Time for the Lost

by Chess Desalls

  The Call to Search Everywhen Series

  *TIME FOR THE LOST is the third installment in The Call to Search Everywhen, a serial series that continues the storyline in TRAVEL GLASSES and INSIGHT KINDLING. To get the most enjoyment out of this story, please consider beginning with the first book in the series, as there are multiple storylines and characters from different times and places.

  Dedicated to the dedicated and to those who share their time with others.

  For love that doesn’t give up on others, even when it seems too late.

  Many thanks to all readers who followed Calla and Valcas’ story up to this point.

  By reading these books, you’ve shared your precious time with me.

  TIME FOR THE LOST

  Prologue

  Part I: Valcas Hall

  Part II: Calla Winston

  Epilogue

  Time and Space Travel Agency Official Record

  Declaration of Guilt, Given under Oath

  Before His Honorable Commissioner Reese

  TSTA HEADQUARTERS, Everywhen

  I grew up in a world of my parents’ making. My mother and father, Sable and James Hall, both had incredible travel talents. Both were World Builders. Most would consider mine a fortunate parentage. Sometimes I did as well.

  The world of my birthplace was known as the White Tower. Despite my parents’ talent for design, they lacked ingenuity for assigning their creations interesting names. Their world lay trapped in a single building. A white tower stretched toward a sky as black as the darkest space in the worlds. The exterior of the tower expanded, forming a sheet which grew longer as necessary to accommodate the tower’s interior hallway. The hallway, the Grand Entrance, was filled with doors leading to places of potentially no limit. Some of the doors led inside the main house, to rooms that I explored as a child, rooms filled with seasons and temperatures that I never found outside the tower.

  The tower’s exterior reflected two seasons: warm and cold. Four moons separated day from night. After I left the White Tower, I learned that other worlds had suns, stars that were golden and warm. And full of light. The galaxy I visited most often contained a small planet or world called Earth. My affinity for Earth likely stemmed from the fact that my father had been born and lived most of his life as an Earthling and citizen of Folkestone, England. He’d abandoned his world to marry my mother. She was a being of Aboreal, a world without surnames, plans or deadlines. What Aboreal lacked in planning, it made up for with an abundance of violence and rules, used by its leaders as a means to control its citizens. My mother was happy to leave her life in Aboreal and to start a new life with my father. Together, they created the White Tower. I was born in that world shortly thereafter—a world intended to be their escape.

  My parents got along well and lived happily enough, but their positions in other societies called them away from their escape, leaving me at the White Tower, well fed and well cared for, but alone. I was glad that my parents spent most of their time together. But that time was short-lived, for my father’s life expectancy was governed by the timeline of his birth-world, whereas mine and that of my mother were not. His life ended thousands of years earlier, from my perspective, which meant he aged rapidly. He died before I could say good-bye. If I hadn’t accelerated the process, if I hadn’t interfered with time, he may have lived longer.

  I hereby admit fault.

  I’ve stated the above freely and honestly, pursuant to the rules of the above-named agency.

  Signed Valcas Hall .

  Valcas Hall

  Recorded /s/ .

  Hon. Comm. Reese, TSTA

  [This copy shall be retained by the convicted.]

  I flipped the document over to add a handwritten update. A second admission of guilt, for my records only.

  During my father’s lifetime, I made several pilgrimages to Earth, but only once to visit my Uncle Edgar’s estate in Folkestone. I remember sitting by the harbor in one of my uncle’s vessels, watching as the sun slowly danced toward the sea. The glow of the sun faded, spreading the last bits of light across the water.

  I’d never seen anything more beautiful. Until a later trip to Earth when I met a baby girl, the daughter of my friend, healer and mentor, Basileios Plaka. In a blink of time, she’d grown into an intelligent and insufferably stubborn young woman.

  Calla glowed more brightly than all the worlds’ golden suns combined. She was a universe of stars that could never be mine.

  All because of me.

  THE UPROAR had been waiting for us in Chascadia. There were countless legends and theories surrounding the being of white light that taunted its victims by blinding them and knocking them to the ground. Some described it as a force of chaos. Others considered the Uproar a pale shadow of the Everywhere and Everywhen. The particularly cynical believed that the TSTA—Time and Space Travel Agency—controlled it in order to eliminate travel talents that the agency sought to regulate.

  I, however, was not as concerned with its origin and history as I was with its targets. This particular Uproar, as far as I’d known, was out to destroy Plaka and his daughter Calla, the last living Remnant Transporters.

  In the murky darkness, guilt and anger surged through my bones. Hatred roiled with ugliness fried my nerves, like a fire that spreads so quickly the embers left behind have time to cool before anyone notices the flame. That was how I knew the Uproar was ready to strike—how I’d sensed its presence.

  Yet, the Uproar hesitated. The blaring of the watch the TSTA had given Calla must have distracted it, because it made no movement to attack.

  Plaka had yelled to Calla, obtained the watch and buried it in the ground. He was likely worried that the TSTA was on its way. My pitiable healer. He’d been behind the Fire Falls far too long. I doubted he’d felt the Uproar, even though he had the ability to sense it. So absorbed was he in his newfound freedom that any threat of being captured and taken away by the TSTA or anyone else must have surpassed the pain of the Uproar’s presence. Calla hadn’t felt it either. I was convinced that the ability to sense the Uproar was similar to travel talents, in that they were both inherited. In this case, I suspected Calla took after her mother.

  Ivory and Ray had felt it, however. I’d seen the recognition—the pain—in their eyes and in the way Ivory braced herself. Not for the impact of our arrival. That wasn’t necessary because the Uproar was there to absorb it.

  Almost immediately, a second siren had sounded. I’d looked up at the sky, choosing my words carefully. “Plaka, did something else happen that you haven’t told us about?” It was as if the TSTA was tailing the Uproar, suggesting that the being and agency were working together. Perhaps Plaka’s theory had been correct—he belonged to the camp of the particularly cynical.

  “No!” he’d said. “Although, upon my life I won’t let that demonic agency find me now, not after all my years of solitude.”

  Calla had stood there, shaking on the outside like a fragile leaf. That would have bothered me had I not known about the sharpness of the leaf’s edges. Fortunately, her eyes lacked the look of pain that I saw in Ivory and Ray’s, leading me to conclude that she didn’t feel the Uproar. “Then what do we do?” she’d asked. “Where do we go?”

  Plaka had disregarded her; instead, he’d turned his gaze on me. He didn’t need to speak. I knew he wanted me to help him hide somewhere safe, the only other place where the Uproar would be reluctant to enter: Aboreal.

  “I’m sorry, Plaka, but Aboreal is out of the question. There are customs, administrative hoops we’d need to jump through in order to be admitted. Not to mention the time limits—”

  Ivory’s response confirmed my instinct that she’d sensed the Uproar’s presence. “Valcas is right,” she’d sai
d, pointing to me. “We can’t just show up there uninvited. I’d rather the TSTA arrest us than go to an Aborealian prison any day.”

  It was illegal to lead an Uproar to Aboreal, even if it was unintentional. The TSTA had contacted Aborealian leaders prior to our arrival and had explained our mission to find Plaka. Ivory had landed in a protected area, which we’d left right away, leaving the leaders to deal with the impact of our arrival, something they had down to a science. They were happy to do it. Had the Uproar arrived, they would have reported the event to the TSTA. And then the TSTA would have been punished under Aborealian law for having led an Uproar to Aboreal.

  We couldn’t afford the same.

  Calla’s sweet voice had sounded above the racket of sirens. “What about the White Tower?”

  Her question iced the fire in my veins. “I can’t go back there.” Not then, not now. Not ever.

  “Why not? You picked me up from the White Tower to take me to TSTA Headquarters for my hearing. You seemed fine then.” The acid in her voice had overcome any remaining sweetness.

  I’d clenched my teeth before answering. I hadn’t wanted to growl at her. She’d asked an innocent question. “That was the White Tower from my past.”

  “This isn’t about the holobrary and all the time you spent alone as a child, is it?”

  She had no idea. It wasn’t her fault. It was mine. “No,” I’d whispered, hoping she’d understand, knowing that she couldn’t.

  She looked at me, uncertainly, while Plaka walked over to us. I’d felt his hand on my shoulder. “You haven’t been to the White Tower ever since?” he said.

  “No.”

  Calla’s beautiful eyes had grown wide. “Since what? When?”

  “Since my father’s death.”

  Uttering that fact aloud had changed everything. It revealed a connection I no longer wanted to believe. That an Uproar had destroyed my father; and the being was present to hurt him when I was nearby.

  I’d admitted that to the TSTA, back when I’d believed it. As time passed, the feeling that I was to blame faded, leaving me to wonder whether it was true.

  The Uproar had prematurely ended my father’s already short lifespan.

  I couldn’t let it happen again.

  Not with Calla.

  IT’S REMARKABLE how quickly time passes, even for those of us who experience a century in the amount of time the Earthborn feel the passing of a year. Today would have been Calla’s first day of college, the start of her spring semester; but according to the admissions office, she hadn’t completed orientation. No one had seen her since she fled Edgar’s Nowhere. No one knew where she was.

  I shrugged into my jacket and ducked behind the softened leather as I shut the door behind me. After locating a bench, I sat down facing a quad of grass. I stared at the trees past a group of students playing a running game with a plastic disk. The students ran around, trying to block each other’s efforts at spinning the disk from person to person. A red-faced male twisted toward me as he wound up for a throw. His shirt read Ultimate Frisbee in white lettering. I wondered whether Calla had ever played the strange-looking game.

  I shook my head and turned my attention back to the trees. A small object was pointed toward me. It hung in midair, and then slowly twisted its way through and around the Frisbee players. I frowned, wondering why they seemed oblivious to the object, where it had come from and why it glided toward me.

  As the object neared, I recognized it as an airplane made of paper. The airplane would have poked me in the eye had I not been wearing my travel glasses. It made contact with the left lens before falling into my lap. I opened it, smoothed out the folds and groaned.

  The paper was covered in angry scrawl. It was another message from Doreen Winston, Calla’s mother, demanding that I return to TSTA Headquarters with a report on my search.

  Ms. Winston hadn’t been pleased with my progress thus far. I’d dodged her written messages as they followed me through time and space. She sent letters, telegrams, faxes and, now, a paper airplane. I shook my head. Her disappointment with me would likely continue.

  I imagined Calla received similar messages from Ms. Winston, a TSTA Communications Facilitator, who was able to monitor comings and goings through time and space. Despite having the finest resources and equipment available to the known worlds, she hadn’t been able to track down Calla. And yet it seemed that she had endless methods of contacting me.

  I balled up the sheet of paper and stuffed it in my pocket. I’d also evaded all communications from Calla’s father and my healer, Plaka. I’d left abruptly, without telling him my plans. I was sure he’d understand, unlike Ms. Winston, who seemingly did not. She was angry that I’d let Calla travel alone after I’d promised to protect her. What Ms. Winston didn’t know was that Calla was safer this way.

  I squeezed the parcel I’d brought with me, Calla’s backpack. She’d taken off without it. I kept the backpack close to me, deluding myself that it would help me find her. Out of desperation, I’d searched its contents: a few articles of clothing, a journal written in the hand of my cousin Shirlyn (along with others I didn’t recognize) and a zobascope. The latter item I’d inspected, confirming that it was the instrument Enta presented to me as a child, a gift my uncle Edgar had given her.

  The zobascope was a miniature telescope that recorded sight and sound. I studied the recordings captured inside: a scene of myself as a child; my teen self’s confrontation with a visually present, but emotionally absent, love interest; and Enta’s message to Calla that the zobascope—with its ability to record—was the predecessor to the travel glasses. Before explaining this fact to Calla, Enta had gone back in time to record a conversation that Enta’s younger self had with my parents and Edgar, shortly after I’d fled the White Tower. My heart sank as I played back my father’s words and confirmation of his love for me:

  We of course thought we were doing him a service with those books.

  We often felt guilt at leaving him for such long periods of time.

  Later in the same recorded conversation, in response to a comment about the irreplaceability of the holobrary, my father had said: And so is our son.

  I clenched the seat of the bench with my fingers. I was irreplaceable to him. If only I’d let him know I’d felt the same way about him—that he’d been irreplaceable to me. Even Plaka couldn’t fill that void.

  I drew in a breath and stood up. For the next several minutes, I wandered the campus grounds, studying the place where Calla should be living out her life in normalcy. Part of me was delighted that she wasn’t a student here. From what I’d seen of the school so far, I wasn’t impressed. The buildings and people lacked personality. Nothing the professors could teach her would help her present situation. No book or lecture on Earth could improve upon her already extraordinary talents. Neither could I. This, Plaka recognized, was something Calla needed to accomplish alone to discover her full potential.

  Once again, Calla was on her own, placing herself in danger and stumbling upon rules of travel that I hadn’t had time to explain. The worlds were too big, and they kept growing. Rules changed. Worse yet, rules were broken. Then there was the TSTA, who wanted control over the rules and the rule-breakers. I hoped the TSTA would fail to catch up with Calla. Who knows what unspoken guidelines she might break, and what her next punishment would be?

  I wished I could ask her my questions and let her ask me hers.

  Multiple barriers thwarted my plans. First, I didn’t want Calla to know that I was following her, trying to block her further discoveries of my past. Second, she’d avoided my incoming communications through the travel glasses as ardently as I’d been avoiding her mother’s. Her tenacity amused me almost as much as it terrified me. But not as much as losing Calla terrified me. My inability to search for a time and place and go directly to her only aggravated my fears.

  As I’d wandered from place to place, searching for where she could be now, I realized that losing her was perhaps more te
rrifying than having her find out about my greatest mistake.

  I didn’t kill my father, but I am responsible for his death. Thus the reason for Plaka’s treatment of me. He’d needed to escape through the Fire Falls—to get away from the Uproar—before my treatment was complete. Never had I felt as cowardly as when I had to explain my need for healing to Calla. I’d wanted her to fear me in order to trust me. I’d learned to equate trust and fear, which was why I’d promised to prove myself to her. Only then would I have felt worthy of her affections. But then I’d broken her heart, abandoning all hope of being worthy of her ever again. Her finding out what I’d done, that my father’s death was more my fault than that of the Earth’s timeline, would seal my unworthiness of her—that is, if she found out.

  And, yet, what if I’d never taken the travel glasses, the pair of sunglasses altered by Edgar? What if I were to go back in time and destroy them or manipulate the past to ensure that I never had them? What would that change? Would I be happier? Doubtful. Would the TSTA charge me with an infraction? Again? Likely.

  Either way, the Uproar would continue to pursue Plaka and Calla. I would just be blissfully unaware.

  I WOKE up several Earth days later in a hotel. In the dim light, I noticed a crack in the mirror across from my bed. It zigged and zagged through the glass, ending at my forehead’s reflection.

  My shoulders tensed. The crack in the glass resembled a fissure in the frozen waters of a memorable slice in time. One where I’d taken Calla to study what had happened the day I’d found her at Folkestone Harbor, when she thought I was trying to run over her, Shirlyn and Romaso with a motorboat. The Uproar had found us there. The water broke. We ran.

  I threw my legs over the bed and held my face in my hands. Unshaven skin scratched against my palms. The Uproar. It hadn’t felt Calla’s presence at all. It felt mine. Instead of digging deep inside my soul to extract and amplify all sensations of guilt, anger and hatred, it must have felt my love for her.