“How long have I been here?”
“An hour,” said the cat, the same second Mimi and Seth both spoke at the same time, said, “A month.”
His head whipped back and forth between us and the cat, and then the boy said, “Why don’t they know? What happened, Cheshire? Tell me—what happened?”
“How shouldIknow—I’m only a cat who sat on your lap since you’ve been here. The hour was plenty long, and you snore sometimes, too. But your lap was comfortable enough, I would guess.” Then he started moving,sideways.
The cat walked, but it walkedsidewaysand it was the strangest thing I’d seen—the way he put his two left paws under and in front of the right ones without even falling.
“You…you’re a Hand,” March said. “We were Hands, too, in the Turning Trials. They ended a month ago. You’ve…you’ve been here a month.”
Impossible,my mind whispered. Nobody could have survived stuck here behind the wall for a month without food or water—least of all if they wereunconsciousthe way this boy here had been.
“You keep sayinghourwrong,” said the cat as it moved closer and closer to the boy’s other side. “I suppose itisto be expected, considering the state of your minds.”
“What state?” Mimi asked, but the boy was looking around us now, raising his head, staring at the walls.
“A pocket,” he finally whispered. “He put me in a pocket.”
“He most certainly did, Timekeeper,” said the cat who’d stopped again near his legs and continued to lick his paw.
“Who?” I said, nearly choking on the word. “Who put him…”in apocket?!
Had they lost their minds, or was it just me?
The cat looked at me, paused. “Why, the Timekeeper.”
Yes, it was most definitely just me because Ifeltlike I’d lost my mind, too.
“Calren,” the boy then whispered, and he let go of me, tried to push himself up. “Where is Calren?”
Finally, a name we knew.
“Outside,” Mimi said, her eyes full of tears she had yet to let shed. “He…he passed out. He’s outside. Who is he?” Mimi reached out and touched his cheek. “Who areyou?”
And who is Reggie?
And who is Helen?
And who is?—
“Cheshire.” The boy’s voice cut my thoughts in half. Hewatched Mimi with wide, unblinking eyes. “Why don’t they remember?!”
Laughter.
The cat laughed and laughed, turned over on its back and giggled, wiggled, spun all around.
“Oh, I do so love that question. It was a glitch, young Timekeeper, a glitch unlike any other—unlikeyouyourself!”
The boy then tried to push himself up to his feet. We all jumped, too—except he must have overestimated his strength because he fell back against the hook with a groan and a sigh, and his eyes closed once more.
“Silas, Silas, Silas,” the others called, while my jaw remained locked.
They asked him questions, tried to reach out and touch his cheek, but he didn’t respond.
Yet he was still breathing, and my eyes were stuck to his chest, and as long as it rose and fell, I thought, it was okay.
Not surehowokay, but at least a little bit. It had to be.
