“You areyou,” the queen said. “Sip-sip! Twice, that is.”
We sipped the tea twice. It hadn’t gone cold at all.
“But we’re alsonot free,” said one girl or the other.
“Correct,” said the queen. “Because I saved you.”
“From the curse,” said one boy or the other.
“Correct again. From the curse.”
A moment ticked by, slowly. We looked at one another—six girls and five boys, we were. All strangers. All clean and dressed and anxious and confused.
“What curse?” whispered someone—a boy across, but not the one I almost knew.
“The curse cast by a Hand,” said the queen, and this time her smile did drop all the way, and her eyes fell on the other side of the table, on a chair. An empty chair across from the boy sitting next to me. “The twelfth Hand.”
That chime in my head again.The twelfth Hand?
Yes, there were twelve players that played in the Turning Trials—three from each of the realm’s four courts. There were twelve players, like there were twelve hours in a clock. They were called the Hands of Time, and they played games, and they always won, and as a result, more Sparetime wasthen released into the air for harvesting—yes, yes, this all made sense, so…
“Where is he?”
The question could have been asked by my own mouth or another. It was the same in all of our minds.
Eleven. We were only eleven.
We should have been twelve.
Laughter. “How do you know it was ahe?!”
The queen was looking right at me. It seemed the question had been asked by my mouth, after all.
How do you know it was ahe, Ora?
The answer was simple. “I don’t.”
“All the better. Lucky guesses are my favorite.” The queen clapped. “Yes, little ticker—it was ahe. And he is no longer with us.”
Silence in the hall, so sudden, so absolute that I thought I heard music playing from somewhere beyond those polished doors.
“No longer with us inthis room,or…” someone asked, and it felt like the question should have been inmymind, too, like the rest, but this one wasn’t.
The twelfth Hand was not here at this table, and that was enough information for me. I didn’t need to know why or how.
“No longer with us in the realm,” said the queen.
Gasps. Hands on chests. Teary eyes.
An echo insisted thatIshould have been the same. That I should have been as panicked as the others, as shook, asafraid.That I had before…before…
Before.
“Silence now, little tickers,” said the queen. “I will tell you everything if you just take another sip-sip.”
So, we did.
2
