The Light Between Us

by Katie Khan

  Isaac and the Thea wearing navy both stare at her.

  ‘It’s oscillating between two states,’ she says again, more emphatically. ‘This is pure time crystal theory! Urvisha and Ayo discarded the concept of spacetime, because it didn’t suit their hypothesis at the time. But it’s worth remembering that everything happening inside the prism with the speed of light is happening in space, so it’s also happening in time.’

  Triumphant, she looks at their confused faces – well, one confused, one less so. ‘Imagine it in four dimensions,’ she says. ‘The movement inside the prism – the pendulum swing – isn’t only between left and right, up and down. That’s what it is in space. But in time – the pendulum is swinging between the past and the present.’

  ‘Oh,’ the Thea in navy says, breathing in.

  ‘This is four-dimensional spacetime. So if we fire the laser as the light wave is trapped at the slowest part of the pendulum arc, when the pendulum is swinging towards the past …’

  The other Thea considers. ‘Then when it carries us away, it would take us towards the past.’

  ‘Yes! You could travel back in time.’ She appeals to Isaac, who is watching them bounce physics between them in the confined dovecote. ‘Now we know what we’re dealing with, we can manipulate it in our favour.’

  He squints, trying to recall everything he’s learned in the last few days; all the theories, all the science. He’s determined to keep up with the Theas but it’s no good.

  ‘Hold on. What are you saying?’ Isaac says. ‘That it is actually a time machine?’

  ‘It’s both. It’s a portal, because a jump takes you onto a different timeline. And it’s a time machine, because you can also jump to a moment in the past on the other timeline.’

  ‘Specifically,’ the Thea in navy says quickly, ‘we could jump to the moment before both Thea and I jumped.’

  Isaac looks between them. ‘And what would that mean?’ he says, fearing he doesn’t want to know the answer.

  The Thea in white finally speaks. ‘If you and Thea return to your world at a time before Rosy ever made the jump, she’ll be there when you go back. You’ll arrive before you left – and before she left, too.’

  The other Thea nearly bounces with excitement at the potential solution. ‘It would put Rosy right back where she belongs … Rosy would never disappear.’

  Isaac speaks quietly. ‘What about me?’

  ‘Nothing can be left out of place on the timeline, or it might not work,’ Thea says, and the kindness in her tone tells him which Thea she is.

  ‘What if we return there, and another version of us jumps here?’ he says.

  ‘I don’t think it works like that,’ she answers, before the other Thea can speak. ‘Remember the mirror.’

  Isaac gives her a look. This is not the time for further extended scientific explanations.

  ‘Two worlds in reflection symmetry,’ she reminds him. ‘When the timeline splits, one world goes left, the other goes right.’

  ‘She’s right.’ Thea steps back from where she’s been listening by the door, so he can see her navy top in the light of the pigeonholes. ‘Our two worlds are paired because of what we’ve done. The other worlds aren’t out of kilter – not yet, at least.’

  ‘Especially if we jump back to before this began, and return it all to the way we found it.’ The Thea in white moves towards him. ‘We’re detangling the timelines. It’s what we have to do.’

  ‘Oh,’ he says, his last bastion of hope smashed. ‘So … I definitely have to go back, too?’

  She looks at Isaac with imploring eyes. ‘Remember the Curlew? And the displaced water?’ she says.

  ‘And the Unknown Woman?’ the other Thea interjects. ‘We’re not just changing our time, we’re changing all of time.’

  ‘We need to detangle the strings,’ Thea says. ‘Everything will go back to the way it was if I stay here, and you both jump back to before all this ever happened.’

  The other Thea smiles broadly, determined. ‘It’s the only way to save Rosy.’

  Twenty-five

  Isaac whispers ‘No!’ and both Theas look at him: one, uncomprehending, the other with her heart breaking. The latter looks away first, closing her eyes as though her eyelids could shield her from the tide of emotion, from the truth of their situation.

  ‘We can’t do this,’ Isaac says to both of them. ‘There must be another way.’

  ‘There isn’t,’ Thea says, though she’s gentle. ‘It’s my fault, Isaac – Rosy is gone because I was careless. Because of that, our friend is missing.’

  The original Thea stands by the dovecote door, an understanding dawning as she looks from Isaac to Thea, and back to Isaac. ‘Guys – you haven’t, have you?’

  ‘There has to be something else we can try,’ he says. ‘Something that won’t … undo … everything.’

  ‘Oh, crikey,’ the other Thea says with a grimace. ‘This is very messy indeed.’

  ‘Can we have a minute?’ Thea asks. ‘To sort this out.’

  She nods. ‘I’ll be in the barn.’

  If Thea dares look at Isaac’s anguished face, she’ll shatter. So she simply nods, her manner brusque. ‘Right. Thank you,’ she adds, as the other Thea exits the dovecote, pulling the door behind her to give them some privacy.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ Thea says, claustrophobic in the small cylindrical building.

  ‘Really?’ he says, looking hopeful.

  ‘Oh – I didn’t mean … Let’s take a walk.’ She takes his hand to soften the blow, stepping from the building out into the fading afternoon light. She remembers at the last moment to look around for the others and to avoid being seen. It’s hard to believe this is her world; she’s been behaving like an intruder, tiptoeing around the farmhouse and away from her friends. But she belongs here. Her farm, her barn, her dovecote … but not her Isaac.

  ‘I could stay here with you,’ he says, as though reading her mind.

  A wave of fresh exhaustion hits her. They walk across the kitchen garden towards the woods that border the farmland. She knows they’ll have to go to the glass house, momentarily; she knows there’s no real time left to make him see this is the only thing that can be done.

  ‘This isn’t your world, Isa,’ she says quietly, as the sky takes on the baby blues and pinks of candyfloss, as though the day knows it has one last moment in which to dazzle, and exerts itself in a display of colour before the inevitable fade to night.

  ‘It doesn’t matter – I’m sure I could stay here and be with you. Nobody will even notice that I’m gone.’

  ‘It would be wrong.’ She blinks. ‘We have to reset the timelines back to the way they were,’ Thea says, inhaling hard when he reaches for her hand as they walk between the trees. ‘If you stay in this universe, when you belong in the other, you could get lost between worlds, too.’

  He looks distraught. ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘No, I don’t. Not for sure. But I’m not willing to risk it. We need to put everyone back where they’re meant to be.’

  He pauses. ‘You are so goddamned stubborn,’ he says. ‘Tell me, do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?’

  She’s silent.

  ‘I don’t think you could live with yourself if it meant having to live with being wrong.’

  ‘That’s not it,’ she says, though he’s closer to the bone than she might expect. ‘It’s my fault, Isaac: I made Rosy disappear. I can’t live with the guilt of that.’

  ‘It’s not your fault—’

  ‘Don’t you see?’ Her voice breaks. ‘It’s always been my fault. I have never done right by Rosy when it comes to you.’

  He pauses. ‘I’m responsible for that, too.’

  ‘And that’s why we can’t. We can’t risk doing anything that would mean the timeline doesn’t go back to the way it was.’ Thea picks up a fallen branch with a spray of dying leaves, and she begins to tear them off, yellowing leaf by yellowing leaf. ‘With ev
ery jump, with every displaced person, the strings of time entangle, weaving a web where people could get hurt … the effects unknown.’ She throws the leaves up into the air and, mesmerized, Isaac watches them float to the ground, landing in chaos.

  ‘You could come with me,’ he suggests. ‘It doesn’t have to be the other Thea. If there was one of you in each world—’

  ‘That wouldn’t work; we’d still be out of time,’ she says gently, letting go of the branch so it falls to the ground with a crunch. ‘Don’t you think the fact we both got sick when we landed in each other’s world is a hint? We’re not meant to be there – we don’t belong.’

  He blanches. Knowing someone is right, even if you don’t want to hear it, is an uncomfortable feeling; staying quiet, even more so. ‘Well, fuck. This is awful.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Do you? Or do you not give a shit because you’ve got another Isaac here, who’s probably in love with you, too?’

  Her eyes widen in surprise. ‘Is that what you think – that I could move what I feel for you onto him, like you’re the same? Because you should know more than anyone how specific it is to be in love with an individual, and not someone else because they look or sound like them.’

  He’s silent.

  ‘Jesus.’ She kicks the branch and it disintegrates, woodlice crawling out and scuttling away across the forest floor.

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s— I feel like I only just found you.’

  ‘I know,’ she says. ‘I feel the same.’

  His face is desperate. ‘Please, Thea. You’re saying I can’t live here with you. But I’m not sure I can live without you. I could stay—’

  ‘You can’t,’ she says, the catch in her voice betraying her emotion.

  He puts his hand pleadingly on her but she shakes him off, instead putting her arms around his waist in a tight hug. Surprised, he holds her, then after a moment finds her mouth with his and kisses her as the light fractures behind the trees. It’s a desperate kiss, the weight of their situation pressing down upon them both.

  She pulls back, reaching to touch the bow of his lip with her index finger, committing the shape and feel to memory. ‘You essentially just quoted “With or Without You”,’ Thea says as they hold each other again, seeking the warmth of one another. ‘I told you it was Shakespearean equivocation,’ she whispers, trying anything to lighten the mood, and he smiles into her hair, the moment bittersweet.

  ‘It will be my favourite song, when I get back.’

  She lets go of the hug but not of him. ‘If I thought there was any other way—’

  ‘I understand.’ He pulls her under his arm and she tucks herself around his waist, one hand resting on his chest, and they walk this way through the wood together, entwined for perhaps the last time. ‘The problem with you being a genius,’ he says, ‘is if there was even a chance of there being any other option, I know you’d have explored it.’

  ‘Think about the sculpture we saw. How many times did the deep red fishing lines cross one another?’ She looks up at him expectantly, and he nods. ‘Just once,’ she answers. ‘More than once, and the strings would be tangled, knotted. Some might even snap. So although I want you to stay here with me – or me to come back with you … we can’t.’

  He leans his chin against her hair and she rests her hand against the back of his neck. He can feel the coolness of her three rings against his skin, and the warmth of her taunting him in every place they touch, from their knees to their faces. He tilts her head, kissing her again before he no longer can. And she in turn pulls him closer, tighter, realizing when she’d started the experiment she had wanted memories she could transport back across spacetime, without considering that the grief might not come from those memories, but from finding the great love of her life in an impossible parallel world.

  The thought of grief sobers her. She takes his hand. ‘Promise me something. When you get back, you can’t let this – us – consume you.’

  ‘But it’s so unfair,’ he says. ‘You’ll flit into my mind every time I speak to the other Thea. When I see Rosy or the others, I’ll remember. Every time I walk around a London gallery, or rent a Boris bike, or go for a fried breakfast in the afternoon, I’ll think of you.’

  She smiles in agony, gesturing past the trees back towards the farmhouse, diverting his attention away from the sorrow she knows is emblazoned across her face. ‘I doubt I’ll ever be able to go back to the barn without thinking of our journey here together.’ She tightens her grip on his hand. ‘You chased away the ghosts for me, Isa. Because of you, I feel more connected to my past than ever.’

  ‘I can’t believe I’ll never see you again.’ They look at one another in anguish, marking the silence as their last minutes together tick by.

  ‘Do you remember,’ she says slowly, regarding the fading pastel colours of the sky, ‘the ecliptic? That feeling – as though we were on the edge of the universe.’

  ‘As if we could wave, and the other planets would see.’

  She smiles. ‘I’ll wave.’

  ‘I’ll wave back,’ he swears. ‘Every single conjunction, I’ll be there.’

  ‘No,’ Thea says quickly, ‘not all. There’s a conjunction almost every week, if you look hard enough; we’d be grieving each other all the time. I want you to move on with your life.’

  ‘How could I?’ he says. ‘How can I possibly do that?’

  ‘Please, Isaac,’ she begs, holding onto him. ‘Only the rarest alignments. A once-in-a-decade conjunction.’

  ‘When we can see five planets at once,’ he says, understanding, ‘lined up with our viewpoint on Earth.’

  ‘Earths,’ she amends gently, and the distinction almost breaks him. ‘Believe me, I’ll be looking at the same arc, looking for you.’

  He nods, holding himself together. ‘Our alignment.’

  With his thumb he gently wipes away a lone tear rolling down her cheek. She blinks and another tear catches in her eyelashes like rain on a spider’s web. Without saying a word, both understanding their fate, they walk together past the house, past the overgrown kitchen garden like something from the end of the world, across the paving slabs – one, two, three – past the dovecote, and round the corner to the outbuildings.

  ∞

  The other Thea is waiting for them. The glass house is alight, illuminated by the photographic lamps like something out of the Blitz, the beams strong. The control panel for the laser is aglow, ready and programmed. She stands by the prismatic glass making a couple of final adjustments. ‘Are you ready?’ she asks them both, and when neither answers she lifts her shoulders apologetically. ‘We have to go back, Isaac. I’m sorry.’

  The Thea at Isaac’s side stares at the glass house, imagining the ray of white that will soon fire from the laser, covering the man she loves in light until he disappears from her world. ‘How do we stop anyone following in our footsteps?’ she asks, and Isaac moans at the question.

  ‘As far as we know,’ Thea says from by the glass house, ‘in our time, the experiment has only ever worked using this ring.’ She raises her hand so the diamond glitters, and Thea raises hers in response; two identical diamonds dancing in the light.

  ‘We dismantle the laser,’ Thea next to him says, ‘and we—’

  ‘—destroy the rings.’

  Isaac is visibly shocked. ‘That’s a family heirloom. We traced it all the way back to the painting. For all you know, those are the rings of Lady Margaret Beaufort.’

  Thea puts her hand on his shoulder. ‘It has to be done.’ She looks across to her doppelganger; so similar and yet, somehow, so different. ‘Rosalind got lost when we used any old prism.’

  ‘There’s more.’ The Thea by the glass house examines the small hole in the door. ‘You destroy the chamber here, and I’ll break the glass house when I get back to my world.’

  Isaac puts his hands to his eyes. ‘All that work – it’s your crowning achievement. All that … magic … Do you really have to go full Fr
odo?’

  Thea slides the ring from her finger and sets it down on the bench beside him. ‘Yes. We have to destroy the rings.’

  ‘And everything else.’ The Thea wearing navy opens the door and steps into the glass house, urging Isaac to do the same. ‘It’s time to go home,’ she says.

  ‘I’ll help with the laser,’ Thea offers, leaving Isaac’s side to get into position, sweeping her hand along the workbench as she moves across the room. The laser is raised once more, at the same height as the tiny hole in the glass house. ‘Do you want to give me your ring? I can fire the light into it, and send you … home.’

  Home.

  ‘Can’t you use your ring?’ Thea frowns inside the glass house.

  ‘I think my ring works due to its connection to me, and your ring works through its connection to you.’ She considers. ‘They’re linked, I think – they’re what sent us to the same place, each time. To send you home we should use yours – I can destroy it after you’ve gone. After all, they may look the same –’ she smiles, the confession so open she feels naked – ‘but they might be entirely different on the inside.’

  The other Thea holds the glass house door, weighing her options. ‘Yes, all right.’ She, too, slides her ring from her finger and, after a pause, hands it to Thea, who moves with it to the laser.

  ‘Isaac?’

  Before he steps into the glass house he cups her face for the last time, running his thumb against her jaw and down the edge of her neck. She leans in, pressing against him to mask the drop of something light into his pocket, before they break apart. ‘I love you,’ he says quietly.

  ‘I love you, too.’

  ‘I’ll see you at the ecliptic,’ he says, before they close the door. ‘Don’t forget to wave.’

  ‘I’ll be there.’ She clenches Thea’s ring in her hand as she stands between the laser and the glass house. ‘Shepherd’s warning.’

  ‘What do you—’

  As she fires the laser, unable to say an extended goodbye lest her heart collapses from the grief, Isaac raises his hand on the inside of the glass.

  ‘Thea, no— Wait!’