Chapter 16
“Why are you following me?”
I was fuming to the tips of my ears, trying not to let my voice rise, trying not to kick something—a wall, a door. March’s crotch.
A shrug. “I have nothing better to do.”
Really, Time must have chosen him specifically to destroy every ounce of patience my body was capable of harnessing.
No, I whispered to myself.
I was not going to fall prey to his silly games. I was not going to let him get to me.
So, I said nothing, only turned around and walked away. As fast as my legs could carry me, hoping, praying he didn’t follow.
He did. And his legs were way longer than mine, so he had no trouble sticking right behind me all the way to our dormitory. Which wouldn’t have been a problem, really, but he also spoke.
“Why were you at the workshop?”
I didn’t answer.
“Were you hoping to steal something?”
Nope. I will not take the bait.
“Were you hoping to make deals with the Timekeeper?”
Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving…
“What’s your favorite color?”
My door. It was in the beginning of the hallway, and I’d never been more thankful for it. I stopped in front of it, turned around, wanted to slam my fist onto that grinning face just slightly less than I wanted to kiss it.
Which took me by surprise, so I paused for a second. Breathed.
“Ora.”
Time’s Teeth, the way he said my name.
All that frustration, all that anger was just…not there anymore.
“I’m joking.”
He’s joking.
“Jokes are supposed to be funny,” I said.
“It was plenty funny for me.”
Why do I want to smile?
Because he was smiling. Because he was grinning. Because his eyes shone a certain way when he smiled like that, and I liked it. Ugh.
“I’m not going to try to run away again, Heartling. I won’t doom the world, like you said.”
“Hmm.” He turned his head to the side as he analyzed me. “So why were you at the workshop?”
I crossed my arms in front of my chest. “To try to figure out how the Labyrinth works.” No harm in telling him that.
“So, you were not making deals with the old Timekeeper?”
That grin. I rolled my eyes as slowly as I could. “No.” I turned around, pushed the door open and stepped inside. I’d had enough of fighting my own impossible thoughts and emotions for the day. It was morning already, anyway. I was exhausted.
“And I’m guessing you didn’t figure out how the Labyrinth works?” he asked. Today, he wore a brighter red on his sweater, and I tried not to notice how good it looked on him, but then the lights from my bedroom fell on him, and I failed.
“Goodnight, Heartling.” For my own sake, I slammed the door closed. Released a long breath. Turned to get to bed and close my eyes and just stop thinking.
But I’d only taken a step when the knock on the door came.
Covering my face with my hands, I resisted the urge to scream. I resisted the urge to open it.
I failed again—but only on the latter.
“What?!” I said with as much bite as I could when I pulled the door open again, and of course, he was still there. Still grinning. Still looking like Time’s better gift to our realm than the Great Clock.
“You didn’t answer the important question.”
I was going to murder him. “What question?!”
“What’s your favorite color?”
So many emotions ran inside me, chasing each other, smashing into each other, creating monstrous hybrid versions of themselves. Anger and excitement. Giddiness and arousal. Pure joy and panic.
Red, I thought.
“Black,” said my lips for whatever reason—and then this overwhelming urge came over me to say, what’s your favorite number?
Such a silly urge; an even sillier question, and I had no idea where it came from. Which was why I pushed the door closed the next second, just in case I accidentally asked.
March didn’t knock again.
I fell on the bed on my face just to stop myself from opening the door again to see if he was still there.
He wasn’t—and even if he was, it wouldn’t matter.
I groaned into the pillow, and then full out screamed, hoping the feathers under the silk would absorb all the sound. It felt better than I expected.
I stayed put for a good while, but in the end, curiosity won as it always did. That’s why I found myself right back at the door, and I pressed my ear to it, held my breath. When I heard nothing, I cursed myself in my head and pulled the door open just a little.
The hallway outside was empty.
I stared into it like it had shape and substance, trying to figure out where this strange sense of disappointment was coming from, and what kind of a disease I could have been developing since I woke up at that table—until I heard the sound of footsteps about to turn the corner.
I closed the door as fast as I could without making a sound, and I went back to bed, a stranger to myself.
I didn’t know who I was.
I only knew who I had been.
I only knew that the panic simmering under the surface was coming, and when it did, it was going to rip right out of my chest. Maybe that’s why I was hugging the extra pillow as tightly as I was.
Not that it helped.
I realized Jinx’s picture and my sketchbook were still in my backpack, which was in my wardrobe.
Lida, or whoever made sure my room was spotless every time I came back had probably put it there.
I went and grabbed it and put the frame on my nightstand again, thinking it would help, but it didn’t.
Staring at Jinx’s face somehow made it worse.
She was so positive. So happy. She used to joke and say that when she was made, all the happiness meant for our parents’ children was used up on her so that when it was my turn to be born, I was given only the leftovers.
Maybe she was right.
I searched the room with my eyes, wondering how something could seem so familiar and so foreign at the same time. Wondering what to want. Wondering what to do next.
Sleeping was out of the question, and the only thing to do was move.
I stood up. Went through the wardrobe again.
Touched the walls and pulled off the framed paintings on them.
Both were of clocks—one melting, one covered in pink and blue glitter.
I even went through all the shampoo bottles and the makeup items hidden under the vanity table.
Nothing interesting—until I opened the bedside drawer and looked inside. A single item, white, no bigger than half my thumb. I reached for it—a small mushroom made of what could have been some kind of a stone. It felt like velvet under my fingers, warm velvet.
“Where did you come from?” I asked it, like I expected an actual answer. But with the way things were looking in my life since I woke up here, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the thing spoke. If cats could, why not this?
It didn’t, though. The tiny mushroom was comfortable in the palm of my hand. Almost…familiar. That’s why I took it with me when I sat on the bed again.
The sky outside my windows had started to turn a deep grey with the unrising sun. The clocks on the nightstands said it was six s.b. I knew I should sleep but I was terrified to close my eyes. Just a little longer.
The mushroom helped. I don’t know why it comforted me. The tiny weight against my palm was like a presence. I wasn’t entirely alone. There was a tiny mushroom made of white stone hidden in my fist.
Such a strange concept.
The only thing I hadn’t looked through yet was my sketchbook, and I wasn’t sure why a part of me was so reluctant to pick it up. I did, though. There was nothing else to do.
I picked up the sketchbook and it was like I heard the memories rushing to get to me before they hit some invisible barrier.
They were close but unable to reach me just now, and I couldn’t tell you why.
It couldn’t be the sketchbook—I was sure it was completely empty because it was new.
I hadn’t drawn anything on it since I bought it. That is, that I remembered.
Then I pulled open the cover and saw a heart.
I didn’t usually draw hearts. In fact, I doubted I’d ever drawn a heart before.
I was always more interested in recreating living things—people, animals, flowers.
Yet here, on the very first page of a new sketchbook I’d bought for the Turning Trials, I’d drawn a large, mechanical heart, the shape of it perfectly symmetrical.
The lines were thicker, darker than I usually made them, but they were mine.
The shadows, the hard and the soft lines—all of it was mine.
I knew it just like I would know my reflection in any mirror.
I’d drawn all these interlocking gears and cogs of all sizes that fit together seamlessly.
“Why?” I asked the sketchbook next. At this rate I was going to start talking to walls soon.
The sketchbook didn’t answer, but each stroke of my pencil on the creamy white page whispered words I couldn’t even begin to understand.
Then I turned the page and stopped breathing altogether.
I’d drawn hair.
Short hair.
Curly hair that I felt against my fingers as my eyes traced the lines and the shadows.
March’s hair, and I’d know it just as if I were looking right at him.
My hand shook as I turned another page. Two hands this time. A bigger hand wrapped around a smaller one that I could barely see.
March’s hand. Undoubtedly his hand around another. Mine?
Another page, this one almost completely black with shadows. The outline of a man leaning against a wall was clearly visible. Wide shoulders, narrow hips, arms crossed, the face blank, but the outline of that jaw.
March—exactly as he had been leaning against that tree last morning when he followed me outside.
It should have been impossible. I turned the next page and on it was an eye bigger than the palm of my hand. A single eye made of lead, yet I saw the colors: red and brown and every shade in between.
On the next was the other eye, a different shape, and the eyeball of this one was made out of gears. A mechanical eye.
There were more.
An arm. Smiling lips. Curly hair again.
All twenty drawings some part of March.