CHAPTER THIRTY
In the span of a heartbeat, the string around my hand snaps.
I lunge after the broken end, drifting from me like a windblown feather, but no matter how fast I chase after it, I don’t get any closer.
How could this have happened? The string was still light blue, the signs pointed to me having more time, but the line frays like a worn-down past, long-visited and best left buried.
I’m caught in the in-between: a rare prism of blackness that simultaneously feels empty and full.
A fierce wind cuts across my face, exerting pressure on my skin as though I’m going to be torn apart, shattered into stardust if I don’t make it out of here soon.
I break into a cold sweat, but my muscles set in determination.
The blue glints a distance away and it holds too much – a promise of a tomorrow I didn’t think I had, that I didn’t think I wanted.
I scream with frustration, my legs aching beneath my body, and as the end dangles a little closer, I dive for it.
I’m plunged into an endless freefall.
I’m not sure if anyone can hear me scream. My eyes press shut, but it’s futile. There’s darkness here and outside, in my mind’s eye and all around me. The sensation is like dropping down a canyon and not being able to see the bottom. Then something tugs at me, and I open my eyes.
The string. It’s wrapped around my finger.
And as sudden as that realization settles over me, the prism launches a full-fledged assault on my senses.
At first, I’m not sure what’s happening.
I’m still falling, but there’s something solid beneath my feet and surrounding me.
The walls – dimensions – around me feel like the cold electricity of the carousel, and every inch of my skin is alight and alive and submerged in a world of color and sound.
I wrap my other hand around the string and pull.
Something in the movement turns this place into a vacuum.
The prism twists, and as I reel within it, clinging to my thread, I comprehend where I am, what I’m seeing.
It’s my past, my story, overlaid in a mosaic of memories and dreams. There I am, looking at the world, newly born, and it’s strange that I don’t recall a second of this, but the sense of wonder and fear that penetrates me is startling, ripping open my vocal cords, and then I hear it, me, my voice, screaming for the world to see me.
I see my hand reach out to touch my mother’s face, still youthful and uncreased by worry as she haggles with vendors in Kolkata.
I’m settled on my father’s shoulders, rocking to the beat of his footsteps as we wind up a trail on Mt.
Tamalpais. My hands stretch out to graze the passing leaves, then draw back at the sight of a wandering bee.
It stings, seeing this, watching it all fall by.
“Why are you doing this?” I cry, pulling along the string. Is this the carousel’s final taunt? The walls around me ripple.
Now, it’s me meeting Novalie in the school playground.
The sheets that graze my laughing face are forts, well-lit with a careful arrangement of flashlights, piled with books filled with fantasy and romance.
And as quickly as I grasp one memory, I’m onto the next, so fast that I can barely catch a breath.
Tears scour my face, and I’m not sure what it is I’m feeling right now.
All I know is I need to make it to the other end, back to the person I’ve worked so hard to become.
Finally, I understand what this is.
It’s Everest, turning back the clock on my life.
It brings me to a halt. My life whips past me like a bullet train, and that’s what this force is, the one that’s trying to pull me back. It’s time going back and starting my story anew, just as I’d asked.
My heart cracks open. He actually did it. With Cyrus or without, he did what he thought I wanted, which was letting me go. Letting me forget all of it.
It’s nearly enough to bring me to my knees.
Nearly enough to make me give up. But the part of my life that’s unthreading around me is one filled with grit.
As I look up at the images, I’m renewed with the same sense of determination that set me on my path to the fair.
I’m dancing on top of tables, searching for shooting stars from abandoned rooftops, holding hands with friends, sitting across dining tables from men, staring up at night skies that move something deep in my soul.
I can’t give up on any of them. I can’t give up on myself. I scream, my biceps on fire as I pull harder, dragging my body across the edges of this dimension.
And then I’m at the fair, and it’s amazing how the entire palette of my life changes like an artist struck with a new muse.
My arms fatigue from pulling, and the string grows tauter as I plow past my adventures and my sorrows, my loneliness and my hope.
I sob at the sight of Beam and Ender, of Keshav and Geneva.
And then I see him.
Everest, standing under a pine tree, arms crossed as he surveys me.
There’s a shift in perspective here, memories that I watch not as I remember them.
It’s Everest tucking me in after time travel, it’s him stealing glances at me during dinner, searching the crowd for me during the eclipse, eyes wide when he realizes that I’m searching for him, too.
But it’s not Everest. It’s a memory of him and the realization that he could be gone, that all of them could be lost from my life, subjecting me to the kind of pain that makes me wonder if I ever really knew loss.
I scream his name, but he doesn’t hear. He’s shrinking into the distance, as are the ghosts, but they aren’t the ones turning their backs on me. I’m the one who’s walking away.
“Not this time,” I promise under my breath.
And I can’t move anymore, because the pull in this prism is too forceful.
It’s all I can do to hold on for my life, to hold on to everything I’ve fought for.
I bite down on my lip, drawing blood, squatting down so my entire body wraps around the line.
“Ryka,” voices whisper, followed by laughter and plenty of tears.
They fall like lethal hail, leaving me battered and bruised. But I don’t let go. I won’t let go.
And then, it all stops.
Everything stops. The pressure, the sound, the colors. I climb to my feet and take in where I am. The string is still in my reddened hand, but it trails limply along the grass. I’m in a field, and there in front of me is the carousel.
But I’m not alone. Eleven figures stand around the carousel, their bodies angled towards me.
Everest’s siblings.
Cyrus steps forward first. “That was quite the fight you just put up,” he says, arching a long, dark eyebrow in my direction.
“I don’t like making mistakes,” I tell them.
“We can tell,” another one snorts. She’s tall, with deep olive skin, dark brown eyes, and hair that falls in a long braid down to her waist. Intricate tattoos coat her forearms and disappear into the sleeves of her billowing rust robe, but the telling one is on her wrist: the diamond-leaved plant from Mother Time’s garden. This must be Sienna.
Cyrus elbows her in the ribs.
Another sibling addresses me next. “What is it, exactly, that you want from us, timekeeper?”
“Where am I?” I ask.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Sienna says.
It’s the fair, but not. There are no other tents. It’s an endless field filled with dandelions, and the sky looks like it’s awash with daylight, but there’s no sun. There’s an energy here that’s palpable, and it’s not solely due to the ethereal beings encircling me.
“I’m at the beginning of time.”
“Ding ding,” Cyrus says drily. “Congratulations; no mortal’s made it here before.”
“I would hardly call her mortal,” Sienna says.
I don’t have it in me to cope with their quibbles right now.
“I want to go back,” I tell them.
Cyrus rolls his eyes in a way that’s so decidedly like Everest, it pinches my heart. “The entire time we’ve known you, you’ve wanted to go back. It’s always back, back, back with you.”
Sienna cocks her head playfully. “Where and when do you wish to go, keeper?”
“To the fair,” I tell them firmly.
Some of them look surprised, others not so much.
“And why would we let you do that?” Sienna asks. “You’ve been our least grateful, most disruptive keeper yet. Why should we unleash you on the fair?”
I ignore her. “Where is he?”
Why isn’t he here?
The carousel lets out a screeching noise that causes us all to jump. The blue shudders and ripples, and a string of time rips out from the winding.
Cyrus scowls. “He’s back where you asked him to be. Unwinding your story.”
“Don’t let him,” I say, stepping forward. “Let me go back.”
Sienna’s hand slams into my chest, blocking my path forward. The others close ranks around her, and suddenly I can no longer see the carousel, or the way it gripes and groans under Everest’s ministrations. “Do you think you can just get away, facing no consequences?”
“What price do you want me to pay?” My voice comes out strained.
I don’t know how much longer I have, or where I’ll be if Everest completes his task.
The sky above us darkens, a dull grey that makes us all look like ghosts.
Even now, the energy is a shifting animal, and I can feel its mood change, steeped in an air of danger.
“I’ve restored order based on what I’ve done.
I know I messed up, but now I’m choosing to go back. It won’t happen again.”
“But maybe you shouldn’t be near our brother,” Cyrus says, folding his arms. “Your influence has rubbed off on him. Even now, he’s willing to bend dimensions to satisfy your childish desires. He’s prepared to give up his own freedom.”
The world wobbles around me.
“Yes,” Cyrus muses. “Did you think he wouldn’t have a price to pay either? Why do you think he came to me, of all our siblings? I deal with fate, Ryka, and he needed me to change his in order for him to return yours.”
A fate for a fate.
He couldn’t have…he wouldn’t be so foolish.