No. I really wasn’t, but…
“Shereallyneeds to go back to the queens so they can do something about it.”
“Maybe it was the clockbeasts.”
“Maybe it was the timewraiths.”
“Maybe it was the curse…”
My eyes closed and I released the breath I was holding. This wasn’t the first time I’d heard abouta curseanda rogue Timekeeper—but any time I tried to ask anyone, they’d panic and run from me so fast it would have been funny if we weren’t talking aboutmy memories.My questions were the same inside and outside of me: unanswered.
I opened my sketchbook and continued to draw until Father came to get me to eat, but this time I couldn’t stop two tears from slipping and falling on the page, right onto the tips of those fingers thatalmosttouched.
2
Russell Gere
The long grassblades on the field that stretched from the side of the houses and beyond where the eye could see were just starting to turn silver. Everyone saw it when they woke up at first light, because Sparetime fell thick and heavy during the night when everyone was asleep—silent as a thief, layer upon layer?—
Actually, that’s not entirely true.
Not forthatnight, nor the ones before it, going back at least a couple of weeks.
Sparetimedidfall thick and heavy during the night, but lately noteveryonewas asleep while it did.
Lately, the boy who’d been a Hand in the 31st Turning Trials was out there, sitting cross-legged just where his backyard ended and the field began, and he watched.
He watched in silence all night long as layer upon layer of Sparetime settled itself onto the fields that held the thickest,tallest grass in the realm for this purpose only—to better catch the Sparetime and to more easily harvest it once it settled.
This area of the third quadrant of the Court of Diamonds did not get as much Sparetime as the rest, but all places close to The Spill, which was the very edge of the Clockrealm, got plenty of it year-round. It was the time wasted, moments lost or skipped, the natural produce of every single second that ticked from the Great Clock spread out—thick and ready to be harvested, to be converted into pure energy, then sealed inside diamonds to be used by the Clockfolk.
Which was also the point of the Turning Trials, the boy thought as he watched the tips of the grass blades turn whiter and whiter. Sparetime was invisible when it was airborne, but somehow it looked like silver dust once it settled. It fascinated the former Hand to watch it, and it emptied his own mind of all the darkness, and it gave him so much more peace than sleep could, which was why he was sitting there on the ground. Watching, all by himself. Waiting for Sparetime all night long.
Easier than facing himself.
Or rather…what was left of him.
“RUSS!”called his sister from the front of the house the moment the door opened, but the boy didn’t turn. Eveline was her name, and though he cared about her dearly, he also couldn’t stand the sight of her long, nor the sound of her voice.
He couldn’t stand the sight and sound ofanyone at alllately, and it was all because ofthem.
“Hey, are you deaf?! Get over here and help me with the containers!” Eveline called again, but the former Hand didn’t move. There was time to prepare the containers for the harvest. It wouldn’t begin for another two hours, and he still needed another moment to get ready for the day. Nightswere easy. He rarely slept anymore, because of what he saw in the darkness of his mind—thin red lips and wild curly hair, whispers and pain, broken clocks and rabid beasts—but outside, the fields were so quiet. He could listen to the owls hooting and the wind caressing the land while he watched. Night didn’t refuse to tell him the truth—the people who were out and about in the day did.
Eveline called and called, as annoying as she could be.
You better get here and help me if you want to eat breakfast!she said, andI’m going to go tell Momma,she said, andjust because you lost your memories don’t mean I gotta put up with your attitude!
It wasn’tjustbecause he’d lost his memories, though. It was because she, along with everyone else, refused to speak a single word to him about it.
And if we wanted to bereallypicky, the former Hand didn’t have an attitude. He simply…couldn’t bring himself to care about anything since he came back.
Even so, when the sun rose higher in the sky, he stood up and went about his chores, and his mother did scold him with a light tap on the back of his head when they went in for breakfast. His father was still asleep, having drunk wine until midnight, and he preferred it that way.Himhe could stand even less.
“You’ve got to put on the weight you lost,” his mother told him when he left his plate half-finished again.
“I’m fine,” the boy said
, but she wouldn’t hear it.
