The Stroke of Eleven Page 7

  “She prefers not to do that unless someone makes her particularly angry. She’d rather keep everyone up here and make them dance forever.”

  “What do you mean, forever? The way you talk about time doesn’t make any sense at all.”

  “You’ll quickly find that nothing makes sense in this miserable place.” He turned to Cordelia. “You and Nick meet me in the secret room in a few minutes. Don’t follow me now. Best we don’t draw attention to ourselves by walking around together in plain sight. Beatrice’s been lenient up until now, but given what she did to Gareth and Sylvia, she’s starting to lose patience.” He spun on his heel and headed toward an alcove in the corner of the room. It contained an ancient Thessalian statue of a woman—with the arms and legs broken off.

  “Can you explain what any of that meant?” I asked Cordelia.

  She exhaled slowly. “I’ll try, Nick, but I have to warn you…you’re not going to like it.”

  “I’m stranded hundreds of years in the past. I already don’t like it.”

  She winced. “That’s the thing. As it turns out, I was wrong about that.”

  I frowned. “Okay…so we’re not stuck in the past?”

  “We are…but at the same time, we’re not.”

  “You’re not making sense.”

  “Under the circumstances, I’m not sure I can make sense.”

  “What did you mean when you said you remembered? What are you remembering?”

  She bit her lip. “Nick…we’ve done this before.”

  “Done what? Sneaked into a creepy castle? I guess we have done that, twice, if you count Warrengate as a castle…”

  “No, no, that’s not what I mean.” She waved a hand at the ballroom. “All this…it’s happened before. We’re re-living it all over again.”

  I struggled to sort out what she was saying. “Are you talking about déjà vu? I had a little of that earlier.”

  “In a way, yes, that is what I’m talking about…except déjà vu involves fake memories, and this is about real ones.” She looked out at the dancing couples. “Tell me honestly, Nick. Doesn’t all this seem oddly familiar?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Don’t answer yet. Focus. Try to remember. In your mind, go back over everything that’s happened.”

  I was starting to wonder if she’d overdone it on the punch while I wasn’t looking, but I decided to oblige her. I shut my eyes and concentrated.

  The first images that flashed through my mind were the events that had happened earlier—the lizard man’s attack, our sudden appearance at the ball, Gervase announcing us, Cordelia teaching me to dance—

  Then a searing, white-hot pain tore through my skull as a jumble of conflicting memories assaulted me.

  I saw Cordelia and myself in the ballroom talking to all four of the Mythfits, not just Gareth.

  I saw a younger Malcolm and that Melody person Levesque had talked about. Not in a drawing this time, though, in real life.

  I saw Sylvia being run through with a sword.

  I saw one of the clockmen slash Cordelia’s arm with a metal claw as she tried to help.

  I let out a cry of pain and doubled over, clutching my head. Cordelia quickly pulled me back upright and ushered me into a corner before anyone could see.

  “What was that?” I gasped.

  “Memories of the other loops are coming back to you,” she said. “I began remembering them in the last loop. Or maybe it was before that…it happens gradually, so it’s hard to be sure.”

  “What do you mean, ‘loops?’” I struggled to clear my mind. “I saw Sylvia die!”

  “Don’t worry. She’s alive. Given that she’s not here anymore, they must have taken her to the dungeons. She caused a lot of trouble for several loops, and I suppose Beatrice finally gave up on trying to keep her with the guests.”

  “But how can she be alive?”

  “Don’t you understand? Time keeps going backwards. Her death was reversed. That’s what happens to everybody who dies in this castle. We go through the same evening over and over again. It’s like a scratch on a record, repeating constantly.”

  My headache was getting worse. “But what’s all this for? Why would anyone do this?”

  “We think we have it worked out,” said Cordelia. “Now that you’re starting to remember, it’ll be easier for us to keep you up to speed.” She checked to make sure no one was watching, then led me over to the alcove containing the limbless statue.

  “Kanin found a hidden room where we can talk privately,” she explained. “In every loop, Malcolm casts some illusion spells around it to make it invisible to Beatrice and the clockmen. Of course, it’s possible that she’s already seen through the spells, and she’s just toying with us by pretending she hasn’t.”

  “So that’s who Beatrice is, then? The fairy godmother?”

  “Exactly.”

  I appraised the alcove. “I hate to be ungrateful to Kanin, but I don’t think this is big enough to hide us.”

  “This isn’t the room, silly. It’s the entrance.” She pressed a tiny bump on the wall behind the statue. The whole section of wall containing the alcove began to rotate. I realized with a start that the floor beneath us moving too, carrying us along with the turning wall.

  “This is getting stranger and stranger,” I said.

  Her expression became grim. “I’m afraid this is only the beginning, Nick.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Poor Old Malcolm Finnegan, Begin Again

  The moving panel brought us into a chamber much smaller and darker than the ballroom. The only light came from a line of flickering candles on a long table that took up much of the room. Kanin sat at the head of the table, and four other people were seated along it. Or rather, three of them were—one was a centaur, which meant he couldn’t use chairs. He just stood.

  I recognized him. In fact, I recognized everyone, but for now I focused on the centaur and the young blonde girl sitting next to him. He wore a double-breasted jacket over his human torso, while she was dressed in a violet gown. Her hair had been dark the last time I’d seen her, but I still recognized her.

  “Bryn!” I said. “Alan! You’re all right!”

  Alan gave me his usual dispassionate expression and shrugged. “More or less,” he intoned, in his northern drawl.

  “Nick! Cordelia!” Bryn the pooka was almost completely human when we first walked in, aside from her ears being those of a cat. She changed fully into a cat and bounded across the table toward us, then resumed her mostly human form once she reached the other side. “So good to see you again!” She took our hands and beamed at us.

  “You say that every time,” said Alan. “Don’t you ever get tired of having to say hello to them over and over?”

  “Well, they don’t remember.” Bryn vaulted over the table and returned to her seat. “I’ve got to be civil.”

  I stared at her. “You’re…different, somehow.”

  “I know!” She brushed her tousled blond hair back. “Do you like it?”

  “Very much,” said Cordelia, “but I don’t think that’s what Nick meant.”

  “Your accent’s different,” I said. “It sounds northern, not Caledonian.”

  “I’ve always been able to speak with both. I was born in Caledon, but raised by Alan’s family. It’s been a long time since I left Caledon, so I’ve been using the northern one more lately.”

  “But it’s not only that,” I said. “You’re not quite as scared, either.”

  “I’ve been through a lot.”

  “We all have.” Alan stamped his hoof. It made an odd, metallic clanking noise.

  I peered over the table at his left front foot. What I saw made me gasp in horror. “Alan! Your leg!”

  He glanced down. “What about it?”

  “It’s turned to clockwork!” I gaped at the gears and hinges that began above his knee and ended in a solid steel hoof.

  “No, it hasn’t. It’s been chopped off.” He lif
ted the leg with a whir of machinery. “This one’s new. Like it?”

  He was perfectly calm about it all, but I was aghast. “You got your leg cut off?”

  “Yeah. Long—”

  “No, no ‘long story.’ Spit it out. How did this happen?”

  “Beatrice had the clockmen cut it off after one of our escape attempts.” He still didn’t appear bothered in the least about it. “It’s all right, though. I’ve got three more.”

  “Alan, you’re part-horse! You need all your legs!”

  “Beatrice didn’t allow the leg to be restored when the clock turned back,” said Kanin. “Instead, she replaced it permanently with that prosthetic. A grim warning, in case we should try to escape again.”

  I was so fixated on Alan’s injury that I barely noticed when one of the two people on the other side of the table clicked his tongue in annoyance. “Do we have to go through this explanation over and over again? It wastes a lot of precious time. Find a way to streamline it, for pity’s sake.”

  I recognized the voice. Malcolm was there, sitting next to the tall young woman from the drawing Levesque had shown us. He looked twenty years younger than the Malcolm I remembered—though I supposed he was actually over a hundred years younger. His hair was entirely red, with no grey at the temples. He wore a long, dark-red leather jacket with a texture resembling scales.

  Melody Nightingale wore a red dress, but she had apparently ripped the skirt in half to allow herself a little more freedom of movement. She had one leg thrown over the other, and was toying with a golden locket around her neck. She acknowledged me with a nod and a brief smile.

  Malcolm stopped me with a gesture before I could speak to him. “Please, don’t say anything. Whatever it is, I’ve already heard it.” He started doing a very poor imitation of my voice and accent. “Malcolm! Crikey! You’re so young! What’s going on here? Who’s that girl? I’m so confused! Oi!”

  “I do not sound like that,” I growled.

  Melody smacked him on the back of the head. “Don’t be rude, grumpy-scales.”

  “Ow!” He rubbed his head and glowered at her, but there was a notable lack of fire-breathing. He must really like her, I thought.

  “How do you do?” Melody rose to her feet and held out her hand. She spoke with a northern accent as well, a dialect specific to the county of Darkwater. “Melody Nightingale, notorious jewel thief. You may have heard of me in the future; I’m sure I’m a figure of legend by then.”

  “Ah…yes,” I lied.

  She laughed. “I never get tired of that. You’re adorable when you lie.”

  “Perhaps,” said Cordelia, looking annoyed, “we should get down to business before this loop comes to an end.”

  “Definitely.” Kanin indicated two chairs at the end of the table nearest us. “Have a seat. I officially call this meeting to order.”

  “Okay, then.” I pulled out Cordelia’s chair for her, then sat down myself. “I have many questions. First of all—”

  “The White Rabbit Society is now assembled.” Kanin’s tone was solemn and ceremonial. “May the clock strike twelve.”

  “May the clock strike twelve,” echoed everyone, including Cordelia.

  I looked from one to the other in bewilderment. “Right. That wasn’t weird at all.”

  Cordelia elbowed me. “Hush.”

  “Has Nick started to remember at all yet?” Kanin asked her.

  “Bits and pieces,” I said. “Nothing’s really clear.”

  “Right. Then I’d better explain everything.”

  “That would be nice,” I tried to say. My voice was drowned out by the weary groans from everyone else at the table besides Cordelia.

  “Oh, grow up, you lot,” Kanin scolded. “I know this is tiresome, but we have to all be on the same page if we’re going to escape. All right?”

  “Can I take a nap until you’re done with this part?” asked Alan.

  “No.”

  “Drat.” He folded his horse legs under him until his equine body was lying on the ground, then leaned over the table, resting his chin on his folded arms.

  “How much do you know already about what’s going on?” Kanin asked me.

  “Something about…time loops or time scratches or time…somethings. Cordelia tried to explain it to me, but I didn’t really understand.”

  She looked miffed. “I thought I explained it rather well.”

  “Let’s start from the beginning,” said Kanin. “On November 17th, 426 B.E….”

  Alan yawned loudly.

  Kanin gave him a stern look. “Alan.”

  “Sorry.”

  “As I was saying, on that date, a royal ball was held at the Castle of Basile so that Prince Matteo of Vetri could choose his bride from the eligible young women of the kingdom. He’d been more interested in weapons than marriage up until that point, so the regents who assisted in his rule decided they had to make him select a future queen.”

  “Barbarians,” said Malcolm.

  “You won’t think it’s so barbaric when we get married,” said Melody.

  “We are not getting married.”

  “Oh, we will. Just you wait.”

  I couldn’t help but wonder what had become of Melody by my time. Most likely, she’d died of old age. Not a pleasant thought. I wondered if she and Malcolm ever had gotten married.

  “The ball,” said Kanin, struggling to maintain control of the discussion, “began promptly at eight o’clock P.M., and was scheduled to conclude at the last chime of midnight. However, the stroke of twelve never came.”

  “And it still hasn’t,” said Bryn. “This evening has lasted over two thousand years, and it’s still never quite midnight.”

  “Time keeps turning back on itself, you see,” said Melody. “Beatrice’s magic is channeled through that big clock in the ballroom. Every time it strikes twelve, the hands start going backward, and time is dragged along with it. Everything gets reset to the way it was when the ball first began.” She hesitated. “Mostly, anyway.”

  “The precise sequence of events in these four hours has altered somewhat over time.” said Kanin. “For example, you and Cordelia obviously weren’t there in the fifth century B.E., when all this started. But then, in one of the cycles, you arrived around nine-o’clock-ish and kept arriving for every cycle after that. I always show up around a quarter past nine.”

  “The people who have been caught up in the magic of Basile over the centuries got…incorporated into the time loop,” Cordelia explained. “And it seems like they were always there, even though they weren’t.”

  I held up my hand to silence everyone. A horrible thought had occurred to me. “Wait a minute. You’re saying that time keeps going around and around in circles inside this castle…” I motioned vaguely to the wall. “…but out there, time goes on normally.”

  “Right,” said Kanin.

  “And we’ve been through quite a few of these loops.”

  “Yes.”

  “So a lot of time must have passed out there by now.” I didn’t want to ask the next question, but I had to. “How much time?”

  There was an uncomfortable silence. “It’s difficult to tell,” said Kanin at last. “Over time, our memories stop getting reset along with the time loop, and we retain our recollections of previous cycles. It happens to everybody eventually; seems to be something Beatrice can’t control. But we never fully recall every single one of those loops starting from when we first got here. So it’s impossible to tell precisely how long ago any of us arrived.”

  I felt sick. “So Cordelia and I could have been in here…what, weeks? Months?”

  “More likely years,” said Malcolm casually.

  “Years?” I choked. “So we’re not in the past, we’re in the future?”

  Malcolm rolled his eyes. “And here we go. Crispin and Molly, whoever they are, could have been trapped at Warrengate for ages and ages. Same song, same verse.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry to bore you!”
I snarled.

  Cordelia touched my hand. “Nick, try to calm down.”

  I ignored her. I wanted to yell at someone, and Young Malcolm provided an excellent target. “It’s not as if I have anything to worry about! My brother’s only being held prisoner by a Council of evil enchanters! He probably thinks I’m never going to come for him! And what are you doing about it? Why haven’t—”

  Malcolm raised a hand to silence me. “Please, allow me. Why haven’t I changed into a dragon and reduced Beatrice to a literal Cinder-ella? That was the brilliant pun you were going to use, right?”

  I blinked in surprise. “Er…yeah.”

  “Then allow me to inform you, for approximately the millionth time, that I can’t do that. All these old castles are equipped with enchantments that prevent dragons from assuming their true forms while inside them.” He motioned to himself. “So I’m stuck like this.”

  I clutched at my mane. “But there must be some kind of magic we can use to—I don’t know—”

  “Poof ourselves out of this castle?”

  It was as if he’d read my mind. “Yes, that’s…exactly what I was going to say.”

  “But there isn’t anything like that,” said Alan. “Plus, I don’t think ‘poof’ is a verb.”

  “There are ways to instantly transport from one place to another,” said Cordelia, “but they require magical ingredients we don’t have.”

  “And besides,” said Kanin, “they wouldn’t work in this case. Not only are the clockmen guarding the exits—and there are hundreds of those things skittering around, by the way—but there’s a magical barrier around the castle. Those pumpkins outside bring people in, but nobody can get out.”

  “How can you be sure the barrier would stop us if we tried to transport magically through it?” I asked.

  “Because I’ve tried it.” Kanin’s voice was stern. “Look, jumping from one place to another happens to be my specialty.”

  “I’m getting very tired of that rabbit pun.” Malcolm rubbed his eyes wearily.

  Kanin glared at him through the mask. “It’s not a pun, thank you very much.” His gaze went back to me. “I can create holes in space and time that instantly take me from place to place. Rabbit holes, if you will.”