He’d grabbed the host by the collar of his vest, and the rest of us rushed to them, but the host never stopped smiling.
“Be clear and give us instructions.Howdo we bake that hour?!” Silas hissed, and his voice had changed, too. Most of his hair had turned to a deep gray, though age hadn’t taken away from his sharp jawline and the sharp look in his eyes. On the contrary—he looked…more.
“It’s easy, I promise. Easy,” said the host, putting his hand onto Silas’s face.
Then Reggie jumped in—“Don’t touch him!” he shouted, and grabbed the host by the vest and pulled him to the side.
He and Silas let go of one another—and I convinced myself that I was living in a dream.
Seeing these boys I knew turn into middle-aged men within minutes, and the girls teary-eyed and silver-haired—there was no magic that could do this, not so perfectly. No magic that could make this happen right in front of my eyes like this, and so it had to be a dream. Or an illusion. Or a different world, a different timeline—what mattered was that itcouldn’tbe real.
The host laughed, but his laughter had lost its shine just now, and we were moving away from him again.
“You mustdividethe hour, to make the hour,” he said, his voice low, dark. “It’s really, truly as easy as that.”
“How?!” Seth demanded, but I had already turned to the table together with March and Mimi and Cook.
We were searching what was over it again, the lanternsand the clocks stuck at six, the teapot that had somehow refilled itself when the game made us older.
Same with the bowls of sugar and flour.
It was a dream, wasn’t it? And didn’t Jinx always say that there was reason within dreams if we onlylookedfor it?
I was looking. I had my eyes wide open, though the view tended to get a little blurry around the edges, now that I noticed. My mind was too crowded with other things to dwell on it for too long, thankfully.
The others continued to argue with the host, but he never changed his words. That’s all he said—divide the hour to make the hour.
I leaned closer to inspect the minutes marked on the teapot. Mimi did, too, from the other side of the table.
Then Cook said from her side, “Are thosespoons?”
He was looking at the white bowl of sugar, but I’d taken one of the two bowls of flour to inspect it, because I could have sworn a teacup was drawn in silver on the inside of the porcelain.
“Guys—over here,” March called, as he leaned in to look at my bowl of flour. I shook it to move it to the side a little so we could see better, and…
“There.” It was a cup, all right. A teacup just like the ones that set this table, drawn in silver, barely visible, followed by= 3 m
“One spoon of sugar equals forty seconds,” Mimi said from across.
“One cup of flour equals three minutes,” I said, my eyes wandering to the mold and the triangular slices in it, and the teapot with the numbers near the handle.Twenty minutes.
“We must divide an hour equally, not just pour everything in together without measure,” said Cook. “Divide the hour—of course.”
“Five minutes,” I said as my mind worked. “Five minutes for each of us makes an hour.”
“And to make five minutes we need a spoon and a half sugar, a cup flour, and a minute of tea,” said Mimi with a wide grin on her face.
We paused, looked at one another, six on my side of the table, six across.
“Oh, good, good—nearly there,”called the host from the distance. “Not quite, though.He, he, he…”
We ignored him.
“We got this,” Reggie said. “We got this—let’s bake this hour right. Five minutes each. Let’s go!”
“And what if it’s the wrong answer?” Levana cried, hands over her head. “I can’t be any older than this—Iwon’tbe!”
It irritated me to hear the sound of her voice, but I was already pouring the flour in my teacup. This wasn’t about her at all. It wasn’t about any of us individually. Now wasnotthe time to break down.
