Of course, I didn’t believe them. Hands didn’t die in the Turning Trials. That wasabsurd.We played games and had a good time and created more Sparetime to fulfill the realm’s needs while we were at it—that’s it. That’s all the Turning Trials were about.
Hands didnot diein these games. They never had.
Then again, I didn’t remember reading or hearing about any of the old trials withtimewraithsin them.
The Tree of Years was groaning when we got up to the next level, which, to nobody’s surprise, looked almost identical to the other two below.
Here, though, the colors were even more faded, the wood darker, the bark rougher, and even the floor under our feet was softer, like it was just waiting to break at any second.
It was happening right before our eyes, too. The more of us climbed up the slide, the louder the groaning, and the more the thinner branches broke off the bigger ones and fellon the floor. There were a few flowers here that hadn’t lost their color, but most had withered long ago.
And the rings…
“Guys,” Cook whispered, raising his hand toward one of the branches, and he touched the ring on its bark with his bare hand—because it was no longer glowing.At all.
“It’s us,” I said, a bit dumbfounded. “We’redoing this to the tree.”
“The magic,” Seth said. “The more we use, the more it takes from the tree.”
“How much longer will we have to climb?” Helen asked, and her voice shook. We were all looking up at the canopy the next second, hoping to find the answer to her question. “If we keep this up, this tree is going to collapse with us inside it. We’ll never-ever-reven make it out.”
No, we wouldn’t.
“It’s nighttime. The game is almost over,” Silas said, and he was back to his usual self. Reggie was still a little pale, but he was perfectly focused, too. That wraith hadn’t done as much damage as I’d feared, thank Time.
“You don’t know that,” said Levana. “There’s only two handfuls of seeds left! We don’t know that we’ll make?—”
“There!”
We all stopped. We all turned to look at where Russ was pointing, and when I did, it took me a few blinks to convince myself that I was seeing right.
It was the trunk of the Tree of Life—the actualtrunk from which all the branches extended, and it was as wide as a house.
We all went closer as if drawn in by the dark, rough bark. The branches that extended from it just below our feet were the foundation of the floor we stood on, woven with more roots and vines and rope that really did feel weaker than it had on the levels below.
But there was a hole on the trunk halfway up this level, and it was made out of stone blocks.
My heart skipped a beat.Our way out.
That’swhere we needed to go—except there seemed to benobranches extending from it where we could reach, only higher up.Muchhigher up, and they twisted and turned in such a chaotic way that we couldn’t hope to be able to climb for hours and hours.
The hole was taller than me, round, so black it looked like nothing existed on the other side of it. The stone blocks that seemed to have been hammered into the trunk by force were identical in color to those of the tower. Vines and roots and leaves must have grown somewhere inside it because they crawled out onto the edges of the blocks, greener than anything else up here.
“Ora, Erith,” Mimi said. “The seeds.”
The seeds.
I still had my seeds, and Erith did, too. We could still make a bridge up to that hole.
“You guys, are you sure thatthat’swhere we need to go? I don’t know—something about it feels wrong,” Cook whispered.
“It’s so dark,” said Anika. “Ireallydon’t want to be anywhere near it.”
I didn’t, either, but… “It’s the same stone blocks as those of the tower. Calren said the last level would be in the tower, right?”
Silence for a tick.
“Let’s do it, then,” said Erith.
