Chapter 23 #2
His voice sent shivers up and down my body. My ears could never get enough of the sound of him.
“Who put you in charge of rules?” Russ said.
“I did. I put myself,” said March without hesitation.
“But seriously—maybe I can find that spider to eat. I was so, so afraid of them, I swear…” Mimi.
“I wonder what he was like,” said Cook.
I stopped drawing.
Everyone stopped talking and looked at him where he lay on his back in front of the Fourth Hour, hands raised as he traced imaginary lines somewhere in the air with his fingers.
“Silas.”
His name seemed to echo to eternity in the darkness that surrounded us.
“I know that name,” Helen whispered reluctantly.
“I knew his face, too,” said Seth.
“Tell us about him, Cook,” said Levana.
“I already did.” Cook stopped drawing imaginary pictures in the air and folded his hands over his chest. “He was quiet. He kept to himself. He rarely played with the rest of us. It’s been years since he moved away.
Nobody really talked about where he went or why.
All we knew was that he didn’t have a father. ”
He didn’t have a father. I knew kids in our court could be very mean to orphans.
They didn’t get that nobody actually chose if their parents lived or died, and they could use that to bully people relentlessly.
I’d witnessed it in school countless times, but in the very first years. Before they knew any better.
Somehow, I knew for a fact that this had bothered Silas.
“I wonder how he could even exist. I mean, a Spade and a Timekeeper…” someone said, but my mind was spiraling down again.
I couldn’t help but think about something that wasn’t there anymore, but the imprint of it was still in my mind, like the wheels of a carriage that remained on the mud long after horses dragged it away.
“I think he was a friend,” said Mimi, and for a second, nobody spoke.
“Yes. I think so, too,” said Cook.
“I think he was…smart.” Russ scratched his head. “I’m not sure why, though. It’s just…a feeling.”
Yes, a feeling.
Silas was smart, and a friend, and a Spade and a Timekeeper.
He was sad, so sad in the eyes, and he was…hiding. This was the impression I got when I thought about his portrait, the way I’d drawn him.
Probably just a silly thought.
“I wonder what he did when he was here. I wonder what we all did, how we broke those hourglasses. Why, when we could just pull them out,” Erith said. “I wonder why.”
“I wonder what Reggie did, too,” Mimi whispered.
There it was, that gnawing feeling in my gut.
The one that brought tears to my eyes that took me by surprise all over again.
I didn’t understand it. I didn’t get why my body would want to break apart this way at the thought of them.
Yes, they were the two Hands who’d died, but I didn’t actually know them, did I?
What exactly had they done when they were here?
A memory—no.
The echo of a memory that wasn’t there anymore.
A headache was developing behind my eyes so fast that I had to quit the drawing and rest back against the platform, close them, focus on breathing.
The others talked. They threw ideas around. Names. Complained about hunger. Considered we should start accepting that we were never going to make it out, and asked if someone was willing to be the first to sacrifice themselves so that the rest of us could eat.
More death.
It raised the skin on my forearms, the idea.
“Maybe we should try again. Maybe the hourglasses will behave now,” said Erith.
“They won’t,” said two or three at the same time.
“But they must at some point!” Anika cried.
“They won’t behave. As soon as everything’s in place, the Thirteenth Hour will be activated, and we’ll have to undo the whole thing all over again.
No, thank you,” said Seth, throwing something in the air and catching it again.
It was a small object, like the mushroom that I’d put in my pocket just to have with me, though I hadn’t thought to take it out.
But…something about what he said.
“So, I guess we’ll die here. Together. Starved to death. How neat,” said Russ, his voice dull, his eyes closed like he was willing himself to forget where he was.
I looked at the drawing of the Eighth Hour in the dust. I could have done a much better job, but you could clearly make out the platform, and the bulb, and the timesand inside.
What was it that Seth said again?
“We’re not going to die. They wouldn’t let us just…die.” Silence followed Anika’s words. “Right?”
As soon as everything’s in place…
“Don’t be a late minute, Anika. We all saw Reggie,” said Erith.
Yes, that’s what Seth said. As soon as everything fell in place, the Thirteenth Hour was activated.
“And we all know Silas is dead,” Cook said.
That name echoed in my head.
I stood up, perfectly disoriented for a moment, as if I’d been placed here just now. As if I was just waking up. As if I was just understanding the game.
Just like Silas had.
It wasn’t a memory. It wasn’t something I knew. It was…something in between. Something that was in its place but wasn’t.
The bulb of the Seventh Hour was there still, right next to its platform. The Eighth Hour chimed and lit up, then continued to the Ninth. I grabbed the bulb of the seventh, and it was lighter than I expected.
Assemble a working clock. That had been the instruction, hadn’t it?
A working clock—that was it. That was all. A working clock that didn’t activate the Thirteenth Hour.
The drawing of Silas’s face was in my mind for whatever reason as I made my way toward the other side of the room, to the First Hour. Someone spoke, but if they were speaking to me, I didn’t hear it. The bulb was in my hand and my eyes were on that empty platform of the First Hour, and…
March was suddenly in front of me. “What are you doing?”
I blinked, and I realized the others were getting closer, too. Nobody was talking anymore.
“A working clock,” I said, licking my dry lips, trying to think of how I’d come all the way here when I could have sworn that I was just by the Eighth Hour the first half of this very second.
Or was I?
“What? What do you mean, a working clock?” March said, brows narrowed, but he wasn’t suspicious for once. Only confused. And tired.
“They told us to assemble a working clock,” I said. “Nobody said the hours had to be in the correct order. Just…a working clock.” And it made sense to me—so much sense, even if I didn’t fully understand it yet.
“Are you saying we should…mess up the order of the hours?” Erith said from behind.
Those were the right words. “Yes.” Mess up the order of the hours. That’s exactly what I was feeling, and now I was thinking it, too. “Move, Heartling.”
A second ticked by.
March stepped to the side.
“Worth a try. We don’t really have much to lose,” Russ said from behind me, but I didn’t wait or contemplate. I just shoved the bulb of the Seventh Hour into the platform of the First. It clicked in place right away.
Behind us, the Eleventh Hour was lighting up, the twelfth waiting…
“Quick—put this in the tenth. I’ll get the seventh.” Helen grabbed the bulb of the First Hour and ran across the room to the other empty platforms.
Everyone rushed behind her.
March gave me a look I couldn’t even begin to decipher before he followed. I wiped my sweating hands on the pants of my suit and urged myself to get there faster because this might very well not work.
Maybe I got it wrong. Maybe the speaker said something else I hadn’t heard correctly. Maybe…
“Done! The first bulb is in the tenth platform,” called Seth.
And Helen slid the bulb of the Tenth Hour into the seventh platform, just as the sixth lit up.
My heart was in my throat. My fists shook and my eyes refused to blink. Nobody moved a single inch and the light of the Sixth Hour dimmed, the sound of it faded.
The Seventh Hour lit up, and the striker inside the platform struck the plate, and the note…
The note remained that of the tenth.
It was three notes higher than that of the seventh, and while it chimed, the second lasted a couple of decades at the very least for me.
Please, please, please…
The Eighth Hour lit up. Played its note. Faded away again.
The Thirteenth Hour did not hum or activate.
We all watched, stunned still as the Ninth Hour faded, and gave way for the tenth.
The sound it let out was wrong—way too low. The note of the First Hour. That’s because the plates alone hadn’t made the notes. It had been the bulbs all along that processed the sounds and created the triads that formed those sequences.
The Twelfth Hour rang, and the thirteenth remained dark, and the First Hour started with a much higher pitch—that of the seventh.
We watched still, unable to move, as the hourglasses lit up, and every time the note didn’t follow the correct order, we waited for the Thirteenth Hour to start humming. It never did.
A full circle, and the hours were all alive. The bulbs all turned once more, and the timesand dripped down grain by grain—and they were working. They were all working, while the thirteenth remained dark.
Everybody screamed at the same time.
Hugs and cheers and laughter and tears—I couldn’t look away from the lights as they moved from one hourglass to the next, exactly at the right time.
Is it over yet? asked a voice in my head, one I was fairly sure I’d never heard before. It wasn’t the Cheshire, but it was definitely male.
I don’t know, I thought, a second before something moved in the distance, beyond the Fifth and Sixth Hour.
Doors opened, large, groaning, and the light behind them chased the darkness away.
I released a long, long breath, and with it all my fear.
Scratch that, I said to the voice. It is.