Chapter 15
Nobody moved—how could we?
We were frozen in the doorway of a room beyond a wall that just disappeared into thin air, staring at a boy who was barely breathing, and a cat that had just spoken.
“Did that…did that cat just…” Russ couldn’t finish his question.
The cat did.
“Talk? Yes. Quite well, in fact. Better than most of you, I’d wager,” it said, raising its head a little as its grin stretched wider than any mouth should stretch on any face, human or otherwise.
Something in my mind stabbed and screamed and burned.
“Time’s Teeth,” Mimi whispered, and she grabbed my arm so hard her nails bit through my sleeve—she had been right behind me.
“Time’s Teeth, indeed. Terribly rude of Him, too, if you ask me. Which you didn’t, but I’m telling you regardless because that’s what I do.”
A talking cat-a talking cat-a talking cat…yet I wasn’t all that surprised, to be honest.
Which begged the question, why? Cats didn’t talk. Animals didn’t talk.
Yet the cat stretched on the boy’s lap, arching its back, its fur rippling with more numbers, and continued, ”I tell people things they didn’t ask for and don’t want to hear.”
“Is this real?” asked one of the boys—I thought Cook.
“Or is this some kind of an illusion?”
“What…what are you?” Anika breathed.
The cat yawned. Actually yawned, showing teeth that were too sharp, far too many. “What a dull question,” it said. “You should be asking who—or better yet, when. But I suppose that’s beyond most of you.”
Holy Hour, a hurricane of senseless words spun in my mind, and in the storm, there was one that stood out more than most, and I had no idea why.
“Glitch,” I said because sometimes speaking out loud made it easier to tame those storms.
And the cat grinned. “No, no—I am not the glitch. I merely live in them, as would all Cheshires if others existed.”
I blinked and blinked and chased my own thoughts in my head like a dog its tail…
“Do they?” Were there more cats like this out there that we didn’t know about?
“Of course not,” it said, turning its head to the side like it was offended.
“There is only one Cheshire, and that is I.” It licked its paw for a short second, in which I was almost eleven-hours certain I’d heard that voice before.
Male, and thick but also smooth, just…different.
“Now, are you going to stand there until he dies, or are you going to do something useful?”
Dies.
The word hit me like a bucket of ice-cold water on my face. My eyes moved from the cat to the boy slumped against the metal hook, his chest barely moving.
His skin wasn’t just pale. It was gray, almost translucent, like something underneath was dimming. His lips were cracked. His hands were curled loosely around an object—a clock. A bigger clock than most, bigger than all chronobanks I’d ever seen.
I went closer before I realized what I was doing, but I wasn’t the only one. Mimi and March were right beside me when we lowered to our knees close to the boy.
The cat leapt off his lap with an offended flick of its tail and began to move away toward the wall that wasn’t a wall, but a perfectly silent, perfectly even waterfall.
“Is this…is this Silas?” I asked—the cat, mind you. I was speaking directly to a cat.
And it answered. “Who else would he be?”
Mimi’s shaking hand closed around the boy’s pale cheek.
“Silas,” she breathed, closed her eyes, sighed. “He’s ice cold.”
March touched his hand. I touched his neck. Ice cold, indeed, but he was breathing.
Mimi tried again, “Silas, can you hear me?”
I didn’t expect anything to happen, which was why I was so shocked when his head moved.
Just barely—a tilt, a shift, like his neck couldn’t quite hold the weight of it anymore—but it was movement, and that’s what counted.
“How long has he been here? What…what in Time’s Trousers happened here?” Seth said from behind us.
“Oh, you don’t want to know what happens in Time’s trousers, I assure you, young one.” The cat was grinning. The cat was laughing. “But the Timekeeper has been here a while.”
A second of silence.
“Not the Timekeeper—him,” I said because he had to know we were talking about Silas.
“Yes—him,” the cat replied. “Pay attention, O-ra.”
I was falling, falling, falling, and there was no bottom to where I fell.
“My name is Ora.” That’s what I said, instead of asking, how do you know my name? Not entirely certain why that didn’t seem as important at that moment.
Thoughts spiraled and images flashed and suddenly I had no more skin to hold me together, but I was loose. I was one with the air, spreading, expanding.
“Ora.”
A hand on my arm and March’s face was right there. I wondered, if he hadn’t been here, how would I have found my way back to sanity? Because he seemed to be the only one who kept me grounded. I kept floating and falling at the most inappropriate times.
“You’re okay,” he said, as if to remind me. And I was.
“I don’t understand. What…what’s happening here? How did this boy get in here through that wall?” Mimi asked, moving a little to the side. “Who is he?”
We all held our breaths as we waited for the cat’s answer…
“The Timekeeper—do you listen with your ears? The Timekeeper.” The cat sat down on its hind legs and began to lick its paw, always grinning.
I looked at March. As confused as I was, if not more. All the others were the same, a few worse.
“He’s not a Timekeeper. We can see him—this boy’s not a Timekeeper,” Anika insisted with a shaking voice.
And the cat said, “So you would rather believe the evidence of your own eyes? How typical.”
I wondered if he realized how senseless he sounded.
I wondered if I’d ever find out why I was tempted to believe it more than I did my eyes. It was a talking cat that knew my name the wrong way and who called this boy a Timekeeper when he was clearly a Spade, judging by his light blond hair.
And judging by his suit…
“A Hand,” Mimi said, slowly lowering on her knees near the boy, her shaking hands hovering just over his arm. “He’s a…he’s a Hand.”
Yes, he was. Because his suit was that same suit we’d all had on when we first woke up in the arena that day. The same suit, and it was stained with something black, too, which the Timekeeper woman had told me was just grime and oil.
This boy’s suit had the exact same stains—and the same colors as my suit. Black and purple.
He was definitely a Spade, and… “He’s been here since the trials?” I asked in half a breath, and now all of us were kneeling around the boy, looking at his pale face. His eyes were moving beneath his lids. Flickering, like he was dreaming, or trying to wake from one.
Time’s Teeth, my heart was about to come right out of my chest.
“S-s-silas,” I said, and the name tasted strange on my tongue, but also right.
“We’re here, Silas. Open your eyes,” said Mimi, touching his fingers with hers.
None of us expected him to hear her. To listen.
But the boy opened his eyes the next second.
Gasps. Sharp intakes of breath. Locked limbs.
His eyes were a pale gray, like smoke or mist or something in between, and for a second, they saw nothing. They looked right through me the way the Timekeeper’s did, focused on something far away, somewhere I couldn’t reach.
Then they found me.
And March. And Mimi.
“For all the minutes he spent sitting there, I thought his eyes would have changed color, but alas…”
All our attention snapped back to the cat as the boy with the gray eyes continued to take us all in, no expression on him. His eyes bounced from one face to the other, and I feared we scared him looking so completely confused and terrified as we did.
“What do you mean, minutes? It’s been a month since the trials ended!” Erith whispered, and the cat stopped licking its paw for a second to look up at her.
Said, “Has it now.” Then continued.
“Silas,” I whispered again, as if trying to make sure that I could say it.
And his eyes stopped on me once more.
It felt like the attention of an entire world.
“Can you hear us?” What a silly question, but an important one all the same.
His lips parted. His brows rose a little.
He could hear us, and…
“Where…”
His voice.
His voice that was buried so deep in my mind it felt like it had awakened from the dead. Thick and hoarse and barely over a whisper, but we understood the word.
We understood the question.
“Where is…” His eyes, gray and wide, moved on our faces again slowly, while we all held our breath and waited. “Where is…Reggie?”
Everybody paused. Our hearts paused, too.
That name.
I looked at March and he looked at me again, and then we looked at everyone else as we had before—and as we probably would again.
The boy’s hand moved.
Shaking, barely controlled, his free hand rose from his lap and reached for my wrist as I was closest to him. His fingers were so cold they burned my skin, yet I didn’t even consider moving away.
His eyes, though, were locked on March’s, who was kneeling just beside me, and he said, “Where is Reggie?!”
His voice was a bit stronger now, a bit louder. His chin shook and his eyes glazed over with tears.
Something-something-something smells like rotten seconds, went my thoughts, before the boy said, “Where is Helen?!”
Names spiraling in my mind.
Thoughts spiraling out of control again.
Then Mimi whispered, “Who’s Helen?” Which was exactly what I was trying to think, too, except…
Tears slid down his cheeks. I saw them, big and glossy and wet, and I felt like I was drowning in each one of them.
But the boy moved, sat up straighter against that strange hook, blinked the tears away and looked around us once more, then turned to the other side.
Said, “Cheshire.”
The cat stopped licking its paw.
“Yes, Timekeeper?”
Why-why-why are you calling him a Timekeeper?!
“How long have I been here?”
“An hour,” said the cat, the same second Mimi and Seth both spoke at the same time, said, “A month.”
His head whipped back and forth between us and the cat, and then the boy said, “Why don’t they know? What happened, Cheshire? Tell me—what happened?”
“How should I know—I’m only a cat who sat on your lap since you’ve been here. The hour was plenty long, and you snore sometimes, too. But your lap was comfortable enough, I would guess.” Then he started moving, sideways.
The cat walked, but it walked sideways and it was the strangest thing I’d seen—the way he put his two left paws under and in front of the right ones without even falling.
“You…you’re a Hand,” March said. “We were Hands, too, in the Turning Trials. They ended a month ago. You’ve…you’ve been here a month.”
Impossible, my mind whispered. Nobody could have survived stuck here behind the wall for a month without food or water—least of all if they were unconscious the way this boy here had been.
“You keep saying hour wrong,” said the cat as it moved closer and closer to the boy’s other side. “I suppose it is to be expected, considering the state of your minds.”
“What state?” Mimi asked, but the boy was looking around us now, raising his head, staring at the walls.
“A pocket,” he finally whispered. “He put me in a pocket.”
“He most certainly did, Timekeeper,” said the cat who’d stopped again near his legs and continued to lick his paw.
“Who?” I said, nearly choking on the word. “Who put him…” in a pocket?!
Had they lost their minds, or was it just me?
The cat looked at me, paused. “Why, the Timekeeper.”
Yes, it was most definitely just me because I felt like I’d lost my mind, too.
“Calren,” the boy then whispered, and he let go of me, tried to push himself up. “Where is Calren?”
Finally, a name we knew.
“Outside,” Mimi said, her eyes full of tears she had yet to let shed. “He…he passed out. He’s outside. Who is he?” Mimi reached out and touched his cheek. “Who are you?”
And who is Reggie?
And who is Helen?
And who is—
“Cheshire.” The boy’s voice cut my thoughts in half. He watched Mimi with wide, unblinking eyes. “Why don’t they remember?!”
Laughter.
The cat laughed and laughed, turned over on its back and giggled, wiggled, spun all around.
“Oh, I do so love that question. It was a glitch, young Timekeeper, a glitch unlike any other—unlike you yourself!”
The boy then tried to push himself up to his feet. We all jumped, too—except he must have overestimated his strength because he fell back against the hook with a groan and a sigh, and his eyes closed once more.
“Silas, Silas, Silas,” the others called, while my jaw remained locked.
They asked him questions, tried to reach out and touch his cheek, but he didn’t respond.
Yet he was still breathing, and my eyes were stuck to his chest, and as long as it rose and fell, I thought, it was okay.
Not sure how okay, but at least a little bit. It had to be.
“Is he…will he make it?” March asked—and he was talking to the cat who was back to resting its chin over his crossed paws right there on the boy’s other side. Just near his legs.
“How should I know? I’m a cat, not a physician.”
“But you said he was dying,” said Seth, and his voice broke—but he wasn’t.
I was looking at the boy’s chest—he wasn’t dying. People didn’t breathe when they died.
“I said, are you going to stand there until he dies. There’s a difference,” the cat calmly said. “One is a statement. The other is a question about your priorities.”
It paused mid-lick. Looked at us—so, so strange—those eyes moving from face to face with an intelligence that had no business being in an animal. How are you real? “He’s been here a long time by your measurements. By mine, it was last hour. Or the next hour—it’s really all about perspective here.”
No sense.
He made no sense at all.
“It’s really about—”
“Cheshire.”
That voice.
Silas moved his lips, though his eyes were still closed, and how could one know a voice they’d never heard before so well?
“Stop playing with them.”
A pout.
A pout on a cat that was stranger than a grin on a cat.
“But I never get to play,” was his answer, and the boy had already opened his eyes halfway.
“We’re in a pocket,” he said, looking at March, then me, then Russ and the others. One after the other, like he was searching.
Searching for someone who wasn’t there.
“The longer we stay here the bigger the toll on our bodies. We need real time and real air. We need to get out.”
Real time and real air, he said.
“I’ll carry you out,” March said without missing a beat. “But once we’re out there, you’re going to tell us everything.”
The boy looked up at him, eyes half open still, and it was clear to see he was barely staying awake.
But even so, he said, “Everything.”
It was a good enough promise for me, and it was a good enough promise for March.