“It’s simple, I assure you. All you have to do is go backward through the trials, and unwin every game you won.Easy,” the queen said. “Until then, time in the realm will be moving backward, too. If you look at your Life Clocks again, I’m sure you’ll notice. In fact, the sun is unrising and night will fall shortly.” And she waved at the windows.
Unrise?
Indeed, the sun was lowering toward the horizon, and had I not known this, I’d have thought I mistook the morning for afternoon, and the west from the east. But the sky was getting darker, and we were looking east here, not west.
A few of them did check their Life Clocks, and the look on their faces was enough confirmation for me. We hadn’t noticed the hands moving backward when we first lookedbecause it would have never occurred to us that a clockcoulddo that in the first place. Not even a broken one.
I swallowed hard.
“I still don’t understand, Your Excellency,” said one of the girls—I didn’t care to look. “There has to be another way, I don’t?—”
“Thereis noother way,” the queen cut her off, her napkin rolled all the way, and she twisted it between her hands as she spoke. “You either unwin the trials, little ticker, or you die.”
Time seemed to skip a second just then.
“Wealldie,” the queen added.
The boy with the curly hair still didn’t believe her. Easy to see the suspicion in his eyes.
But this wasthe queen. The White Queen, one of the two rulers of the Clockrealm. She had no reason to lie. She’d saved us from a traitor and a curse. She’d done the only thing shecoulddo to save us.
“How will we do that? How can we unwin? How did wewin, and why don’t we remember?” asked the boy, and again, at the sound of him my heart skipped beats and beats and beats. So familiar, yet a perfectly foreign voice.
Curiouser and curiouser,this morning.
“Part of the curse, I’m afraid,” said the queen, looking down at her hands as she now unrolled her napkin slowly. “The curse took your memory of the trials from the very beginning, even before you entered Neverwhen.”
“So, how will we know how we won?”
“You won’t!” said the queen. “But you will begin each trial from the end, and you will finish it in the beginning, when the game has been unwon. It’s simple, really. As simple as a tick.” She waved a hand and steam appeared over the table, in it a clock and a hand that turned a minute. Magic came so easy to her, but I couldn’t find it in me to even be impressed.The sound of that tick echoed eternally, either in the hall or in my head.
“I’d suggest you go off to bed now, little tickers, and rest. For your trial begins tomorrow, just as the sun starts to unset.”
An unsetting sun.
The White Queen stood up. We all jumped to our feet with her, and if it weren’t for the table, half of us would have fallen. We were disoriented, dizzy, unable to make out which side was up for a second. But the table was there to hold our weight, and the queen smiled and nodded her head toward us.
We all nodded ours toward her instinctively, like we’d done it a thousand times before. Like our bodies knew to do it, even if our minds didn’t.
“The help will show you to your rooms, as I’ve got to be out of the Labyrinth, I’m afraid. My mind cannot handle time moving backward in here for long.” She laughed. “But I shall see you and you shall see me yesterday. I have faith in you, my little tickers.”
Wait,said the others as she slowlyglidedon the marble floor mixed with whites and blacks and grays.
How does one unwin?
Can’tyoutell us how we won?
Won’t you help us, please?!
The queen didn’t turn. Instead, when she was in front of those polished white doors, they opened, and men and women were out there, dressed in white from head to toe. They bowed their heads as the queen passed, chirping like a bird, too far for us to hear her words properly.
Neither of us moved a single inch while the help came into the hall with their hands folded in front of them and their eyes on us. Eleven of them.
Eleven—such an odd number. Almost a clock, but not quite.
The guy with the curly hair was looking at me again, and when our eyes locked, the doubt in him made that thought pop in my head once more:something stinks like rotten seconds.And whatever it was, we were standing right in the middle of it.
The day was undone.The sun had unrisen. My head weighed a million clocks, and my body didn’t quite feel like my own as we followed the help to the dormitory. All eleven of us, following all eleven of them, no one making a single sound, our eyes wide, fixed on the walls, the windows, the ceilings.
