Mara fixed watches in a little shop that smelled of brass and old oil. On Wednesday she buried her brother Tomas, who had stepped under a delivery truck on Tuesday. That night she sat alone and wound the dead clock he'd left her. The mainspring caught hard, like it snagged on something. Then every hand in the shop began spinning backward.

Instead of fighting it, Mara wound the clock tighter, on purpose. If it could pull time back one day, maybe it could pull back more. The spinning screamed. The brass case grew hot in her hands. The shop floor dropped out from under her like a trapdoor.

The clock pulled too hard. Mara fell through years in seconds and couldn't stop. Faces blurred past, Tomas as a boy, a baby, gone before she was born. The mainspring finally snapped. Everything went white. When it cleared, she stood in an empty shop, in no year she knew, clutching broken brass.