Chapter 33 #2
“Let’s get the benches prepared, guys. C’mon, let’s settle,” said Mimi, and she was right. The benches were still by the walls just like they had been that night when I came to see Master Talik. Which made me wonder if he’d maybe overslept and had forgotten that we had a lecture today?
Then March looked at me, and his eyes were like magnets for mine. The others were already by the benches—they were apparently heavier than they’d looked—so it was just him and me there by the door still, our eyes locked, our memories flashing before our eyes. Or at least mine.
“Hi.”
What a stupid thing to say. What a stupid, stupid thing to say, but it was all I had. Hi.
An arched brow. He really did know how to make me feel both like I was on top of the Great Clock, and the most pathetic person to have ever existed.
“You disappeared,” he then said, and everything inside me squeezed.
My mouth opened to say something—you were asleep or it was easier that way or anything at all—but nothing came out of me. Not a single sound.
March then nodded, like he got exactly the answer he was expecting, and with the suspicion hiding the red hues of his eyes, he went to help the others with the benches.
Meanwhile I was flustered, barely able to see in front of me, and I just walked ahead toward the main table where Reggie stood by himself, ignoring the others calling for us to help them.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, I chided myself in my mind. I should have said something. A word—any word.
Better yet—I shouldn’t have cared that he accused me of disappearing because I had! And if I went back in time, I’d do the same thing again, simply because it was easier. What was so wrong with easy?!
Nothing.
Except maybe the way he’d held me. The way he’d taken me to his tub. The way he’d carried me to his bed. The way we’d both slept without moving an inch away from one another. The way we’d both chosen that, despite him having no trust, and me having no compassion.
Maybe.
“What’s, uh…what’s that?” I said, even though I didn’t really see anything in front of me yet.
Reggie nudged me with his elbow. “Look. It’s moving,” he said, and pressed his finger on a device unlike any I’d seen before.
It was like a ball made of these metal bands engraved with lines so fine I couldn’t see if they were letters or symbols or just decorations.
The bands, possibly about twenty of them, were thinner than my pinky finger, and they were somehow connected because when Reggie pressed onto the top, they all moved, spun around in themselves one after the other, then created the same ball from the other side.
Reggie pushed one band and all the others moved in sync, so smoothly, like they weren’t made out of metal at all.
“I’ve never seen anything like it. What do you think it is?” Reggie asked.
“No idea,” I said, and leaned in to play with the circular bands as well. They moved so smoothly, it was actually really satisfying. Whichever way you pushed, all the other bands just rearranged themselves in the same way and the same speed.
“Maybe he’ll teach us about it today,” said Reggie, and he made to go to the others, who were dragging the tables to the center of the room while a few gathered all the scattered devices and put them into the boxes lining the shelves.
“Hey, wait.” I grabbed Reggie’s arm. “The other night when you were coming out of the workshop. What were you and Master Talik talking about?”
I’d been meaning to ask Reggie since then, but we never seemed to be alone for longer than a second. Right now the others were far, and none of them paid us attention—except Silas and March, but still they couldn’t hear us.
Reggie smiled, a little confused. “What? What other night? I’ve never been to the workshop at night.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m serious, Reggie. What did you guys do? Master Talik seemed pretty shook after—and you didn’t look well, either.” He’d been pale and he could barely stand. I’d thought he was going to fall on his face.
The smile on Reggie’s face faltered. He narrowed his brows, shook his head. “I swear, I don’t know what you’re talking about, Ora. What night?”
I was tempted to laugh. “Stop it, Reggie. I’m serious.”
“I’m serious, too!” He laughed. Put his hands over my shoulders and basically shook me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Then he turned around and left, and I stared after him with my mouth wide open.
I stared after him, too stunned to move for a little while, and my eyes locked on Silas as he took his seat behind the first bench. His jaw was locked and I could have sworn something flashed in his eyes, something like regret. Something like sorry.
Then the door opened and Master Talik came in, in tow with Calren.
My ears whistled as I went to sit with the others, eyes on Reggie and Silas and Reggie again. He was smiling, whispering something to Mimi and Seth, same as always—except that night.
That night that I’d seen him coming out of this very workshop, barely standing. I’d seen him with these very eyes…
…had I?
Had this place really messed with my mind so much that I could no longer even trust my own memories?
“Settle down, settle down, everyone,” Calren said. “Apologies for the delay, but Master Talik is here now.” He dragged his usual chair to its spot by the door, a fake smile on his face before he unbuttoned his black jacket and sat down.
I sat on the last bench with Erith and Anika.
March was in front of me with Levana and Helen, and he didn’t even look back at me like usual.
No, his eyes were on Master Talik, who practically stumbled through the room to get to his table in the front, and he looked more than exhausted. He looked almost drunk.
When he made it to his table muttering his good day, Hands, he froze for a split second, too. Froze when he saw whatever that ball made out of metal bands was, and then he grabbed it. Moved around the table while keeping the device half hidden under his apron.
By the time he made it to the other side of the table, it was gone. His hands were empty.
I leaned down to try to see better. Had he put it under the table somewhere? Maybe there was one of those boxes full of tools he always had around him?
“Master Talik—what’s that thing you were working on? Can I have it?” Reggie.
The panic in the old Timekeeper’s eyes was evident.
“Settle down, Reggor. We’ll begin shortly,” he said.
“But what is it? I’ve never seen anything like it before,” Reggie insisted. “I’d love to keep it—as a souvenir from the Labyrinth.” Of course, he was joking. Reggie was always joking, always grinning.
Except that night.
“No.” Master Talik’s voice was sharp, final, very unlike Master Talik’s voice. Even Reggie was taken aback. “We may begin in a moment.”
The Timekeeper went to the other end of the table, to the boxes on the built-in shelf in this shallow alcove at the corner where the wall pressed inward.
“Fine. I only asked,” Reggie muttered and settled back on the bench.
That’s when March turned to throw me a look that said everything, and nothing at all. A look you could give a stranger, a friend, or a foe.
I was neither to him, as he was neither to me. Maybe that’s why I was so uneasy.
What a day, what a day, what a strange, strange day.
“What’s up with the Timekeeper?” Erith asked. “He seems off.”
“No idea,” Anika said. “But they do say Timekeepers operate on their own times.”
A tick of silence.
“What’s up with you?” Erith was staring at me now. “You look…different. I can’t put my finger on it.”
“She does, right?” said Anika, like she was just noticing, as she leaned back a little to see me better. Meanwhile March leaned back on his bench and I could have sworn his shoulders shook a little. I could have sworn he was stopping himself from laughing.
Heat on my cheeks. “Nothing. I didn’t sleep much last night, that’s all,” I muttered to the girls.
“No, that’s not it,” said Anika. “I didn’t sleep much last night, either, but—”
“All right, everyone.” Master Talik.
Master Talik was standing in front of his table again, looking at us, and he probably had no idea that he practically just saved my life. I wouldn’t die of embarrassment, at least not today.
“Where were you, Master Talik? I didn’t know you ever left the workshop,” Mimi asked from the second row.
“Yeah. I was pretty sure you live in this room,” said Russ.
“And that you never sleep,” said Levana with a nod.
“I was called away to help with some adjustments,” Master Talik said, and Erith and Anika were invested enough that they didn’t even look at me again. “The Labyrinth is a big machine. It requires assistance often.”
“Not that often, though,” Silas said from the front. “At least not from a Royal Timekeeper.” Master Talik looked at him with his lips pressed. “Unless…something’s wrong.”
“Things are always wrong with devices,” the man said. “Especially ones like this place.”
“How does it do it, anyway?” asked Cook from Silas’s other side. “How does the Labyrinth actually do what it does? What kind of fixing does it even need?”
It was a question I’d thought about myself a lot of times—and now I was invested, too. Enough to ask, “Is there a reason why it was built so close to the Great Clock, Master Talik?”
The man’s mouth fell open. He looked from Cook to me to Silas and to everyone, and he shook his head only slightly before he turned to the front of the room. To where Calren sat.
“All right, that’s enough, everyone. Sit tight and listen to your lecture. We don’t have much time before we have to go through everything,” Calren then said, clapping his hands together.
“It’s just a question,” someone muttered, but Master Talik had already brought a device that looked sort of like a clock to the main table, and he started telling us about all the ways one could go about fixing more complicated clocks.
He spoke slower. Even his eyes weren’t open all the way.
The man was exhausted, yet nobody seemed to care. Had he really worked all night? And what kind of issues needed to be fixed by a Royal Timekeeper, when this place was brimming with normal workers?
Rotten seconds, said the voices in my head. Something stinks like rotten seconds.
That was the first time I admitted to myself that I was actually looking forward to going back home. I couldn’t wait, in fact. To leave here, to see Mother and Father. My cousins. My friends.
For the first time since I’d gotten on that carriage, I really couldn’t wait to be done with these trials.
But then another terrifying thought filled me with dread. With the way things had gone for me these past couple weeks, what would going back home be like for me?