Old, fine cherry wood with mahogany, clawed feet; the face was creamy ivory when it was new. Now, it was a rotted yellow, almost an ochre color, but the ebony numbers still made an elegant contrast in its noble aging. Its hands were wrought iron, and they had a tendency to jump when it was wound for the month. But Alfred enjoyed watching the mechanics shake and quiver, and only with metal did he actually remember to be gentle, so he was given the task of maintaining the old clock. And every Sunday evening, half an hour before curfew, he took the key from the hook beside its wooden body, opened the door, and selected one of the golden disks for its musical rotary.

The old musical grandfather clock had been a gift from Ludwig, Gilbert, and Roderich sometime in the very early 1800's, well before the Great Wars. Alfred had little knowledge of how Arthur had been given such a marvelous gift, but he possessed a sneaking suspicion that Francis tipped off the Germanic trio, and possibly called in a favor. All the boy knew was that the large, stoic piece of metal and wood, wrought by expert's hands, brought certain serenity to the often-lacking household while it played one of its many tinkling songs.

Matthew would be curled up on the couch, his tired head on Arthur's knee, not yet in need of glasses. Arthur's usually busy hands were not quite so busy, one petting the soft, ashen waves of his smaller boy, the other having fallen still in his lap. His eyes would have gone soft, unfocused as he listened to the tinnying of the music box. Not even the little, colored threads in the basket by his feet, nor the colored lights settling about the room, could draw him from what Alfred supposed was memory. The old goat had often told Alfred to mind his own head when asked, but he only took that as a yes. And the energetic boy, himself, would be seated before the musical clock, once again memorizing, timing the little chinks in the metal disk as it spun in slow, lazy circles over the spectrum of the metal harp behind it.

But that was nearly 250 years ago.

Alfred stood in the darkened hallway, his hands running over the metal mesh over the tall, rectangular storage space. The key in his pocket felt like an insistent weight that demanded he come down innumerable flights of Smithsonian Restricted Access stairs to this very spot. It urged him, still.

He took the key ring from his pocket and fit the one he wanted into the bottom of the padlock, his eyes never straying from the wooden crate behind the fence. The door opened with a low squawk. Alfred went into the storage space and he rested a hand on the rough surface of the box. He could even now feel the muted thump of the heart underneath the wood. With another twist of the key, the box was opened to the cold, preservative air of the Smithsonian Underground.

"Hullo, old friend."

Alfred eased the decrepit clock from its container and opened the door in its front. The hands were stuck, showing the time whence the gears had ceased function, but Alfred remembered how to fix the music box. He sat down on the cement floor, alone in the storage facility among all this old things, adrift in his memories.

"One more for me, huh? Just one more time."

He turned the dial to start the music. As the first tinny note rang, the whole of Alfred's world was that clock and the sitting room where it once resided.

When the disc finally ceased its spinning, the only sound left was soft weeping.