Except one look at March, and the gears inside me twisted like they’d run all out of oil. The realization hit me as if I was just considering it for the first time: I wasnevergoing to see March again.
In all likelihood, when the trials were over, March would go back to his court, and I would go back to mine, which were on opposite sides of the realm with Neverwhen in between. Days worth of travel.
“I don’t know,” he said, and the sound of his voice did something to me. Far too many things to be able to pick them all apart. “It doesn’t feel like it. I don’t think he showed us that device to help us with the trials.”
And I didn’t think that, either. Just a feeling I had—except now that I had theotherfeeling, that pure, raw desperation and panic, I no longer paid the timeometer thing much attention. Couldn’t if I tried.
“Why else would he show it to us then?” asked Russ.
“Where is Silas?” March asked. My eyes closed—you will never-ever-reven hear that voice again,said other voices in my head, a symphony of them.
“No idea. He wasn’t in his room. I knocked,” said Mimi with a shrug.
“Maybe the others went to check out the junkyard,” said Erith. “Maybe we should, too.”
“Nope. Still protected. I checked before dinner,” Russ said.
Silence for a tick. I felt March’s attention on the side of my face like heat from a summer sun. When I opened my eyes, he still looked at me, his expression unreadable, but the red in his eyes was as vivid as ever.
A million needles pierced my skin everywhere at once.My truth is that I miss you,he’d said, but I bet he didn’t know that that wasmytruth, too. I missed him more than wasreasonable—or sensible, considering he was a few feet away from me right now.
But I missed all the seconds in the future when wewouldn’tbe sitting a few feet apart more.
Then something hissed right behind our bench, and steam shot toward the tree over our heads lightning fast.
Mimi and Helen jumped off the bench screaming, and I would have, too, if I hadn’t frozen so completely. My instincts must have been malfunctioning, or maybe I was spread out too thin with too many wants and fears just now, but I stayed seated as the steam shot off into the air with a loud hiss.
Others laughed.
Mimi and Helen flipped them the tick. “Yeah, yeah—you all jumped, too!”
“What in the worldisthat?” Cook asked as he went onto the bench and leaned over it to see better. He sniffed the air as the steam lost strength more and more. “Smells like boiling potatoes.” Cook flinched visibly, like he couldn’t think of any worse scent than that of boiling potatoes.
“What could be down there?” the others wondered.
“What would besteaminglike that—and so loudly?”
“I wonder if there’s people there?—”
“Or if they ever come out?—”
“Or if it’s like a whole world below our feet, like in books!”
“I wonder if there’s a way to peel the ground off and look…”
Then, “Thereis.”
We all turned to Seth, who popped the last cracker in his mouth and chewed with his mouth open. “There’s actually a doorway at the edge of the garden. Lots of stairs, but they lead down.”
We looked at one another. “Downwhere?” March asked.
But Seth shrugged. “Just down. I don’t know, I never checked. I can show you if you’d like.”
“Yes!” we all said almost at the same time. Yes, we definitely wanted to see if there was a doorway with stairs to take us underneath the ground and into the actual Labyrinth.
Just like that, we were running through the fake bushes and trees and flowerbeds, all the way to the other side of the garden, very close to the fence of the Labyrinth, which separated it from the rest of Neverwhen.
It was a whole city out there. People from all over the realm lived in it. There were some three-hundred thousand Clockfolk in the Clockrealm (including Timekeepers) and this city alone housed more than seventy-thousand. We were part of it, yet perfectly separated. Those tall golden fences made sure to keep everyone out—and to keepusin, too. The tips of them were a reminder that we were stuck here, regardless of whether we came willingly or not. We were stuck here until the trials were over.
