The ticking grew louder over the next few days, soft and steady like a metronome under the floorboards. I tried to trace it—checked the wall clock by the counter, the ceiling fan, even the coffee machine—but it always seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.
Then one afternoon, just as I was thinking about closing, the cuckoo clock by the front door began to stir.
It’s an old one — carved oak leaves, little brass weights, the kind that runs when it feels like it.
It hadn’t made a sound for months, but now the hands twitched and the pendulum began to swing, slow and sure.
At the top of the hour, the tiny doors flew open and the bird burst out with a single, unexpected call:
“Cuckoo.”
Then silence.
The ticking stopped.
And the air in the shop shifted — as though someone had just drawn a deep, satisfied breath.
⸻
That night after I’d locked up I stayed late to finish pricing a new batch of china.
The shop had gone still, that velvety after-hours hush that settles when all the browsers have gone home.
I heard the Singer’s wheel turn once. Just once. And then the cuckoo called again — faint this time, as if echoing from another room.
In the quiet that followed came a rustle, like fabric brushing against timber. I turned toward the nursery room doorway and froze.
The dolls had moved.
Not far, not dramatically — but enough that I knew they hadn’t been like that when I’d locked up. A small porcelain girl who usually sat slumped in a pram now stood upright, a feather duster tucked beneath her arm. Another, the one missing a shoe, leaned against a bookshelf as though she’d been reaching to straighten it.
I should have been frightened. Instead I laughed, because really, what else can you do when your shop decides to clean itself?
⸻
By morning, the shelves gleamed. The silver had a soft new shine, the mirrors were free of fingerprints, and someone — or something — had restacked the books, by colour. Beckham followed the trail from room to room, tail twitching, chirping softly at corners.
I found a single gold thread on the counter, looped in the shape of a heart.
That evening I sat by the wardrobe, a cup of tea growing cold beside me.
“Thank you, Elsie,” I said quietly. “You’ve got good help.”
From inside, a faint hum answered — a tune half-remembered, the rhythm of a treadle pedal keeping time.
The cuckoo clock ticked along with it, perfectly in sync.
⸻
we continue next week with part five….
🍂💛