The Time Collector

by Gwendolyn Womack

  Without taking his eyes off her, he walked over and put the globe on the counter. “I’ll take all of them,” he said. His voice was quiet and husky.

  He was standing close enough that she could see his eyes were green and flecked with amber. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d found someone this attractive, least of all a customer.

  She tried to focus on the conversation, sure she had a blank look on her face. “All of what?”

  “All of these,” he said, motioning to the globe in front of her.

  “All twelve?” Her voice rose in disbelief when she realized what he was asking for. “You want all of them?”

  “Yes.” Then he added with a little smile, “Please.”

  She jumped up and knocked over her pen cup, scattering pens and Sharpies across the desk. She almost spilled her tea, too, but his hand snaked out and caught it in time.

  “Careful,” he said.

  Her face flushed in embarrassment and her mind raced with questions.

  Why he was buying all her work? Were these gifts? Should she tell him she’d made them? She just couldn’t, not when he was buying every single one. The whole situation was confounding. Who dropped more than two thousand dollars on snow globes?

  “Do you need these gift wrapped?”

  “No. Thank you.” He handed over his credit card.

  The name on the card said Roan West. What did Roan West do for a living, and what was he planning to do with twelve snow globes?

  Under normal circumstances she would have made polite conversation during the sale, found out if he’d like to be on their mailing list, and mentioned the upcoming holiday sale. Right now she was too stunned to speak.

  Yesterday was shocking enough with the Breguet appraisal, and now an attractive stranger was purchasing all her artwork.

  She rang up the sale with a mounting sense of surreality. She had to step out from behind the counter to get each globe. It took her six trips, with one globe in each hand. She tried to stay focused so she wouldn’t drop one.

  He watched her while she boxed them up. The lull in conversation became an awkward stretch of silence and the tension between them became palpable. Melicent finished nestling all the boxes into two large gift bags and held them out with forced enthusiasm. “Here you are.”

  Roan West had his gloves back on when he took the bags from her, but still the brush of his hands across hers had an unsettling effect. His eyes flickered with awareness and he turned away.

  She found herself calling out cheerily, “Thank you so much!” when really she felt bereft. Two years of her work were wrapped up inside those bags … two years of her life.

  When she had priced the globes at two hundred dollars apiece, at the time, she had thought the price was too much, but in hindsight it wasn’t enough.

  The door jingled shut and her mystery customer was gone—gone with a part of her she could never get back.

  5. THE COMPASS

  WELL, THAT DIDN’T GO AS PLANNED. Roan scowled at the two gift bags sitting across from him on the plane like a person. He rubbed his chin and let out something between a groan and a laugh, in disbelief that he had just absconded with all of Melicent Tilpin’s art.

  The reality was he hadn’t been able to talk to her. From the moment he walked into the gift shop, he’d been unsure of what to say. She was so much lovelier in person, like a whimsical dancer straight out of a Degas painting.

  Seeing her had caught him off balance. He’d watched the YouTube video countless times, studying every nuanced expression on her face and every gesture. But then when she was right in front of him, he’d started second-guessing his urge to meet her.

  Did he really want to begin a conversation? Introduce himself and share that he understood exactly how she’d found the watch?

  He’d struggled with what to say—until he began to wonder if he needed to say anything at all. Maybe he should remain a voiceless, anonymous customer. She didn’t have to know he’d flown all this way to meet her.

  Then when he saw her name on the place card beside the snow globes and her signature on the globes’ granite mounts, he had taken off his glove before he could think it through.

  When he touched one of the globes a myriad of thoughts filled him. Within the silica, the ash, and the limestone, and after seventeen-hundred-degree heat had fused the quartz, immense sadness lived. She’d made that Zen rock garden inside the crystal sphere to cope with a life out of balance—using her art to help transmute her pain. Then she had tried to sell it because she needed the money.

  A deluge of powerful imprints hit him and Roan set the globe back down on the counter, already knowing he had to buy it. He had to buy them all.

  Reading the imprints would be the surest way to understand her, he reasoned. Besides, it was always easier for him to touch something than to have a conversation. Having the globes would negate the need to question her at all. He could read the imprints on his own time back home and then decide if he would contact her again.

  When he stood watching her box the globes up, he wondered why she hadn’t told him she’d made them. Most people would have. She hadn’t wanted to sell them either. Her shock and reluctance were obvious. The globes were more sentimental and important to her than she’d realized until she had to let them go.

  The crushed look in her eyes when she handed him the bags still burned in his mind—and he began to think maybe he should send them back.

  He replayed their encounter in his mind over and over as he stared out the plane window at the clouds. His hand absently took his lucky coin out of his pocket and rolled it across his knuckles in a soothing motion. He didn’t know what he wanted to do about Melicent Tilpin. The trip to L.A. had been a distraction, and Stuart not showing up in El Paso had left him with a sense of unease.

  He thought back to Stuart’s voicemail. All Stuart had said was that it was imperative they meet and that it concerned the group. Roan had no idea why Stuart was trying to involve him.

  Stuart belonged to a small international network of psychometrists. Five years ago, when Roan and Stuart first met, Stuart had asked him to join. Stuart was the first psychometrist Roan had ever encountered, and Roan was surprised to hear there was a group—but Roan had no interest in joining. His whole life he’d grown up with his parents drilling it into him never to reveal what he could do. He wasn’t about to start now.

  Still, Stuart coaxed him into attending one meeting before making a decision. He’d pressed Roan at a vulnerable time, months after Roan’s father had passed away; otherwise Roan never would have agreed to go.

  Roan had flown to France to attend the meeting, not knowing what to expect.

  François Dupuis, an elderly historian, usually hosted the biannual gatherings. The retired widower lived in a charming country house outside of Avignon. The villa was a ten-minute commute to the Ceccano Municipal Library, where François had been an archivist for thirty years.

  When Stuart arrived at François’s with Roan in tow, François welcome them both warmly and offered them a glass of wine from his cellar. He was a cherub of a man and still spry on his feet at seventy.

  Another member, Sun Kim, had already arrived. Roan wasn’t sure what to make of the severe-looking Korean woman who greeted them with silent nods. She was wearing pants and a tunic-like jacket, and her silver-streaked black hair was cut short.

  François performed the introductions, explaining with enthusiasm that Sun was the best psychometrist he’d ever known. Sun waved off his compliments with a brusque hand, earning a chuckle from the Frenchman. But Roan caught the gleam of laughter in Sun’s eyes. It was obvious the two were friends.

  The others arrived shortly afterward. Miguel Casal, a tall, soft-spoken Peruvian sporting a full beard and little round glasses, was the leading anthropologist at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú in Lima. The group’s other member was an archaeologist from India named Gyan Patel, a charismatic man in his thirties. When Gyan met Roan, his int
ent gaze dropped to Roan’s gloved hands.

  Roan felt out of place surrounded by two archaeologists, one anthropologist, an historian, and a curt, enigmatic Korean woman who sat surveying them all without a word. Roan had no idea what Sun did.

  Stuart fortunately kept Roan’s introduction brief. “Everyone, let me preface our meeting by saying I’ve asked Roan to join our little group, but knowing Roan, he won’t. So this is probably the last you’ll ever see of him. Right, mate?” Stuart slapped Roan on the back playfully as if they were having drinks at the pub. “I’m afraid Roan doesn’t like people. He barely likes me, and I’m his friend.” Stuart’s outrageousness earned a round of laughter. Only Sun’s expression remained unreadable.

  Everyone spread out among the sofas and chairs in François’s living room. Roan chose a chair farthest from the circle, near the fireplace, and sat back to watch.

  Miguel led the discussion. “I brought something that I’ve been most anxious to share with you.”

  He pulled out a stone spoon from his satchel and held it up.

  “What you’re looking at is one of the first compasses of the world. These originated in China and were made of loadstone. The scientists of the time understood that the ore of the stone could find magnetic north.”

  Next he pulled out a bronze plate decorated with constellations and cardinal points. “This is called a heaven-plate.” He placed the plate on the table and laid the spoon in its center. “Now, interestingly enough, before this was a compass, it was first used for divination purposes to foretell the future. But when the diviners realized they could always find north and south with it, the compass was born. If I were to date this piece, I’d say it was Han dynasty. But the true mystery surrounding this piece is that it wasn’t found in China.”

  He looked at everyone, giving his silence a pregnant pause.

  “I found it at an excavation in Ecuador buried in thousand-year-old sediment. So not only is there a missing time span of three thousand years—somehow this compass traveled to the other side of the world.”

  He let that statement hang in the air.

  “I have it on loan from the Ecuadorian government for further testing, but I wanted to share it with you because I believe this is an OOPART.”

  “An oopart?” François asked, looking perplexed. “What kind of word is that?”

  “It stands for ‘out-of-place artifact.’” Stuart sat forward in excitement. “Something that doesn’t belong in the timeline it was discovered in. I’ve never seen one up close before.”

  Miguel nodded. “It’s a rare phenomenon. But they’ve been found all around the world.” He ticked off a list. “A hammer in Texas, discovered in 1936, was buried in Cretaceous rock. The Dorchester Pot, discovered in 1852, was found in rock that was five hundred million years old. There are the ancient batteries in Baghdad, the nanostructures in the Ural Mountains in Russia. No one’s been able to date the iron pillar in Delhi.” He looked to Gyan for confirmation. “That could be an oopart right out in the open.”

  François put on his reading glasses for a better look. “How curious.”

  “I wanted your help reading the imprints,” Miguel said.

  Roan listened, his curiosity piqued. He’d never heard of out-of-place artifacts before.

  “Give it a go, François.” Miguel handed it to him.

  François picked it up. Everyone was quiet as François closed his eyes to focus. “I find the imprints to be jarring, like a double exposure my eyes are trying hard to see.”

  “Exactly!” Miguel pointed at him. “As if it’s existed in two timelines, not one.”

  Stuart took it next and closed his eyes. After several moments he said, “You’re right, François, the imprints are muddled. This would take some time to unravel.” He offered it to Sun, who was sitting to his right.

  Sun took it in her hands and focused on the imprint. Unlike the others she kept her eyes open, gazing inward. “This is from the Qin dynasty, not Han, about two hundred B.C.E.”

  Miguel’s eyebrows shot up.

  Her voice was sure as she continued. “It belonged to a man named Shang Yang. He was an architect and used the compass to align buildings, homes, graves. It was a prized tool. Shang received this from his father, who originally used it for divination, like his father before him. They were considered great magicians in their time. The compass was lost with Shang, buried in an earthquake that leveled every town in the province.” Her brow furrowed. “I can’t see the time after that or before it was found in Ecuador.” She was quiet a moment and closed her eyes to concentrate. “The two times are like two parallel imprints running side by side that don’t belong to each other. Fascinating.”

  François clapped his hands softly and leaned toward Roan. “I told you, the best.”

  Roan gave him a polite smile.

  Sun offered the compass to Roan next with a speculating gleam in her eye. “Perhaps our special guest would like to try?”

  Roan had no urge to read double imprints from an out-of-place artifact in front of a group of strangers. It sounded like a migraine waiting to happen. “No, thank you.” He crossed his arms. His gloves would not be coming off today. Fortunately, Sun didn’t press the point and handed it to Gyan, who had little luck with the imprints either.

  “After I found this,” Miguel went on to explain, “I started looking at the oopart phenomena more closely and began to wonder: What if ooparts aren’t random? What if they’re connected to each other?”

  “You mean a unifying factor?” Stuart asked, intrigued.

  “Yes.” Miguel nodded, his eyes intent as they circled the group. “If there was, we’d be the ones to find it.”

  * * *

  Roan never knew if the group had decided to pursue Miguel’s theory. By the end of the meeting, Roan had graciously declined their invitation to join. He could tell Stuart was disappointed by his decision, possibly offended, and for many months Roan thought their friendship might have come to an end.

  It wasn’t until six months later that Stuart surprised Roan with a call, asking him to show him how to rock climb. Stuart knew Roan was an avid climber, a boulderer, and Stuart wanted to learn. He said he needed an outlet too. Roan arranged the meeting at Hueco Tanks and had done his best to teach him what he knew.

  Roan had been shocked when he’d met Stuart on that trip. Stuart had shadows under his eyes and his jovial smile was missing. He was emotionally hurting on that first climbing trip to El Paso. Roan could feel his pain in the rocks, falling across the stones like a silent shadow.

  Stuart had recently lost someone dear to him in a tragic car accident in the rain.

  Her name was Nema.

  The pain was hard for Roan to ignore. Stuart stamped Nema’s memory on every rock he climbed until his heartache covered the mountain like a blanket. This woman was the reason Stuart was climbing. Roan didn’t feel they were close enough to admit what he knew from an imprint. So he pretended not to know.

  Stuart tried to exorcise his grief by physically pushing his body to its limits. He had a natural talent for the sport too, was incredibly competitive, and soon became even more obsessed with bouldering than Roan.

  The men’s friendship grew over time and they kept climbing together. As Stuart’s expertise began to match Roan’s, they sought out the hardest climbs and most dangerous ascents: the Story of Two Worlds in Switzerland, the Burden of Dreams in Finland, and Creature from the Black Lagoon in Colorado, among countless others.

  During their trips they kept their private lives separate. Stuart never discussed the other psychometrists either, and Roan didn’t ask.

  Why was Stuart trying to involve him with the group again after all this time?

  Even more perplexing, why hadn’t he shown up in Texas?

  6. THE HANDLE

  WHEN THE PLANE TOUCHED DOWN in New Orleans, Roan breathed a sigh of relief. He got behind the wheel of his black Tesla and put Melicent’s bags in the passenger seat. From Lakefront Airport
he took Elysian Fields to I10 and exited near the harbor.

  He sped down the street since there were no other cars on the road. Tchoupitoulas Street was one of the major industrial corridors that ran adjacent to the harbor’s entry points. Only warehouses and yard operations lined Tchoupitoulas, and they were stationed there for efficient cargo transfer to and from the port terminals.

  New Orleans had one of the largest harbors in the world. Most of the industrial warehouses clustering the area spanned tens of thousands of square feet, and their loading dock doors could open up to receive an entire cargo container at once. It had been the perfect place for him to move.

  Roan pulled into an enormous warehouse lot. He hit the remote to open one of the five bays to the building. The heavy metal door rolled up and fluorescent lights lit the empty cargo bay. He eased the car in and parked, using the bay as his garage.

  He’d purchased the warehouse ten years ago. At first he bought the building with the sole intent of storing his most valuable pieces, but then figured seventy thousand square feet could accommodate him as well. The windowless space offered the height of anonymity and privacy, two things he valued most.

  Fourteen thousand square feet had already been designated for first- and second-floor offices that stretched along one side of the building. Excluding the loading bays, the remaining fifty-six thousand square feet was wide-open space and had thirty-five-foot ceilings. The entire building was insulated, with concrete blocks and metal panel siding.

  Roan had paid twenty-five million outright for the entire lot. It’d been a hefty investment but a necessary one if he was going to continue his work. West, Inc. had earned a global reputation for unearthing some of the most valuable antiques ever to come on the market. Last year, the company, through Sotheby’s, had auctioned a royal soup tureen designed for King Louis XV for ten million dollars. Security had always been a priority, and the more discreet West, Inc.’s headquarters the better.