Chapter 8
“Look at this.” March guided me toward one of the smaller piles on the right of the large space.
The others were already throwing themselves at the bigger ones, touching everything, trying, testing, licking and biting, even.
I could have sworn Seth was trying to bite something that looked like a wooden carrot—and the smile on my face was really starting to hurt.
Then I saw what March was pointing at.
It was a flower.
“Holy Hour, that’s beautiful,” I breathed and immediately fell on my knees in front of it—it was a big flower, as big as my torso, the only thing standing upright in the entire pile, like someone had placed it there on purpose. Like March had placed it there—for me.
He confirmed it when he, too, lowered to his knees next to me, my hand still in his. “I found it a few hours ago. It’s the only familiar thing in this place. I think I know what it is, but I’m not very sure.”
Red on his cheeks. I’ll be damned, but it looked good on him. The dark looked good on him, too.
So did the light from the lantern, and the shadows that the others cast while they moved around us.
“Well?” I said, a wondrous smile on my face. “What is it?”
That knowing grin had me melting on the inside, and it was so intense I had to look away before I turned into a pile of goo right there on the floor.
I had to reach for the flower—with both hands, and he did let go of me.
The air was so cold, I realized. It had been so much nicer when his fingers were intertwined with mine.
“I think it’s a timebloom, a very old one. Very big.” He reached out to touch the top of the closed flower gently, like he was afraid it might break.
It was sculpted from bone-white porcelain and dark bronze. The petals were layered metal sheets painted red, etched with impossibly fine lines that even the dust had done nothing to hide.
“What does it do? How does it open?” I wondered, leaning in to see better.
The porcelain leaves stretching from the stem were outlined with bronze. The detail the creator had put on the lines and the edges was remarkable, but I couldn’t see beyond the petals at all.
“Music,” said March. “They’re very specific music boxes. It opens here—look.” He leaned down and waved for me to do the same, to look at the stem that was as thick as my thigh.
On the side there under a leaf, there was a box attached to it, as big as my hand, with three wheels spinning out of it, marked with numbers.
“You wind it up just like you would a music box.” March reached for the back of the stem. “It’s gotta be somewhere—ah.” His eyes were on me while he spun the winder, and I realized we were very close. We’d both leaned in to see better, and now the tip of his nose was an inch away from mine.
My heart wanted to soar right out of me and into his hands.
“You wind it up, and you set a date, and it plays music—only on the date you set. My mother’s timebloom played once a month—every eleventh.”
“Oh. I think I heard of a timebloom before.” Someone must have mentioned it at school or something, because I’d heard of something like it, but I’d never seen one. Spades preferred old-fashioned music boxes for their songs, but this was something else entirely.
March nodded, looked down at my smile like he was indeed seeing wonder.
“I’m going to set it to today and see if it plays,” he said, then leaned down again, eyes on me until he had no choice but to look at the wheels.
Meanwhile, I was currently above clouds, oblivious to the world around me.
How strange. I was told stories about things like this before—by friends and cousins. I’d read books, too, where the girl and the boy met and clicked and fell and fell, like one would from the edge of the realm. You didn’t die if you went over The Spill—you simply fell forever.
This, too, felt like falling, though I was perfectly aware of the cold ground underneath my legs.
Something clicked. Wheels turned. And while they did, I studied the shape of March’s profile, his nose, his chin, his earlobe, all the curls on his hair, wilder now than before because of Reggie who’d jumped on his neck earlier.
He didn’t seem to mind at all, March, and it was for the best. Wild looked good on him, too.
Then the petals moved with a louder click.
Only when the silence fell heavy in the room did I realize how noisy it had been here until now. Everyone had been talking and laughing and calling, and I hadn’t even noticed.
“What’s that? What’re you doing?” someone called, and others were already making their way toward us.
“You guys, come check this out!”
“You better not make anything explode, Red…”
March didn’t answer, though. He simply looked at me while I stared at the metal petals opening more and more, until we could see the middle of the flower made of a metal mesh painted yellow.
That wasn’t all, though. On the inside of the petals, words were engraved in a beautiful cursive handwriting: Almost Always, Stay Until Never, You in Every Hour, Chime no. 6—and on and on it went on all twelve petals.
“The songs,” I said in wonder—they were titles of songs.
“Go ahead, pick one to play,” March said, and I was already reaching out a hand as the others leaned closer, towering over us to better see, asking questions neither of us even heard.
“I’ll warn you, though,” March said, a second before I made my pick. “If it plays, I’m going to ask you to dance with me.”
My poor heart.
Pulling my lip between my teeth, I touched the petal that said, You In Every Hour. Something about that title, though it wasn’t a song I’d heard before. None of them were.
The music started a second later, straight from the flower’s center.
Cheers. Claps. Screams from the other Hands as the melody spread into every corner of the room, and it was loud, like it was coming from a large speaker somewhere.
Time’s Teeth, I didn’t know the melody, had never heard the voice of the woman singing the lyrics, but it was the best song I had ever heard in my life.
The others were already dancing.
A hand stretched in front of me. “May I have the honor?”
How am I still in solid form?
“Yes, you may.” Today and tomorrow and every day after.
I put my hand over his, and March didn’t hesitate. He pulled me to my feet like I weighed nothing, then wrapped his arm around my waist tightly. Then he brought my hand over his other shoulder and closed his over my knuckles. The mischievous grin on him spoke words that might not even exist yet.
I laughed. “You knew it would work, didn’t you.” It wasn’t even a question.
“Maybe I did and maybe I didn’t,” he said—he absolutely did. “Do you like the music?”
I nodded too many times. “I adore it.” It wasn’t fast or slow, just the perfect spot in between. You could dance to it, definitely—everyone in the room was dancing—and you could sit and listen as well.
“So, you like dancing,” March said, eyes squinted a little bit.
“Well, I…” I’d never really liked dancing per se, but…
at the risk of my cheeks melting off my face, I said, “Tonight I do.” I liked the way his arm was secured around my waist. How his hand held mine.
How his breath felt against my lips. How he looked down at me like he wanted to study me, analyze me, know every inch of me like nobody ever had before.
Who are you? I wanted to ask but didn’t need to. I had the feeling I was going to find out soon.
“Tonight, I do, too,” March said. “Tonight, I seem to like a lot of things.”
The gears in my stomach were turning overtime. “What things?” I asked, knowing full well what the answer was going to be, but needing to hear it anyway.
I was never this girl. In fact, thinking back now, whenever my friends had told me about talks with their boyfriends or girlfriends, I’d always cringed a little bit inwardly. It had felt so fake, so unnatural—and now?
Now March was talking and looking at me like that, and I was a different person altogether. Like he’d changed me within a day, which was perfectly absurd.
“Just things. Like the look on your face when you’re thinking. I never know whether you’ll start running or punch someone in the throat any second,” he said, and my jaw hit the floor.
“I don’t look like that!”
Did I, though?
Father always said I was too serious, and Mother promised me that no guy was ever going to dare approach me if I looked at them like I contemplated ways of murder in my free time.
Ridiculous—I did not.
“Yes, you do.” March pulled me against his chest just a little tighter. “And you also walk like the ground owes you something, too.”
My mouth was wide open, and I tried to push him away, but he didn’t let me. Instead, he pulled me even closer, until it got almost difficult to breathe—but I was breathing.
I was trying to pretend I was irritated, too. “Maybe I no longer like dancing tonight,” I said—a total lie, and he could tell just fine.
Throwing his head back, he laughed, then squeezed my hand over his chest a little bit.
“That glare isn’t nearly as terrifying as you think, I’m afraid,” he told me. “I’ve seen you smile. It ruined whatever tough act you were planning to keep up in the future.”
Oh, the nerve of him.
The fact that I was laughing instead of being angry—or at least pretending!
“You’re one to talk,” I said, only halfheartedly. “Your exterior does not match that smile you have on all the time.” Lame, but it was the best I had. He really was too big and too mean-looking to be smiling so much. Kind of.
“Believe it or not, I was never one to smile much,” he said without missing a beat.
“Except you never stop!” I saw it since we met—and I was looking at his stupid, perfect smile right now.
“Maybe I just have something to smile about.”
Oh, the mouth on him…
“Maybe I have something to be mean about, too.” I leaned back—this time knowing full well he wouldn’t let me, and that was exactly why I did it.
I didn’t recognize myself at all in those moments. Must have been another Ora.