Top of the clock
Meet me at high
Tell the late day hello
Wish the morning good-bye
A twist and a flip
What do you see?
Take them two at a time
And come find me
I sat on the steps, staring at the words, then worked through the rhyme line by line, turning the piece of stained glass over in my hands. Top of the clock. I pictured a clock’s face in my head. What’s at the top?
“Twelve.” I rolled that over in my mind. The number at the top of a clock is twelve. Like dominos, that set off a chain reaction in my mind. Meet me at high…
High what?
“Noon.” That was a guess, but the next two lines seemed to confirm it. Noon happened in the middle of the day, when you said good-bye to the morning and hello to what came after.
I moved on to the second half of the riddle… and I got nothing.
A twist and a flip
What do you see?
Take them two at a time
And come find me
I focused on the stained glass. Was I supposed to twist it? Flip it? Did we need to assemble all of the pieces somehow?
“You look like you swallowed a squirrel.” Xander plopped down on the stairs next to me.
I definitely did not look like I’d swallowed a squirrel, but I was guessing that was Xander’s way of asking if I was okay, so I let it go. “Your brothers don’t want anything to do with me,” I said quietly.
“I guess my kind gesture of sending you all to the Black Wood together exploded.” Xander made a face. “To be fair, most of my gestures end up exploding.”
That startled a laugh out of me. I tilted the step in his direction. “The game’s not over,” I told him. He read the inscription. “I found it last night, after the Black Wood.” I held up the stained glass. “What do you make of this?”
“Now, where,” Xander said thoughtfully, “have I seen something that looks like that?”
