Chapter 20
We argued. We sat. We complained. We laughed.
We walked.
The loop seemed to be a little over an hour long, and each time we completed it, the mushroom would be there to mock us, and the flowers would come to life for a minute or two, to tell us to go back and save ourselves.
If only we could. If only there was another way.
The more time passed, the darker the entire forest became.
The darker the forest became—with nightfall, I would imagine—the more lanterns seemed to just appear on the branches here and there, illuminating our way, but also creating all those shadows that played with my sanity.
The creaks of the wood underneath us became heavier and louder as we walked. The branches seemed to groan more with each step, too, and the glow of those rings on the bark became more and more faded.
Like the Tree of Years itself was shutting down with us.
If it did so all the way, what would become of us?
“It was the same in that masquerade,” Reggie argued. He was the only one still trying to keep our spirits up, and I appreciated him so much more than he knew. “We all thought it was hopeless at one point, didn’t we?”
“Not me,” Mimi muttered.
“Well, not you, Mim-Mim, but most of us,” Reggie said with a grin. “We’ll figure it out, you’ll see.”
“Go, then. Go on your way, if you dare, and try to figure stuff out!” she snapped at him.
She liked Reggie (who didn’t?) but she was pissed off, and everybody knew she wasn’t serious. Reggie did, too.
That’s why he was grinning when he raised up his hands in surrender and said, “Okay. Fine, I’ll go. And I’ll be back to get all of you out of here, just like I did down there.” He turned around to walk back to the other side.
“Oh, c’mon, Reggie! Don’t listen to her. Come back!” Seth shouted.
Mimi waved him off with a roll of her eyes. “Oh, let him. It’s not like any of us is going anywhere, anyway.”
Reggie didn’t even turn his head, just kept going. He was walking away for real. I shook my head, smiling. Of course he was.
“I propose a break until he comes back,” Silas said. “Right here seems just fine.” Without even waiting for a reply, he sat near a thinner branch, rested his back against it, and closed his eyes.
“You know what—a break sounds really good right now,” I said. We hadn’t had one of those in a bit.
March didn’t hesitate. My hand was still in his, and he took us farther back as he searched for a place to sit, and everybody else did the same.
We, too, found a branch to sit against, and I adored how he never once let go of my hand, even when we settled down.
I adored how he played with my fingers, how he analyzed them, then kissed the ones I’d scratched before magicking that axe to help us climb the slide tree.
That’s what everybody was calling it now—the slide.
“Safe to say these trials are nothing like what I expected,” Levana said when they all settled down as well.
We nodded in agreement.
“I played a game with my classmates the week before I came here,” Russ said. “All twenty of them were to submit to me two ideas of what they thought the games would look like. So far none has come even close.”
“Who even comes up with these trials?” I wondered.
“Timekeepers, probably,” said Seth.
“No. Not Timekeepers,” Silas said. “They make sure the Labyrinth keeps running, but they don’t come up with the games.”
“Who then?” Mimi asked.
“I’m eleven-hours certain it’s the queens,” said Silas. “But maybe…maybe not.”
The queens.
It did make sense.
“I want to say something but I don’t dare to say it out loud here,” said Helen, looking around as if she were expecting to find someone watching us. “Maybe later.”
The mechanical eye I’d drawn in my sketchbook came to my mind.
Yeah. Maybe later.
We only took a few more moments to rest before we got up to continue walking, hoping this time something would be different. Hoping this time some new clue would come to light and we would gather an idea about how to get to the next level.
Each time, though, that hope grew dimmer and dimmer. I personally doubted we could go anywhere, at least without magic, but who knew?
“Reggie’s not back yet,” Seth said, while Silas stretched his neck to try to see better behind us after every few feet.
“It’s not like he can go anywhere else,” said Levana.
“Yeah. We wish,” said Cook.
“C’mon, Sy. He’ll find us in no time,” I said. There literally wasn’t anywhere else to go.
Silas did look a bit uncomfortable, but he followed us anyway. He walked beside me, so I saw how he turned his head back every fifth second without fail.
I was thinking about what to say to distract him so he had a moment to calm down. My eyes were on the floor, watching my every step, racking my brain for something I thought he’d know more about—because he seemed to know a lot about a lot, Silas—and that’s why I noticed it first.
That’s why I saw it when the energy shifted—it hissed, as the air released differently on this side for a moment. As if I was suddenly in a different place, though I wasn’t.
I stopped, and when March continued ahead, my hand slipped away from his.
It was a subtle change, and for a split second there I couldn’t really make out why, but then the heat in my chest rang all of a sudden. The energy under my skin buzzed.
My magic was just…there.
“Ora?” someone called, but I was still looking at the floor, at that network of roots and branches and leaves I stepped on.
They’d changed, too. I could have sworn the color of them was paler.
“It broke,” I whispered, unsure of my every word, but twelve-hours certain at the same time. “The loop—it-it broke.” I felt it right there in my gut.
Everybody stopped walking and talking and breathing.
“How?” March asked, looking down at the floor himself, then at his own hands. With them, he touched his chest—he could feel the buzz of his magic, too. It was released from whatever had held it back. It was there again.
We looked at one another, unsure of what to expect, what to say, whether to cheer and clap, or to question what we were feeling, when…
“Reggie.”
Silas’s voice fell like a mountain over my shoulders.
He took off running, and the entire world spun before my eyes when I pivoted to the side and ran after him without taking a moment to breathe.
The rest of the Hands followed, and I thought we’d be running a while until we found wherever Reggie had gone. Because I thought he’d done something, Reggie. I thought he was the reason why there had suddenly been a shift in the loop, why it had suddenly let us go.
Instead, Reggie was on the ground, half hidden away by a thick branch, with another man hovering over him, choking him.
My mind went blank. My eyes were painting the view in front of me, but I refused to believe them, because it was impossible that Reggie would be on his back like that, shaking, with his arms to the sides, just taking it while a man choked him.
It was Reggie. He was a big guy, the biggest among us, and he could take on anyone. He was not afraid to fight, that much we knew. So then why would he let another man do that to him?!
I found out the next moment, when we were close enough to see them better.
It wasn’t a man that had gripped Reggie by the neck, no.
It was a timewraith.
Time moved in slow motion again, but only for me.
The world followed my pace, too, and so I saw it with my unblinking eyes how the creature had leaned over Reggie’s body, and how he’d wrapped those long fingers around Reggie’s neck, how he was salivating all over Reggie’s chest while he drained the time out of him.
The wraith was draining the time out of Reggie right before our eyes.
Something moved in my peripheral faster than a shadow. Silas flew at him with his arms wide open, slammed onto the wraith and pushed him back with all his strength.
This can’t possibly be real, went the thoughts in my head, as they rolled on the floor together, as Reggie sucked in a deep breath, moved his hands up to his neck. It couldn’t be real, yet I was already near him, my instincts divided between helping him up and going to Silas.
After all, he’d run and slammed onto a timewraith, so I already knew he wasn’t well in the head. To leave him alone would be to kill him myself.
But then again, I wasn’t the only one there, was I?
“Get Reggie up and walking!” March shouted as he jumped right over Reggie’s body and to the other side, to where Silas was trying to get away from the timewraith, and failing. Obviously.
“No magic!” I shouted, and I, too, jumped over Reggie’s body. The others would get him on his feet. I’d decided I was helping March with the timewraith.
I could have been another person in those moments.
If there was fear inside me, I didn’t feel it—or maybe I felt too much of it, had been completely consumed by it, so I could no longer tell it apart.
Timewraiths had been the subject of my nightmares ever since I’d first laid eyes on a drawing of them in our Anatomy book at school.
Those gray skins and dull eyes full of hunger.
Those old rags that covered parts of their bodies.
They were tall, skinny—bones protruding everywhere, and they had patches of black hair all over their heads, sharp teeth in their jaws—but their hands.
That was the most terrifying part of a wraith.
Their fingers were twice the size of ours, no fingernails, the tips of them bruised a deep black.
Those fingertips enabled them to draw time from another person, or from their magic.
That’s why you couldn’t even use it against them, because they could transform any kind into raw energy and feed off it, too.
Impossible to defeat.
Yet I was two feet away from it now.
March raised his hands above his head. They glistened under the lanterns because he had something in his fists—the climbing axes—and he brought them down onto the side of the timewraith while he was still squeezing Silas’s arm, trying to pull him closer.