I remember the morning the tower fell silent.
It was about seven in the morning when we all noticed the bell hadn’t yet chimed—no big deal, the clock commonly ran late; we thought nothing of it. After all, nothing else seemed out of the ordinary—the city was as filthy as ever, and thick grayish smog pervaded the streets like crisp morning fog in a faraway valley. I was on my way to work—Mr. Gladly’s, a dingy old shop a few blocks south of the clock tower—and with every step I took, it seemed that the probability of having another dull, monotonous day increased. I stopped to watch a wiry rat devour a moldy, half-eaten piece of bread. In a way, it reminded me of Mr. Gladly: desperate, disgusting, hopeless. I trekked on to the town square, and that’s when I saw it.
An oddly dressed man shuffled through the crowd in the square across the street, his bright orange cloak clashing against the grayness of the city, yet despite his unusual semblance, he went unnoticed by the masses. His outfit seemed to match with the clock tower, standing proudly, pristinely overhead.
Initially, I shrugged the unusual figure off, thinking that he must be from out of town. But even as I resumed my burdensome trudging towards work, I felt strangely propelled back to the town square, almost as if I were the needle of a compass pointing northward. It wasn’t often that our city had visitors, much less wealthy ones like the man seemed to be, with his dazzling clothes and all.
I stood at the corner of Marigold Lane; my feet planted in the pavement like a flower’s roots. Marigold… weren’t marigolds orange? Orange, like the cloak of the strange man I couldn’t seem to forget—how could I forget? Everything around me was grey, everything but the clock tower—and that man.
Marigold. My eyes were entirely fixated on the word.
In that moment, I made the most important decision of my lifetime.
* * *
The metallic, rusty scent of flowers permeated the shop as hazy, morning sunlight streamed in.
“Axel, you’re fifteen minutes late—you know what that means!” Mr. Gladly said, his shiny white teeth clashing against the sickly yellows and greys of the shop.
“No pay today.” I said curtly.
“Exactly!” Gladly guffawed, though I knew he was dead serious. “Now, go out back—we’ve got a new batch of flowers to sell!”
I opened the creaky, wooden door in the back of the shop to find copper marigolds on the dusty counter.
To Be Continued
