I should have just walked away, left her to it, yet I wasn’tquite feeling like myself just now, and my mind was desperate for a distraction from everything that had happened since I woke up, so…
“Mimi?”
She stopped just on the side of the large clock and finally looked up at me. Our eyes locked but she wasn’t surprised to find me there. She looked perfectly…lost.
When she spoke, her voice was small, barely louder than a whisper. “I don’t know what I’m doing here.”
Then she lowered her head and continued to walk around the clock again.
By the time I made it back to my bedroom, I had somehow managed to half-convince myself again that the whole night might be a dream.
13
“Tick-tock-tea-talk.”
A tray carrying a teapot, teacups, a bowl full of sugar, and a plate full of pastry slammed down on the bedside table hard enough to make the dishes rattle and to chase away my sleep.
“Wake up, you hairy hare.”
It never failed to bring a smile to my face. I was not hairy—my hair was not thick nor fine, just somewhere in between. But my sister had called me that since I could remember, and in the nights she had dreams, she woke me up with tea the morning after. Morning tea-talks were always about dreams.
Even though I knewthiswas a dream, too, that Jinx hadn’t been there to wake me up for almost two years now, I was still disappointed when the knock on the door pulled me into the waking world.
My eyes opened and every last bit of hope I’d had of staying in the dream for a moment longer just to see her face disappeared. I wasn’t in my room or back home in the Court of Spades, and Jinx was most definitely not sitting inthe recliner she’d left near my bed specifically for our tea-talks.
Instead, I was in Neverwhen, in the Labyrinth, in a fancy palace, sleeping on fancy silk sheets, and Lida the maid was behind the door, screaming at me to let her in. Here, midnight cameafterdawn, not the other way around, because somehow time was currently moving backward.
What a mad, mad world.
Apparently, locking the door wasnotallowed, according to Lida, and she was furious that I’d made her spend four minutes knocking and screaming for me to wake up.
This, no part of me cared about, not accidentally, not instinctively—none.
When I finally dragged myself to the door and unlocked it, she gladly informed me, half screaming, that I’d overslept, and that I was supposed to be in the eating hall thirty minutes ago, and if I didn’t get therenow,they were going to start the last lessons without me.
I would have gladly told her that I was on my way, then get back in bed the second she left—I wasnotready to face any kind of world right now, not forward, not backward—but she didn’t.
No, Lida stayed and she pushed me toward the bathroom to wash my face and brush my teeth, then forced me into a pair of clean clothes, mine, but they smelled like this place now. Not like home.
Which is when it occurred to me that I hadn’t thought about home all that much.
I hadn’t thought about my parents.
I hadn’t really…missed them as I ought.
It was the time—or lack thereof. And it was…well,everythingthat had happened since I woke up at that dining table, nothing more.
When I made it to the eating hall, it was just a little beforenine m.b. All the other Hands were done with dinner, and they were walking out the door. March was there, too, and the way my soul slipped out then rushed back into me again was perfectly absurd, but I ignored it. I only ran, grabbed a croissant and an apple from the table, and I stuffed as much food in my mouth as I could while walking behind them down the hallway.
Lida was gone, thankfully, but the Hands were being led by Elida the Royal Timekeeper, who wore a hat and a vest the color of mustard, and she was telling them something I was too far away to hear as we descended the main stairs I’d found so impossible to find the morning before. Maybe it was the brighter moonlight streaming through the windows, which seemed to have multiplied as well. Or maybe I just hadn’t been counting windows while trying to sneak out.
With every new step I took, and the more food I had in my system, the clearer my head became, and I actually remembered everything that had happened when I woke up after dawn.
The sneaking around. The magicking of the rope, the gloves, the chalk—which I’d left behind by the fence. Good thing I’d thought to grab my backpack, at least. My sketchbook and Jinx’s picture were still in it.
I also remembered the magic that had stopped me from escaping, had thrown me back to the ground.
The magic of the Labyrinth, perfectly invisible to my senses, yet I hadn’t been able to even throw a piece of rope through it.
