The Stroke of Eleven

by Kyle Robert Shultz

  “Alan’s quite the musician,” Bryn explained as she approached us. “He can play pretty much anything.” She watched him proudly as he directed the song.

  “Lovely. But I don’t think those clockmen approve.” Cordelia motioned to the mechanical creatures, who were advancing on Alan in staccato jerks.

  “I’d better do something about that, then, hadn’t I?” Bryn changed into a sheepdog and rushed at the clockmen, barking in their hooded faces. They snatched at her, but she was too fast for them.

  Melody moved over to a table laden with refreshments. She picked up some sandwiches and began gleefully throwing them at random people.

  “She reminds me of you,” I said to Cordelia.

  “Oh, really? I can’t imagine why.”

  Malcolm snapped his fingers, and one of the tapestries hanging on the wall burst into flames.

  “Not nearly as satisfying as breathing fire,” he remarked, “but at least I still have some of my powers.”

  “Good job.” Melody pulled a dagger from under her coat as five clockmen advanced on her and Malcolm. Orbs of fire materialized over Malcolm’s open palms, and he and Melody launched into battle against the robots.

  Alan had abandoned his one-centaur band performance and was using his powers to throw the clockmen around the ballroom. Bryn was now a bear—a far more imposing form than I’d ever seen her take before. Dancers screamed and ran as she and Alan reduced the clockmen to piles of cogs and gears, one by one. Unfortunately, the magic that animated them also put them back together every time they got smashed. To make matters worse, there were now a lot more of them.

  “Where are they coming from?” I exclaimed.

  “They can build more of themselves,” said Kanin. “See?” He indicated the remains of a clockman that Alan had trampled. The components separated into two piles, and each of these reassembled into another clockman.

  “That’s not fair!” I shouted.

  “I agree!” As the two automatons advanced on Kanin, he flung out his hand toward the floor at their feet. A swirling vortex of white light opened up and pulled them in. He stretched his other hand toward the ceiling, and another hole appeared among the frescoes. The clockmen tumbled out of it and fell to the floor. The forty-foot drop onto solid marble left them in smithereens.

  “I thought you said you couldn’t make those rabbit-hole things in here,” I said.

  “Not to the outside, and not to the dungeons. But so long as I stay within the confines of the ballroom, I can use my powers however I like.”

  He wasn’t finished yet. As the broken parts of the clockmen pulled back together, he held out both hands toward them and closed his eyes. The partially-assembled robots froze with a loud creak. Red spots of rust spread across their metal limbs like leprosy. When they fell apart this time, there weren’t even any components left. In seconds, they had aged into heaps of reddish-brown dust.

  Things were going fairly well until Beatrice came back.

  The air rippled near where the clockmen had fallen, and the fairy godmother stepped out of the ether to stand directly in front of Kanin. She simpered at him. “Oh, how naughty. You’re broken my lovely toys. I shall have to be very, very stern with you this time.” She held up her hands, and runes shone between her fingers.

  Kanin smiled. “Go ahead and try.” White light crackled around him…and he turned into a rabbit.

  True, it doesn’t sound very impressive. However, he didn’t become an actual, ordinary rabbit. He was still human-sized and roughly human-shaped, and his eyes were blazing white. He didn’t look remotely like a cute little bunny. More like one of the powerful, dangerous trickster creatures of folklore who take on animalistic forms.

  Beatrice began casting runes at the White Rabbit, but he merely gave a strange, unearthly laugh and parried them with quick motions of his hands. The fairy godmother’s spells shattered against his fingers like glass. Then he blasted her with bolts of white lightning. She squeaked in alarm and staggered back, casting a shield of runes in front of her to block his powers.

  “Right then.” Cordelia grabbed my hand. “I think they’ve got the diversion going nicely. Shall we stop gawking at them and get to work?” She dragged me over to the big pillar holding the clock.

  I looked ruefully up at the timepiece. “You know, maybe this is too simple.”

  Cordelia punched me on the arm. “Don’t start talking like that now! This is no time for pessimism!” She bent down, pulled off her shoe, and threw it at the clock face with all her strength. The glass shattered to smithereens, and the shoe fell to the floor.

  “Watch out,” I warned. “Some prince might pick that up and expect to marry you.”

  “Very funny. Are you going to change the clock, or aren’t you? I would, but I’m not quite tall enough to reach it.”

  “Right.” I squared my shoulders. “Here goes.”

  The fur on the back of my hand prickled as my fingers drew nearer to the clock face. I hooked my claw over the hour hand and began to push it toward twelve. As I did, everything around me took on an eerie, dream-like quality. Time stuttered forward at a much faster pace. The dancers moved like people in a sped-up film reel. The music distorted from a stately waltz into a bizarre, high-pitched music-box tune. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Kanin and his society still fighting at the same pace. Maybe it was because we were near the clock, or because we were near Beatrice. Either way, no one in our vicinity seemed to be affected by the sped-up time.

  I had brought the time almost all the way to twelve when a yelp of surprise from Cordelia caused me to stop and whirl around.

  Beatrice was standing behind Cordelia. She was holding a curved, ancient-looking knife engraved with glowing blue runes. As I watched in horror, she pressed the tip of the blade to Cordelia’s neck.

  “I could simply threaten her with a spell, of course,” she said. “But this is more…tangible.”

  She had vanquished Kanin in the end. He lay unconscious on the floor, and was in the process of shifting back into his masked human form. Malcolm, Melody, Alan, and Bryn were surrounded by a tight circle of clockmen, who had their claws extended to disembowel them if they dared to move.

  So much for the diversion.

  “Let her go,” I snarled at Beatrice.

  Her eyes went to my finger, which was still poised against the hour hand. “Let that go first.”

  This was as far as I dared to push her. She had all the leverage. If I managed to end the time loop, and Beatrice killed Cordelia, then Cordelia wouldn’t come back. There would be no more resets; no more second chances.

  “All right,” I stepped back from the clock and held my hands up in the air. “You win. Just leave her alone.”

  Beatrice slowly loosened her grip on Cordelia, who lurched away the second the point of the knife left her skin. She turned to face the fairy godmother, her eyes filled with fury.

  Beatrice ran the tip of the dagger along the lapel of my jacket. “Now, I don’t want you to think I’m angry with you. Far from it. After all, it’s not like your ridiculous idea would have worked.”

  I ground my teeth. I’d been afraid of that.

  “Oh, you can speed up the loops by changing the clock,” she went on, “but that only makes them go faster. It won’t actually stop them. And the clock can’t be completely destroyed, either—it puts itself back together just like my clockmen.”

  She was right. Even as she spoke, the fragments of glass from the clock face rose back to their place and fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle, shielding the hands from my touch.

  “So I’m really, honestly not upset with you.” Beatrice tapped the dagger against her palm. “But…I can’t have you meddling with my magic, even if there’s nothing you can do to thwart it. It sets a bad example.”

  Kanin had regained consciousness, and now struggled to his feet. “These people are all under my protection, Beatrice. You leave them alone.”

  She laughed. “Ah, so now you’r
e finally taking responsibility for all the unrest in my lovely party. I wondered how long it would take for your better self to prevail, after you sacrificed that poor dryad and the faun for your silly little schemes. And I’d heard the White Rabbit was a hero.” She gave a wistful sigh. “It’s been fun, watching you try and fail over and over again to ruin the ball. But I’m afraid all good things must come to an end. It’s high time you and your friends went to the dungeons.”

  “It was my fault,” I said. “I put them up to it. Send me to the dungeons. You don’t need to punish everyone else for my mistake.”

  “You’re right. It was your fault, wasn’t it?” She ran a finger along the edge of her blade. “As a matter of fact, I’ve changed my mind. I am angry.”

  Before I could move a muscle or comprehend what was happening, Beatrice’s knife flashed toward me.

  I realized, with a sort of numb, hazy shock, that she’d buried it in my stomach.

  “NO!”

  The cry came from Cordelia—but not just her. She had shouted in unison with someone else.

  Kanin.

  I tried to stay on my feet, but it wasn’t any use. In the end, I settled for a less-than-graceful slump to the floor. I was beginning to lose feeling in my limbs, and I caught a brief glimpse of the red stain blooming across my waistcoat. I pulled the knife free with a trembling hand, expecting my unique healing abilities to kick in and save me. But whatever the blade’s magic was, it prevented that. The wound wouldn’t close, and the world continued to grow darker.

  A lot was happening around me. Cordelia grabbed Kanin and yelled something in his masked face. I couldn’t quite hear his reply, but his lips formed the words “can’t” and “knife.” I assumed that the enchantment on Beatrice’s blade would stop him using his powers to heal me.

  Cordelia went after Beatrice, firing a volley of red runes that would probably have torn any normal person to shreds. Unfortunately, they had no effect on the fairy godmother, who simply laughed and then vanished.

  Then Cordelia was grabbing my hand, stroking the fur on my face, begging me to look at her, to stay awake. I couldn’t see her, partly because my vision was starting to blur, and partly because Kanin was in the way. I could only see fragments of his grief-contorted face beneath the strange, inhuman features of his mask.

  And then his hand moved over the rabbit’s visage, pulling it away.

  I struggled to focus as my imagination reached back through the years to discern the familiar face underneath.

  Glamour spells don’t work on people who know you well. No wonder he hadn’t used one.

  The truth crashed over me as I sank into darkness, and with my last breath, I whispered Kanin’s true name.

  “Crispin.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  WHAT?

  Six. Seven. Eight. Nine.

  I took a long gulp of air, like a man rescued from drowning, and staggered against the wall. My claws dug into rough stone. In the distance, the last echoes of clock chimes died away.

  It was nine o’clock again. And, once more, I was alive. I was in a dank and foul-smelling prison cell bedded with moldy straw, and there was a faint ache in my belly, but I was most definitely alive.

  The fact that I’d just died and resurrected didn’t matter very much to me at that moment. There was only one thing on my mind—the sight of my brother’s face, years older than it should have been.

  “Crispin!” I threw myself against the bars. Torches burned along the passageway outside my cell. “Where are you?”

  “Right here,” said a voice from behind me. “Kanin’s” voice, but with Crispin’s Talesend accent this time. “You don’t need to shout.”

  I whirled around to face him. He was sitting in the corner of the cell with his back to the wall. The rabbit mask dangled from his neck on a strap, and his white costume was spattered with dirt.

  “Well?” he asked, after a few seconds. “Are you going to stare at me until the loop starts over again, or are you going to say something?”

  “Crispin,” I breathed.

  “Yeah, that’s my name. Don’t wear it out.” He stretched and yawned. “And I’m finally in the dungeons. I knew I’d end up here eventually, but I did hope I’d have a bit more time. Relatively speaking.”

  “You’re…old.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I mean…you’re older.”

  “I’m sure I appear ancient to a little puppy like you, but I’m only forty-four.” He ran a hand over his grizzled face. “If my hair hadn’t turned prematurely white, I’d look quite youthful for my age.”

  I sank to a crouching posture on the bed of straw and lapsed into silence again. My mind was still struggling to process all of this.

  “They’ve taken Cordelia to another cell,” he said. “That hag Beatrice arranged for us to be alone so we could ‘catch up on old times,’ as she put it.”

  A legion of questions swarmed through my mind. I couldn’t settle on which one I wanted to ask first. For some reason, the one I finally blurted out was, “Why a rabbit?”

  “What?”

  “Why’d you disguise yourself as a rabbit, for pity’s sake?”

  “It’s—”

  “Don’t be Alan and say it’s a long story. Regardless of how long it is, tell it.”

  He drummed his fingers on his knee. “All right. Fine. Like Cordelia said, ‘rabbit-hole’ is the popular term for magical portals. And for some reason, as my ability to create those portals grew stronger…I found that the only form I could shapeshift into was a rabbit. Either an ordinary one, or that human-ish version you saw earlier. I don’t know if it was a psychological thing, or if there was some other cause.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I mean…rabbits are a little…you know…cute.”

  “Hey.” He poked a piece of straw in my direction. “Don’t knock rabbits. Rabbits are amazing now, thanks to me. I have re-defined rabbits.”

  “Okay, okay.” I got up and started pacing.

  “Don’t pace. That’s one thing I haven’t missed. Why can’t you think while sitting still?”

  I turned on him. “Crispin, what happened?”

  He gave me a wry smile. “What didn’t happen, more like.”

  “That’s not an answer!” I started pacing again.

  “You’re—”

  “Yes, I’m doing it again! Deal with it!” I padded back and forth across the straw on all fours. “Forty-four years old.”

  “Give or take. You know I’ve always been a little arbitrary about my exact age.” Crispin didn’t actually know what day of the year he’d been born on.

  I made a quick calculation in my head. “Twenty-one years! It’s been twenty-one years since Cordelia and I got dropped into this place?”

  “Not counting whatever time I’ve spent in here. When I left to come here, it was 1943. I don’t know how long it was before I started remembering, and I’m not sure how many cycles there were after that.”

  I tried to sort out a timeline of events in my head—a difficult task, under the circumstances. “So you came in, and Cordelia and I were already part of the loop, arriving at the ball over and over again, thinking we’d just left you—”

  “Yeah. Basically.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me who you were?”

  “I did, a few times. You didn’t take it well, and I got tired of seeing you go through that pain over and over again—once I started remembering past cycles myself, of course. You weren’t remembering yet when I arrived, and I started retaining my memories before you did.” He shrugged. “Like I said, the process is different for everyone in here.”

  “So you kept it hidden from me. All that time.”

  “Trust me, Nick, it was better for you. And I already had the mask and the costume, so hiding my identity was easy.”

  I gave him an incredulous look. “You infiltrated a magical ghost castle dressed as a rabbit?”

  “I lead a
very complicated life, Nick. Don’t judge.”

  I wanted to delve further into this, but first I asked a more important question. “Where’s Molly?”

  His gaze went to the floor. “I don’t want to talk about her.”

  “Too bad. I want you to talk about her. I want you to talk about everything.”

  Crispin’s teeth clicked together. “Nick, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m not your little brother anymore.”

  I sprang at him and snarled directly in his face. “Look, you. I don’t care how old or grumpy you get, or what kind of stupid costume you wear. You will always be my little brother. Is that clear?”

  He didn’t flinch. His expression softened. “Yeah. It’s clear.”

  I sank back onto my haunches in the straw and closed my eyes. “Now. I want you to tell me everything. Start at the beginning, and don’t leave anything out.”

  “I’ll do my best, but we are talking about a couple of decades here. I may have to give you the abridged version.”

  “Not too abridged,” I warned.

  “We all got captured. Molly and I were sent to Warrengate, which was a lot more…austere without Malcolm in charge.” He fidgeted with his mask. “We didn’t hear anything about you for months. When I finally got an audience with Levesque, she told me you and Cordelia were dead. That you’d been executed.”

  I felt a rush of sorrow and anger. “Please tell me Levesque is dead now.”

  “Yeah, she is. I’m not quite sure how it happened. Apparently she was strangled by something with tentacles.”

  “Perfect.”

  “But before she went missing, she decided to make me and Molly her pet projects. Somehow, she’d found out about my restoring Molly’s voice by warping time. She wanted to explore the effects of that event on both of us.”

  I tensed. “What do you mean, effects?”

  Crispin started pulling apart a piece of straw. “This is going to sound like I’m bragging. Trust me, I’m not. But as it turns out, I’m an extremely powerful Charmblood. Possibly one of the most powerful ones who’s ever lived. It’s terrifying, and I hate it, but that’s the way it is. Apparently there hasn’t been anyone like me since Merlin. And Levesque wanted to exploit that.”