Chapter 1 #2
He still hadn’t blinked. Neither had I.
“Ah, yes. That.”
The others stirred. My eyes protested when I forced them from the boy and to the queen. She still hadn’t stopped smiling, not all the way. She was looking down at the table now, at the motions her hands made while she folded a white napkin to a perfect little triangle.
“There’s been an…incident, I’m afraid.” She put the triangle aside and grabbed another napkin—there seemed to be plenty around the plates.
The silver threads at the edges of them matched the style of the hall we were in, too—the walls were white and silver, with the outlines of rose petals engraved here and there.
The ceiling was high, shaped like a dome, and the doors on the other side of the room, both closed, were a polished white with silver streaks as well.
From the windows we could only see the sky, so blue it insisted this wasn’t a dream at all.
“You see, all of you entered the Turning Trials in their due time, which was two weeks ago. All of you played the four games and won.” Another folded napkin, and the queen looked up at us. Smiled harder. Must be really painful, I thought. “You made it to the very end, and then…and then…”
The White Queen’s black eyes glazed over as she looked ahead but didn’t really see the table—or us anymore. Her smile didn’t budge.
“The incident.” These words came from my own lips. It was my voice that said them.
“Yes. The incident.” The queen looked at me. “And the incident was a bad, bad incident, indeed.”
But the blood and the grass and the night—
“I don’t understand. How can I win the trials and not remember?” said someone—I didn’t look because I was trapped under the gaze of the boy across the table once more.
His name was at the tip of my tongue, and yet I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t remember any name other than mine—Ora Reese of the Court of Spades. That’s who I was.
And who was he?
Time’s Teeth, who were all of these people?
“All in due time, no rush,” said the queen. “We have minutes to spare, don’t we? You all won a great deal! Look–look, go ahead, I’ll allow it!”
More laughter, and it was soft and sharp at the same time, and the way the queen moved was…fluid. The curves her hands made, the way her fingers fluttered. Only her hair seemed to be frozen that way, unable to move the way the rest of her did.
But the others were indeed looking—down at themselves, at their own bodies. Searching. For what?
I had no idea, but I searched, too. I touched the foreign fabrics, pressed against the layers of shimmery tulle, and it only took three seconds to make out the hard object underneath the first few layers.
A clock.
It was round and golden, as big as the palm of my hand, and only one set of hands on it counted time. The other held it instead, because this was no ordinary clock.
This was also a chronobank.
Two faces, one within the other. The smaller one told time—a normal twelve-hour clock—but the bigger counted numbers up to a hundred. Three hands to count seconds and minutes and hours in the smaller clock, and the longest hand told the amount of Sparetime the clock contained.
That hand was pointing at number fifty-eight.
Fifty-eight minutes. That’s how much Sparetime this clock held.
Fifty-eight minutes was a lot of power. One could do a lot of magic with that time. Yet the chain of the clock was attached to my dress as if all those minutes actually belonged to me.
I raised it, looked at it again, just like everyone else around the table.
Nobody understood.
“I don’t—” the boy sitting to my right started, but the queen did not let him finish.
“Before you start with your silly questions again—yes, these are your Life Clocks, given to you at the start of the trials, with thirty whole minutes to use, and to calculate your victories and failures throughout the games. I’m sure you can see…
” She made a point to lean to the sides to see the clocks of the girls sitting near her.
“Ah, yes—I’m sure you can see that they’re all full of minutes now!
Well-earned minutes that will serve you a great deal.
All those minutes to use for any magic you please! ”
How curious.
Even my parents who worked full-time had never had chronobanks this full—and this didn’t even look like an ordinary chronobank.
Those were simple pocket watches that contained whatever amount of Sparetime you purchased, to then use as fuel for magic.
They did not look this…sophisticated. This fancy.
“Very special, indeed. These chronobanks are one of a kind, my little tickers, and they are made especially for the Hands of the Turning Trials”—the queen raised her hands to indicate both sides of the table—“which is you!”
Another applause. Another laugh that sounded like birds chirping.
Not a dream. The way things were evolving, I was getting the sense that this was not a dream at all.
“Then why?” said the girl sitting right across from me, on the left of the boy with the curly hair, who was still looking at me every third second.
I knew because I was looking at him, too.
Something about the shape of him. The colors of him. The weight of his attention.
“Why can’t I remember?” the girl continued. “If I came to Neverwhen and actually completed the Turning Trials, why can’t I remember any of it? Or any of you?!”
She looked at us with wide brown eyes full of unshed tears, and she was shaking. She looked genuinely terrified.
Hmm.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, deep into my being, it felt like I should have…felt something. It felt like I should have said something, too. Maybe an are you okay?
I don’t know, it just seemed like something I would have done before…before what, Ora? Before what?
What came before?
The White Queen spoke. “Well, didn’t you hear? It’s because of the incident!”
“Oh, the incident,” said the others, bobbing their heads. The incident, the incident—like they already knew exactly what it was or what it meant.
“Excuse me, but what exactly was the incident?” asked the boy on my other side.
Everybody stopped.
The smile froze on the queen’s face. “It was a curse, my little ticker.” A deep sigh. “It was a curse.”
Ooh’s and aah’s, some curious and some terrified, erupted around the table.
My eyes found his on their own, like it was a default setting in me to be looking at him—a boy I didn’t even know.
And he didn’t know me, but our defaults must have matched.
He didn’t make a sound, but he made it perfectly clear with the expression on his face and with his fisted hands that he didn’t think something was right here, either.
Rotten seconds. It stank here like rotten seconds.
“But fear not, my brave Hands. Fear not, for I have saved you.” The queen placed her hands over her chest. “I have saved me, too. I have saved all the Clockrealm!”
She clapped those petite hands, and then urged the girl sitting on her right to do the same, and before the minute was over, we were all clapping. Slowly. Completely lost as we looked at one another, at the table, at the room.
“More tea! Three sips each, please,” the queen demanded, and so we drank.
Three sips.
What was before?
“Then it’s over,” said the boy, and the sound of his voice twisted strings in my gut I didn’t know were there.
Something about his voice. When had it whispered in my ear? Perhaps in a dream?
“Oh, yes. It’s over,” said the queen with a nod. Her hair still didn’t bounce as hair should.
“And we’re free to go,” said the boy.
“Oh, no, no, little ticker! It’s not that over.” More laughter. “No, certainly not. You’re not free by any means.”
A clock ticked in the back of my head now. Every turn of the hands sounded more and more sinister.
“What are we then?” I asked, half-surprised to find the words out there in my own voice.
“You are you,” the queen said. “Sip-sip! Twice, that is.”
We sipped the tea twice. It hadn’t gone cold at all.
“But we’re also not free,” said one girl or the other.
“Correct,” said the queen. “Because I saved you.”
“From the curse,” said one boy or the other.
“Correct again. From the curse.”
A moment ticked by, slowly. We looked at one another—six girls and five boys, we were. All strangers. All clean and dressed and anxious and confused.
“What curse?” whispered someone—a boy across, but not the one I almost knew.
“The curse cast by a Hand,” said the queen, and this time her smile did drop all the way, and her eyes fell on the other side of the table, on a chair. An empty chair across from the boy sitting next to me. “The twelfth Hand.”
That chime in my head again. The twelfth Hand?
Yes, there were twelve players that played in the Turning Trials—three from each of the realm’s four courts.
There were twelve players, like there were twelve hours in a clock.
They were called the Hands of Time, and they played games, and they always won, and as a result, more Sparetime was then released into the air for harvesting—yes, yes, this all made sense, so…
“Where is he?”
The question could have been asked by my own mouth or another. It was the same in all of our minds.
Eleven. We were only eleven.
We should have been twelve.
Laughter. “How do you know it was a he?!”
The queen was looking right at me. It seemed the question had been asked by my mouth, after all.
How do you know it was a he, Ora?
The answer was simple. “I don’t.”
“All the better. Lucky guesses are my favorite.” The queen clapped. “Yes, little ticker—it was a he. And he is no longer with us.”
Silence in the hall, so sudden, so absolute that I thought I heard music playing from somewhere beyond those polished doors.
“No longer with us in this room, or…” someone asked, and it felt like the question should have been in my mind, too, like the rest, but this one wasn’t.
The twelfth Hand was not here at this table, and that was enough information for me. I didn’t need to know why or how.
“No longer with us in the realm,” said the queen.
Gasps. Hands on chests. Teary eyes.
An echo insisted that I should have been the same. That I should have been as panicked as the others, as shook, as afraid. That I had before…before…
Before.
“Silence now, little tickers,” said the queen. “I will tell you everything if you just take another sip-sip.”
So, we did.