by Aaron D. Key
Glant did not look at me as he spoke and I thought I understood him. It made sense but it felt wrong. I was lonely and Glant was lonely. We were similar in many ways, bowed down with a power that stripped us of our human qualities. We could understand each other. We could forgive.
Then I thought of Koa and realised that you could not argue desire into existence. It was either there or not. There was no readily understood reason for it. Perhaps nature understood the rules and might even be brought to explain them in some future that I had access to, but for now I was in the dark.
Still, lack of desire did not mean that we could not be allies. I could help him to achieve his ambition, and perhaps this process would keep me busy enough to divert my attention away from my unlucky fate. Thinking of this and Koa reminded me why I was there.
“I need to ask you a question,” I said and hesitated, frowning. It was a complicated question and it needed framing carefully.
“When we passed the tower in the desert, you knew that no one was there. You said Elena wasn’t real. Where did she come from? Monta and I met her in the tower before. She seemed real enough. The memory of her must have come from somewhere, even if you or Aeth created her to divert us.”
“Elena was an unhappy woman,” Glant said obscurely and I tried not to get impatient. “Of course, Aeth remembered her. They were married until Aeth’s body died … Everything’s changing. The past is changing. Have you done something, Damon Ich?” Glant said as if he was bemused. “I am like a newborn baby, newly hatched: half my mind has gone, the other half barely recovered.”
“Koa and I went back in time to ensure that Rael had a son,” I confessed.
“That is why. This morning I was childless. And now I remember having two sons, although one died because of my foolishness. Remembering is slow.”
“You had children … You are Elena?” I was baffled.
“I know now that you love Koa, and I remember being Elena. I will tell you everything I know but not now.”
He turned his back on me with an apologetic smile and I reeled from the information he had shared with me. He was Elena and he/she had had a child who died. What had we done earlier and who had died? It wasn’t Moyan, Rael’s oldest child, as he had lived long into his nineties and been a power-bearer himself. Was it me? I felt it was. The truth hit me in the back of the head like a blow from a horse’s hoof.
“Thank you for my … pavilion,” I struggled to say as he turned his back on me.
“I thought it would be more comfortable than sitting on the grass,” Glant said lightly, batting away my gratitude as if it had been a mosquito on his shoulder, and disappeared.
* * *
I poured myself out another tea. I had died but there was still a chance to put all to rights. Herron still existed. It must be teetering on the edge of possibility but there must still be hope. I had to survive to bring Rael to this world and everything I had done since to help me exist and survive.
I settled back into the comfortable space and I forgave Glant a little. He remembered being Elena, he had said. Perhaps I should stop calling him “he” but until he changed his physical form I did not know what was right. I was trying to think logically, work everything out, but there was still that pain in my head. I tried to enjoy the place to calm my thoughts. I had always dreamed of putting a shelter here at the end of my swim. Nothing as grand as this. I imagined a roof, a plain log affair. Not the piece of art and culture I had been presented with. It was a lack of imagination that had made my plans so paltry, and an innate feeling that just because everything was possible it did not mean that everything should be. Still, a gift was a gift. It would be rude to turn it down.
I needed to get Elena back to where she belonged to make sure her retrieval was not the part of the plan that had gone wrong.
I went back to Rael’s Hill and stayed there for just a second, as I remembered I needed to find Koa again. I found him in the Great Hall sitting closely with Monta and Herai. They looked like they were plotting or at least grumbling. My sister was also there, chatting to Cailo. That made a full contingent of the people from Glant’s city apart from Glant himself. They were fitting in well, I thought bitterly. Better than I would have done in the same circumstances. My thoughts were unravelling before me. I was not in control. Had we come to the crisis in time that would undo me and my world?
I had a few seconds of watching them before they knew I was there. Jack, one of Tan’s assistants, came in bearing a large bowl filled with food in his massive arms to general cheering. They all looked happy, even Koa. Then they noticed I was there and a watchful hush fell around the table.
“Do you want to come and get Elena with me?” I asked Koa warily.
“Yes.” He rose from the table and bowed his head – like a servant, my savage thoughts consumed me. He had no free will. I had dragged him here out of his life to entertain me. He could only guess what would happen to him and his friends if he failed me. I could not suggest anything without risking gaining a helpmate where I wanted a lover, an equal.
* * *
Travelling back to the next morning was easy. Everything was easy: life and death … easy … easy. I hardly needed to concentrate and we were there in the alleyway where Elena lived. The buildings ebbed and flowed in front of me like the tugging of my heartbeat. There was a distant clock tower showing the time to be half past seven.
“We’re early,” Koa said.
Not as easy as I thought then.
“We should wait somewhere else,” Koa suggested. “We don’t want to get in the way of anything.”
“Let’s go back to the river,” I said. My mind felt full of water anyway. We traced our steps back and stood on the bridge where I first saw Rael in his world. The city around us was gradually coming to life.
“I am grateful for your help,” I said to Koa, talking like a drunk man. “I’m beginning to think that Monta might be right in his low appreciation of my abilities.”
“If you never needed help you would not be human,” Koa said. He leaned against the balustrade of the bridge facing me as I rested with one arm against it.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, crossing one foot in front of the other as if preparing for a long wait.
“I feel fine,” I replied. “Just not myself. It’s as if I’m floating above myself and judging everything I do.”
“I haven’t known you very long, but I know that this is not you on a good day,” Koa mused.
“Elena will be here soon and then all will be put to rights,” I said and hoped I was right. “And if not, none of this will matter, so we can only hope to enjoy it.”
“Are you enjoying it?” Koa asked intently.
“I’m enjoying your company when I remember not to worry about the future.”
“Do you remember the last time you said that and we roamed about in your memories? For me it is not what I do but who I am with and the memories we share. I’ll remember this bridge because you are here as well as because it’s novel for me to spend time in a place that isn’t my world.”
“We could make it even more memorable,” I said.
“I don’t understand?” he replied.
“We could commit an indecent act here – which no one could see – in this pocket of time that might never have happened.” As I suspected, he looked shocked. He looked closely at my face. I pulled him closer so that his face was close to mine and kissed him. I expected to be rejected and was pleasantly surprised when he kissed me back with a passion. It felt like falling into the waters of the river below me and finding it warm as blood instead of cold as the ice it appeared to be.
I fumbled with the string of his belt and, loosening it, found my hands inside the material, finding a warm stirring with a pleasurable shock …
“Damon Ich!” Someone called my name. “Damon Ich.” I opened my eyes. Koa was looki
ng at me from a distance with concern.
“They are here, on the bridge.” I looked in the direction he indicated. Elena had her back to us, holding hands with Rael.
“You look shocked,” he said. “Were you asleep? I thought you had been quiet for a while.”
I didn’t answer. I did not know what to answer. Presumably I had been asleep and dreaming vivid dreams. As we watched, Rael walked away with a lingering parting of fingers. He turned back and smiled wryly, as if embarrassed. Elena watched him with a last wave until he was out of sight and turned towards us with a triumphant smile.
“You’re early. That’s good. I thought I was going to have to hang around – before any of the shops were open.” She sounded happy.
“I hope everything went to plan?” Koa said casually.
“It was a lovely night,” she said but then sounded concerned. “What is the matter with Damon Ich?”
I looked up questioningly, surprised that anyone was talking about me.
“I don’t know,” Koa said. “We thought this piece of meddling with time would make him better, but it seems to have made him worse.”
I didn’t understand why they were talking about me as if I was a patient in a hospital unable to join the conversation. “Take Elena back, Damon Ich,” Koa said. I longed for my own home but I had a duty to safeguard my future and so I returned us to Elena’s time. My home before it had become my home.
Elena waved to Koa as she was about to step through the barrier of the trees. She turned to me as well.
“Thank you, Damon Ich,” she said. “I remember you now. I’m sure that I wouldn’t if everything is to end. I have seen you before so I believe that you work it out.” She smiled cheekily. “I am still waiting for you, but patiently.”
I didn’t understand that, but she didn’t seem to need a reply. She turned her back and walked through the berry-bowed branches.
We travelled back to my time, although there was no hint around us that anything had changed.
“I thought that would help,” Koa said. “But there’s evidently more to do. What did she mean – waiting for you?”
“I’m feeling my way … step by step,” I said. “Now I need to wait for the next step to become apparent.”
“I hope it’s quick. You do seem to be getting worse.”
“Why was Jack waiting on you?” I asked, full of anger about everything. “He doesn’t usually do that.”
“Not on me,” Koa explained. “I think he was flirting with Monta. I might be wrong but it looked that way to me.”
I fell silent. I could not be angry about this. Well I could, but only without reason.
“Do you want a hand getting to your room?” Koa asked, as if I was incapable of rational movement.
“No. I’m going to stay here and see if anything happens. You can go, though.”
I said this in a petulant way. I couldn’t stop it but he turned to grin at me before he stepped through the trees, as though we were sharing a joke.
I was glad he had gone. I wasn’t in control of the words that left my mouth, not even of the thoughts that filled my head. The sun slowly set and the world grew quiet. My thoughts were not still. They chased around my head like sticks in a maelstrom, but I was able to watch them from afar, without getting involved.
The crisis point was close, I could feel that.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Elena Appears
Everything was looking subtly different from when I had first entered the circle of trees. The sun had set now. Above, stars were outshone by a full moon. In the moonlight, the trees were like exquisite embroideries in silver thread with leaves that shone luminous. Birds were singing a song that made my soul ache with its tender beauty. Every touch of fabric, of wood, of the earth beneath my feet was like the lightest caress at the height of passion. It were as though I had always lived in a world that had been switched off and now it blazed with life, as if my brain were on fire. I was happy but more than happy, ecstatic! I feared it was a sign of something sinister: of a brain that was dying and using its last power to see the best in all around it. It was a knell of death wrapped up in a capsule of pleasure.
I wanted Koa to be with me. My body ached for him, a draining of flesh that emptied me onto the earth and left me hollow. I had been so close to … on the bridge … but they were not my thoughts, I realised with a sudden shock. I had been listening to Koa’s thoughts! My only indiscretion had been to allow my carefully constructed shield to slip.
Aeth had been wrong after all about Koa’s likely reaction, but it was too late to worry about that now. The distortion of time had sapped all my strength, left me with no direction. I lay on the grass in the circle of trees. It looked so inviting, it was not worth moving.
* * *
My breathing was smooth and gentle, like the ripples on the lake at Herron. That was what I noticed before my brain shifted into focus.
Now I was lying on rubble, the collapsed remains of houses, in a landscape of ruins and mist: a place that I had never been to before. It was similar to Elena’s city, from what I could see of the far streets still standing, but sterner, darker. It was night here and I had only ever been to her city in sunlight, but still there was something about the architecture that was intended to intimidate, not comfort, the soul.
The streets were deserted. This was not a disaster that had just happened but a tragedy that people were coming to terms with gradually. Yet there was a heartbeat. I could hear it over my own steady, slow heart: weak and ragged like the heartbeat of a mouse, but not a mouse. That thought made me scramble up and listen intently. Someone was trapped under the rubble.
I felt better here. I was in control of my thoughts and body. I had not been in control when I brought myself here but it had done me good. Perhaps if I carried on using the power so loosely without control, I would have to give it up before I became a danger to all around me, as Glant had been, but for now I was not worried.
Not that anything was worth worrying about with non-existence so close at hand. Nothing mattered at all. I almost wondered why I was bothering to help now when everything I had ever done might soon be erased and rendered naught, but I could not have turned away and left a body trapped under stone.
I balanced carefully on the rubble, trying to get close enough to move it without placing any extra pressure on the stones that might be crushing the body. Dust trickled through the gaps I dug and filled up the cavity like a tomb in the desert. Not a tomb today, I thought with anger. I used the power to lift the layers and fling them away where they would do no harm – another layer and another.
My digging revealed a solid structure, a wooden table, and underneath a large void. I ducked my head into the void and pulled out a bundle of blankets. There was a tiny hand sticking out stiffly from the bundle. When I unwrapped the blankets I revealed a sleeping baby. Not dead. Although it looked dead to me, there was the heartbeat still pulsing in my mind.
There were unwritten rules for situations like this. I knew that this baby might have parents who had perhaps died in the bombing or managed to escape, thinking their child was dead. I should really have stayed and established these facts, but the baby was close to death so I acted quickly. I made sure I could find the time and place again and returned us both to Herron.
I did what I could with the power as I walked down the slope of Rael’s Hill. The baby’s health had improved, as it began to cry loudly.
I felt well for the first time that day as I walked back to Herron by starlight. I felt different carrying my small bundle: important, useful, and above all, well.
In the Great Hall, it was after dinner time. I walked in with my bawling baby, hoping someone would come and take responsibility for this life from me. My wish was soon granted. Ann and Elena moved quickly in my direction when they saw what I was carrying. I was confused. Had Elena decided that
she no longer wanted to look like Glant? Had she had time to explain to everyone and become a part of the company in the short time I had gone?
I thought Ann was going to throw her arms around me, but instead she looked inside the bundle of blankets and took it from me.
“A baby! Why have you brought it here?”
Elena said with a worried expression, “I didn’t know you hadn’t found him yet.”
Then she fell silent. Ann took this in her stride.
“You’re back,” Koa said, coming over to see what was happening. He quickly examined the bundle in Ann’s arms with a practised eye. “I’ll look at him more closely tomorrow but I think he’s just hungry and thirsty. He needs milk.”
“What happened?” Ann asked.
“I travelled to the place where I found this baby,” I replied, considering the matter, “and I felt better. I don’t know why.”
“I will take Elena with me and we will find someone suitable to look after him,” Ann said decisively. Elena followed her without protest.
“Elena announced her presence while you were away,” Koa said, watching her. “I’m not going to crow but I knew Glant was a woman, or at least part of him was.”
“She told me while I was on the hill. I hope everyone has recovered from the shock.”
“I hope you have recovered?” Koa said mournfully.
“I never fancied Glant, if that’s what you mean,” I said. I was emboldened by the memory on the bridge. “It was only ever you, you know?”
He raised his eyebrows and after a moment said, “Is the baby staying, or will he be going back home?”
I must admit I expected more from my first honest declaration of love. I had tiptoed around it, building up my certainty that I would not be rejected, just to find that I was. I played along with his attempt to pretend that my words had never been said. It was easy. It was my wish too. I tried hard not to betray the desolation I felt.
