Chapter 17
More Timekeepers.
Six new faces I’d never seen before, three of them moving about that strange room with the three-legged table, while the rest of us sat anywhere we could, with blankets over our shoulders and steaming teas in our hands, waiting.
They’d taken Calren somewhere else, into another room, they said.
They’d taken Silas, too, to rest, but he was awake, at least. His eyes were half open and on me while the Timekeepers carried him through that doorway that still revealed nothing but darkness to us from this room.
I sat on the floor—couldn’t tell you why. Maybe I just needed the support of something larger than the back of a chair to lean against.
March came to sit with me, his tea in his hand, and then Mimi came to my other side, too.
For the longest time, nobody spoke, only watched the Timekeepers as they came to check on us, then disappeared beyond the doorway again.
Then Anika sighed from where she sat at the table, running her fingertip over the rim of her teacup.
“I can’t believe cats can talk.”
That definitely was one of the stranger things we’d seen today, but somehow it wasn’t…shocking to me in the least.
“I can,” said Seth. “What I can’t believe is that someone would be stuck in a room behind a wall without food or water, barely breathing, and just…survive.”
“For a whole month,” said March from my side, his voice sending shivers down my spine.
I dragged myself a little closer to him on instinct.
“Somebody’s lying,” said Erith from across Anika.
“Everybody’s lying,” shot Russ, tapping his foot against his chair’s leg relentlessly.
He hadn’t even bothered to put that blanket they gave us around his shoulders.
Not that any of us really needed it—they’d dried our clothes and hair with magic as soon as we’d come through, like they had minutes to spare on such trivial things.
We weren’t cold, but the weight and the feel of the blanket around my shoulders gave me some strange kind of comfort.
I dragged myself a little closer to March again. There was still an inch or so between us.
“True,” said Mimi. “The only people we can really trust is us.” She made a point of throwing her small green notebook in the air and catching it again.
“Except we have no clue what happened,” Erith reminded her.
“But that Spade boy does,” said Seth.
“And he was one of us…somehow.” Mimi flinched, then opened her notebook. “Why isn’t his name in here, though?”
“The same reason why there is no Reggie and no Helen.” Those names. They stabbed at my gut as I said them, my own body rebelling against me.
“Who even are they?”
“Were they Hands, too?”
“Where are they now?”
“And why would that guy remember if he was stuck behind that wall?”
“Convenient, wasn’t it? To send us there, to basically take us all the way to the crazy Timekeeper who tried to kill himself by slamming against a wall…”
“He wasn’t trying to kill himself—he was trying to get to the boy!”
“Just because that guy was wearing that suit doesn’t mean he was a Hand—”
“And how would one even survive for that long? No, it makes no sense,” Russ was saying, shaking his head. “It makes no sense—how—”
“Through a pocket in the Labyrinth. That’s how.”
Kohen’s voice carried through the room before he stepped through from the darkness.
Behind him was the younger one—Damon was his name.
Except Damon no longer seemed bored or like he was being forced to share the same room with us.
Instead, he was pale everywhere, except the apples of his cheeks that were bright red.
We all straightened up where we sat, and this time it was March who closed the distance between us, came all the way to me until his shoulder pressed against mine. I thought maybe he could really read the thoughts in my head and knew just how to calm me down.
“What even is a pocket?” asked Anika.
“And where is the Timekeeper? Who is he?”
“And where is the boy? The Spade boy we found?”
“Are you going to make us go back? Because people saw us. Maids saw us and there was this Timekeeper woman who—”
“Nobody’s going to make you go back anywhere,” said Kohen with a raised hand and a smile Seth’s way. “You’ve outdone yourselves, Hands. Exceeded all our expectations. You found the proof we were looking for in record time.”
Our mouths opened and closed as we exchanged quick looks.
Part of me said, yes, yes, I knew it! while the other dreaded what he was going to say next…
A chuckle. “No wonder the lot of you finished the trials forward and backward the way you did. You work well together, complement one another perfectly, that’s for sure.”
“It’s him, isn’t it,” I whispered. “The Timekeeper.”
Kohen smiled. “Yes,” he told me. “It’s Calren Hock.
The Labyrinth wouldn’t let him out when time turned backward, and after the trials were over, the queens prohibited his release.
We had reason to believe he was there when the curse was cast—but we absolutely did not expect you to bring back the other one.
We genuinely thought Silas Sear was dead. ”
Timekeeper, Timekeeper, Timekeeper, sang the voice of the talking cat in my head over and over, while Damon went and grabbed two chairs from the other side of the room, and dragged them all the way to the front of the three-legged table.
“What are you doing?” asked one or the other, but I couldn’t look away from Kohen’s face.
“Keeping my end of the deal, of course. You brought back the proof. Now, I tell you the truth.”
My heart beat in my chest, but I heard the echo of it as if it was in someone else’s body.
My hand moved on its own, searching for March’s without looking, hid beneath his fingers like it was the most natural thing in the world to do.
We sat up straighter still, all of us, and looked at the old Timekeeper’s smiling face.
He really did look…better. In every way. His wide eyes were alive, his cheeks flushed, and even his shoulders seemed a bit wider.
“Are you ready?” he asked, but none of us could speak.
Until…
“Not quite,” said another voice I’d definitely heard before.
We all turned to the doorway just in time to see Silas with his arm over one of the Timekeepers, holding a wooden cane in the other, limping his way toward us with a smile on his pale face.
At that point we were all standing, all breathing heavily, all terribly confused about what to do—whether to go to him, whether to speak, whether to run.
“I’d love to tell them my part of the story, though I understand now that it’s not the whole story. What do you say, Master Kohen?”
His voice was low but clear, so much more powerful than before. Whatever those Timekeepers had done to him in there, he looked like he’d slept a couple days and had eaten all the best food in the world, too. All within the hour.
My heart ached. The gears in my gut twisted. I had March’s hand in one of mine, and Mimi’s in the other, and I squeezed them both with all my might.
“Absolutely, Silas. Come sit with me right there.” He waved for the empty chair where Damon had been sitting, but who was now going back to the other side of the room for another chair.
Kohen smiled like all his dreams had come true, patted Silas on his knee before he turned to us again, eyes sparkling.
“Pay attention, Hands, for we’re about to piece together what could be one of the most interesting, incredible stories to have ever been told in all worlds and all timelines—if we’re lucky.”
Another chuckle, and he leaned back on his chair, got comfortable. Of course, there were a thousand things in my mind, running, spiraling at the same time, but just now it all felt very…distant. Suddenly I had space in my head—a lot of space for the most interesting story in all the worlds.
So, I held my breath together with the others, our hearts beating as one.
And Silas said, “Allow me to start by saying, I’ve missed the lot of you terribly in the hour that I haven’t seen you. And I’m forever grateful that you found me.”
Then he began to tell us the story of how he came to Neverwhen to be part of the Turning Trials and how he met what he claimed were the bravest Hands in all of time.
Us.
For three hours, they talked.
First Silas, and then Kohen, and by then I was almost twelve-hours certain that I knew who Reggie and Helen and Silas were.
I knew, but I didn’t.
And when the story was over, I felt…empty. Which was saying something, since I’d been plenty empty before, too. None of the spots that ached inside me with their hollowness were filled with all that information.
Instead, we’d moved, March and I, had put back all those inches that had been between us when we first sat down, and when the story was over, the others had told them ours, too. Everything that had happened since we went back to the Labyrinth the day before.
Too much information. Far too much for my mind to process, which was why, I guessed, I felt so empty.
Even after they’d all taken us to separate rooms in what they called the Hollow, the part of this underground structure beyond the veil of darkness. The extension of the Labyrinth that nobody used anymore. That was connected—but separate.
That’s exactly how I felt about my own self, too. Like I was me, but…a different person from me.
How ever much sense that made.
They had rooms down the corridor, small ones but they all had cots in them. Kohen claimed the others had fixed and cleaned them up for us—with clean sheets and everything. We each could have our own so that we had time and privacy and the chance to actually rest.
Time’s Teeth, I was a stranger to all of them, and they to me.
I couldn’t bring myself to look March in the face when he stopped by the door to his room for the night.
I felt his eyes on the side of my face, felt everything that wasn’t said between us like charges of electricity in the air, yet I couldn’t bring myself to even turn my head.
I just walked ahead to the very last room on the left.
“Brave Ora.”