Chapter 17 #2
I swallowed so hard it was easy to hear the gulp. My eyes were on his lips still, his tongue gone, but the memory of it in my mouth incinerated all my thoughts one after the other.
He wasn’t close enough, and I found myself leaning forward just slightly.
“Okay.” My voice was thick, hoarse, and I wasn’t entirely sure what I was agreeing to.
“Memories,” he whispered, and I blinked and blinked, and looked up at his eyes when those beautiful lips stretched into a crooked smile I wanted to draw with my entire being.
“What?”
“I have your memories in my mind, and I think you have mine.”
Suddenly I went deaf and blind and mute, but only for a tick. “Memories?”
“Yes.”
It sounded very wrong. “How do you know?”
“Because I’m a Heart. I know memories. And you see me through my eyes, don’t you?” Yes. Yes, I did. I saw from his eyes—the way he worked the glass, held the rod, looked at the furnace… “I see you in that forest through your eyes, too. And I also saw your parents.”
He could have stuck a knife in my gut. “My parents.”
“You have your father’s eyes, but you look like your mom. She’s shorter than you and she wears an onyx spade around her neck. Your dad’s hair is longer, tied behind his head.” Where’d all the air go? “Am I right?”
Yes, yes, you are.
“How do you…how do you…” I couldn’t finish the question.
The smile fell from his face. “I saw it in a memory. Your memory.” A step closer. “Are you okay, Spade?”
“What kind of a memory? What…where are they now?”
His thick brows narrowed, not in suspicion, but in concern this time. He looked like he was genuinely concerned for me, and it confused me even more.
“I don’t know. I only saw that one memory of them—they were hugging you, kissing your cheeks. You were…”
He paused. So did I.
“I was what?”
I could see the gears in his mind shifting. “Nothing,” he muttered.
I stepped closer until I saw every color in his eyes with clarity. “I was what, Heartling?”
Both his hands rose, came close to my face, but he never touched me. “You were hurting.” My ears rang. “You hated it. You wanted to run.”
I’m bad-bad-bad, whispered a voice in my head.
I moved to the side, not exactly aware that I was doing it.
March stopped me. “You’re not okay.”
“I’m fine.”
He wrapped his hand around my wrist. “Then walk with me.”
“No.”
“It wasn’t a request.” His voice was low, and he didn’t let go of my wrist. He just turned and walked up the hallway with me, and no matter how badly I wanted to knee him in the crotch again and run, I didn’t.
Memories rushed into my mind. Crashed against my skull.
I couldn’t really see where I was going—the world had turned so blurry, but March’s hand around my wrist guided me, and luckily I didn’t slam onto any walls.
We climbed stairs, and then my vision cleared a bit, and when we turned the corner to our dorms, I was glad to find the hallway empty.
Then…
“Are you crying?”
I looked up at March. He let go of me, and my hand was cold, and the door to my bedroom was right behind me.
“No. No, I’m not c…” My hand went to my face. My cheeks were wet.
That’s why the world had been so blurry.
Why am I crying?
“Ora,” March whispered, and it was like something inside me cracked. His fingers were around my chin, and he raised my head, and he looked in pain. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I shouldn’t…”
I opened my mouth to tell him that I was okay, and that I was not okay, but then he was wiping the tears off my cheeks with his thumbs, and his hands somehow ended up on either side of my face, and he was looking at me like that, like maybe someone had cut off a piece of him.
Like maybe he wanted to burn something at the same time.
“I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.” Lips on my forehead, so warm.
He replaced them with his own forehead then, and I was holding onto his wrists as he held onto my face.
His eyes were closed and he was breathing deeply, and that made me breathe deeply, too.
I was suspended in that second, and it lasted a good while.
We just stood there, forehead to forehead, close and far, breathing.
Then March let go of me all at once, turned around and walked down the hallway to his room. He didn’t once turn to look at me when he made it inside and pushed the door closed.
I stared after him for another minute or two before I finally gathered enough sense to get in my own room, too.
Memory.
I somehow had March’s memory in my mind, and I saw it all in perfect detail as if it were my own, as if I was inside his head, looking through his eyes.
Of course it was a memory. It made perfect sense. I was inside his head while he did what he did with the glass.
And he was in mine when I screamed in the woods, and when my parents hugged me.
I don’t know why I’d cried, but for the life of me, I couldn’t recall the memory for myself while I bathed. I tried, I really tried, and I knew my parents. I knew how they moved and how they hugged me and how they kissed me, yet I couldn’t recreate what March saw in his head no matter what.
Which told me the memory he saw wasn’t in my head anymore.
The other one, where I was screaming in the woods, was different. I’d done that same thing so many times that I doubted any of the times had been different, and I wouldn’t remember if I forgot one of them.
How curious. Why would I have a memory of March in my head? How had I gotten it? Had it been him?
Because the magic of Hearts was tied to memory as well as emotions.
They could draw out buried emotions, and they could manipulate them, even erase memories if the Heart was powerful enough.
They couldn’t create an emotion from scratch, but they could amplify or lessen an existing one, depending on their magic.
Back home they used to say, if you fell in love with a Heart, you never knew if it was real, if it was all you, or them, the memories and emotions in you, and your perception of them altered.
Had March somehow taken my memories, and given me his?
I didn’t see how—he was my age, and he’d need years and years of magic practice to be able to pull that kind of thing off. Most Hearts never did, according to what they taught us in school.
Most importantly, though, I didn’t see why.
Either way, I didn’t have the courage to face him, not this morning.
That’s why, after I showered and got dressed, I took my sketchbook with me, my little mushroom, and I went straight for Master Talik’s workshop.
Yes, I was hungry, but I figured I could get breakfast when the others had already left.
I could stop there on my way back to my room.
Except when I got to Master Talik’s workshop, the door was locked.
I knew knocking wasn’t going to get me anywhere, but I still tried. I waited. Knocked again. If he was in there, I didn’t hear him. And if he’d locked his door because he didn’t want me to bug him again, he was very successful.
With my sketchbook against my chest, I made my way down to the second floor to find the library Elida told me about.
It was easy. All I had to do was ask a man who was carrying plastic boxes down the other end where the library was, and he said, “Two corridors down from here, take a left, and another left.”
When I got there, one of the library doors was open almost all the way. The closer to it I got, the better I saw what was in there, and by the time I stopped at the threshold, I wasn’t even breathing.
It rose in tiers, each balcony stacked with books that climbed so high they vanished into the dim vault of the ceiling.
Iron ladders clung to the walls like skeletal vines.
Long wooden tables painted red and white stretched across the floor in perfect parallel lines.
Lanterns shaped like clocks were mounted on the pillars between shelves and lamps the size of my fists hung on delicate chains, swaying a little to the sides all over the long tables.
Near the shelves, these large velvet recliners were scattered everywhere, two or three in one place, with a low table between them stacked with books and scrolls.
They were so big I could hide in them if I sat there—and I would.
With a book, and with my sketchbook on my lap, I could sit there and draw and read for days at a time.
So many books.
Some volumes had clasps shaped like gears.
Others were chained to the shelves with golden clock chains.
The scent of aged paper and oil hung in the air, and it was heavy, but it was perfect.
Exactly the right scent for a place that looked like this.
Compasses, hourglasses full of timesand, clocks in all sizes were positioned everywhere, on shelves and tables, even on the floor that was set with a thick carpet my feet sank into when I took a step forward.
The library was not empty. Helen, Levana and Seth were already in there, the first bent over one of the long tables, with two books open in front of her. The other two were on the first set of recliners, each with a big stack of books over the armrests.
They looked at me when I walked in—just looked.
I briefly considered turning around and walking away but decided against it.
Yes, I was uncomfortable being in a place with the other Hands because of how they looked at me, but I needed this library.
I needed the books and the peace and quiet.
The room was huge, and I planned to go all the way to the other end, so I sucked it up and I walked with my head up.
They said nothing but they kept their eyes on me until I made it all the way to the other side. The two dark purple recliners in the far left corner were perfect for me. They even had a clock lamp on the low table because the lanterns on the shelves were far away. It suited me perfectly.
I left my sketchbook on the table, and I finally approached the first shelf to look at the spines.
Gorgeous colors, most leather-bound with golden and silver letters.
Atlas of Impossible Corridors by N. N. Nower, said a title, and the next was Gears of Governance: The Royal Courts.
They had The Shade Treaties, Volumes one through four, all written and prepared by The Ledger, which is what the governing body of our court was called.
I’d studied these books in school like all other Spades.
They had a couple of volumes on The Heart Court Lexicon, and The Diamond Harvest by a Jerry Daide; Sparetime: The True Story and even The Anatomy of a Club, which could be very interesting.
We all learned about the main traits of Clockfolk from each court, and about Timekeepers as well, but only the very basics.
It had always fascinated me how the same environment behaved differently around certain groups—like Clubs, who could age fast if they stayed in one place for longer than a few hours.
The same air, the same gravity, the same time—yet for them it was different than it was for us.
And how Spades were supposed to live longer than all others, and how Diamonds were quick to cast out their own if they couldn’t prove they were worthy when they matured.
Fascinating that we shared the same world yet were so different.
There were separate sections full of fiction work as well, but for now, I had to skip those and keep searching for something that might help me understand whatever madness I was part of—because the White Queen wasn’t coming back, apparently, and Elida was most definitely not going to give us answers, and Master Talik may or may not have locked his door for the sole purpose of keeping me away.
Books were my only hope. My last hope.
So, I searched the shelves until my eyes started to sting—I was exhausted from the day—until I came upon a title by Eric Vonder—Clockwork Bestiary: Creatures of Metal and Pulse.
It was exactly what I imagined the Labyrinth to be—a beast full of magic, with a mind of its own, free to take life with impunity.
I picked up the book and went to the recliner. It was more comfortable than I’d imagined. I even toed my boots off and pulled up my legs, and it was so big that I was almost lying on it.
Like that, with my back turned to the table so the light of the lamp could fall on the pages, I pulled the cover open.
A map of the Clockrealm was drawn in perfect detail, with the Great Clock and Neverwhen in the middle, and the four courts around it.
Releasing a long breath, I began to read.