited.
Over the next several years Master Sullivan taught us a great deal about clocks and a great deal more about dealing with customers, whether ordinary people or the so-called "upper classes." Her shop was right on the border between where the homes and businesses of the two groups were situated, which made her exceedingly busy. It also was the reason why she had such a large shop with such a wide variety of clocks.
Once we were 14 and legally allowed to quit school to begin an apprenticeship, Master Sullivan took both of us on. It was highly unusual for a master to take on two at a time, unless they were family, but she had a reason. On the first day she took us aside and whispered, "No way am I going to let a competitor have one of you. I want you all to myself!"
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We didn't entirely understand what she meant, but we did get that she valued us for some reason. After all the years of being told that we were barely ordinary, it was quite a ray of sunshine in our lives.
Some masters rely on being harsh to get their apprentices to work properly. Besides being abusive, it's incredibly stupid. Hearing even an occasional word of praise from Master Sullivan, or "Sully" as she insisted we call her in private, was of itself enough to make us push ourselves as hard as we possibly could. We both made journeyman at 17, about a year earlier than most.
It might have been sooner, but we both had a rather unfortunate tendency to want to "improve" the clocks that came in for repairs. Equally unfortunate was that, back then, our skills were nowhere near as good as we thought they were. Consequently Sully sat on us for an extra year until we began to at least have a glimmer of understanding of the idea that if you don't do it the way the customer wants they may not come back.
On the plus side, it was no time at all before we became true masters at figuring out exactly what in a clock needed to be repaired or replaced. When they weren't running properly it caused us an almost physical pain. Since fixing the clock was the only way to stop the pain, well, I'm sure you can see that we were highly motivated.
By the time we were 22 we were both masters, but, rather than opening a shop of our own, we stayed with Sully. We liked her, she liked us, and we didn't have to worry about little things like tracking costs and paying taxes.
We'd left home for good when we turned 20. At 21 we married and our spouses joined us in our rooms on the fourth floor of the building the shop was in. The location perfectly suited all of us. The rent was cheap, as nobody else was willing to hike up to the fourth at the end of the day. Master Sully lived on the second floor, and the third floor was our warehouse, which was extremely convenient. Even more important than that was that all the buildings surrounding us had only three stories, which meant that nobody could see into our apartment.
Bru and I had been best of friends with Elaine and Constantine Faraldo since primary school. Elaine rapidly became Bru's best girl friend, and Costa was my best guy friend. That they were also twins made understanding each other that much easier. It's a common story I guess. Over the years our friendships turned into love. We talked things over, for a good long time -- several months actually -- and arrived at the only logical conclusion.
Yes, of course we got married.. We had a civil ceremony, which was still fairly rare in those days. We even skipped the reception part. Our parents wanted to throw a big party, but all four of us, like so many twins in The City, didn't do all that well with crowds, and, when we did go out, we preferred to be with a few friends at most.
That night we had a little party for just the four of us in our sitting room. When it was time to go to bed, I hugged and kissed Costa. Bru hugged and kissed Elaine. Then Elaine and I went into our room, and Bru and Costa went into theirs. We never talked about it afterwards, but the silly looks on all of our faces the next morning made it pretty clear that none of us had been disappointed the previous night.
By the time we were 24, business was beyond booming, in good part because we were now contracting out our services to repair clocks that were too large to bring in to the store. Which brings us back to the job I was on.
One thing that hadn't changed over the centuries was that the churches competing to have the biggest and "best" bells hadn't lost a bit of their enthusiasm even though just about the entire population of The City hated them with a passion. Oh, yes, they'd learned to live with them, but irritated tolerance was about the most even the most enthusiastic supporters could muster.
For reasons that have always been unclear, those actually in charge of the churches, when told of the attitude of the public as a whole, invariably ascribed it to jealousy. There have been a goodly number of scholars over the centuries who, having studied the phenomenon, concluded that the reason for such delusions was actually rather simple.
There was an inverse linear relationship between the thickness of the walls of a church and the strength of the delusion. In other words those most supportive of ringing the bells as loudly as they could were those whose brains had been addled the most by the sound. Since they functioned reasonably well when discussing any other topic, they couldn't be removed and replaced by other priests who were more rational. This was probably because the priests whose brains actually functioned the best tended to either leave The City entirely, or join the churches with the best protection, such as The Church of the Placid Heart with its two meter thick walls and multi-layered shield spell.
The priests who had managed to finagle assignments to churches that focused on quiet and contemplation tended to be extremely attentive to the needs of the parishioners. They knew that there were many other clergy desperately waiting in the wings to take their places if their performance of their duties was lacking.
Word of how well they took care of the members of their parishes resulted in a constant influx of new members, which meant a need for more priests and so on. Over the past 200 years, all such churches had become extremely wealthy, which of course meant more money spent on charitable works, which meant more donations, more members, more priests, etc. Placid Heart began its own seminary 117 years ago.
Anyway, so here I was, tuning up the clock that controlled the mechanism that rang the bell of yet another church controlled by someone who wasn't quite right in the head. For myself it didn't matter much. It wasn't my church. Sure Bru and I had tried several times to get out of working at the ones where those in charge were the craziest. We'd doubled, then tripled what we charged, all to no avail. For some reason their delusion was broad enough that they'd all decided that higher fees meant "better tuning," and they paid our newly inflated bills without making even a minimal effort to dicker with us.
Finally we just gave up and did the work as quickly and as accurately as possible. (As if there were anything else we could do if we didn't want to go nuts from hearing the bells go off at the wrong time.) Then we hurried to the next job. Between us we managed to synchronize every bell in town once a year. The rest of the time we devoted ourselves to making and repairing clocks that were as accurate as possible.
After three years of experimentation, we'd developed a new type of mechanism that was accurate to within one minute every three to four days and would fit in a small clock casing. It wasn't perfect, but it took care of the frayed nerves we developed when we were around clocks that were significantly off.
Anyone with our new clocks could set them by the chimes of whichever churches were allowed to ring the hours on non-Festa days, which was the major reason we kept the church contracts. If their time was right, then the time of most of the rest of the clocks in the city was right, and we were a lot less irritated and irritable.
It was after we'd finally sorted that out that we discovered one group that valued the correct time as much as we did. Or, I guess I should say two groups, perhaps three, maybe four? Oh hell, whatever....
What it came down to is that we discovered that our "worthless" talent wasn't so worthless after all. The first businesses to come calling were the coach companies, and along with them the inns and hostels along the King's Highways. Next it was the army. Once a few of our clocks hit the docks, things really took off. We had orders by the dozens from the navy.
Neither of us had ever thought of it, but, hey, The City is landlocked and over a hundred kilometers from the nearest seaport. I'm not much for geography, but for reasons I still don't understand, if you don't have the accurate time, you can't tell how far east, or west, you are when you're at sea. Though I have no idea of what the mathematics involved are, I do understand that things might be a bit rough if you wanted to go to Tunis and ended up in Algiers instead.
The money was nice, to be sure, but, for the two of us, what was more important than anything was the vindication. Our talent wasn't worthless. Not only that, we were making a LOT more money than a certain horse breeder who used to torment us. I haven't seen that particular person lately, maybe 'cause they're hiding from us. But if I DO, I'm not going to be all that subtle about rubbing her nose in it.
(Yeah, it's petty, but it'll be worth it, at least once. Ok, maybe twice, but no more than that. I promise!)
Things flowed along nicely for a few years, but then we started talking about maybe having children. All of us loved them to distraction, but obviously the way things were it wasn't possible. Fortunately our logic and our hearts lead to the same conclusion. All four of us loved each other, very much. We decided that we would have children. The biological parents would be our wedded spouses. After that, we'd raise them together.
Emily and I would be "mom" to all of them, and Costa and Bru would be "dad." We figured that by the time they were old enough to understand that we weren't like most other families, the kids would be mature enough not to talk about how we dealt with our family life.
It helped a lot that Emily was an artist and Costa was a sculptor, which meant that both of them worked at home. That way there were always two of us home for the kids, plus whoever was in the shop that day could run upstairs at lunchtime or if there were a problem. Otherwise when Bru and I got home, we spelled the others.
To tell the truth, that's about all there is to it. We lived quiet lives and enjoyed not only our children but also our grandchildren. The only trouble we ever had with other citizens of The City was when some of them found out that we were the ones who tuned the bells so they'd strike at exactly the same time. Fortunately all they ever did was cuss at us a bit.
What really surprised us was that whenever there was a group cussing us out, there'd be other people who'd start arguing with them, saying that they actually liked the way the bells were synchronized, and did the complainers really want the torture spread out over a longer period of time like it would be if some rang later than the rest?
Oh? Some of you think we should have broken up the arguments?
Whatever for? They were having a great deal of fun. Some of them made sure that they'd be near the shop several times a month, just in case a chance to "get in on the fun" came up.
Virtual head shaking here. Still, a life without family and friends is pretty empty, isn't it?