I didn’t hesitate. Reaching for my pocket, I grabbed the seeds in my fist and moved to get as close to the trunk as I could, thinking we should plant them right by the edge so that branches extended upward, and then we could just climb. It wasn’t too far a climb. It would work, no doubtabout it.
As the thoughts and plans went through my head, I was perfectly distracted, and so I didn’t even notice movement until a hand wrapped around my arm and pulled me back.
“Run, run—RUN!”shouted one Hand or the other from a few feet away.
I looked up, my legs moving as March pulled me awayfrom the trunk.
Becausetimewraithswere running toward us from both sides of it, and this time there were four of them.
Black dots in my vision, but I was running. My blood rushed and my heart hammered, and someone screamed or said something, but my ears were too busy whistling. March was ahead of me, his hand in mine pulling me forward.
March. The others.
All the Hands—we were still here.
The thought pushed back my panic a bit. I blinked and I saw—more of the same branches and leaves and flowers that should have long ago withered but hadn’t. My lungs burned, and I could’ve sworn the floor beneath my feet tilted every now and again, the branches stretching and recoiling like they could barely hold our weight.
But the wraiths were after us still, and we couldn’t stop. Not before we made it. Not before we were safe.
Then someone screamed.
It was loud and clear, and it pierced right through my mind. March and I stopped running, and we turned at the same time to see a wraith grab Helen by the back of her suit, andthrowher against the floor.
My heart all but stopped beating.
Helen was far away, at least fifteen feet behind me. Seth and Erith were closer, and they stopped, too. They ran back to help her.
“No, no, DON’T!”I shouted at the top of my voice, but it was too late.
Four timewraiths.Four.They easily grabbed the Hands and threw them to the ground before either could even touch Helen, who was shaking on the floor.
I tried to take my own advice but it was impossible. My axes were in my hands and I shot forward—and almost slammed right onto Silas.
He’d stepped in front of all of us who were aiming to run back to the wraiths, and he had both hands raised when he shouted, “STOP!”
“They’re killing them, Sy—move!” Reggie shouted, but Silas was already moving.
Silas was movingsideways,toward one of the thicker branches that curved just over the floor from somewhere over our heads, before it twisted up a few feet away and disappeared over another branch again. The bark of it was browner than most others right now, and Silas put both hands on it.
“They’ll kill all of us if we go to them now. We can’t win, not against four,” Silas said. “Trust me, I?—”
“I’m not going to leave them behind!” March cut him off, and took another step forward—Time’s Teeth, they werekilling them for real!Helen and Seth and Erith were on the floor, shaking, while those creatures hunched over them, put their disgusting hands over their bodies, drinking in every second of life in them.
They weredying!
“We’re not leaving them—juststop for a second!Wraiths do not hunt people when there’smoreactive time elsewhere to feed from!”
Of course, I didn’t understand a single word he said, but…
“Sy,” Reggie cried, defeated, and Silas closed his eyes, turned to the tree.
“Just watch for a second—JUST WATCH!”
It took a lot out of me to stand there with my axes in hand, to watch our friends gettingfed onby fucking monsters, to watch Silas trying to basically push his hands into the bark of a branch bigger than the width of my body.
It was stupid. It was ridiculous—we could have been on them already!
But…it broke.
