Up until now, she had pushed the thought aside, focusing on her missions with the Time Corps, her crew, her ship. Emotions and entanglements made one weak, though she knew her own passionate nature enough to admit that she loved people, and fiercely. She also knew it was a vulnerability.
She understood now, as she looked at the thing in the form of a man before her, that he was gone forever. Their mission to the Alexandrian library had failed and as the place went up in flames, so went her hope of reviving him. His absence tore open a wound inside her so deep that she was shocked at the intensity of the pain.
Gone. Neil Grey was gone. Not waiting in heaven, but erased forever from existence. Her Neil, whom she loved. Yes, she loved him. There was no sense in denying it to herself. She had never pictured herself with anyone else. In all her visions of the future, Neil had always been at her side. He knew her, her past, her failures, her weaknesses, and he loved her still.
She loved him, and he was dead. Unable to bear looking at him, she rested her head on her arms and wept. She cried for the past and all of the things unsaid between them, for the future, grim and empty, and for the present and the knowledge that she was now starting upon a new path alone.
Later that night, rain thrashed against the outside of the ship. She had cried until she was emptied and calm, the storm inside her quieted into a black despair that had no more words or tears. Now and then she heard the crew shout to one another. The ship was in no danger. They would call her if they required her help.
She glanced at her computer, at her books. There had to be something else, something she was missing. Through the pain, she had to make herself think.
Mr. March was no devout or holy man, so the notion that he created Neil through heavenly means was perhaps misguided. Maybe he had done it through evil and nefarious means. But that didn’t help her at all. What was she going to do, perform a wicked blood ritual or a human sacrifice? Even if she were willing to do such a thing, she wouldn’t know where to begin.
“Do you remember that Italian gallery we visited?” she said softly. “And how you admired the sculptures. ‘Capturing life in stone,’ you said. They almost seemed alive. Too bad you didn’t get to become something you considered beautiful. Just a lump of earth. Dust to dust.”
Dust to dust. Adam, the first man, had been created by God out of earth. Then at death, to dust he returned, as would all his countless children. Neil’s transformation had simply been quicker than that of the average person.
Ah, but perhaps she was looking to the wrong culture when trying to revive Neil. He may be a golem, but that didn’t mean she had to solely consider the Hebrew stories. She naturally had felt drawn to them, her own eighteenth-century French Catholicism finding a comfortable spiritual home within the idea that God could create and that His name held the power to bring life, even to a lump of earth.
But she had met others who followed different gods. She had managed to keep her faith by acknowledging that this world, like so many of the worlds different from her own, had other traditions, practices and creatures. It also had gods that lived and breathed, and she was friends with two of their servants. She did not disbelieve Yukiko and Huginn when they told her that their masters were real. The other gods might not be the one God, but perhaps were part of His overall plan.
How many ways were there to make life, beside the ordinary human one? What things did most rituals include? She thought about it. Symbolic objects, words, fire, blood. Yes, blood might be involved. A human birth was always accompanied by blood.
She pulled open her desk drawer and extracted a pen knife. Locking the door to her quarters, she knelt beside Neil and made a small cut in the pad of her index finger. She squeezed it hard, and a little dark globe of blood appeared on her fingertip. Then, holding her finger over Neil’s mouth, she squeezed the sides of her finger hard. The pain was nothing, and she watched two, then three drops land on his tongue.
He lay unchanged.
She put away the pen knife and sucked her finger as she paced and thought. Waking the dead, reviving the dead, how did one go about it?
Gods and goddesses, spirits and fair folk, they all were real. Doorways both natural and mechanical, people who could change appearance at will. Sea folk with the bodies of humans and the tails of ocean animals, sidhe with animal body parts, animals who spoke. All were real. Some she had met, and some she had heard about from others. Even dragons were real, and they still craved young maidens. She wondered if there were no longer any real princesses left for them to snatch.
Princesses. Now princesses were truly a rare thing. She thought about it. What had happened to Snow White when she had lain dead? And Sleeping Beauty?
A kiss? She glanced at Neil and returned to her position beside him.
“Do you remember how every time we met, you asked how old I was?” She paused, as if he might answer. “What were you waiting for? What am I going to know when I’m older that I don’t know now? Or was it something else?”
His dead, dry mouth lay open. He had no real lips to speak of. But still, she leaned over and kissed his forehead, his eyes, his cheeks and then his mouth. Then she pressed her forehead to his and sighed.
“Did you ask my age because it’ll take me years and years to figure out how to bring you back? Will I be an old woman by the time I manage it? Or will I never manage it at all?”
She covered him back up and replaced the crate’s lid, then got ready for bed. And when she slept she dreamed of growling dogs and rolling trains, earthquakes and other low, rumbling things.
When she woke, she wondered if the tossing of the storm had caused the lid of Neil’s crate to slide askew. She glanced around the room, but nothing else had moved. Her door was still locked, so no one else could have disturbed the crate.
She pushed back the crate’s lid, and when she saw Neil, she cried out in horror.
He was alive and moving. He had torn most of his wrappings off and they lay in tangles around his body. He had even managed to push the lid back. But he could do no more. He exhaled a rattling breath and Hazel put her hands to her mouth as he struggled to sit, writhing in place, his chest rising and falling and his mouth working without forming words.
How had this occurred? Had it been the blood? The kiss? Had he heard her voice and somehow returned to her?
A fresh wave of horror struck her, the horror of what she had done. She had taken a dead man and brought him back to life into a body of crumbling stone.
Chapter 44
When Yelbeghen took Astrid’s hand, the world exploded into sensation. She held her breath as colors leapt into vividness so bright it was painful. Sound became magnified, not only louder, but more detailed. From the swish of the curtains blowing in the sea air to the robin’s egg blue of the sky, all of it was too intense to bear.
She pulled her hand away.
“I can’t do this.”
The bowl sat between them on the kitchen table, beside Yelbeghen’s open hand.
“When Red Fawn helped me, it made it easier,” she said. “I could concentrate. But you make it worse.”
He didn’t apologize, but she didn’t expect him to. It wasn’t his fault that together they were even less successful in making the bowl work. Besides, Red Fawn specialized in creating illusions and fooling the human mind. Not that Astrid was entirely human, or that Yelbeghen wasn’t good at illusions. After all, she didn’t think he had been born looking human.
“Perhaps Red Fawn should help you again,” Yelbeghen said. “I don’t think there is much I can do.”
Astrid poured the water out into the kitchen sink and wrapped the bowl in a towel.
“Do you have time to stay for dinner?” he asked.
“Not this time. I know my cousin is outside of time, but every minute counts. I don’t know how soon it’ll be until Hazel and e
veryone come back from ancient Egypt. I need to have a functional bowl if they fail.”
“And if they do not return?”
“Then I need to get all of them out of the Library. I know they brought a time machine in, but who knows if they’ll be able to use it.”
“Your cousin has caused a lot of trouble for his friends.”
“Most of it because of me.”
“I wish I could help you more.”
“Why?”
He paused, as if startled by the question. “I’m not sure. I suppose I withdraw the offer.”
“Fine. But thanks anyway for trying. At least now I know that doubling up on the people making Doors doesn’t make the Doors work any better.”
“I could have told you that. There was a time when there were more of us.”
“When? And why? The population of earth is at its highest level. Were souls more sticky and likely to become geists? Is that why they needed more psychopomps?”
“Perhaps souls were more sticky,” he said, “but not all Doors were psychopomps.” He then rose and held out her coat for her.
She took it from him and put it on herself, still uncomfortable with his occasional over familiarity. She thanked him, and taking the bowl and her bag, she made a Door to the Time Corps house in Los Angeles.
An hour later, the Professor had all of his instruments set up around the bowl on the dining room table. Cables and wires ran between various boxes with exposed electronics and other devices with wind-up parts and cranks. All of them culminated in a single receptor device, shaped roughly like a cone, but made of black metal, suspended over the water-filled bowl. If things worked correctly, it would be able to pinpoint the time and place of the transmission and get a time lock. Or so the Professor claimed.
Red Fawn sat on the sofa, telling a story to both of the kittens and Astrid felt Sister’s absence keenly. The girl would have been with the cats, listening, or just watching from the sidelines, pulling absently at the tassels on her shawl.
Felicia set up a video camera, which Astrid hated. She had no desire to be recorded making a Door or even just sitting still. But she couldn’t deny the logic of having the thing record her. If they could freeze images, like the unknown library though her previous Door, they could perhaps identify specific items.
“Ready when you are, lass,” said the Professor.
Red Fawn slipped into a chair beside Astrid and took her hand. Once again, the room and people in it faded away until only the bowl remained. Astrid vaguely noted the click and whir of the Professor’s machinery and the glow of the red recording light on the front of the video camera, but in a few moments, even those faded from her consciousness.
The water in the bowl was perfectly still, reflecting a ghostlike version of her own face. It was like she was looking up at herself from below, from the bottom of a deep, dark, quiet lake. It was lovely there, like the void, silent and serene. From the dark place, she reached out to the surface of the water and then beyond it, feeling the place on the other side.
That was when she felt the other bowl.
There were two. They were a set.
That was why the writing on the bowl said bowls were mirrors. Not a single bowl. Bowls. Plural. The bowls were twins. Like Astrid and Sister. Like Huginn and his brother. Like the twin ravens carved into the rim of the bowl.
She registered movement around her. Perhaps the Professor was adjusting some equipment. Or a kitten might have leapt up onto the table to investigate. Red Fawn’s hand was soft and warm in hers. Again, she felt the twin bowls, and then she saw the opening, the tiny dot in the center of the water that opened, dilating, until she saw the ceiling of a room.
And then there was a face. Elliot’s face. He saw her at the same instant, and said something, but she couldn’t make it out. She heard sounds and knew they were speech, but it was like he was speaking gibberish. It didn’t matter. Someone would tell her later, or the video camera would record it.
The image vanished, then reformed, then disappeared again.
“We’re losing it,” said the Professor, and this time, she understood the words.
If only she could use the bowl to step through, or to get Elliot through. Instead, it only allowed an image and words to travel.
The bowl was black now, the Door gone, and Astrid blinked and took a deep breath.
Red Fawn patted the back of Astrid’s hand. “I think you got what they needed.”
She hoped so. Felicia and the Professor were examining readings together and taking down notes. The Professor looked like he was about to jump out of his skin with excitement and Felicia beamed at Astrid.
Astrid watched Felicia as she worked with her husband and wondered if there was a way to use this information to get Felicia home. Astrid could open Doors between worlds, but Felicia’s world was very difficult to reach. Unlike Astrid’s world, the hub world, it did not sit cheek by jowl with many other worlds. But what if, with time, Astrid could help her?
“It’ll take me a few hours,” said the Professor. “I need to go over the readings and recalculate a few things. But I think we’ll get a solid time lock. I think between my machines and your Doors, we can do it.”
Diego leaped into her lap and purred, rubbing his forehead against her stomach. He might not understand what was going on, but he knew it was good. She petted him while Felicia unhooked the cables and rolled up the wires. Red Fawn went into the kitchen to make coffee, as the Professor would be up late, and Astrid sat looking at the black bowl with the twin ravens and her name on it.
Her phone rang. It was Hazel.
“Are you okay?” said Astrid.
“We’re all alive,” said Hazel. “We couldn’t get into the Library, and it burned, just like in the history books. But we all are fine. Well, almost. I managed to bring Neil back. But it’s bad. Is Julius there?”
Astrid called Julius and put the phone on speakerphone so they could all hear. Hazel said she was sending a picture of Neil and Felicia and Red Fawn gathered around to see. A few moments later, a picture came through, a picture of a man made of stone sitting on a chair.
“He’s getting better, I think,” said Hazel. “He can move more.”
“What did you do?” asked Julius. “How did you do it?”
“I’m not sure. I put some blood in his mouth. And I—I kissed him. But nothing happened. Then, this morning, he was moving. I think he might be getting better.”
“Is he in pain?” asked Felicia. “Is he flesh in a stone casing, or is he stone all the way through?”
“I don’t know,” said Hazel. “I didn’t dissect him. But he can hear a little now, and he can nod and shake his head.”
“She brought back a golem,” muttered Julius. “She actually did it.”
“You said he’s getting better,” said Felicia. “What did you mean?”
“He has some normal skin between his fingers now. And his eyes look a little moist sometimes. So does the inside of his mouth.”
“Then he’s returning to human form,” said Julius. “Wait. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.”
“It’s good!” said Hazel. “He’s back alive and that’s most definitely good. And I don’t want to hear any nonsense about golems turning on their masters. I’m not his master. He’s a free being.”
Astrid wondered if this was so. She hoped Hazel was right, for all their sakes.
Then another thought occurred to her.
“I wonder if he can still travel within ten miles of himself,” Astrid said. “Because the Professor is working out the numbers for a time lock. With my Doors and his machines, I think we can do it. And if we can have ten or twenty golems with us, that could only help.”
“I’m not sure,” said Hazel. “But give him a few days. How is the Professor g
oing to manage it?”
Hazel and Felicia were the two people who best understood the Professor’s calculations and machines. Either of them could operate them nearly as well as he could. But to Astrid, they seemed as strange and impossible as her own abilities must seem to them. Felicia told Hazel a few of the details.
“I’m going to work with him,” said Astrid. “I think he has a way to guide the Doors I make.”
“The dynamic time lock,” said Hazel. “He developed a new method using some complicated algorithm.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s it.”
“But I thought you couldn’t use your Doors to go to other worlds and definitely not to the Library.”
“Well, I couldn’t, but now I think I can,” said Astrid. “With the time lock and the machine, I might be able to.”
“Isn’t there some rule against it?” asked Hazel. “Won’t the psychopomps send you to psychopomp hell or some such?”
“There is no psychopomp hell. At least I hope not. But whatever they do to me, I don’t care. I’m tired of the Seelie with their tasks and drakes with their deals and psychopomps with their rules. I’m a Door, and I’m going to get Elliot out of that Library.”
Chapter 45
“We’re going to run a test,” said Hazel. “A scientific test.”
Neil sat motionless, but she knew he was listening. He nodded once.
“I’m going to order you to do something, and we’ll see if you are compelled to do it.”
He dipped his head again.
“Stand up!” she commanded.
The Time Corps Chronicles (Complete Series) Page 112
