Chapter 2 #2
“All of you seem to be whole, as promised. I see twelve heads, twenty-four arms, and twenty-four feet,” he said with a smile, and folded his hands in front of him. His friends remained a step behind, taking notes every second, too. Not sure of what, though.
“And while we’re on the topic—did you know that, supposedly, there are worlds out there who have twenty-four hours in their days?”
A gasp or two, but I only smiled. He couldn’t possibly mean it, I was sure. It was a joke, because—assuming there was another world in the universe, which was madness all on its own—how could it possibly operate with twenty-four hours, when the Great Clock ordered time into twelve?
“It’s true,” the Timekeeper said with a nod, his eyes roaming from face to face as he slowly paced in front of us. “Twenty-four hours in a day—one could do so much with them. Can you imagine?”
“It’s not only in a day, though,” said the Spade standing to my left—Silas. The Timekeeper stopped halfway toward the other end of the line and turned. Looked at him.
Maybe it was just me, but Calren’s smile faltered a little bit before he spun on his heels and came closer to us.
To Silas, who continued, “Twenty-four hours in the day and night. Like we count twelve moon-bound and twelve sun-bound hours, they consider the day and night a full cycle and count twenty-four.” How curious, said a voice in my head. “I suppose, of course,” he added.
Calren stopped in front of him, analyzed Silas from head to toe, and the look in his eyes wasn’t one I’d seen before. Not on him, not on anyone, so I couldn’t really understand it. I just knew that it made me uncomfortable, like Calren saw more than there was to see on Silas’s face.
If Silas noticed how the Timekeeper was looking at him, though, he didn’t show it. His easy smile didn’t change.
“That’s a very specific supposition, isn’t it,” said Calren. “And you delivered it with a perfectly reasonable explanation, too.”
I don’t know why I was holding my breath while he arched a ginger brow higher and higher on his forehead—and I wasn’t the only one.
Then Calren smiled. “I do like people who talk too much. I like them a lot.”
Silas burst out laughing. The rest of us joined in.
Of course, he was just kidding. Of course it was a joke.
The Timekeeper laughed, too, before he stepped back and waved his hands to his sides. In his left was a pen—a wooden pen of some sort, thicker than usual, and he held it between his fingers as he bowed his head.
“Allow me to introduce myself properly to those of you who don’t know me—hi, Ora,” he said in a single breath and winked at me.
Which in turn made me giggle, and turned my cheeks a bright red again.
“I go by the name of Calren Hock, a Royal Timekeeper serving Their Royal Clocklinesses, the White Queen and the Red Queen, and I will be your warden for the coming weeks until the end of the Turning Trials.”
He bowed slightly, then pulled at the end of his strange wooden pen.
Turns out, it wasn’t a pen at all. It extended right before our eyes, the material of it strong and sturdy, which was how we knew that it was magic.
Normally magic could be seen as it burst out of our hands—it had color, like liquid spilling in the air or smoke spreading about, but I had no idea what kind of magic Timekeepers could do or what kind of devices they had.
What had looked like a pen was definitely a cane, and he extended the handle of it so naturally, like that tiny thing was meant to become this all along.
When he was done, Calren tapped the end of it to the marble floor with a triumphant smile—he’d done this on purpose, to impress us.
“I only have two minutes before I have to take you out there to meet your audience—and the queens,” he said, and my heart just about exploded in my chest.
The queens. We were going to meet the queens.
“In these two minutes I will tell you—I am here to help you. I am here to watch after you. For anything you need and everything you might want, you come to me, and I will do my bestest best to accommodate you,” he said, his voice lower just now, like he meant it.
“The Labyrinth itself will keep you safe without needing anybody else to intervene—while you’re not playing in the trials, of course.
And I know you know how things move along once you’re here.
After all, you don’t get chosen among hundreds of applicants for not being prepared, am I right? ”
Heads bobbed in agreement—mine included.
Calren smiled. “Correct. There are four Turning Trials in total, each inspired by one of the courts, and they’re all three days apart from one another. So, your first trial begins in three days.” He held up three fingers from his free hand, and in the other held the handle of his cane tightly.
Meanwhile, behind him the other two continued to write down whatever it was they were writing on their pads.
“The queens have a training program set in place for you that will start tomorrow. It’s very basic things that I trust you already are familiar with, but nonetheless, all of you have to go through every one of them, and hopefully the lectures will help you complete the trials even better when their time comes. ”
Ugh, lectures, someone said with a groan.
“With that, allow me to guide you outside. There’s a cocktail party waiting for you in the front yard, and a lot of people who want to meet you. Come, come—outside!”
“But what about our things?” someone asked.
“And what about our food?”
“And what about our clothes? We were told to only bring a backpack!”
They were right, we were. They told us to only bring essentials in the smallest backpacks we had—and we did. They took them from us when we entered this building, though—two men and one woman dressed in white, with silver and red threads in their uniforms.
“All in due time, Hands. All in due time. We’ll be back in the palace soon, and you will get the hang of your new life inside its walls in no time,” Calren said.
The rest of us looked at one another, wide eyes, slightly nervous again, though we trusted Calren.
I know I did.
Usually, the Clockfolk didn’t mingle with the Timekeepers.
At least that’s what we were told back home.
They were descendants of the Great White Rabbit, and even though he created the Great Clock and forced time into a twelve-hour order so Clockrealm could exist under it, he was also a thief.
He stole from Time in order to create, so it was a very confusing situation for most of us.
That’s why Timekeepers stayed in Neverwhen, and they didn’t much care to mingle with the rest of us, either.
Apparently, though, here it was different. Or maybe it was just with us? Because I could have sworn that there wasn’t an ounce of hesitation in Calren’s manner when he approached me and the others or when he spoke to us. I believed all that he said.
Maybe that’s why, when the others followed him toward the polished white doors of the entrance of this building—he’d called it a palace—I had no trouble doing the same.
Especially since the Heart boy lingered behind all the rest, his eyes on the side of my face propelling me forward. And when I fell in line behind Cook, with Silas behind me, he came right behind us.
Difficult to explain, but his attention weighed on the back of my head. Touched me as if with an invisible hand.
Then we were outside.
It was warm, warmer than your typical day in early May, but the sun was just about to start setting.
The sense of dread overwhelmed me all at once, but it only lasted a moment, until I realized that all the others felt the same way.
Their wide eyes and flushed cheeks, the way they slowed their steps and exchanged looks.
Not sure why that would make me feel better, but I took it, and I finally focused on my surroundings.
People, over a hundred of them, if not more.
Soldiers wearing silver armor, marked with red and white over their chest plates and their silver helmets, were on both sides.
Grass under our feet right off the cobbled road that led to the main entrance where the carriages had dropped us off.
They were nowhere to be seen now—only the yard on the right surrounded by trees, and the people clapping their hands as they stood near tall cocktail tables full of bottles and glasses and plates.
Beyond the large oak trees surrounding the party, rose the tower—quite possibly the largest tower in the world.
It was the tower that the Timekeepers had built right underneath the Great Clock to reach it easier.
They worked on it all the time, from what we learned, as the massive gears inside the clock were always in need of oiling and fixing, and making sure that they counted the seconds properly, that they spread time equally across all of the Clockrealm.
They were very powerful, Timekeepers. They accessed time as energy in a different way, through clocks that the rest of us could not use, and they could wield incredible magic—all that was necessary to keep the Great Clock forever running.
All these things I’d learned since I knew how to learn anything, and I’d even seen the silhouette of the Great Clock when we went hiking in the mountains of our court with Father—but to actually be here and see this gigantic tower from so close up was different.
It was like I’d stepped into a different world altogether, like my eyes had been opened for the first time.
Not to mention the queens.
Time’s Teeth, I couldn’t breathe right. Not enough seconds and not enough air left in me as we followed Calren onto the grass and toward the people, toward the Red Queen and the White Queen who waited for us at the very head of the crowd, with smiles on their faces and soldiers on their sides.
The queens are really here.