“See you later.”
In a blink, he was out the door while I was still trying to process the hug, my mouth wide open and my mind more chaotic than it had ever been before.
37
Silas didn’t look at me differently at meals, and to see him in the arena, and then in Master Talik’s workshop, you’d think that morning in my room never even happened.
Curiouser and curiouser.I didn’t know whether to believe my own self, especially when a big part of me was convinced thatI’ddreamed the whole thing up. Because if it were true…how could I even begin to understand what he’d implied?
That I needed to ask questions, and look at records, and find out who saw the Great Clock as it did what it had been doing for three-thousand years?
Absurd. All of it, too absurd.
Then, there was March.
He watched me like he always did, but there was a different feel to his attention now. It had gotten…colder. There was no stopping his words from spinning around in my mind at any given second, and as much as I tried to tell myself that it didn’t hurt, it did. As much as I wanted to be glad that I had given my compassion away, this was different. Istill cared aboutthis.I still cared about being treated that way, humiliated.
So I did my best to avoid meeting his eyes, to never once look at him, even when he was sitting right in front of me. Even when we were eating and hecasuallytouched my arm with his,I had to sit there and take it and pretend I wasn’t affected.
It was a long day, but the last trial was tomorrow, and that’s where my focus was.
Time’s Teeth, I’d had enough of this place. I’d had enough of picking myself apart and leaving pieces of me behind—not only in the games, but in the days in between. I’d always thought I wanted tofeel. I wanted to experience the entire spectrum of emotions, know the bad and the good and everything that lived between them, but I never knew howtiredfeeling could make you. I never knew how exhausted you could really become, and now I needed rest. I needed the lake. I needed to be by myself and break apart this tangled mess of why’s and how’s that currently had me in a chokehold.
Then I’d know how to live through it. Then I’d know how to get to the other side.
But I still had another day to go, and a game to win.
What else would I be required to leave behind in the last trial?
Master Talik sounded like he always did. He spoke like he always spoke as he explained the ins and outs of the most basic chronobanks, and Calren didn’t leave the workshop at all, so Master Talik didn’t mention the timeometer. I wonderedwhyhe’d try to hide that from him, but then downstairs under the mechanical garden, they’d spoken so openly about who’d loosened those anchors.
I wonderedwhyabout a lot of things.
“This is it, children,” Master Talik said when the threehours of lecture were over. The old Timekeeper brought a hand to his chest as he smiled at us, and it hit me all at once—this was our last class with him. I was most likely never going to see Master Talik again.
A bad feeling settled in my gut. Dread was a cloud floating over my head.
“Allow me to say that it has been an honor to teach you what little I could teach you in the limited amount of time we’ve had together. You’re now better equipped to fix any gear or any clock than most your peers, and my reward is that you will carry that knowledge with you until the day you run out of time.”
Why-why-why were there tears pricking the back of my eyes again? It made no sense. I was looking forward to leaving this place behind. I was looking forward to going home. These people were all very much strangers to me—so why did I want to cry at the idea of never seeing them again?
“I’ve had a great time with the lot of you, and if I could choose one thing to leave you with, it would be this:aim.Aim to win. Aim to get to the finish line, for aim is intention, and intention is the only thing that gives you direction. Once you know where you’re going, there’s very little that can stop you,” Master Talik said. His words layered themselves in the very center of me, letter after letter.
He waved his hand. “Now, go. Go get through the rest of your day. I’ll be watching you in your last trial, and I wish you all good-timing from the bottom of this rusty heart.”
Some laughed. Some waved. Some even cried—Mimi, Helen and Cook had tears in their eyes.
“We won’t forget you, Master Talik.” Mimi.
“You’re probably the smartest old guy I’ll ever know.” Russ.
“Old? I might be a little rusty, but I am far fromold, young man,” Master Talik said.
More laughter.
Words were tied on my tongue.
There were things I wanted to say all of a sudden, things I hadn’t even thought about, only felt.
