Tanith Lee was an extremely prolific writer, accomplishing over 90 novels and 300 short stories. Her stories feature fairy tale, magical, vampiric, gothic, and mythical tropes; strongly feminist and often spicy.  Again, how do you pick a story from a writer who has produced so much?

I have picked this tale which was selected as the lead in Colder Greyer Stones, which was published by NewCon Press to celebrate Lee being honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award at that year’s World Fantasy Convention.

Like Lee, I’m fascinated by old clocks, but I don’t trust myself around them. I’m liable to break them, or cause them to warp, or for something to unravel inside. My husband has developed a fascination with watch repair and attempted to try it for himself, but strangely enough it takes… time.

I have one ancestor in my family tree that managed to briefly lift that line of the family from poverty and servitude by becoming a clock maker in the 18^th century, and so who knows, maybe there is clock-making in my blood, but I rather fear I would accidentally conjure something as beastly as the cockatrice/clockatrice in this story, who turns hapless onlookers to stone.

Such is rumoured to be the fate of Diana, an Elizabethan girl who was the erstwhile paramour of Robert Trenchall’s ancestor, Robert Southurst, and therefore the statue in the garden is no statue at all. The modern day Trenchall’s girlfriend, Dru is fascinated by the statue, and also by the story of how Southurst had made a clock featuring these mythical beasts in order to warn visitors to his mansion, and to preserve the story of Diana’s fate. When Trenchall ditches her for a new love interest, Dru has no qualms about repurposing his family history to sell an article with a piece of accompanying art. She has her friends help her build a clock model that she can photograph and enhance digitally. However, her thoughts and dreams have been infected by the story, and she has unwittingly given rise to the mythical monster through the power of dreams.

A story of lost loves, stone hearts, and gothic creepiness.

First published in Fantasy Magazine, 2010, and available to read here. Collected in Colder Greyer Stones, NewCon Press, 2013