Chapter 6
Neither happened.
“What in Time’s Teeth is going on?!” said a guy sitting opposite from me, with dark hair and a slit cut through one eyebrow. A Club, if my memory served me right—and it did. He was wearing green now, too.
“Who-who’s responsible for this?!” a girl with short blonde hair said, her chin quivering, tears slipping down her cheeks. I was almost envious—I was too shocked to cry, but a few tears would have released some of this pressure that had built in my chest.
“Is it you? Who did this—show yourself!” another girl demanded, her hair long and thick, her eyes almost as red as the dress she wore—a Heart.
And then the Heart boy.
His eyes were on me.
He sat three chairs to my left, the head-bag in his tight fists, and his eyes moved lightning fast from the others and to me. They always stopped on me for a beat and two and three.
And mine always stopped on him.
I know you—but I didn’t.
Then…how had I known to draw him so perfectly?
Because he was sitting there now, and I realized I’d gotten every line, every shape, every curve exactly right.
His hairline, the arch of his thick brows, the width of his nostrils—I’d gotten everything so right the thought sent goose bumps down the length of me.
How do I know you?
“Somebody will have to answer for this!”
“Ouch—that hurt!”
“Where you hit on the head? I was—right here…”
“You just wait until my father hears about this!”
“Who would dare attack a former Hand of the Turning Trials!”
“I demand an answer, right now!”
“This is—”
“Stop.”
Everyone did.
I had yet to look away from the Heart boy.
What a strange, beautiful pair of eyes Time had given him.
“Stop talking all at once. I-I…I’m Cook, if you remember. We’ve all met before. Let’s just…let’s just calm down for a moment and try to figure this out.”
Tearing my eyes from his was physically painful, if only for a tick—but I had to see the boy who was speaking—Cook from the Court of Spades, two chairs to my right on the very edge of his seat, looking about the room with wide, gray eyes and an open mouth.
“Calm down?!” said the girl with the bright green eyes and dark skin sitting right across from him, next to the Heart boy.
Mimi was her name—she’d spoken to all of us first that day we woke up standing under the Neverwhen sky.
“I can’t calm down! I was—I was home, and then someone hit me, and I just woke up here! ”
Voices erupted again, everyone talking at the same time.
My eyes went back to his as if that was my default setting, locked on his beautiful face, hungry to see more of it, if only to confirm that I already knew every detail, quite possibly as well as my own face.
He didn’t speak, he barely blinked.
I didn’t speak, I barely blinked.
It was like we were…on a different frequency, and I realized I wasn’t as panicked as I had been a moment ago. In fact, that pressure I was so sure was going to undo me from the inside was gone—couldn’t tell you where. I was…almost calm.
And he was, too.
So, while everyone spoke over one another, our gazes remained locked and our breathing the same. I could swear that our hearts chased the same rhythm, too, and I was twelve-hours certain that I was right.
I drew you, I said to him in my mind.
The problem was, I had no idea how he’d reply to that.
Then… “Enough!” said the girl with the green eyes. “Enough, already—we’re not going to figure anything out if we keep talking!”
She was absolutely right.
And when the Heart boy looked at her, I was momentarily released from the spell of his eyes, so I could focus once more on our surroundings.
“We’re not tied to these chairs or anything. Let’s just…let’s see if we can find a way out,” said another boy, skinny, tall, with a silver streak in his hair—a Diamond. I remembered him, too. I remembered all of them when I wasn’t so entranced by the Heart boy.
He was right—we weren’t tied to the chairs, though the red skin around my wrists and those times I’d been almost awake were proof that rope had been around me at one point. Possibly all the way here.
Which begged the question… “Where are we?”
The words slipped from my own lips, catching me by surprise.
“Possibly not home,” said the Spade boy—Cook was his name, and he looked a little better than he had a moment ago. He attempted to stand—and he did. His legs held him.
The rest of us did the same.
The room tilted a little bit, and my knees buckled, but I didn’t fall. Nobody did, though we swung to the sides at first.
“Underground,” said a voice that chased every single thought in my head away instantly.
The Heart boy continued, “We’re underground.”
“How do you know?” asked the Club girl.
“No windows—and look there,” said the boy who’d spoken first. He was pointing somewhere behind me, at the wall of the room where pieces of concrete had broken away to reveal rocks underneath.
“And the stairs,” said the Heart boy, pointing his thumb behind him to show the narrow flight of stairs almost hiding in the corner that led to a single black door halfway up the wall. The ceiling was high, indeed, possibly over two stories.
“And that doorway…” said the Diamond girl, looking toward my left, on the other side of the table standing on three legs, where there was indeed a doorway on the wall, so dark no light from this room could penetrate it.
Shivers ran down my back, ice cold.
“Guys, do you think it’s…the trials?” said one of the boys.
“Don’t be ridiculous—the trials are over,” the Heart girl with the long hair said.
She and the boy were the only Hearts here, just like Cook and I were the only Spades, and Mimi and the other Club were the only ones from their court, too.
Yet the Diamonds were three, as it should be. There were always twelve Hands in the Turning Trials, just like there were twelve hours on a clock. But we’d woken up in a strange place twice now, and we were still only nine.
I said, deliberately this time, “What happened to the other three?”
Silence in the room.
My voice echoed in the tall ceiling. Everyone was looking at one another, counting in their heads. My eyes kept going back to the Heart boy, so I saw it when he opened his lips to speak—and I braced myself for the goose bumps.
“We’re missing a Heart, a Club…” he said, his voice trailing off for a moment as he analyzed my face like he was searching for something. “And a Spade.”
“Maybe they just haven’t gotten here yet?” someone asked.
“Don’t be silly—we were only nine when we woke up in Neverwhen.”
“Then where are the other three?”
“Do I look like I know anything more than you do, right now?!”
“Time’s Teeth, I’m in a room full of fools!”
“What are you looking at me for—I didn’t even say anything!”
“Yeah, none of you are responsible for this. You could never-ever-reven pull something like this—”
“If you’re done bickering and want to get the hell out of here—the stairs are that way.” The Diamond was already moving toward the narrow stairs, when…
“What’s this?”
Mimi had made it all the way to the left of the room, had gone up to that doorway with nothing but darkness on the other side, and had stopped by the three-legged table.
We all stopped and turned to look at her because she was the only one who sounded…curious. Not frustrated. Not shouting, just curious.
Then she grabbed something that was sitting there on the table and she raised it with a shaking hand.
It was small and green and…
“A…tiny book?” said one or the other.
Mimi pulled it open—the covers were thicker, shiny, green. Almost the same green as the shirt she wore.
“A notebook,” the Club whispered, and for some reason we were all suspended, frozen in place, watching her with our breaths held as she slowly turned a page.
Something about that notebook, though I couldn’t really tell you what.
Then Mimi gasped, and my knees shook.
Her wide green eyes moved on whatever she was looking at on that thing, and then she looked up at us.
The whisper barely left her lips. “You have to see this.”
The next second we were all moving, all running to the table, to the other side, and Mimi had put the notebook right there on the corner, had left it open. There were words written on the first square page in dark green ink.
“That’s…that’s my handwriting,” she breathed, and she was shaking. I could tell because I was by her right shoulder (the Heart boy by her left).
“When did you write this, then?” asked one or the other—I was too busy trying to make out the words.
But the handwriting was very small, the letters tiny, so I couldn’t really make anything out.
“I don’t…I don’t know,” Mimi whispered.
“Can you read it? I can’t make out a single word.”
Mimi licked her dry lips, leaned closer toward the table, and we all did the same as if we were being guided by the same strings.
“W-w-we, the Hands of the 31st Turning Trials of the Clockrealm—Mimi, Seth, Russ, Cook, Anika, Erith, Levana, Ora, and March—do hereby vow that once the trials are done, we will stand united.”
Gasps, sudden movements, and someone pushed me even closer to the table as Mimi’s whisper wreaked havoc in my mind.
That’s me, that’s me, my name is in there, went my thoughts, and…
It’s him, it’s him—it’s March, that’s him! Don’t ask me how I knew, but it was him. The Heart boy.
Mimi slowly turned the page and continued to read.
“We will uncover the truth of our forgotten memories. We will hold responsible those who’ve lied to us, and who’ve kept us stuck here, and who’ve forced us to play these trials backward as well.”
“Holy Hour,” said one or the other—but we all felt the same way.
Time’s Teeth, I was shaking, I could hardly breathe, and there were tears in my eyes, too. Tears I had to blink away to clear my view when Mimi turned yet another page—the notebook was no bigger than the palm of her hand—and read…
“We will not abandon one another. We’re in this together.”
Silence for a tick.
I was falling, even though I felt the ground underneath my feet, and the rough wood of the table I was holding onto. I was falling down that hole in the ground, only this time I couldn’t really see anything, could only hear those words echoing in my head over and over again: we’re in this together.
“Guys—who lied to us? Who kept us stuck…where?” one of them asked.
But…
“Those are questions worth asking.”
The voice came from our side, and every one of us jumped back with screams and gasps, to find that the doorway that had led to darkness was no longer empty.
In front of it now stood two men, and they were definitely not surprised to find us there.