Chapter 14 #2
When those words left my lips, for a second after, he looked at me.
Really looked at me like he could see me.
Like he could understand me. “Cook and I will help. We’ve got Sparetime—you can use mine.
You can unlock the seal with magic—but you can’t keep doing this.
It won’t work. You’re only going to kill yourself—you can’t break that wall by slamming on it. ”
He wasn’t moving. He wasn’t thrashing.
I stepped back, eyes locked on his, and I pulled out my chronobank from my pocket. Brought it up so he could see it.
“Sparetime. Sixty minutes are in here. You can use every last one, okay? We’ll guide you.”
A second ticked by, then another.
Seth let go of his right arm first. Then Russ, then March.
“Ora,” he said, his eyes dark with suspicion, with worry. “Are you sure?”
I nodded without hesitation. “I can always buy more Sparetime.” And even if for some reason I couldn’t, I could live just fine without magic. I’d done it my whole life already, hadn’t I?
“He can have mine, too. I don’t need it,” said Cook, holding up his own chronobank.
“And mine.” Mimi.
“Definitely mine.” Seth.
“He can have all of them.” March.
“I think we’ll be fine to start with this.” I reached out a shaking hand for the Timekeeper’s.
Time’s Teeth, it didn’t look like a hand at all. All bone and skin cut in too many places to count, nails broken. But he let me take his hand, raise it between us, put my chronobank in the center of his palm. Closed his fingers around it.
All the while he looked at me.
“Let’s do it. Together. Let’s find the seal.”
“Ora,” Cook whispered. “What if…what if he didn’t make it? What if it was someone else?”
A very real possibility that sent shivers down my back. I swallowed hard. “Then we’ll know.” If it didn’t work, we’d know, and we could figure something else out.
For now, I stepped to the side and, with his hand between mine still, I pulled the Timekeeper gently toward the wall. Cook grabbed his other hand, his chronobank at the ready, and we moved slowly.
The Timekeeper walked.
His legs shook. It was a miracle that he was able to slam against that wall the way he did, over and over, when he could hardly stand. A miracle he was still here somehow, still doing this.
The wall was right there, stained with blood and grime. Cook placed the Timekeeper’s hand against it. I did the same on the other side, pressed his hand with the chronobank against his palm to the wall, and put mine next to his.
“Close your eyes,” I whispered, still not entirely sure that the Timekeeper could even understand me—but hoping. Hoping with all my heart.
He did close his eyes, and Cook followed, and so did I.
The buzz was immediate—louder now, sharper, almost angry, as if the seal could feel us, too. Like it didn’t recognize us.
“Feel for the edges,” Cook whispered. “It’s easier to penetrate from the edges of the magic.”
He was right. “It feels…like a knot,” I said in wonder, but I saw the shape of the magic in my mind. Almost like it was a concrete thing. An actual lock.
Behind us, the whispers had already started.
“What if there’s nothing back there? What if it’s just more wall?” Levana, always the optimist.
“Then why would he seal it?” Seth shot back.
“Maybe he sealed it before he lost his mind. Maybe he doesn’t even know what he sealed anymore.” Russ.
“Or maybe it’s the proof,” said Anika, and I heard her shift closer.
“Yeah, probably not.” Erith. “We’re wasting time here, but okay…”
“A device, maybe? Something he took from those barred rooms?” Seth.
“Could be a weapon.” Russ.
“Why would you seal a weapon behind a wall?” March wondered.
“I dunno…maybe because he’s mad?”
“What if it’s…someone?” Mimi’s whisper was barely audible.
“Don’t be silly. A person would be long dead by now trapped behind a wall.” Levana.
“Time’s Temper, guys, is that what we’re going to find? A corpse?!” Anika.
“Could be a tomb.”
“Ew-don’t say that—”
“Could be treasure. Could be someone’s secret stash of Sparetime, for all we know.”
“You think people hide Sparetime behind walls and seal them?!”
“What would—”
“Guys.”
I spoke before I realized I’d decided to. But they kept whispering, talking one over the other like always, and it was impossible to focus. Impossible. “Just shut up for a second,” I said, then flinched. “Please.”
They did.
“Anything?” Cook whispered.
“Not yet.” I felt the buzzing, but that’s about it. I didn’t have the slightest clue on how to reach for it, how to make it submit.
But the more I focused now that it was quiet in the room, the more I…felt it. Felt the hand on my chronobank that was pressed between the wall and the Timekeeper’s hand. I felt the seconds in it, the minutes, too. In a way I never had before, almost like I was trying to connect to them.
Like my body was operating on an old instinct. Like it had done that very thing before, and now that it felt the magic, it wanted to reach for it.
Curiouser and curiouser. My own body was a stranger to me, just as much as this Timekeeper.
Which was maybe why I felt like I knew him, too.
“Reach for it,” I thought I whispered, though I could have just thought the words in my own head. “The seal is right there. Reach for it.”
But I must have spoken out loud because Russ said, “You made it. It’s your magic. Go ahead, reach for it.”
I risked a glance to the side to find the Timekeeper had his eyes closed still, had pressed his forehead to the wall. Sweat beads lined his dirty face, and he clenched his jaw so tightly we heard his teeth grinding.
I didn’t really expect anything to shift, until…
Cook gasped from the other side. “It’s moving,” he said, and my heart fell all the way to my heels. Every gear in my body came to a halt, too, and I focused my entire being on the wall again. On the magic.
My breath caught. I thought I gasped, too.
Holy Hour, it was really moving.
I wasn’t entirely sure how to explain it, but the hum changed. Shifted. That knot that I’d felt at first began to loosen slowly, thread by thread, like something frozen thawing.
Calren’s fingers twitched against the stone. I could tell because I was still holding his hand against the wall, only now I also felt his magic stir beneath his skin. It was…odd. Faint and confused, but responding. It was responding to the Sparetime in my chronobank.