Ah, yes. The brother. Elida’s brother. The Timekeeper.
A face half lost in my mind came to the surface suddenly.
“Calren,” Cook whispered, and then the face became clearer, only for a moment.
“He did,” Levana said. “He said we’d be free when the trial was over.”
“But what if that’s not true? What if…we finish the trials and we’re still stuck here? What if we’re not free?” Anika whispered.
Tears in my eyes. Tears in most pairs of eyes around me as well.
March exhaled, and I felt the breath more than heard it. “Then we make sure we find them,” he said. His voice was low. Quiet, but steady. “Together.” And he squeezed my hand.
I didn’t know if I should have been comforted or terrified by the promise in his tone, but something about it made my chest tighten.
“Let’s write it down, then.” Mimi sat up straighter and reached for something in the pocket of her pajamas—her Life Clock. She pulled it out, and then a dark green light flashed on her other hand.
When the light faded, it left behind a little notebook with a green cover no bigger than her hand and a pen next to it.
She sat cross-legged again, put her Life Clock on one knee, and opened the notebook over the other.
“We’re stuck here with each other anyway. And we all know something’s wrong. Let’s make a pact to figure it out once it’s over,” she said and started writing.
“A pact,” I said, and a few others echoed it, too.
Yes, a pact made perfect sense.
“If we don’t get our memories back, and if they don’t free us, we will figure a way out by ourselves,” Erith said from the bench.
“And whoever did this, for whatever reason—wewilluncover the truth. We will find out why, together,” I said, and my every word rang true. It was exactly right.
Mimi wrote down every word in her little green notebook.
“A vow, then,” Russ said with a nod. “We will take care of one another in the last trial, and when we make it to the other side, we will hunt down those responsible for keeping us here, for stealing our memories from us.” He brought a hand to his chest. “I vow to fight.”
All of us touched our hands to our chests, too, and repeated the words after him:I vow to fight.
I intended to keep that vow no matter what happened next.
“We deserve to know why this was done to us, and by whom,” Erith said, her voice shaking, her cheeks wet with tears. “We deserve to know who…whoSilaswas, and what curse he put on us, and why.” She sat up straighter on the bench. “We deserve to knoweach other. I can’t forget about you—Iwon’t.”
My own tears slid down my cheeks. I felt her every word like a knife to my heart, and I refused to forget about them, too. Not ever.
Mimi cleared her throat and brought her notebook closer to her face. “We, the Hands of the 31st Turning Trials of the Clockrealm—Mimi, Seth, Russ, Cook, Anika, Erith, Levana, Ora, and March—do hereby vow that once the trials are done, we will stand united. We will uncover the truth of our forgotten memories. We will hold responsible those who’ve lied to us, and who’ve kept us stuck here, and who’ve forcedus to play these trials backward as well,” she read. “We willnotabandon one another. We’re in this together.”
Together,the rest of us said in unison.
Mimi nodded, closed the notebook and put it in her pocket.
“If any of us forgets, we’ll have this. Wewillremember whatever it is they’re trying to take from us,” she said, her chin quivering.
“Always,” Levana said with a nod.
After that, we settled into a comfortable silence again, drying our tears, breathing, looking at one another, making sure we remembered in any way we could.
The garden seemed to breathe around us, too, and it stood witness to our resolve. I’d meant what I said, and I knew that they all meant that vow, too. We were going to get to the bottom of this as soon as the last trial was over, and we gained our freedom back. We would find out who was behind this and why. If we’d already won—and unwon—the trials together, we could do anything.
Yes, we might be incomplete right now, being drained as we sat there. We might be missing even more than we realized—but none of us was alone.
