Chapter 10 #2
If Calren really thought that we were ready, then we were.
“There you are.” He smiled all the way, yet I could have sworn just now it didn’t reach his eyes. “All better. Breathe, and try to enjoy yourselves, Hands. It’s your first trial, after all.”
“Our first trial, guys,” said Anika from the end of the line. “He’s right. C’mon, cheer up! It’ll be a breeze!”
A smile tugged at my lips.
“We’ll set the whole thing on fire if we don’t like it,” said Reggie with a wicked grin, his sparkling eyes on Silas. “Who’s gonna stop us?”
“Who possibly could?” Silas shot back.
Nobody.
Nobody could stop all twelve of us together.
Just like that, we were smiling, chuckling, feeling more like ourselves.
March was smiling, too. Nodding at me as if asking for confirmation. I nodded back. I was really okay. It was only the trials—they weren’t dangerous in any way. We could handle them just fine.
Then Johnny began to speak again, and most of us flinched at the sound of his sharp voice.
“Welcome, Your Royal Clocklinesses, our dearest White and Red Queens—welcome!”
Applause, screams, shouts. Behind us, the queens were still standing, the White waving her hands at the audience, the Red moving her hand fan as she looked at us.
“Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, witnesses of this grand event, and most importantly—a big welcome to the Hands of the Turning Trials! We’re incredibly happy to have you in our midst tonight.”
I looked to the sides, all around us, expecting to see the Timekeeper speaking into his little round device, but Johnny was nowhere to be seen, even though his voice still came from everywhere.
He continued from wherever he was hiding.
“Now, the important things. Here lies the ball of your lives, where art is deception—or was that the other way around?”
Laughter. I swallowed hard, looked at March again. So long as our eyes were locked, I’d be fine.
“Where every smile may hide a secret. Every heartbeat may be an echo—notice how I say may. He-he-he,” went Johnny.
“The room you are about to enter is full of possibility, dearest Hands—and with peril, too. Something to remember is that your voices are considered an offer already given. I myself cannot wait to see you tangled in a waltz of illusions, looking as grand as you all do.”
More laughter. More applause.
I thought I might be sick any second, but I swallowed hard and pretended for the sake of the others. Just the trials, just the trials, just the trials…
“But before we let you go—some sound advice from our High Timenesses themselves,” Johnny said. “You must not believe what you remember, nor what you see. And most importantly—you must dance!”
Dance, he said.
“What dance, you ask? Well, the one that begins at the strike of forgetting!” he shouted at the top of his lungs, and my eyes closed and I barely held myself from closing my ears. “To the first trial, ladies and gentlemen! To the first trial!”
I could no longer hear myself thinking, only the cheers and the screams of the audience—and Calren’s voice when he said, “Ready, everyone?”
I wasn’t. I’d need another day or three to convince myself that this was exactly what I’d wanted. What I was here for.
But time waited for no one.
I said nothing because there was nothing to say. I was here now, and I was going to see this through one way or the other.
So, I smiled at March when he smiled at me. And when Calren gave us the go-ahead, we walked together with our chins up.
Darkness. That’s really all there was between those doors.
“Boo,” Reggie whispered a few feet in. “Scared yet, my little tickers?”
His voice changed when he imitated the White Queen, and it was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever heard. Laughter echoed all around us now, making me think that maybe this darkness went on forever. I was still afraid, yes, but it was impossible not to laugh at Reggie—he was insane.
“Where in the Everstill are we even going?” asked someone—but they must have been all the way to the other side of the line because I barely heard them.
“I wonder if this ever ends…” said someone else, but the voice was already faded that I couldn’t even tell if it was male or female. So far away—which made no sense because we’d walked in here side by side.
“Silas,” I said, and my own voice sounded strange to my ears. “Cook?”
No answer.
My hands shook as I reached out my arms to the sides—they’d been just there, both Silas and Cook! They’d walked in here with me, had laughed with me at Reggie’s thin voice, but now they were gone.
How?!
I spun around, reached out into the darkness for anything at all, but there was nothing there. Just me.
For a moment I considered screaming. Whatever this place was that could just swallow people and make them disappear, I wanted out. I wanted out right now.
But this was a trial.
For possibly the thousandth time since I woke up that morning, I had to remind myself that I was in the Turning Trials, and that there would be games to play here. Games.
Then I saw the light.
It was a tiny bit of light, but it was there, and it beat the all-consuming darkness.
I fisted my hands and breathed in deeply, and I went for it, in my mind chanting, a game, a game, it’s all part of a game.
The faster I ran, the bigger and brighter the light became—a soft red light coming from behind a veil, it seemed to me.
No—not a veil, but curtains.
The sound of music reached my ears, and I stopped once more, closed my eyes, exhaled. I was not all alone in this darkness, after all. There were people here, and there was light. There was music.
Half my fear had already faded away into nothing by the time I touched the thin fabric of the red curtains and pulled them aside.
I was not alone, indeed.
Three men were in the room in front of me, two sitting, one standing behind them.
The walls were red, the curtains red, the cushions of the chairs red, and even the polished wood of the desk in front of the seated men had a red hue to it.
Must have been some sort of a reception area, I figured, and the doors were just ahead.
Two of them, black, shiny, and I had to just walk around that big desk for a bit to get to it.
“Hello, Ora Reese,” said the man who was standing behind the two, and they all looked strangely similar, like maybe they were brothers.
They had round faces and round bellies, and they wore identical brown suits with red ties, too.
The hair on their heads was a golden brown, which made me think they were Hearts.
The seated ones looked at me from over their rimless glasses, before they picked up pens at the same time and began to write on the papers in front of them.
They had two identical lamps hooked to the edge of the desk, but even so, I couldn’t see what they were writing at all.
Like their ink was invisible to my eyes.
“Um, hi,” I said, feeling more out of place by the second, even though the man standing smiled at me.
What looked like a wooden spinner was near him, a very strange wooden spinner.
It was shaped like a heart, painted red, mounted on two narrow posts driven into the ground.
The heart was divided into sections, the bold letters at the edges carved into the wood—2 x good, 1 x bad, 3 x happy, 1 x sad, and so on.
A thin metal arrow was fixed at the center on a small pivot.
“Welcome to your first Turning Trial. We’re excited to have you,” said the guy, and the others didn’t glance up at all, even when I went a little closer.
“Excited to be here,” I said—and it wasn’t entirely a lie. “What, um…what exactly is the first trial? They didn’t tell us much outside, and my friends—”
“That’s okay, Miss Reese. The rules and the conditions will be clear to you as soon as you walk through those doors.” And he pointed at the black doors cross the room.
“Oh.” Well, that hadn’t been so difficult. “All right, then.” Clearing my throat, I went ahead around the table, when—
“One moment, please, Miss Reese,” the standing man said, and the other two had stopped writing for a tick. “I’m afraid you must first pay the price of entrance.”
I paused. “Price of entrance? But I don’t have any—” money on me, was what I wanted to say, but I should have known better than to think money would be required in a trial.
“You have everything you need, in fact.” His smile was ice cold. “Please, step close to the spinner. You only need to spin it once.” He waved both hands at the wooden heart.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand.” That didn’t look like a normal spinner—and those words carved on the edges made no sense to me, either.
“You will in a moment. Please, come closer. Spin the needle so you can be on your way.” He even stepped to the side, as if to tell me I’d be safe to do what he asked.
Spin the needle. Easy enough, wasn’t it?
I stepped around the table and to the other side of the spinner shaped like an arrow, and the seated men ignored me completely even when I was standing just behind them.
“What are those?” I asked, pointing at the carved words.
“The price,” the man said.
“Yes, I know they’re the—”
“Please, Miss Reese,” he cut me off. “Spin the needle.”
I see. He wasn’t going to give me more explanation, it seemed. Not until I spun the needle.
So, I did. I pushed the end of it down hard enough to make it move.
My feet took me back a step, and my lungs held onto the air in them, and my eyes held onto my lids as the arrow spun and spun and spun…
Then slowed down, moved from one section to the other, and finally stopped.
2 x bad
1 x neutral
“Luckier than some,” said the man standing on the other side of the spinner.
“Luckier about what? What are those numbers referring to?” Because I’d analyzed the entire board and there was nothing else on it except those words.
The man said, “Why, memories, of course.”
“Memories?” That would have been the last thing I expected.
“Yes. Memories.” And he moved.