I wondered if ‘do remember to forget him properly this time’was just one of the many senseless things he said.
Or was it supposed to make sense somehow, like the advice he gave me for the clockbeast?
There he was, though—March with the wide shoulders and his suit splattered with blood. Mine was, too, but only on my right arm. His was almost completely black—just like mine was before.
I closed my eyes for a second, shook my head to clear it. Now was not the time to visit those flashes of memory. It was time to walk away.
Except March, who’d likely run from the clockbeast he’d unkilled a little deeper into the forest, was bent over it now, his red pouch open and on the ground, the loupe firmly between his cheek and his brow bone.
I moved a little closer, hid behind a tree better, and made sure the others couldn’t see me.
Then March moved, stood up, left his pouch behind, and instead grabbed that spear he’d left against the tree while he watched the clockbeast slowly rising to its feet.
I went as fast as I could without making too much noise, and without coming out in the open. I was going to call out his name, tell him to stop what he was doing, hit the beast on its clock so it could die again for a moment, but the beast had already gathered its strength, it seemed, and I was still five feet away when it leaped into the air and tried to slam onto March.
The scream stuck in my throat, thankfully, because March was prepared. At the right moment, he grabbed his spear in both hands, andhecharged for the beast as well, pushing it back until it hit the tree with a yelp, the thick wood of the spear right below its jaws.
“Stand down,” I thought March shouted while I convinced my body to unfreeze and keep moving. “Stand down!”
He was trying to order the beast tonotkill him, I gathered. And it was simply not going to work.
The fear returned when I was just behind him, those wide shoulders, the strength of his arms as he held the beast against the tree with his spear.
Something about it.
But the beast was growling and yelping and whining and trying to claw at his body as hard as it could to free itself. “Stand?—”
“Stop.”
I said the word slowly but he heard. I was right there behind him now, but he didn’t turn to look—because the beast was still between his spear and the tree, and it was growing more and more violent by the second.
I licked my dry lips. “Don’t move. Just keep it there.”
The clock of this beast was on its shoulder, right below the spear that was cutting off the beast’s airflow. It was a messy, broken thing, but the hands were moving, and it was working. It had given life to the creature, and that’s all I needed to know.
March had frozen completely, and he only turned his head slightly to the side, looked down, like he could already see me clearly from his peripheral. I took that as a sign that he was going to do as I said, even if he didn’t confirm it with words.
So, I stepped to his right, went closer to the beast, and when his eyes finally locked on mine, the second stretched like an anomaly. Stretched seconds were dangerous, and they could create loops one could never get out of—unless they were a Spade, of course—but this one didn’t seemreallystretched.
Just like the Cheshire didn’t seemreallyreal.
Just like unwinning didn’t seemreallypossible.
And when time snapped back into a normal pace, I reached a hand—that was oddly shaking—for the beast’s clock.
March’s lips parted. There were words in his mouth, on his tongue, but he didn’t say them. Instead, he continued to look at me while I focused on the clock—half broken and battered, the crown almost completely dented in.
I touched it—and the clockbeast lost it. It moved frantically, growled, pushed at March’s arms and chest with all its might.
“Hold it—just hold it like this,” I said through gritted teeth. He raised up a knee, pressed it onto the beast’s chest, making it whine again and struggle for air.
I didn’t hesitate. There was a little light, and the sky must have been getting brighter because I didn’t even need the lanterns to pull up the crown on the beast’s clock.
The second it came up, the beast went limp. It, too, looked like a rabid dog with long, thin limbs and teeth that could rip apart my arm in seconds. But it was no longer struggling, and March still held it there against the tree with his knee and his spear, and I only needed a breath to wind the crown ten minutes back, into our future, then push it down.
A tick.
A heartbeat.
