Insight Kindling

by Chess Desalls

  I remembered that Enta had also added a communication feature to the pairs of travel glasses she’d created. She’d also informed me that, like the zobascope, the travel glasses were able to record.

  “Enta gave me the zobascope that Edgar had given her for her birthday,” I admitted.

  Valcas raised his eyebrows. I thought I saw a slight pink tinge reach his cheeks. My eyes popped open. Was he embarrassed?

  The zobascope was a tiny telescope that Edgar had invented to capture moving images. Rotating the zobascope to the right recorded a scene, and turning the lens to the left played the images back. After Edgar died, Enta had given the zobascope to me, presumably so I could view what was recorded inside: recordings of a past-Valcas and a conversation between Valcas’ parents and Edgar regarding Edgar’s invention of the travel glasses. I remembered the recording I watched where Valcas confirmed that his holographic girlfriend, Juna, was not real. She’d been nothing but a character in a book that his parents had gifted him—one of many volumes in the holo-brary.

  “Enta knew that Edgar had surpassed her with his invention of the travel glasses,” I continued. “From what I understand, Edgar’s travel glasses, unlike the pairs Enta made, had the ability to record. She told me that the zobascope was the predecessor to Edgar’s travel glasses.”

  Valcas reddened again and nodded. I bit my lip, recalling Valcas’ confrontation with Juna that I’d seen through the zobascope. Was something as silly as that enough to embarrass Valcas? I cringed, knowing how much someone else seeing something like that would embarrass me. I instantly softened toward him.

  “Everything else I learned about traveling, I learned from you—the past version of you that I found at the White Tower.” Now it was my turn to blush. As proud as I was that I could stand up to Valcas and admit all of these things, I couldn’t help feeling embarrassed about how close I’d gotten to his past self—the green-eyed version of him that I’d used to get more information about Valcas’ past, the one deserving of compassion and love.

  “From me,” he said, his voice breaking slightly. Something about the way he spoke those words made me feel like he was able to read more into the situation than I’d told him.

  But what could he possibly know about the time I spent at the White Tower pretending I was green-eyed Valcas’ betrothed? Did he have any idea how his past self would have acted and felt toward me? Was he even the same person? Unable to handle any more awkwardness along those lines, I redirected the conversation back to Valcas’ earlier question.

  “What is slicing?” I asked. “Does that have anything to do with the travel glasses’ ability to record, communicate, search or travel?”

  “All of those abilities and more,” Valcas said.

  “SLICING IS more easily observed than explained,” Valcas said, taking my hand in his.

  He started running, dragging me along with him. My feet pressed forward while my stomach tumbled inside of me. My travel glasses were still in my backpack, so I had to trust Valcas completely. We were going wherever he had in mind to take us.

  The world around us whizzed past. I squinted my eyes as the white light surrounded us and grew brighter. Then I closed them, letting Valcas and his travel glasses transport me.

  When I opened my eyes, I gasped, not because the world around us changed again. I was getting used to that. This time was different.

  We stood above a body of water. I looked down, half expecting to sink, but the water below me felt solid. We weren’t just above the water, we were standing on it.

  I stomped my foot and then looked down, sliding my eyes and toes along the ground. The water was motionless, resembling glass molded into ripples. But it wasn’t silver, like the still waters of Nowheres, and it didn’t appear to be wet.

  “What is this place?” I asked.

  “Take a closer look,” Valcas said. He let go of my hand and took a step backward.

  I scanned the water below me and took a few steps. Each time, my foot came in contact with solid ground. But it wasn’t technically ground. I bent down to touch the water, expecting it to be frozen and slippery, like ice. My finger pressed and then scraped along the glossy material. It was smooth and solid, like glass. Cool, but not cold. I sucked in a breath. This was amazing. More than amazing, but I still had no idea what it was.

  I looked up at Valcas who watched me, amused.

  “There’s a lot more to see here than water,” he said.

  I stood back and looked around again, taking small, careful steps, because in the back of my mind the “water” should have been slippery. But it wasn’t.

  A few feet away I saw a small motorboat. It was tan and white with Pipette painted across its side. My eyes widened as I studied the figures inside the small boat. A blonde girl sat in the driver’s seat, clenching the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles were white. Her golden hair stuck straight out from her head, hanging there in midair, as stiff as straw. Next to her sat a bronzed teen boy, with dark curls just like mine, holding on for his life. Had he been smiling, I knew his almond-shaped eyes would crease at the edges and his cheeks would dimple. But he wasn’t smiling. Neither was the dark-haired girl behind him—the only one wearing sunglasses. A past version of me. Everyone’s mouths were open as if they’d been screaming. I glanced back and forth between the two girls and the boy as the memory took shape and sharpened inside my mind.

  Shirlyn, Romaso and I were inside the Pipette, lifeless and completely frozen in time.

  My jaw dropped.

  I knew where I was, where Valcas had taken me. He’d brought me to Folkestone Harbor, England, just before I’d tried to travel to Valcas’ past, and Shirlyn and Romaso got dragged along with me.

  I spun around in the opposite direction, where I knew another boat would be. Sure enough, a larger motorboat painted yellow and black was there, facing the Pipette, with Valcas inside. He, too, had his mouth open, but instead of looking panicked, the corners of his lips were upturned, in a frozen smile, as if he’d been delivering his favorite joke.

  I clenched my teeth, remembering. After boarding the Pipette, I’d put on the travel glasses to shade my eyes from the tartness of the sun’s glare coming off the water. Yep, that was stupid. But that was what I’d done. Valcas had taken advantage of the opportunity. Or at least he’d tried.

  His words that day rang in my ears as I stared at the frozen replica of him: “Is the water so bright, Calla?” He’d spoken to me through the travel glasses, using the glasses’ communication feature. Then he’d warned me to watch out… just before trying to run over the Pipette and those of us inside of it with his motorboat!

  I spun around again, this time toward the version of Valcas that lived and breathed beside me.

  “Fascinating, isn’t it?” He smiled.

  My heart thudded violently in my chest. “You tried to kill us!”

  Valcas shook his head and frowned. He clearly didn’t expect that reaction from me. Was he crazy? His people skills reeked!

  “I would never try to kill you.” He sighed. “I was trying to get you to come back with me that day.”

  “I know. Mom told me that much already. Valcas, you were chasing us down with a motorboat!”

  He placed his hands out in front of him in a placating gesture. “What is it going to take to get the point across to you that I never meant you any harm?”

  “Did you bring me here to apologize again?” I asked.

  “No. This is an example of slicing. I brought us to that exact moment. The travel glasses can transport their wearer to an active place and time. They can also transport one to an inactive place and time, an immovable moment. I knew you would recognize this moment, and I wanted you to observe it more closely.”

  I shook out my hands and took a deep breath, trying to relieve some of the tension. No, I decided. He’s not crazy. He’s completely bonkers.

  “What do you notice about the larger motorboat?” he asked.

  I glanced in the direction
of the larger boat and then looked back and forth between it and the Pipette. Confused, I walked toward the yellow and black vessel for a closer look. The front of the boat was fixed inside the solid water surrounding it, like a gigantic model ship displayed in waterline. But it wasn’t pointed toward the Pipette. Not exactly. From farther back it had looked like the two boats were facing each other. I remembered feeling as if Valcas’ motorboat was coming straight at us from inside the Pipette too. But…

  I frowned as I examined the front of the yellow and black motorboat. It was shifted far enough to the side, in such a way that, had both boats traveled forward at the same time, they wouldn’t have collided. They never would have crashed. And Valcas had known that the whole time!

  “But I saw you coming straight toward us!” I yelled. Which, of course, was why I’d yelled for Shirlyn to turn around.

  Valcas nodded. His lips were pressed in a tight line.

  My gaze flashed between the harbor and the yellow and black boat. I drew back, wondering whether Valcas had found some other way of reconstructing the scene. Maybe this was a trick, an alternate reality that he’d made up.

  “I was trying to scare you,” he said. “I thought it would help you see reason, but I failed.” He looked more foolish than sorry.

  I took a deep breath and lowered my voice. “So how come you didn’t kill both of us by time traveling to me? We were both wearing the travel glasses. I hadn’t figured out how to use the device Enta added to the travel glasses to block you out. Edgar said that if someone tried traveling to someone else wearing a pair of travel glasses, one set would consume the other and both people wearing the glasses would die—like what happened with Enta’s twin daughters.”

  Valcas’ frown deepened. “I never knew Enta had twin daughters,” he said. “And I wasn’t time traveling to you in that moment.”

  My jaw dropped. “What do you mean?”

  “I was recording.”

  I’D SUSPECTED that Valcas had already been at Folkestone Harbor that day, waiting for me. Now I knew it had to be true.

  “You were recording?”

  Valcas stepped closer to me, stopping when he was just inches away. He placed a hand on my shoulder as he pointed at the version of himself in the larger motorboat. “I recorded while communicating with you through the glasses.” He tapped his sunglasses. “If you don’t believe me, I can show you. Our recorded conversation is right here, inside this pair. Although, I must warn you, you looked and sounded rather scared.”

  I ignored his last statement. What he’d said slowly began to make sense to me. I remembered my last Estrel-flyer flight with his past self, the green-eyed version of Valcas. I’d recorded the entire flight—I’d burned everything I saw, heard and felt into the travel glasses. But, despite being in motion during the flight, the travel glasses hadn’t transported me somewhere else in time and space. Motion was necessary for time travel; but, if the traveler was recording, then he or she could be in motion without traveling. Not only had Valcas figured that out, but he’d also discovered how to record with the travel glasses while using them to communicate with someone else…all while in motion.

  Impressed, I looked up at Valcas. “How do you have so much control over all of the different ways to use travel glasses?”

  He grinned. “I’ve been using them for a long time, studying them, trying to figure out whether there are more ways to use them.”

  I hissed a breath through my teeth. What had I gotten myself into? Would I ever be able to master the travel glasses the same way Valcas had? I doubted it. But I could try.

  “Okay,” I said, trying to figure out some way to digest all this information and combine it with what I’d learned earlier. “The glasses can be used to travel through time and space. That’s called transporting and it requires motion. The bright white light is the Everywhere and Everywhen through which a traveler can pass.”

  “Correct,” said Valcas, nodding. “But let’s just call that traveling. Transport technically means to bring or carry someone with you, whereas traveling means going somewhere.”

  “Okay, traveling,” I said, noting the subtle difference between traveling and transporting before continuing. “The glasses can also be used to speak to someone else wearing the glasses at the same time. That’s when you can see the other person, but not his or her surroundings. The other person looks like a cardboard cutout pasted on an all-white background.”

  “Yes, that’s what it looks like to me as well.”

  “Then, there’s recording.” I cleared my throat. “I, um, learned how to record at the White Tower.”

  Valcas nodded again, this time blushing. I had no idea why.

  “What?” I asked.

  “What?” he repeated.

  “You’re blushing.” I couldn’t hide the fact that I noticed it anymore. That was the third time today.

  Valcas shrugged. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Why not? It kind of weirds me out. What about all this could possibly make you, of all people, blush?”

  “It’s nothing,” he said, twitching the muscles in his jaw. “From what I just told you, you can be in motion with the glasses while communicating and not travel through time and space. That’s why it was safe for both of us to be wearing the travel glasses at Folkestone Harbor.”

  I looked at him silently for a moment. “Okay, so now I understand that you can both communicate and record at the same time. Then, later, as you can with anything else already recorded in the glasses, I assume you can play it all back and watch the recordings while searching for them.”

  Valcas sharply inhaled. “You are definitely getting the hang of this,” he said. “And quickly. Are you sure that you didn’t learn more about this from Edgar?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. Like I said, I learned in bits and pieces from Edgar, Enta and you.” I bent down to touch the water below us, testing its solidity before crossing my legs and sitting down. I looked up at Valcas through my lashes. “How on Earth did you figure out how to use the glasses for slicing?”

  “What makes you think it happened on Earth?”

  I laughed. “Point taken. Really, though, how did you find out about it?”

  “I stumbled upon it,” Valcas said as he sat down across from me, pulling his knees in toward his chest. “I found myself in a place like this one day while trying to escape from a fight.”

  I raised my eyebrows, placed my elbows on my thighs and cupped my face in my hands. “You mean you ran away?” Now this was a story I wanted to hear.

  Valcas pursed his lips. “You would have run too if you’d seen what was after me.”

  “What was it?” I asked, leaning closer.

  “Nothing you need to worry about,” he said. “But it was fast… and dangerous.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Okay, so all of a sudden you found yourself in a particular instant in another place in time, frozen in an inactive moment.”

  Valcas nodded. “It was on a baseball field. The pitcher had just thrown the ball. His arm was outstretched and the ball was on its way to the batter, but had stopped, frozen in the air.”

  “You traveled to a baseball game?” What a strange escape route, I thought.

  “Yes. I didn’t have a recording of it to refer to before traveling, not that I would have had enough time to do so. I was still learning to travel with an unofficial object. Something somewhere in my subconscious must have brought me there that day. What, I don’t know, but when I got there I knew that somehow it was meant to be.”

  “So it did happen on Earth,” I blurted out. “It sounds like you were distracted. When I escaped, or rather, took my leave of you at Folkestone Harbor, I was distracted too. I tried to travel to the White Tower, but ended up in a Nowhere instead, in an empty space with a still pool of water.”

  “Interesting,” Valcas said, watching me. “We’ll have to discuss that further at some point.” He cleared his throat. “Yes, it was on Earth that I first learned of slicing. But I was
n’t alone.”

  “Well, no,” I said. “There would have been all the players on each team, their coaches and all the fans.”

  Suddenly, Valcas looked uncomfortable or emotional, I couldn’t tell which. “What is it?” I asked. “Who else was there?”

  Valcas tilted his head and stared down at his knees for a moment before looking back up at me. “Your father.”

  A FAINT squeak escaped my lips. “You met my father at a baseball game on Earth?”

  Valcas squeezed his knees closer to him. He truly did look uncomfortable, but this time he wasn’t blushing. “That was the first time I met Plaka. He called out, from somewhere behind me. I’d been absorbed in looking at the unmoving world around me and was surprised that anything, or anyone, mobile would also be there.”

  “‘Fascinating, isn’t it?’ Plaka said to me. ‘The worlds are beautiful, despite being cluttered with all that moves around them and us. Everything happens so quickly that we don’t get to appreciate the full beauty of all of it until we are frozen in time.’ His words rang in my ears.

  “‘Is that where we are now?’ I asked him. Plaka looked at me and smiled. From that day forward, your father and I were inseparable. I learned more from him than I’d learned from anyone else. He was a true-born traveler with a special talent I’d never seen before. He had the ability to take past versions of people, the silhouettes of real people that had actually existed, and take them with him to different places and times.”

  I gulped. Like me, my father had been a Remnant Transporter, but I had no idea what the significance of that was. “Why is that so important?”

  Valcas stared at me. “Your father used his gift to comfort others. Perhaps you’ve heard stories of people conducting séances to try to communicate with the dead.”

  I grimaced.

  Valcas held up a hand. “That’s not what Plaka did. Instead, he sought out the lonely and the lost and comforted them. He did so by bringing past versions of their loved ones to them so that they could enjoy the silhouettes’ company. Sometimes he did this for people who never had a chance to say good-bye. More often, though, he helped the lost who had lived too long to reconcile themselves with the past before finding themselves again. He was a special type of healer.”