4. Mewling Meatsack
Mewling Meatsack
Luna stood outside Tout le Temps, staring at the sign: “TIMEPIECES REPAIRED * TEMPORAL CONSULTATIONS BY APPOINTMENT ONLY.” The letters shifted and writhed whenever she didn’t look directly at them.
A memory surfaced: herself at eight, bored on a Sunday, wandering into Louise’s shop. She’d knocked over an hourglass, and the time witch banished her to a medieval dungeon known as an Angstloch (literally, fear hole), complete with rats the size of rabbits and distant shrieks of tortured heretics.
When Luna had finally been retrieved by a frantic Mama, Louise’s only comment had been, “Perhaps the child will learn to mind her surroundings.”
She’d learned, all right. Learned to stay as far away from Louise Demain as humanly possible.
And yet here I am, she thought suddenly. Maybe Louise will help me save the day, or maybe she’ll help me make everything a thousand times worse.
Surely there had to be easier ways to get a day off work.
Luna’s arrival was announced by the bells on Louise’s door, tinkling out Chopin’s “Funeral March.”
Inside, the air shimmered with chronological instability.
The shop’s walls curved in impossible ways, and none of the timepieces made sense with one another.
Water clocks predating written history were side by side with chronometers from star systems that didn’t yet exist. Each piece beat to its own rhythm, kicking up not only a racket but also a fundamental disruption to the flow of time.
Luna sensed it in her bones, the way seconds stretched and compressed, the way causality itself frayed at the edges.
She’d never dreamed that Louise’s shop could possibly get any weirder from the last time she visited. And yet.
The time witch perched in an ornate chair carved from a single massive gemstone.
She drank tea from a delicate china cup, working on a complex timepiece as her tools floated through the air in precise choreography around the mechanism.
Antique scrolls covered in symbols lay scattered across the table.
Despite the bells, Louise did not acknowledge Luna’s presence.
She stood there for a full minute, waiting. Then another minute. Then she cleared her throat softly.
Nothing.
“Um, Louise?” she ventured. “Ms. Demain?”
Louise’s violet eyes finally lifted to fix on the young witch with a sort of predatory intensity. Her floating tools clattered to the floor. Somewhere behind Luna, a grandfather clock chimed disapprovingly.
“What pestilential mote breaches the sanctity of my domain?” Louise’s voice somehow carried its own echo, along with the promise of unspeakable consequences. “Speak, you paltry speck, before I relocate your consciousness to the heat death of the universe.”
Luna took a steadying breath. “Nice to see you, Louise. It’s Luna Melrose. I was hoping you could help me with something.”
“Ah.” The ancient witch set down her teacup.
“The Melrose whelp. The one who meddles with forces beyond her comprehension and calls it ‘travel.’” Her gaze drifted to the dismantled timepiece on her table, and her expression darkened.
“I am in no mood for social calls, child. This accursed chronometer has ceased functioning without cause or warning, and I find myself sorely vexed.”
Luna could identify the timepiece immediately. The brass housing, the arrangement of gears, the crystalline components bending light in impossible ways told her what it was.
“That’s a Rajasthani probability clock,” she said without thinking. “Fifteenth century, if I’m not mistaken? Instead of tracking linear time, they measure potential timelines. When they stop working, it usually means they’ve detected a significant temporal paradox.”
Louise went very, very still. Around the shop, pocket watches ticked more quietly, as if holding their breath.
“And how, precisely, does a mewling meatsack such as yourself possess knowledge of probability chronometry?”
“Um. I spent three months with a clockmaker in Jaipur? He specialized in paradox-sensitive devices.” Luna paused, realizing Louise was staring at her with . . . not quite respect, but not her usual contempt, either.
“Tell me what you observe,” Louise demanded.
Luna cautiously approached the workbench. She studied the timepiece, noting the crystalline matrices that had gone dark, the probability wheels that had locked in position.
“See how the resonance crystals are clouded over? That shows temporal feedback. The probability displays are stuck because there’s too much paradox energy for the mechanism to process.
It’s like . . .” She searched for an analogy Louise would appreciate.
“Like trying to calculate every chess move while someone keeps changing the rules mid-game.”
Louise’s expression grew thoughtful, then troubled. “And the source of this temporal chaos . . .?”
“Hard to say just by looking.” Luna met Louise’s gaze, although it made her a little nauseous to do so. “But usually it’s unauthorized time travel. Specifically travel too far into the future. That’s usually frowned upon because it creates so many cascading paradoxes.”
Louise’s face moved through several expressions in rapid succession: surprise, calculation, and finally, grudging acknowledgment. She sighed. “This may be my doing. I recently found myself in something of a contretemps with a time witch in the thirty-second century. But she started it.”
“Uh-huh. Well, the good news is that probability clocks can be recalibrated. But it requires realigning the temporal matrices to account for the specific paradox patterns.”
“Your analysis is adequate, if only barely.”
From Louise, this amounted to a dozen roses and a standing ovation, so Luna seized her chance. “Since I’m here anyway, I need to know how to get into and out of the Void.”
Around the shop, timepieces suddenly ticked more nervously.
“You seek passage to the abyss between realities? The realm where lost souls drift for eternity among the nightmares of sleeping gods?” Her voice carried a note of genuine disbelief. “For what conceivable purpose would you court such obliteration?”
“There’s someone trapped there. A magician named Elias who helped my mother and the other prisoners when they were trapped in the Void this past Christmas. He’s been there for decades, apparently. Helping people while being completely alone. I owe—I mean, we owe him a rescue.”
Louise stared in disbelief, as if a goat had just announced its intention to juggle flaming chainsaws while riding a unicycle across Niagara Falls. “You propose to risk annihilation in the Void . . . for a man?”
“Ew, yuck. When you put it that way, it sounds bad.”
“A man who obviously chose his miserable fate, due to whatever crimes sent him to the Void in the first place?”
“Yeah but on the other hand, he did save my mother.”
“Thus demonstrating that he possesses the same deficiency of judgment that poisons your own bloodline.” She gestured dismissively. “This debt you imagine is meaningless. That he aided Kelly Melrose merely proves his own idiocy.”
“But—”
“Remove yourself from my presence.”
“How about a deal,” Luna said quickly. “You like deals, don’t you? If I can actually fix your probability clock—not just diagnose it, but solve the temporal paradox that’s jamming it—then you help me.”
Louise laughed. She wasn’t good at it. “Child, the workings of this device are beyond mortal comprehension.”
“I disagree. I can fix it by filtering out the paradox noise and recalibrating the probability matrices.”
The shop fell silent. Even the most argumentative cuckoo clock stopped mid-chirp.
After what felt like years, Louise finally said, “Very well. Succeed, and I shall provide the information you seek. Fail, and you spend the next week experiencing the Black Death. Firsthand.”
Luna rolled up her sleeves. Around the shop, timepieces began ticking with anticipation. She had the impression that they were rooting for her.
Her fingers began to move, weaving a complex spell that combined temporal magic, mechanical empathy, and the harmonic resonance techniques she’d learned in Jaipur.
The probability clock shuddered, whirred, then burst into brilliant life.
Potential futures, probability percentages, and temporal stress indicators all running smoothly.
Gazing down at her victory, Luna could feel a smile start to bloom. But she quickly bit her lip, stifling her pride. Outsmarting a time witch was risky enough. Dare look smug about it, and she could end up back in a fear hole.
Louise stared at the restored timepiece, then at Luna, then back at the timepiece.
“I find myself outmaneuvered.” With an air of resignation, she settled back into her chair.
“Very well. Portal magic, as you should know, far exceeds the simple teleportation spells favored by contemporary witches. True portal magic—the kind required to breach the barriers of the Void—has been lost to your kind for centuries.”
“Lost to living witches, you mean,” Luna said. “But last Christmas, my sisters and I used portal magic to relocate an entire casino. So clearly it’s still doable.”
“One parlor trick does not make you a master of interdimensional travel. The Void exists between realities, in the spaces where even thought fears to tread. No living witch possesses the knowledge necessary to navigate such realms safely.”
“No living witch. So you’re saying I need a dead witch.”
“No, meatsack. You need a god.”
Luna blinked. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Myrna.”
Luna burst out laughing. She couldn’t not—the idea was too absurd. “Myrna? You mean Myrna with the crazy overdecorated Christmas house? The little old lady who turns her Victorian mansion into a holiday nightmare every year?”
“Child!” Louise pounded her fist on the table, making several smaller timepieces jump.
Her expression could’ve frozen helium. “Your ignorance is exceeded only by your arrogance. The ‘little old lady’ you speak of is merely one manifestation of a power so vast that mortal minds cannot comprehend her true nature.”
“Myrna. Who charges tourists five dollars to look at animatronic reindeer. She’s some kind of cosmic deity in disguise?”
“The Christmas house, as you call it, is not the gaudy tourist attraction you imagine. It is a shrine. Every decoration, every garish ornament, every singing snowman represents an offering from believers. The mortal form you know as Myrna is but the tiniest fragment of a consciousness older than your sun.”
Luna stared at Louise, trying to process this information. “You’re saying she’s like . . . some kind of Lovecraftian Old One, hiding in plain sight?”
“I am saying that the power necessary to breach the Void and return safely requires divine intervention. Myrna, as we may as well call her, since her true name cannot be spoken by human tongues, possesses such power.”
“Okay, assuming I believe any of this . . . How do I find her? It’s May. She’s only seen in Oak Haven during the month of December. I can’t wait that long.”
“The god manifests at various other holy sites throughout the year. Currently, she is most likely to be found at the Iowa State Fair, where she takes the form of an enormous butter sculpture.”
Luna opened her mouth, closed it, and opened it again. “A butter sculpture.”
“The faithful sojourn across the Midwest to make offerings and seek her wisdom. Butter is sacred to her summer aspect—it represents the transformation of humble cream into something greater than itself.”
“This is . . .” Luna shook her head. “This is completely insane.”
“Sanity is a capitalist construct. The question is whether you possess sufficient courage to seek divine audience.”
“Fine.” Luna shrugged. It was hardly the weirdest thing she’d ever done. “How do I get to the Iowa State Fair?”
“Portal travel will suffice. I can provide the coordinates.”
“Great. When does the fair start?”
“Late August,” she said sweetly. “You’ll need to wait approximately three months.”
“Three months?” Her carefully constructed plan was crumbling. “I can’t wait three months! Elias is trapped in interdimensional hell right now!” And dear gods, I need a vacation or I’m going to lose my mind.
“Then you shall have to convince me to send you forward in time to reach the fair season. Despite having just now shamed me for my own travel to the future.”
“Okay, okay,” Luna groaned. “I apologize for that. Will you please send me forward in time to the Iowa State Fair?”
Louise examined her fingernails with elaborate casualness.
“I agree.” She stood and began gathering temporal manipulation supplies: crystals that bent light and scrolls covered in equations that hurt to look them.
“Let it be known. When petitioning a goddess for favors, it is traditional to bring an offering.”
“What kind of offering?”
Yet another unsettling grin from Louise indicated that Luna was on her own in solving that particular puzzle.
“Now then.” Louise raised her hands as the air around them began to shimmer. “Let us see how you handle state fair cuisine, not to mention what havoc the late-summer humidity is going to wreak on your hair. Oh, and do try to land somewhere sensible. Avoid the livestock stalls if at all possible.”
Around the shop, timepieces began chiming and ticking in farewell. They’d been rooting for her all along.
The last thing she saw before reality twisted itself into a pretzel was Louise’s satisfied expression, and Luna had the distinct feeling she’d just made a deal with someone she absolutely should not have.
Then the world lurched sideways, time folded in on itself, and Luna found herself somewhere else entirely—specifically, fifteen feet above a funnel cake stand and falling fast.