Chapter 21
The flowers came back to scream at us—get back, get back, don’t go up there! They told us, You will die if you do!
Of course, I didn’t believe them. Hands didn’t die in the Turning Trials. That was absurd. We played games and had a good time and created more Sparetime to fulfill the realm’s needs while we were at it—that’s it. That’s all the Turning Trials were about.
Hands did not die in these games. They never had.
Then again, I didn’t remember reading or hearing about any of the old trials with timewraiths in them.
The Tree of Years was groaning when we got up to the next level, which, to nobody’s surprise, looked almost identical to the other two below.
Here, though, the colors were even more faded, the wood darker, the bark rougher, and even the floor under our feet was softer, like it was just waiting to break at any second.
It was happening right before our eyes, too. The more of us climbed up the slide, the louder the groaning, and the more the thinner branches broke off the bigger ones and fell on the floor. There were a few flowers here that hadn’t lost their color, but most had withered long ago.
And the rings…
“Guys,” Cook whispered, raising his hand toward one of the branches, and he touched the ring on its bark with his bare hand—because it was no longer glowing. At all.
“It’s us,” I said, a bit dumbfounded. “We’re doing this to the tree.”
“The magic,” Seth said. “The more we use, the more it takes from the tree.”
“How much longer will we have to climb?” Helen asked, and her voice shook. We were all looking up at the canopy the next second, hoping to find the answer to her question. “If we keep this up, this tree is going to collapse with us inside it. We’ll never-ever-reven make it out.”
No, we wouldn’t.
“It’s nighttime. The game is almost over,” Silas said, and he was back to his usual self. Reggie was still a little pale, but he was perfectly focused, too. That wraith hadn’t done as much damage as I’d feared, thank Time.
“You don’t know that,” said Levana. “There’s only two handfuls of seeds left! We don’t know that we’ll make—”
“There!”
We all stopped. We all turned to look at where Russ was pointing, and when I did, it took me a few blinks to convince myself that I was seeing right.
It was the trunk of the Tree of Life—the actual trunk from which all the branches extended, and it was as wide as a house.
We all went closer as if drawn in by the dark, rough bark. The branches that extended from it just below our feet were the foundation of the floor we stood on, woven with more roots and vines and rope that really did feel weaker than it had on the levels below.
But there was a hole on the trunk halfway up this level, and it was made out of stone blocks.
My heart skipped a beat. Our way out.
That’s where we needed to go—except there seemed to be no branches extending from it where we could reach, only higher up. Much higher up, and they twisted and turned in such a chaotic way that we couldn’t hope to be able to climb for hours and hours.
The hole was taller than me, round, so black it looked like nothing existed on the other side of it.
The stone blocks that seemed to have been hammered into the trunk by force were identical in color to those of the tower.
Vines and roots and leaves must have grown somewhere inside it because they crawled out onto the edges of the blocks, greener than anything else up here.
“Ora, Erith,” Mimi said. “The seeds.”
The seeds.
I still had my seeds, and Erith did, too. We could still make a bridge up to that hole.
“You guys, are you sure that that’s where we need to go? I don’t know—something about it feels wrong,” Cook whispered.
“It’s so dark,” said Anika. “I really don’t want to be anywhere near it.”
I didn’t, either, but… “It’s the same stone blocks as those of the tower. Calren said the last level would be in the tower, right?”
Silence for a tick.
“Let’s do it, then,” said Erith.
I didn’t hesitate. Reaching for my pocket, I grabbed the seeds in my fist and moved to get as close to the trunk as I could, thinking we should plant them right by the edge so that branches extended upward, and then we could just climb. It wasn’t too far a climb. It would work, no doubt about it.
As the thoughts and plans went through my head, I was perfectly distracted, and so I didn’t even notice movement until a hand wrapped around my arm and pulled me back.
“Run, run—RUN!” shouted one Hand or the other from a few feet away.
I looked up, my legs moving as March pulled me away from the trunk.
Because timewraiths were running toward us from both sides of it, and this time there were four of them.
Black dots in my vision, but I was running. My blood rushed and my heart hammered, and someone screamed or said something, but my ears were too busy whistling. March was ahead of me, his hand in mine pulling me forward.
March. The others.
All the Hands—we were still here.
The thought pushed back my panic a bit. I blinked and I saw—more of the same branches and leaves and flowers that should have long ago withered but hadn’t.
My lungs burned, and I could’ve sworn the floor beneath my feet tilted every now and again, the branches stretching and recoiling like they could barely hold our weight.
But the wraiths were after us still, and we couldn’t stop. Not before we made it. Not before we were safe.
Then someone screamed.
It was loud and clear, and it pierced right through my mind. March and I stopped running, and we turned at the same time to see a wraith grab Helen by the back of her suit, and throw her against the floor.
My heart all but stopped beating.
Helen was far away, at least fifteen feet behind me. Seth and Erith were closer, and they stopped, too. They ran back to help her.
“No, no, DON’T!” I shouted at the top of my voice, but it was too late.
Four timewraiths. Four. They easily grabbed the Hands and threw them to the ground before either could even touch Helen, who was shaking on the floor.
I tried to take my own advice but it was impossible. My axes were in my hands and I shot forward—and almost slammed right onto Silas.
He’d stepped in front of all of us who were aiming to run back to the wraiths, and he had both hands raised when he shouted, “STOP!”
“They’re killing them, Sy—move!” Reggie shouted, but Silas was already moving.
Silas was moving sideways, toward one of the thicker branches that curved just over the floor from somewhere over our heads, before it twisted up a few feet away and disappeared over another branch again. The bark of it was browner than most others right now, and Silas put both hands on it.
“They’ll kill all of us if we go to them now. We can’t win, not against four,” Silas said. “Trust me, I—”
“I’m not going to leave them behind!” March cut him off, and took another step forward—Time’s Teeth, they were killing them for real!
Helen and Seth and Erith were on the floor, shaking, while those creatures hunched over them, put their disgusting hands over their bodies, drinking in every second of life in them.
They were dying!
“We’re not leaving them—just stop for a second! Wraiths do not hunt people when there’s more active time elsewhere to feed from!”
Of course, I didn’t understand a single word he said, but…
“Sy,” Reggie cried, defeated, and Silas closed his eyes, turned to the tree.
“Just watch for a second—JUST WATCH!”
It took a lot out of me to stand there with my axes in hand, to watch our friends getting fed on by fucking monsters, to watch Silas trying to basically push his hands into the bark of a branch bigger than the width of my body.
It was stupid. It was ridiculous—we could have been on them already!
But…it broke.
I had no idea what in the Everstill was going on, but I could see the way the bark of that tree tore like invisible claws were attacking it. It tore like a piece of cloth, and the Tree of Life groaned louder than before, and then something slipped out those tears, too.
Liquid—and you’d think it would be sap, but this one was a silvery blue in color, and it glowed. Just like those rings had in the lower levels, it glowed.
Everything came to a halt for a tick.
Us, the wraiths, the tree itself.
When it groaned again, it was different. This time, it sounded like it was in pain.
“Silas!” March called, because he was shaking as he held his hands on that bark still, and those tears leaked more of that silver sap—the Tree of Years, the speaker had called it.
Because it was full of magic. Full of time.
The wraiths moved.
I could hardly believe my eyes, but the more the tree groaned, and the more silver sap leaked from those tears, the faster the wraiths moved, stood up, let go of the others, turned toward us. My instinct was to turn around and back away, to run, but I didn’t. I only watched.
“Run,” Silas breathed, hands still on the bark. “Run—just RUN!”
Except running required us to be able to move our bodies, and we couldn’t yet.
Because the silver sap spilled and the wraiths were onto it, the Hands abandoned on the floor, shaking still.
They fell on their strange knees in front of the branch, making that awful sound that was a cross between a growl and a scream.
Sticking their faces right onto those tears and drinking the sap as it slipped out, licking it off the bark.
“It’s working,” Reggie whispered, a dumbfounded smile on his face. “It’s working!”
Then the tree moved, too.
The next moment unfolded like a tale, like a fantasy, unlike anything I’d ever seen before.
Branches all around us moved, up and down and to the sides, exactly like branches shouldn’t, like they weren’t made out of wood, like they had turned into ropes instead.
They lashed out like tentacles of a giant monster lightning fast, caught the wraiths by the ankles, and yanked them upward, pulling them off the bark.