The Timekeeper’s Secret(Rich Puckett) The afternoon sun slanted through the attic’s lone window, casting long, golden fingers across the dust-choked air. Emily sneezed, the sound sharp in the quiet, and watched as motes of dust swirled like tiny stars disturbed from their slumber. Her grandmother had asked—no, *insisted*—that she clean the attic during her summer visit. *"Too many memories packed away,"* she’d said with a wistful smile. *"Someone ought to sort through them while I can still remember what they mean."*

Emily hadn’t minded. There was something comforting about the attic’s quiet chaos, the scent of aged paper and cedar mingling with the faintest hint of lavender from her grandmother’s long-forgotten sachets. She knelt beside a stack of yellowed newspapers, their headlines whispering of wars and weddings from decades past, when her fingers brushed against something solid beneath them.

A collection of books.

Some were bound in cracked leather, their spines brittle with age; others had cloth covers fraying at the edges, their pages whispering secrets as she turned them. But one stood apart—a thick, weighty volume with an ornate cover, its gilded letters nearly worn away by time.

Her breath caught as she lifted it. The moment her fingers touched the spine, a strange warmth pulsed through her, like the book itself was alive.

Carefully, she opened it. The pages were thick, the ink faded but still legible—recipes, sketches, diary entries in handwriting that looped and curled like vines. And then, nestled in the very center, a single slip of paper, yellowed with age, its edges soft as a sigh.

A bookmark.

On it, written in delicate script, were words that made her pulse stutter:

*"Three steps to time’s door:
Place a hand on your heart and say the words—
‘Take me back to yesterday.’
‘Take me back to the present day.’
‘Take me forward to tomorrow.’"*

Emily’s fingers trembled. It was ridiculous. Impossible. And yet…

She glanced around the attic, half-expecting her grandmother to appear, laughing at the joke. But the room was silent, save for the distant hum of bees outside the window.

*What if…?*

Her heart hammered against her ribs as she pressed her palm to her chest. The words slipped out in a whisper, barely audible:

*“Take me back to yesterday.”*

The world dissolved.

The attic’s wooden beams melted into streaks of color, the scent of dust replaced by the rich aroma of her grandmother’s beef stew. A laugh echoed from the kitchen, familiar and warm. Emily blinked—and suddenly, she was sitting at the dinner table, her fork halfway to her mouth, her grandmother grinning across from her.

*Yesterday’s dinner.*

Her stomach lurched. She dropped her fork with a clatter.

"Everything all right, sweetheart?" her grandmother asked, eyebrows lifting.

Emily forced a nod, her mind spinning. It had worked. *It had actually worked.*

Over the next few days, she experimented in secret—skipping ahead to tomorrow to peek at a test’s answers, rewinding a clumsy moment to play it off with grace. At first, it was harmless. Fun, even.

But then came the bigger temptations.

A fight with her best friend, undone before it began. A missed opportunity, rewritten. Each small change felt like smoothing a wrinkle from time’s fabric—until she realized, too late, that the fabric was fraying.

The final mistake came on a rainy afternoon. Frustrated, heart heavy, she pressed her hand to her chest and whispered, *“Take me forward to tomorrow.”*

But when the world reassembled around her, nothing was familiar.

The house was different. The streets outside were wrong. And when she turned, expecting to see her grandmother’s kind smile, she was met with the puzzled gaze of a stranger.

A cold dread settled in her bones.

She had changed too much. Skipped too far. And now, time itself had unraveled around her.

The book had given her a gift.

But time, she realized with a sinking heart, was not hers to command.

And now, she had to find her way back—before the life she knew was lost forever.

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