CHAPTER EIGHTEEN #2
I don’t remember every single place I’ve been to, and maybe it’s the bias of expectation at play here, but I swear I recognize this shed.
It’s a worker’s quarters, built around a broad carpentry bench blanketed by a thin film of sawdust. As I get to my knees, I notice the walls are covered with shelves, blades and tools neatly organized in categories that make no sense to me, but were clearly thought out by the owner.
Then, a low whistle sounds, followed by a laugh right outside the high window that lets in a sliver of sunlight.
It’s innocuous. Nothing more than a standard burble of machinery and a sign of life, but it strikes me like a dire omen.
I’m convinced that someone is standing right behind me, breathing down my neck, and I swear invisible hands push me to the ground and under the bench.
I spin, fighting an unseen force when the door to the shed swings open.
“I’m just grabbing the hammer!” says a burly voice, and as the entrant retrieves his prize, dust waterfalls off the edge of the table and into my eyes.
It takes everything in me not to yelp or sneeze, but I’m overwhelmed by the foreboding sense that this has happened before.
This very moment, down to each millisecond.
As the man dips out of the shed as quickly as he entered, I remember more clearly.
Coming here with Beam and Ender. Ender warning us just before someone came inside.
Hiding under this exact bench, Beam curled up next to me as we waited for him to leave.
Except this time, no one but a powerful specter of my subconscious, turned momentarily corporeal, was here to warn me.
I recall the screw that I’d seen rolling at the foot of a stool, the very one I pocketed before returning to the carousel.
The one that’s in my pocket now.
When I first picked up the screw from the trinket box, I mostly guessed that it belonged to this timeline based on some of Quill’s older notes.
But I’ve collected multiple screws and bolts and buttons and pins, and she’s long grown tired of keeping meticulous records of the “pointless” objects.
I’m certain, though, that this one came from here.
It grows hotter in my pocket as if in recognition, then comes anxious demand to be released back to its home.
I acquiesce to its wishes, rolling it briefly on my palm, studying the rust that’s gathered around its winding threads.
It guides me in a manner that’s inexplicable, tugging me along the timeline and towards the stool from where I took it.
When I place it on the ground, the thread around it glows a bright blue.
The corroded iron transfigures back to its unblemished black; and just like that, in seconds, it’s over.
Relief streams from me like a hot breath against the ice-chilled window. The rotten string around my hand shimmers and lightens, and I nearly cry with relief. Quill did it. I did it. The cursed treasure in my pocket feels lighter now, like each item can feel its way home.
Bone-weary, I take a hold of the timeline, preparing to head back to the point of entry.
The cool sense of being watched swings down on the back of my neck, the unseen presence that trailed us since Darjeeling revived.
Maybe it wasn’t my subconscious after all.
I take an uncertain step forward, prepared to pelt myself out of the timeline, when the tether snaps.
A cold sweat seeps from the cavity in my chest. The place where the rot tied back to a healthy timeline – my timeline – is suddenly empty, the other end vanished.
I search frantically for a sign of glittering blue trailing up ahead, but everywhere around me is brown, brown, brown.
My breathing grows thick, burdensome, and any remaining oxygen has gone straight to my brain and scrambled up all my thoughts.
I race towards the workbench, look under the tools, as if the string is simply caught under an instrument or between the nooks and crannies of the shed. Nowhere. The line has disappeared.
I told you to take someone with you, an imaginary Quill berates me, and my body burns from embarrassment.
How could I be foolish enough to do this on my own?
My ego has had a wrathful edge to it my entire life, but this may take the prize.
My hip knocks into the corner of the bench hard, balance lost as the gravity of the situation carves into me.
I didn’t even say goodbye. I didn’t hug Beam or Ender or Keshav or even Geneva, goddammit.
I’m never going to see Everest again.
The thought possesses the fervor of the most violent winter storm, a blizzard I can’t see my way through.
The room closes in on me just as time travel fatigue threatens to collapse my internal organs.
I slide to my feet, curling into a ball, like I can hold everything in me if I try hard enough, that I can reach back through to my old decisions, to take them back.
In all my years of racing through histories and futures, I never realized that I’d also been running from death.
The end was a distant fate that didn’t apply to me. Until now.
Warm, strong hands touch my shoulders.
“Ryka!” a voice says through the haze. I hadn’t realized that the world had gone dark, that sound had melted into moonlight.
I find Everest crouched in front of me, wrought with worry.
“How did you–” I croak.
He holds up his right hand, where a blue string winds around his palm. “Quill summoned Keshav when you were gone too long. What were you thinking?”
Everest’s tone is steel, a steady anger that I’ve rarely heard from him before, and never at me.
He scoops me up against him, and I’m about to protest, but I can’t stand on my own or hold anything up.
My head lolls against his chest, and it’s an effort to stay conscious.
Time drain is remarkable, and it makes sense why we’ve limited trips by frequency.
The ground drops as he picks me up and holds me to his chest. I don’t have the energy to speak as he walks us back along the timeline and out of the carousel.
We are greeted by ghosts.
None of them can hold us, so Everest and I stumble out together, collapsing through multiple waiting bodies and into the ground.
I clench my teeth against the cold, but relief is a stronger emotion.
It breaks out of me in sobs, and I roll against Everest, trying to catch my breath under the strong sun.
“Foolish girl!” Geneva says, hustling to the front. “How do you have no sense after all your years here? And to be taking things from time? It’s a miracle the carousel hasn’t incinerated you yet!”
So they all know.
Everest’s eyes are closed next to me.
I reach for his hand, which is cold as ice. “Thank you,” I tell him quietly.
He doesn’t move.
I shake his arm harder. Say his name.
Nothing. No flicker that he’s heard me. I sit up, my head protesting the sudden movement, but I don’t care.
“Everest?” I say again, panicking. Around us, the ghosts start muttering, and Beam rushes to the front.
“He’s breathing,” Beam says, putting her head on his chest. “Everest!”
I touch his ice-cold neck. Feel for his lumbering pulse, which feels frighteningly, abnormally slow. His face is quiet and peaceful, but it fills me with jaw-numbing, brain-gnawing unease. He doesn’t get time fatigue, not like me. He’s a god.
“Please,” I whisper, falling into an abyss of disbelief. Of all the fears I’ve nursed over centuries, this hasn’t been one of them. Losing Everest – untouchable, immortal, frustrating but irreplaceable Everest – has been an impossibility.
Until now.
“My god,” Geneva says, drifting closer. “Roll up his sleeves.”
“What?” I ask, then I see it. Traces of something dark, writhing on his wrists.
I gasp and pull his sleeves up.
Everest’s veins, lovely blue lines that I’ve memorized over the years, have turned ink-black.