Into the Hourglass

by King, Emily R.

  Just as quickly as I rise, I fall, plummeting so fast that I fear I will strike the ground like a bolt of lightning and scorch the world.

  I land in a grassy field on a cliff overlooking a gray-blue sea. Thin clouds streak the sky, and on the hill above me, a large house faces the water. It’s my childhood home, the one Markham burned to the ground.

  Across the field, running toward me, comes a little child with raven hair and ruddy cheeks. Chasing after her is my mother.

  “Evie! Don’t go far!”

  Her pursuit of the little lass is half-hearted. She lets the child romp through the high grass and pauses to stare out to sea, two fingers pressed to her mouth. I caught my mother daydreaming a thousand times. She would stand by the water’s edge or at a window and seek the horizon for a glimpse of my father. I could tell she was thinking of him because she would rest two fingertips upon her lips.

  Younger Everley toddles past me down the hill. She cannot be more than three. The girl runs with abandon, her tummy out and her feet like a puppy’s, barely keeping up with her enthusiasm. She barrels past me, headlong for the cliff. I glance at my mother, but she’s still preoccupied, so I hurry after the child.

  Below on the rocky shoreline, foam has frothed in the sea, and the waves push it to the beach. An ivory mare sprints down the coast through the foam and water.

  Younger me is nearing the drop-off. I grasp at her, and my spirit passes through her little arm. A larger hand darts out and pulls her back from the edge. Father Time is kneeling in the field, partially hidden by the grass.

  “What have I told you about staying with your mother?” After gently reprimanding the child, he opens his hand and offers her a daisy. She scoops up the blossom and swings it about like a sword.

  “Evie!” Mother calls from up the hill. “Evie, come to Mama!”

  “Go on,” Father Time says, patting the girl’s back.

  She toddles up the rise to Mother. Though I do not hear my mother’s words, I can see her scolding expression. Younger me offers her the daisy, and I watch Mother’s worry melt away.

  “You have always been a daring spirit.” Father Time rises and begins to walk along the cliff.

  “I met Muriel,” I say, following him. “She told me about Amadara and the artifact. What was worth her life and her child’s life to save?”

  “I was with Amadara for half a century before I told her what you now ask of me.”

  His statement opens the floodgate on my frustration. “But shouldn’t I know what Markham is after? And why didn’t you tell me I don’t have long to live? What did you mean when you said I need the sword to defeat Markham?”

  “You have many questions, and we do not have long.” He peers over the cliff at the mare racing up the beach. Her movements are elegant, graceful. “Listen well, Everley. We have prolonged your life by harnessing the creation power of the heartwood and animating your clockwork heart with time given to you by your uncle. As you are aware, that time was not infinite. The sword is the key to unlocking more. You must find the blade and bring it to your uncle, so he may repeat the ceremony.”

  I balk at his suggestion. “I won’t take more time from him.”

  “You may accept time from any willing individual, but you must have the sword to complete the ceremony.”

  “Muriel doesn’t need the sword and she takes time from people.”

  “Her methods of sorcery exploit creation power and pillage time, but her donors are willing, so we cannot interfere. The cost of her manipulating time is high. Muriel exists in a state of half life, chased by death and decay. The purity of your heartwood ticker would be harmed by such invasive practices.”

  What I must do dawns on me with each step. Someone else will have to bleed time off their life to feed my ticker. I cannot ask someone to sacrifice themselves for me. Living day to day for years has taught me just how precious time can be. “Isn’t there another way?”

  “You could live in the Everwoods, but the moment you leave the forest, the time in your ticker will resume counting down.” His alternative feels like a punishment, not a solution. “We have brought you to the past again and again, revealing more to you than we have to any other human, so that you may leave your past alone. You must quit looking back, wondering what could have been, and move forward in faith.”

  My clock heart spins and spins, free of the time it’s bleeding. “But how can I know everything will turn out all right?”

  “Trust your task. Find the sword of Avelyn and bring the blade to your uncle to perform the ritual, or you will perish and Prince Killian will prevail.”

  “Prevail in what?” I ask, still shaken by my dream of the battlefield. “What does he want?”

  “He isn’t after a ‘what,’ he’s after a ‘who.’ When Prince Killian nearly stole the artifact from Amadara, we hid it far away. He has since deduced the whereabouts of the artifact and will find any way possible to get there. That is all we can say or we will compromise the timeline.”

  Influencing time may not be so terrible. I rather prefer this memory of my younger self over my niggling fear about what’s to come. I want a promise of what the future holds.

  Father Time’s voice sounds close beside him, his attention fixated on the woman and child playing up the hill. “Do you know why mankind inherited the Land of the Living?”

  “Not in the slightest.” The elves and giants I’ve met so far seem much more capable and durable than humans.

  “Mankind’s limited time fuels an insatiable lust in them to live their fullest life. Humans value time more than any other creature. They are encouraged to better themselves each day and do something worthy of becoming a legend.”

  “I don’t want praise or acclaim,” I say, lifting my gaze to the sky for patience. “I want to go home to my uncle and for my friends to return home safely. I don’t want to waste any more time racing Markham.”

  “You are already learning that time is love.”

  Father Time walks back toward where we started, and we plod up the field to my family’s manor. While younger me twirls in the grass, my mother has once again given her attention to the sea and placed two fingertips over her lips. Her love for her husband is something that, as a child, I prayed was in my future, loving someone so much my heart would leap across great divides to find him.

  Father Time kneels and opens his arms to younger me, and she jumps into them. My anger festers, raw and furious. The lass will lose her parents and home. She will forget what it is to run with abandon and spin circles by the sea.

  Choked with despair, I look away. The wild mare still gallops up and down the beach. Her mane and tail fly into the sky, her coat glistening. I lean closer for a better view of her. The ivory mare leaves no prints behind her. She flies over the beach without her hooves kicking up sand or marking a trail.

  It’s said that where the sea meets the land, Eiocha comes to shore in a drift of foam and emerges from the water in her mortal form as an ivory mare, free and powerful. She stays until nightfall and then rides a wave back into the sea and disappears in a moonbeam.

  The ivory mare halts and looks up at me. My lips part in wonder, and a warm buzzing cascades over my spirit. While our gazes are connected, my spirit begins to rise off the ground. I continue upward as swiftly as an updraft. The ivory mare shrinks beneath me until she blends in with the foam along the beach.

  I lift my gaze as I ascend toward the heavens and into the soft cloth of the eternities. The drop is always less gentle. I plunge into my body and dizziness grips me.

  Muriel catches me before I fold over. “Did you see Father Time? How did he look? Is he still as handsome as ever?”

  I just flew to the past and that’s her first question?

  “I . . . I need to sit down.” I stagger back into the main room ahead of her, trying not to trip over the cats. Radella has fallen asleep on the back of a sitting chair, clutching her full belly. Osric and Laverick rise in alarm. Jamison was waiting by the door,
so he helps me to the sofa.

  “What did you do to her?” Laverick accuses the sea hag.

  “Nothing,” replies Muriel. “Everley is faint from spirit jumping.”

  Jamison and Laverick gape at her and Osric’s eyebrows raise.

  “I’m fine,” I say before she divulges anything I don’t wish to share. “We were talking, and I got woozy.”

  Muriel lifts her chin, clearly still offended by Laverick’s harsh accusation. “Osric, come join me in the kitchen.”

  He pats Laverick’s shoulder in understanding and follows Muriel out. Several cats run after them, I suppose for food.

  “That woman is mad,” Laverick says, throwing up her hands.

  Jamison sits at my side and stares at me, prodding me for further explanation. I stare right back at him. He wishes for me to explain what Muriel said about spirit jumping, but I can scarcely fathom it myself. What am I supposed to say? That I spent several minutes outside my childhood home, which has since burned to the ground, and I saw my mother, who is long dead? And that I may have seen the Creator out for a run on the beach? Muriel would not be the only one accused of madness.

  Our standoff continues for so long that the feeling in the room shifts to a level of discomfort that Laverick can no longer tolerate.

  “I’ll help in the kitchen,” she says.

  Halfway to the door, she pauses out of Jamison’s sight and motions at me to talk to him. She’s making a big sacrifice by choosing to go into the same room as Muriel, so I nod a little to assure her that I will speak with Jamison. Laverick salutes me, pivots on her heels, and marches into the kitchen.

  “Everley,” Jamison says quietly, “you aren’t well. I don’t want to ask you again, because I know you’ll tell me everything is fine, but I know it isn’t.”

  I would tell him what’s wrong with my heart, but I cannot even think about taking years from someone else without feeling ill. Father Time may have said that what Muriel does is worse, trading fortunes for time, but both methods are monstrous.

  I select my words carefully and with sincerity. “I’ve shared more about myself with you than anyone else. Everything I’ve told you is true.”

  “What about our wedding vows? Did you mean them?”

  “You didn’t mean your vows either,” I say on a strained laugh. His expression tightens into a pained look. “Jamison, you couldn’t have meant them. We hardly knew each other.”

  “A promise is a promise.” His hand tries to touch mine, but I pull back.

  I have touched him too often of late and savored his touch more than I should have. Every time I allowed a physical connection to happen between us was out of selfishness. We have come a long way since we made our marital vows, but I’ve fooled myself into thinking this could last.

  Jamison sits away from me, giving me the room between us that I silently asked for. “Everley, you’re my wife. No matter what happens, I swore that I would be your husband forevermore.”

  I stop myself from rubbing at my building headache. I have to share something, confide in him in some way, to stop the rift widening between us.

  “Muriel told me she’s a seer. She can look into someone’s past, present, or future and show her customers what they wish to see. In return, she takes time from them.”

  Jamison sits up straighter. “She takes time as payment, as in years off of someone’s life?”

  “I assume that’s how she’s lived this long.”

  His attention turns inward as he scratches the head of a calico. He must be speculating about what he would ask the sea hag to show him if they struck a deal. I would return to a quiet evening with my family. I presume Jamison would wish to see a moment from the past where he was with his mother and sister, but the possibilities are endless, so I cannot say for certain.

  Osric carries in two steaming teacups. “This is seaweed tea. It sounds worse than it tastes. Actually, it’s atrocious, but it will tide you over until dinner.”

  I accept a cup. Jamison declines the second cup, so the elf drinks it himself.

  “Is it true?” Jamison asks. “Can the sea hag see through time?”

  Osric sits on the corner of the sofa, pushing off a cat. “Reading someone’s lifeline is Muriel’s specialty. People come far and wide to see their fortunes.”

  “What did you ask to see?” I ask, sipping my tea. The drink tastes abominable, like hot stewed lagoon water.

  The first mate stares down into his steaming cup. “My parents. I wanted to know how they were faring without Brea and me.”

  “And?” I press.

  “And I suggest you be careful about what you ask to see.” Osric rises, startling another cat from around his feet. “Muriel asked that you two join us in the kitchen. She’s thought of a way to send us to Everblue.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Muriel lays the fish in the pan over the fire. For a sea hag, her kitchen is missing the expected identifiers of a sorceress’s home. She doesn’t have a boiling cauldron of frogs’ legs and toad eyeballs, or a broom in the corner, or jars of miscellaneous body parts floating in amber liquid. Except for the cats roaming in and out, her kitchen could be a match for my uncle’s. I’m beginning to wonder if human storybooks depict anything right.

  Jamison and I join the others at the long table. Instead of chairs, Muriel has two settees stuffed with pillows pushed up to it. Before sitting, Jamison checks under the throw pillows and finds a loaded pocket pistol. He puts it on the table and then pours us both glasses of grog. He finishes his and speaks up first.

  “Muriel, how much time does it cost for someone to see their future?”

  She shoots him a sly grin over her shoulder as she sprinkles green flakes on the fish. I pray the seasoning isn’t seaweed. “I deal in yearly increments. Two, four, ten . . . The contract depends on what it is that my customer wishes to know.”

  “Contract? Time?” Laverick asks, glancing from face to face. Jamison quickly summarizes Muriel’s powers, with Osric chiming in. At the end, the Fox has her own question. “Do the years come off your customers right away or later in life?”

  “Whichever they prefer. All the terms are written in the contract. Most request their life be shortened instead of abruptly aging.”

  “What if someone only has months to live?” Jamison asks.

  Muriel smiles again as she flips the fish over in the pan. “I’ve never had anyone die, if that’s your worry. I always leave my patrons with at least a year of life, but many of them are elves and giants. They typically have more time to give than humans.”

  “Which is why this is a bad idea for any of us,” I state.

  “A human’s time is limited, so it’s worth more to you, but a year is the same to me regardless of whom it comes from.”

  “Can we ask to see someone else’s future?” Jamison says. At my widening eyes, he adds, “Of course, this is all hypothetical.”

  While the fish in the pan is cooking, Muriel stirs a small pot of boiling potatoes and then goes to a cutting board and chops apples with a cleaver. “You’ve a mind for strategy, Lord Callahan. But I’m afraid the answer is no. For my customers to give away time willingly, they must see their own fortune.” She slams the cleaver into the cutting board, sending two cats at her feet scattering.

  Laverick taps her foot against the ground impatiently. “Can we discuss how you plan to send us to Everblue now?”

  The sea hag wipes her hands on her apron. “I had the idea while I was with Everley. You cannot swim to Everblue as yourselves, so you should travel as someone who can.” We stare at her in confusion. “The solution is simple. I can transfer your spirit to someone else, and you go to Everblue disguised.”

  “Transfer our spirits,” Jamison says slowly, trying to puzzle the words out. “You want us to steal someone’s body?”

  “I prefer to think of it as borrowing.” Muriel tosses a bit of fish to the cats, and they all crowd around for their part. She smiles at them fondly. “Sometimes when I cann
ot sleep in my own body, I transfer spirits with my cats and sleep and sleep. It’s very restful.”

  I glance at Osric as if to say, You brought us to this lunatic?

  “Whose body do we ‘borrow’?” asks Jamison.

  We all lapse into contemplation while Muriel slides the fish out of the pan onto a platter and carries it to the table. The fish still has its head and tail, its dead eyes looking at me. I glug down another glass of grog.

  Osric brings the bowl of boiled potatoes along with the plate of apples for himself. Neither Jamison nor Laverick appears hungry.

  Laverick sits up suddenly. “We can catch merrows.”

  “You and Markham already tried netting them,” I remind her.

  “This time we’ll use bait and a decoy.” Laverick gestures at the fish on the platter. “You catch a fish with a worm or a fly. We can dangle something appetizing in front of the merrows to draw them in.”

  “Wonderful idea,” Muriel says, clasping her hands together. She makes no comment about whether baiting them will work, but this is the same woman who professes to switch bodies with her cats, so her opinion doesn’t hold much merit. “Each of you will need your own merrow to trade spirits with. Are you going as well, Osric?”

  His winces, torn between his reluctance and my silent pleading. “They’ll need a guide,” he surrenders at last.

  “How safe is the transference?” Jamison inquires, pouring us both our third glass of grog. “Are there any long-term effects?” He does not reference me, but I suspect he’s concerned about my low stamina.

  Muriel answers while studying her frown lines in her hand mirror. “None at all, but the longest I’ve been out of my own body was one day. I wouldn’t wait any longer.”

  “What happens if we do?” Jamison asks.

  “Your spirit will switch back on its own. The sudden switch can be very disorienting.”

  Spending any amount of time with my spirit in the body of a merrow seems like a terrible idea. “Can we swim to Everblue and back by then?”