Travel Glasses

by Chess Desalls

  I returned his invitation with a dark look of confusion. I didn’t want to forget about Edgar. Who was he to decide when I was done grieving?

  “I mean— if you’d like that. Forget it. Sorry. You must be fatigued from travel and grief. Would you like me to show you to the rooms that have been prepared for you?”

  “Sure.” I shrugged. “Thank you.” Maybe he was right. It wouldn’t hurt to unwind. I was more than cranky, and I wasn’t being very pleasant to the person who, earlier that morning, I’d been both excited and nervous about seeing.

  Valcas and I entered the tower and walked past the area of doors where I expected him to stop in front of one of the guest suites. We didn’t stop walking until we reached the doors farther down the hallway, the doors that led to the rooms inside of the main house.

  Astonished, I asked, “I’ll be staying inside the main house instead of in one of the offsite guest suites?”

  “Of course.” He smiled. “We’re much too closely acquainted for that.” Handing over the unusually large bouquet, he added, “These, my dearest, are for you.”

  I tentatively accepted the bouquet of fragrant roses. Shirlyn had been so upset about being put up in a guest suite instead of in the main house even though she was Valcas’ first cousin. What was I to him?

  “How closely acquainted are we?” I asked.

  Valcas laughed, evidently amused, as he opened a white door and gestured for me to follow him into my very own suite of rooms inside the main house. I stayed in the hallway, waiting for an answer to my question. He took in my puzzled expression with a serious frown.

  “You haven’t changed your mind, have you?”

  “Changed my mind about what?”

  “About our engagement.”

  MY EYES just about popped out of my eye sockets as my heart slammed against the insides of my chest. Filled with past memories of Valcas’ first plan for our engagement, his request that I pose as his betrothed, the role I would so perfectly fill and his successful search for me, I nearly exploded. I wasn’t just startled, I was angry.

  “Where did you ever get an idea like that?” I hissed.

  Valcas sharply inhaled a shallow breath. His eyes were full of fear and the shock of rejection. He didn’t look anything like the Valcas I remembered back at the palace. This version of Valcas was vulnerable and innocent like the one I’d met on my last visit to the white tower. And he had a lot of guards who would be happy to escort me off of the premises if I got out of hand. He just needed to say the word.

  I clasped my forehead with my hand and took a deep breath, trying to calm down. Did he really believe that we were in a relationship? That we were engaged? But, how?

  “I’m sorry. That came out wrong,” I said. “I don’t remember you ever asking me to marry you. Or, does it happen some other way here?”

  “It’s right here—” Valcas pulled out from his robes a printed photograph from the night we’d flown together on his Estrel-Flyer, the night I’d left the white tower to help Edgar.

  Two bright faces smiled at me—Valcas’ face with his usual grin and emerald green eyes, and my face with a fixed smile and eyes of a swampy moss green. We looked good together. Well, he looked good, which I suppose made me look better just by having him next to me. I shook my head. It still didn’t make any sense.

  “That was a really fun night, but what about this photo makes you think that we’re engaged?”

  “Turn it over, Calla.”

  On the back of the photograph someone had handwritten slash marks with dots that I couldn’t decipher along with a short poem.

  Flying with Calla Winston, the woman I will marry,

  She who dims the brightness of the four moons

  and the glow of the tower.

  Valcas looked at me with admiration and devotion. “I’ve kept this photograph with me and have looked at it every day while waiting for you to return to me. If you’ve changed your mind, at least allow me the chance to change it back again.”

  I stood there wide-eyed and openmouthed, not because I was frightened, but because I finally understood what had happened, what Valcas had done. Sometime soon after I left the tower, before his memories of me erased, he and Shirlyn must have developed the photos from the flight. Then, he’d taken the picture of us, a physical object, and wrote what was on his mind. I turned the photo in my hands from front to back again.

  My heart warmed, touched but with an edge of panic. He must have misunderstood his own inscription after the memories of that day were erased. He’d mistaken a passing romantic fantasy of marrying me someday for the existence of an actual engagement. That part I can’t read must be the date, I thought. The poor guy has been reminding himself of me every day for two weeks. I wondered how to break it to him that we never were engaged.

  I looked up at Valcas sympathetically, expecting him to be discouraged by my delayed response. Instead, a grin spread out playfully below two twinkling eyes. He made it difficult to not flirt back, especially when this closer relationship could help me with my research.

  “You have your chance.” I smiled. “It’s not like I’m wearing a ring or anything.”

  Valcas pulled me out of the hallway and into the room. “True, the ring doesn’t become important until I make the official announcement to my parents, but they won’t be back for some time.”

  “Wait—there’s already a ring?”

  Valcas didn’t answer me with words. A flash of teeth cinched into a smile beneath a playfully raised eyebrow before he circled around me and left the room.

  In a haze of awkward giddiness, I looked around the suite of adjoining rooms. It was bigger and even nicer than the guest suite I’d shared with Shirlyn. The front room had a burgundy and bronze color scheme with dark wood furnishings and glass tables trimmed in gold. A picture window hung on the wall, covered with gauzy curtains that were completely drawn. I arranged the bouquet of roses in a table vase that I found on top of a glass end table. Then I sank down into a pile of floor cushions that were upholstered in rich Bordeaux velveteen. I studied the table vase that held the flowers Valcas gave me.

  “At least Valcas and I are together again,” I murmured out loud.

  Before long I grew bored with sitting by myself and ventured out into the hallway. “I am not spying on Valcas’ private life this time,” I kept telling myself as I tried to remember which door would take me to the guest suite I’d shared with Shirlyn.

  I wondered where she and Romaso could be. Even though Enta said it would be okay, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d abandoned them, that I was somehow responsible for having brought them to the white tower and leaving them there. There should have been other photographs from the flight outside the white tower, including the one of Shirlyn, Romaso and their driver. Where were they?

  A horrible thought entered my mind. What if Shirlyn was out there somewhere lost, famished and separated from Romaso, with no memory of how she’d gotten there and with Valcas having no memory of her ever having arrived?

  I desperately started twisting doorknobs, trying to open the white doors. Guess after guess, none of the doorknobs would turn. Reaching in my backpack for something of use, I grasped hold of the box that held the small telescope. I opened the carved box and looked skeptically at the small instrument. It didn’t look like a key and didn’t appear to have any on or off buttons. I briefly considered using the travel glasses to ask someone what to do with it, but there wasn’t anyone to contact. Edgar was gone. Enta had made it clear that she needed time alone. Any communication with the presently existing Valcas—the one presumably out there still looking for me—was absolutely out of the question. I suddenly felt very stupid. I didn’t have the magical key that I’d been looking for in my backpack.

  At the sound of faintly approaching footsteps, I turned my back to the door I’d just tried to open. A sharp intake of breath later, the footsteps—those of a guard—became louder and more pointedly directed toward me.

  �
�Hello? Is there someone there?” a voice called out.

  I stood still, not sure whether to respond, not wanting to give myself away. As the figure of a man became more visible in the hallway, I noticed that it was my interrogator, the security guard who questioned me when I arrived at the white tower the first time. “Hello,” I called out, waving. “I’m trying to find the guest suite I stayed in earlier, but none of these doors will open.”

  The guard increased his pace, stopping twice to lock a couple of white doors—from the outside.

  “Miss Winston. I should have known. I’m locking up for the night. Shall I escort you back to your room?”

  “No, thank you. I was trying to find—”

  “Back this way, Miss Winston. I’m not sure how you managed to wander so far from the main house. The guest suites have been vacant for a couple of weeks now. No one’s been in there since the silhouettes were last sighted. The rooms are locked now, as a matter of security.” The guard peered down at me over his thick moustache.

  “The silhouettes are still here?”

  “Only what’s left of them, the remnants of travel.”

  “Huh?”

  “Occasionally travelers will bring along with them guests from other places, most often the past, and then just leave them here. That’s all well and good and everything, but it gives me the willies. It’s like living in the midst of ghosts.”

  I stepped in time with the guard, our footsteps tapping noisily down the hallway. “Do the silhouettes find their way home without the traveler who brought them?”

  “No. The way I understand it is that the silhouettes just fade away, eventually disappearing. Oh don’t worry now—there’s no harm in it. Can’t hurt anything really.”

  “Then why bother locking the doors?”

  “Erm,” the guard grunted. “Another presence has been felt here, one in addition to you and the two silhouettes. Boggles my mind how it would have gotten past security. Ah, well, maybe whoever it is hasn’t completely shown up yet. Don’t you worry now, Miss Winston, we’ll be keeping an eye on the situation.”

  The guard bowed and bid me good-night once he saw that I was safely back in my suite. The door behind me locked with an insistent click.

  I SLEPT in late the next day, so late that I wondered whether Valcas forgot all about me despite the daily reminder that he’d created. I didn’t actually get out of bed until I heard a knock at the door, followed by a click.

  A round head poked into the room through the partially open door. “Hello, Miss Winston. My name is Melda. Valcas assigned me to you just now—to help you prepare for the party.”

  “Hi, Melda,” I said. “Come on in.” After Edgar’s funeral and yesterday’s shock, I could use a good party.

  Melda opened the door wider and stepped into the room. Her round body matched her round face. Her hair and eyes, both the same shade of gray, also matched.

  “What time is it?” I asked.

  “Just past midday. Have you looked at all of the dresses in the closet?”

  “No. What’s the occasion?“

  “Nothing special. Valcas throws everyone a party from time to time, you know, to keep up morale.”

  “Will you be there?” I asked as the maid pointed me to a large walk-in closet.

  “Oh yes. We’re all invited. Young Mr. Hall breathes life into any occasion. His family’s acquaintances run deep in many places, but he never forgets any of us—no, never.”

  The maid reminded me of an overstuffed chicken, the way she squawked and waddled about.

  I flipped through the dresses that hung along the walls of the closet, stopping when I found a jungle green cocktail dress with an off-the-shoulder neckline and a train in the back.

  The maid nodded in approval as I pulled the dress up to myself. “My, that color just brightens your face, Miss Winston!”

  I pulled the dress over to a mirror and held the leafy green fabric up in front of me. Knowing that the travel glasses continued to affect my eyes the more I used them, I’d been avoiding mirrors. Now that I’d seen the photo of me with Valcas, I was curious how much I’d changed since then.

  If anything, the dark green of the fabric heightened the contrast. My eyes were a sickly, lifeless matte green that made my skin look even paler. I wondered how long it would take before I completely ruined my eyes the way Valcas had. I murmured a polite thank-you even though I disagreed with her comment about the dress brightening my face.

  THE PARTY took place behind one of the white doors that opened into a vineyard château. Melda and I entered a room packed with people who I assumed were hidden away during the day behind the maze of doorways that lined the white hallway.

  “Who are all of these people?”

  “Everyone here except for you and Valcas belong to the tower staff. There are maids, cooks, laundresses, guards, groundkeepers, seamstresses, farmers, butchers, bakers—”

  “And candlestick makers?”

  “No, not candlestick makers, but the list goes on and on.”

  I grinned, amused at how my attempt at humor had gone unnoticed. I stood on my tiptoes, trying to look around and through the mass of people. Tables filled with pitchers and plates of food lined every wall, leaving a large open space for dancing in the center. That space was filled with people too.

  Valcas caught my eye and waved at me as he weaved through the guest-servants, welcoming them, calling orders. The banquet hadn’t started yet. Adults sampled a variety of red and white wines. Minors, such as Valcas and I, were offered flutes of laramile. Before anyone started eating, Valcas asked me to step outside with him onto a balcony that overlooked the vineyards.

  “Where did all of these people come from?” I asked as the music and laughter faded behind us.

  “The hallway is very long, requiring a vast team of help for its upkeep.”

  “Melda told me that, but how did all of these people get to your world? I thought that your parents made this place, imagined it, and then traveled here.”

  Valcas nodded. “That’s somewhat true. They designed the tower so that it would be more of a real place instead of an un-place. They didn’t want my birthplace to be a nowhere. However, I can’t imagine a technology so advanced that it could create people.”

  He sipped from his glass and gestured toward the banquet hall. “My parents, my mother especially, are very good at making friends, securing loyalties soon after first meeting. Each member of the staff, everyone from the most highly respected attendants to the maids who clean the latrines, is a real living person, hand selected to live here at no expense for as long as he or she wants. They’ve voluntarily agreed their service in return for a comfortable life.”

  “Is that why you treat them like friends?”

  Valcas shook his head. “Not friends, but still treated with warmth and familiarity.”

  “What do you mean?” I watched Valcas while he carefully considered how to answer me.

  “Take for instance the relationship that you have with extended family members, long-distance relatives that you see maybe once every so many years at a wedding or reunion.” His face looked troubled, as if he wasn’t fully sure whether the words accurately expressed what he felt. “They are not part of your day-to-day confidences, thoughts or feelings. Of course, they may have an idea of your personality, know if something is troubling you by your countenance, or perhaps even keep track of your general likes and dislikes, but they lack understanding of the complexities that define you as a person. They don’t really take the time to get to know you.”

  I stared, not because I was confused by the words he used, but because his description sounded unnecessarily cold and formal—even for him. “Are you saying that friends are the only people who really care about you?”

  “Yes and no. In my opinion, friends are those who legitimately care as shown through their efforts in trying to understand you. Tell me, Calla, who is it that you consider a real friend?”

  “Real?”

 
; “Yes, real.”

  I felt Valcas look at me as if he could read into my thoughts, like he knew the answer that was coming before I did. I remembered his speech in the library of projections where I’d stumbled upon Mortimer and Catherine, where he’d delivered his biting words about what was and was not real. Was he testing me? He couldn’t possibly remember my embarrassing intrusion, could he?

  “What, um, exactly do you mean by real?”

  Valcas frowned, disappointed. “That’s unfortunate. I was hoping that I would be the first name on your list.”

  I felt my cheeks redden. Edgar would have been the first name on my list, but now he was dead. I knew that this green-eyed version of Valcas was not real, but he was right there in front of me, looking at me expectantly, waiting for me to confirm that he meant something to me. “Okay, fine, you’re on top of my list.” I glared at him briefly, then smiled. “What about you? Who do you consider a friend?”

  “Other than you, I used to be very close to my governess, but that was more of a maternal relationship. That was very long ago.”

  “A governess?”

  “Yes, I was schooled here at home, mostly by my governess and then later educated by some of the world’s most renowned academics and inventors.”

  “Your governess was human?” I cringed, slightly embarrassed at having blurted this out. For some reason I thought the projection books were his only babysitters.

  His eyes narrowed, not at me but at the space in front of him. “Human? Yes. Although, I do suppose that I’ve had much less human-like companions. That’s a dark story though. Something I may tell about you someday.”

  I raised my eyebrows, trying not to appear too knowledgeable about what his words meant. He smiled and leaned back against the balcony railing, pulling me close to him.