The boy could barely move his legs. He couldn’t keep his head up at all.
Time’s Teeth, he must have been worse off than we thought.
We needed to get him out of there—and fast. The others were already ahead, rushing, but just before I turned the corner of that corridor, I went back to the room. To the metal hook. To the cat that was now sitting on top of it, watching me with that horrible, beautiful grin.
“Aren’t you…aren’t you coming?”
The Cheshire tilted its head. Numbers cascaded down its fur like rain.
“I live in glitches, O-ra. I couldn’t follow if I wanted—which I would very much like if I did. As it happens, I do not.” Slowly, he raised a paw to his mouth and began to lick it. “Guess I shouldn’t complain—the Timekeeper was dreadfully boring, but so is being impossible—and yet, here I am.”
There’s no such thing as impossible,went the voices in my head, but when I opened my mouth to speak, I said, “You keep calling himTimekeeper,which he is clearly not.”
He was a Hand, Silas, however it had happened. He was a Spade.
That grin. So awful and stretchy andsharp.“Then by that calculation, I am clearly wrong, am I not, O-ra?”
“Why do you call me that? How do you know my name?” Though it wasn’tmyname at all—it sounded wrong the way he pronounced it.
But the next blink, the cat began to fade away.
Right there, in front of my eyes, it began to lose substance while it sat on the top of that hook—which was impossible all on its own—and licked its paw and grinned and grinned.
Then said, “Oh, we have history, you and I…” Even his voice had faded halfway. “The kind thatneverhappened.”
Laughter.
By the next blink, the cat was gone, and I was standingthere looking into an impossible room, trying to decide if my sanity was gone for good.
Luckily, someone called my name—March—and his voice I always heard. Whether I was real or not, as long ashewas, I could be, too. I could use him as my anchor to pretend at the very least. So, I turned and I walked all the way back to the real world, but the Cheshire’s voice remained in my head for a long time after.
“…can’t leave him!” Mimi was saying. Calren was still on the floor, barely breathing, and March was still carrying Silas on his own.
Others were arguing.
“Wecan’tbring him with us—he’ll slow us down!” Russ insisted. “We have to go! It’s bad enough that we haveoneunconscious person, and we haven’t even found our proof yet!”
Proof, he said.
“I don’t care!” Mimi shouted. “I am not leaving him behind like this—look at him! He wouldn’t survive!”
“He will! The Timekeeper who brought him food will come and-and?—”
“No.” The word slipped from my lips, and I was moving, and how could I stop?
Timewas moving here, too. The difference was right there in the air. My lungs had finally filled properly.
The others stopped, looked at me. Silas gasped beside March like he was surfacing from deep water, but he couldn’t even open his eyes.
“Easy,” March murmured, adjusting his grip around his wrist as he watched me. “I’ve got you.”
“We’re not leaving the Timekeeper behind,” I said, stepping carefully over his legs to get to the other side.
“Thenyoucarry him,” Russ spat.
Iwouldif I had to, but that was not the issue here. “Don’t you see? They sent us here to look for proof.” I looked at Russ—at March. “They know. That boy and this Timekeeper…they know what happened. Theyarethe proof.”
And if they asked me how I came to that conclusion, I wouldn’t know how to answer, but I felt it. Ifeltthat this was it.
