Silver Shard

by Betsy Streeter

  Helen confronts the nearest wall and plants her feet. She reaches out and begins to dig at the dirt and rock with her fingers, pulling pieces loose and letting them fall to the floor. One chunk comes free, then another, then a damp hunk of soil the size of her fist. Soon she’s created a foot-wide indent in the wall. She keeps digging, creating a bigger and bigger opening, working with her fingers.

  But she uncovers nothing. No wires, no metal, no structure. Just more dirt and rock. There has to be some system behind these walls and their strange behavior, some reason why they behave in this way. Behind every phenomenon are the factors that brought it into being. But where to look? Where is the curtain to pull back?

  Helen closes her eyes. Perhaps the answer is not in the dirt, but in her own mind. She holds still and waits.

  At first she perceives nothing but darkness, her thoughts just like the dreary tunnels around her. But then layers and shapes begin to emerge. Only impressions, but it’s a start. And it’s better than digging around with her fingers like a mole.

  Helen focuses and quiets her mind. The forms in her head become clearer, more colorful. In a way, they resemble the electrical wiring she discovered inside the walls at the Council Chambers. But in another way, they are unlike anything she has ever seen. Her inner vision fills with a network of colored lines running every which way, toward her and away from her, up and down. They bend and wind around one another, like roots.

  Helen moves her hand along the wall, her eyes still closed. As she moves, the lines move, too. To the right and then to the left. Up and down. Veins of color jump over one another and change position. Now the colors bind together in a thick mass, like a giant cable running upward and away. Helen follows along in her mind, climbing. Sections split off, reaching out and branching into new paths and shapes.

  Branching out. Like a tree.

  Now Helen can see circular shapes hanging from the branches. Like leaves, they shift and glimmer. She looks down the trunk again, toward the roots.

  But something changes. The roots twist in on themselves. They become tangled, bent. There’s something wrong with them.

  Hard, metallic plates bolt into the trunk. Claw-like vines twist around the tree and dig into the bark, puncturing and smothering it. Soon Helen can barely make out the tree’s shape at all. It has been imprisoned in a tangle of cruel-looking restraints.

  She hears a sound, like the scream of splitting wood, and then Helen opens her eyes.

  The wall in front of her remains blank. No panels, no controls, no connection to what she just saw in her mind. She has accomplished nothing.

  “What is this stupid place?” Helen yells, and throws a fist at the wall. Or, she tries to. But her punch meets with nothing. She wonders whether the darkness has messed up her depth perception and caused her to miss. She throws another punch, and again nothing.

  Helen takes a step forward, then another. She lifts a boot and moves her foot toward the wall slowly. The tunnel seems to sway.

  Then everything spins out of control.

  The corridor twists and flips, convulsing as if Helen is inside a giant rope being tossed about by a child. She falls over and over, crashing into the ceiling and then the floor. She tries to roll up into a ball, but her arms and legs fly around her. She can’t even get enough air into her lungs to cry out.

  Then Helen’s head bashes into the wall. Everything spins and her vision fades to black.

  “Ah! There you are,” a voice says.

  Monder?

  Helen opens her eyes. The back of her head pounds. How long was she out? And why is she hearing Monder’s voice? As far as she knows, she is nowhere near Monder.

  She sits up. Every part of her body hurts, but at least the floor is staying beneath her…for the moment. The corridor has contracted back down to only a few feet across. Helen feels like one big bruise. Every time she moves, she discovers a new pain.

  She feels at her belt for her device—it’s still there but it has been crushed. Everything in her pack is probably pulverized as well. She doesn’t bother to look. She does pat her pocket for the knife, which thankfully remains with her.

  “I hope you brought the fragment, or this is all a colossal waste of time,” Monder says.

  Where is that voice coming from?

  “Who’s there?” Helen says, for lack of something better to say. Her head is filled with fog.

  “You know who this is,” Monder says. “Now bring me the fragment.”

  “Show me my brother,” Helen says.

  “Your brother is fine,” Monder says. “Here.”

  A clicking sound, like an old-fashioned movie projector revving up out of sight. A rectangle of light appears on the wall above Helen. It’s a grainy black and white movie, with jumpy frames and streaks running down the side. The film shows a small room with a bed, viewed from above. There’s a boy in there, and Helen can tell immediately by the shape and the white hair that this is Henry. The boy moves in fast-motion around the room, from the bed to a desk, then he disappears, then reappears, and curls up on the bed. The film jumps as if someone cut together a collection of scenes. It looks like the same movements, over and over, a time lapse of many days. Then the clicking of the projector slows, and the movie disappears.

  “That…movie, or whatever it is…tells me nothing,” Helen says. “That could be fake. It looks fake. Is that the best you can do?”

  “That’s what you get,” Monder says. “I am limited in what I can show you.”

  “Why?” Helen asks. “What is this place?”

  “It’s not a place at all,” Monder says. “This is my little home. I don’t expect you to understand, not with your human mind. You humans can be so literal about everything. That’s why you can’t control yourself. I fully expect you to fall on your head many more times before we meet face to face. Not that it will make much difference in a human brain.”

  Helen can feel anger rising in her chest again. She reminds herself to breathe. This is certainly part of the game, Monder’s attempt to keep her feeling vulnerable. A Council member once made the mistake of insulting Helen and treating her like a child, and he paid for it. Helen uses her anger to focus her attention.

  “Now, I require the fragment,” Monder says. “You will bring it to my location. You may have noticed that the broken edge has begun healing, as an effect of the piece now moving into close proximity to its counterpart.”

  Helen touches the fragment around her neck. Monder is right; the edges have become smoother. She looks at it. The markings appear clearer and more defined. Now she knows she has come to the right place. Even if Monder says it is not a place at all.

  “I haven’t seen my brother. I have seen some made-up home movie of my brother,” Helen says. “You think I’m going to fall for that?”

  “Helen Silverwood, I will shortly have no further use for your brother. At which point, I can either hand him back to you, or dispose of him. Your choice.”

  “You will not dispose of him, because if you do, I will destroy this fragment and you with it,” Helen says. “I did the research. I know that if you don’t put the portal back together you go out of time on a permanent basis. Now I need real evidence of Henry’s well being and whereabouts.”

  As Helen is speaking, she gets up slowly so as not to send the tunnel into another spin. If this thing really does react to her movements, then she ought to be able to control it.

  “You do not possess the means to destroy the fragment,” Monder says. “No one does. Don’t fool yourself.”

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Helen says, feeling her way along the wall, “what exactly do you want the fragments for, anyway? If you’re so smart, why can’t you just find your way out of the rift on your own? How come some little bitty portal stands in your way?” She moves her hand out in front of her, slowly and then faster. Quicker movements alter the walls, but slower ones do not. Something about the way Helen moves seems to create space out of nothing. She realizes that e
arlier she had moved too quickly, which sent everything out of control. Best not to make that mistake again.

  “Not your concern,” Monder says.

  “Okay, another question. I know you won’t answer any of these,” Helen says. “Why don’t you just come get the fragment yourself? I mean, I’m right here. I can hear you. You can’t be far away. What’s the hold up?”

  “You come to me,” Monder says. “That’s the deal. Although in a short time, I will be able to do just that. It’s a simple question of navigation, really. Knowing how to pinpoint a location. Your brother has been exceedingly helpful.”

  Henry, helping Monder? Not on purpose.

  “Well, then, maybe I’ll just sit tight and wait for you while you find me,” Helen says. Now she’s pushing walls in and out, raising the ceiling. She still hasn’t got her sea legs, but she has gained much more command of her surroundings. Now, hopefully, she won’t send herself flying.

  “Waiting would be an unfortunate mistake on your part,” Monder says, “because the second I get the information I need in its entirety, Henry will no longer be necessary. He becomes Tromindox food. And I will hunt you down. So, ask yourself: Is that a gamble you want to take?”

  “We’ll see,” Helen says. She’s moving faster now. She finds that she can reshape the tunnels into larger spaces, create rooms. She pushes up into the ceiling. Her presence is altering the fabric of the space around her.

  And then it hits her: The lines and connections that she saw in the walls, moving as she moved, those were her own thoughts. That is why she could not hack into them or find them physically.

  “So are you going to give me directions to your location?” Helen asks. “Is there a street sign or something?”

  “The fragment will tell you,” Monder says. “It will signal as you get closer. That is how you will know you are traveling in the right direction. Now, get moving, because before you know it, I will be coming to find you. And your brother will be past his expiration date.”

  Helen looks at the portal again and wonders how quickly it will change as it moves in relation to its counterpart. Because now that she knows how she can tell if she is getting closer, she also knows that for now she needs to travel in exactly the opposite direction.

  “Well, my friend,” Monder says, “it appears our project, the one you helped me to begin, is nearly complete. We can make contact with our fragment bearer, even if we can’t get to her just yet. Only a matter of time. And the boy’s maps are moving along nicely.”

  The Tromindox stands at a control console at the center of the room, directing his words half to an ornately-framed monitor in front of him and half to the skeleton still in its place on the wall. He punches a few keys and magnifies the screen image. It shows something resembling a map, like a subway, with a dot moving around on it. A box in the corner displays a space for coordinates, but no numbers appear yet. The dot jumps around, as if the system is re-scanning for it every few seconds. Boxes form on top of the map, zoom in and out, and attempt to pinpoint the dot’s location. But they do not yet track along accurately. They appear, change shape, and disappear.

  The dot represents the movements of Helen Silverwood, his fragment bearer. The girl who will free him from this life. The reward for his hard work and diligence in the face of imprisonment. Soon he will apply his vast learnings to the real world, the world that exists in time.

  Time. Monder can hardly believe it. This rift has been his prison for so long he has all but forgotten what real time feels like. Cause and effect. Relationships to real things and people.

  He thinks back to his first hours and months and years in this place out of time. Running, falling, stumbling into tunnel after tunnel and realizing only after he had reached total physical exhaustion that he was causing space itself to expand and contract. That there was no way to escape a thing that you made out of your own movements. No entrance, no exit. A self-creating prison.

  It took him many years to find even a tiny hole in the rift. After such a long time (or lack of time), he had his very first link to the outside. To real time. And Monder only found that hole because he had help from the other side, from an unwitting accomplice.

  Monder turns to the skeleton. “Your little Silverwood friend is coming for a visit, sir,” he says. “I don’t suppose this was what you expected from your experiment, was it? Not the result you hoped for when you began.”

  The fragment around the skeleton’s neck, still encased in a clear box, looks brighter now. The broken edge appears smoother, the half-spiral more defined.

  “I mean, your work was brilliant—don’t get me wrong, you have my utmost admiration,” Monder goes on, taking a few slow twirls around the room. His embroidered robes flow with him and he raises his pointed chin above his high starched collar. “Such a breakthrough you had, taking advantage of the ruptures that the portals created, converging space-times onto one other, exploring and mapping the rifts between time and no-time, expanding on the work of the Watchmakers. Brilliant stuff. Really.”

  Monder touches the chin of the skeleton. The jawbone moves slightly, and a shred of the skeleton’s once-dapper double-breasted suit comes loose and flutters to the floor.

  “Yes, Chairman, even I will admit that you were a genius when you lived. It’s just, when you tried out your invention, you didn’t expect little old me to pop up on the other side, did you?”

  Daniel Brush and his uncle sit facing each other on the Brokeneck Bookstore’s creaky wood floor. Daniel is cross-legged, his shoes off, dreads tied back and a mug of tea steaming near his knee. Marvin Brush, older and stiffer and with considerably less hair, sits legs-out on a cushion borrowed from a rocking chair provided for customers. The sun went down some time ago, and the two sit together in a blob of light provided by a single candle.

  Mr. Brush felt the need to shut off the lights, something about being “seen.” Even though there’s no one around the old town to see them at this time of night. The diner at the other end of Brokeneck’s lone dirt street is dark except for the lazy blinking light from its small neon EAT sign. The hotel across the way remains in ruins. At this hour, Brokeneck’s residents are not interested in Daniel and Mr. Brush.

  Mr. Brush has installed a tiny round magnifier over the right lens of his spectacles and his face is lit up. Daniel has watched his uncle gleefully dig out all of the leather volumes in the mysterious wooden box, holding up each book and regarding it like a long-lost friend. Books sit open and shut, face up and face down, all around the floor. Bertrand the cat crouches nearby atop , which also lies on the floor, but, of course, remains closed because of the ever-vigilant cat.

  “Ah! See, here’s one,” Mr. Brush says, cracking open a book. He pushes his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose. “This particular portal was opened on this date, and then over here…” he picks up another open volume and pages through it, running a finger over the page, “there’s the corresponding closure. This is how the notations used to be done. Aren’t they beautiful?”

  Daniel, trying to keep up with all this new information, peers at the two entries. There are concentric circles, some complete and others not, connected by lines running through them at various angles. At the intersections of many of the lines and circles, tiny symbols have been painstakingly added with a fountain pen. All of the markings incorporate a square, but there are a wide variety of embellishments: a swirl, a circle and triangle, three hash marks. Throughout the page there are also tiny numbers separated by even tinier dots.

  “These symbols show the status of a portal at the time of its last use,” Mr. Brush explains. “According to the map, this one here is closed, but this other one was left partially open. It’s a pity. So many portals left ajar. People going through and then not coming back the same way, or just neglecting to close the thing again when they are done.”

  “Why would people do that?” Daniel asks.

  “People, or Tromindox,” Mr. Brush says. “Oh, in the old days there were lot
s of reasons,” he explains. “Maybe they were in battle or being pursued and in a hurry. Or in the case of the Tromindox, they didn’t know or care. They would use a portal to hunt humans, make their kill, and come back. Proper portal maintenance was the last thing on their mind. That’s what made the Watchmakers’ job almost impossible.”

  “Who are the Watchmakers?” Daniel asks.

  “You mean who were the Watchmakers,” his uncle says. “A magnificent group, those folks. The mechanics of time. They repaired the rifts, closed the portals, documented it all in these maps.”

  “What happened to them?” Daniel asks.

  “Oh, who knows?” Mr. Brush says. “Chaos. Politics. Conflict. Things I personally like to avoid. But I can tell you, there have been some real messes. One Tromindox was banished into a rift between space-times, when it nearly murdered half the Silverwood clan from inside. And there were others in the Silverwood clan who had to make a one-way portal jump, just to keep themselves from being totally annihilated. Yes, much of the damage to space-time has been the result of hasty decisions made in emergencies.”

  “I’m guessing the Silverwoods who made the one-way jump were Helen and her family?” Daniel says.

  “Right you are,” Mr. Brush says. “That family got out of harm’s way—just barely. But things were never the same after that incident. Everyone was out for themselves. The Watchmakers were spread to the four winds like everyone else.”

  “You know an awful lot about this, Uncle. Were you a Watchmaker?” Daniel asks.

  Mr. Brush looks up at his nephew. One eye appears huge through the extra lens. “Well, yes, I was,” he says. “Or, I tried. I tried to help. Like I said, I kept a low profile.” He sounds regretful. Daniel suspects there is more to the story, but he knows better than to push too hard. If Mr. Brush gets rattled, or thinks he’s under interrogation, his words pile up and his thoughts collide, and he ceases to make sense. So Daniel takes his time.

  “The Watchmakers had a very important job holding space-time together,” Mr. Brush says. “When somebody goes through a portal, two space-times come in contact with one another for a split second.” Mr. Brush puts his palms together to illustrate. “When the portal is not closed properly, it leaves a tear and things on either side can get mixed up in undesirable ways. Objects, events, even people end up having encounters that they absolutely should not be having. Things got complicated.”