Before the Light Dies

Hello my Lovely Learners, and welcome to Easy Stories in English, the podcast that will take your English from OK to Good, and from Good to Great. I am Ariel Goodbody, your host for this show. Today’s beginner-level story is called Before the Light Dies. As always, the transcript and PDF are available at EasyStoriesInEnglish.com, and you can find the link in the description.

OK, I’ll just explain some words that are in today’s story.

A clockmaker is someone who makes clocks. You know those things that sit on the wall and go tick-tock tick-tock? Those are clocks. In the past, before factories, clocks were very complicated to make. Swiss clocks are still very expensive, and Swiss clockmakers have to study a long time.

Your ancestor is a relative, a family member, who lived a long time before you. Some people are very interested in genealogy, the study of family history, and do lots of research to find out who their ancestors were. So, for example, your great-great-great-grandfather is your ancestor.

When you repair something, you fix it, or mend it. Basically, you take something broken and make it good again. In the past, people often repaired their own cars, but now people often go to a garage and have other people repair their cars. If you fight a lot with your partner, and then your partner stops talking to you, you might need to repair the relationship.

If you ban something, then you make it so it is not allowed. You have to have a lot of power to ban something. For example, maybe smoking is banned in your office. Your boss banned smoking in the office and now you can’t smoke in the office. Well, now in the UK, and in many countries, smoking is banned in most buildings. Another thing that might be banned is dancing during an exam, which I think is silly, because dancing can really help you do better in your exam. Try it the next time you do IELTS.

An apprentice is someone who is learning to do a specific job. The apprentice learns from someone very good at that job and they help them with the work. For example, a chef, a cook, might have an apprentice who they teach to cook, or a clockmaker might have an apprentice, who they teach to make clocks. Usually, an apprentice makes less money until they have learned to do the job well. So essentially, they are working and studying at the same time.

A gear is a part of a machine. Gears are small circles with ‘teeth’, and gears are usually made of metal. Gears sit next to other gears, and one when gear turns, the other gear turns with it. Gears are used in machines to move lots of parts at the same time.

When you rush, you move too quickly. If you sleep through your alarm, you might have to rush, or you’ll be late for work. If you’re always rushing, you’ll make yourself stressed. Sometimes, you need to rush, though. For example, if you’re late to the airport and your flight is going very soon, you’ll need to rush through security and rush to the gate.

A symbol is a picture or a shape that represents something else. For example, the cross is the symbol of Jesus Christ and Christianity. So many Christian churches have crosses in them because it is a symbol of Jesus Christ. Emojis are symbols that have lots of different meanings. For example, the heart emoji is the symbol for love, but it can also mean ‘I love you’.

A diary is a book you write your feelings in, your journal. Some people write a diary every day, and in their diary they write what they did that day. Some people only use a diary to write about important things, like when they have appointments. I journal, write in a diary, quite often.

Honesty means being honest, telling the truth. If you tell the truth, then you are an honest person, but if you tell lies, then you are dishonest. For example, maybe you borrow ten pounds off your friend, and then months later, your friend asks for the ten pounds back. Then you say, ‘But I only borrowed five pounds!’ That would be dishonest – you are telling a lie. You are saying that you borrowed five pounds, when actually you borrowed ten pounds. Honesty is very important. We want to live in an honest society and an honest world. Well, I do. Maybe you want to live in a world where everyone lies. That’s your business.

When you know something that other people don’t know, you have a secret. For example, maybe you saw that your sister didn’t do her homework, but she told your mother that she did her homework. She has a secret, that she didn’t actually do her homework, and you know her secret. Usually, secrets are more important than that. For example, someone might steal something and keep it a secret from everyone.

If a secret is very important, we can say it is a deep secret. My deepest secret is [bleep]. Oh, I guess you’ll never know!

OK, so listen and enjoy!

Before the Light Dies

Once, there was a clockmaker. This clockmaker was the best clockmaker in all the land. He made clocks that were so beautiful, people thought he must use magic.

One day, the king asked the clockmaker to visit him. The clockmaker was nervous. He had never been to see the king before. The king bought clocks from the clockmaker, but normally, the king never asked the clockmaker to go and see him.

Well, you can’t say no when the king invites you somewhere, so the clockmaker went to see the king.

‘I hear you are the best clockmaker in all the land,’ said the king. ‘Well, I want you to look at this.’

The king showed him a clock. The clock was beautiful, but it was broken.

‘This clock belonged to an ancestor of mine,’ said the king. ‘I have been told that it is a magical clock. It can shine as bright as a star in the night sky. If you could repair this clock, it would be perfect. I love family history, and I would so love to see the beautiful shine of this clock…’

The clockmaker understood why the king really wanted the clock repaired. Recently, people in the land had started to doubt the king. He was losing wars, and last year there was a terrible famine, a time when there was very little food in the land. Many people had gone hungry, and many people had died. So they doubted the king. They said that maybe he was not the true king, and if someone came along who was a better king…

So the king wanted the clock repaired, because this magical clock would show that he was the true king. It would show that his family had been kings for generations. It would show that he was strong and clever. It would show that he had a very beautiful clock.

‘Of course, Your Majesty,’ said the clockmaker. ‘I will work very hard to repair it.’

And so the clockmaker took the broken clock and went back to his workshop.

In those days, most clockmaking was done without magic. The king’s father had hated magic, and he had banned magic from the land. The clockmaker had once had a young apprentice who loved using magic. The apprentice was very good at magic. The clockmaker tried banning his apprentice from using magic, but the apprentice used magic in secret. So finally, the clockmaker sent the apprentice away, to a country in the east.

That had been a very hard decision, but he tried not to think about that now. He focussed on repairing the clock. He was not sure why it was broken, so he needed to try lots of things.

First, he replaced the gears of the clock. He noticed that the gears were made with fake gold. Maybe someone had taken the gold gears out and replaced them with fake gold gears. In the past, gold was very expensive, and people would take gold out of old clocks to sell it. If this was a magical clock, it might need real gold to work.

So the clockmaker replaced the fake gold gears with real gold. The clock started ticking, and it began to shine.

But the clock ticked too fast. When the clockmaker went outside, he saw that all the people in the town were rushing. Just as the clock was ticking too fast, the people were moving too fast. They rushed everywhere, doing everything too quickly.

The king also rushed. He told his wife, the queen, to get ready more quickly. He told her that she was speaking too slowly. He told her that she was eating too slowly. Well, as you can imagine, the queen was not happy. When the clockmaker heard about this, he knew he had to try something else.

The problems with the queen made the clockmaker think about the decorations on the clock. The clock had lots of beautiful decorations on the outside. There were many rose decorations. Roses were the symbol of one of the past queens. But that queen had done some very bad things, and she was sent away from the land. If this was a magical clock, and it had the symbols of a bad queen on it, maybe that was why it was working badly. If the clockmaker changed the symbols, maybe the clock would work better.

So the clockmaker took off all the roses. He replaced them with swans. Swans were the symbol of the current queen. The clock shone brighter, and its ticking changed, but this time it ticked too slowly.

The next day, the clockmaker went outside to buy food. But in the market, he found no people. Everyone was at home sleeping. Just as the clock ticked too slowly, the people moved too slowly. Everyone was sleeping and relaxing, and nobody was working.

This was a big problem, the clockmaker realised. The king was at war with the country to the west. If the king’s army was sleeping, the other army might come from the west and kill them all.

Fortunately, the western army also moved slowly. Three days later, news came that the two armies were both asleep, and the clockmaker could relax. Still, he needed to repair the clock, and he needed to repair it fast.

The clockmaker decided to learn about the original clockmaker, the man who made this magic clock. He asked the king who had made the clock, but the king didn’t know. So he went to the library and read many books. Finally, he learned that the original clockmaker had been sent away from the land. He didn’t know why the original clockmaker had been sent away, but he thought that it must be important. The original clockmaker was dead, but he had a great-great-granddaughter. The clockmaker decided to go and visit the original clockmaker’s great-great-granddaughter.

The great-great-granddaughter lived in the country that the king was at war with, the country to the west. It was very difficult to travel there, and it was a long journey. And because of the clock’s magic, everything moved slowly. Even the horses moved slowly. So the clockmaker got off his horse and walked. He walked past horses and people, and he walked through towns and cities where everyone was asleep.

Finally, the clockmaker found the great-great-granddaughter. He asked her about the clock.

‘I have my ancestor’s diary,’ she said. ‘Let me find it.’

She pulled out her ancestor’s diary. The clockmaker read through it. It was hard to read, because the style of writing had changed, but he was good at reading the old style of writing.

He learned that the clock needed honesty. If the owner of the clock was dishonest, then the clock’s light would die. That is exactly what happened. The king who had owned the clock always kept the clock in his pocket. He loved his wife, the queen, but as his wife got older, he stopped thinking she was beautiful. His wife asked if he still thought she was beautiful, and he always said yes. That would be just a small lie. It wasn’t a big enough lie to break the clock.

But the king wasn’t just dishonest about the queen’s beauty. He had a much deeper secret. The king did not only love women, but also men. And as his wife got older and less beautiful, the king began to sleep with other women, and men, too. Every time the queen asked him about it, he lied, and this was a big lie. Every time the king lied, the light of the clock died a little. Finally, the clock’s light went out, and the clock broke.

At that time, the only people who knew about the clock’s magic were the king and the clockmaker. If the queen found out about the magic, then she would know her husband had lied to her, and she would know that her husband had slept with other women, and perhaps with men, too.

The king thought the clockmaker might tell the queen about the magic, and so he decided to have the clockmaker killed. But before the clockmaker could be killed, he escaped. He escaped to the other country in the west, and he knew he could never come back.

‘There is only one way to repair the clock,’ said the great-great-granddaughter.

‘Please,’ said the clockmaker. ‘Tell me.’

‘You must tell it a truth that nobody else knows. You must give the clock your deepest secret.’

The clockmaker couldn’t believe it. He was a simple man, and he had no deep secrets. Still, he thanked the woman and went home.

During the long journey home, the clockmaker thought. A truth that nobody else knew… He didn’t have any secrets like that.

But slowly, he started thinking through his life. Slowly, he realised that there was a secret. In fact, it was such a deep secret that he didn’t even know it himself. But reading the diary of the old clockmaker had shown him his own secret.

When the clockmaker came home, he took the clock into bed with him. He held it close to his heart, and he said, ‘I loved him.’

Because he had loved him: the young apprentice, who had worked for the clockmaker all those years ago. He had loved the apprentice, and he was scared of love, so he had sent the young man away to the east. All these years, he had kept the truth a secret from himself.

The clock began to shine more brightly. It shone so brightly that the clockmaker couldn’t look at it. He had to put it in a drawer by his bed.

The next day, the clockmaker went to the market and everything was back to normal – not too fast and not too slow. People were buying and selling food, talking and laughing. The clock was repaired.

So the clockmaker brought the clock to the king.

‘Here it is,’ he said. ‘It is beautiful. But you must be careful what you say around it. Do not tell lies when you are carrying this clock – not even small lies.’

‘What do you mean?’ said the king.

But the clockmaker was already leaving. He went and got on a horse and rode east. He rode east, to where he had sent the apprentice, all those years ago.

Perhaps, before the light of the clock died again, he could find the man he loved.

THE END

 Woo! Thank you for listening to this story. I hope you enjoyed it. You might have noticed that I went back to the old format of stories where I introduce the vocabulary and then tell the story instead of telling the story twice with some explanations.

This time I focussed really hard on keeping the grammar of the story simple, so it has maybe a bit more vocabulary than I would normally put in a beginner story. I’m kind of just experimenting with different formats for the podcast. I’ve been doing this for long enough now that, if you started listening as a beginner, you’re probably intermediate or advanced at this point, so I want to keep things interesting for people who have been listening faithfully all these years.

So this beginner story is kind of like ‘beginner plus’, in a way. To get the really accessible, beginner-friendly stories, you can go back to earlier episodes of the podcast, but I hope this was still easy to understand and interesting if you are new to the podcast.

Originally, I was going to write this as an intermediate- or advanced-level story, but it was quite a challenge, actually, to write it at a lower level, and I think the story still came out good.

I would love to hear your thoughts. I’m quite proud of this episode. I think it’s a dramatic and romantic story, and we haven’t had a good old love story on the podcast for quite a long time. It’s time to open up your hearts once again, ho, ho, ho! And tell me all your deepest, darkest secrets… Send me an email, leave me a comment, and tell me your secrets. Or don’t, you know, you don’t have to do that.

But if you enjoyed this episode of the podcast and you want to read my books in a physical format, you should buy my book, Easy Stories in English! Just go to EasyStoriesInEnglish.com/Book to find out all the information about where you can buy my books. It’s a collection of 10 stories in four levels, and I think you’ll really enjoy it.

Alright, thanks for listening and bye!