Chapter 22
Ikept looking back at the wraiths thrashing and screeching that awful sound until it was my turn to climb the vines. March and I went last.
My head kept spinning around even as I climbed, unable to look away from them for longer than a second, until we were dragged into that hole by the others.
Suddenly we couldn’t hear nor see the monsters anymore.
We couldn’t see anything.
“You’re a fool!” someone shouted.
“You could have killed us all!”
“You should have brought the seeds first—then we would have all gone back for Silas!”
“You almost cost us our lives, Ora!”
“Such a damn fool!”
True, all of it.
In fact, now that I thought about it, that would have been the smart thing to do—only I wasn’t really thinking straight then. I saw Silas hanging there on that tree and the wraiths were far too close to him, and my body reacted on instinct. I couldn’t have stopped myself if I’d tried.
“Stop it, all of you,” March spat. “The game isn’t over yet. We still have to make it out. Move.”
It was a damn order, and I was sure someone was going to try to argue, but they didn’t. All I heard was the footsteps as they slowly started to walk ahead.
“Where are we, anyway?” said Mimi. “I can’t even see anything. Anybody?”
Light.
It sprang into existence out of nowhere, right over the palm of Anika’s hand.
It was small but we could see each other’s faces if we were close, at least. We could see the walls made of those same stone blocks in whatever corridor that hole had led us to, vines crawling on their surface, hiding between their edges.
We were definitely inside the tower.
“There. Let’s keep moving,” Anika said, pointing toward where the walls curved a little to the side.
She and Russ went first.
Reggie still held Silas by the arm to help him walk as they went behind them. The others followed.
March took my hand in his, and I could barely see his silhouette now that Anika was farther away. “You okay?”
“Fine. Let’s go.” I couldn’t wait to get this over with already.
It wasn’t long before we came upon a round hall, the walls of it also made out of the same stone blocks.
We’d reached the very top, apparently, because the ceiling was perfectly visible from here, high, round, with two square windows on either side that let in just a tiny bit of silver light.
The moon must have been shining outside.
On the wall across, there were four archways, each drenched in darkness. Four symbols were engraved on the stone over them—a spade, a club, a heart, and a diamond.
A bad feeling settled in my gut. This place wasn’t done with us yet, it seemed.
“They want to separate us,” Reggie said. “Tick that. We go through together. Just pick one and we’ll go there.”
“No,” Silas said, his arm still around Reggie’s shoulders.
He made an attempt to stand on his own, and to our surprise, he managed to keep his balance just fine.
His cheeks didn’t look as pale anymore, either—or maybe it was just the lack of light.
“If we don’t follow the rules of the game, they’ll never let us out.
It’s the Turning Trials. We either do what they want, or we don’t get out of here at all. ”
Silence for a tick. I knew Silas was right, but Time’s Teeth, I did not want to let go of March’s hand. I did not want to go into that darkness at all!
Yet I knew there was no other way. We all knew by now that this game meant business. It was not a joke. It was not fun like we’d all thought in the beginning. Like everybody in the realm believed—including Jinx.
It’s just games—fun and exciting games! No.
This was real and it was dangerous. And we really ought to get out of here as fast as we possibly could.
Reluctantly, we began to spread out. March squeezed my hand before he let go, looked at me in a way that said so much, but I couldn’t decipher the words just yet.
I didn’t have the headspace. I didn’t have the courage.
So I only nodded at him, and together with Cook and Silas, stopped in front of the archway marked with a spade.
“I guess we’ll see you on the other side,” Erith said with a wave of her hand. Her voice broke.
“Yes. I’ll see you on the other side. Each and every one of you,” Reggie said, looking at us in turn before his eyes stopped on Silas. “Don’t be late.”
I wanted to say something, too, or to at least smile at March who looked at me like he was seconds away from bursting into flames.
I couldn’t. I just lowered my head and walked into the archway, and once again, the darkness swallowed me whole.
The sound of footsteps was in my head. It helped to try to keep up the rhythm with my mind. That way I didn’t think. That way there was no time to wonder.
I had my hands out—I was sure the boys did, too. There was no way to see, and we weren’t Diamonds to be able to produce light so easily.
In fact, maybe we could with all those minutes in our Life Clocks, but for some reason we didn’t bother.
“Do you need to lean on me, Silas?” I whispered as we went, because not only had he been dried up by a timewraith in that tree, but he’d been manhandled by the tree itself, too.
“No, I’m fine. Thank you,” Silas said, his voice soft.
“How did you do that, Sy?” asked Cook from his other side. “How did you make the tree spill that juice?”
It was a question I wanted to know the answer to myself—and also an even better distraction from my own mind. From having to wonder and worry about where the others would end up. Where March would end up at the end of this nightmare.
“It wasn’t me—just the tree. I figured because of those rings that it had magic inside it, since, you know, it’s called the Tree of Years,” Silas said. “So I figured I’d cut holes on it and see if the time it contains would spill out. It worked better than I expected, to be honest.”
Except…something about the way he spoke just now wouldn’t let me believe him the way I always did.
“Did you know that the tree would lash out like that?” I asked.
Because I knew that he had. I’d seen it in his eyes when he’d turned to tell us to run, long before the tree had acted, while the wraiths had still been drinking the silver sap. He’d known.
“No,” Silas said.
Lie.
I wanted to call him out on it, but for whatever reason, I couldn’t. I wanted to ask him, too—how did you know, and how did you tear that tree’s bark so precisely? And did you think you were going to die? Did you know you were going to die when you did it?
“Brave Ora,” he whispered next. “Thank you for that.”
“No thanks needed. I almost killed everyone,” I muttered, thankful for the dark just now so they couldn’t see the flush of my cheeks.
“But you didn’t,” said both Silas and Cook at the same time.
A chuckle—Silas. “You give me hope, you know. All of you give me so much hope.”
Hope? “For what?” Because right now I was feeling quite hopeless.
“That not all Clockfolk is…messed up.”
This time Cook chuckled. “You know, you sometimes talk like you’re a hundred years old.”
Silas laughed. “But I’m merely eighteen.”
I agreed with Cook, though. He sometimes sounded like he wasn’t from this world at all.
“I think we’ll be all right. We’re at the top. It won’t take much longer now. We’ll be just fine,” Cook then said.
“Yes, we will,” said Silas.
The sound of our footsteps kept us company as we fell silent, each lost in our own heads, trying to either rethink through what had happened, or forget. I was somehow trying to do both at the same time, and maybe that’s why my head was threatening to split open right through the middle.
Maybe that’s why I didn’t notice the light burning at the other end of the tunnel—or did, but didn’t really register it until I was about ten feet away.
I stopped then.
Holy Hour, there’s light. We’d reached the end of the tunnel.
“You guys, it’s—”
I stopped again. Didn’t breathe, didn’t blink, didn’t move, only strained my ears to listen for the footsteps. Not mine, but those of Silas and Cook. The footsteps that I’d been listening to for the past…how long exactly had we been walking down this corridor?
Or rather, how long had I?
Because there was no other footsteps anywhere near me. There were no shadows, no silhouettes, no sound at all.
“Cook?” I breathed, suddenly terrified. “Silas?”
No answer.
I was all alone.
It made no sense. I’d had the sound of all three of our footsteps in my ears as I walked. When had it changed and how had I not noticed?
What in the Everstill was this place doing to me?!
“Shit, shit, shit,” I chanted under my breath, and with my hands fisted tightly around the axes, I shot forward as fast as I could without running. This game was most definitely not done with us yet, but I was done with it. So done.
Finally, light.
Lanterns on the stone walls every few feet, the fires in them small but there were plenty, so I saw everything around me. Mainly the three structures standing in the middle of the round room.
From here, they just looked like doors carved out of gray stone, massive, the top of them rounded.
But from the other side, they were mirrors.
“Holy Hour,” I said, a fist over my chest when I caught my reflection on them.
All three of my reflections, even though I wasn’t standing in front of any of them. I was still far to the side, slowly making my way around when I caught a glimpse of the glass.
The three mirrors stood side by side in the middle of the room, each with a different Ora reflecting in them, and each with a word engraved in big bold letters at the top:
brEAK - AND - FORSAKE
I took another look around just to make sure that I was all alone, that the boys weren’t coming through the tunnel behind me. Maybe I’d walked too fast without realizing it, or maybe they’d just gotten lost and they’d find their way soon—but no. These mirrors only showed me a reflection of me.