This time, I was so flustered, sopanickedunderneath the pretending that I didn’t even consider that the magic wouldn’t work. This was new to me, so new. Doing magic was as foreign to me as these Hands, but I just went for it. Closed my eyes and reached for that warmth that buzzed in my chest.
It came—even easier than before, like I’d definitely done thiswaymore times than just two.
Purple smoke slipped out of my hands.
I’d never transported anything before—that I remembered—but I was pretty sure sand would be more difficult. It didn’t work asonebody, but a million small grains, and the magic had to stick to each one, pick it up and move it at the same speed, in the same direction.
Still, it worked. It tooka longtime, much longer than normal, I guessed, and by the time half the sand was inside the broken bulb, my forehead was lined with beads of sweat. When it was all done, I had to keep half my focus to not let it fall out again, until the glass was repaired and trapped it in.
Meanwhile, March was on his knees on the floor, and he’d rearranged all the bigger pieces of glass into the shape of the missing bulb, and he had his Life Clock out, too.
“March,” I warned because we had a deal.Iwas going to do the magic for this.
He looked up at me, an easy smile on his face, and said, “I like glass, remember?” He spread his hands out over the broken pieces. “Besides, you already did the hard part.” And his magic released into the air.
Red flashed under his palms, and the pieces of glass began to vibrate. I still had to keep half my focus on not letting the sand pour out of the broken bulb, but I was in awe of how quickly the glass wasmeltingright there on the floor, and then merging together, piece by little piece.
It took March all of twenty seconds to harden the melted glass into a single piece again. It still glowed a little red when he grabbed it and came closer, placed it where the lower bulb was broken. It was identicalin shape.
“Keep holding,” he told me, as he worked the broken piece into place, all the jagged lines at the top, and the smooth curve at the bottom.
The timesand was still wrapped in faded purple smoke. I held on tight as March’s magic vibrated between the piece of glass he’d mended and the rest of the bulb, melting them together, then hardening them again.
He stepped back. The red faded. “You can let go now.”
I did. The timesand stayed put, and it had only cost me six minutes off my Life Clock.
The bulb was restored. The hour was full again.
22
It was easy.
The others who’d worked together had prepared the rest of the hourglasses, too, and we were all done within fifteen minutes, which was a miracle. Seth and Anika were the last ones to harden the pieces of glass into a single bulb at the Seventh Hour, and then they were all fixed. Not a single shard of glass remained on the ground, and not a single grain of timesand, either.
“That’s it,” said Russ. “That’s the last one. What now?”
As if the room had heard his question, something beneath the black tiles groaned. Something like gears shifting. Very big gears.
All at once the repaired bulbs inside the platforms turned upside down, and the timesand inside them began to pour down. The numbers that were engraved below lit up from within with all kinds of colors, and the room was suddenlyalive.
The Hands clapped. Cheered. Laughed.
I was tempted to laugh, too—it was over. All the hourglasses were repaired, and the Thirteenth Hour remaineddark, and the trial was already unwon. We’d undone whatever was required from us in the forward trial. It wasover.
The gears beneath the floor groaned louder. The Hands hugged one another, hi-fived the people they’d worked with, and March looked at me from the other side of the thirteenth hourglass.
The urge to smile released me at once when I saw the suspicion in his eyes. When I saw his frown.
A second later, the bulbs moved, turned upside down at the same time without anybody touching them—and the melody began.
The laughing and the cheering and the clapping stopped, and we all watched in awe as the First Hour lit up with lights that must have been somewhere inside the platform. Green and yellow and blue, they fell on the bulb while the sand slipped down, and the sound came from somewhere inside the base of the platform, too. A single note.
When it faded, the Second Hour lit up with pink and purple and red. The note that sounded from inside it was a little higher.
The Third Hour was next, the colors that brightened up the bulb the same as those of the first, but the note of it was higher still than the second. Then the Fourth Hour lit up, and the fifth, and the sixth—and the Hands were laughing again, swinging to the melody of the notes. It was working, indeed. The hourglasses were working, and the lights were so beautiful, I forgot all about the look on March’s face for a moment.
Only a moment.
