How?!
I spun around, reached out into the darkness foranythingat all, but there was nothing there. Just me.
For a moment I considered screaming. Whatever this place was that could justswallowpeople and make them disappear, I wanted out. I wanted outright now.
But this was a trial.
For possibly the thousandth time since I woke up that morning, I had to remind myself that I was in the Turning Trials, and that there would be games to play here.Games.
Then I saw the light.
It was a tiny bit of light, but it was there, and it beat the all-consuming darkness. I fisted my hands and breathed in deeply, and I went for it, in my mind chanting,a game, a game, it’s all part of a game.The faster I ran, the bigger and brighter the light became—a soft red light coming from behind a veil, it seemed to me.
No—not a veil, but curtains.
The sound of music reached my ears, and I stopped once more, closed my eyes, exhaled. I wasnotall alone in this darkness, after all. There were people here, and there was light. There was music.
Half my fear had already faded away into nothing by the time I touched the thin fabric of the red curtains and pulled them aside.
I was not alone, indeed.
Three men were in the room in front of me, two sitting, one standing behind them. The walls were red, the curtains red, the cushions of the chairs red, and even the polished wood of the desk in front of the seated men had a red hue to it. Must have been some sort of a reception area, I figured, and the doors were just ahead. Two of them, black, shiny, and I had to just walk around that big desk for a bit to get to it.
“Hello, Ora Reese,” said the man who was standingbehind the two, and they all looked strangely similar, like maybe they were brothers. They had round faces and round bellies, and they wore identical brown suits with red ties, too. The hair on their heads was a golden brown, which made me think they were Hearts.
The seated ones looked at me from over their rimless glasses, before they picked up pens at the same time and began to write on the papers in front of them. They had two identical lamps hooked to the edge of the desk, but even so, I couldn’t see what they were writing at all. Like their ink was invisible to my eyes.
“Um, hi,” I said, feeling more out of place by the second, even though the man standing smiled at me.
What looked like a wooden spinner was near him, a very strange wooden spinner. It was shaped like a heart, painted red, mounted on two narrow posts driven into the ground. The heart was divided into sections, the bold letters at the edges carved into the wood—2 x good, 1 x bad, 3 x happy, 1 x sad,and so on. A thin metal arrow was fixed at the center on a small pivot.
“Welcome to your first Turning Trial. We’re excited to have you,” said the guy, and the others didn’t glance up at all, even when I went a little closer.
“Excited to be here,” I said—and it wasn’t entirely a lie. “What, um…what exactlyisthe first trial? They didn’t tell us much outside, and my friends?—”
“That’s okay, Miss Reese. The rules and the conditions will be clear to you as soon as you walk through those doors.” And he pointed at the black doors cross the room.
“Oh.” Well, that hadn’t been so difficult. “All right, then.” Clearing my throat, I went ahead around the table, when?—
“One moment, please, Miss Reese,” the standing man said, and the other two had stopped writing for a tick. “I’m afraid you must first pay the price of entrance.”
I paused. “Price of entrance? But I don’t have any—”money on me,was what I wanted to say, but I should have known better than to thinkmoneywould be required in a trial.
“You have everything you need, in fact.” His smile was ice cold. “Please, step close to the spinner. You only need to spin it once.” He waved both hands at the wooden heart.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand.” That didn’t look like a normal spinner—and those words carved on the edges made no sense to me, either.
“You will in a moment. Please, come closer. Spin the needle so you can be on your way.” He even stepped to the side, as if to tell me I’d be safe to do what he asked.
Spin the needle.Easy enough, wasn’t it?
I stepped around the table and to the other side of the spinner shaped like an arrow, and the seated men ignored me completely even when I was standing just behind them.
“What are those?” I asked, pointing at the carved words.
“The price,” the man said.
“Yes, I know they’re the?—”
