“But you said we’d let them find it themselves!” Levana shouted.
“Andyouwere only there because we neededhimto help us open it!” Reggie told her.
I shook my head—what in the Everstill were they talking about?
“But he said, he said—” Levana insisted, eyes wide and full of horror as she looked at March like she couldn’t even believe him, but he cut her off.
“I lied,” he simply said, then pointed his finger at Reggie. “And the only reason I came to help you was because I knew you’d want to keep it to yourselves.”
“Keepwhatto yourselves?!” I demanded, a little flustered because now everybody was standing, looking from one face to the other. Meanwhile Reggie laughed, Silas chuckled as he shook his head, and Helen and Levana had crossed their arms in front of them, fire in their angry eyes.
“It’s not something I can explain. I’ll just have to show you,” said March, pulling me toward the end of the garden.
“Hey—what about us?!” someone called—could have been Erith.
“You can do whatever you want! Stay here in your boring garden—or follow us,” March called back.
And Reggie roared with laughter before he took off running after us. “You bastard—I’ll show ya!”
“Run!” March shouted, laughing, and pulled at my hand harder.
I ran.
Everybodyran.
Everybody laughed. The night echoed with the sound of us, and March never let go of my hand as we went through the fake garden, and I had the strange sense that I was actually walking on clouds, if only for a moment. I was purelyhappy.
7
March never let go of my hand as we ran. Even when Reggie basicallyjumpedonto his neck, wrapped an arm around him and tried to knock him to the ground, March resisted, pushed him off, continued running with me. Our laughter could wake the whole Labyrinth, yet none of us seemed to mind just now.
If somebody heard us, they’d have to catch us first.
We ran for a good while, to the very end of the mechanical garden and beyond, through trees that were real, bigger, colder than the fake ones, and toward a wire fence at least ten feet tall.
Reggie was at the head of the group now, his grin huge, and he went straight for the fence like he couldn’t even see it there—but he could. And the fence was cut at the side, so when he pushed it back, it gave.
Cheers and screams filled the night. Levana and Helen went through first as Reggie held up the cut fence, and then March guided me in front of him, my hand still firmly in his. The way he held it, I didn’t even consider that he’d let go.
“Where are you guys taking us?” I said, trying to whisper but I failed—and anyway, everybody was laughing out loud.
“In there,” March said, pointing ahead at the structure in the distance—a building, wide and dark, not a single light anywhere near it.
“Whatis that?!” I wondered, but Reggie was urging us to run again, and everybody was following, so March and I were running, too.
The grass wasn’t as green on this side of the fence, I noticed, and there were no lanterns to illuminate the way, but the closer to the building we got, the more I realized it was some sort of barn—only it was stranger and bigger than any barn I’d ever come across back home.
Once again, we slowed our steps and stopped running, no longer laughing out loud but whispering to one another, as if suddenly being close to a building reminded us that we weren’t supposed to be out here at all.
“Over here,” Silas said, calling our attention to the right while we looked around the thick wooden panels that made the walls of the barn. No windows, no anything—but Silas and Reggie were standing in front of a set of doors.
You could barely make them out in the dark, and the wood that made them up was identical to the rest of the walls, but there had been a thick chain attached to the metal handles there, and it was now on the ground.
“Don’t tell meyoudid that!” Mimi whispered from behind March.
“We sure did,” Reggie answered proudly. “To the Hands of the Turning Trials—welcome to the junkyard!”
He bowed, stepped aside, waved his hand to the side, while Silas pulled the door near him open with a screech that would have you thinking the wood was alive.
