by Dakota Rusk
And then I made a discovery that knocked me back down onto my haunches. Literally, my legs just gave out from under me, I was so completely stupefied.
Attached to one of her wrists, beneath the flowing sleeves, was a Hopper.
One of Eddie Mason’s Hoppers—the device he used to jump from parallel to parallel, through the pores of the Veil.
I carefully unstrapped it and draped it over the palm of my hand. I’d never actually looked at one this closely before; its bulky keypad was clustered with buttons and symbols that were completely alien to me. I had no idea how to operate it.
But apparently Olwen did. I snorted in contempt at my own stupidity, remembering how she’d held the cell phone out to me and said, “I’ve no experience with the likes of this, and I’m not keen to learn.”
The lying witch, I thought; and then I realized she actually, literally was a lying witch—and I started to laugh.
And maybe it was the release of tension I badly needed, but I couldn’t stop. In fact, the longer I laughed, the harder I laughed—till it was my own voice, whooping and howling, that rebounded from the metal roof.
And then something new happened—something that made the discovery of a Hopper on Olwen’s body seem like just a minor little twist of fate, almost not worth mentioning.
A shadow fell over me; someone had come up from behind me, and of course I hadn’t heard because I was so busy shrieking like an idiot.
As I turned, the newcomer said, “What’s going on here?” in a voice I couldn’t help recognizing.
Even though it was impossible.
And then I was facing her—looking into her eyes.
She stood there, holding a large pail of water, and looking down at me, every bit as dumbfounded by what she was seeing as I was.
It was Fabia Terentia, standing there before me.
I was face to face with myself.
18
The cliché is to say, “It was like looking in a mirror.” But it wasn’t like that at all. It was much more disorienting; it was like the sense of diffusion I’d been feeling—of lacking a center, or my essential self being adrift, in a kind of fog—all of a sudden turning very much concrete. Everything I’d been missing seemed rooted firmly right there in front of me.
Attached to someone else.
No…not someone else. Me.
She—this other Fabia—took a step back from me, and I heard a soft slurring and clinking from the pail she was carrying. And I knew at once that it was filled with ice water, and I knew exactly why. I’d done the same thing, dozens of times—taken ice out to the training ground, to mop my cats’ underbellies after a long workout on a hot day; it was a safe, pleasurable way of cooling them down, and of bonding with them.
She was doing that—not me. Because she was Fabia Terentia; and I was—what? A kind of ghost, who’d been slowly fading away, and now was about to snuff out entirely?
No—no. I wasn’t giving in to that. I’d seen a lot of very strange and terrifying things over the past year, and I hadn’t let them break me or diminish me. This, admittedly, was in an entirely different class—but in one sense it wasn’t: it was the unexpected. It was a challenge.
And I was Fabia Terentia, too. I was the Warrior Nun.
The other Fabia didn’t have the benefit of my experiences; but she was still tough, still decisive—still me. I saw her take in Olwen’s body, lying next to me; then she said, “Who is that? Who are you? Why are you here? What do you want?”
As she spoke, I saw that she was slowly lowering the pail, and I knew why. It was to free her arms; once it was on the ground, she’d come for me—she’d attack.
It’s exactly what I would’ve done.
“Please listen,” I said, getting slowly to my feet, “there’s a lot to explain; and I’m not entirely sure I’ve got a solid grasp on it, myself.”
The pail settled on the floor, and as she straightened her spine she called out, “Djumi!”
I shook my head. “He can’t come. He’s dead.”
She gave me an of-course-he-is look; she didn’t believe me. I wouldn’t have, either.
“Djumi! Come here, please!” she called.
“I’m telling you, he’s dead.” I pointed to Olwen’s body. “She killed him. She was going to kill me.”
Fabia looked me hard in the face. “Who—are—you?” she growled. She was a jungle cat herself, preparing to pounce.
“I’m—I’m Fabia Terentia,” I said, and wished I hadn’t stumbled while saying it; it was like I was having trouble believing it myself. “I’m you.”
That was all the provocation she could take. She lunged at me.
And it was at that very instant—probably triggered by her calling for Djumi—that I had another of those intuitive flashes Darius admired so much. I realized, just before my doppelgänger knocked me to the ground, exactly what had happened—it came to me complete in every detail.
“Wait,” I cried, as she straddled me, pinning my arms to the floor with her knees, “listen to me—listen—you’ve got to hear me—”
She slammed her fist into my face, with all the force you’d use against someone you’d caught trying to steal your face, your name, everything that made you you.
I reeled from the blow; I blinked—I saw stars. And when my vision cleared, I saw her drawing her arm back for a second shot—
—so I bucked my hips, knocking her off balance and tipping her towards me.
I lurched up and banged my forehead into hers. The resulting collision was so forceful that I could hear the crack of our skulls even over the continued din of the animals, who had now worked themselves into a froth of excitement—including Nikos and Nike; I couldn’t even imagine what they must be thinking, watching this from behind the bars of their cage.
The head-butt succeeded in dazing the other Fabia for a moment; unfortunately it hurt me almost as much, so that I couldn’t take advantage of the opportunity to get her all the way off me. I managed to free one arm and shift her weight off my left hip—but a few seconds later she threw herself back on top of me, heavier than before.
“What kind of nightmare creature are you,” she snarled, “coming here—committing murder—with my face—”
She hit me again. Again, I saw stars.
I shook them away and said, “Listen, please listen—I’m you, I’m you—”
She hit me again. My head spun with the force of it.
“I’m Fabia Terentia—I was born Fabia Terentia—I’m the daughter of Terentius Lutatius and Hermione of Edfu…”
She hit me again. I felt my mouth fill with blood.
I spat it out. I had to convince her soon, or I’d find myself unable to speak. “I grew up ashamed of being half Greek—I was afraid the Vestals wouldn’t accept me…”
That caused her to balk for a moment, and I could see the surprise on her face; and no wonder. I’d just said something aloud that I’d barely allowed into my most private thoughts—something I’d spent years trying to suppress. I was clearly desperate…but it was also clearly my only hope.
She hit me again—even harder this time; because, no doubt, I’d exposed her secret shame.
But not her only secret shame.
“When I was fourteen,” I said, blood spattering from between my teeth, “I took my sister Vipsania’s pet parrot and set it free.”
I gasped for breath as I waited for her to react.
She sat astride me, fist balled—ready to bash my face to pulp, if need be—but I’d stopped her cold with that one.
It was the worst thing I’d ever done. Nofret had been a magnificent macaw and my father’s treasured pet, and when he died Vipsania had inherited him because she was the only one of us the bird had any affection for. I was jealous of the connection it gave her to my now departed father; and one afternoon, after a terrible teenage argument—I can’t even remember what it was about—I sneaked into the aviary, untethered the parrot from his perch, took him to the balcony, and threw him
into the air. And then I watched as he flew away, never to return.
I felt the first pangs of guilt the very moment he left my hand; they only deepened as Vipsania suffered paroxysms of grief over the coming days. She was so consumed by it that Mother had to call a physician; she feared she might actually starve herself to death.
She recovered, of course; but she turned vain and silly, like Drusilla, who she’d never resembled before. Secretly I blamed myself; and from then on, whenever Vipsania was at her worst I tried to bear it, believing I had made her that way—by taking away from her the only thing she loved.
And no one ever knew. I never told anyone, never confessed even to a priest—wouldn’t even allow myself to think of it, except in the deepest hours of night, beneath the heaviness of my bedclothes.
The other Fabia’s arm went limp; she dropped her fist.
“You’re me,” she said.I’ll never cease to be amazed at how stupid I can be. At the end of freshman year, after Merri had sacrificed her life to save the multiverse, Eddie had explained to us that all the different parallels we came from weren’t absolute; they didn’t exist as solitary chronal strands in the tapestry of the time-space continuum. Each one was constantly splintering—diverging into separate timelines at critical junctures, creating new parallels, almost identical to each other, but gradually growing more and more different.
And to prove it, he produced another Merri. Our Merri—the one who’d died—was from Parallel 81; it was one of the parallels that had been consumed by the Terminus Engine. But there was another Parallel 81—a splinter Parallel 81—that had diverged from the original in the recent past; and that one hadn’t been erased, and that was where Eddie had found his replacement Merri, whom he brought to Parallel U., and who took the place of our fallen friend and who was now my roommate.
It was such a head-scratching concept that in my joy at having Merri back—or rather, having a version of Merri back—I just accepted it, and never really thought much about its implication. But I realized now that it applied to my own parallel as well; my true home—Parallel 24—really did perish in the Terminus Engine’s final weeks. Where I was now, was a splinter Parallel 24 that was home to a Fabia Terentia who’d chosen not to accept the athletic scholarship to Parallel U., and instead went to the University of Alexandria, and was now—so she told me—in her sophomore year there.
It was fascinating to sit face-to-face with myself, looking at the girl I would have become had I made just one decision differently. In a way, I envied her; her life was far simpler than mine.
I tried to make her understand who I was and where I’d come from; I told her everything about me—from the moment I met Merri at freshman orientation, through our fight against the Terminus Institute and up through the arrival of the witches on campus. Her jaw hung open for most of it—I could tell she was finding it hard to wrap her head around—but every once in a while, when I told her about something I’d done, she’d nod her head and say, “Yes, I’d have done exactly the same;” so I felt like she was giving me the benefit of any doubt.
It was when I got to the witches that I had to switch from narrating facts to relating the details of my “hunch.” As I said, it had all come to me in a flash.
“Almost as soon as I saw you,” I said, “I realized I must be in a splinter version of my home parallel. And it was clear that this was the crux of the witches’ plan. They couldn’t really take me home, because my parallel is gone; so they took me here, where my appearance would be entirely natural—because there’s already a Fabia Terentia on hand. Olwen must have made a reconnaissance jump to determine that you were still in Alexandria, so it was safe to bring me—it would’ve ruined her plan if I showed up at Mother’s apartment and you were there. Anyway, she got me on video with what I thought was my real family, reassuring everyone at Parallel U. that everything was fine and that the witches could do what they promised. And once she had that, I was expendable. And in fact she had to get rid of me before you showed up.
“So,” I continued, “instead of going back to the park and casting a return spell, like she’d said, she followed me here, killed Djumi, and then tried to kill me. If she’d succeeded, she would then have disposed of my body; and then you would have showed up at home for the holiday, and maybe there’d be some confusion about you having been there already, which would make the next few days a bit weird—but it would eventually be forgotten. And no one at Parallel U. would ever have a clue.”
Fabia nodded. “But what your witch friend couldn’t know is that I’ve come home a day early, because I missed my cats so much—and in fact once I got to Indium I came straight here, to give them some exercise before I got too mired down with family obligations.”
“That’s why they were in on the training ground instead of their cages,” I said. “And that’s why Djumi acted so weird when I came in through the front door and said I wanted to visit them. Because he’d already seen me come in—or rather, seen you come in.”
Fabia scratched her head. “Poor Djumi! I suppose we ought to tell someone about all this…”
“Who?” I asked. I looked over my shoulder to make sure we were still alone. “Listen, I don’t want to panic you or anything, but I can’t be entirely sure that Olwen was the only witch who was in on this assignment. She was my official escort, yes, but it’s possible she had a backup somewhere. And if that’s the case, I’m still in danger.” I looked into her face—so crazily familiar! “We’re both in danger.”
She bit her lip. “What do we do? Should we go home? We’d be safe there, we’d have time to—”
“No,” I said, vigorously shaking my head. “We can’t get my fam—sorry, your family involved. That would just make them targets. We have to arrange it so that the witches don’t know what happened; we need them to believe they succeeded, even if they don’t hear it from Olwen. As long as they’re not sure of how things played out here, they’ll hesitate to act.”
She got up and paced the floor. “I don’t like this. It’s not how I usually handle things.” She whirled and gave me a pleading look. “I need something to hit. Give me something to hit, and I’m good.”
I laughed; it was so exactly what I would have said, under the same circumstances. “I wish it were that easy,” I said. “But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from all my adventures, it’s that sometimes you have to think your way out of a jam.”
She dropped back onto the floor and sat with her hands draped over her knees. “Fine, then. You’re the strategic expert, I guess. You tell me what we do.”
“Well,” I said, nudging Olwen’s body with my toe, “first we have to get rid of this.”
“The dung pit,” Fabia said, jerking her thumb towards the back of the property. “She ought to sink right to the bottom of that. And even better, as she decomposes, no one will smell it because—“
“—because it’s a dung pit,” I said, grinning. “That’s actually brilliant! You’re good at this.”
She blushed. “You’d have thought of it, too.”
We carried Olwen’s body to the pit—a big septic hole the management had dug for the purpose of containing the large amounts of excrement the kennel produced; I knew for a fact that it was only ever cleaned out twice a year, so Olwen’s body wouldn’t be discovered for several months. Even after the police found Djumi’s corpse, they’d have no reason to go searching the premises for another one.
“Now what?” Fabia asked when the job was done and we returned, sweating and out of breath, to the interior of the kennel.
“Now we have to get out of here,” I said. “And that’s going to be tricky. Not even one Fabia Terentia can be seen leaving this place, much less two.”
“So how, then?”
I reached into my tunic pocket and took out the Hopper I’d removed from Olwen’s wrist. “This might help. It’s the thing I told you about—the device Eddie Mason used to jump from parallel to parallel.”
Her eyes widened. “Where’d y
ou get that?”
“I forgot to mention; Olwen was wearing it. I found it on her body.” I strapped the Hopper around my own wrist. “I’m pretty sure it’s how she got me here. In fact, the more I think about it, the more certain I am that the witches don’t know how to use magic to travel between parallels. They’ve been using Eddie’s Hoppers all along. I wonder how many they have—and where they got them.”
“But…didn’t you say Olwen cast a spell on you?”
I snorted in disdain. “That was just to get me dizzy and intoxicated, so I wouldn’t be in any condition to see how she really managed the transition.” I held my wrist up so that Fabia could see the Hopper. “The problem is, I have no idea how to work this thing. It’s just a jumble of keys and buttons; none of it makes any sense to me.”
“Surely you’ve seen your friend Eddie use one before.”
“Well, yes. But his fingers just flew across it so fast, they were just a blur.” I shrugged. “Plus, I wasn’t really paying attention…I mean, I never thought one of those things would end up in my hands.”
Fabia seemed frustrated with me. “Can’t you experiment? Press a few keys at random?”
“Far too dangerous. We could end up floating in space, or under an ocean or something.”
She took a closer look at it, then shook her head. “Well, if you can’t figure this thing out, I’m sure I can’t.” Suddenly something caught her eye. “Only…this here.”
“What?”
She pointed at one specific button on the pad. “This key…it’s not like the others. It’s not a numeral or a mathematical symbol or anything. It looks like…I don’t know what. It’s just weird.”
I turned my wrist so that I could more clearly see the button she was referencing. And sure enough, it was different from all the others; on its surface was a small red dot, with two small spikes projecting from the top.
Something about it caused a tingle in my brain. “Wait—wait a minute,” I said, as I tried to sort through my memory for what it reminded me of. “Wait…just a…oh—oh, I know what it is!”
