Forus?
This, too, I would never know.
When I came upon a worker hunched beside what I could have sworn was a rosebush until I saw it wasn’t, I stopped, and the panic returned. The man was tightening a valve on a metal stem where a thorn should have been. His uniform was plain, a pale olive in color, stained with ink and grease almost equally on both sides. A Timekeeper, judging by the ginger color of his hair.
I thought he would stop me. I thought he would tell me to get back, or he’d call for someone—but the man didn’t even raise his head. He must have heard me coming and stopping just there on the other side of that rosebush that wasn’t—hemust have.Yet he kept going, kept working on that valve like he couldn’t care less about my existence.
Luck, I figured. It was pure luck.
The soft hiss of the air spilling out of that valve resumed behind me as I kept going. There were no more workers that I could see, and I soon reached the other end of this strange garden where the trees were real. The tall metal fence that surrounded possibly the entire Labyrinth area, separating it from the rest of Neverwhen, was just beyond them.
It was going to be a hard climb, but I had a Life Clock full of Sparetime to use, and I could climb anything with the right ropes, I hoped. I’d need gloves, and chalk. I’d needshoes with rubber soles for better grip, too. All of it perfectly possible through magic.
I’m going home,I repeated in my head. Nothing was going to stop me.
I turned to look at the palace once more, and I could only see the fifth floor of it from this side of the trees, but the dread returned. March was on my mind, and so was Reggie.
But it didn’t matter now, did it? I’d made it this far, and they were probably all still asleep. Except for Reggie, of course. There was no point in thinking, so I fell to my knees on the grass, pulled out the Life Clock from my pocket, and I began to call for magic.
What a strange sensation—exactly like people described it when they told me about magic. Plenty of my cousins had started or finished the School of Magic. My father came from a very big family. I myself had yet to even send in my application, as the school would start in September. But everyone knew that the more magic you used, the better you’d become. Everyone knew that it felt likeheatgoing down your arms, and not just.
Most importantly, it wasworking.
A smile on my face, despite the circumstances. The magic was coming, just like it did in that forest—easily.Like I’d done this hundreds of times before. I could hardly believe it myself, but it looked like I wasreallygetting out of this madness tonight.
Focus, Ora,I told myself, because the sooner I’d get this over with, the sooner I’d be free. However, it took more time than I thought it would to make the rope I needed out of thin air (and magic), because I had to imagine the feel, the smell, the sturdiness, and then each and every spin of the threads until I’d imagined one long enough to reach the end of those fences.
The warm, tingling sensation spread from my chest anddown my arms, reached all the way to my hands, then spread out into the world from the skin of my palms in purple—something between light and smoke. Magic could come out of anywhere we chose, but the hands were the most reasonable option, naturally. Purple smoke in my hands, which I saw through half closed eyes. It stitched the fabric of reality with new threads, guided by the images in my head.
And when it faded, it left behind a roll of brown rope in front of my knees.Realrope.
I bit my tongue until I tasted blood so as not to allow myself to laugh at loud—but I wanted to. Fixing that beast clock in the forest wasonething, but this was completely different. And it had only cost me five minutes of Sparetime, according to my Life Clock.
The gloves and the chalk came next to help me with climbing. The boots were last—I only had to change the soles, give them a bit more grip.
Nine minutes of Sparetime spent—magic wasexpensivehere in the Labyrinth—and I had everything I needed to get to the other side of that fence. I was as ready as I was going to get when I looped the end of the rope. No looking back. No thinking about anything—not yet.
I threw the rope and threw it hard, twelve-hours certain that it would reach the sharp, spear-tipped edges of the fence.
It didn’t.
Instead, the rope flew up about two feet in the air, then fell back down like dead weight.
I knew that same second that something was wrong. I knew it well because the wretched dread whispered it in my ear—but I still tried. I picked up the rope and threw it even harder, again and again and again.
It refused to go higher than two feet over my head each time.
That’s because something stopped it, threw it back toward the ground. Some sort of a barrier that was invisible to the eye, but no matter. I still had my boots and my gloves, and I decided I was going to climb the fence with my bare hands. I didn’t even need the rope. I wouldclimball the way out of here.
So, I started.
Harder than I’d imagined. Definitely not like climbing trees—trees were easy. Bark didn’t slip the way metal did. Still, I got up almost halfway to the top, sweating, arms and legs aching, muscles screaming. Another half, and I’d be free.
And who cared how I’d get down the other side? I just needed to reach the top first.
But when I pulled myself up the next time, the top of my head hit something harder than concrete all of a sudden—and then I was falling.
Dark spotsin my vision when I hit the ground on my back. My lungs were empty, my ears ringing an awful sound. I looked at the night sky as I coaxed air down my throat slowly, carefully, some stars here and there, most hiding behind clouds that were near invisible to anyone looking.
