Chapter 12 #2
The soft hiss of the air spilling out of that valve resumed behind me as I kept going.
There were no more workers that I could see, and I soon reached the other end of this strange garden where the trees were real.
The tall metal fence that surrounded possibly the entire Labyrinth area, separating it from the rest of Neverwhen, was just beyond them.
It was going to be a hard climb, but I had a Life Clock full of Sparetime to use, and I could climb anything with the right ropes, I hoped. I’d need gloves, and chalk. I’d need shoes with rubber soles for better grip, too. All of it perfectly possible through magic.
I’m going home, I repeated in my head. Nothing was going to stop me.
I turned to look at the palace once more, and I could only see the fifth floor of it from this side of the trees, but the dread returned. March was on my mind, and so was Reggie.
But it didn’t matter now, did it? I’d made it this far, and they were probably all still asleep. Except for Reggie, of course. There was no point in thinking, so I fell to my knees on the grass, pulled out the Life Clock from my pocket, and I began to call for magic.
What a strange sensation—exactly like people described it when they told me about magic.
Plenty of my cousins had started or finished the School of Magic.
My father came from a very big family. I myself had yet to even send in my application, as the school would start in September.
But everyone knew that the more magic you used, the better you’d become.
Everyone knew that it felt like heat going down your arms, and not just.
Most importantly, it was working.
A smile on my face, despite the circumstances. The magic was coming, just like it did in that forest—easily. Like I’d done this hundreds of times before. I could hardly believe it myself, but it looked like I was really getting out of this madness tonight.
Focus, Ora, I told myself, because the sooner I’d get this over with, the sooner I’d be free.
However, it took more time than I thought it would to make the rope I needed out of thin air (and magic), because I had to imagine the feel, the smell, the sturdiness, and then each and every spin of the threads until I’d imagined one long enough to reach the end of those fences.
The warm, tingling sensation spread from my chest and down my arms, reached all the way to my hands, then spread out into the world from the skin of my palms in purple—something between light and smoke.
Magic could come out of anywhere we chose, but the hands were the most reasonable option, naturally.
Purple smoke in my hands, which I saw through half closed eyes.
It stitched the fabric of reality with new threads, guided by the images in my head.
And when it faded, it left behind a roll of brown rope in front of my knees. Real rope.
I bit my tongue until I tasted blood so as not to allow myself to laugh at loud—but I wanted to. Fixing that beast clock in the forest was one thing, but this was completely different. And it had only cost me five minutes of Sparetime, according to my Life Clock.
The gloves and the chalk came next to help me with climbing. The boots were last—I only had to change the soles, give them a bit more grip.
Nine minutes of Sparetime spent—magic was expensive here in the Labyrinth—and I had everything I needed to get to the other side of that fence. I was as ready as I was going to get when I looped the end of the rope. No looking back. No thinking about anything—not yet.
I threw the rope and threw it hard, twelve-hours certain that it would reach the sharp, spear-tipped edges of the fence.
It didn’t.
Instead, the rope flew up about two feet in the air, then fell back down like dead weight.
I knew that same second that something was wrong. I knew it well because the wretched dread whispered it in my ear—but I still tried. I picked up the rope and threw it even harder, again and again and again.
It refused to go higher than two feet over my head each time.
That’s because something stopped it, threw it back toward the ground.
Some sort of a barrier that was invisible to the eye, but no matter.
I still had my boots and my gloves, and I decided I was going to climb the fence with my bare hands.
I didn’t even need the rope. I would climb all the way out of here.
So, I started.
Harder than I’d imagined. Definitely not like climbing trees—trees were easy. Bark didn’t slip the way metal did. Still, I got up almost halfway to the top, sweating, arms and legs aching, muscles screaming. Another half, and I’d be free.
And who cared how I’d get down the other side? I just needed to reach the top first.
But when I pulled myself up the next time, the top of my head hit something harder than concrete all of a sudden—and then I was falling.
Dark spots in my vision when I hit the ground on my back. My lungs were empty, my ears ringing an awful sound. I looked at the night sky as I coaxed air down my throat slowly, carefully, some stars here and there, most hiding behind clouds that were near invisible to anyone looking.
But whatever was in the air here that wouldn’t let me get up that fence was better at hiding—I couldn’t see anything no matter how hard I focused.
No shimmer, no smell, no sound. A piece of nothing as hard as concrete.
Magic, more powerful than anything I could come up with, even if I’d been twenty, even if I’d had a hundred minutes in that Life Clock. There was nothing I could do about it.
I wanted to rage. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry—because I’d thought it would be easy. I’d been so, so sure that I’d be home by this time the next day.
Instead, when my lungs worked normally again, I sat up and rested my elbows on my knees, closed my eyes and continued to breathe, because raging and screaming and crying wasn’t going to help me in any way.
“You’re a piece of clockwork, you know that?”
The voice that came from behind me made my heart pause—not just because it had caught me by surprise, but because it belonged to March.
The panic and the excitement came together and nearly suffocated me. I still had my breath held when I turned to look back, six-hours certain (or maybe hopeful?) that I’d imagined it.
I hadn’t. He was standing there by a tree with his arms crossed and his shoulder resting against the trunk, watching me with a smile on his face that wasn’t pleasant at all.
He nodded his head up toward the fence. “So you were just going to run away?”
Heat on my cheeks—why? I had no idea.
Lies crossed my mind but none stuck. What would be the point?
“Yes,” I said.
March pushed himself off the tree, then walked past me and to the fence. Leaned back against it, stuck his hands in the pockets of his pants, and looked down at me—all perfectly casually.
Moonlight looked good on him, I noticed. It hid the shades of red and brown in his eyes but gave an unearthly glow to his hair and skin, like the moon was trying to compensate for muting his colors. It did a very good job.
“Why?” he then asked.
This confused me. “What do you mean, why?” It was an absurd question. “We’ve already done the trials. I didn’t sign up for another set—and a backward one at that.”
His eyes squinted. His suspicion grew and his jaws locked a little tighter—all details I could have easily imagined. But even so, they made me want to say something, say more. Convince him that I wasn’t the monster he—and most likely Levana—thought I was.
“Look—this entire thing is madness. We woke up at that table, clean and dressed up, missing one Hand. We walked out of that forest missing another. What do you think will happen in the next one if we actually play?”
Silence for a beat. March looked up, somewhere to the side, and I was stuck on the sharp edges of his jaw, the gleam in his eyes, the way the silver light bounced off his smooth skin and enhanced the curls of his hair.
He wore black pants, and a dark red shirt that must have been made for him.
It was tight around his wide shoulders, muscular arms and chest, then fell a bit loose around his waist and narrow hips.
But what I couldn’t figure out was why I continued to stare, analyze him in such detail, even when the rational parts of me insisted that I shouldn’t.
I simply couldn’t stop.
“Are all Spades traitors, then?”
Slowly, March slid down the fence and sat on the ground. Like that we were almost eye level. He raised one leg and held his arm over it, and with his other hand he plucked grass blades from the ground.
Fluid motions. So slow. So damn confident.
“I’m not a traitor,” I said. Please keep moving.
“But you were going to run away.”
“As should you.” As should all the Hands.
An arched brow. “And doom the entire realm?”
My mouth opened. Even if I’d had something to say—which I didn’t because I’d made it a point not to think, and I hadn’t allowed myself to even consider what he was saying—he wouldn’t have let me.
“You were just going to run away and let the curse sweep up all of our time, kill everyone in the realm because you can’t be bothered to care?” His voice was low, neutral, and he spoke like he was in no rush, only curious about the answer.
“We don’t know that there was a curse. We don’t remember—”
“The Great Clock isn’t moving. You can see it. Everyone can see it, regardless of what you remember. Do they teach you in your court about what happens when the Great Clock is stuck for more than two weeks?”
They did, in fact. “It falls out of order.”
He smiled and it was sharp as a knife. “The order that keeps this realm alive. Without it, it collapses.” And all the time the White Rabbit stole would snap back to its own place, and the Clockrealm would no longer have a timeline to exist in.
Yes, we all learned this. Since first grade—which had been plenty traumatic for all of us.