Time’s Teeth, I’d missed her face—and was I crying?
How I’d almost forgotten the shape of her, the colors of her, thefeelof her—and was I awake?
“Ora, look at me. Open your eyes, look at me…”
Holy Hour, I’d been holding on so, so tightly, my hands must have been covered in blood—and was that March calling me to look at him?
I thought it was. I thought he might be there for real if I opened my eyes, and my hands might be mine again, and Jinx would still be gone.
But she would also be…there. Inside me. Sitting in the center of my mind, playing her piano in the sunlight—forever.
My eyes were mine to open. They were wet, too—I’d definitely been crying. But the tears were light, and they were refreshing. They weren’t like the other tears, the ones that added weight to my shoulders. These were different. These didn’t blur the memory of Jinx at all. In fact, they just intensified it. She was absolutely still there.
I opened my eyes. March’s face was indeed above me—pale, his eyes bloodshot, his hair wild. His hands were on my cheeks, on my shoulders, pulling me up, but my body had yet to respond as quickly as he needed it to. That’s why I immediately tried to lie back down—was I lying on the floor?
Yes, I was.
In fact, I was still there, still on the threshold of the Distribution Room, and the humming in the air was so much louder, I hadn’t even realized it wasn’t in my head. No, it was out there, and there were screams in the background, too—“PICK HER UP, QUICK, PICK HER UP!”
Mimi.
I’m up, I’m up,I wanted to say, but my mouth didn’t quite work yet, either. Arms underneath me, and the more I blinked the more clearly I saw—March holding me in his arms, Mimi pulling a door closed, Silas right over my head, saying something to March in a whisper.
Then we were moving.
March ran with me in his arms. The melody of Jinx’s piano faded away a little as I tried to come to my senses, to hear better, to see, to understand—were we still in the Distribution Room? Was that humming the charge for the next hour? Was it going to kill us?
“Thirty seconds!”
Silas.
“The…the tools,” I thought I said, but I wasn’t sure the words came out right. But the tools had fallen out of my pockets in the nothingness, and Master Talik needed them to get us out, but my eyes refused to obey me. My mind refused to stick to reality just yet. It was too tired from all those scenes, absorbing all those moments.
I was exhausted.
Even so, I kept saying it for as long as I was awake—the tools, the tools, they were in my pocket,and the best I could do was pray that they were somehow still there. That they hadn’t disappeared in the dark, but they’d come out here with me.
Eventually, I could no longer get my mind to even remember Jinx’s melody. I was gone.
“Ora.”
My heartbeat shook me like a drum in my chest, like it was the first time it was beating in forever.
“Ora, can you hear me?”
Yes.
The word remained inside me, but my eyes were opening. Blinking. Chasing away the darkness little by little.
And the melody in the back of my mind had already started again.
I wasn’t moving anymore. Nobody was carrying me. I was lying on something—no.I was sitting on something hard, and my head was on the side, lying on something soft—March’s hand. His other was on my cheek, caressing it.
I was no longer crying.
“Just give her time. She’ll come around.”
Silas’s voice pierced right through my mind and silenced even Jinx’s piano for a tick.
