“Full? What do you mean,full?” Russ asked from the other side, still rubbing his neck, not daring to go close to March, but he was curious enough to stand on his tiptoes to see better.
“It means it contains a memory,” March said, and every inch of my skin rose in goose bumps.
A memory.
“Is ityours?” Anika spit with all the hatred she could muster into those three words.
“No, I…no, it’s not. I just…”drew it.
Why did I draw it?Wasit mine for real?
“So, whose is it?” asked Russ, and another tick went by in silence.
“There’s a way to find out,” March said and stepped back. Fell on one knee on the floor, just like that.
“That’ll cost you minutes,” Levana said, but she was already stepping back, too, pulling Anika with her.
“What will?” I asked, unsure whether I wanted to keepwatching or stop this nonsense right now before it got even more out of hands.
“To open it,” March said and looked up at me. “IfI can.”
A heartbeat, and the wordsno, don’t!died on my lips. It probably wasn’t smart to do this, not here and not now in front of all these people, but I also couldn’t help myself. If there was indeed a memory inside that thing, and we could actuallyseeit, I wanted to know. I had to know—because why would I have drawn this?
But…what if it wasmine?
What if it was my memory in there somehow?
What if…Iwas the criminal, and someone had removed the memory of a crime from my mind?
Shivers danced on every inch of my skin. I watched with my mouth open as March held his hand over the device and red smoke slipped out of his palm while he called for his magic. He looked at me for another moment, as if to give me time to stop him if that’s what I wanted—and I did.
But I couldn’t. I had to see. Ihadto.
So, he reached for the pocket of his pants and pulled out his Life Clock, and we all gathered around closer, leaned in to see better as the hand moved and the minutes expended with March’s magic.
One minute, two, four…
His jaws locked. The red of his magic became more intense.
“March,” I thought I said because his muscles were strained again and he looked almost like he was in pain.
But March didn’t stop until nine minutes were spent from his Life Clock—and then the device hissed.
The magic faded.
He stood up and stepped back, his arms out to tell us to move, too. Another hiss, and all those metal strings that werewrapped around the device began to retreat, reshape themselves below, setting the small glass ball in the middle free.
Stop, stop, stop, st?—
All at once, colors burst out of the glass and spread around us. Most screamed as we jumped back, myself included. The library was drenched in colors that were coming straight from that little light that had burned at the center of the glass ball.
It was a projection, half faded, but plenty clear to see exactly what it wanted us to see.
The mechanical garden outside the palace.
A boy standing not ten feet in the distance with his hands in his pockets, watching the steam curl up what looked like a rosebush to his side.
It was Silas.
