“How much is left?” Laverick asks quietly.
I stare at the ground to avoid seeing Jamison’s reaction in my side vision. “I don’t know exactly. The tenth anniversary isn’t until next month, but it feels closer.”
“Time moves at different intervals in every world,” says Osric. “One day in the Land Under the Wave is equal to one month in the rest of the worlds. Your visit to the Land of Youth, then to your own world, then to this world in so short a period may have confused how your ticker counts time.”
Of course time is working against me. I can never seem to get ahead of it, but my ticker will not stop me from going home to my uncle. I will make time for this.
Jamison drops his head in his hands, his fingers digging into his hair. “How long have you known?”
Osric clears his throat and rises. “We’ll wait over here.”
The lot of them step aside. Claret does well walking on her own, but her scarecrow body moves as though her joints are understuffed with straw. Laverick supports her until she’s steady on her own, and Radella flits off to hover by them.
“I’ve known something was wrong since before we came to this world,” I admit. Jamison cranks his jaw from side to side. “I didn’t know I was running out of time until I met with Muriel. I wanted to tell you in the grotto, but we were in a rush to do the transference.”
He lowers his hands and stares at a tuft of grass between his feet. “Did Muriel tell you how to fix this?”
“I need to go home. My uncle will know what to do.”
“After your uncle saves you, then what happens?” he questions in a low voice. “Will you return to your old life? Is that what you want?”
What I want is very different than what waits for us. I have evaded the obvious truth for too long. Jamison deserves my honesty, even if it is unsatisfactory. “I can’t change who I am or who you are.”
His gaze jumps to mine, and the amount of hurt I see there steals my breath away. “Do you know what I wanted to tell you in the grotto? I wanted to assure you that I’ll make your life as Lady Callahan a happy one. I don’t care to participate in high society. Though I still have my title, I gave up that lifestyle when I lost my inheritance. For me, going home means having a life with my wife. Everything I’ve done in this world was so we could go home together.”
He’s trying to compensate for complications that aren’t his to solve. My clock heart and criminal sentence are my burdens to bear. “I would never ask you to live as a shut-in.”
“You don’t have to ask. Being with you is the only homecoming I’ve imagined.” Jamison pushes to his feet to leave and then hesitates. “I wish you had told me. It’s difficult to trust someone with your cares and dreams when they refuse to trust you with theirs.”
Laverick bites her lip and looks away. All our friends are watching or listening, and upon reading their expressions, I realize they agree with Jamison.
“I’m sorry,” I say, extending my apology from one friend to another. “I should have told you all, but I was afraid of what was happening and didn’t want to admit it was true.”
“I’m afraid too—afraid of losing you,” says Jamison. “Above all, I’m afraid for you.” He reads the sun, discerning the midday hour. “Markham’s lead on us is growing. We need to get Everley home.”
He picks up my sword, lightening my load, and marches past our friends. Osric and Claret follow him down the path toward the village, Claret moving steadier each step she takes. Radella flies to the front of the group to ride on Jamison’s shoulder, a clear indicator that I’ve lost her favor.
Laverick walks by my side, our gaits falling into sync. “Do you know what I do when I’m afraid?” she asks. “I light a fuse and blow something up.”
Though that may not have been my intent, I fear that’s precisely what I’ve done.
Chapter Twenty-Four
We hurry down the steep footpath, traveling around the lagoon to the village. Osric finishes eating another charm apple and signals for us to stop. Upon the elf’s request, Jamison passes him the spyglass.
“What is it?” he asks Osric.
The first mate peers through the spyglass at the structure atop the mountain, the stairway that seemingly leads to nowhere. “Someone is climbing to the portal . . . It’s Prince Killian.”
I grab the spyglass to see for myself. Markham is indeed scaling the stairway. If we hurry, we won’t be far behind.
Jamison doesn’t need to set the pace now, because I race down the pathway ahead of everyone. But as we round the bend into the village, Claret slows down and points behind us out to the sea.
“Lavey, isn’t that the pirate ship you told me about?”
I pause to look through the spyglass at the Undertow entering the harbor. I lower my sight to the upper deck where Captain Redmond stares back at me through his own spyglass. I snap mine closed. “We need to hurry.”
I was pushing my limits before, yet I still dig further for strength and dash for the village. Radella flies alongside Jamison, her little wings easily pacing us. I grip my aching ribs and start to slow. Laverick slides her arm around my waist, and Claret does the same on my other side, helping me along.
As we near the houses, the residents go inside and shut their doors and windows. Osric slows, as though something is wrong, and then Neely steps out from behind a building, a mace in one fist.
“Osric,” says the giant, “the captain said if you came this way, I was to bring you all to the ship.” Neely spots me supported between my friends and sends me an apologetic smile. “Hello, poppet. How’s your ticker?”
“It’s not so good, Neely. I need to go home.”
“I can’t let you do that. The captain found a way for me to go home to the Hollow. I’m sorry, poppet. I would like to see my world again before I die.”
“I understand,” I say.
Osric draws his sword at the giant. “Everyone keep going. I’ll handle him.”
We hasten past him while he paces the giant. Jamison resumes the lead, urging us onward, my sword in his right hand.
The switchback roadway is endless, the crushed shells beneath our feet difficult to run on. I hear Neely smashing apart buildings below with his mace, trying to strike Osric. His mace finally connects, and the impact tosses Osric over our heads. He lands in the hills above us.
Neely stomps after us, gaining ground with his long strides. Jamison hands my sword to me and draws his pistol.
“Get to the portal,” he says.
“But, Jamison—”
“Go, Everley!”
I pull away from my friends and push myself to run. Claret and Laverick stay close, their swords drawn. We round the end of the switchback and jump all at once at the boom of gunfire. Down the slope, Neely has dropped his mace and is clutching his shoulder from where Jamison shot him.
Jamison sprints after us, waving for us to keep running. We set off again, but so does Neely.
Radella, who has been switching between flying beside Jamison and me, now darts behind us and flutters her wings, releasing pixie dust. The dust opens a hole in the ground. The giant’s foot lands in the ditch, and he flings forward, landing hard.
Up ahead, Osric gets up from where he was thrown. We run toward him, and he signals for us to keep going, then walks to the center of the road with his sword to confront the giant for another round. Radella stays back this time with him.
We leave the seashell-strewn streets and set out on a dirt trail. Jamison is limping, but I dare not mention it. Our footing pulls out loose rocks and sends little stones bouncing downward. The Fox and the Cat are tiring, so I do my best to hike without their help on my wobbly knees and ankles.
Neely’s heavy footfalls close behind us cause us to pause. I don’t see Osric or Radella, so the giant must have fought his way past them. Laverick glances at Claret, and they seem to agree upon something.
“Everley,” Laverick says, “go ahead of us.”
“No, we stay togethe
r,” I reply. “I’ll run faster.”
Laverick groans at my stubbornness. “Stop trying to do everything alone. Let us do this as your friends.”
The top of the giant’s head appears down the slope.
“Be careful,” I say to the Fox and the Cat, and then Jamison and I continue up the trail.
We run until we are high above them, then I look back and see Laverick standing face-to-face with the giant. Claret leaps out from behind a boulder, and Laverick gives her a boost, lifting her onto the giant’s back. The Cat wraps her arms around the giant’s neck, clinging to him while Laverick hacks at his knee with her sword. Neely lets loose a howl. Jamison and I start up a steeper incline and lose sight of them.
The tingling in my fingertips worsens to include my toes. Numbness in my extremities is a warning sign that time is leaving me. Pressing a hand over my tight chest, I sense little movement in the gearwork of my ticker. I plod around the next bend and stop to read the clockface. The minute hand is at the seven and steadily moving toward the six, soundlessly rotating counterclockwise. Once it counts downs to a zero hour, I sense my time will be up.
“Evie, we have to go,” Jamison says.
“Take my sword to my uncle,” I pant. “It’s my ticker the captain wants.”
“Don’t be a nidget.” Jamison hoists me over his shoulder, my arms draping down his back, and starts uphill. “We may disagree from time to time, and you often pretend you don’t like me very much, but we were just starting to fancy each other.”
“You’ve always fancied me.”
“What’s not to fancy? Your frosty temperament or your mannish attire?”
He sets into a jog, his knee barely holding. My view of behind us shows me longboats full of pirates rowing from their ship across the lagoon to the dock. Reinforcements are coming to aid Neely, but we should be long gone before they catch up.
Jamison starts up the final section of rocky path, the stairway to the portal well in sight.
A boulder soars over our heads, hurled by the giant, and decimates the trail in front of us. Dirt and pieces of stone spray down, the pathway crumbling. We slide downhill, Jamison and I falling and skidding to a stop in a cloud of dust. I cough and wave away the dust plume.
“Jamison?”
“Here.” His trousers are torn and his legs cut and scraped. I rise to help him, and the air clears to reveal Neely rounding the lower bend of our trail.
“Damn bastard won’t give up.” Jamison pushes to his feet and passes me the sword of Avelyn. “Get on up there.”
“I want to go home together.”
“I’ll be right behind you.” He draws his sword and confronts the giant. “Go, Evie!”
My pistol still has one shot, but unless my aim is perfect, firing it will only serve to further anger Neely.
I scramble up the path, over unstable rocks, and crest the mountain. The wooden stairway is bigger from this vantage point and endlessly tall. The many stilts that hold up the structure appear rickety and old. As my uncle would say, the craftsmanship has no soul. The stairway is strictly functional and not well maintained.
Markham is nowhere to be seen, so I heft the sword and climb.
The stairs go on and on. After the thirty-fifth step, I reach a platform and a boggart rises through a trapdoor in the floor. The creature can assume the shape of anyone or anything. His current form is of a skeletal cloaked figure, his hood drawn to cover his skull. His jawbone juts out from under the shadow of his hood, the rest of his face hidden.
“Name,” he says in a crackly whisper.
“Everley Donovan.”
“You may pass, Time Bearer. But first, the sea hag requested that we deliver this to you.”
The boggart’s skeletal fingers slide out from under his sleeve. In his bony hand is a folded piece of paper. I take it and quickly read the message.
Dearest Everley,
Some sacrifices are so immense they change the course of the future.
This was always my end and your beginning.
All my love,
Muriel
The stairway starts to shake. Neely has topped the mountain. Neither Jamison nor any of my friends are anywhere in sight behind him. The structure creaks and groans as the giant begins to scale the steps after me.
I shove the letter in my pocket and dash upward. The taxing climb grays my vision around the edges like singed paper. When I glance over my shoulder to gauge Neely’s progress, I spot Jamison bounding up the steps after us.
Neely lunges upward two and three steps at a time. I run faster and summit the final dozen stairs. An iridescent cloud hovers and swirls at the end of the platform at the top, floating above the ground in midair. One could step off the platform into the portal, akin to stepping on a cloud. As I have never stepped through a portal without a guide, the security of its structure is uncertain.
The giant barrels after me, his heavy weight and fast movements making the stairway quake. I wait for a moment for Jamison to catch up so he can come with me, but he’s still too far behind.
I shuffle to the end of the platform, my toes hanging over the edge. The ground is a very long way down. Up close, the color of the portal varies from red to green to blue, and every color in between, a rainbow through the mist.
Neely ascends the final stairs and towers over me, bleeding from his leg and his shoulder. His weight unbalances the structure, swinging it from side to side.
“Jump, Everley!” Jamison yells.
Jump into what? I would feel more confident if the portal were a doorway or a tunnel, something more substantial than colorful brume.
The giant lowers his big hands to catch me. I duck down, avoiding his swipe. Though I don’t want to leave Jamison or our friends behind, I have nowhere else to go. I ready myself for a big drop and leap from my crouch into the portal.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I am standing atop a lofty pinnacle. Stars race around me, chasing each other like flitting butterflies. Far below, I see the worlds, all of Avelyn lies at my feet.
My clock heart spins, then the gears inside it yank and the floor opens beneath me.
I plunge through the darkness, plummeting through the bottom of a star. A soft, soulful melody played on a violin fills my head, and a warm, velveteen blanket engulfs me.
The sudden silence jolts me awake. I blink fast to clear the starlight from my eyes and find myself standing in a forest of colossal elderwood trees. Their trunks are as wide as wagons, and their treetops so high I cannot find the sun beyond their leafy crowns.
I didn’t know portals could transport me to the Everwoods. Perhaps they only do this for Time Bearers.
My ticker has paused its countdown and instead spins and spins like a compass struggling to find magnetic north. The sword of Avelyn glows as brightly as a new star and vibrates a little in my hand, as though it’s happy to return to this wondrous forest.
No one else is here—not a pixie or sprite or gnome in sight. The trees are all the company I need. I tread to the nearest elderwood and press my palm against its velvety bark. A word comes to my mind with firmness.
Hurry.
A patch of daisies sprouts beneath my feet, extending out in a path. I follow the trail of flowers through the trees, the rich scent of damp greenery fresh upon my skin. Warm sunshine filters through the leaves and dapples the forest floor.
Through a gap in the leafy branches, the daisy path leads me to a clearing. On the opposite side stand several doors, seven in total. The doors are not built into a wall but stand independent of each other, as though a house has fallen down around them and only they were left erect.
Each door is constructed from the same wood yet carved with individual designs. The first door is the most ornate, decorated with etchings of apples with crowns of leaves encircling them. The second door has markings of mountain peaks, and the third has wild lilies, but the markings have faded and the brass doorknob is rusty.
The fourth door is carved wi
th acorn trees, its craftsmanship finely detailed. I linger by this door the longest and then move on to the fifth door, which is set apart by its etchings of shooting stars. The sixth door is also distinct, with images of various seashells. But the seventh door is the most unique, and not for good reasons.
Dead vines choke the door itself, and faded leaves are strewn in front, the only fallen flora I have seen in the Everwoods.
I tug away a patch of the scraggy vines and reveal the door’s cloud designs. Someone has placed a large hanging lock around the handle, and, more oddly, the lock has no keyhole. While the other doors appear to be in service, this one is obviously in a state of disrepair.
Down the row, the acorn door slowly opens and muted light spills out. I cautiously tread back to it, and a daisy sprouts near the opening. The flower shoots up and up, tall as my outstretched hand. I touch the pure-white petals, and something shifts in the forest behind me.
I raise my sword and whirl around. “Father Time, is that you?”
Nothing else moves in the forest; however, the acorn door swings inward wider. No wind pushes it, and as far as I can tell, I am alone.
A familiar sound carries out of the door—a chorus of ticktocking clocks. Curious, I touch the door, and it swings fully open into a room filled with timepieces. My uncle’s creations.
I step inside the store, and when I look back, the door from the Everwoods has disappeared.
The shop smells of sawdust and fresh lacquer mixed with a mustiness that accumulates after endless spring rainstorms. I sheathe my sword and lay my palm on a mantelpiece clock. Its beats ring through me with purpose. My own ticker has resumed its counterclockwise beats, its voice too weak to hear. The minute hand has crept farther backward and is now between the three and two.
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