Chapter 38 #3
Dust and stale air and darkness, before the light came through from behind me while Levana told me to move to the side to make way for her. I did so absentmindedly, then sat on my legs, my mouth wide open while my heart pounded in my chest.
“Time’s Teeth, they’re here.” Erith. “There’s plaques everywhere!”
Yes, there were.
Wrapped in white and black and gray sheets, there were bundles of twenty and thirty plaques all over this space—dark, dusty, the ceiling so low the top of my head almost touched it even sitting on my legs.
The plaques were here.
My heart was ready to break out of my ribcage. My mind was empty—finally, blissfully empty.
I reached in, coughing from the dust, and my fingers closed around the nearest bundle, the cloth old and slightly damp.
When I pulled it and unwrapped the edge, the light from Seth’s hand-lantern behind me caught the surface of a metal plaque—thin, the size of a large book, covered in rows of fine, precise inscriptions that glinted like silver—exactly-exactly-exactly right!
“Time’s Trousers, we actually found them. They’re here. They’re…they’re here…” Levana kept whispering to herself, her voice shaking.
I pulled another bundle, and another. All the hours, all the minutes, all the seconds they stole—it was all in here and I could hardly believe my own eyes.
“We’ll take at least one bundle each. That’s about a hundred and fifty plaques,” I said.
“That’s more than enough to prove any kind of pattern.” Erith.
“Let’s do it.” Levana.
So, we did.
Holy Hour, we did exactly that, picked a bundle full of metal plaques each, and dragged it right out of the hole in the wall. We got two for the boys as well, so they didn’t need to waste time crawling in there themselves.
“We’ll come back for the rest once everyone sees the proof,” said Russ, pulling the piece of wall back in place.
It slid just as smoothly as before, fell into place with that soft click, but now that we knew where it was, we saw the slight disruption on the wall’s surface.
Though it was incredibly fine, we saw it.
We’d find it again; there was no doubt about it.
We’d get all those plaques out for the whole world to see, however many there were.
Just as soon as we got out of here.
“All right,” said Seth, the dark gray sheet wrapped tightly around his fist. “We have what we came for. Can we please get out of this palace before I have a heart attack?”
We absolutely could.
We moved fast. Back through the kitchen, through the main hallways, turning corners like we knew exactly where we were going—and we didn’t but our feet did.
Russ led and we followed, not as silently as we’d have liked dragging the sheets behind us, but it was easy enough to do so we didn’t even consider picking them up.
It had been wrong, the paranoia. It had been wrong because we’d done it.
We’d actually done what we came here to do, and I’d actually gone stillward—how incredible was that, all on its own?
! I’d seen moments in time, all kinds of people, and events, even creatures—but right now was not the time to think about that, even if all those images seemed to suddenly be spinning in my head.
Right now, we needed to wait for Master Talik and March, and then we’d get out of the Labyrinth, and all would be over.
The Red Queen would have no choice but to give us our memories back.
She’d have no choice once the world knew her true face.
She would take full responsibility for all she’d done—she and her sister both.
The corridors were still empty, which I was choosing to see as a blessing. We reached the side door and Russ pushed it open, and the cold night air going down my throat made me feel like I’d been underwater for hours.
The mechanical garden was ahead of us, beyond the trees. We’d found it by accident the last time—but maybe it hadn’t been an accident at all. Maybe it was Time’s way of offering a helping hand. Maybe He knew that we’d be back here all along.
Maybe.
We ran, smiles on our faces, the sheets firmly in our hands, the metal plaques wrapped perfectly in them.
We ran straight to the garden, and we saw the tall hedges that weren’t hedges at all, and we slipped between them, onto the pathway that snaked all around the space while low posts topped with dim lanterns illuminated the way here and there.
Freedom. Every breath I took tasted like freedom—just before everything exploded.
The sound reached me first, I think.
Then the light.
Then the blast.
It seemed to just materialize out of thin air—or maybe it rose from the ground right in front of our feet?
The grass blades made of some kind of fiber.
The trees made of brass, and the leaves made of plastic painted green.
The rosebushes and the vines and the flowers—they all exploded from within at the same time, and the sound of it was like thunder.
The light was bright enough to blind me.
The blast was strong enough to pick me up and throw me back and slam me against something hard.
I passed out before a single thought could cross my mind.