“If you would be so kind,” the host said, batting his lashes in a strange way.
“So we have to…create an hour,” Silas said.
“That’s easy. We can all give a bunch of minutes from our Life Clocks,” said Russ.
“Ah, I’m afraid that won’t do.” Suddenly, the host pushed his chair back and slipped underneath the table—so fast he turned to a blur.
When he came up again, a split second later, he had something in his hands.
“You have to makethe hour.Makeit.” And he climbed on the table on all fours as we watched.
We leaned back as far as we could, and some screamed, and most gasped. The host then slammed the thing onto this raised wooden platform in the very middle, that had a teapot and two bowls of sugar at the sides, and three different clocks near the corners.
The clocks fell off it, rolled, and stopped on their small metal feet.
The host moved back just as fast, and sat down on his chair again.
Meanwhile Anika and Reggie from either side pulled up the tablecloth to see underneath the table, then looked at us and shook their heads—there’s nothing there!
“There. Mix your minutes, mold the hour, one cake whole—youhold the power.” The host leaned back, crossed his arms in front to his chest with a grin.
It was a mold. It was an actual cake mold that he’d put up there on that wooden platform—whichwasn’ta wooden platform at all. It was actually metal painted like wood, if my eyes weren’t liars.
Or if the Labyrinth hadn’t already fried all my brain cells.
“So…that’s it?” Cook whispered, wiping the sweat from his brow. “We just bake an hour like a cake, and…we’re done?”
A hundred nods later, and the strange hat on Host Ticktock’s didn’t move an inch. “It would make meso happy,” he sang. “After all, happinessisa piece of cake.” And he winked.
“How do we make the batter, though?” Erith wondered. “There’s no flour, no?—”
“You have there your solid seconds, right there in the bowl,” he said, pointing at the bowls of sugar. “You have your minutes that flow, too—plenty to work with.” His laughter echoed in the dark forest. The flames in the small lanterns seemed to shake at the sound of it, too.
“And…the flour?” Erith insisted.
“Oh! Oh, silly me, I almost forgot!” The host moved again, went under the table, came up with a tray—so fastIwas getting dizzy from the other end of the table.
He climbed on all fours, and somehow he didn’t push a single cup or lantern or clock to the side as he did this, like he knew exactly where to place his knees and hands.
He put the tray right there near the platform. More bowls were on it, and these triangles no bigger than my hand made of the same metal as the cake mold, a lot of them stacked one on top of the other. The bowls were full of flour, and there was a ladle and a whisk there, too, half the size of normal ones.
“How’s that for a full list of ingredients?” Host Ticktock laughed again.
“That’s it? That’s all we have to use?” Anika asked.
“Yes, that’s right, Miss. But don’t forget—baking time requires both precision and chaos.”
“How are we supposed tobake it,though?” asked Reggie.
“Why, in the oven!” The host raised both hands toward the middle of the table where he’d put the cake mold.
On the other side, Levana and Erith leaned in closer— “Guys, it has a handle. It’s an oven!” they cried.
I was willing to bet anything that the handle hadn’t existed until now—they would have seen it.
“This is your chance, Hands,” said the host solemnly, a hand to his heart as he stood up, slowly this time. “Complete the perfect hour, and you may taste Time’s sweetest flower.”
With that, he bowed his head, stepped away from the table and behind his chair, and watched us—all the while smiling.
