Chapter 10 #2
That dinner not having come out of my stomach already was a miracle. I had gripped the back of Seth’s chair so tightly my fingers hurt for real, and my instincts wanted me to grab the knives, too, but what could knives do against whatever kind of magic was being used here?
Wicked, wicked magic.
And then the table vibrated. As it did, March began to age.
Gasps, but no screams. The hair around his temples turned gray just slightly. His hands changed a tiny bit, and I noticed when he raised them up to inspect them.
Even Levana had stopped crying, and Russ had raised his head to look.
The table no longer shook. Erith, Anika, March and Reggie had aged, but only by a few years, and each had only lost ten minutes from their Life Clocks.
A grin. The colors in March’s eyes hadn’t changed a bit. He wasn’t dead. He wasn’t even that old, possibly in his late twenties if I had to guess.
He was very much alive, and he seemed to be in good spirits, too.
“Right again, Spade. You were right again.”
They stood up, started talking, all at the same time. Erith and Anika weren’t crying, and they only looked like they’d matured—not a single grey hair on their head, and that made Levana scream again. Reggie was still the same, still with his head down, still chanting, do it-do it-do it…
“I’ll do it,” I said—because words seemed to have this nasty habit of just falling out of my lips at the most inappropriate times. Not all thoughts were meant to be spoken, and I would have rather kept all of mine inside.
But this body. My body seemed to obey a different set of thoughts sometimes. Like it did…before.
They all stopped. They all looked at me.
The teapot steamed again. The tea from the cups fell toward the canopy. The game was reset.
The Hands waited. March crossed his arms in front of his chest and watched me like he was preparing to witness something wondrous.
I pulled the sleeves up to my elbows, cursed myself in my head for having said those awful words, and I got to work.
Twelve cups. A teapot worth seven tea-hours, and a bowl worth about three sugar-hours. I took that logic to mean something when I divided them in my mind as evenly as I could.
Each cup could hold no more than five minutes. And since there was more tea than sugar, I decided to mix three tea-minutes, and two-sugar minutes together. Five minutes in twelve cups made a full hour.
Divided. As broken up as it could possibly be.
Then I went around the table and poured the minutes as they watched.
Then I grabbed the bowl and poured the sugar with the small spoon—just one spoonful for each.
Then I stopped in front of my chair and I waited.
This time, when the table shook again, the clocks began to groan, too. So many of them, all over the table, like they were suddenly alive.
I knew what was coming. I knew exactly what to expect—wrinkles, gray hair, possibly a bleeding nose—but I did hope that it wouldn’t be too severe.
When I reached to pull my Life Clock out of my pocket, I genuinely thought I would get less old and give up fewer hours than March and the others had given.
The hands moved as the clocks groaned for one last time. The whole table held their breath, and I expected my hands to start wrinkling any second…
The table stopped shaking.
The clocks stopped groaning.
The hands on my Life Clock moved back—one minute.
The clocks on the table moved back—one hour.
At first, I didn’t really understand what was happening, why my hands were still my hands. Why my Life Clock hadn’t spent at least five minutes. Why the clocks on the table were all back to six.
But the other Hands cheered and clapped and stood up, said the words it’s over—again and again. A shadow fell over me and I had to look up—March with his eyes and his mouth and his hair. Dark, without a single silver string in sight. His skin smooth, not a wrinkle anywhere I could see.
He looked like him. And Levana looked like Levana. And Russ looked like Russ—I knew this because he grabbed me by the shoulders, pulled me toward him, hugged me. He said something in my ear, screamed it, shaking as he was—crying or laughing or both—but I didn’t hear it.
All I could think about was that I wanted him off me right now.
Luckily, he stepped back.
“The hour is unmade. It’s six o’clock again. It’s over!” he informed me, and when I pushed his hands off me, he didn’t react.
“An hour spread thin enough that the game couldn’t keep ahold of it anymore,” March said from my side, arms crossed in front of his chest as he looked down at me.
A little bit of suspicion, a little bit of wonder.
Not a lot.
“Good work,” he added, almost reluctantly.
I nodded, as if I’d been certain that this would happen all along. “It’s over,” I repeated, just to hear those words said from my own lips. “You’re not old anymore.”
“I was never old. Only looked like it,” he said. “Just the game.”
Another nod. “Just the game.” A twisted, twisted game that could add decades to your body in a blink.
I did not want to be part of this game anymore.
“Guys-guys-guys—let’s go!”
We both turned to the other side of the table, to Reggie, who wasn’t feeling any better, it seemed, though he looked entirely like himself. His eyes were still bloodshot, his hands trembling as he waved for us to follow him. To just go.
I would eagerly follow. I was very ready for this to end, too, and to never be back here again.
The others felt the same way. March stayed behind me, his shadow falling over me as we moved around the table, and I don’t know why I found that comforting—maybe because that way nobody could come hug me from behind? Only him, and he wouldn’t hug me.
Only him, and if he did hug me for whatever reason, I wouldn’t want to forsake my skin and run away, either. His touch was…something else. Not like Russ’s. Not like anyone’s.
“Whichever way we go from here will be the proper way,” Anika sang.
“Whichever way we go, we’ve already unwon twice today.” Mimi.
“The clocks are back, the hour unmade.” Seth.
“Wrinkle-free, no longer afraid.” Levana.
“We’ve—”
“GUYS!”
The sound of Reggie’s voice irritated me—guys, guys, guys! Still, it was impossible not to recognize his panic, and not to stop together with the rest of the Hands, to turn.
To find Reggie was still by the table, his hands on the edge of it as he was trying to pull himself forward but couldn’t.
He looked even more terrified than before.
“Reggie, come on,” said Mimi from my side. “What are you waiting for, we’re—”
“I can’t!” Reggie cried out, his face wet with tears, his whole body shaking.
“He can’t.” Redundant words, but they slipped out of me anyway because I was stuck on how white his hands were, how hard he was trying to move himself forward but couldn’t.
He was a big guy, bigger than March, and it seemed impossible that the table wasn’t moving or at least groaning from his grip, but…
“It’s all right. We’ll carry you. You don’t have to walk,” said Seth, and he was already moving back toward the table, toward Reggie.
March followed him. “I can carry him by myself.” And he didn’t even hesitate.
Why?
Why did all the other Hands look so…concerned?
Why weren’t they irritated by the crying and the shaking of Reggie?
Or was the better question, why was I?
My brain worked—had I always been like this, or had I been like them? What was the before like?
What was before before?
“The host!” A scream. “The-the-the host!”
Reggie hit the ground on his knees, right there by the table, his hands raised now, palms bloody where the edge of the table had cut into his skin.
Seth and March stopped. The others huddled closer to me, whispering, hands over their mouths, terrified. I stepped to the side as casually as I could—too close. And Reggie fell on the ground with another cry.
“Reggie!” Seth and March ran forward. I watched, stunned and frozen, as the ground came alive, and vines and tree roots slipped out from underneath, and wrapped themselves like rope all around Reggie’s body.
It was as horrifying to watch him wail and scream—the host, the host!—as the ground consumed him, as it had been to look a clockbeast in the face while it tried to eat me.
And March and Seth tried. The others joined—they tried to get those vines and roots off him. It wouldn’t work—of course it wouldn’t. He’d known, hadn’t he?
All along, Reggie had known that he was going to die. He’d told me so himself.
Yet they tried and they pulled and they failed and they cried when all of Reggie’s body was covered by those vines. The weapons they had with them, knives and swords, couldn’t cut through them at all. You couldn’t see a single inch on him—he was completely covered.
Then the table began to shake again.
A bad feeling settled in my gut.
I think I’m going to be dead.
The others stood up, moved back, gave up trying to free Reggie. Levana looked at me, saw me standing there, waiting for the next minute to tick, and she twisted her face like she’d just tasted something sour.
“What is wrong with you?!” She was crying.
Nothing, I wanted to say.
I don’t know, I wanted to say.
I don’t care, I wanted to say.
My tongue remained stuck between my teeth.
“Time’s Teacups—look, guys, look!” Mimi shouted, and she was crying, too, and the vines that had wrapped around Reggie’s body were moving. Undoing. Unleashing him.
My chest hurt with so much feeling—was it relief? Was it dread? Was it confusion?
The others all spread out, moving away from Reggie, hands raised and weapons drawn, waiting and waiting…
Purple, green, yellow and pink. Silk all over his body, and a hat inside a hat inside a hat on his head.
My mind came to a halt. All the fear and the confusion and the what is wrong with me? disappeared. Nobody said a single word or seemed to breathe as we looked at Reggie being released by the soil. His suit was gone. The clothes on his body were entirely different. Too colorful. Too silky. Too much.
Then his eyes opened.
A few gasps sounded among us—could have been me as well. We all started to move back as Reggie sat up, looked down at his hands and his torso, then stood up like a newborn, testing to see if his legs would hold his weight while he held onto the table.
Thump-thump-thump went my heart, faster than a fast-forward second.
“R-R-Reggie?” Mimi whispered.
And Reggie finally turned his head to us. Smiled. Grinned worse than the Cheshire had.
Time’s Teeth, he’d changed. His eyes glistened differently. His cheeks were red. There was a hat-in-a-hat-in-a-hat on his head that hadn’t been there before, and those clothes…
“I’m afraid Reggie isn’t available at this time. He’s been returned to the minutes that made him.”
Reggie’s voice, but with a sharper, colder edge to it.
Reggie’s voice, but…not.
“Where is he?” March demanded, in his hand a knife, his other fisted and ready. If he attacked, what would Not-Reggie do? Would he fight back?
I would rather not find out at all…
“What did you do to him, freak?!” Seth shouted—and he, too, looked ready to attack.
But Not-Reggie was grinning still, unbothered as he walked to the beginning of the table, pulled out the chair, then pushed back the tail of his colorful jacket, and sat. At the head.
“Why, nothing, of course! The Game was owed a host…” His voice trailed off as he reached for the teapot with the rotten tea—it was full again.
He poured himself a cup, then grabbed the sugar bowl, looked at us.
“Now it has one to declare the Game’s unwon, darlings.
Door’s that way—if you dare.” And he waved his hand behind us.
“Where is he?! We’re not going anywhere without him—where is Reggie?!” Mimi shouted at the top of her lungs.
But Not-Reggie put two or three spoonfuls of sugar into his cup and continued to grin.
“Tick-tock, darlings. Tick-tock…”
“Where—”
The ground began to shake. The cups and dishes on the table began to rattle. The spoons and the silverware hanging on the trees over our heads began to fall to the ground like ripe apples.
“We have to go,” I said because it was clear that whatever magic had made this place didn’t want us here anymore.
The others tried to protest, tried to run back to the table, to grab Reggie, shake him, get him back to who he was—but they couldn’t. Their legs couldn’t move in the table’s direction. Every time they took a step, they did so backward.
“Enough—we have to go, or we’ll end up the same way!” Russ shouted. “Go-go-go!”
Vines slipped out of the ground, old roots like hissing snakes.
I stepped back, and the thought of being wrapped up in those things, unable to move, unmade like Reggie had been, infused my blood with pure terror—and I wasn’t the only one.
Before the minute was over, we were all running through the trees, away from the host as he quietly drank his tea and checked his clocks, like he couldn’t tell that the entire ground was shaking and half the dishes had ended up off the edge of the table.
Over, over, over, said a voice in my head as we ran, but I didn’t believe it.
Couldn’t believe it. Not until I heard the cheering, and saw the blue sky, and the arena, the screens with our faces on them as if there were casters everywhere around us, their magic perfectly replicating our image through projection.
But I didn’t care. We ran and ran until we made it out of the tree line, and the people were all standing and clapping and cheering—and we were alive.
Against all odds, we’d made it, and though a few were on their knees, crying, most of us were standing still.
It made me sick to hear those screams, to carry all those memories, all the trauma the last few hours had gifted me with—but there was no time left to be sick.
Now, it was time to figure out how to leave the trials, and the city, and never-ever-reven come back.
“The first Backward Turning Trial has been officially unwon!”
That voice. So loud. So gut-turning.
And the moment the words registered in my brain, I was falling.
Memories flashed in my mind—both brand new and old, familiar. I saw tea that didn’t smell rotten, I saw cake exploding in an oven, I saw clockbeasts and broken clocks, all that blood on my body.
I saw mad eyes on a stranger that I knew—with a hat in a hat in a hat over his head.
I saw the knife as it went into his gut.
I saw the blood, and the life draining from his eyes. The host-the host-the host.
Everything had been different then. Everything had been different in the forward Turning Trials, and for that split second, I remembered.
Then the world turned dark.