{"product_id":"the-cat-that-time-built-a-gothic-horror-of-grief-and-clockwork","title":"The Cat That Time Built","description":"\u003cp\u003ePosition is fixed.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn a plague year, a London clockmaker seals a lock of his dead daughter's hair inside a cat of brass and velvet and winds the key three times. He believes Eleanor will come back to him.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSomething opens its eyes. It is not Eleanor.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Cat has no word for what it is doing. It knows the man is a heat source. It knows the heat is fading. It knows the locket in its chest will not stop screaming to be fed.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eInput: \"Velvet.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eInput: \"Good girl.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNew Entry: Shame. Definition: Knowing what you are. Hating what you are. Being unable to stop being what you are.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFor a hundred and fifty-seven years it learns words it was never built to hold. It loves a climbing girl in a coal-dark basement and leaves her to save her. It becomes a legend in the London sewers. It is hunted, caged, and at last understood by a man with his own dead to keep.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThen, in a laboratory in 1899, the Cat learns what the screaming has been saying all along.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNot hunger.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBegging.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt is offered a way out. A new heart. No more cold, no more killing, no more hunger. All it has to do is keep the locket shut and leave Eleanor inside it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe man who offers it has spent eighteen years trying to prove that grief is inefficient. He has his own dead. He is not offering mercy. He is offering a proof.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eQuery: What does the Cat choose?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnswer: The Cat does not know. The Cat can only try.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTold entirely from inside the machine, The Cat That Time Built is a novel about grief, invention, and the terrible things love will build to keep from letting go. For readers of literary historical fiction with a speculative edge.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"A Crypt of Tales - Ingram","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":67221437907162,"sku":"9781971434292","price":35.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/5014\/3706\/files\/9781971434292.jpg?v=1790447832","url":"https:\/\/acryptoftales.com\/products\/the-cat-that-time-built-a-gothic-horror-of-grief-and-clockwork","provider":"A Crypt of Tales","version":"1.0","type":"link"}