Chapter 20 #2
I didn’t see Silas at all. I didn’t even think. I was reaching for my own axes in the thigh pockets of my suit, so damn thankful that we’d magicked them to climb the slide tree. They were in my hands in a second, and then I was slamming them down onto the body of the wraith without really thinking.
Black blood, the smell of it like rotten fish, sprayed my suit. I could have been screaming but I no longer heard or saw anything properly, just gray skin and black blood. Someone was on my other side, too, moving with the same rhythm, slamming their own axes onto the body at our feet.
Screams and shouts.
My arms moved and I never planned to stop, not until this creature was in pieces.
I was angry, so damn angry that they’d allowed a timewraith in here with us.
So damn angry that it had gotten to Reggie when we’d all been so sure he would be safe.
So damn angry that it could kill me any second if it could just touch me with those fingers, and not even a thousand axes were going to help me then.
A hand wrapped around my arm and pulled me back.
Levana’s face was splattered with black blood, too.
“Help us with Sy!”
A blink and two and three. The view came back to me slowly, and I looked around—March was dragging the wraith that was basically in pieces now, with too many holes to count in its body, closer to the thicker branch, and he was nailing his arms to the wood with his axes. The wraith could hardly raise its head.
Russ and Cook were already on it, too, helping him with their own axes, and I finally turned to Sy—to Seth, Levana and Mimi trying to help him up.
I went closer, looked down at my hands, the axes in them, all that black blood. Bile rose up my throat, but I swallowed hard—not now. I put the axes away in my pockets, and—
“Don’t you dare touch me with that blood,” Silas said, his voice weak, dry—but he was already standing, his arms around Mimi and Seth.
He was standing and his eyes were open, and he seemed to be perfectly conscious, too. Definitely not dead.
“Let’s go-go-go! Everyone, run!” March.
“I’m okay. Let go—I can run,” Silas said, and he could. I wasn’t sure how long he’d been on that wraith before March and I got to them, but it must not have been long at all.
My heart still slammed in my chest. March had Reggie by one arm, and Russ was on his other side, carrying half his weight.
Reggie’s eyes were open, too, on Silas. He looked so pale.
Time’s Teeth, Reggie looked half dead.
And the wraith…
I moved with the others, but my eyes still went back to where it was nailed against that tree, barely moving, his long fingers twitching, almost completely black.
The memory was going to stay with me forever. The image of it remained imprinted in my mind, even when I ran with the others as far away from it as we could get.
“One of us?” Seth shouted. “They want us to leave one of us behind?!”
His voice echoed in the forest, and we all flinched.
The rest of us were sitting down, using leaves to clean up (March, Levana and I), and Reggie and Silas were trying to catch their breaths, too.
They both seemed okay, even though Reggie was pretty shaken up.
But he’d been about to die at the hands of a timewraith, and I was sure I’d have handled it much worse than him.
He came out of nowhere, he came out of nowhere, Reggie kept whispering.
“I want out,” Helen said, her head on her hands as she shook it, staring ahead. We’d sat in a circle so that we could see all angles, just in case.
We’d also run at least ten minutes away from where we left the wraith, but you could never be too sure, apparently. They could come at us out of nowhere.
“That’s it—I want out of here. They brought wraiths in this place with us. Wraiths!” Helen.
“It’s the Turning Trials,” Anika said. “I expected no less. Of course they’re going to use wraiths.”
“Well, I want no part in it,” Helen hissed.
“Well—you’re not going anywhere because we’re not leaving anybody behind,” Levana said, equally as pissed off.
Out of the three of us, she had the least amount of blood on her suit, and her face was already clean.
I wondered if mine was, too, but was happy I didn’t have a mirror at the same time.
It was enough to see the blood splatters on my suit.
The others went at it for a few more minutes, only because they needed to let out some steam.
March nudged me on the side and gave me a brand new leaf that must have been as big as a hand towel—and very soft, too.
“Thanks. Is my face bloody still?” I figured he could be my mirror for now.
“No. Wipe your hands,” March said, his eyes dark. “And I would really appreciate it if you would never do that again. I had it handled.”
I raised a brow. He couldn’t be serious. “I would also really appreciate it if you remembered that I know how to fight just as well as you.”
“I don’t care if you know how to fight. I will do the fighting from now on.”
I gave it a moment, then two.
Time’s Teeth, he was serious. Didn’t even crack a smile while he said this.
I turned to face him better. “You will do the fighting for what?”
“Anything. Anything that comes our way.”
I waited a heartbeat. “I still can’t decide if you’re messing with me.” It really didn’t look like it, but then again, you could never be too sure.
“Stay away from blood from now on, Ora. I can fight for the both of us.”
Holy Hour… “So can I.”
“Again—I never said you couldn’t.”
I shook my head. “You’re…you’re mad.” He said all this to me with a straight face and expected me to just…go with it?
No—not a straight face. He was grinning now. “I never said I wasn’t.”
“It’s not your job to protect me, Heartling. We’re all equals here.” He opened his mouth to speak, but I said, “And don’t you dare say I never said it was.” Because that’s what he was going to say, I just knew it.
His widening grin said so—but now I was smiling, too. “Not my job, true. Just my honor.”
Well, fuck. What could I possibly say to that?
“Enough.”
Silas’s voice rang in my ears, and he sounded unlike his usual self. We had no choice but to look up, especially when everybody else suddenly stopped talking, too.
“They don’t want us to leave one of us behind,” Silas said, and his eyes fell on Cook, then me. “What was it that we learned in Balance about loose ends?”
Easy. “Time hates loose ends.” We’d been learning that since elementary school.
“Ridder’s formula,” Cook said from where he sat near Mimi across from us. His eyes were wide open, his cheeks slightly flushed, like the thoughts in his head were racing. “A…a form of breaking loops is not allowing them to come full-circle.”
That’s when it hit me, too, all at once.
“Because a loop only exists when it can come full circle.” Of course. There were all kinds of loops magic could make, but some of them only needed to not close to stop existing. You didn’t necessarily have to break them—simply never allow them to loop.
“I don’t think this loop rewinds time, though,” Silas said. “I think it rewinds inventory.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Levana asked.
“It means people. Objects,” Silas explained, and it made so much sense now I felt silly for not seeing it sooner. “It means all we have to do to not allow this time to loop to close is to leave something behind.” Silas slowly stood up and looked at March. “And we already have.”
“The axes.” The axes that they’d left with the wraith, to pin him to the wood.
“The loop can’t close if we leave something behind,” I whispered to myself, just to taste the words on my tongue, to make sure they sounded as right as they felt. They did.
“If you’re wrong, I’m going to punch both your faces, Spades.” Helen jumped to her feet. “Let’s try to get out of here already.” And she started to run.
There was still a part of me that considered it wasn’t true. There was still a part of me that wondered if maybe we had to do more to not allow the loop to close, maybe leave behind something else. Our shoes or our uniforms or even cut our hair—anything at all.
But the axes qualified. They were objects that had belonged to us, too.
We ran together, and this time we all felt the shift in the air. We all felt our magic buzzing in our chests again. It had worked.
And when we found ourselves back to the beginning of it all, the mushroom didn’t come to life to say its line—Still stuck? How original. The flowers remained just flowers, too. No warning, and no screaming—just the hole on the ground where the slide tree had brought us up from the level below.
“It works,” Seth whispered, green smoke over the palm of his hand as he raised it up. “The loop is broken. We’re no longer stuck.”
Levana said, “Your seeds. C’mon, everyone, bring me those seeds again. I’m ready to get out of here.”
It’s over, it’s over, it’s over.
We weren’t stuck anymore, and our magic was back, and we were free to climb to the next level. We were free.
Four of the Hands who still had their seeds, including March, were already by Levana. She’d kneeled right at the edge of the slide, because Mimi insisted that it would require less magic to extend these existing branches all the way to the next level, than to create new ones from scratch.
They dumped all their seeds, and I was waiting to do the same, too, if needed.
The five of them were enough again, though. And the effect was immediate. As soon as the seeds hit the edge of the smooth wood, the ground groaned and shook and threw us all off our feet just like before.
This time, we knew to brace ourselves as the branches grew and twisted up toward the sky lightning fast, so none of us lost balance or fell. We only prayed that the next level of this game would be the end of it.