My fingers itched to grab my sketchbook on the bedside table while I lay down to rest my legs a bit and waited for the help to be gone all the way—but not yet. I had too many things on my mind, and I wanted to draw all of it at once. That never worked. A headache waiting to happen, a trap I’d fallen into many times before. No, I would wait until I had a clear vision of what I wanted to immortalize—as Jinx called it—on paper first. After that, it would get easier.
The wait wasn’t long, though. Less than five minutes later, there was a knock on my door.
I jumped to my feet, ran to pull it open, half afraid that Lida had come back, but no. It was Mimi standing there in the hallway, wearing a pair of deep green pajamas.
“Up for some exploration?” she asked, and my own smile hurt my cheeks.
“You came at the right time,” I said and slipped out the door right away. My Life Clock was in my tunic’s pocket, and I didn’t think to pick up a jacket even though nights tended to get much colder than the days. I doubted I’d feel the cold, though, and I had the boots on my feet still, so I would be okay.
Outside in the hallway, Anika, Erith, Russ, Seth, and Cook were already near the corner, waving for us to hurry.
“I’m going to get March,” I whispered to Mimi, but she shook her head.
“They’re gone. They’re outside! Everybody’s outside—come on.” She grabbed my hand and pulled me forward with ease.
Laughter bubbled in my chest but I held it between my teeth. We were all running down the hallways on our tiptoes, whispering at each other to hurry up. No one had a clue where we were going in the first place, but we kept moving. Forget the main stairs—we couldn’t find them somehow, and the moment we came upon a narrow set down a narrower hallway, we took them. We just needed to get down and out of the palace, that’s all. We’d find our way back in no time.
“Wow! Look at that!” said Mimi as we passed through a junction that connected five different hallways together, and in the very middle of it was this large rectangular grandfather clock made of polished chestnut wood and gold. It was indeed impressive, and the sound of it ticking echoed in the tall ceiling, giving the whole thing morecharacter,like it was a person instead of a clock.
“I want one just like this in my house,” said Erith with a sigh as she, too, admired it with both hands to her chest and a wondrous smile on her face. “It counts seconds and minutes, days, and weeks and months!”
It did, indeed. All those hands would probably make me dizzy if I looked at it for too long.
“We’ll get matching ones,” Anika said, laughing. “And we can explore clocks later—let’s go outside!”
Just like that, we were running again.
It was almost nine m.b., so the hallways were almost completely empty—thank Time—and eventually, we found our way to the main hall, too. To the main entrance doors.
We stopped near the corner and hid behind a thick round pillar engraved with roses, held our breaths and strained ourears for a beat to make sure nobody would be there to see us or stop us.
Nobody was. The doors were open, too, and just a couple minutes later, we were outside, breathing in the cold air of the night.
Goose bumps on my arms but it had nothing to do with the temperature, only the thought that I washere,now, together with these people, feeling like I belonged again like I hadn’t in ages in my own home. The other Hands were all strangers to me, yet I understood deeply what it meant that we were in this together, and that I really,reallywasn’t on my own here.
Not to mention March.
Whatever it was about that guy, I wanted to know more. I wanted to knowhim.In detail. Study him over and over, until I saw all the colors on him. All the shades.
But March wasn’t waiting outside with the others like I thought.
Nobody else seemed to care, though, and I figured I shouldn’t, either. We were all out here to explore, and we weren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
“That way—look,” Seth said, pointing farther to the right of the palace, where there had been a field full of cocktail tables and people the night before. Now, there were only trees and grass.
Which made me wonder if I’d mistaken the east for the west?
I turned to look, when?—
“The cocktail tables are gone,” said Russ.
“Exactly!” Seth.
“I swear there were no trees there before.” Mimi.
So, it wasn’t just me.
“C’mon, let’s keep moving,” I said, running on my tiptoes still farther to the right, praying we didn’t stumble upon thehelp—or worse, a soldier. Not that they’d do anything, of course, but theycouldmake us go back inside, and I was feeling so freein those moments. So…unchained. I refused to go back to the room yet.
