“One hour again?” Daniel asks.
I think about that. “Let’s make it two. In case anything goes wrong, and I need more time, I don’t want to have to come back here and then start all over again.”
It’s clear from his expression that Daniel doesn’t like the sound of that. “Two hours is an awfully long time. You don’t know what it was like waiting for you during only one hour.”
“If this works,” I remind him, “you won’t even remember it. It will be Thursday afternoon, and I’ll already be in town along with Halli to come to your dad’s birthday party tomorrow. I’ll make sure that I come.”
Daniel shakes his head. “I’m glad you’re able to keep track of all this.”
“I’ve had a little more practice than you have.”
Before he straps me back in, we take a moment to embrace for what might be the last time in this lifetime. It’s a little sad for me, but it’s also what I want. I need to be Audie again. Inside and out. And Halli deserves to have her life back, too.
“Okay,” I tell him. “Let’s go.”
He fastens the straps, adjusts my earphones, and prepares to lower the goggles over my eyes.
“See you,” I say.
“See you.”
Then I’m in the dark. A minute or so later I feel the gentle sway of the machine. The pinging starts. Then the soft mallets against my brain.
I defocus. I am stars and space. But there’s no time to linger here. I have work to do.
I dive down into the soil. Take hold of the Mother Root. And focus on a specific moment.
“Take me to the original Halli before the decision that will cause her death.”
The dark and the stars fade away as a new scene comes into view.
I’m not in the mountains.
There is no snow.
Instead, sights and smells and sounds I’m not expecting. And don’t recognize.
I don’t feel safe right now. I don’t know where I am.
So I purposely stay hidden. Stay an observer. Don’t let my duplicate body take form.
There’s a girl standing in a kitchen. She is barefoot and brown skinned and young—maybe around nine or ten. She has a knife in her hand.
She slices open a cloth sack that looks like it’s filled with a grainy kind of flour. She scoops some of it out into a bowl. Then she mixes in water and what looks like milk and some spices.
She pours the batter onto a heated griddle. Cooks it up into four flat pancakes. Then she carries them out on a plate into another room.
There’s a table in there, low to the ground, and people are sitting on pillows all around it. They’re wearing colorful clothing in reds and greens and purples, made of soft gauzy fabrics with sashes draped diagonally across the women’s torsos.
There are six people at the table: a woman and a man and two children, all of them with dark features and dark hair. They look like they might be from India.
No, they are in India, I realize. As are the other two guests at the table: Halli and Ginny Markham. And from the look of Halli, not that long ago. Maybe a year.
Halli takes two pancakes off the plate and gives them to Ginny. Then she takes the other two for herself. She says something to the girl in a language I don’t understand. Then Halli and Ginny dig in.
I’m watching, but I don’t believe it.
I think I’m about to see how Ginny Markham died.
48
I don’t want to watch this. It takes me a moment to remember that I don’t have to—I’m in charge.
So I change my focus.
“Forward,” I think. “Twenty-four hours. Show me Halli.”
I want to know how she’s coping. I want to comfort her, if I can. Speak some words of hope in her ear. Tell her she’ll be happy again. Tell her … something. I don’t even know. I just know that she needs a friend right at this moment, and I’m here, and I want to help her get through this.
I’m in a bedroom. There’s a mattress on the floor. Colorful wall hangings. Pretty flowers in vases.
People gathered around the bed. Sobbing. A shape on the bed—a body—completely covered in a white sheet.
Ginny is inconsolable.
Because it’s Halli who is dead.
“NO,” I tell myself, jerking back from the scene. I can’t watch this. I don’t want to know.
But there’s a part of me, a voice inside, asking, “What did you expect?”
Not this! But I must have. Didn’t I ask to see the original Halli before her death? This is the original Halli—not the girl I met. I don’t know when my Halli came to life, but it was obviously some time after this.
My head is spinning.
Meanwhile I’m deep inside the soil, hanging on to a thick white root, wondering where I should go and what I should do.
“Forward,” I say. “Later.”
I don’t have a particular time or destination in mind, but I know I want to get away from India. Get away from the what I’m sure will be the very sad, drawn out, and very public mourning for world-renowned and much beloved teenage adventurer Halli Markham. Be someplace quiet and private where I can process what has happened to my friend.
And find out what’s happened to her grandmother.
The new location takes shape. I know this place. I’ve been here several times before.
I recognize the celery green couch. The lavender chair. The walls completely covered in maps.
The house is empty. But there are lights on and I can smell coffee. Outside the big front windows I can see sunlight sparkling on dew. It’s morning here in Colorado, in the house Halli used to share with her grandmother.
I hear a door open. I move into the kitchen where I can watch Ginny come from the separate house that she turned into a greenhouse. She’s carrying a basket filled with fruit she just plucked from the trees and vines growing in there.
She doesn’t see me. I’m still just a thought in the air.
I hesitate. I’m not sure I should do this. Is it selfish to want to talk to her? To find out what happened? And yes, I’ll admit it, to finally meet this wonderful woman I’ve heard so much about?
What will she think if her granddaughter simply materializes in front of her? Will she have a heart attack? Will I kill her?
No, Ginny is strong. Even in grief or in shock, she’ll be strong. And I have to know how she did it. How she survived this time, when the Halli I know is the one who lived.
I make a body. I gather my courage and walk into the kitchen. Ginny is standing at the sink washing off strawberries. She has her back to me.
I clear my throat. “Hello, Ginny.”
She whips around and stares at me, wide-eyed and amazed.
And then I know in an instant I’ve made a terrible mistake.
49
The cry that erupts from her lips is like an animal in horrible pain. She grips the edge of the sink as she collapses to her knees. She’s on all fours on the floor, her body shaking with sobs as she tries to gasp out Halli’s name. “Hal … Hal …” She doesn’t have enough breath. She’s sobbing and shaking, and I don’t know what I should do, but I know I have to do something.
I rush over to her and grasp the sides of her arms and start helping her to her feet. She hugs me so hard the breath is surprised out of my lungs. She clings to me like a drowning woman desperate to save her life. There’s no doubt that these are the arms of a woman who once rowed across an ocean.
“Oh, Halli,” she cries. “My child.” She releases her hold enough to lean back and look at me. She’s so happy it nearly breaks my heart. She gazes at me with the kind of fierce love I always knew she must feel for her granddaughter.
It’s time for me to tell her the truth.
“I’m not Halli. I’m sorry. My name is Audie. I’m from another universe. But Halli is alive. I know her. She loves you. She misses you.”
Ginny bursts into fresh sobs. I don’t blame her. It’s a lot to take in all at once. I help her to a chair and s
it in the one next to her and let her keep holding my hand. She covers her mouth with the other one and gazes at me with eyes still pouring out tears. “Please,” she says shakily, “please. Please tell me it’s true. Tell me my Halli’s alive.”
“It’s true,” I say. “I promise.” And now I’m crying, too. It’s impossible to watch this strong woman crumble without crumbling right along with her.
“Oh, sweetheart,” she says. “Oh, child.” She runs her hand over my long thick hair. “You look exactly like her. I never thought I’d see her again. This is the most wonderful thing you’ve done.”
She stands up and reaches for my arm. “Come into the living room. I need to sit somewhere comfortable. You have to tell me everything.”
She keeps hold of my arm as the two of us move into the next room. She’s not holding me because she’s frail, it’s because I know she doesn’t want to let go. She sits on the soft green couch and I consider taking the chair, but I know she needs me nearer. I sit down beside her and she covers us both with the white blanket folded nearby.
“You’re shaking,” she says.
“I know. I didn’t really know what to expect. I probably should have done this differently.”
Ginny laughs in a wet, phlegmy way. “How, exactly? It was going to be a shock no matter what.”
But now that that initial shock is over, I’m starting to see the strong woman come back.
“Tell me who you are,” she says. “Tell me how this happened. I need to know about Halli. I need to know she’s all right.” She tucks her legs up onto the couch and readjusts the blanket over both of us. Then she gives me her full attention. She’s obviously settled in for a long, complicated chat.
Unfortunately, I don’t have that kind of time.
I don’t know how much of my two hours is left. Now I wish I’d asked Daniel to set it for five.
I’m going to have to go straight to the tough stuff.
“I met Halli in a universe where you’re the one who died.”
A strange look of happiness seems to wash over Ginny’s features. Her worn, weathered face relaxes into a smile.
“Good,” she says with a tremendous sigh of relief. “Then it worked.”
50
“Have you ever had a vision?” Ginny asks me.
“I’m … not sure what you mean.”
“A glimpse of the future. Of the way something might be.”
I consider telling her about my experience with remote sensing. About how I saw Halli as she was about to die. But it’s too long to explain. I go with a simple, “Yes.”
“Then you must also know that nothing is permanent,” Ginny says. “You can see what might happen, but sometimes you still have the chance to change it.”
I’ve never thought of my remote sensing as a vision, but I definitely understand what Ginny is describing. I changed Halli’s future—and mine.
“I saw her,” Ginny says. “Laid out in a bedroom where we were staying in India. She was dead. She’d eaten something contaminated. It killed her within just a few hours.”
“But what about you?” I ask. “Didn’t you eat it, too?”
Ginny gives me a curious look. “How do you know about that?”
“I … may have seen it. The pancakes.”
“They aren’t called that,” Ginny says, “but yes, that’s what they look like. The flour was contaminated. Halli and I were the only ones who ate it. My friend Bija threw it out the moment she realized we were sick.”
“So what happened?” I ask.
“After we ate,” Ginny says, “I hiked down to a quiet stretch of river where I always liked to go. Halli was going to join me later. I usually spent a few hours there in meditation every morning, but this time I started feeling sick almost right away. I began vomiting uncontrollably. My body was pouring off sweat. My gut felt like someone was tearing it open from the inside. I knew I’d eaten something deadly. And my immediate thought was that Halli had, too.
“I tried to get up, to go to her, but I didn’t have the strength. I just lay there convulsing, while my mind took the journey for me.
“That’s when I saw her,” Ginny says. “My wonderful girl, dead. I couldn’t help her. I couldn’t stop it. There was nothing I could do.”
Ginny pauses for a moment. The memory is obviously still painful.
“But you did help her,” I say. “The Halli I know survived.”
“I never had any way of knowing that,” Ginny answers. “Until today.” She smiles. “So maybe you can understand my reaction.”
The pieces don’t fit yet. I’m not hearing the whole story. And my time is ticking away.
“How did you save her?” I ask. “You obviously figured out what you could do.”
Ginny shifts her weight. Sits up straighter. Looks more energized all of the sudden.
“Have you ever seen a mystic?”
“A mystic? No. I’m … not even sure I know what that is.
“There are yogis in India—very advanced yogis,” Ginny says, “who can manipulate matter. Send their bodies to other places. Heal others through touch. And even heal people from a distance without ever touching them at all.”
I know about the body-sending part—I’m doing it right now with bilocation. But I don’t want to take the time to discuss that. I want to hear about the rest.
“I studied with one of them,” Ginny says. “I watched her save a man’s life. He’d been lying in bed for over a week with an infection spreading throughout his body. One of his legs was already black from it. The doctor said he wouldn’t last another night.”
“So what did she do?” I ask. “How did she save him?”
“She sat beside him in deep meditation. She never even laid a hand on him. But I sat there in that same room with them, and over the course of about an hour watched all the blackness fade out of his leg. Then the rest of his skin returned to its regular healthy color. Soon enough, he opened his eyes for the first time in three days. When we came back the next morning, he was up and eating rice and drinking his tea.”
“Wow.”
“But what was really interesting,” Ginny tells me, “was what my teacher did when she was done. She flicked her hands like she was getting rid of something disgusting off the tips of her fingers. She said the infection was like a poison. She’d drawn it all out, but now she had to get rid of it so it wouldn’t hurt her.”
“Is that what you did?” I ask. “You drew the poison out from Halli?”
“I didn’t know how,” Ginny says. “I’d only watched that one time—I’d never done it myself. I tried to imagine pulling it out of her, draining it off, but I couldn’t do it for very long. I was getting sicker every minute. I hoped it was because Halli’s poison was coming over to me. I could try to get rid of it later. But in the end … it didn’t work. People found me passed out by the river. By the time they carried me home, my girl was dead.”
“Not in the other universe,” I say. “You died, Halli lived.”
“How is she?” Ginny asks. “Tell me everything you can.”
“I might have to leave soon,” I say. “I’m in a kind of machine right now, and when it makes a sound I’ll hear it and I’ll have to go back. But I’ll tell you everything I can until then.”
Ginny settles back against the cushions again, anxious to hear whatever I might say.
But I already know one thing I won’t be telling her: that she’s given me a very special gift just now. A gift I can’t wait to share with Halli.
Because for the past year, Halli has believed that it was her grandmother who poisoned her. That Ginny knew she was going to die, and instead of warning Halli and telling her goodbye, or even leaving her any kind of note, instead Ginny put something in Halli’s food so she’d be too sick to follow and see Ginny die that day.
And what’s worse about that—what’s haunted Halli this whole time—is that Ginny taught her all kinds of first aid. Halli thinks she could have saved Ginny, if only she’
d been given the chance.
But now I know that’s not true. Both Ginny and Halli were headed for death, one way or the other. And Ginny did what she always did: she tried to protect her granddaughter.
I hope that will finally ease Halli’s mind. And I need to be able to offer her something. Because I know very well that even though she’ll be ecstatic to find out that Ginny is still alive somewhere, she’s going to be devastated that she wasn’t the one to see her.
This might be her only consolation.
“Tell me first,” Ginny says. “Is she happy?”
Apparently Ginny likes to start with the tough stuff, too.
“She’s …getting there,” I say. “She really misses you. I’m not going to lie.”
Ginny’s eyes well up. She brushes away an escaping tear and gives me a stoic nod.
“Then I have a favor to ask,” she says.
“Okay.”
“I need you to bring her here.”
51
This time when I emerge from the machine, my legs feel wobbly and useless. Daniel releases all the straps, and then he isn’t so much hugging me this time as he is holding me up.
“What’s wrong?” he asks. “What’s happened?”
“Just help me sit down for a second.”
I sink to the floor. I don’t really feel like taking the long walk to the next room. I feel weak and starving and used up. I try not to let Daniel see me shake, but I’m not doing a very good job.
“You’re freezing,” he says. He runs back into Dr. Venn’s office and brings me back his coat and a blanket he found somewhere. He also brings a big warm dog, and Red does his job of sitting as close to me as possible and laying his head on my lap and sharing some of his heat.
“Audie, look at me. Let me see you eyes.”
I do my best to focus.
“Come out here where it’s warm,” Daniel says. “Let me help you.”
It feels like a supreme effort, but I manage to get to my feet and let him lead me back into the office and into a chair. He bundles me up in whatever extra coats and sweaters he finds hanging from a rack in the corner.
Parallelogram Omnibus Edition Page 90
