Chapter 43 #2
March stopped near me, and I instinctively dropped that small knife and grabbed his hand. I needed an anchor. I just needed an anchor before I floated all the way out of this world and got lost in an abyss.
“It’s over,” Reggie was saying. “We…we won. It’s over!”
But Silas wouldn’t hear it. “Nothing’s over, Reg. Nothing.” And he reached for the zipper of his suit pocket, sitting there on the ground still.
From it, he pulled out a silver chain attached to a clock. A very big clock.
At first I thought it was his Life Clock, as if I hadn’t seen that thing a hundred times already. As if I didn’t know that it was golden, not silver.
Then Silas stood up and he began to back away from us, his eyes locked on it.
Something smells like rotten seconds, I kept thinking, and squeezed March’s hand as he squeezed mine, too.
“Sy, buddy—let it go. It’s just the trial,” he said, but even he didn’t sound convinced of his own words, because he knew Silas wasn’t going to listen.
Instead he grabbed the silver chain in his other hand, and raised it up to show us the clock.
Not his Life Clock.
Not a chronobank, either.
A Timekeeper Clock spun around in the chain he held. A Timekeeper Clock that was for Timekeepers.
“Silas, what are you doing with that thing in your pocket?” I asked, and I didn’t even recognize my own voice, but I was moving. I’d let go of March and I was moving closer to him.
“I didn’t come here to survive, my friends,” Silas said instead, then wrapped the chain of his clock around his neck. “I didn’t come to play or to become a Hand or to win—I came here for one thing, and one thing only.”
His eyes closed. Others called his name. Reggie begged him—look at me, Sy, just look at me!—but Silas lowered his hands toward the ground instead, palms open, relaxed.
“I came here to expose them,” he said, his voice calm, even.
The air around him dimmed, became muted, as if the colors themselves were suddenly being drained. His magic bled unlike any I’d ever seen before—outward and in slow, deliberate ribbons of teal.
My jaw touched the ground. His magic was a blue-green glow that looked less like flame and more like illuminated water suspended midair. Less like the smoke that all our magic looked like, and more like pure light.
It hummed as it slipped out of his palms and spread about—or maybe that was Silas. His eyes were closed and he didn’t appear to be breathing at all.
“Silas, stop—what are you doing?!”
The next second, everything stopped instead.
Time glitched, missed a step, fell. Dust fell, too, upward, and shadows moved about us like they were drunk.
Black tendrils of smoke were suddenly everywhere, coming at us lightning fast, sharp as knives.
Screams, and we all moved closer to Silas, who’d finally opened his eyes.
They locked on mine, wide and horrified. “What are you doing, Silas—what is this?!” I whispered, my body too shocked to produce any actual voice.
But he shook his head as he now looked at the shadows around us.
“That’s not me,” he told me. “It’s them.”
The next second, the shadows attacked.
They were faster than the clockbeasts, much faster, and they were coming for us from all sides—no.
They were coming for Silas.
Blades were useless, though we tried to swing them at first—but what could blades do against shadows?
And one would wonder, what could shadows do to us, too?!
These ones could do plenty, it seemed.
They were no ordinary shadows. They grabbed us like they were the tentacles of some giant monster, like they had substance, like they were made out of bone and flesh and blood. They pushed us out of their way with such ease none of us stood a chance.
Suddenly I was flying in the air, and the blade slipped from my fingers just as my body slammed hard against the ground on my side. My eyes were wide open, though—I thought I was too shocked to pass out, even if I hit my head.
Before the second was over, before I’d even drawn in a breath, I was on my feet, trying to see through the darkness, trying to find the others, and I did.
March was ahead of me to my right, trying to push himself to stand.
A little farther away, Helen and Erith were holding onto each other, barely keeping their balance, and—
“SILAS!” someone screamed—could have been Mimi. I was running before I knew it, and March was right behind me, and Silas was on the ground, half lying, half sitting against the trunk of a tree, the shadows still hovering over his torso.
Reggie was already there, grabbing him by the shoulders, shaking him, pulling him to sit upright.
Silas, Silas—what happened, Silas—what was that, Silas—what did you do just now, Silas?!
Questions tumbled from our mouths at the same time, and we were all kneeling around him, looking out for those shadows at the same time as we took in his face—the blood dripping down his nose, the way he breathed so heavily, the way his skin had turned almost gray.
The way he held that Timekeeper Clock between his hands, too.
His hands that were glowing with that same teal color again.
“It’s okay. It’s safe,” Silas whispered. “It’s safe, they couldn’t get to it, it’s safe…”
He was talking about the clock.
“Hold on, okay? Just hold on. I’m going to carry you out of here—” Reggie made to grab him but Silas raised up a glowing hand and said, “No.”
Such a simple word but it carried so much weight.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Silas said, and closed that same hand around Reggie’s cheek. “I’m sorry, Reggie. I’m sorry to all of you. I tried.”
It made no sense—just like most things in the Labyrinth.
“What? What do you mean? What did you try?” asked one or the other, and that dread in me spread and spread and spread…
I died, and you asked questions.
“But it’s over now. It’s done. It’s only a matter of time before it explodes inwardly…”
His eyes closed.
I realized, Silas could really be dying.
“Silas.” I said his name like an accusation.
I leaned closer, grabbed his hands, warm and softly pulsating with life still.
I looked down at the Timekeeper Clock on his lap, too—and the hands were spinning.
Three sets of them on the clock’s face, and they were spinning without stop while the clock hummed and teal-colored electricity shots buzzed on the engraved silver surface every second.
“Silas, talk to me. Tell me what you did. Why is your magic green? Why do you have a Timekeeper Clock, Silas? Talk to me, please.” Because our very survival depending on it.
His survival depended on it, and whatever it was that had come over me, I wanted to do everything in my power to make sure he lived to see another day.
The others were right there with me.
We can help, they said.
Tell us how!
We’ve got magic, minutes to spare.
We’re in this together, aren’t we?!
We were.
But Silas smiled.
“You give me hope,” he said. “The Clockrealm will be okay. It’s almost over.”
“What’s almost over, Silas, what’s almost over?!”
“The curse.”
That stopped all of us at once.
“The curse?” someone asked—could have been me.
“The curse to end all curses once and for all. The curse that will stop them.” Silas’s eyes closed a little more.
My skin was far too tight for my body.
“Sy, c’mon! Let me carry you,” Reggie kept saying. “Please, just let me…let me…”
He was crying, too. We all were.
“It’s almost over,” Silas said, taking Reggie’s hand in his, bringing it over the Timekeeper Clock.
“Who, Silas?” I thought I said. “Stop who?!”
His eyes flickered to me once, too dull, already lifeless, but they still held my heart perfectly still for a beat.
“The queens,” he whispered.
The next second, the ground groaned and shook like lightning had suddenly struck it.
A scream came from behind us in the distance. A bright white light illuminated the twisted shadows of the forest.
We were all on our feet, shielding Silas, hands raised, magic at the ready—though none of us would really know what to even do with it.
“What did you do?!”
A voice, thin and sharp, assaulted my ears. A voice I knew well.
The white light grew closer and closer, and revealed her face with clarity. The White Queen looked murderous as she held up her hands over her head, glowing white.
“What did you do? I feel it in the air, I feel it—WHAT DID YOU DO?!”
Her scream could have been a monster’s roar.
“It’s over,” Silas said from behind us, and we had no choice but to step to the side, just slightly, so we could see him.
So he could see the queen, and the queen could see him.
She did.
Her eyes were two dark clouds, and her glowing hands shook as she slowly lowered them, coming closer and closer, half a step at a time. She looked like she wanted to eat Silas alive.
Holy Hour, she was a completely different person from the woman we knew.
“It’s already over. You can’t stop it now,” Silas said after a deep breath, and the queen smiled, but it was like her teeth were sharp and she was really a monster, not the White Queen.
“Impossible. You don’t have the power,” she hissed.
And Silas smiled, barely keeping his eyes open as he held onto Reggie’s hand. Reggie who looked just as lost as the rest of us, without a clue what was happening or what to expect.
“Why do you think I came here, Your Majesty?” Silas said. “I’ve used your Labyrinth to knit the magic together. It’s done. The curse took. The curse—”
A gut-turning scream. All the questions that kept on piling up in my head disappeared.
Three things happened at once.
Silas hissed as if he was suddenly in unimaginable pain.
Calren’s face appeared between the trees as he came running, both his hands outstretched, his palms glowing with that same teal color that shot toward us like ribbons.
And the White Queen raised her hands over her head again.
The last thing I heard was her screaming—“NEVER!”
Then the white of her light became too bright, too loud, too warm, and my body was no longer my own.
I fell, the ground cold against my cheek, my mind begging itself to hold on a moment longer, just until something made sense. Just until we made sure Silas was okay.
Because whatever this was, whatever was happening here, there would be an explanation for it all. There would be answers, not only questions—but we had to get out of this forest alive first.
But no matter how hard I tried to cling to my senses, to see or hear or feel something that wasn’t this scorching heat wrapped all around my body, I didn’t stand a chance. It was too powerful, and I barely had the means to resist to begin with.
My mind shut down—with Silas, March and the others in the very center, praying that I’d soon wake up and this would all turn out to be only a part of the game.
—THE END
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