Chapter 2
Russell Gere
The long grass blades on the field that stretched from the side of the houses and beyond where the eye could see were just starting to turn silver.
Everyone saw it when they woke up at first light, because Sparetime fell thick and heavy during the night when everyone was asleep—silent as a thief, layer upon layer—
Actually, that’s not entirely true.
Not for that night, nor the ones before it, going back at least a couple of weeks.
Sparetime did fall thick and heavy during the night, but lately not everyone was asleep while it did.
Lately, the boy who’d been a Hand in the 31st Turning Trials was out there, sitting cross-legged just where his backyard ended and the field began, and he watched.
He watched in silence all night long as layer upon layer of Sparetime settled itself onto the fields that held the thickest, tallest grass in the realm for this purpose only—to better catch the Sparetime and to more easily harvest it once it settled.
This area of the third quadrant of the Court of Diamonds did not get as much Sparetime as the rest, but all places close to The Spill, which was the very edge of the Clockrealm, got plenty of it year-round.
It was the time wasted, moments lost or skipped, the natural produce of every single second that ticked from the Great Clock spread out—thick and ready to be harvested, to be converted into pure energy, then sealed inside diamonds to be used by the Clockfolk.
Which was also the point of the Turning Trials, the boy thought as he watched the tips of the grass blades turn whiter and whiter.
Sparetime was invisible when it was airborne, but somehow it looked like silver dust once it settled.
It fascinated the former Hand to watch it, and it emptied his own mind of all the darkness, and it gave him so much more peace than sleep could, which was why he was sitting there on the ground.
Watching, all by himself. Waiting for Sparetime all night long.
Easier than facing himself.
Or rather…what was left of him.
“RUSS!” called his sister from the front of the house the moment the door opened, but the boy didn’t turn. Eveline was her name, and though he cared about her dearly, he also couldn’t stand the sight of her long, nor the sound of her voice.
He couldn’t stand the sight and sound of anyone at all lately, and it was all because of them.
“Hey, are you deaf?! Get over here and help me with the containers!” Eveline called again, but the former Hand didn’t move.
There was time to prepare the containers for the harvest. It wouldn’t begin for another two hours, and he still needed another moment to get ready for the day.
Nights were easy. He rarely slept anymore, because of what he saw in the darkness of his mind—thin red lips and wild curly hair, whispers and pain, broken clocks and rabid beasts—but outside, the fields were so quiet.
He could listen to the owls hooting and the wind caressing the land while he watched.
Night didn’t refuse to tell him the truth—the people who were out and about in the day did.
Eveline called and called, as annoying as she could be.
You better get here and help me if you want to eat breakfast! she said, and I’m going to go tell Momma, she said, and just because you lost your memories don’t mean I gotta put up with your attitude!
It wasn’t just because he’d lost his memories, though. It was because she, along with everyone else, refused to speak a single word to him about it.
And if we wanted to be really picky, the former Hand didn’t have an attitude. He simply…couldn’t bring himself to care about anything since he came back.
Even so, when the sun rose higher in the sky, he stood up and went about his chores, and his mother did scold him with a light tap on the back of his head when they went in for breakfast. His father was still asleep, having drunk wine until midnight, and he preferred it that way. Him he could stand even less.
“You’ve got to put on the weight you lost,” his mother told him when he left his plate half-finished again.
“I’m fine,” the boy said
, but she wouldn’t hear it.
“With no meat on your bones, how are you going to run fast enough when they come?”
The former Hand knew exactly who they were—the timewraiths that always lurked just close to the fields, waiting for Sparetime.
They had units of the queens’ soldiers permanently stationed very near their home, equipped to take care of the monsters with the long fingers and their never-dying thirst for time.
It was his job to go calling for the soldiers the moment he spotted the wraiths near the fields.
He had to run as fast as he could, lest the wraiths make it all the way to town, and then everything would be over.
“I’ll be fine,” the former Hand insisted, for he no longer had the same rush of fear going through him at the thought of wraiths, like he’d had all his life.
But when he made for the door, his mother stepped in front of him, twice as wide as his bony shoulders, her fists against her hips as she looked up at him from dark, almost black eyes.
Then she slowly turned her head aside. “Aren’t you gonna give your momma a kiss before you leave?”
Aren’t you ever going to tell me what happened to me in Neverwhen?
Of course, he said no such thing. He’d tried once—it hadn’t ended well. So, the thought remained in his head, and his lips kissed the soft cheek of his mother while Eveline rolled her eyes from the table, and then the day really began.
He went through the motions. Helped with the containers, placed them into the large vehicle that gathered the Sparetime from the fields, and then when they were done, he loaded the containers onto the trucks to be sent to the Factory—the place where they compressed Sparetime, then put it into diamonds.
He did this with all the kids his age that lived in town, whenever school was out, and though he’d hated it before, now it was a relief to have something to move for.
It was a relief to have something to focus on, other than the stares and the sorry smiles and the flinches of the boys and girls he grew up with, most of whom he’d considered friends before.
But friends didn’t let friends lose their memories and not tell them all about it no matter what any decree said, royal or otherwise.
At least that was the former Hand’s belief.
And none of his friends had wanted to hear about it when he still cared to speak, to ask questions, to demand they tell him what he’d lost.
It wasn’t fair, was it? It wasn’t fair that the whole world knew what he’d lost, and he himself, one of the few they claimed saved them all, remained so…empty. Completely hollowed out.
So, he kept to himself now, didn’t speak to anyone, and they eagerly left him alone for they knew he only had questions if they cornered him.
They did not like his questions at all.
In his mind, the former Hand was in another place altogether while he worked.
He was in Neverwhen, in that arena where he’d woken up with eight others around him, people who were dressed in almost identical clothes, with almost identical expressions on their faces.
They’d all thought it was a good thing to be woken up in the middle of a foreign place, with people cheering their names, throwing roses at them, waving. They’d all thought it was a good thing.
And then they’d found out it wasn’t.
The former Hand had never felt more worthless than when he was put into that carriage with a scroll in his hands and told he was going home. No explanation, no nothing—just a new chronobank full of minutes, and money in his bank account.
Except he couldn’t exactly do magic, and he couldn’t access the money in his new account until he started school—which was the one thing that made him…
less stressed. His father (and his mother) were counting down the days before they could get their hands on what he’d earned in exchange for his memories for four whole weeks—and sometimes, when he was out there sitting in front of the field, looking at the sky, he liked to fantasize about having the courage to leave.
To get up and tell his parents that what he’d earned was his, and he was going to use it to start a life for himself away from them, that he didn’t want to be living here in this town, but away.
Far away from them. From anything he knew.
Yes, he fantasized regularly.
But this was real life, not a fantasy. And in real life, the former Hand finished all his chores, stayed past dinner hoping he’d be alone to eat in the kitchen by the time he made it home, that his father wouldn’t be there with his wine, making plans about all the things he was going to do when he had access to the former Hand’s bank account.
All the while he wished he could just disappear.
Even when his sister went inside and left him alone to drag the last container into the shed.
Even when his limbs were shaking, his stomach rumbling, his mind screaming, he wished he could just disappear.
The shed was huge, the ceiling high, and every small noise echoed at least a dozen times, so when he finally pushed the plastic container in place, and a cry escaped him, ripped from his very soul.
The echo of it stayed in his ears for a good while.
There he stood with his eyes closed, his hands on the edges of the barrel-shaped plastic that buzzed still with Sparetime residue.
It was as tall as him, so he could lean against it, press his forehead to the cold surface, breathe and try not to think, or at least think of something else.
Something other than the fact that his life felt stolen from him, just taken out of his hands.
Something other than the emptiness gnawing at his insides so much worse than the hunger.
Something other than the other Hands who’d looked so excited to be standing in a circle with him that day, before they were all taken away by soldiers.
Soldiers—like they were some kind of criminals.
He’d gone to the Turning Trials to gather courage to choose himself, this boy. Better yet—to prove to himself that he could stand on his own.
Now here he was, crying in a shed full of empty Sparetime containers.
Minutes passed, and then he straightened up, wiped his face, and turned to leave.
He hadn’t noticed the two shadows falling just behind his feet at all, and he didn’t see the two men waiting for him by the shed’s doors in the dark until it was too late.