CHAPTER NINETEEN
I wake with a jolt.
“Easy, there,” someone says, lifting me up by the shoulders. My face feels like it’s been pressed against something cold and metallic, but when I look down, my soft pillow is flattened like a pancake. I’m on my bed.
Valentin kneels next to me, Beam by her side.
Everything’s foggy, like my brain is actively trying to forget what just happened.
I take stock of each sense – Beam’s blurry face right up to my nose, the smell of cardamom tea placed next to my bed, Valentin’s quiet breathing, the bitter dryness in my mouth, and the touch of my sweat-damp bed.
But there’s something else that’s wrong, a sixth sense that drips with dread.
I recall the last day: my return to a timeline and a narrow escape.
Everest, who found me between dimensions, rot seeping through his veins.
The last thing I remember is being struck by horror, and then…
nothing. The time travel must have knocked me out.
“Where is he?” I leap out of bed and stumble like a newborn fawn, unable to keep my weight steady. Through the pinched drapes of my tent, the moonless night sky greets me. “How long have I been out?”
“A few days,” Valentin says.
“And he’s alive,” adds Beam. “He’s in his tent; he’s probably still sleeping. Ryka, wait–”
I pull my sherpa coat around my nightgown and race out into the bitter cold, where that sense of wrongness grows.
Fallen snow nips at the bare bits of my feet exposed by my sandals, but it only urges me to go faster.
Ghosts shed from my path. Valentin’s footsteps track mine, and Beam catches up right when I rip open the drapes of Everest’s tent.
I stop short at the sight of him, lying flat on his bed.
His freckles have turned pallid in the dry dark of his tent, like the stars have winked out of his face.
The sheets have been pulled up to cover the rot in his arms, but otherwise, this place looks the same as it always has.
Constellations hang from the top of his tent, mimicking the night sky.
His giant telescope sits in the corner. His clothes are folded neatly in a half-open trunk, and the whole place smells like him: like walking into the forest after a fresh snowfall. Tears burn my eyes.
Valentin walks over to him, gently places her fingers on his jugular.
“I’ve been checking on him daily to see if there’s anything I can determine.
It’s difficult, because he’s demonstrating signs of a coma, but I know you all experience irregular, deep sleep patterns after time travel, so I don’t have an accurate benchmark.
” She pulls the sheets down to his waist. “And then there’s the matter of his arms.”
His arms are gently curved by his side, and a dark web of rot writhes under his skin.
I’ve never been squeamish, but this has me feeling like I’ve gone on a high-speed rollercoaster after eating a very large meal.
I kneel next to Valentin, pushing a hand through Everest’s hair. My fingers come away sticky and wet.
“His heartbeat is regular,” Valentin continues, “But he’s not human, Ryka. I can check his vitals, but when the source of his illness is so clearly unnatural, they don’t mean much to me.”
Rationally, I know she’s right. It may have been an eternity ago, but I went to medical school. I understand that what she’s doing for me right now is largely posturing, but it’s the only thing keeping me from unraveling.
“Quill has been looking into it as well.”
I jump at the sight of Keshav, who is watching quietly from the back of the tent. Ender materializes next to them, but he’s half hidden amongst Everest’s things, too nervous to come any closer.
“And?”
“No records of any such illness, but she was exploring another path when I left her,” Keshav says.
I get to my feet. “I want to talk to her.”
“And we want to talk to you,” a shrill, squeaky voice screams. Suddenly, a small Asian girl with a round face and blunt fringe is right in my face.
“What–” I stutter, looking between the strange girl and the other ghosts, who recoil from us. “Who is this?”
“Who am I?” the girl screeches so loud I take a step back. And then I notice it: the dark, determined gaze, lips pursed in a thin, angry line. An expression I’ve been the recipient of countless times.
“Geneva?”
“Who else?” the girl barks, and I swear steam is coming out of her ears. “Now, you be quiet and listen to me, I’ve been waiting days to say my piece.”
“But how?” I demand. “How did you…What happened?”
“You happened!” Geneva says. “Look at what you’ve done!”
Her words suck the air out of the room. My mind is racing, trying to reconcile what I’m seeing with what I’m hearing.
Geneva’s in front of me, but she’s aged down to five?
Eight? I can’t even tell, but whatever’s happened to the carousel, whatever’s poisoned it, has done this, taken decades off Geneva as I’ve known her, and I’m sure that’s not the extent of the consequences.
“You’ve been stealing from the carousel?” she shouts, drawing my attention back to her. “Taking objects from other dimensions? Even Everest has more sense! Even he has the minimum amount of respect for the order of things! I thought you were smarter than this!”
She’s screaming, but it’s not the volume that’s striking at my heart like a spiked mallet.
It’s the sheer disappointment, the shock at what I’ve done.
And the others feel the same way too – Ender’s barely meeting my eye and Keshav looks tired, resigned.
Beam remains a safe distance away, studying her toes with the most focus she’s ever given anything.
I glance at Everest, remembering the heart-wrenching look on his face when he found me in the shed, and I want to crumble.
“You could have told us,” Keshav says.
My voice comes out timid. “I know.”
“She told me,” Ender spurts out, at what is possibly the worst moment. Everyone whirls towards him.
“She what?” Beam says, hurt.
“You’re the accomplice,” Geneva says, pointing a stubby finger at the rapidly withdrawing teenager.
Somehow, she’s more terrifying as a child.
“No, okay, I did not tell Ender; he just happened to catch me once,” I explain, trying to calm them all down.
“I’m sorry!” Ender says, waving his hands about. “I just…I couldn’t keep it a secret any longer. I wanted to wait till you were awake, but it was so hard, Ryka, they were all so mad and I had to pretend I didn’t know.”
“It’s not your fault,” I say, doing my best to calmly rein in his babbling. “And I told no one but Quill, and even that was an accident when it started.”
“She knew?” Keshav’s betrayal is apparent. Geneva looks at me like she’s picturing how pretty a dartboard my face would make.
I take a deep breath, then tell them everything.
No one interrupts me as they process how it started; a mistake that grew into something intentional – a compulsion, almost. How Quill and I’ve been using these objects to help her develop the spell she used to scry for Valentin’s timeline, how it opened up the channel for me to go back to the past. Keshav looks like he’s struggling to squash his questions, Geneva looks mildly impressed, and Beam is… pissed.
“But why?” she asks stubbornly, and I know I’m going to pay for letting Ender in on something and leaving her out.
“To try to go home,” Geneva answers for me. “Isn’t that right?”
I nod slowly. I remember the conversation we had on the riverbank, her verdict that maybe my dreams and paths have changed, but how much of that was because I had no choice?
The door is now open, and on the other end rests Novalie and my mom.
It was too late for my dad, but I can still see the others.
My heart clenches desperately at the thought.
“I’m going to return everything,” I tell them. “I’ll do it myself. No one else needs to risk it.”
“You’ve already risked us,” Geneva shouts. “Look at me!”
“And you can’t,” Keshav says patiently.
I look between all of them. “What do you mean?”
“The carousel’s locked,” Beam volunteers. “It’s gone dark, barely moving. We think it’s to do with him.”
And that’s when the true extent of our problem reveals itself to me.
The carousel’s energy is quiet. Only one candle hovers in the middle of the tent and it’s straining to stay afloat.
I race to the exit and stare outside, where other tents are dark and quiet, hiding ghosts who may be enduring worse shifts in timelines than Geneva.
The frequency of the air has changed, tainted by the absence of magic.
And it’s all to do with Everest, of course. In some ways, he’s the life source of this fair, and with him incapacitated, our hands are tied.
“A few of the others have aged up or down,” Ender volunteers, sidling up to me. “Iris’s arm has gone permanently missing.”
Each word sinks my heart deeper into hell.
“I’m going to go get Quill,” Keshav says, sidling out, muttering something under his breath.
“I’m sorry,” I say to Beam and Geneva, who are jarringly the same size.
“I know it doesn’t mean much, especially now, but I didn’t want to hurt anyone.
I really thought that there were no consequences – we’d been doing it for so long!
” It’s foolish, but true. I’d succumbed to hubris, felt invincible when I was as fragile as thin glass.
“You should know better than anyone else how every little action has consequences,” Geneva says. “Every choice you make, down to every thought you have.”
“I’m going to fix this,” I promise her.
“I know,” Geneva snaps, then looks at Everest. “There’s no point in hashing out what’s been done. We can only work with the hand we’ve dealt ourselves, and on we go.”