Time for the Lost

by Chess Desalls

  PLAKA RETURNED to the Clock Tower with grins and gusto.

  Nick and Ray surprised him, and the rest of us, with delicacies from Chascadia. Plaka openly relished the tastes of home. Even more so, he seemed excited about sharing his Chascadian heritage with Calla.

  “This,” said Plaka, pointing to a plate of sugared figs, sliced and layered with slivers of bovine meat, “was your grandfather Salomao Plaka’s favorite treat. Your grandmother, Dara, used to tell him to go easy on it, though. He wasn’t an active man, not a traveler like us.”

  I chewed. The sweetness of the fig complimented the savoriness of the meat. It was excellent, as were the fish stuffed with fried cheeses, minced lamb and cakes made with lemon and olive oil. Each food was rich, usually reserved for ceremonies and special occasions. Nick must have had a fortune to be able to buy food like this. I scanned the walls of the loft, noting the lack of furnishings. The Aborealian trunk he used for his clothing was small. He hung his two coats on pegs that stuck out from the wall. Right now, one of the pegs was empty. Perhaps he’d saved what he didn’t spend on private possessions.

  “Was Grandma Dara a traveler?” asked Calla.

  “A Remnant Transporter, like you and me. Chascadia honored your grandmother by marking the place of her death with a crown of laurel and rose gold, a symbol of her contributions as a healer.” He bowed.

  After waiting a breath, Plaka’s head snapped up again. He raised a glass of honeyed kraspota, the Chascadian equivalent of Aboreal’s laramile. “To Nick!” he said, slapping the Time Keeper on the back. “And to Ray—for bringing us this feast!” He stood up, raising his body along with his voice. “Also to the hasty departure of the banes of Susana that will no longer be. Once we are finished with them, may they leave the Lost to live, or to rest, in peace.”

  Calla and Ray tensed. Their countenances flashed from lighthearted to serious.

  I glanced at Nick and shook my head. Leave it to Plaka. His passion was amusing to watch, but he knew how to ruin the mood for a good party.

  We lifted our glasses anyway, and drank.

  Plaka wiped his lips with the back of his sleeve. “Now that we are refreshed, we return to Susana.” He held out his hand to Calla.

  She accepted and, whether she realized it or not, she agreed to the mission.

  WE ENTERED the land of the Lost, once again, through the Clock Tower’s portal.

  I wasn’t sure I’d ever get used to the chill of the place or its lifelessness and lack of color.

  I gauged Calla’s reactions with caution. This was the first time she’d visited Susana after having been set free. She saw it for the first time with the eyes of someone no longer Lost.

  Her eyes watered. When she found her breath, she said, “I have to help them. All of them.”

  Plaka placed an arm around her and led her away. As I watched their retreating forms, I wondered why Nick, Ray and I were there. How were we supposed to help? We didn’t have the Remnant Transporter talent. All right, maybe Nick was worth something because he had control over the most direct route between the Clock Tower and Susana. Presumably, he could help both Calla and Plaka transport silhouettes back and forth more rapidly by opening the portals.

  Was Ray supposed to record all of this with his brain? I supposed I could do something similar with the travel glasses, but my World Building talent was useless here. I’d already reached out and tried.

  “Valcas!” Plaka’s voice came from across the way. I jogged to catch up.

  He and Calla stood near a man who was being attacked by a pair of Chars. I knew how this would work. Plaka would place his hands on the man to calm him down enough to learn his name and the person he’d been searching. Then he’d travel to find silhouettes that could help accelerate the man’s healing and bring him back, to free him from the Lost.

  I stood by, shifting my weight from one foot to the other. Finally, I threw up my arms. “What am I supposed to do while you and Calla transport silhouettes and heal?”

  A tinge of darkness reached Plaka’s eyes. “Do you doubt me? Calm down and listen, Valcas. I have thought this through; I have a plan.”

  “What could I possibly do here? My talent is use—”

  “Enough!”

  All went quiet. Even the flashes of light momentarily paused.

  “When we finish our task of freeing the Lost, we will set fire to this world. We will cleanse the land.”

  If he saw my look of confusion, he ignored it. I tightly set my jaw and focused, hoping that at some point his plan would make sense.

  “As we have learned from our escape from the Fire Falls, Uproars resist fire. If there are any left after the Lost have been freed—and their Uproars have been extinguished—I expect that the strays will flee. Perhaps The Chars will too. When they are gone and Susana is empty, assuming there is anything left, it will need to be refilled.”

  Nick looked down at me at the same time I began to understand Plaka’s plan. “It will need to be rebuilt. And for that to happen, we need a World Builder, someone who can fill the void so there’s no longer a place for the Lost.”

  “What do I build?”

  “Anything you want, Valcas.”

  Hope dawned. The possibilities were endless. But—the blood drained from my face. “I was penalized as a child for World Building without the TSTA’s permission. They would never approve this.”

  “It’s not like it would be your first infraction, friend.”

  “Or the second, or third,” I said, resisting the grin that threatened to form; amusement felt inappropriate in the place of the Lost. “But I refuse to burden my mother with whatever outrageous price the penalty for the infraction may be. The mission they would send me on could be far worse.”

  Calla either hiccupped or quickly smothered a scream. Whatever it was didn’t look comfortable. “Not another mission. No. We’d have to find some way to pay.”

  I massaged a knot that had formed between my neck and shoulder blade. Another infraction for a good cause that would lead to another unjust penalty. Just what I needed. And I still had my own Chars to worry about. It seemed I would never escape the path to becoming Lost. We didn’t know if Plaka’s plan would even work.

  I looked to Calla and Ray, trying my best to focus on them and to ignore the pain building behind my eyes. Both looked depressed. Plaka seemed pensive, but now haunted, as if his plan had not been foolproof, after all.

  But Nick was smiling. “I don’t think you’d need to bother your mother about this, even should the TSTA slap you with the harshest of penalties.”

  “That’s kind of you, Nick. But I can’t expect you to hide me at the Clock Tower. I don’t doubt it would work, but then I’d lose my freedom.”

  I beheld Calla, returning her look of sorrow with mine. I couldn’t expect things to work out between us. But in the event that we were to grow close again, staying with Nick at the Clock Tower meant I couldn’t give her the type of life she deserved. I understood Ivory’s problem with Nick’s proposal. In some ways, a life of hiding was no better than a life in Susana. It wasn’t much of a life at all.

  Nick chuckled. “That’s one idea, friend, but not what I had in mind. I was thinking more along the lines of funding, a loan of sorts.”

  PROBLEM SOLVED. After graciously thanking Nick for his generous gift of money—should it be needed—I learned the other part of Plaka’s plan for me. He asked me to accompany Calla while she transported silhouettes. Ray tagged along with Plaka. Nick scuttled back and forth as needed to help facilitate transport through the portals.

  The effort was well planned and ran smoothly. We grew more efficient with each round, with Ray and I recording details about the Lost who began speaking—their voices, their names, what they looked like, their specific bodies of water, their home worlds and who they’d been searching for. Being able to play back the information with certainty, and quickly, was crucial to helping Plaka and Calla focus on which silhouettes to select, from where and from w
hat time periods.

  Before long, the Lost reduced by half, and then by another quarter. Susana seemed emptier somehow, more desolate; and yet, less desperate.

  Calla adapted rapidly, embracing her talents and providing comfort to the Lost. Some of the men and women recognized her from when she’d resided with them as a prisoner of Susana. Seeing her walking among the Freed gave them hope. It also may have sped up their progress.

  Several of the travelers that Calla and Plaka set free were people I recognized, travelers I’d met as an accused who faced hearings at TSTA Headquarters, travelers who—like myself—had been ordered to seek the Lost as payment for their infractions. Travelers who themselves had become Lost.

  One by one, the silver waters of Susana dried up, and the horizon darkened given the decrease in Uproars and their flashes of light. The Chars reduced in number as well, disappearing as those they tormented became Freed. It was truly spectacular to behold.

  Each time a Lost became Freed, he or she either came back to life or disappeared unto death. The living went with Nick, who helped port them home, wherever and whenever that may be. Tingles of hope and uneasiness crawled through my spine every time someone became Freed who should have died according to his or her timeline. The shimmering edges that spread across the individual’s form, the glittering light and the realization that hit when the person was no longer there.

  But nothing was as remarkable as when one of the Lost asked for Ray, by name.

  A young woman, near in age to Calla, wrung her hands while standing near a lagoon. Thin layers of sand separated silver edges of the lagoon from a shade of a larger body of water that was no longer there. Her hair, blonde tinged with shadows, twisted to her waist. Her body was just as wiry. She stared, studying the pond as if trying to remember each detail, the placement of every drop of water collected inside.

  Plaka calmed her to the point where she stopped wringing her hands. Disturbed by her intense focus, he passed his hands across her face in an attempt to break her gaze, to grab her attention.

  She looked through him and arched a brow. “Ray?”

  Ray, who’d been recording a man next to us and his silver body of water, turned. His mouth hung open for a brief moment, before he ran and wrapped his arms around the young woman who’d spoken his name.

  “Lily.” He said the name tenderly, not just once, but repeatedly.

  Nick nudged me. I wondered if he was thinking what I was—that this Lily could be a love interest of Ray’s, from the past. He’d never mentioned her name before. But then Ivory hadn’t mentioned Nick or his alter ego, Travertine, either.

  Ray smoothed Lily’s hair back from her face. She stared at him with the same intense gaze he used while recording. He gave her the same smile he gave Calla, a friendly one. But not one of passion. I regarded the pair more closely. He was several inches taller. His eyes were dark blue. Hers were softer, lighter. They seemed alike somehow, but I couldn’t quite place why.

  Tired of my own inner speculation, I asked, “How do you know Lily, Ray? Why is it that she was searching for you?”

  He took a deep breath. His face was stricken, even though all of us knew Lily would be fine, that she would heal and be set free. Just like all of the Lost in Susana.

  “She’s my older sister, by fourteen minutes.” He swallowed before continuing. “We haven’t seen each other in more than a year, Earth time. She’s a Detail Technician, like me.”

  I TRIED to imagine Lily with Ray’s eye color instead of the dull blue they were now. Maybe that’s the way they’d always been. It occurred to me that Lily’s eyes weren’t gray like Calla’s because she hadn’t used the travel glasses to sap their color. But she’d found Susana somehow or another, just like the other travelers who’d become Lost. I suspected each had an unofficial object of their own.

  Directing my attention to Lily’s hair, I noticed that it was washed-out and golden. That was it, the similarity I couldn’t quite place. She and Ray were family. Fraternal twins, with identical travel talents.

  My lips tugged into a frown, realizing why Ray seemed worried rather than elated, remembering the effects the Fire Falls had on his psyche. I couldn’t imagine how it would feel to be Lost in Susana and be able to record it unintentionally. But Ray probably could, and like the rest of us he realized that Lily would need a great dose of healing.

  “I thought you were dead,” said Ray. “Otherwise I would have kept my original mission, to look for you.”

  Lily stood there silently, staring.

  “You gave up a mission to find your twin sister to help us find Calla’s father?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Was family so unimportant to him that he would offer to search for a complete stranger?

  “I thought she was gone, permanently,” he answered. “And after Doreen, Calla’s mom, explained Plaka was a Remnant Transporter, I figured that—if Lily were still alive, if there were any chance—Calla’s mission would lead to this one, that everything would work out in the end. Learning that Calla was also a Remnant Transporter doubled that hope.” A tear threatened to leak from his eye. He swiftly rubbed it away.

  Ray was efficient, I’d give him that. His plan was sound, but so rational that it crossed the line toward irrationality.

  He was also kind and in control of his emotions.

  His twin sister Lily was even more so. After she came back to life as a Freed, I found her lack of emotion to be eerie. When her Uproar disappeared, her cheeks colored slightly. But there was little life there, a lack of happiness. I hoped she wasn’t torturing herself with her recordings of Susana. Perhaps she could find a way to turn those images off, to distract herself, to bury them in her subconscious. But I didn’t know how the brains of Remnant Transporters worked. Ray’s road to progress behind the Fire Falls had been a long one. At least he and Lily had—and could help—each other.

  During a break at the Clock Tower, Ray explained to me and Plaka that Lily’s lagoon had no meaning to him. He and his sister grew up apart, their parents having been divorced. They’d kept in touch regularly, mostly with their phones through texting and social media apps.

  “We learned about our travel talents at an early age,” he told me. “My parents sent me for training so I could take the TSTA’s exams. They thought of it as a career path for me. But they, my father in particular, were overprotective of Lily. They kept her as far from the TSTA as possible.”

  “They didn’t want her to develop her talent?” I said.

  “No. My father wanted her to have a normal life, with a family and children of her own.”

  “They didn’t want that for you?”

  He shrugged. “Perhaps they were less worried about me becoming Lost.”

  I pondered that. When Lily’s lagoon faded in Susana, she’d knelt and reached out to it with both hands, as if she didn’t want to let it go. She hadn’t cried out for Ray; she’d merely said his name. A single word in the form of a question. An “oh, is that you?” as opposed to a frantic desire to find him, or anyone else.

  Lily was a puzzle. Just like Ray and his tattoo.

  TIME PASSED. As for how much, I would need to go back and measure the time spent at the Clock Tower, and then translate it to the timeline where I was born—that of the White Tower. Sometimes I found it easier to measure time in Earth days. Maybe that was just a way to feel closer to Calla.

  Either way, time disappeared; it went away, consumed and expired just like money and other things precious to us that don’t last forever. It wouldn’t be long before Calla turned eighteen, passed me in age measured by maturity. I wouldn’t reach that age for a long time. By then, she would be farther ahead according to her own timeline. I would never catch up.

  I pushed that worry into the deepest recesses of my mind. Instead, I focused on our task of freeing the Lost. And measured the passage of time in terms of lives saved and fading bodies of water. I distracted myself with complicated ideas, such as whether copies of the bodies of water in Nowhe
res dried up along with those that faded from Susana. Time would tell, if I traveled to the right places.

  Susana depleted as Lost from all places and times came back to life.

  Aborealians of different ages, white-haired, black-haired, with eyes of an array of gemstones, returned to their homeland. Nick kept himself hidden from the Aborealian Lost, electing to return to the Clock Tower before they recognized him and became Freed. In those situations, it was up to Calla, Plaka or me to take them home.

  Earthlings of varying eras slowly came to life. Calla bloomed, growing stronger and refining her talent with the release of each person.

  Joined by their silhouettes, men and women from the past introduced themselves to us before glittering their way toward nonexistence or a new form of existence I could not yet fathom. Some wore robes from ancient times. Others, the tailored fashions of the Victorian era. Styles changed and recycled from the casual to the elaborate: the homespun attire of Colonial America up through the T-shirts and jeans of Calla and Ray’s present.

  The Lost from Earth’s past raised interesting challenges. Earth had many languages. All of its countries hadn’t adopted English, the official language of the TSTA. Even if they had, it wouldn’t have mattered because many versions of Earth’s various tongues were no longer in use. Calla and I traveled to find translators, silhouettes of historians and language artists who could help us interpret, before we could begin to search for silhouettes from the Lost individuals’ places and times—those who could help bring them back to life. The interpreter silhouettes returned with us to Susana. They were invaluable. Susana opened my eyes to the significance of each and every person, from wherever and whenever they originated.

  The Freed who had lived during Earth’s present regained their strength and journeyed home. Earth’s future had not yet happened. My timeline, one of a future world, overlapped with theirs but did not coincide without interference from travelers.