“You.”
I stopped. Blinked. Realized I hadn’t beenseeingwhere I was going at all, so consumed with all those bad feelings, with all the contradictions in my head. Mimi had been walking toward me—and she was wearing pajamas again. Not the gown she had on the morning before, but a green pair that matched her eyes.
My mouth opened to say something, but I had no idea what.
“I know you.” Mimi stopped in front of me and leaned her head to the side as she analyzed my face.
“Well, yes, I’m—”Ora, one of the Hands,I wanted to say, but she didn’t let me.
“I liked you,” she whispered. “Before.”
My stomach twisted like the gears in me were suddenly malfunctioning. “You remember?”
Mimi closed her eyes, but I could see she was moving them underneath—one side, then the other.Fast.
Now that I thought about it, she didn’t really look so well. Her face was covered in a layer of sweat, I noticed, and her hands at her sides were shaking.
I wasn’t sure whether to run back to the eating hall to call for someone. She really did look like she was about to collapse any second, but… “Mimi,” I said instead.
Because I had to know. Because if she remembered, then that would mean there was a chance. Somehow, there was a chance thatIwould remember, too.
Her lips moved but she didn’t open her eyes. Under her lids, they moved still from side to side at a dizzying speed. Then her voice came—“Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock,”she was whispering.
The feeling of dread returned full force. I stepped closer, touched her shoulder— “Mimi, can you hear me?”
A sharp intake of breath, and her eyes opened. I was more terrified than if I’d had five clockbeasts fighting for the right to eat me right now. I’d even moved back a couple steps without realizing it.
“I remember the queen,” Mimi whispered, and she suddenly looked afraid, too, turned to look down the hallway as if she was expecting to find someone there. It was empty. “Doyouremember?” she then asked me.
“The White Queen? Yes, I remember her.” She’d been sitting at the head of the table when we woke up.
But Mimi shook her head, pulled the sleeves of her pajama top all the way down her fingers, wrapped the fabric around them as if she suddenly couldn’t bear to leave her hands out in the open.
“TheRedQueen,” Mimi whispered.
“The Red Queen?” We hadn’t seen the Red Queen at all, except that time when we were entering the forest for the trial. She’d been in her box with the audience, but we hadn’t actually seen her face. She’d been too far away.
But Mimi nodded anyway, and she leaned in closer to me, and I couldn’t move away if I tried. “She did something,” Mimi said under her breath.
“Something…like what?”
She leaned back, released the sleeves from her fists.
“I need to eat,” she said, and her voice sounded completely different this time.
In fact, she looked perfectly fine as she walked around me and up the hallway, toward the open doors of the eating hall on the other side.Changed,just like that, from one second to the next.
Meanwhile, I stared after her, speechless for a good long while, wondering whether this game had fried Mimi’s mind for good. Wondering if it was going to do the same to all of us.
Then I continued down the hallway.
15
Ifound Master Talik’s workshop on the first try, which was not expected, as I hadn’t been paying that much attention to where Elida took us in the evening.
When I saw the door, I was genuinely surprised that it was still there. Even more so when I knocked, pulled it open, and found it unlocked.
But it didn’t surprise me to find Master Talik hunched over a small device on the main table, his side turned to me.
