16 DAYS. 13 HOURS. 02 MINUTES.
The following week was spent getting Meena back on her feet and prepping for the journey home. Surprisingly, Red was still here, skulking around and getting up to goodness knew what, and on the day we were due to depart she paid me a visit while Meena was writing yet another correspondence to her parents.
“I cannot believe you pulled it off, to be frank,” she said as she settled into the chair at the desk in our chambers. “I thought for sure the princess would die.” She fiddled with a pen until it plopped onto the wooden surface with a metallic ping.
“Is there a reason you’re here, or am I supposed to simply guess your villainous motives?”
Our relationship over the past week had not improved, and I doubt it ever would, but at least she had stopped with the flirting. That, at least, made talking to her more comfortable.
She pulled two vials out of her pants pocket and placed the green things onto the surface. “Take these with you, in case you ever need them again.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Don’t look so surprised. I am not as villainous as some would believe.”
“You put a knife to Billary’s neck and finagled a way on to the royal dirigible, then proceeded to hassle Lady Lorelai for the past week.”
She shrugged. “Perspective, dear.” She turned in the chair to face me, a wicked grin ear to ear. “I would say that I alleviated the princess from irksome tattle-tales, ensured her safety on a voyage of dangerous discovery, and then spent the week ensuring you were both free from your hostess’s words of wisdom.”
I got the feeling that last one wasn’t true, given her inability to hold eye contact through the words and the way she fiddled with her belt loop, but I wasn’t about to suggest it.
“Anyway,” she continued, “take them.” She gestured again to the herbilore vials on the desk. “You’ll make better use of them than me.”
I still wasn’t sure how the procedure worked or how Dad had managed to transfer himself and his time into a steambot. I had been so caught up in the back and forth between grief and relief I had forgotten to ask Lady Lorelai about it.
“Thank you, I guess.”
Hands slapping her thighs, she stood. “For whatever it’s worth, I hope you two get your happily ever after now. I’ve never met someone who deserves that fairy tale ending more than you, Cinderella.” She walked out the door and down the corridor, and I got the feeling I would never see her again.
I would say that I was sad about it, but out of the numerous things to be sad and confused about right now, that wasn’t one of them. My life would be simpler without that criminal in it.
I scooped up the vials and placed them inside my toolbelt before wrapping it around my pants’ waist and buckling it into place. There were many things I now had to take good care of, but these were the ones that posed real danger.
The door opened and Meena walked in, full of life and color. She grabbed my hand before placing a gentle kiss on my cheek. “Are you ready?”
I looked at the bed the ladies in white had stripped earlier and to the lifeless steambot that lay on top. “Just need to transport him to the ship, say goodbye to Lady Lorelai, and then we can go.”
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered again. It was probably the thousandth time she had said those words whenever IoN came up in conversation.
“I know you are, but I didn’t have the choice either. I couldn’t have stopped him, I couldn’t have made the choice for him. He wanted to save you.” Given I had planned to do the exact same thing the day before him, I wasn’t about to begrudge his sacrifice. “It’s so sad he’s gone. And I don’t think I’ve processed it yet. But it was his choice, and I won’t belittle that by letting you live in guilt.” I wrapped my arms around her shaking shoulders. “He wouldn’t have wanted you to feel sorry for him.”
“I can’t...help it.” Her tears stained my tunic, but I didn’t attempt to calm her down. I merely let her lean on me. “He’s gone, and I wouldn’t be watching the love of my life grieve if I had never met you both.”
“Lady Lorelai told me that IoN... Dad believed we were meant to meet. That’s why Lady Lorelai felt obliged to help him when he came looking for answers she had denied everyone else.”
She pulled away and looked at me pensively. “You think Seren intended it to be this way?”
I shrugged. “I’ve never really been much of a believer in Seren. Neither was Dad. It’s hard to believe in a god when you live in hunger every day. But if he believed that it was some form of fate, whether willed by Seren or not, then I’m inclined to believe him. He was the smartest man I knew.”
“I wish I had known him before IoN.”
I picked up IoN’s body and carried him out of the room, the princess following behind me.
Over the last week, Meena had focused on regaining her strength and enjoying her newfound freedom, eventually walking without hesitation so long as she could take regular breaks. But that was more from malnutrition than breathing. I hadn’t heard her wheeze or cough once since I went to see her that first day in the hospital. It seemed her lungs had gotten better the moment IoN had transferred his life to her.
I didn’t understand it.
For the first time, really, I was faced with something I didn’t think was understandable. That maybe the answers to time and how our lifeclocks worked were not something we were ever meant to discover. It nagged at me nonetheless. The number of unanswered questions continued to build every time I mulled over the events.
Did IoN really have Dad’s consciousness, or was he just a clone of Dad’s remaining time? Why wouldn’t he try to give me clues or hints over the years, even if he did prevent himself from saying the words? Did he not trust me? Why didn’t he help more with the garage?
The more I thought about it, the more I disbelieved that IoN was truly the same as Dad; that maybe they were similar and he had parts of him inside, but there was no way every part of Dad’s consciousness ended up inside IoN.
Even if it did, how did one go about transferring consciousness? Was it just a side effect of transferring time? Or did our lifeclocks mean more than what I believed them to?
“You’re thinking too loudly,” Meena said when she finally reached the front door to the temple. “I can hear the wheels turning in your head.”
“Sorry. I was just thinking about everything that’s happened. It’s unbelievable.”
“Yes, it is,” said Lady Lorelai from the chair beside us that was in part-shade, part-sun, as though she’d had a lifetime to perfect her lounging placement here at the temple. “Which is why I hope you won’t tell anyone else what you have learned here.”
“I won’t tell a soul, so long as you answer a single question.” I folded my arms across my chest, doing my best to stand firm.
“I knew you would not be satisfied leaving without answers,” she said. “Go on then. Ask me your single question.” She lifted the glass of milky-white liquid to her lips and lay back down, content to simply listen it would seem.
I could have asked how Dad’s consciousness had been transferred to IoN, but something told me that I needed to ask something else. Something more important. “How does the procedure to transfer time work?”
She opened her eyes and lifted an eyebrow. “In the grand scheme of things, I do not think telling you will be a problem.” She sat up and rested her head in her hands. “Although it’s against protocol to give the information out, I will tell you because I feel you of all people deserve to know.” She looked at Meena, her lips turning down almost immediately. “You need to inject the herbilore serum into the tube inside of the lifeclock, then connect them and turn the dials of the person receiving the time.”
“That’s it?” Meena asked. “Is it that simple?”
Lady Lorelai shrugged her shoulders. “Well, we have a more complicated procedure involving ladies in white, Seren’s holy blessing, and a temple, but yes. Essentially, everything your dad did before he came to me was right; he just didn’t have the final piece of puzzle.”
“Herbilore.”
She nodded and went back to closing her eyes and lounging in the half sun. “Now, if you don’t mind, I have important duties to attend to.” Only, she didn’t move anywhere, and I think, by the time we had made our way down the front steps, she had fallen asleep.
“You could have asked anything, but you asked that?” Meena asked as we were escorted to the dirigible a few miles north.
I shrugged off the question as if it were nothing. “It’s what I was most curious about.” Something flickered in the back of my mind. Some kind of blinking light that told me something wasn’t right here.
The journey home was filled with surprise reunions, many tea parties, and taking the time to stare at the sunset over the desert horizon as Meena talked endlessly about her life in the palace and all the things she wanted to share with me once we were home. It wasn’t until we passed the gates to Palatina in the distance that I realized we weren’t going straight home.
I looked at Meena with a furrowed brow.
She handed me Dad’s notes from the final days of his travels. “It’s the final place he went before going home. You deserve to finish his footsteps.”
“Vakt Port?”
“In a few hours, yes,” the captain said with a smile on her face. She seemed less frustrated by me the more time we spent together, but I think the conversation she had with Meena was largely to credit for our new amicable friendship. “I can’t land too close to the town since they don’t have any place for me to make port, but I’ll get you as close as I can.”
“Are you coming with us?” I asked, curious. Did she always stay with the ship?
She shook her head. “I’m not comfortable leaving the ship. It’s a high-profile target, after all—a known royal vessel. Maybe one day I’ll get to travel as a passenger.”
Meena frowned, unsure what to make of that information. “Is there anything you want us to pick up for you?”
“Some salted fudge, if you wouldn’t mind. There’s a stall in the harbor that smells amazing. You can’t miss it.” After we looked at her with surprised faces, she explained, “Best in Clepsydra.”
“You can make me a list, if you’d like?” I asked, knowing she probably didn’t get to enjoy herself very often, which was sad for a captain. “I’ll pick you up whatever you want.”
She clapped me on the shoulder and smiled bright, her lips a deep orange color from whatever lipstick she had chosen to don this morning. “You’re a good friend, El.”
The couple of hours before landing were spent in the captain’s deck discussing Vakt Port and all the wonderful places Hera had visited before, which was everywhere, apparently.
“The Pental Coast is a beautiful sight, if you ever get the chance to go one day. White cliffs surrounded by raging northern oceans and beaches filled with green and orange rocks from the seabed.”
“I’ve seen the paintings,” Meena said in awe, her voice full of wonder, “but I’ve never been, since it’s outside Palatina’s jurisdiction.”
I looked at them in confusion, not understanding why that would make a difference in her ability to travel.
“Inside the kingdom I have immunity and protection, but outside there are constant threats. I would have to take a whole team of guards and an entire entourage with me just to cross the border.”
“She could be assassinated by people with grudges against the kingdom or people who want to take the throne for themselves, or she could be harmed in an attempt to weaken the kingdom or bleed it dry.”
“I’d never thought about it.” It was more complicated than I ever thought it would be; I always imagined the lives of the rich and royal to be ones of luxury, but there was more to it than that, it would seem. “Maybe we can arrange a trip one day. Maybe we could even leave the island and travel to nearby lands.”
Hera laughed, an incredulous look on her face. “Dream big, girl. And never stop.”
“You’ve never been off the island?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Never. Never met anyone who has, either. But I’d love to. One day.”
“Why?” I’d spent my life so caught up in the here and now that I never really gave much thought to what was out there and if we could see it. “You have the dirigible...”
“The ocean out there is a dangerous place full of unmapped territory and unknown threats. Not many people who leave the island come back.”
“Captain,” Yolot, the second in command, shouted, “we’re about to land.”
“Got to go.” She tipped her hat at us and practically jumped to her feet and into her captain’s seat. “Okay, on my count, turn off flight and descend landing thrusters. Three, two, one.” The dirigible jolted for less than a second before we started descending and the air pressure gradually changed. “Initiate crew landing.” A clunking sound echoed from somewhere deep in the aircraft, and what I assumed was the landing platform at the back of the dirigible dropped. A few moments later, Hera said, “Radio landing crew to tie us down.” She looked at Yolot and said, “Descend the anchors.”
“I had no idea there was such a complicated process for landing,” I shout-whispered to Meena over the noise.
“It’s only when we hover,” she replied. “When she lands properly it’s simpler, but we can only do that safely while in a port.”
Why was that? I’d have to ask her one day.
In the meantime, Hera waved us off, gave me her list, which I tucked into a pocket on my toolbelt, and told us she was off to bed so she could rest after the long flight.
We, on the other hand, descended into an empty field just outside of Vakt Port, having left the desert behind us the moment we flew through the mountains yesterday. I didn’t realize things would look so different on the other side of those mountains, but it was less dry here, the air less muggy and cloying. I could breathe. Vakt Port was a cluster of buildings with neither a gate nor a wall surrounding it. In fact, it had nothing but a wooden arch slapped between the two outermost stone buildings with a sign hung from the post.
The buildings themselves were of a single story, and when we stepped foot into the town, I could see the sky from level zero, as though they had never thought to build upward at all.
“I have only been here once, when I was a small child, but it’s just as I remember it.” She looked around as awestruck as I felt, her eyes not quite able to fix onto one thing long enough before they were stolen by another piece of wonder. “Everything is so flat.”
Everything was made of plain gray stone and dark wood, clearly from the woodland to the west, but the shutters on the windows were pastel greens and blues and purples, adding dots of color to the otherwise pristine landscape. The cobbled path clicked under Meena’s heeled boots. It had wide paths, open, sunlit streets, and bakeries and bookshops and candle stores that littered the streets with signs flapping in the sea breeze. As we turned a corner, I spotted a shop selling soaps and shampoos, so I took us in.
“First item on Hera’s list is a butter and sea salt scented soap,” I explained to Meena. “Might as well try here first.”
“Can I buy you things while we’re here?” she asked. I went to shake my head, but she stopped us in the doorway and took my hands in hers. “I want to buy you things and treat you and shower you with love. Will you let me?”
Her green eyes begged as her face sparkled in the cloudy sunlight and her hair blew in the breeze. How could I say no to that? Sighing, I gave in, and she hopped in delight as she dragged us fully into the store.
Back home, we bought plain soap sparingly, making it last as long as possible so we didn’t have to buy the expensive stuff more than once a year—and often families shared a bar. But here the prices were cheaper. Though Meena didn’t even notice them, placing bars into my waiting arms that smelled nice. And that was before we moved onto shampoos and perfumes.
We left that shop with more items than I had used in my lifetime, much less in a year or two. But I did particularly enjoy a woodland-scented shampoo and soap set Meena picked up for me, and I was curious to try it. In the meantime, I was trying to forget what the numbers on the price tag said, but I failed.
“What is next?” she asked, clearly on a mission.
I pulled out the piece of paper and read the next two items listed, and off we went. We wandered in and out of several stores, some where she was recognized and some where she wasn’t, but she didn’t seem too bothered either way. We weren’t in a part of the kingdom, so it was to be expected. Seeing her able to walk down the street without issue and walk up steps without pause and have long, rambling conversations without needing to be quieter than she actually was, sent a thrill through me.
She would live the rest of her life like this.
As we wound our way farther south toward the harbor, I began to forget about the questions niggling at the back of my mind and I almost forgot the reason we were here altogether. I wanted to find the scavenger Dad had met on his journey. I wanted to find the final piece of the puzzle.
The sea brushed against the wooden pier we walked down, a slow wash of salt water edging along the sides and creeping underfoot as gulls cawed in the distance. Stalls lined the pier, selling things from fish to crab to salt reserves to iron jewelry and...fudge!
“That must be the fudge she was talking about.” I pointed out the stall with the sign labeled Sea Salt Fudge.
Meena walked up to the stand and bought three pots, one each, filled to the brim with the sweet delicacy, and I put one into Hera’s bag and the other two into ours as we carried on down the pier.
“Who was it your father met here? Maybe we can ask around?”
“A Mr....Buke? Dad’s notes don’t really say much, just that he had a long conversation with the man and finally decided on the parts he’d need for IoN.”
“Wasn’t there a Buke’s Trading Post on the promenade?”
On the what?
She clearly knew what she meant, though, because she grabbed my hand and guided us to the end of the pier, up the stone steps, and to a garage-like building back around the corner we had come from. Written on that building was Buke’s Trading Post , with the O and the S so faded they were barely legible. But here it was, the last stop Dad had made on his final journey before he came home and died a week later.
I really hoped Mr. Buke had the answers I sought, otherwise I was afraid it would remain a mystery.
The door was rusted shut, the dented metal so thin in places I could almost see through to the darkness beyond, but with a strong shoulder I screeched the door open along stone flooring. “Hello?” I called into the barely lit room. Shadows scattered across the floor like rats scurrying from the outside light, and the sea breeze whooshed our hair farther in.
Meena was the first to step through the entrance, then I followed, but I held her hand as we continued through the space.
“Can you spot a lantern anywhere?” she whispered.
I shook my head, barely able to see three feet in front of me this far away from the sun’s light.
But just when I was about to suggest leaving, finding a lantern, and returning, lights buzzed overhead in a string of small gas lamps the shape of teardrops. I’d never seen anything like them before, always having relied on oil lamps and candles. They looked like something out of a children’s story.
“Who’s there?” a gruff, older voice croaked. “I’m not open.”
“We just have some questions about some work you did a long time ago?” Meena asked, polite as ever and gentle as a mouse. “Would you care for some tea at the café around the corner, sir?”
“Can’t leave. Mustn’t leave. Stay, stay, stay,” he mumbled, his breaths puffing in ragged gasps. “Stay...”
“Okay. Then is it okay if we take a seat by your workstation over there?” Meena pointed to a large wooden desk with scattered tools and a larger, unused version of the smaller gas lamps in the corner.
There were pieces of machinery and tools and wayward sheets of metal, and every now and then I spotted a random pile of assorted bolts and screws, as though they belonged to a project long forgotten. A thick layer of dust and debris suffocated the room. As I moved a steam thruster strapped to the ceiling out of my way, I realized he hadn’t worked in this garage for quite some time.
What had happened here?
“Sure, I guess.” The man entered the room in a mechanical wheelchair that looked steam-powered somehow, but the frown on his face when he looked at me, a glimmer of recognition fluttering in the space between us, nearly stopped me dead.
I’d seen this man before.
Not in person, but in an old photograph.
“Gabriel Forthright? It is you, isn’t it?”
“That’s me,” he said as he wheeled himself to the workbench. “And who are you?”
I looked at Meena, unsure if mentioning my name would help or hinder our progress. “Cinderella. I’m Preston’s daughter.”
He spluttered a series of coughs into a handkerchief he fetched from his breast pocket. “I don’t think you should be here, girl.” He went to turn himself around and leave, but I grabbed the handle of his wheelchair and stopped him.
“No, wait. Please. Dad died a long time ago.” Well, kind of. “But I have questions...about the Internal OxiNexus.”
His face blanched white, his eyes widened, and his jaw opened and seemed unable to close again. “I... Please leave.”
“I can’t.” I sat in the chair in front of him and grabbed his hands. “I know you and Dad were friends, and I know it ended badly, but he never spoke of it. He just said he couldn’t come and visit you anymore because he wasn’t welcome.”
“Of course he wasn’t bloody welcome,” Gabriel spat. “What did he think would happen when he made me make that wretched contraption?”
“You mean IoN?” Meena asked. “You made him. Or rather, you made him who he was inside?”
Gabriel nodded, his brow permanently furrowed.
“You transferred Dad’s consciousness to IoN?”
His gaze snapped up to mine, his dark eyes almost black in the dim light. “How do you know about that?”
“It’s been a long month.” I shrugged my shoulders to brush off the question, knowing Meena wouldn’t want anyone gawking at her new life. “How? How did you transfer someone’s brain into a steambot? I don’t understand.”
A calloused hand scratched his forehead. “Look, I wish I could answer your questions, but I don’t really know how it works. I’m not sure we understand Seren’s work enough to have the words, ya know.”
“I don’t understand.” My eyes shifted from him to Meena to the workbench. “You’re saying Seren did this? That you didn’t do anything? That it’s nothing more than godly magic?”
“I saw him. When I transferred your father’s time into IoN, hoping for nothing more than storage while we found a solution to what ailed him, he appeared before me.” His eyes filled with tears as he dropped his gaze to his lap, where he fiddled with nuts and bolts. “He told me that what had been done couldn’t be undone. That I’d...killed him.” His shoulders shook as sobs echoed in the dusty workshop. “I tried. I tried to use the backup herbilore to transfer the time back—maybe he could spend his final days with you. But it didn’t work. Nothing I did made a difference.” He looked at me, dark eyes even darker in the barely lit room, and whispered, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean?—”
“This wasn’t your fault. He went searching for answers, and he got them.” I was starting to understand the perilous nature of seeking answers to questions that shouldn’t have been asked. “I understand that.”
His shoulders sagged and more tears fell, but this time they descended with relief, as though he’d heard something he had needed to hear for years. “Thank you.”
“You know, you have some great inventions here.” I gestured to his wheelchair and the lights. “Why don’t you sell them?”
He laughed then, the tears having stopped with the conversation. “I don’t need the money, dear, but working has become difficult with my joints the way they are.”
“Then teaching, perhaps?” Meena joined in. “We have a great academy in Palatina. I could get you an interview, at least.”
“Teaching, huh?” He scratched his head and beard in thought. “Not a bad idea, Your Highness.”
Meena beamed at the man, clearly proud she had maybe given him an idea as to how he could put his skills to use. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like some tea, Mr. Forthright?”
“Well, maybe I could swing my behind by and have a slice of Mrs. Bumble’s ginger cake. Best on the island.”