CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“You should rest more,” Ender says. “We’ve done like fifty of these in the last ten days.”
“And we’re still behind,” I remind him, but I can’t muster even an ounce of assertive force behind it.
The artifact-return trips we’ve been making are quick – our work to optimize the paths of return based on timeline jumping has significantly accelerated the process, no longer limiting us to one trip per day.
It also helps that we’re restoring order.
The gravity of time and space pave the way, and I’m just a vessel transporting its pieces from one to another.
Still, the trips leave me drained in an entirely different way, and after over a week of dipping into timelines, matching artifacts to locations, and watching the carousel heal, I’m spent, hardly able to stand up straight.
“Why do you want to return everything so quickly?” Beam asks. “Everest has another two days before the full moon, and Valentin will be ready to leave once he’s back on his feet. Shouldn’t that take care of most of the problems?”
Her mention of Everest is a root that catches my ankle.
Ever since my breakdown at his tent, I’ve been careful not to be alone with him.
It’s not fair to muddle the lines we’ve so clearly drawn between us because I can’t get a grip on my emotions.
And since I can’t make sense of my feelings right now, I’ve thrown myself into the work, navigating the variables that I can control.
“I don’t want to operate under assumptions,” I tell her, while a cold sweat breaks across my body.
At first, I was relieved that Valentin insisted on staying until Everest made a recovery, but I’m afraid the time she so generously gifted me has gone to waste.
That day is nearly here, and I still don’t know how I want to handle our trip home.
A part of me has hurried to get the artifacts back as a distraction, while another has wondered whether, if I finish returning all the artifacts to their place, I can maybe stay in my timeline longer.
Death has changed conceptually over the years.
As a medical student, death was inevitable and finite.
One of the only things you can depend upon.
But as timekeeper, death became something more nebulous.
Ghosts come and go from the fair. I grieve my family repeatedly in lives where they exist and in the ones they don’t.
I know now that death occurs in many forms: the end of a love story, the slow, apathetic end of a friendship parted by space, the consequence of transplanting yourself from one part of the world to another.
Now, I’m the master of endings, and death is nothing but absence.
And like most absences, the possibility of more is always a painful, persistent presence.
If I stay back in my timeline, I’ll lose this power over death, over the possibility of another beginning.
But maybe I can see my mother in her last days.
Not at all eager to let the ghosts in on my trail of thought, I angle my body towards Everest’s tent.
It’s become our informal meeting place, replacing the main tent and the stargazing spots.
He’s awake for longer stretches, but the rot continues to clot his veins, and his muscles are still too weak for him to stand for prolonged periods.
Cyrus, who’s become marginally less annoying since we collaborated in the archives, has been working on a medicine that will give Everest enough strength to cling onto Calliope for our trip up the mountains.
As we walk closer, I realize that Cyrus is already in Everest’s tent.
“…tell her, at least,” he is saying as we approach.
“Not yet,” Everest says firmly. “I want to know if it’s possible first.”
Beam waggles her eyebrows at me. “We could listen.”
“Absolutely not,” Ender says. “No eavesdropping!”
“Everyone eavesdrops here,” Beam argues, and the sound of them bickering drowns out the conversation inside. I’m tempted to tell them to hush, but I change my mind. The two gods haven’t had a lot of alone time, and I don’t need to get involved in sibling matters.
I part the entrance, announcing our presence with a, “We’re back!”
Cyrus is standing at the foot of Everest’s bed, and the two were clearly engaged in some sort of a heated argument.
The former looks displeased when I enter, muttering something under his breath as he straightens, his head nearly grazing the low-hanging ocean-blue tent.
Everest, on the other hand, breaks into an ear-splitting grin as he sits up with effort.
“Everything okay?” I ask.
“Oh, yes,” Everest says, but his smile is pained. “I was telling Cyrus that we haven’t played cards in a while, and he should join us.”
They were absolutely not talking about cards, but I don’t push. “We haven’t played in two weeks.”
“Too long!” Everest says, turning to his brother. “We play every couple of nights, but it’s fallen to the wayside with all the drama around here lately. We should play.”
“Now?” Beam asks excitedly.
“Why not?” Everest asks, and Beam’s already out of the tent.
“It has been long,” Ender says, perching on one of Everest’s telescopes. “Everything’s been so serious. Let’s play.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I say. I’m so tired, and I still need to prepare for tomorrow’s trips. “I’m supposed to go see Quill so we can determine which ten items to return tomorrow.”
“You’ve been working nonstop,” Everest says. “You’re making me look bad.”
“That’s nothing new.”
He holds a hand to his heart, wounded, when Beam bursts back inside, Geneva and Keshav accompanying her.
“Brilliant, you brought the entire firing squad with you,” Cyrus says.
Geneva shoots him a sharp glare. “Is a god afraid of a little competition?”
Cyrus’s chest puffs up. “I will wipe the floor with you.”
“Let’s let the game decide that, shall we?” Keshav interjects, wisely pulling Geneva to the side.
“Everyone settle down,” Everest says, patting his bed. The ghosts gather around the edges, floating above the sheets. Cyrus sits at the foot of the bed as Everest tosses his pillows off and shuffles inwards, making more room. “Ryka, could you get the cards, please?”
I’m already pulling the deck out from his nightstand. “Fine, but just one game.”
As I go to sit next to Cyrus, Everest catches my wrist. “What are you–”
One pull, and I tumble into the bed next to him. Before I can protest, he swings one arm around my shoulder and tucks me to his side. It isn’t fair that despite being ill, he hasn’t lost his woodsy scent.
“You know all my tells,” he says, leaning forward to pick up the deck of cards. In one swift motion, he splits the deck into two halves, lining the short ends up with one another before combining them back into a single, shuffled deck. “You need to sit next to me so you can’t study my face.”
“You just want to look at my cards,” I say, but I’m unable to look away from the movement of his fingers, deftly repeating the faro shuffle. “Show off.”
“If I was looking at you, I’d be too distracted to play.” He holds my gaze as he deals, each card landing squarely in front of every player.
It’s unbearably hot next to him on this bed, with his muscled thigh pressed against mine, and his face just inches from mine.
Normally, this would make me flush, but today it feels like a fuse is wrapped around my body.
I’ve been constantly inundated with thoughts of him, from the way he held me when I cried to the way he lights up when he’s staring up at the sky.
I’m acutely aware of how the time I have with him may be limited, and every cell in my body hates it.
“Are they normally this insufferable?” Cyrus asks.
“It’s a tactic,” Geneva says, waving him off. “Ryka gets too flustered to focus.”
Everest grins, but he’s still studying me. “Works every single time.”
I poke him half-heartedly in the ribs. “You’ll regret that.”
As expected, Geneva crushes all of us like seeds under her heel.
“I need better competition,” she sniffs, all while Cyrus looks ready to murder her. Keshav floats protectively between the two of them.
“Your rules make no sense,” Cyrus says. “No one plays like this!”
“Excuses, excuses,” Geneva says. “You play by the rules of the group, or do you need everyone to adapt to you?”
The tips of Cyrus’s ears redden. “Rematch!” he bellows.
Geneva leans forward threateningly. “You’re on.”
“I’m going to sit this one out,” Everest says. His voice is thin and weak, but before I can ask him if he’s okay, he curls around me and lies down. His free arm drapes casually across my lap, his fingers twisted in my dress.
“Me too,” I say, ignoring the smirks around the tent as the others call for Cyrus to deal.
Accusations fly around as I sit there, my mind no more than scrambled eggs. As the game commences, I try to reposition myself, but Everest’s arm tenses.
“Please,” he whispers. “Just stay with me for a while.”
He looks boyish right now, relaxed and mouth drawn straight, stripped of his usual playful facade.
His plea drives its way straight into my heart and pulls, and before I know it, I place a hand under his head.
His eyes flutter open and I wonder if I’m looking at him with the same kind of tenderness.
“You don’t look very comfortable,” I say, scooching backwards and guiding his head to my lap.
He follows my lead hesitantly, and then his weight is there, solid and certain.
“I should have known,” he says.
“Known what?”
“That you’d feel like this.”
My heart twists. The others continue heckling each other, actively tuning us out. Cillian makes an appearance as a ball of magical yarn unfurls into the entrance, no doubt the fair’s latest creation for its feline.
“Like what?”
He’s quiet. Beam screeches, and Geneva cackles, but I’m not paying attention to any of them. Everest exhales into my thigh. “Like home.”
I’m tongue-tied with something inexplicable, so instead of continuing the conversation, I push my fingers through his soft hair the way my mother would do to me when I wasn’t feeling well. He hums in content, and the vibration travels down to my toes.
We stay like this for the next few rounds, his breathing deepening. I study how he holds me nearer and tighter the deeper he falls asleep, like it’s when he’s the least conscious that he wants me the closest.
Like I’m his home.
When the last round ends, I start to unwind myself from Everest’s side, needing air with fervent desperation.
“Leaving already?” he asks, blinking awake.
I wince apologetically, but I can’t be around him like this when no one else is here. Our interactions are already messing with my head, and if I have to be this close to him without ghostly buffers and witnesses, well, I might do something completely thoughtless.
“I should probably get some rest as well,” he says, all while his brother and Geneva bicker. “Actually, everyone should give me some space!”
They pause.
“No need to be so passive aggressive,” Geneva says.
Cyrus nods. “He’s always been like this.”
“Would you please leave?” Everest asks, rubbing his head. “Was that aggressive enough for you?”
I grab Cyrus and Valentin by the elbow and tug. “Everyone out; we’ve got a long two days ahead.”
And I’ve got big decisions to make.