“Mother. Father.” They stopped. “I know what I learned, and I will be careful, and I will make the best impressions I can make. Have faith—I will be back soon.”
It sounded very much like something Jinx would say.
WhatIwould say if I dared, on the other hand, was,please, don’t forget me. Don’t forget Jinx all the way while I’m gone.
Thesewords remained neatly tucked under my tongue.
Then I hugged my friend Renee and my favorite cousins, Allan and Finn, and I stepped into the carriage before anybody else could reach me.
“See you soon, everyone! See you—oh!”
Just like the Timekeeper said, the door closed on its own, cut off the cheers and the calls, hid away the faces of my parents and all the others who’d come to see me off.
Relief came over me. The window was small and the glassthick, so all I did was wave while the carriage moved forward. Wave and think,Holy Hour, I’m doing this.
I wasreallydoing this.
The magnitude of the whole situation hit me fully for the first time as the horses took the carriage up the hill again. In the next two weeks, I was going to be away from home and everything I knew for the first (and possibly the only) time in my life.
Difficult not to be overwhelmed, but the farther away from the house I grew up in I went, the…betterI felt. More relieved. Like I weighed a little less with every second shed.
I stood up and looked out the small back window of the carriage as my parents, my entire neighborhood became smaller and smaller, as my smile stretched wider and wider.
It was over. That wasit.I’d already left—and I’d been dreading this moment for weeks and weeks now and I never actually thought I’d make it this far. I never thought I’dbe on my way.
But I was, and the people who’d gathered around the main road of our town were proof. Everybody had come to see me go, which was a surprise. I’d gotten a lot more waves and nods and smiles, even flinches since I’d been chosen as a Hand from our side of the court in the past month, but I didn’t expect so many people to be standing there and waving, calling my name as I went. Such an odd feeling, and not entirely bad. In fact, the farther away from home I was, the more sense what used to be senseless made.
Maybe running wasn’t a very bad thing. Maybe I would be okay, after all. Maybe, just maybe, the Turning Trials were going to reallyturn a new Ora in me, like Father said.
I guessed I would find out soon—and in Neverwhen, no less.
It was the city of Timekeepers, the very center of the Clockrealm, surrounded by the four courts of the Clockfolk—The Court of Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs, and my court—of Spades. I lived very near the middle of our quadrant, which my mother calledthe most delicious slice of the Clockrealm,so it was going to take us about ten hours to get to Neverwhen. I’d dreadedthatpart, too, thought it would be uncomfortable, but I was wrong.
The carriage was spacious, and the seats on both sides were big and soft and covered in rich red velvet. A table rose between them like a flower on a thick metal stem, not big and not small, just right. White roses hung on either side of the carriage walls, the vases made of glass, mounted on the wood. The intricate silver designs all over the white surface could keep me entranced for hours, and the frames of the small windows seemed to have been made ofice. It was only glass, but it was beautiful.
Plenty to keep me interested, curious, so that the trip to Neverwhen flowed as smoothly as drunken seconds.
The Royal Timekeeperbrought me food. He moved about the outside of the carriage like we weren’t being dragged by horses at all. He had a basket full of pastries to serve me for breakfast, even though I claimed I’d already eaten (I hadn’t—too excited). For lunch, he brought me a bowl of pasta, which was somehow warm, but he refused to say where he was taking all these dishes from. Or how he knew to bring me bottles of water and teapots full of warm tea any time I was only just slightly thirsty.
We only stopped once when I needed to use the bathroom of a restaurant, and we were on our way again within minutes.
Magic wasn’t an uncommon thing in the Clockrealm. We used the energy of seconds and minutes to alter our reality on the daily, butthiskind of magic wasn’t something I wasused to. To know when another person was thirsty or hungry, or in need of a smile and ahow are we doing in there, Ora?Definitely not something Spades excelled in.
So, before I knew it, the sun had traveled across the sky and to the other side of the realm. The scenery around us changed from one-story to two-story to multiple-story buildings, made not of wood but of thick, gray stone—and we’d arrived in Neverwhen.
The entire day could have been a dream.
A knock on the left window of the carriage while I was looking out the right.
“Hold on tight!” Calren called, and there must have been something he held onto just outside the carriage, because he had no trouble standing upright against it. “It might get bumpy going through the crowd.”
His grinning face flashed in front of the window for one second.
“Wait—what crowd?” I called, but he was already gone.
I had an answer to my question only a minute later.
The road we traveled was cobbled and wide, as wide as the roads in our court’s center. We turned the corner around a large building that could have been wider than ten houses together, and five stories tall, so we couldn’t see the other side of it at all. That’s why the sight of the many people who’d gathered on both sides of the road took me by surprise—there were so many of them.
