Chapter 7
It worked.
A heart beat in the clockbeast in front of me. The cuts on the side of its body were closing before my eyes as I put all the tools in the pouch as fast as I could, while also trying to see into the clearing, to see who had screamed.
Who was still screaming.
The only thing I could see, though, was the running.
The other Hands were running away from the clearing into the forest, and at least two clockbeasts were chasing them.
“Fuck-fuck-fuck.”
That was not supposed to happen.
And I was standing there like a fool with nothing but a pouch in my hands—right next to the clockbeast I’d brought back to life, that was also standing now, growling as it licked its leg where a wound had been, before it raised its head and locked its empty eyes on me.
Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock…
Sharp teeth. A body that—as I’d accurately guessed before—reached up to my arm at the shoulders. Thin limbs and short, patchy fur, and those eyes…
Another scream sounded in the distance that felt like it had ripped right out of my throat.
I turned around and ran.
The forest somehow looked darker when you had a rabid clockbeast with the growl of a monster chasing you, it seemed, but I didn’t run for long. Just as long as I needed to put the pouch in my pocket and grab the knives strapped to my waist.
I expected bad. I expected very bad when I made a sharp U-turn around a large tree to confuse the clockbeast and give myself a moment to assess, but it worked. The beast continued forward another couple of feet before it realized I’d disappeared, and by then I was behind it, and I could see.
The uncoordinated movements. The way it swung to the sides when it stopped—like it was still gaining footing. Like it still hadn’t gathered its strength. Like it had been dead too long.
But it heard me. It turned a heartbeat later, and it saw the glint of the blades in my hands from the lanterns on the trees around us.
It didn’t waste another second before charging.
I said it before—I’d never actually been in a real fight.
I’d sparred more times than I could count with my father, but that wasn’t the same thing, even though we used real weapons.
It wasn’t the same as an actual clockbeast with teeth as big as my fingers coming to rip me apart with that awful growl, but my body knew how to move.
My heart was galloping and my blood was rushing and my arms were moving and slicing into skin—and the clockbeast was coming for me.
Blood. It sprayed on the arm of my suit, coating it black. The beast howled and tried to wrap those nasty jaws around my thigh in turn, but I moved like I knew it would do that very thing. Correction—like my body knew it would do that very thing, even if the thought didn’t exist in my mind at all.
Another slash on the side of its neck as it went up, and I moved back to gain some distance, and I pretended I didn’t hear the screams coming from deeper into the forest.
The clockbeast licked its fresh wounds with a long black tongue, then stalked toward me as I moved back, both knives raised, my heartbeat shaking me like a drum.
The fear was there still, but…I wasn’t as terrified as I had been in the beginning.
Without really understanding what the hell I was doing, I analyzed the beast’s movements, saw how weak its back legs were, how its front leg where I’d struck it on the shoulder was shaking, how it was hesitant to jump me the way it did a moment ago.
But it only waited another three seconds before it opened its jaws wide and jumped.
My body was prepared. I stepped aside at the right split-second with my arm pulled back, and swung my knife with all my strength, handle first.
The butt of it slammed right onto the clock I’d just fixed, and the creature fell to the ground without a sound like all its strings had been cut off at once.
Silence.
The sound of my breathing echoed in my head. No more screams that I could hear in the distance, either. The beast was down, the clock on the side of its head broken once more.
I was alive—and terribly excited, when…
“There you are, finally gone. I was worried you wouldn’t arrive before you left again.”
The voice came from behind me, up above.
A miracle I didn’t drop my knives when I jumped, definitely not excited anymore.
Pure terror had seized me by the throat, and it didn’t let me breathe until I’d looked at every single tree surrounding me, both the dark ones and those with lanterns hanging on the branches.
But there was nobody there.
“I myself tried not to arrive early, I really did. And I almost didn’t recognize you without all the blood.”
The voice was there, I wasn’t making it up.
And it was coming from behind me—always from behind me whichever direction I turned.
It was a male voice, I thought, but I could have easily been mistaken, considering I was alone in this forest with a dead clockbeast at my feet and no idea what to expect the next second.
But it sure as Sparetime wasn’t a grin.
It was there, hovering just above a branch over which hung a lantern, so there was plenty of light to see.
It was a grin made of perfectly aligned sharp teeth that looked like a crescent moon at first—and then the eyes appeared, big and green. The nose, a shiny black button. The fur, gray and black and white.
A cat.
“Don’t look so grim, O-ra. You’re perfectly safe here. See? Nothing has tried to kill you for seconds!”
A talking cat.
A talking cat that laughed, but I didn’t actually hear it, more like I imagined the sound in my head. The soft, velvety waves of its voice as it rolled and crashed against the walls of my skull…
“It’s Ora,” I found myself saying because that was not my name. It sounded all wrong when the cat said it—oh-rah—and that wasn’t it.
“Is it now,” the cat said, and its laughter rolled again in my mind as it slowly stood up and stretched.
A talking cat, and I was telling it how to pronounce my name.
Something wasn’t right here.
Was I dreaming again? Had the clockbeast gotten me? Had I lost consciousness without noticing?
But no, the clockbeast was still on the ground near a trunk, its clock broken. It wasn’t moving—but the cat was.
The cat was walking down the side of the tree as if it were as straight as the ground, its thick tail swooshing to the sides slowly as it took its time—and it was walking backward.
I blinked and blinked at least three times, and the image didn’t change—the cat was walking on the bark backward, tail first.
My legs carried me away, too, on instinct.
Part of the game?
It could very well be.
“Who…who are you?” I managed to ask, knives raised still. There was no clock on the cat that I could see. It wasn’t big, but it was round, and its fur was fluffy, and there were numbers moving on it when it moved.
Of course, it could have been a trick of the shadows.
“Why, the Cheshire—who else?” it spoke again, clearly through sharp, grinning teeth, and sat there on its hind legs in front of me, wrapping its tail all around its body. I could have sworn that it hadn’t been long enough for that a second ago, but my eyes insisted that now it was.
“What’s a Cheshire?”
I doubted I’d heard the name before—or anyone mentioning a grinning, talking cat who walked down trees backward.
Then the cat stood up. “Who, you mean, who—and the Cheshire is I.” When it started walking, it did so backward again. Two paws back, two toward my right.
Curiouser and curiouser.
“Are you part of the game?” I wondered again because my mind was still trying to make this make sense.
“A game? I do so love games!” it said, continuing to walk backward, and I continued to move in a circle to have it in my line of vision at all times.
“Where do you come from, then?” If he wasn’t a part of the trials, did he maybe live in this forest? Though the forest was inside the Labyrinth in Neverwhen, and I doubted animals would be allowed to live here.
But perhaps talking, grinning cats were an exception?
“From Time, the wretched old bastard, of course,” it said, and it walked backward so naturally. Just like one walked forward.
It was considered blasphemy to speak that way about Time, but I couldn’t bring myself to remind him of that just now. Instead, I asked. “And…and why are you here?”
Such soft looking fur. Fluffy. With numbers appearing and hiding underneath longer strands with every step it took.
“I’m always here—here is the only place to live when a wretched old bastard like Time casts you out. Glitches are my home.”
“I don’t…I don’t understand.”
“Backward,” the Cheshire said. “I live backward, O-ra. And you do now, too. How curious.” It took two steps backward, then sat and looked up at me again, the clockbeast right at its side yet it pretended it couldn’t even tell the carcass was there. “Are you a little lost?”
“I—”
“Wait—do not tell me.” Its head snapped back suddenly, and it looked at the forest like it could see something in the darkness.
“Ah.” The voice popped in my head like its laughter did, and every inch of my skin rose in goose bumps.
“You’re not lost, then. The forest wandered off without asking your permission first. It does that sometimes, yes. ”
My eyes closed—only for a second. I breathed deeply, called order in my mind.
A trial. It’s all part of the trial…
“What do you mean, you live backward? What are you doing here?” I asked—for the last time before I walked away.
Before I found whatever end this game had and told the queen and those cheering buffoons that there was no way to unwin this trial—the beasts would eat us all if we brought them back to life!
“I mean your tomorrow is my history. Pay attention, O-ra.” The way he said my name was wrong, so wrong. “Backward is such a lovely direction, don’t you think? What are your impressions so far?”
My mouth opened but no word left me yet. The Cheshire was back in front of the tree where it had appeared, and now it sat down again and watched me. Waited.