Insight Kindling

by Chess Desalls

  “Yes. I don’t know where she is, but she has multiple pairs of travel glasses. Valcas and I can try contacting her, either here or at our next destination. Maybe we should visit her first, instead of Chascadia.” Frowning, I added, “Only, I don’t know if she’d be willing to help us.”

  Valcas stepped back from me. He looked conflicted. “Why wouldn’t Nurse Vittor help us?”

  My cheeks flushed. “As much as she tried to help me, I think she blames me for something.”

  “What could she possibly blame you for?”

  I lowered my head. “Edgar’s death.”

  Valcas pulled me into a gooey hug. “You weren’t responsible for Edgar’s death, Calla.”

  “But I didn’t gather the ingredients for his youth elixir in time. I got distracted. I fell asleep—”

  “Well,” he said, “if Enta harbors hard feelings against you, there’s no better time to find out than now.” He slid his pair of travel glasses onto his face.

  As Valcas tried to contact Enta, I noticed just how warm the air space was in between the balm and fire layers. Now that I had a chance to see the air layer for myself, I was surprised at how large it was. No wonder the burning sensation of going through the Fire Falls had felt like it lasted forever.

  I gazed up at the vines along the wall. They were several inches thick in diameter and reached all the way from the ground to the top of the Falls. I couldn’t tell whether they’d grown up or down—they seemed to be either coming out of or going into the balm layer. I hoped they were strong enough to rope together and hold our weight.

  To my left was the fire layer, endless licks of flame that reached out and baked the side of my body. I stepped as far back from it as possible. If we were to climb the vines and accidentally swing ourselves into the fire layer and fall, the result would be deadly.

  I TWISTED three thick vines into a long, green braid. Ivory had cut the bottoms of the vines free with her knife. At first I’d been happy to hear that we weren’t going to be cutting a ladder into the side of the rock wall, but now that I saw how high the vines were, I wished we would have used Ivory’s knife to etch footholds into the wall. My upper body wasn’t trained for this type of climbing—or any type of climbing, really.

  As we roped the vines, Valcas recounted his conversation with Enta.

  “How’s she doing?” I asked.

  “Physically well,” Valcas said. “But deeply depressed. Edgar’s death greatly affected her.”

  “I didn’t understand it either, at first. Valcas, did you know that Enta was in love with Edgar?”

  “Hmm,” Valcas said. He didn’t seem as interested in the story as I was. He seemed much more intent on his vines. After a few moments of concentrated silence, he said, “Whether that is true or not, Enta seems to be on a mission of her own.”

  My mouth dropped open. “You mean she was charged with an infraction?”

  “No, nothing like that,” he said. “She’s been using her travel glasses to travel through time and space, which is why it was so easy to contact her. She must be wearing them all the time now.” He frowned.

  “Valcas, what’s wrong? What aren’t you telling me?”

  “I think Enta’s trying to forget about her worries; I think she’s trying to become lost.”

  “Oh, no! Are you sure?”

  His frown deepened.

  “Why would she do that?” I asked, the pitch of my voice rising. If Enta was traveling through time and space it would make it difficult for us to travel to her, so that potentially ruined some of our plans. After what had happened to Edgar, how could she be out there trying to get lost on purpose?

  Valcas didn’t respond. I glanced over at him. His jaw was firmly set and he refused to meet my eyes.

  “I know you were close to Enta. She was your nurse and governess. I’m so sorry.”

  His hands grasped onto the vines until his knuckles turned white. My father immediately ran over to him.

  “Calm down, Valcas,” he said, resting his hands on Valcas’ chest and back. “Breathe. Enta’s emotions must run their course. You of all people should understand that.”

  I threw my father a questioning look. His eyes were sad. He shook his head, as if to tell me not to press the issue. It was as if he were able to sense my next question, words I later realized I should have kept to myself.

  “Valcas, why would you understand what it’s like to intentionally get lost?” I asked.

  Valcas looked over at me with pain burning his eyes, bright green eyes that had looked hopeful—eyes that had comforted me—just moments ago when I’d come through the balm layer choking and gasping for air.

  “Sometimes—” he said, in a voice that was barely a whisper, a voice that didn’t sound quite like his own, but rather, like a stranger… the way I remembered him sounding when I first met him at the dock. “Sometimes it’s the only way to forget.”

  I swallowed and broke my eyes free from Valcas’. Looking up at my father, I said, “You’re right. I’m sorry I didn’t take the hint.” I shook my head. Now I wasn’t sure whether I ever wanted to find out what happened to Valcas.

  Ivory and Ray silently stared at Valcas and my father, wide-eyed and with sympathy. How I wished Ivory would say something to break the ice. But she didn’t. She let Valcas have his moment.

  Maybe that was better.

  VALCAS CALMED down again by the time all the vines we needed had been roped, which was good given that I lamely and literally needed his support. No way was I strong enough.

  I looked at Ivory’s long, lean muscles with envy, knowing that her arms and legs were every bit as strong as Valcas’. Then, as if she and Valcas had read my thoughts and wanted to tease me, they raced to the top of the vines, as if this was something they practiced every single day.

  Ray and I exchanged a glance. How were we going to climb up the vines? Worse yet, how was my father going to do this? He stood by, watching Valcas and Ivory, with his hands clasped behind his back.

  I tugged at my vine and placed one foot on the rock wall. I made it two steps up before I slid on the rock and fell flat on my behind, my hands scraping along the vine on the way down.

  “Ouch,” I said, rubbing my hands. Embarrassed, I stood with my back to the balm layer and slid my hands inside. The blobby fluid instantly cooled and eased the painful sting.

  “You don’t think we’re going to let you climb up here by yourself, do you?” Ivory yelled down at me.

  “That’s a relief,” I said. “How are you going to get the rest of us up there?”

  “We’re tying the vines into swings.”

  I looked up and, sure enough, the vine Ivory had climbed was now knotted into a loop. She deftly held onto the vine, grabbed the one next to her and lowered the looped end.

  “Put your legs through this and hold on,” she said. “We’ll pull you up.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” If only Kevin Staunch could see me now—Cow-la getting pulled up the side of a wall with a rope. I wondered what kind of cow game that would be called. Cow raising, maybe?

  My father urged me on. “The faster we all get up there, the faster we can leave here.”

  He was right. The air layer felt hotter by the minute, with the nearby fire heating the air and drying the blue-green goo to our clothing and skin.

  I looked up at Ivory as she pulled my rope, marveling at her strength instead of looking at the dizzying depths below. “How are you doing this?” I asked.

  Ivory snickered. “You may have special Chascadian talents, but the blood of Aboreal runs through my veins. Valcas’ too. We’re pretty resilient. Right, Tarzan?—saw that movie on an Earth mission. Good stuff.”

  Valcas sniffed. “If you need more outlets for your strength, Ivory, my mother is available for arm wrestling matches.”

  “You two are crazy,” I said, shaking my head. Both of them had their feet twisted through loops in the vines so they could free their hands for pulling.

  While I
vory pulled me up, Valcas lowered his looped vine down to Ray and repeated the process on his side. Then she and Valcas swapped places, so Ray was with her and Valcas was with me. This left my father to climb by himself, which, to my surprise, he managed quite well. I wondered how the Chascadian timeline compared to the Aborealian one. How young was his strength? That, however, was a matter for later.

  With all of us raised up in the vines, we were high enough to get in motion. We were ready to travel.

  I REFLEXIVELY reached for my travel glasses. I hoped I wouldn’t have to use them, but I remembered Valcas’ prior warning—that I should wear them just in case something went wrong and I needed a quick escape.

  “No,” Valcas said, reaching for me. “Keep them somewhere safe.” He circled an arm around my waist and backed me up against him.

  “But what if we need to run?”

  “The Uproar won’t risk getting inside here,” he said.

  “That doesn’t make sense. If we can communicate and travel inside this layer, why couldn’t the Uproar just show up here?”

  “You have a point, but…”

  “But what?”

  He kissed me lightly on my jaw, just beneath my ear. “I’ve never been more hopeful than I am now.”

  Sighing, I tucked the travel glasses inside my backpack.

  “Are you two coming with us?” Ivory yelled. “We could always come back for you… after you’ve had more time to yourselves.”

  “Of course we’re going,” I yelled back. “We’re just waiting for something to happen. Have we decided on a destination?”

  “Yes,” my father said, his eyes glistening. “We shall visit Enta sometime soon; but right now, we are headed to Chascadia!”

  “Well, at least I might have some family there,” I muttered under my breath.

  Valcas chuckled, squeezing me more tightly. “I’m sure you do. Now watch Plaka’s method of time travel. It’s, as he would say… fascinating.”

  With his legs looped through the vine, my father detached the baglamas from his belt. I gaped, wondering how he was going to play the instrument while holding onto the vine.

  He certainly didn’t look worried about it. His grin was huge. A glint of gold, from his gold tooth, reflected the flames of the fire layer. He counted aloud, as if he were setting the beat to his favorite tune.

  “One. Two. Three. And four!”

  Instead of freeing his other hand to strum the strings of the baglamas, my father swiped the instrument through the air. He did this again and again, scooping the air like he was serving up soup and the baglamas was his ladle.

  I counted four swipes before I started to hear a low buzz, as if the air was bouncing off the strings, creating sound. The buzzing sound grew until it echoed off the ceiling of the air space, bouncing back down, and then up again. I could hardly believe what I was hearing.

  Then, I couldn’t believe what I was feeling. As the waves of sound bounced back and forth, growing louder, I kid you not, I felt the air bend.

  I gasped. “What’s happening?”

  “The sound waves Plaka set in motion are creating a vortex,” Valcas explained. “In just a few moments, the pull will be strong enough for us to travel. We’ll be able to jump without falling to the ground.”

  “How do we jump toward the vortex without missing it?” I asked. “I can feel something, but I can’t see it.”

  “Don’t worry. The vortex will suction us inside.” He laughed. “We wouldn’t be able to avoid it if we tried.”

  “Yeah, okay.” I caught a glimpse of Ray who was intensely watching the whole thing, probably recording the scene with his brain. I wondered what the vortex felt like to someone like him, who I knew could sense and feel the presence of the Uproar. I hoped it wasn’t too uncomfortable.

  The buzzing sound increased to a thrashing rush of wind.

  “It’s time!” Plaka shouted over the wind. “Let go of the vines!”

  I slipped my legs out from where they’d been looped and clung to Valcas. He didn’t remove his arm around me, but sooner than I was ready, he let go of our vines.

  We fell.

  I felt the drop deep in my gut.

  I held my breath, trying to appear strong. I didn’t want to be the only one to scream.

  Rather than plummeting downward, we hovered diagonally in the air, as if some other force had a hold on us, funneling us in.

  More slowly than I expected, all of us—my father, Ray, Ivory, Valcas and I—were pulled together, tightly packed inside the vortex. The room—the air layer—spun around us. It felt like one of those amusement park rides that twirls around until you’re stuck so tightly to the wall that you stay in place even after the floor drops.

  Only, instead of staying in place, we fell. Hard. I suddenly had the sensation of being tossed from a cliff. It felt that way until I was blinded by bright white light.

  I closed my eyes.

  THE LIGHT faded just in time for me to open my eyes again and see what I was about to smack into: the ground. I, along with the rest of my team members, tumbled over, like a stack of raised dominoes that had been violently tipped by the flick of a giant’s finger.

  I looked up at the sky, taking in the glow of the teardrop moons… Of Chascadia! We’d made it! We’d found my father and escaped the Fire Falls. Our mission was complete.

  My father fell to the ground and kissed it. The darkness prevented me from seeing what color scheme this new world had. Was it like the White Tower? Was it anything like Aboreal?

  Unfortunately, we didn’t stay long enough to find out.

  Because that’s when the watch that the TSTA had given me finally revealed what it was.

  THE DAY we reached Chascadia was the day I started to believe in my father’s theories about the TSTA. Maybe I’d believed them earlier, but didn’t want to admit it. Maybe I’d hoped that a time travel agency would bring order to my world of confusion. Maybe not.

  My father barely had time to wipe the soil of his homeland from his lips before my watch turned bright red and started beeping.

  “I knew it,” he growled, glaring at my wrist.

  My hand flew to my wrist. I tapped and swiped furiously at the watch face, trying to silence it or shut it down.

  The red light glowed brighter, shooting a beam up into the sky. Its beeping tones stretched out until it screamed like a siren.

  “Take it off your wrist, Calla,” bellowed my father. He grabbed my forearm and held it up. “We will bury the vice of surveillance deep in the ground.”

  In two swift swipes, my father removed the watch from my wrist. Digging with his hands, he plowed a hole in the ground that was six inches deep. He planted my watch inside the hole and covered it back up, pounding his foot into the ground, while the rest of us stood by, gaping.

  I thought it would take the TSTA officers a while to catch up with us—the way they had when Valcas was taken to TSTA Headquarters for his first infraction: world building without a permit. The TSTA hadn’t threatened to come after me at the White Tower either, not unless I would have refused to let Valcas take me there.

  I was wrong.

  My father’s burial of the watch had deadened its noise. None of its red light poked through the ground. So then, where were the sirens I heard now?

  Valcas looked up at the sky, no doubt searching for the loud pulsing noise above and around us. “Plaka,” he said, “did something else happen that you haven’t told us about?”

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

  “Then what do we do?” I asked, shaking. “Where do we go?”

  My father looked at Valcas. His gaze was stern, demanding.

  Valcas shook his head. “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—”

  “Valcas is right,” said Ivory. “We can’t jus
t show up there uninvited. I’d rather the TSTA arrest us than go to an Aborealian prison any day.”

  Earlier, Valcas and Ivory had joked about not wanting to overstay our welcome in Aboreal. I’d thought they were bantering about silly customs. I had no idea they were worried about something more dangerous. Visions of Aborealian children wearing black and gold robes flooded my mind. The sweet notes of their singing, their funeral chant, revisited my ears.

  My father stood there in stunned silence. His face sagged, defeated.

  “What about the White Tower?” I asked.

  I felt Valcas’ body go rigid beside me. “I can’t go back there,” he said, his voice tight.

  “Why not? You picked me up from the White Tower to take me to TSTA Headquarters for my hearing. You seemed fine then.”

  “That was the White Tower from my past,” he said. The pain I’d seen in Valcas’ eyes in the air layer behind the Fire Falls had crawled back in again, searing and terrifying.

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

  He shook his head. “No,” he whispered. His eyes pled with me, begging me not to ask any more questions about it.

  My next question caught in my throat, unasked.

  My father walked over to us and placed his hands on our shoulders. “You haven’t been to the White Tower ever since?”

  “No,” Valcas said.

  I couldn’t stand it any longer. “Since what? When?” I asked.

  Valcas hung his head. His response was a miserable whisper. “Since my father’s death.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, crushing him in my arms. I blinked back tears. “I had no idea.” Although, I might have—had I taken the time to think about it. Valcas’ father, Jim, was Edgar’s younger brother, but would be nearly as old. Edgar’s daughter, Shirlyn, was barely alive in her early one hundreds. There was no way her uncle Jim was still living.

  The difference between my timeline and Valcas’ had worried me before; but now, the full effect of that time gap crushed me. Jim had died according to his own timeline, leaving Sable a widow for however many thousands of years, who knows. If Valcas and I stayed together, if our relationship deepened into something more serious, then I would die long before he did, leaving him alone again.