Aworkshop,if I had to guess.
Low ceiling made of glass this time, too, only it was dark above it, too dark to make out anything properly but some lanterns glowing with a dim orange light—and shelves. Lots of shelves with lots of things on them, things we only saw as shadows from down here. A dark room with no windows.
The floor was made out of stone, and ahead of us, long wooden tables were arranged in rows.
On the tables were clocks.
Hundreds of them—pocket clocks, wall clocks, grandfather clocks in miniature, clocks shaped like animals, clocks shaped like faces, clocks with no hands, clocks with too many.
All of them were silent. All of them were stopped at different times.
“What in Time’s Teacups…” Mimi whispered.
“Don’t touch anything,” Silas said.
“They’re just clocks,” said Erith. “We’ve seen worse. Those dolls…”
Yes, the dolls that were supposed to be miniature versions of Hands were indeed terrible, and they would remain in my memories forever, but…something about this room.
Something about all these clocks.
Silas removed his arms from around the boys’ shoulders. “Ora, the cane,” he said, limping on one foot, and I offered it to him—again, surprised to find it in my hand. It was like I was perfectly detached from my body in this place. I hardly felt my own limbs.
“It’ll be fine. Just don’t touch anything,” Silas said, stretching his neck as he eyed the clocks. “Whatever you do, don’t?—”
Russ had moved back a little to give him space once he stood on his own, and his elbow caught a clock on the edge of the nearest table. A small one—brass, shaped like an egg, barely bigger than his fist.
It tumbled off the table and hit the stone floor with a sharp, clear chime that cut Silas off.
For a second that lasted hours, the silence was deafening, like a world of its own.
Then the room woke up.
It was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. A blink, and then every clock on every table began to tick at the sametime. Not in unison but each at its own speed, its own rhythm, creating a wall of sound so dense and layered it feltphysical. The ticking filled the room and it kept rising, getting louder, faster.
There was no time to react, barely enough time to blink from one second to the next, so we couldn’t have possibly thought to run before it was too late.
Because the doors slammed shut at the same time.
Both of them—the one we’d come through and the one on the far side—swung closed with a force that shook dust from the ceiling and the walls.
The locks turned, the sound of them so heavy.Final.
“What is happening?!” someone screamed, and we were all instinctively moving closer to one another, and I had a hand around my arm pulling me back faster, which I knew belonged to March without having to look.
“This isn’t good, this isn’t good?—”
“Why did the doors close?!”
“Is there somebody there?”
“HELLO!”
“The clock—put the clock back on the table, you fool!” shouted Seth, pointing his finger at Russ.
We all held our breaths as the Diamond scrambled for the egg-shaped clock on the floor, grabbed it, slammed it back on the table’s edge, all within the second.
Please, please, please?—
