A Time Traveler's Theory of Relativity

by Nicole Valentine

  They gave up conversation. Finn was glad because he didn’t want to sound breathless. Instead of focusing on his screaming leg muscles, he looked down at the ground. The trail looked different at this altitude. It was no longer a carpet of brown and rusty leaves, but a newer green and yellow layer of teardrop-shaped ones. He should probably know what they were called. Aspens came to mind, but he couldn’t be sure. He looked up at the surrounding trees. They all looked the same to him.

  It would have helped if Gran and Mom had at least told him what kind of tree he should look for at the summit.

  When he was little he and Gran would take long walks, and she would name each tree for him. He couldn’t remember anything specific about those days, only that the sun was always shining when they were together.

  Gabi’s footsteps behind him slowed and stopped.

  “You okay? You need to rest a bit?”

  “No. I—yeah. Sorry.”

  “No, it’s okay.” The truth of it was he needed the rest, too. He sat down on the green and yellow leaf carpet and let the blood rush back into his legs.

  “It’s—it’s all so steep!” Gabi was still fighting for her breath. “I keep thinking it will level out a bit whenever I see a turn up ahead and then no, it’s just more straight up.”

  She pulled out her water bottle and took a big long gulp this time. Finn had planned to share the extra bottle between them, but now he thought he’d give it to her. He took a small sip of his own.

  He checked the time on his phone. It was bad. Four hours had passed and they were nowhere near the summit. At least it didn’t look like it. How could he even tell? If they were only halfway they’d never get back down again before dark.

  Gabi seemed to read his mind. “Okay, I’m ready. Let’s go.” She struggled to stand on shaky legs.

  “Have you noticed?” she said as they trudged forward. “There are no birds up here.”

  Finn hadn’t noticed. “Yeah, come to think of it there are no chirping crickets either.”

  “It feels different up here.” She crossed her arms around her middle.

  “Well, it’s colder.”

  “It’s something else too.”

  “What?”

  “You’ll make fun of me for it.”

  “No I won’t.”

  “Yes, you will, but I’m going to say it anyway. There’s something big and alive up here. It takes up all the space. It’s like I can feel the mountain breathing below my feet.”

  “I think you’re channeling Aunt Ev now.” Finn tried to hide the amusement in his voice.

  “See? You’re so predictable.”

  “No, no. I can see how you’d feel that way. I feel something, too. I just don’t attribute it to anything mystical. It could be magnetic fields, or the effect of a quick atmospheric change on the human brain . . .”

  Gabi was shaking her head while staring up at the trees, the ones that Finn figured might be aspens. “Call it whatever you want. I know it’s something different. Bigger. Magical.”

  He wanted to agree with her. If people could time travel, why couldn’t mountains breathe under your feet? But he couldn’t make that illogical leap, not even for Gabi. That’s not what he was about. And somewhere in the back of his brain something primal was telling him that when your world has completely fallen apart, you need to hang on to who you are.

  Finn was a scientist.

  So he offered what a scientist could. “Quantum mechanics is the closest thing to real magic I’ve read about. Subatomic particles have laws they’re governed by, and if the universe has hidden laws that rule the very smallest of objects, well, it can sort of look like magic.”

  He could practically see Gabi’s mind tune him out through her glazed-over eyes.

  With an arched eyebrow, Gabi said, “Well, we now know time travel is real, but can you explain it? Does it fit into your science books?”

  “No, not yet. But I bet I’ll be able to figure it out in time. Everything is eventually explained by science.”

  “Yeah, now that’s the part I’m not so sure about.”

  They walked on in silence—the only sound their labored breathing, as they tried to get to the top as fast as they could. Now that Gabi had brought it to his attention, Finn missed the sound of the birds.

  °°°

  The trail was a relentless climb with no views, no waterfalls, no clearings of any sort after the hunting cabin, only lots of unidentifiable forks in the trail. Some ended in dead ends that forced them to go back down to the point where they diverged. Those were the moments that filled Finn with the most doubt. What if one of those dead ends had once led to the portal? What if the trail Mom intended him to take was now grown over, blocked by a fallen tree and left to nature to fill back in?

  “Gran didn’t say anything about what the tree looks like?” panted Gabi. She was having a hard time, stumbling more, wheezing a little. Finn was afraid to ask her if she was okay.

  “No. She just said we had to go to the summit.”

  “Are you sure she said the summit?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  That was a lie. He wasn’t sure of anything anymore. It wasn’t like he had been in the best frame of mind while talking to Gran. He tried hard to remember. He could have sworn she said it was at the top, but that might be his own memory filling in the blanks. Was the top the same as the summit? There was the horrible possibility that it was lower on the trail and they had somehow missed it. The droplets of sweat on his forehead grew cold. It was impossible to look at every tree along the way and see if there was something different about it. Surely, Mom had picked a tree that would stand out. He hoped it stood like a climber’s flag at the peak, glowing and obvious.

  The real truth was he had no idea.

  “What if we don’t find it?” said Gabi.

  “Then we stay up here till we do,” he answered.

  A long moment passed before she weakly responded, farther behind him now. “I need to stop again. I’m sorry.”

  His heart sank. Gabi looked exhausted. Her face was bright red and her hair was plastered to her forehead. She sank to her knees. He had been pushing them hard in the last hour. Maybe too hard. They had been on the mountain for a full six hours.

  Gabi looked like she was ready to give up. Finn felt a little panicked at the thought. She was right, he couldn’t do this alone. He needed her.

  “Yeah. Let’s stop.” Finn tried to sound upbeat. He sounded unnatural and he knew it. They might as well take five minutes—there was no way they’d get off this mountain in daylight now. They could take thirty if they wanted. They both realized it, even if they didn’t want to say it out loud.

  “We have to be close to the peak by now.”

  The air had gotten colder and the trees were different again. Some type of sparse-looking evergreen, their lower branches covered in bright green mossy stuff that hung like tattered clothing.

  Gabi took off one of her sneakers and as she did, Finn could see a bright red bloom of blood along the bottom of her sock.

  “Aw man, Gabi. You okay?”

  “Blisters popped a while back. These aren’t the best hiking shoes. I’ll be all right, I just wish I had something to wrap around them.” She tugged at the bottom of the t-shirt she was wearing under her sweater. It took Finn a moment before he realized what she was trying to do. She wasn’t giving up. She was digging in. She was going to rip up part of her shirt for bandages.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out his keychain. “It’s a penknife. It opens.”

  “Thanks.” She made quick work of it.

  “Gabi, I—”

  “It’s okay, Finn. It’s just a little bit of blood. I got this.” She smiled at him, but it didn’t reach her eyes. She was able to get three long strips of cloth from the bottom of her shirt that she wound around her foot.

  “Are you going to be able to keep walking on that?”

  The look she gave him did not fill him with much confidence.
“Let’s hope so.” Finn watched her struggle to get her sneaker back on over the bloody sock and makeshift bandages.

  Then they both heard it—the sound of something large coming up the path behind them. Instinctively, Finn grabbed Gabi’s hand and yanked her off the trail before she even had time to stand. She stumbled after him into the trees. The underbrush here was nearly nonexistent. The trees would be their only cover, so they’d have to move quickly. Finn ducked underneath a branch and got a face full of drippy green moss.

  He and Gabi crouched behind a small rise of land only about fifteen feet from the trail. They were still very much out in the open when they saw him.

  A huge outline of a man reached the crest of the trail. It was Mr. Wells. Finn could tell from his expensive oiled barn coat. It wasn’t park ranger’s gear—it was Ray Wells all right, dressed posh as usual, like a leaf peeper up for a country weekend.

  ISTA had found them.

  Mr. Wells unbuttoned his coat, knelt down with one knee on the hard packed dirt of the trail, and pulled a radio from his belt.

  “They’re up here.” He then spotted something on the ground and reached for it. It was Finn’s pen knife keychain. Gabi had dropped it when Finn dragged her into the trees.

  Finn could hear a crackled male response come from the radio, but it was unintelligible.

  “Nah, I didn’t see them, but it looks like they ran when they heard me. Has to be them. I won’t let them get any farther.”

  Wells pushed the radio into a pocket of his tan canvas belt. As he stood up and faced their direction, he placed both hands on his waist, flaring his jacket open.

  That’s when Finn saw the shoulder holster.

  For an agonizing second, their eyes locked. Wells’s face furrowed into an angry scowl of recognition. And the first thing he did was reach for his gun.

  “Finn! Stop!” he called as he came toward them.

  Gabi whispered, “This way!” and Finn had no choice but to follow her deeper into the woods. She pulled him along for a few yards and then pointed.

  Directly in front of them stood an unassuming tree, like all the rest, only this one had two doorknobs screwed into either side of its trunk. They looked like two metallic mushrooms blooming from the bark. The metal was old and rubbed into a dull finish by the elements. Finn could see that the center of the ornately carved knobs had a keyhole. He momentarily panicked. Was he supposed to have a key?

  “FINN!” Gabi screamed, looking over her shoulder at Wells.

  And Gabi—Finn obviously couldn’t leave Gabi behind now. Wells was lumbering over logs and underbrush close behind them and would catch up to them any moment.

  The tree looked so ordinary. Nothing about it gave him the impression it would take them anywhere. He wondered if the doorknob would turn easily, or even at all. There were no instructions carved into the bark, nothing to tell him if they were supposed to hold on to one doorknob or two. It was all a wild guess.

  Wells was barely an arm’s length away now, with the weapon in his outstretched hand.

  “With me!” Finn yelled to Gabi, his hand hovering over one doorknob. She nodded, placing her small hand over the second. “One, two, THREE!” They each grabbed hold and pulled.

  Finn felt the cool wet metal against his palm and then a pulse of electricity. A blinding white light circled everything, formed a tunnel around reality. The last thing Finn saw was Gabi’s eyes, wide and scared.

  A loud noise muffled the sounds around him, including Wells’s shouts.

  Finn was wrenched forward and backward so hard he was afraid his neck would snap in two. He yelled for Gabi, only he no longer had a voice. He heard nothing but the roar of light—that’s what it was. Light here had sound. It roared past his ears louder than any train or jet. The jolting was so rough on his body that the only thing he could do was go limp, so as not to fight it and cause himself more injury.

  He was sure these were the final moments of his life. He shouldn’t have even attempted to Travel. This wasn’t for him. This was for Mom, Gran, and Faith. As these thoughts entered his mind, the roar and the pain increased. He needed to focus, to at least try to . . . to . . . steer?

  Mom.

  He silently called out to her. He imagined her waiting for him. Smiling. Thrilled to see him. The air around him quieted and the buffeting lessened. He kept at it. She would be proud of him for finding the tree.

  Only he hadn’t, had he? It was Gabi who’d found it.

  The buffeting increased. He tried to somehow push out the sounds. Tried to squeeze out the light.

  Right when he was sure his body could take no more and he would be ripped in half, there came an abrupt silence. No more light, no more noise except for his ragged breathing. All around him was pitch black, and he had no idea where he was.

  He could still feel the doorknob in his hand. Somehow he had never let go. He sank down against the tree. It was night and it was cold. Far too cold.

  “Gabi? Are you okay?” There was no answer.

  “Gabi!” He crawled around the tree on all fours, circling it. He was surprised to find his body obeying his brain’s impulses. He’d been afraid every bone had been broken.

  The ground was cold and wet. It was covered in snow!

  “Gabi?” There was no answer. He was alone. “No! NO!”

  The tree hadn’t taken Gabi, which meant she was alone on the mountain with Wells and his gun.

  Or worse—the tree could have taken her someplace different. He might never be able to find her again.

  He couldn’t bear to even think of the third possibility.

  Finn began talking to himself in desperation. “If I hold on to the other doorknob again, maybe I can get back.” He struggled to reach the other knob and whispered, “Hold on, Gabi, I’m coming.”

  A voice came out of the darkness and said, “It doesn’t work that way.”

  Chapter 19

  Finn couldn’t trust his ears. It was too dark to see, but he could swear the voice was hers.

  “I had to be sure it was you.” He heard a sandpapery swish and the small explosive pop of a match being struck. The flame of an oil lamp sprang into existence. His eyes adjusted slowly.

  “Mom?”

  She was there in front of him, glowing in the weak amber light.

  He staggered toward her, desperate to get a closer look. It was her. He fell into her arms, and she hugged him back tightly. She was real. Miraculously she was flesh and bone and real and there. Her arms were around him and he was crying and his nose was running like he was a snotty four-year-old all over again.

  She cradled his head. “Oh Finn, I’m so sorry this has been hard on you. I’m so, so sorry.”

  Finn pulled away enough to look into her eyes. “What are you doing here? Why am I—”

  “I’ve been hiding here. Oh, Finn. I knew you would find me.”

  “I didn’t—I mean, it wasn’t me. It was Gabi. She found the tree—and she—”

  “Is she with you this time? Good. Don’t worry, the tree would leave her behind.”

  “No! You don’t understand. Mr. Wells is there with a gun!”

  She frowned at this but reached out and squeezed his hand tightly. “I promise it will be okay. She’ll be fine when you return. As for Mr. Wells, that will take a bit more explaining. I’m sure he’s part of Doc Lovell’s faction—”

  “I knew it! Gran trusted him and then she didn’t. She must have found out.” He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out the list with Gran’s warning.

  Mom took it gently between her index finger and thumb, holding it up to the weak light of what Finn could now see was a brass lantern. She scanned the paper and then slowly folded it back up into a neat square. “This certainly confirms what I suspected all along, though she’s never owned up to it in any timeline.”

  “Owned up to what?”

  “That she misjudged him. That she was blinded with love. I think she figured it out too late.” She handed him back the
note with a solemnity that spoke volumes.

  “You already know, don’t you? You know that she’s . . . dead?”

  “Yes. I knew with me gone, she would Future Travel a lot in order to help us. She wouldn’t be able to survive that many trips.” She reached up and put her hand lovingly against his cheek. “You’ll do anything for your child. I understand that now.” Her voice cracked on the last words.

  Finn could hardly believe she was real. He had done it. He had found Mom.

  “Each trip forward in time took years off her life. She wasn’t like me. I can go forward and see the results of my actions and then come back, without the deadly side effects. I can’t keep returning to the same exact time over and over—if I do I get terribly sick when I return—but for your gran it was much worse.”

  Terribly sick. Her migraines. Gran’s too.

  He couldn’t imagine Mom and Gran enduring what he just had, even once, much less repeatedly. Why would Gran do this when she knew it would kill her?

  As soon as his mind formed the question he realized how dense he was being. It was for him. She was protecting him. Just like she tried to protect him from finding her body.

  “And with all the closed nodes, it would be that much harder for her.” Mom placed her hands on his shoulders and focused on his eyes as she spoke. It was hard to see in the dim light, but she looked thinner to Finn, and tired. “She loved you very much, Finn. We both do. It’s what she wanted. She wouldn’t have had it any other way. She was fully aware what crossing over closed nodes would do to her.”

  Finn swallowed and his throat hurt with the effort. He tried to focus on facts and data. “What do you mean? What’s a closed node?”

  “Nodes are very important to us. Traveling through time is a fragile thing. Imagine holding on to a long cord and going impossibly fast downhill. Nodes are like knots on that thread, they’re where you can grab hold and then jump off. They’re markers and landing points. There used to be many of them, all over the timeline. Now, someone’s been locking them. The remaining open ones are years or even decades apart.”