Chapter 24
CHAPTER 24
S imeon had to give Bran credit. If Simeon had been holding the box when it opened by itself, he would have dropped the damned thing and backed away. Bran, however, just stood there, mouth open and hand shaking ever so slightly.
There was nothing inside except a miniature pocket watch no larger than a thumbnail.
“What is it?” Bran asked.
“Dunno. I haven’t been able to open the box.” Simeon shrugged. “This means it really must be yours. What was in it when you played with it as a child?”
“It was always closed then. I never saw inside. Where did you get it?”
Simeon explained, including the part where Clara gave them clothes, cryptic advice, and an admission that she’d been the one who’d dropped the box at the carnival. “But she wouldn’t tell us why,” said Simeon, “or where she’d found it.”
“They’re like that,” Crow chimed in.
Bran looked puzzled. “Who’s like that?”
“The… three women.” Crow looked uncomfortable. He an d Simeon had long ago agreed that this was one of those topics best left unexplored. It just seemed as if digging too deeply into these women’s identities, motives, and practices would lead nowhere good.
Bran shook his head but then seemed to decide the women weren’t important right now. He sat on the edge of the other bed, still holding out his hand with the box atop it. “A watch,” he said thoughtfully. “Not a coincidence, I assume. But what does it mean? You inherited the power to travel in time while I inherited a time-related trinket?”
“Haven’t any idea,” said Simeon, who’d recently faced far too many unsolved puzzles. He pictured himself sitting on a grassy hillock with Crow leaning against him and the night sky spread above them like glistening jewels. There would be the sound of an owl, small creatures rustling, and a light breeze carrying the scents of newly tilled earth and of dinner cooking in an oven. There would be a tall tree nearby with widely spreading limbs, and sometimes Simeon would perch on it in his other form, watching the world below. But mostly he’d remain a man, and he and Crow would have only simple human questions to answer.
It was a lovely fantasy.
Crow made a small impatient sound. “I doubt it’s just a trinket. There’s something important about that box or what’s inside it, or else it never would have made its way to us.”
Although logical, it didn’t get them any closer to understanding. Bran laid the box on the blanket and it closed at once, then opened again as soon as he picked it up. “You could go back to when our parents were alive and ask them. Or at least see if you could gather some information.” An odd gleam appeared in his eyes. “You could go back?—”
“No!” said Simeon and Crow in unison. It was Simeon who elaborated, “I told you—messing about with the past is not wise.”
“That’s not true, though. You’ve been meandering about in time for days. You said so yourself. This would be equally harmless.”
Crow shook his head angrily. “It’s not harmless. Every time he does it, he’s wiped out physically. Didn’t you wonder why he was in bed in the middle of the day? And it’s getting worse. I think if he does too much, he might—” He stopped abruptly and turned his head to glare at the wall.
Bran looked slightly chastened. “It’s a waste of an extraordinary talent,” he muttered but then fell silent, turning the box over and over in his hands.
“We can work this out ourselves.” Simeon rubbed his face as if that might massage his brain into more activity. “A box is for holding things. Bran, do you reckon it held something else when you were a boy and it remained closed?”
“It might have done.”
An idea was tickling at the edge of Simeon’s mind, but he couldn’t quite grasp it. He got out of bed—Crow didn’t stop him this time—and crossed the few steps to Bran, who drew back a bit, protectively holding the box against his chest.
“I’m not going to take the bloody thing,” said Simeon irritably. “Just want a closer look.”
With clear reluctance, Bran extended his hand closer to Simeon. The watch face had numbers so tiny and faded that they were barely legible, and there were no hands. Simeon huffed. “Not very useful for knowing the time, is it? And there’s no stem to wind it.”
“Maybe it’s not meant to be used that way.”
“But that’s what a watch does—it keeps time.”
As soon as he said it, he knew. His heart raced so powerfully that he felt faint and had to sit beside Bran; for a moment he couldn’t get his mouth to work properly. When it did, all he could do was repeat those last two words: “Keeps time.”
Crow hurried over to crouch in front of him, brow furrowed. “Are you okay?” He clutched one of Simeon’s shoulders as if trying to keep him from disintegrating.
Simeon gave what he hoped was a comforting smile. “It doesn’t make sense that the second son would get such strong powers and the first son nothing. Usually the firstborn would get more, yeah? Bran, you were meant to be the one with this gift, not me. But our parents never had the chance to give it to you, and then I stumbled upon it recently. You couldn’t find it because?—”
“Because I’m dead,” said Bran flatly.
“You were. Would have been. Or… bloody hell, I don’t know what verb tense to use in this situation.” Simeon looked at Crow. “Your Miss Kovacs wasn’t entirely right. Sometimes correlation does mean causation. The time travel works only if the box is nearby. The box—or the watch in it—is the source of the power. A… a talisman. A device,” he added, recalling his earlier thoughts on the matter.
“So if I hold the box I can time travel?” asked Crow. He seemed skeptical.
“I doubt it. You’re not a rook whose parents?—”
“Yeah, got it. Makes sense.”
Bran stared at both of them, his eyes bright. “Now that I have the box, does that mean I can do it? I must?—”
“Wait!” With some difficulty, Simeon controlled himself and didn’t snatch the box away. “You can’t simply gad about. There are consequences. Remember the prophecy? Time manipulation affects whomever you interact with. Hell, it affects the world at large. And you , mate.”
“You’ve been gadding about.”
“Mostly accidentally. The rest was finding you. And look how that turned out. ”
He regretted that final sentence as soon as he said it. Bran looked hurt, and Simeon wanted to explain that he hadn’t meant it that way; he was glad Bran was alive and that they’d reunited. But before he could work out how to phrase all this without causing greater offense, Bran snapped the box shut, stood, and marched across the room.
“You’ve no right to tell me what I may and may not do. You’ve no rights over me at all.”
“Bran, please, I?—”
Bran pulled a short blade out of his jacket and held it in one hand while the other formed a fist around the box. “Don’t drag me back. If you do, this time I’ll stab you both.” Although his words were threatening, his expression was not. He looked frightened and confused and on the verge of tears.
Barefoot and bareheaded, he spun on his heel and left the room. He didn’t bother to close the door behind him.
Simeon growled and punched the mattress. “That insufferable foozler!”
Crow snorted and sat beside him. “He is kind of a prick. But cut him a break, Sim. He’s been through a hell of a lot, and he’s had nobody on his side. He might be perfectly nice if you give him some time.”
Simeon barked a humorless laugh. “That’s exactly what I just did! I gave him time. And he’s going to bollocks things up—I know it.” He gritted his teeth. “I’m going to bring the bastard back. Don’t care if he has a fucking knife. I know how to manage that.”
“Look, maybe he’ll come back on his own once he cools off. And even if he doesn’t…. I’m not going to just sit here while you destroy yourself.”
“I won’t.”
“You don’t know that! One more time trip, and that might be it for you. It might—” Crow stopped, apparently unable or unwilling to complete the thought.
“He’s my family!” Simeon roared.
Crow was quiet for a moment. When he finally spoke, his voice was soft. “Do you remember when we were in Bayaq, at that weird place where the angels live? I was going to let them do to me what they did to my mother—remove my soul. Partly because I thought that was the only way to beat the demons, but also because it was the only way to be close to my mom. Do you remember that?”
“Yes.”
“You begged me not to do it. When I refused to listen, you started to walk away because you couldn’t stand to watch me do that to myself. Well, guess what? The tables have turned.”
“You’re going to leave me?” Simeon could barely ask the question.
“Jesus Christ, no. If you took a swan dive into a volcano, I’d be right there with you, hopping right on in. But I am going to plead with you. Don’t do this. Don’t go after Bran.”
Crow was right; Simeon shouldn’t do this. Hell, he shouldn’t have brought Bran here in the first place. He should have remained in the carnival with Crow, erecting tents, taking a flight now and then during his time off, snuggling in the caravan with Crow. But here he was.
“I have to,” he said, desperate for Crow to understand.
And perhaps he did. He shook his head but didn’t argue, and after a moment he crossed the room and closed the door. “Do you want to put on some clothing first?” he asked gently, because Simeon wore nothing but drawers. He remained quiet while Simeon dressed, took several deep breaths, and sat on one of the beds. Crow came over and put a hand on Simeon’s shoulder.
Simeon looked up at him, hoping his gratitude showed. Then he closed his eyes and reached for the time stream .
And nothing happened. No sense of an invisible current, no flashes of the past or future. Nothing at all except Simeon sitting on a mattress with his eyes closed and Crow squeezing his shoulder too hard.
Simeon tried again, straining parts of himself that had no physical existence. He opened his eyes in case that would help. He took additional deep breaths. He concentrated on Bran’s face, on his voice, on his eyes that so closely resembled the ones Simeon saw in the mirror.
“Simeon? Are you all right?”
With a deep sigh, Simeon slumped and hung his head. “I gave him time.”
“What do you?—”
“I can’t do it without the box.” Which, in retrospect, should have been obvious.
Crow was quiet for a long time. Others in his position might have celebrated that they’d gotten their way after all. He must have been relieved, but he didn’t say so, and his grip on Simeon’s shoulder became a caress.
Simeon jerked away. “You’re not going to lie and say you’re sorry?”
“Sigmund Freud would probably point out that you’re angry at Bran and maybe angry at yourself, so you’re trying to pick a fight with me.”
“Sigmund Freud can bugger off.”
That made Crow snort a laugh. Then he sat beside Simeon and banged their shoulders together. “Look, if this means you’re not gonna disintegrate on me, well, I’m not broken up over it. I am genuinely sorry about Bran, though. Maybe he’ll track you down eventually and you two can live in peace.”
Simeon scoffed at the notion. Bran clearly wanted nothing to do with him, and now that Bran had the box—and, presumably, the power of time travel—Simeon had nothing to offer him. “I’ve accomplished nothing and I’ve stranded us here. Stranded you .”
“Your brother’s not dead. That’s a big something. You learned a lot about your family. And Jesus, Sim, I keep telling you. I could be living in the devil’s guest room and I’d be content, as long as you were there with me.”
Simeon leaned against him, feeling Crow’s strength and the warmth that almost never left his body, as if he perpetually carried a bit of sun-kissed cornfield within him. Yet Simeon had one additional concern: what if whoever possessed the box affected everyone’s time stream?
“Bran will bollocks things up. Worse than I did. He might make that prophecy come true.”
“He might.” Crow kissed Simeon’s head. “Would going for a flight help you feel better?”
“Later.” Now he wanted only to listen to Crow breathe and to press so close that he could feel Crow’s heartbeat. And not for the first time, he wished that Crow could fly too. Partly because he knew Crow would enjoy it but also, selfishly, because flying alone wasn’t as fun. Simeon had so rarely had companionship in the air.
A thought hit him quite suddenly. “The other rook!”
“What?”
“The one I saw near the British Museum and chased north. At the time, I assumed it was Bran. But at that point he didn’t even know I was still alive. In fact, at that point, he wasn’t alive.” Once again he struggled to wrap his mind around the strange rebirths that time travel seemed to allow. “It couldn’t have been him.”
Crow nodded slowly. “Then who? One of the Frugises?”
“Perhaps, but I can’t fathom