text: \*See Part I : Ok, where were we with this story? Last time, James the watchmaker identified the initials on the mechanical movement belonged to his father and came to examine it in person for himself. “Remarkable!” He said as he circled around Giselle. “Since the watch is still running, there must be an auxiliary power source keeping the movement wound.” My aunt believed that it was impossible, but then they soon realized that it was Giselle’s eyes. There was just something about them... They moved Giselle near a desk lamp and discovered that the light shined through her eyes to the glass viewing window of the mechanical movement. “This was it! Her eyes runs on a sort of solar energy. Those are selenium cells in her eyes, which stores energy when exposed to the sun. But, they only last for 25 years. This must be keeping the watch functional all this time. But why? Why the watch, and why is it keeping time?” Together with James, they moved Giselle around and shined the lamp closer to examine any hidden features. When they shined the lamp at the glass viewing window behind her head, words were projected onto the wall: Greenwich 0701206439 “I know what that is. We are looking at an ISBN number, and Greenwich is the local library in the town where I grew up.” Said James. “That hidden message would only be visible as long as the mechanical movement inside her head is running. Otherwise, the numbers would be scrambled forever into oblivion.” “We HAVE to go find this book!” My aunt said. The next day, they showed up at the Greenwich library and asked for this book by number. None of the librarians knew what it was. That is, until an old lady came from the back room and brought them to the special archives vault. She dusted off a book in the far corner and handed it to us: “A young man asked me to keep this for him all these years. It was an unpublished book, and he told me to keep it hidden until someone asked for it by that ISBN number, or burn it if 25 years had passed. That would have been next week.” And the title of that book? “A Crimson Lullaby - You and I and time”. The book cover had a single photo in black and white with four obscure people by the water. This could be a family vacation. There was also a beautiful young girl in the corner. Flipping through the pages of the secret book they found, my aunt recalled the first page: “My dear Claire, I hope this book will help you find your way back to me. \-Pierre.” As my aunt told me, the rest of the book was simply a series of photos with some captions. After all the years, I still have never seen the book. Perhaps James kept it, or maybe it was destroyed, I wasn’t sure, and I had no way of reaching him. Apparently, he left town a month after my aunt and her found that book, never to be seen again. Still, my aunt took photographs of two pages in the book as a memento. One of them was a girl standing in a field. Her face was obscured, and light and darkness perfectly divided the diagonal of the photograph. The girl’s face was in complete shadow, but deep in my soul I knew that this was that girl. This was Claire. The second photograph my aunt took showed the last page of the book, with only four short sentences: “There will be a time for us. Just you and I. Overlooking the ocean. Always and forever.” And that was the end, the very last page - at least according to my aunt. Even after all this time, my aunt never told me if she ever found out who Claire actually was, but over the years she developed a fondness for this beautiful story. Sometimes when we visited the beach together, we would both remember the last page of that book as we embraced the endless mystery of the vast ocean and listened in silence. The gentle sound of the waves was like a lullaby of time. Time past, and time present, all in one place. Always and forever. What about the real story of the mechanical watch hidden within Giselle? Well, years later, another small fashion boutique made a similar discovery in their store. It made international news as a valuable timepiece was hidden inside a mannequin- something that most people had heard about for the first time in their life. The watch was auctioned off together with the mannequin for five million dollars. However, unlike the watch my aunt found, that watch had stopped keeping time - probably because the Selenium cells finally decayed after 25 years. And, there was no hidden message and no secret book at a library linked to that discovery. It was just another relic of time celebrated by the rich as a piece of their collection and accompanied with their own story. I miss my aunt sometimes. She would have been 90 years old today. I hope she found her happiness in life.