Chapter 7
March never let go of my hand as we ran. Even when Reggie basically jumped onto his neck, wrapped an arm around him and tried to knock him to the ground, March resisted, pushed him off, continued running with me. Our laughter could wake the whole Labyrinth, yet none of us seemed to mind just now.
If somebody heard us, they’d have to catch us first.
We ran for a good while, to the very end of the mechanical garden and beyond, through trees that were real, bigger, colder than the fake ones, and toward a wire fence at least ten feet tall.
Reggie was at the head of the group now, his grin huge, and he went straight for the fence like he couldn’t even see it there—but he could. And the fence was cut at the side, so when he pushed it back, it gave.
Cheers and screams filled the night. Levana and Helen went through first as Reggie held up the cut fence, and then March guided me in front of him, my hand still firmly in his. The way he held it, I didn’t even consider that he’d let go.
“Where are you guys taking us?” I said, trying to whisper but I failed—and anyway, everybody was laughing out loud.
“In there,” March said, pointing ahead at the structure in the distance—a building, wide and dark, not a single light anywhere near it.
“What is that?!” I wondered, but Reggie was urging us to run again, and everybody was following, so March and I were running, too.
The grass wasn’t as green on this side of the fence, I noticed, and there were no lanterns to illuminate the way, but the closer to the building we got, the more I realized it was some sort of barn—only it was stranger and bigger than any barn I’d ever come across back home.
Once again, we slowed our steps and stopped running, no longer laughing out loud but whispering to one another, as if suddenly being close to a building reminded us that we weren’t supposed to be out here at all.
“Over here,” Silas said, calling our attention to the right while we looked around the thick wooden panels that made the walls of the barn. No windows, no anything—but Silas and Reggie were standing in front of a set of doors.
You could barely make them out in the dark, and the wood that made them up was identical to the rest of the walls, but there had been a thick chain attached to the metal handles there, and it was now on the ground.
“Don’t tell me you did that!” Mimi whispered from behind March.
“We sure did,” Reggie answered proudly. “To the Hands of the Turning Trials—welcome to the junkyard!”
He bowed, stepped aside, waved his hand to the side, while Silas pulled the door near him open with a screech that would have you thinking the wood was alive.
Cold air and dust slipped out the door instantly, as if happy to finally be set free, and the rest of us leaned back a little bit. Whatever was in there, it smelled stale, old, wet—definitely not what I was expecting.
“A junkyard? Are you well in the head?” Seth said.
“I think his gears need a good oiling,” said Erith.
“Actually, I’m perfectly fine, thank you,” Reggie said, perfectly unbothered by the jokes.
“And yes—this used to be a yard some time ago. See this?” He pointed up at the rooftop of the barn.
“This was built after the fence was already in place.” He slapped his hand against the wooden walls next.
“Probably to hide the things on the other side—but who knows? What matters is, this was a yard originally, and so we shall continue to call it THE JUNKYARD.” He spread his hands in front of him as if he was hoping to magic the letters into the air itself.
The rest of us laughed. He really was a funny guy.
Then Silas produced something from the inside pocket of his long coat—a hand-lantern. The warm yellow light streaming out of the small orb tried but couldn’t fully illuminate the darkness inside the barn.
Silas said, “Now that that’s settled—after me, boys and girls.” And he slipped inside with a grin on his face to match Reggie’s, who followed him closely.
Helen and Levana rushed after them, and March pulled me to follow.
My instinct was to remain out here for another minute, to make sure I knew what I was walking into first before it was too late, but my instincts were powerless, it seemed, to guide my body when March held onto my hand the way he did.
I went into the barn with my breath held.
The others behind me whispered—“This is still not a yard…”
“Is someone else in here?”
“How much trouble are we going to get in if we get caught?”
“Hush—nobody’s going to get caught.”
“Are you guys going to set us up or something?”
Then…
“Are you afraid?” March whispered, his mouth close to my ear, making every inch of my skin rise in goose bumps.
My mouth opened to say yes because I should have been.
Afraid, that is. But instead, I said, “No.” I wasn’t. He was here, and everybody else was here. I was not afraid of anything right now.
“Good. Give it a minute.” We stopped, and it was too dark to see anything at all, but I felt the way his thumb rubbed circles over my knuckles perfectly. “Any minute now…”
“What are we waiting for?”
“Light,” March said. “Your skin is so incredibly smooth. Like…velvet.”
My blood rushed and rushed.
Why, I happen to like velvet very much, I said in my mind, but in reality, my tongue was too tied. To speak out all those words seemed an impossible feat just now.
Then came the light, followed by sudden gasps and screams and laughter.
“There, you bastards! There you have it. The junkyard is all yours now, too!” Reggie shouted, his finger pointed at us—at March. “You’re in my debt, Red! I’ll be coming to collect.”
March chuckled. The sound of it traveled through my ears and into my mind and stayed there. It wouldn’t budge, I suspected, for the rest of eternity now.
“You can certainly try,” he called back, and if Reggie said something else, I didn’t hear it because I was already distracted by everything that the light revealed.
The air was still, thick with dust. The space felt endless, with piles and piles of discarded things rising around us—rusted frames, dented orbs, splintered gears, all covered in a soft coat of dust. No structure, no shelves or boxes or anything, only piles.
Devices of every shape, some no bigger than my hand, others towering like statues.
None of it made any real sense, though. A chair made of glass arms. A tangle of wires woven like a bird’s nest. A stone basin lined with symbols that looked familiar, like I’d seen them before written in a book or something.
I couldn’t tell what anything was, and neither could anybody else.
“What in Time’s Trousers is this?!” someone whispered.
“What does that thing do?”
“Is that a fork?! For whom—a giant?”
“Is this a doll or a creature? Is it dead?”
Indeed, everything in here seemed dead. Far too quiet. Nothing made a sound, except us—and the light glowing in the very middle.
It was a lantern, only it was twice as tall as me, the glass of it frosted halfway around the bottom.
The light was coming from a large glass-ball in the middle, burning—not with flames, but with magic.
The gold-painted metal frame was chipped and rusty, but the shape of it, narrower at the base and wider at the top, was still undeniably that of a lantern.
It was a fascinating thing—and it gave off much more light than I’d have expected.
An ocean of forgotten tools and devices I wouldn’t even know what to do with. Some items were delicate, like lace sewn from brass, while others were heavy, brutal, all sharp corners and metal teeth.
For a moment there, I felt like we might have walked right into someone’s secret, and we needed to get out right away before we were discovered, but the more I took in, the more distracted from my own mind I became.
March pulled me gently deeper into the room, his hand warm, his tight grip reassuring.
“What do you think?” he asked me, and my lips did open, but I had nothing to say yet, so I just shook my head. “We think they’re tools and devices used in the past Turning Trials. All these things used to be part of the games, and now they’ve put them here.”
“That…makes perfect sense.” Just like he made perfect sense to me, somehow. That he existed. That he was here with me right now—like duh, Ora. Why else would anything have ever happened?
My mind had become as curious as this junkyard that wasn’t a yard at all.
“Holy Hour, this is amazing!” Seth shouted, and others laughed.
“You guys realize that we have Sparetime, right?” Anika said, slowly pulling out the golden chain of her Life Clock from the pocket of her blouse.
“We can actually do magic,” said Russ, like the idea just occurred to him—and it was the best thing he’d ever said.
“No magic,” March and Silas said at the same time, and neither was smiling at the moment.
“We have no idea what these things are,” said March.
“And you don’t know how to do magic even if you tried.” Silas.
March waved a finger around. “Half these things could explode for all we know.”
“Or,” said Reggie, holding up a finger. “We completely ignore these cowards, and we do whatever we want. We’ve got the seconds. We’ve got the minutes, don’t we?” And he himself had pulled out his Life Clock from his leather jacket as he grinned.
Impossible not to smile—he was insane in the best possible way. I liked his spirit—everybody did. Especially Silas, who was still smiling even as he shook his head and looked at him. His gray eyes sparkled, full.
“Oh—and I do hope this place is to her lady’s liking,” Reggie then said, and he was looking at me now, bowing dramatically with a hand to his chest. “After all, we planned to let the rest of you find this place on your own, but the traitor betrayed us—so I’ve decided to call him Red because his truths obviously bleed… ”
Our laughter made the entire place come alive.
Reggie cleared his throat dramatically. “As I was saying, Spade, I really do hope this place is to your liking, since it revealed the traitor among us,” he concluded with another deep bow, pushing the word traitor more every time he said it, and my stomach hurt from how hard I was laughing.
The look on his face was everything. The sound of his voice, the way he moved—Reggie was something else.
March was shaking with laughter, too, when he pulled me closer.
“You’re just jealous you didn’t get to use this place to impress…someone,” March shouted as we passed Reggie.
He brought both hands to his chest and gasped—so dramatic. “Don’t go spilling all my secrets, too, Red!”
More laughter, and I had tears in my eyes because of it, which hadn’t happened since I was a little girl.
The others were all shouting words at one another, making jokes, behaving as though we had known each other years and years, not mere hours.
As though we’d been here before, and we’d done things we weren’t supposed to do in the dead of the night, and this was normal. Our interaction was perfectly natural.
Then there was March.
Was it just me, or did what he said to Reggie imply that he’d tried to impress me?
Because it sounded exactly like it…