Insight Kindling

by Chess Desalls

  I blinked back tears. Enta had Edgar’s recipe for his youth elixir. If it became absolutely necessary, I could always travel back in time and get the ingredients from Edgar again, and ask Enta to help me—assuming she wasn’t lost by then. My face crumpled. Everything was so complicated.

  Valcas clung to me as I thought through all these things. Later, I hoped to sit with him and have a serious conversation about the timelines and his father’s death.

  But right now, I had to rip my thoughts back to the present situation. We needed to escape from the sirens, which no doubt signaled the arrival of TSTA officers.

  As if reading my thoughts, a flock of flat silver jets appeared in the sky. The rumble of their engines rivaled the noise of the blaring sirens. Tunneling winds roared around us as the jets drew nearer. I froze, wondering whether the jets planned to land right on top of us.

  “We need to decide where to go!” yelled Ivory. “We’re running out of time.”

  “There’s not enough time to activate the baglamas,” my father pointed out.

  “Then we’ll need to run,” I said. “We have to use the travel glasses.” My heart sank, knowing they would once again affect my eyes. But I had no choice.

  I slipped my glasses on my face and reached for the hands of my father and Valcas. Ivory clasped hands with Valcas and Ray. We were joined, my team and I, as well as the object of our completed mission, my father.

  “On the count of three,” I yelled. “We run.”

  Ivory grinned. “Way to take charge, Transporter.”

  “Calla, where are we going?” Valcas asked. He’d also put on his pair of travel glasses. He was not grinning.

  “To a place where I stayed a long time without being attacked by the Uproar or bothered by the TSTA—to a Nowhere, to Edgar’s workshop in the woods. It’s abandoned now.”

  Valcas squeezed my hand. “Fine. There’s no need or time to explain. We trust you can take us there.”

  I focused on Edgar’s workshop in the woods, with its surrounding woods and the still, silver brook. His front garden would be wildly overgrown. Edgar wouldn’t be there to welcome us. But his Nowhere, his un-place, was somewhere we could go, one that I could find with my eyes closed, as long as I was wearing the travel glasses.

  “All right, let’s go!” I yelled. “One… Two… Three!”

  Hands joined, we broke into a run. Our feet kicked up Chascadian soil. The jets blew the soil back down at us from above. I ignored the rumblings and sirens that pierced my ears and focused on Edgar’s workshop.

  The sounds faded as the darkness around us lit up with a bright, warm glow.

  THEN IT was dark again.

  Our arrival tore our hands apart and scattered us on the ground, as if we were two and a half pairs of dice.

  I propped my glasses on top of my head and looked around, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness and my ears to the silence.

  “Is everyone all right?” I asked. “Did we all make it?”

  “I’m here,” said Valcas from somewhere to my left.

  “As am I,” said my father.

  “Ray and I are here too, Calla. Good work.” The sound of Ivory’s voice and her approval made me smile.

  I breathed a sigh of relief. In that breath, I could smell and taste pine needles. I stood up and took a few steps. When I heard the crunch of pine needles beneath my feet, I smiled.

  “We must have landed in the thicket of trees,” I said. “If we pick a direction and walk for a little while, I’ll be able to tell where we are based on the location of the brook. Edgar’s workshop is in the opposite direction.”

  We tried a couple of different routes through the trees before we oriented ourselves. As we neared the workshop, I gasped.

  Edgar’s garden looked like a small jungle. I lifted a drooping stalk of a plant I couldn’t identify. Of course, given Edgar’s bizarre cultivations, I may not have been able to identify it had it not been overgrown.

  “I don’t know if any of this is edible,” I said, frowning. “There aren’t any fish in the brook, or anything else to hunt and eat either.”

  Ivory squeezed my shoulder. “We’ll manage. Right now, what’s important is that we’re safe. Now that your tracking device is buried in another world, it should take the TSTA a while to catch up with us. You’ve bought us time.”

  I nodded. “We should go inside. I’m sure there’s a packet or two of stale biscuits and a stash of herbal tea in the lab. That’s better than nothing, I guess.”

  Ray laughed. “Tea and stale anything will be an improvement over fish and seaweed.”

  I looked up at Ray and smiled. It was nice to see him both feeling better and laughing again. He looked down at my hand, as if he were considering taking it and walking with me into the workshop. He lifted his hand and hesitated. Then, looking at Valcas, he dropped his hand, walked past me and followed Ivory and my father to the workshop.

  Valcas didn’t say anything. His face was a blank canvas. He slowly took off his glasses and slipped them inside his jacket.

  “Come on,” I said. “I’ll give you the grand tour of the workshop in the woods. Edgar always left it unlocked.”

  He nodded. I expected him to take my hand; but, unlike Ray, Valcas didn’t look at me or my hand. He just walked stiffly next to me as we walked from the garden to the workshop’s front door.

  I shrugged and pushed past Ray and Ivory, who stood next to the open door. “There are lamps in the living room, along the wall. Once we light up the place, we can fire up Edgar’s stove to make tea.”

  I lit the first couple of lamps by feeling my way around the room. After Ivory helped me get the room in order, I gave everyone the same tour Edgar had given me. “The living room has a love seat and a chair—Edgar called it an easy-chair. There are plenty of pillows and blankets.” I grinned, pulling extra blankets out of Edgar’s chest of drawers. “We should sleep better tonight than we have in a long time.”

  Ivory and Ray both smiled.

  “To the right of the lab,” I continued, “there’s a washroom and library. And the brook outside has plenty of drinking water.”

  “I’ve got dibs on the washroom,” said Ivory, running through the lab. Ray followed her immediately, but with less urgency.

  “Thank you, Calla.” My father sounded sad, homesick. “You chose well. This is a suitable temporary destination.”

  “I hope we can get you back to Chascadia soon,” I said. “Even if that means I need to go back to the TSTA alone, to tell them that the mission is complete.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Valcas said. “They already know we found Plaka. You’ve paid your penalty—we all have. You’re free to go wherever and whenever you please.”

  “Then why all the sirens and jets?”

  Valcas shrugged. The lamps on the wall flickered and reflected in his bright green eyes, but for whatever reason he avoided looking directly into mine. “I don’t know. I was as surprised as you were when they showed up. Maybe I should have stayed behind to find out what they wanted.”

  I stared at Valcas. What was his problem? Didn’t he want to be here with us, together and safe?

  “What’s the matter, Valcas?” my father said.

  He didn’t respond.

  My father looked at him, focused on him as if trying to read him, his patient. “It’s been a trying day. Maybe you should get some rest.”

  “Actually,” Valcas said, “I’d like to go for a walk. I—I’ll be back.” Without another word, Valcas stormed out of the living room. Just as I heard the laboratory door slam shut, Ray came back with a packet of biscuits.

  “This bag of crackers was open,” he said, using the American word for biscuits. A couple of stray crumbs escaped his lips. He swallowed as if he were eating the driest thing in the world. Despite that, he smiled. His eyes widened when he saw my father and me standing there, still stunned from Valcas’ behavior. “What?” he said.

  I didn’t stick around long enough to hea
r my father’s response. I ran out of the workshop to see if I could catch up with Valcas. Something was seriously wrong; whatever it was ate me up inside. I hoped I could help, even though I didn’t know whether that was possible.

  Unsure of which direction Valcas had wandered, I instinctively walked toward my favorite part of Edgar’s Nowhere—the brook. The still silver brook had a way of calming me. I’d spent a lot of time there when I lived with Edgar, when he’d given me lessons about time travel—after I’d escaped from Valcas. That felt like a lifetime ago.

  As I cautiously stepped through the thick layer of trees, the scent of pine grew heavier. I walked, thinking about Valcas. He’d been so hopeful just before we left the interior of the Fire Falls, the air layer. I didn’t know if it was the sirens in Chascadia, or the TSTA watch lighting up like a beacon, or what it was that changed his mood so suddenly. He’d seemed fine until we started discussing where to go next. His hesitance to go to Aboreal was understandable. The last straw seemed to be my request that we return to the White Tower, a place he hadn’t visited since his father died. Maybe that’s what was on his mind; but was that enough to make him ignore me and storm off into the woods?

  I shook my head. I didn’t know what to think anymore.

  The trees around me thinned and opened into a glade of wild grasses. I’d almost reached the brook. When the sun was out, the water sparkled by reflecting the streams of light that came through the pine trees overhead. The brook wasn’t as impressive in the dark as it was during the daytime. With no light to reflect, the brook was black and somber, similar to Ivory’s eyes.

  I stepped carefully, imagining the brook would be nearly as dark as the ground. I wasn’t in the mood to accidently fall in; although, it wouldn’t be a horrible idea given that I was covered head-to-toe in dried blue-green balm. Still, I much preferred the washroom in the workshop.

  Just as I thought I saw a difference in the ground below me, something glassy and smooth in contrast to the rough grasses, I heard another crunching sound. Footsteps coming toward me.

  “Valcas?”

  “YES, CALLA. It’s me.”

  Before I could say anything, before I could ask him all of the questions I’d been thinking about while walking through the woods, I felt his arms around me and his lips press against mine.

  When I gasped, his lips pressed harder. This wasn’t anything like the time I’d kissed him at his palace, a manipulative move I’d made to take his travel glasses and run away. This was more like when his past self kissed me at the White Tower, after learning that the TSTA had charged me with two infractions, and that I was going to be taken away. His past self had wanted to come with me to my hearing, but I couldn’t let that happen.

  Both of those prior kisses were good-byes. This one felt different than the good-bye kiss at the White Tower because I knew that this version of Valcas was real, not just a shadow of his past. But why did it feel so familiar? Why did this kiss also feel like a good-bye?

  I started, pushing myself back slightly, breaking the kiss. Catching my breath, I said, “What happened, Valcas? What’s wrong?”

  “Everything,” he said. “Everyone, Everywhere, Everywhen… all of it. It’s all wrong.”

  “I don’t understand,” I answered, my voice breaking. “We’re together now. We’re away from the Fire Falls. You helped me find my father. We can be together now.”

  Valcas exhaled a deep sigh. “No, we can’t.”

  “What do you mean?” My cheeks flushed with panic. “You’ve more than proven yourself to me, if that’s what you need to hear.”

  “That’s the worst thing you could have said to me right now, Calla.”

  “I—I’m sorry. I’m sorry if I made you feel like you had to prove yourself. It was wrong of me. I didn’t know you yet, who you really are.”

  “And you don’t. You won’t. We’re not right for each other. Our timelines won’t permit it. Just look at my parents, Calla. My father lived for the briefest glimpse of my mother’s life, of my life. Then one day he was gone. Now, take someone like Ray—”

  “Ray?”

  Valcas let go of my waist and held me out at arm’s length. “You and Ray are both Earthlings. I’m not even living under Aborealian time, like Ivory is. I was born in the timeline in the world my parents created. Chascadia’s timeline is closer to the White Tower’s timeline than any other world. But even that doesn’t help us. You and Ray are both—”

  “I don’t want Ray, Valcas!”

  He tensed, frowning. He avoided my eyes.

  “I’m half Chascadian,” I said desperately, fully knowing that wouldn’t matter since I was born on Earth, under Earth’s timeline.

  Valcas relaxed his stance. “I see how Ray looks at you. He’s talented… and good. You could make him happy. He could make you happy. You could give each other your entire lives.”

  “You don’t mean that. You can’t—” I blinked back tears.

  He let go of me and took a step backward. “Yes, I do.”

  “So that was a good-bye kiss?” My words weren’t sad or whiny. They were bitter. “After all that we’ve been through together—the chase, the TSTA mission, the Fire Falls. You want to give up. Just like that?”

  “I don’t see any other way. I’m sorry.”

  “Okay, fine. Then we give up,” I said, pacing. “What choice do I have, seeing as you’ve given me no part in the decision?”

  Having never been in a relationship before, I’d never broken up with anybody either. Valcas was dumping me. It hurt more than I could have possibly imagined—like he was tearing my heart in half with his bare hands.

  Worse than the pain, was the unfairness of it all. What happened to my choice?—back when Valcas had told me I was the one who should tell him if he had no chance. In one quick blast, he’d turned my choice on its head. I hadn’t seen it coming. It wasn’t fair.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again.

  My lips quivered. The tears I’d held back finally broke free.

  “Yeah, well, so am I. I’m sorry for trusting you. My father warned me not to break your heart, not to hurt you. At least I kept my promise. I can’t believe I trusted you!”

  I hadn’t realized that I was screaming the words at Valcas until I heard the other, softer sounds in the woods—footsteps and voices.

  Suddenly, I felt I couldn’t breathe. I felt the woods of Edgar’s Nowhere close in on me. I had to leave. I had to get away, to run.

  I was tired of acting stronger than I was, tired of threading together strands of relationships that didn’t fit because they never should have existed in the first place. I was tired of being led toward a brighter future only to have it taken away from me again. I wanted the one thing that had never betrayed me, the only thing I knew I could rely on: the past.

  I broke into a run. My legs were tired, but my muscles knew exactly how to react, even though I hadn’t run since being cooped up behind the Fire Falls. The pain in my muscles felt good.

  As I ran, I imagined that I heard voices saying things like: Stop her; Don’t let her go; Don’t just stand there, go after her! I don’t know if those were real voices or my heart hoping them into reality. The one phrase I’m sure I heard came out of my father’s mouth, just before I slipped on the travel glasses: “We need to let her go.”

  I didn’t stop to find out whether he’d actually spoken those words or to ask what he meant. I kept running, pumping my legs harder as the world around me became white and empty—as empty as I felt, knowing that whatever Valcas and I could have been was over before it ever began.

  Love wasn’t in our future. Or our present. Which left only one possibility.

  The past.

  MY FIRST stop was in a frozen slice in time. I wanted to go back to Folkestone, where Valcas had shown me what slicing was, to explain that he’d never meant me any harm. If he only knew the damage he’d done. If he only knew the damage I was about to cause.

  I’d wanted to travel to the slice in
time exactly when the Uproar had attacked us, to finish what the Uproar started, but I wasn’t precise enough. The ground—the solid water—was glassy and smooth, unblemished. The untainted perfection of the place fueled my fury. I wanted to see cracked, splintered glass. I wanted to see it broken, just like my heart.

  But I’d left my backpack at the workshop. No matter. I wiped the tears from my eyes and looked around for something else. Surely there would be some form of debris in the water.

  A glint of metal caught my eye.

  I slid the travel glasses up on top of my head, like a headband, and took a closer look. The metal was sticking halfway out of the solid water. I pulled it free, wondering how it had stayed afloat. I shrugged. What did it matter anyway? The slice in time could have been during the slightest fraction of a moment—just as someone had tossed the object into the water.

  The metal instrument was heavy and bent at the edge. I smiled. I’d found a crowbar. I looked up to see the Pipette on my right and Valcas’ black and yellow motorboat on my left. I looked up at his face, his frozen smile. He thought he was so smart that day, wanting to frighten me so he could take me back to Mom. I laughed bitterly. He’d also found out just how resilient I was. He may have the strength of an Aborealian, but I was me, with talents of my own. A Remnant Transporter with my father’s Chascadian temper, and one whip of a traveler.

  I restrained myself from smashing the crowbar into Valcas’ motorboat. But I let the water below me have it. As the metal impacted the glassy water, the jolt of the reflecting vibrations made my teeth chatter and my ears ring. Before the feeling subsided, I crashed the crowbar onto the ground, again and again, until my fingers were raw and my heart was numb. If the impact of my arrival hit, I hadn’t noticed.

  I sat down, breathless, and looked at what I’d done. The waters of Folkestone Harbor looked like a mirror that had fallen from the sky and shattered in a million pieces.