CHAPTER TWO #2
The carousel of time is only a legend in my mortal world; old folklore says that if the carousel appears to you – and it only does for the bravest and strongest of hearts – then it’ll grant you a wish.
I was only six when my mother told my best friend Novalie and me about the carousel.
We were packed like sardines in my twin bed, she in her bright-pink Barbie pajamas, me in my midnight-blue sleep shirt, our blankets pulled to our chins, cold toes prodding at each other’s warm calves.
My mother was in prime storyteller form, taking sips of her Earl Grey tea while describing the enchanted carousel bound by strings of time, lingering in a fold within space that only a rare few could access.
Mom was a dreamer; she’d passed her love for fantasy onto me, and I’d shared the same tales with Nova.
We had grown up joking about finding it together.
We couldn’t have predicted that I would be alone when it found me, armed with nothing but the sole wish to save her life.
It’s not just Cillian’s cold fur that sends a chill through me.
I’d been beaten down after months in my second year of surgical residency, running on stolen hours of sleep and copious amounts of caffeine.
Then Nova had fallen sick, and it had all ceased to matter.
One night, I’d left her bedside at Stanford, where she lay unconscious, lingering at the door of death.
Inundated by a delirious haze, I headed for a late-night run at a nearby open space preserve and went off trail.
I’d been desperate to get away, to break out of the numbness draining me and, in the darkness, I took a bad fall down a steep hill.
Once I came to rest, pain bloomed from my bloody knees and elbows, cocooning me in shock.
And it was at that moment the fair appeared before me, deeming me worthy of its power.
Geneva had greeted me then, the keeper of time. The person who could save Novalie.
“Every wish has a cost,” she had warned me. “Are you prepared to pay it?”
“Yes,” I had pleaded.
I was ready to give up anything. I memorized each detail of this carousel that burned like a dying star, just so I could describe it to Novalie and my mother in vivid detail; I watched Geneva step into the carousel and fall back out, telling me in sure words that my friend would survive.
I remember how she patted my shoulder sadly, in a way that confused me, before turning grey, grey, grey.
Each timekeeper turns into a ghost once they pass the baton, joining the rest of the dead occupants that end up here once the carousel has touched their lives.
It was only then that I realized what I’d agreed to.
That I could never leave the fair. That it was my turn as the steward of time.
I’d made my choice, and I’ve lived with it ever since, refusing to let anyone else take my place.
Twenty-three questers have found the carousel since I got here, but the carousel does not allow the keeper to warn each venturer about the terms of the agreement, and I refuse to let someone walk into this without knowing about the nights of guilt and regret, the people they’d never see again.
My tongue swells to the size of a small watermelon each time I’ve tried.
So I tell them no, and they leave, disheartened but with hearts that will heal and lives they can call their own.
I’d nearly resigned myself to this fate.
Nearly, hums the stolen button in my pocket. Until I saw a way out.
The fair exists in its own pocket realm; there is no “past” or “future” because the carousel is a stockpile for time across dimensions, spinning its threads in an eternal circle, so we’re able to access any timeline at any point.
I first grasped this a few decades into being keeper – most of my trips had involved places or eras that I didn’t recognize.
Then we went somewhere I did know: Kolkata, India.
I had to unloop time around a copper piggybank in a child’s room.
On my way out, I saw a small boy sitting on the floor, head tilted up as he watched a football match on a small grey CRT TV.
The World Cup, 2002. Germany vs. South Korea.
Beam and Ender swept me out of there before I had much of a chance to react.
Head spinning, I stumbled back to my tent, dizzy with what I had learned.
I was young during that World Cup, barely remembered it, but I was alive and on my father’s lap as he bellowed at our own scuffed TV, beer in hand.
I was alive, and I’d just gone back to a year before the fair found me.
This meant that somewhere in the carousel, my precise timeline is still playing out as it was before I left, if only I could find a way to access it.
Unfortunately, the ability to pull off a gallant return home hinges upon a functional carousel, and we’re short of one right now. The carousel douses me in a wave of irritation. I rub my arms to dispel the ensuing goosebumps.
“Four hundred and eighty-seven years and I’ve never seen the carousel’s loom do that,” I say. “Quill, I’m going to need all of the previous keepers’ notes.”
Each timekeeper has left behind a binder filled with entries; pieces of advice for others to come, to help ease our transition into this strange life.
A stream of books and scrolls spiral towards us in a category-five paper storm before landing neatly in front of me. The scroll on top reads:
The First Timekeeper: Minerva T, 22 years since the beginning of time.
Beam’s the first to break the razor-sharp silence. “Do we need to read all of that?”
“This is only the first batch,” Keshav says primly. A bead of sweat rolls down the back of my neck. “Better get to work before we grow too tired.”
Or before the carousel deteriorates into nothingness, taking us all with it.
I toss aside a scroll titled The Eighth Timekeeper: Ibrahim Hassan, years 81 to 88 after the beginning of time just as Beam and Keshav find a reason to escape. Keshav almost never leaves the archives. That’s how bad it is.
There’s nothing new in these records. While the keeper may have changed, the backbone of this place has stayed the same.
Every few weeks, there’s a snag in time; it darkens the affected thread around the carousel, alerting the keeper to its needs, and a quick trip to rectify said issue restores the state of the universe.
The cadence and scale have stayed consistent; despite my frantic flipping of delicate pages, I haven’t found anything more major than when the rot was as thick as a band, and that was because time had swallowed a message that prevented a global-scale war.
“This is pointless,” I say, on the verge of pulling out my own hair.
Cillian, sweet boy that he is, flops to demand affection.
Rubbing a cat’s belly solves 99% of problems, but sadly not this one.
I comply with his wishes and direct my next words at the draped ceiling.
“Any chance you can just…give me the book with the answers?”
Ender clears his throat. “Quill already said she can’t help you if you don’t know which book you need.”
“I’m asking the fair,” I clarify. “You built the archives for the first keeper when they asked and helped stock it with all these books. Minerva would be so disappointed.”
A rumble of discontent shudders through the archives.
The story of the archives’ inception is legendary.
The first keeper, Minerva, escaped a toxic marriage to come here when the fair was barren, save for the carousel and a very grumpy Cyrus, one of Everest’s siblings and the resident god who had been on rotation.
Not unlike the keepers who came after her, she started talking to herself one night, dreaming of the home she wished she had.
She was shocked to realize that the fair not only listened, but helped her construct much of the landscape as it is today.
The archives were one of her wishes. My predecessors’ desires have conjured other things at the fair: vending machines, games, musical instruments, rides.
A reliable library index would be a good addition for me to make, so no one else withers away digging through countless books, but the fair doesn’t seem inclined to help. Nothing happens.
“How long are you going to keep that button to yourself?” Ender asks.
I glance up, seized by a momentary panic that someone’s heard him, only to realize that no one except Cillian is around to witness my crimes. Quill perks up, her pages stiffening.
“I was getting around to it.” I pull the button out of my pocket.
The engravings catch the rosy light of the archives.
“I was hoping to get my hands on something bigger, but we were in a bit of a rush,” I tell the tome in a hushed voice, in case there is a ghost hanging around.
Quill’s pages are heavily marred by age; we’ve long given up on reading the sweeping script etched into the thick, browned parchment.
But Quill isn’t exactly the kind of book you read.
I drop the button in front of her and place my palm on her page.
Her voice fills my head, smooth and solemn. I’ll just have to add it to the trove of all the other trinkets you’ve collected.
At that, a small box flies down, landing in front of me. Its lid opens, revealing an assortment of wooden, metallic, and fabric buttons that I’ve snatched from different trips. I watch aghast as the gold button jumps into the box and the latch snaps shut.
I wrench the box open. “You didn’t even try.”
Quill sighs in my head. We’ve discussed this. You cannot simply pick up the last thing you see before returning here. We have to try with something personal, something meaningful to you.
“How am I supposed to know that something is meaningful?” I argue.
“Buttons are pretty non-sentimental,” Ender says. He doesn’t need to hear Quill to know what this is about. “Maybe jewelry would work better.”