When the Clock Strikes is a retelling of the classic fairy tale Cinderella, but with a twist. It is a story of treachery, dark magic and revenge. The story is set in a city that is now in ruins, though some 200 years ago, it had been a great city, prosperous and a stronghold.
The story begins when the narrator shows some tourists the old Ballroom of the ruined Palace in the ruined city. And in the Ballroom, he points out a clock, which is marked with an image for every hour. The images begin beautifully, but as time progresses, it becomes more strange and unnerving. The images are in the order: a girl-child, a dwarf, a maiden, a youth, a lady, a knight, a queen, a king, abbess, magician and next to last, a hag. But the very last image is the strangest of all: Death; which had caused a rise in the superstition in the city that as the twelfth hour struck, death would also strike. the narrator then decides to tell the story of the last time the clock struck, which was 200 years ago.
About 200 years ago, a Duke had come to power by usurping the power of the then-reigning family. He had treacherously killed the last duke and all his family. Except for one, that is. This was an obscure woman the duke had not known of. She was royal and proud and seething with a hunger for vengeance. For safety and disguise, she had married a wealthy silk merchant in the city and had a daughter by him.
The Merchant was a respected but not wise man, rejoiced in his handsome aristocratic wife, and never dreamed of what she might be about. She, in fact, practiced witchcraft in an old tower, where she would go to worship Satan at night, and then practice witchcraft against the duke. The woman had, over the years, trained her daughter too, in the same, and their work in the tower made them closer to each other. This witchery took the form of making a wax effigy and injuring it. The Duke became ill soon and in fear for his life, named his 16-year-old son as his heir. This son was very dear to the Duke, and so the woman planned to kill the son before killing the duke, and so let the Duke linger in his agony.
The Merchant, though he absolutely loved and trusted his wife, started having doubts about his daughter, who unlike other girls her age was uninterested in marriage or clothes or jewels. She rather preferred to read in the garden at the foot of the tower. While returning late one night, the Merchant caught a glimpse of his daughter's shadow going into the tower and quietly followed her. And there, catching his wife's voice in Satan worship, He immediately gathers his neighbors to kill his wife and daughter.
The woman, realizing that her game was up, after advising her daughter how to save herself and how to complete the revenge on the duke and his son, stabs herself. When the neighbors come up, they find the girl seeming unaware of what had happened. Unable to resist her beauty, they agree that she was innocent, and had been bewitched by the Merchants wife. The next day, she was questioned by a priest and asked to kiss a crucifix, which she did after praying to Satan, without being hurt. The girl became a recluse after this, and put on ash on her hair and wore rags, in supposed regret about what had happened to her. The Merchant got married again, to a widow who had 2 daughters. Nothing any of them could do would make the girl change her mind.
Two years later, the Duke died, and his son became Prince in his place. The Prince was liberal, charming, wise and courteous but he never smiled. Months later, a great banquet, a ball was arranged in the palace. The Merchant and his wife and her daughters decided to go to the ball but didn't bother to ask the first daughter, knowing that she would speak about her sin and penance. So, the day of the ball came and the others left. After they had left, she went to the tower and started to chant.
Just before ten o'clock, a carriage drew up at the palace and a beautiful young woman stepped out. Everyone in the palace was dumbfounded by her beauty. The prince himself was interested and asks her about herself, to which she says it would not have been different from his own if not for an unscrupulous man, who had caused the downfall of her house. On being asked her name she gives the name 'Ashella'. They dance together till the prince tiring of losing her to other men, brought her to a terrace, where he had small tables filled with delicacies and wine brought to them. Meanwhile, inside the ballroom, the merchant sat looking as pale as a ghost, being the only one who knew the strange woman's true identity, as an awful foreboding weighed him down.
On the terrace, as the hour of the hag drew near, the girl began to chant under her breath. On being asked by the prince, she answered that she was saying a spell to bind him to her. The prince then says that he is already bound to her and proposes to marry her. To this, she says that justice required a harsher payment.
As the hour of death approached, and the clock began to strike, the girl started to curse him. As the clock struck twelve though, the clock stopped and the girl disappeared in a smoke, leaving a glass shoe behind. The prince lost his mind and said that he would find her with the help of her glass slipper, which he believed she had left behind as a token of her love. He said that every woman in the city, rich or poor, had to try on the slipper. But it would fit nobody, being a magical slipper that kept changing in size all the time.
Days passed and the Merchant was brought before the Prince, where he told the prince his whole story, about his first wife and daughter and also how his daughter had been missing from the day of the banquet. The prince ran through the city toward the merchant's house without guard or attendant, and on the road, the intriguers waylaid and murdered him. As he fell, the glass shoe fell and broke into a thousand pieces. Within a year, external enemies were at the gates. A year more, and the city had been sacked, half burned out, ruined.
The narrator ends by saying that the listener might think he was Death himself, considering how he knew the story in detail, leaving the reader wondering.
