“Then where are the other three?”
“Do I look like I know anything more thanyoudo, right now?!”
“Time’s Teeth, I’m in a room full of fools!”
“What are you looking atmefor—I didn’t even say anything!”
“Yeah, none of you are responsible for this. You could never-ever-reven pull something like this?—”
“If you’re done bickering and want to get the hell out of here—the stairs are that way.” The Diamond was already moving toward the narrow stairs, when…
“What’sthis?”
Mimi had made it all the way to the left of the room, hadgone up to that doorway with nothing but darkness on the other side, and had stopped by the three-legged table.
We all stopped and turned to look at her because she was the only one who sounded…curious. Not frustrated. Not shouting, just curious.
Then she grabbed something that was sitting there on the table and she raised it with a shaking hand.
It was small and green and…
“A…tiny book?” said one or the other.
Mimi pulled it open—the covers were thicker, shiny, green. Almost the same green as the shirt she wore.
“A notebook,” the Club whispered, and for some reason we were all suspended, frozen in place, watching her with our breaths held as she slowly turned a page.
Something about that notebook, though I couldn’t really tell youwhat.
Then Mimi gasped, and my knees shook.
Her wide green eyes moved on whatever she was looking at on that thing, and then she looked up at us.
The whisper barely left her lips. “You have to see this.”
The next second we were all moving, all running to the table, to the other side, and Mimi had put the notebook right there on the corner, had left it open. There were words written on the first square page in dark green ink.
“That’s…that’smyhandwriting,” she breathed, and she was shaking. I could tell because I was by her right shoulder (the Heart boy by her left).
“When did you write this, then?” asked one or the other—I was too busy trying to make out the words.
But the handwriting was very small, the letters tiny, so I couldn’t really make anything out.
“I don’t…I don’t know,” Mimi whispered.
“Can you read it? I can’t make out a single word.”
Mimi licked her dry lips, leaned closer toward the table,and we all did the same as if we were being guided by the same strings.
“W-w-we, the Hands of the 31st Turning Trials of the Clockrealm—Mimi, Seth, Russ, Cook, Anika, Erith, Levana, Ora, and March—do hereby vow that once the trials are done, we will stand united.”
Gasps, sudden movements, and someone pushed me even closer to the table as Mimi’s whisper wreaked havoc in my mind.
That’s me, that’s me, my name is in there,went my thoughts, and…
It’s him, it’s him—it’s March, that’s him!Don’t ask me how I knew, but it was him. The Heart boy.
Mimi slowly turned the page and continued to read.
