The Heart boy didn’t remember standing up, but he was now slowly walking closer to the street as the light approached. He lived in a fancy enough neighborhood—though most places in the Court of Hearts were consideredfancy—so there were plenty of gold-painted lanterns on lampposts lining the street on both sides. Plenty of light to make sure that he wasn’t just seeing things, that the teal magic was real.
Timekeeper.
The word popped into his head without an explanation. He made it all the way to the edge of his yard, stepped onto the sidewalk, looked at the light getting brighter, getting closer…
He felt the buzzing of it, too. Felt the magic, raw and warm. He couldn’t really do magic properly at his age, but for some reason he recognizedthatone more clearly than any back at home—even his own mother’s spells.
His hands fisted to the sides instinctively. He looked upand down the wide, clean street, the dark windows of the houses, the perfectly manicured lawns, waiting…
“Hello?” he called because magic didn’t just happen to slither up the street by itself.
No—if there was magic nearby, someone had brought it to life.
Unfortunately for the Heart boy, though, the man who had ordered his magic to distract him wasnota friend. He was not here to chat nor to wish him good-timing.
Instead, he felt something behind him—rightbehind him, like the air suddenly charged, like a presence had materialized out of thin air without warning. His heart jumped, his instincts took over, his hands fisted tightly at his sides, and he was ready.
But he was no match for the piece of wood that hit him on his temple just as he turned.
The Heart boy ended up sprawled on his front lawn, cheek pressed against the grass blades, unconscious.
5
Ora Reese
Staringat the ceiling of my room had become part of my sleeping routine. I could no longer tell just how long my eyes remained open or what exactly went on inside my head before I slept—orwhenI fell asleep, or what was sleep and what was awake.
That’s why, when I heard the tapping on my window, I figured I was imagining it. I figured it was just one of the things that had no explanation that I sometimes thought about or remembered ordidn’t.
So, I went down this hole in my mind that opened somewhere below my bed like a tunnel that went on forever—and in it were the strangest things. Shelves full of books and candles trapped in cages, colorful feathers and jars full of eyes, and grinning cats, too. Such a strange place to be in that I could spend hours and hours falling, trying toseeeverything the hole contained, even though most things I saw were lost on me the second I looked away.
But that night, the tapping on my window continued.
I’d sketched the whole day. I’d pretended to be present at the picnic. I’d pretended to read when we came back home, too, and I’d pretended I wasn’t in pieces during dinner. Here, though, in my room, in my bed while I stared at the ceiling, I wasn’t supposed to have to pretend. I wasn’t supposed to have to ignore a sound as hard as I was trying now.
I just wanted to focus on falling, yet the tapping didn’t stop.
I sat up on the bed, either in a dream or in reality. I looked at the lamp on my nightstand, and the round clock that had been a gift from Father for my twelfth birthday—and it still ticked every second exactly as it should.
The hands claimed it was a little past midnight, and nobody had any business being outside at this hour—but the tapping continued, and when I focused on the window on the other side of the room, I could make out the little rock that fell against the glass just as the tapping sounded.
Someone was throwing rocks at my window.
That’s when I decided that I was dreaming.
It was easier to move once that decision was made. Easier to pull the covers off and instinctively grab the chronobank that I’d been given in Neverwhen—like it was a habit to take it with me everywhere I went. I never even went to the bathroom without it, which was strange enough on its own. I couldn’t explain why.
My bare feet barely made a sound on the hardwood floor as I walked to the window, looked outside into the side yard of our house, at the trees beyond the fence gate. Everything was dark, even though there were lanterns shining nearby.
Nobody was there.
Yet as I stood there with my breath held, a tiny rockslammed against the right side of the window just near the corner. There was no mistaking it—it was a rock. A rocksomebodyhad thrown.
The gears in my stomach turned. I had the feeling I was about to get into trouble, yet it was alsoexcitementthat raised the hair on the back of my neck.
Another rock against the glass, and then I was out of my bedroom door, tiptoeing my way down the wide hallway, as Mother and Father’s room was just around the corner from mine. They’d be fast asleep, and I never left my room at night, so they had no reason to suspect—but still. I was suddenlydesperateto find out who it was that was throwing rocks at my window, these fantasies from every romance novel I’d read and every play I’d seen spinning like a hurricane in my mind, warping my reality even more.
Or my dream—whichever I was in right now.
