“Tick-tock, darlings. Tick-tock…”
“Where—”
The ground began to shake. The cups and dishes on the table began to rattle. The spoons and the silverware hanging on the trees over our heads began to fall to the ground like ripe apples.
“We have to go,” I said because it was clear that whatever magic had made this place didn’t want us here anymore.
The others tried to protest, tried to run back to the table, to grab Reggie, shake him, get him back to who he was—but they couldn’t. Their legs couldn’t move in the table’s direction. Every time they took a step, they did so backward.
“Enough—we have to go, or we’ll end up the same way!” Russ shouted. “Go-go-go!”
Vines slipped out of the ground, old roots like hissing snakes. I stepped back, and the thought of being wrapped up in those things, unable to move,unmadelike Reggie had been, infused my blood with pure terror—and I wasn’t the only one. Before the minute was over, we were all running through the trees, away from the host as he quietly drank his tea and checked his clocks, like he couldn’t tell that the entire ground was shaking and half the dishes had ended up off the edge of the table.
Over, over, over,said a voice in my head as we ran, but I didn’t believe it.Couldn’tbelieve it. Not until I heard the cheering, and saw the blue sky, and the arena, the screens withourfaces on them as if there were casters everywhere around us, their magic perfectly replicating our image through projection.
But I didn’t care. We ran and ran until we made it out of the tree line, and the people were all standing and clapping and cheering—and we were alive.
Against all odds, we’d made it, and though a few were on their knees, crying, most of us were standing still.
It made me sick to hear those screams, to carry all those memories, all the trauma the last few hours had gifted me with—but there was no time left to be sick.
Now, it was time to figure out how to leave the trials, and the city, and never-ever-reven come back.
“The first Backward Turning Trial has been officially unwon!”
That voice. So loud. So gut-turning.
And the moment the words registered in my brain, I was falling.
Memories flashed in my mind—both brand new and old, familiar. I saw tea that didn’t smell rotten, I saw cake exploding in an oven, I saw clockbeasts and broken clocks, all that blood on my body.
I saw mad eyes on a stranger that I knew—with a hat in a hat in a hat over his head.
I saw the knife as it went into his gut.
I saw the blood, and the life draining from his eyes.The host-the host-the host.
Everything had been different then.Everythinghad been different in the forward Turning Trials, and for that split second, I remembered.
Then the world turned dark.
11
The clocks on the walls in this strange room said it was just a little after four, s.b. Ands.b.stood for sun-bound, asm.b.stood for moon-bound, but had that changed now that the world had gone mad, or did the same still apply to indicate day hours and night hours?
I wasn’t sure.
My head buzzed. A strange sensation had spread all over my limbs, like I might have something in my blood. Like I might have a disease in my bones, infesting.
Or a memory I couldn’t reach.
My eyes closed, and I tried and tried and tried. Because I’d remembered. Theback then, thebefore.I’d remembered the game and all the details—I’d remembered.
And then I’d forgotten again, like the trial had never even happened in forward time, but it had also left behind a gaping hole in my mind, something so clearlymissingthat it was physically painful for me.
It was there and then it was gone.
“Do you guys…”
