Chapter 11
The clocks on the walls in this strange room said it was just a little after four, s.b. And s.b. stood for sun-bound, as m.b. stood for moon-bound, but had that changed now that the world had gone mad, or did the same still apply to indicate day hours and night hours?
I wasn’t sure.
My head buzzed. A strange sensation had spread all over my limbs, like I might have something in my blood. Like I might have a disease in my bones, infesting.
Or a memory I couldn’t reach.
My eyes closed, and I tried and tried and tried. Because I’d remembered. The back then, the before. I’d remembered the game and all the details—I’d remembered.
And then I’d forgotten again, like the trial had never even happened in forward time, but it had also left behind a gaping hole in my mind, something so clearly missing that it was physically painful for me.
It was there and then it was gone.
“Do you guys…”
Mimi’s voice trailed off for the third time now. She couldn’t seem to be able to finish that question.
We all did in our minds, though. Do you guys remember?
Nobody said it because nobody wanted to answer. Because the answer was yes—we all remembered.
Then we didn’t.
“It’s real,” Russ said after a minute, elbows against his knees, his fingers pressed together like he was trying to stretch them out of his skin as he looked at the floor. He’d barely moved for the past thirty minutes.
They’d put us here—in a lounge room the maid had called it—with chairs and velvet seats scattered about, and windows that showed us the sun as it traveled backward across the sky to unrise once more.
There was an empty wall there, too, where you could clearly make out the marks of whatever had been hanging on it for possibly a long time.
The outline of a lot of squares was painted by time with a slightly yellow color on the otherwise white wall—picture frames, or paintings?
If so, why would anybody bother removing them? There seemed to have been quite a lot. Judging by the nails sticking out every few inches, the whole wall had been covered in frames.
There was tea on the low tables, too, but I was pretty sure I was never going to drink tea again, ever in my life. Nobody had touched a single cup or pot. Nobody had moved from their places yet.
“It’s…it’s real. Not just part of the trials. We really are going backward,” Russ finally finished his thought.
Yes, I’d figured as much while we were still in the game, in that forest. All of this was really real. We weren’t being tricked. We weren’t being fooled. We were most definitely not dreaming.
Shivers rushed down the length of me.
“Reggie is gone,” said Seth, who sat on the floor on the other side of the seat, back against the leg of it.
“A host. What…what…why?” Mimi whispered.
“I knew,” said Helen from the other side of the room. “I knew why.”
And so had I. So had everyone for that second when the game was declared unwon. We’d remembered.
Someone moved, stood up. March, from where he’d been sitting with Levana on the last seat made of dark red velvet.
He stood up and he took a step, and another—all of them in my direction.
I was sitting on a gray-colored seat all by myself.
I’d gone to the end of the room for this very reason—to sit by myself.
Then he came and sat with me.
Nobody reacted. That’s the only reassurance I had that they hadn’t heard the beating of my heart—or the beats it skipped in the first ten seconds.
Irritating—shouldn’t it be? Because it wasn’t. My mind calmed down. My anxiety eased. Like my body knew his and felt safe when he was near.
Such a curious thing, instinct. Such a powerful thing, too. I never knew until I had to force myself to sit still and not drag myself closer to see if he felt even better from closer up.
“We all remembered, right?” Cook finally whispered, and his eyes found mine. I don’t know why he always looked at me. “We all remembered forward.”
Heads bobbed like they were following some silent beat, mine included.
“They killed him. They killed Reggie,” Mimi whispered. Out of all of us, she seemed to have the most trouble getting herself together. She was still crying, her brown cheeks constantly wet, her eyes bloodshot, the curls of her dark hair spilling all over her head.
“The game was owed a host,” said Anika. She sat with Erith, their hands linked still, like they drew strength from one another.
“And it took one. It took Reggie,” said Erith.
“Why Reggie? Why him?” Mimi asked, her voice louder, shaking.
“We knew,” was all anyone could tell her.
But we didn’t know anymore.
Others began to talk then. Some in whispers, some out loud.
They went through what we’d done in that forest, the tea party and the clockbeasts, like they were trying to understand what had happened better.
They shouldn’t have bothered. There was no understanding things backward.
We’d unwon, and that was enough for now.
If they were smart, they’d be looking for ways to get away from this place.
“You’re in my head.”
My eyes opened, and only then did I realize that they’d been half closed. I’d been about to fall asleep right there on that seat.
March was next to me, head back, eyes forward—but he’d whispered those words. I knew he had.
For the longest moment, he didn’t move an inch, didn’t blink at all as he looked at the others, and then he turned those eyes toward me.
“Why are you in my head, Spade?”
He still hasn’t said my name.
“I don’t know.” Was it wise to tell him that he was in my head, too? Instead, I said, “Do you like glass?”
A silly question, I knew. But maybe it was equally as silly as asking me why I was in his head, so…
March froze. Sucked in a short breath. Looked and looked and looked.
“How do you know that?”
Because you’re in my head, too.
“I don’t. It’s why I’m asking you.”
March didn’t answer me. “How did you know about the clockbeasts?” he asked instead. “And about the hour, too.” I didn’t answer him, either. “Who are you, really?” The suspicion that suddenly filled his eyes was heavy.
“You know who I am,” I said reluctantly. I’d told them my name.
“I don’t.”
“I’m a Hand in the Turning Trials.” That he made me say this—and that I actually said it—was pretty damn frustrating.
“We’re Hands, too, but you certainly don’t look like one of us.”
If he’d slapped me.
If he’d burned me.
If he’d whispered my name in my ear.
“You’re so incredibly suspicious of everything,” I found myself saying. “If not a Hand, what am I?”
Large shoulders shrugged. “I don’t know. What kind of a person would stand back and not at least try to save someone in need?”
The memory of Reggie being wrapped up in those vines and roots crawled at the center of my mind.
The kind who knows when it’s useless to try, I thought, but didn’t say it. I don’t know why.
Luckily before I could come up with a different answer, the doors finally opened and a woman we’d never seen before walked in with a grin on her face and guilt gleaming in her light green eyes. A Timekeeper.
“Good day to the most wonderful Hands in the Clockrealm—and congratulations on your first unwin!”
Her voice was pitched high, her smile fake, her posture that of a statue.
Her short hair was ginger, which was how I knew she was a Timekeeper.
They were easily identified by their hair color, too.
She’d done hers in tiny, corkscrew curls and she had a black cylinder hat on her head that she didn’t take off when she bowed before us, but it somehow stayed in place. Must have been magic.
Some of the others stood up, including March.
I stayed put, his words still spinning in my head, clashing with the image of this woman, as well as the two soldiers I could see just outside the doors while a man and woman walked in behind her.
They were with the help, judging by their white uniforms, and they didn’t look half as happy to be here.
“Who are you?” Seth asked, his eyes bloodshot like he’d been stopping tears for too long.
“I’m Elida Hock, a Royal Timekeeper—and as your new warden, I am at your service.” Once again, she bowed with a hand to her chest, and her hat stayed in place.
“Where is the White Queen?” asked Erith, barely making it to her feet.
Anika followed. “A boy died today, or the-the-the game took him! We demand to speak to the White Queen this instant!”
I was curious to know what the woman would say next, but not surprised when she pressed her lips together. “I’m afraid their Royal Clocklinesses are busy with queenly things. And the game took a player, as is its right.”
The others exploded into shouts.
They all spoke at the same time, went closer, made more demands, but all I could think about was the terms that we’d been given to sign when we were accepted as applicants for the Turning Trials.
It had been a long list revealing in detail what we were agreeing to, and it was the first thing we’d had to sign before the application process even began.
I didn’t remember it word for word, but there was a clause in that long list that relieved the queens and the makers of the trials of all responsibility should a Hand lose their life during the games.
Because Reggie was dead—and he had known it was going to happen before it did.
While the others argued, I thought about the most important question, which was how. How much had he remembered from the game in forward? What had we really done at that tea party then?
“Silence, please, silence!” My ears rang and my focus snapped back to Elida the Royal Timekeeper.
She was no longer grinning, but her cheeks were flushed and she had both hands raised.
In her vest shone the chains, golden and silver, of what I assumed were three clocks hidden in her pockets.
They said Timekeepers kept at least two clocks on their person at all times, one of them their Timekeeper Clock, but they never really said why.
The other Hands stopped talking. I stood up, too, went closer to see better. The way Levana looked at me when I stopped near March would have you thinking she daydreamed of my murder in her spare time.
“Now, please, be patient. Nobody quite knows what happened before the curse,” she said, and just like that, I had another word to add to my question: what came before the curse?
Not exactly helpful.
“But the game knows. The Great Clock knows what it requires to fulfill the counter-curse of our beloved White Queen. We have never questioned Time in the past, present or future, and we will not begin today.” Her voice was firm, loud.
The Hands wanted to argue, opened their mouths, but one look at her face and they stopped.
Because we all knew exactly how right she was—the Great Clock was the reason our realm existed. If it needed something, it was going to have it, no matter how anybody felt about it.
And besides, Time devours everything—we were all raised with those words in our ears.
“When is the second trial?” I asked when another second ticked in silence.
The Timekeeper pressed her lips painted the same shade as her hair together again and pulled down the hem of her vest.
“The second trial, which is in fact the third, will take place in three days,” she said, and I, together with a few others, opened our mouths again to ask, but she raised her finger at us first. “No—we don’t know what the trial was, or what it will be.
But don’t you worry, because the queens have a plan.
Since you don’t remember anything since before you came to Neverwhen, we will be implementing all the lessons we’ve planned for this year’s Turning Trials—backward, of course, and starting tomorrow night—or yesterday, if you so please. ”
Lessons. I didn’t plan to stay here for any lessons. I planned to find a way to leave just as soon as I was alone.
“So—now you will eat, you will bathe, and you will sleep, and tomorrow night—or yesterday”—she winked—“we will begin.”
Elida bowed her head for the third time, and in one movement spun around and basically ran for the open doors.
“Have we met you before?” I asked before I could help myself—that habit of speaking my mind was truly a nuisance.
The Timekeeper stopped, turned her head. “Oh, no, I’m afraid not. My brother was your warden in the forward trials. I’ve never met any of you before.”
“And where is your brother now?” I was saved from asking by March this time.
Elida smiled and it looked considerably more painful than the smiles of the White Queen. Then she walked out the door without a word, and the help waved for us to follow them to the eating hall.
Just like that.