CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX #2
“Beam, it’s not like that,” I start to say, but every word sounds like a lie.
What comfort can I offer her when I haven’t told them about the true extents of the path I’m entertaining?
That once I’m gone with Valentin, Everest will turn back time?
Realistically, they won’t even mourn me for longer than a few moments.
I won’t mourn them once it’s all said and done. I won’t remember to.
It should be a shallow comfort, but a part of my soul chips away at the thought and I’m certain that this will feel like an eternal splinter under my skin, except I won’t know where it came from or how long it’s been there.
“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” Beam says, her little body shaking.
I get to my feet. “Beam–”
But she darts out of the archives before I can step any closer.
“You should stay here,” Everest says sadly. “I’ll go check on her.”
“Me too,” Ender says.
“It sounds like we’re quite done here,” Geneva says, her voice wobbling. She floats away from me without another glance back. Keshav rushes after her, and then it’s just me and Valentin left in the empty archives. I don’t realize that I’m shivering until she puts a gentle hand to my shoulder.
“Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it?” she asks.
Yes. No. I don’t know.
“I need to sleep on it.”
Valentin bites at her lip. “You know, when I was younger, I wanted to be a teacher. I still think about that often, how things would have turned out had I gone down that path. During never-ending nights at the hospital in particular, and when I’m away from my family on holidays.
We’re only given so much time – too little, in my opinion – to make decisions that change the course of who we are.
And I think the hardest part about growing up is seeing all the ways in which your potential dwindles, and you have no one to blame but yourself. ”
“Do you regret it?” I ask her. “Not becoming a teacher?”
“I think I came to understand that these lows would have come with any occupation,” she says. “Would I then have wondered why I didn’t become a doctor? Would I ache with a different kind of longing? It’s an impossible question, that of regret. We either do or we don’t.”
“I don’t know how to not ache,” I confess.
Valentin nods. “I had this conversation with mom a few years back. I was twenty-six, I think, so hitting that age when everyone’s transitioning to this new phase in their lives.
I never had a friendship like you and mom have.
I’ve cycled through people all my life, and it was difficult for me to contend with, especially when I saw former friends getting married, settling down.
I wondered if the distance was my fault, then beat myself up when I realized it was. ”
“What did Nova say?”
“She said that it’s hard separating nostalgia from desire,” Valentin says.
Then, assuming a lilting, high voice that I’d recognize anywhere, she adds, “Everything is romantic under the sun of a day that has passed, especially if you don’t remember the long night that followed.
It’s easy to forget that your present moments are the stars shining overhead, brilliant promises of the days to come. ”
I crack a smile. “She never lost her poetic little lines, did she?”
Valentin laughs. “Nope; she’s the same as ever, I’d imagine.”
“It must have been liberating to lose your memories for a while.”
“At first,” she says. “But when regret is absent, so is everything else.” Her face lights up. “I can’t wait to see them, to hold them. I wouldn’t trade anything for the joys I’ve been given, and they are my own to tend to.”
I stare down at my feet.
With that, she taps me gently on my back, and heads out of the archives. Alone and unsettled, I walk over to Quill. Cillian’s up on the table, snoozing next to the tome.
“Do you have any sage words of wisdom for me?” I ask, placing a palm on the open page.
Would you listen if I did?
She sounds…angry.
“What’s with the attitude?” I ask.
What attitude? I’m simply posing a question. You seem content to go about your life making decisions for yourself.
“How am I supposed to turn away from this?” I don’t know why it’s easier to talk to her than any of the others. Maybe because she doesn’t have a face.
I’m not human; don’t ask me that. You’re all insolent and idiotic. Well, Everest isn’t human, but he may as well be. Some god, going off, playing with time and spreading rot to his bones, I–
“Wait what?” I say sharply.
Quill goes quiet. I should not have said anything.
But my mind is already racing. Everest had not budged when I asked him what triggered his illness, and I’ve been so occupied with everything else that I haven’t pushed.
“What do you mean playing with time? He’s a god,” I insist. “Quill, I leave tomorrow and I will not hesitate to dog-ear you.”
You wouldn’t dare, Quill hisses. And fine!
I told him to tell you, and since he did not listen, I will be more than happy to show you the error of your ways.
You think I do not know about your little plan tomorrow?
Did you not consider why we do not change much of the past in Tamperings?
Why this has never been done before? Everest has been breaking the most sacred rules in trying to help you reach your childish dreams.
I can’t breathe. “He wouldn’t do that.”
Quill laughs. Nearly five centuries and you still don’t see it.
I race out the archives and into the haunting night.