by Ted Sanders
“Doesn’t matter,” Chloe said. “You’re the Keeper of, like, the most wicked Tan’ji ever. And I’d bet anything it’s about to get . . . wickeder. You’ll figure it out before we have to deal with whoever’s coming for that flower thing.”
Horace nodded. The problem of the unknown Keeper could be set aside, but not for long. He had twenty-four hours to learn what the silver sun could do. He couldn’t afford to be distracted or uncertain about the Fel’Daera once the daktan had returned and the lost Keeper was once again on the move.
Chloe studied his face. “I think you want me to stay.”
“For dinner?”
“Sure, yeah, but I meant for the thing. The figuring out whatever you have to figure out.”
“Why the heck would I want you to stay for that?”
“What are you going to do, just ball up in your room and think real hard?”
Horace shrugged, not bothering to admit that that was pretty much his plan.
“Look,” Chloe said. “We’ve got until, what . . . eight o’clock tomorrow night before the daktan reappears?”
“Eight thirty-one,” Horace said automatically.
“So by eight thirty-one tomorrow, you’ll figure it out. I’m staying to make sure that happens. Now take me inside and get me invited to dinner, like best friends are supposed to.”
Horace closed his eyes and laughed. “You are my best friend, you know,” he said.
“Duh,” said Chloe.
They went inside. Horace’s mother was in the living room, working on a crossword puzzle.
“Hey,” said Horace, not quite meeting his mother’s eyes.
“Hey, Mrs. Andrews,” Chloe said.
Horace’s mother looked startled. “That’s the first time you’ve called me that.”
“I think it might be the first time I’ve called you anything,” Chloe said.
“Well, if you’re going to call me anything, I prefer Jessica.” She pushed her reading glasses up onto her head. “Dad already went to bed, but there’s plenty of leftover pizza if you’re hungry. That goes for you too, Chloe.”
“You don’t have to feed me, but I’m planning to stay. If that’s all right.”
“If you stay, you eat. But I gather there’s a situation.”
“There is, in fact,” Chloe said. “It’s a box thing.”
Horace looked at Chloe incredulously.
“What?” Chloe said with a shrug. “You weren’t going to tell her?”
“Ah,” Horace’s mother said knowingly. “Tan’ji troubles.”
Horace wanted to die. He wanted to get out of her sight—could she see what was wrong with the box even now?
Chloe seemed to catch his mood. “Uh, Horace has some things to figure out. I’m here for moral support, and tomorrow night some stuff is going to go down.”
“Things and stuff, I see,” said Horace’s mother. She hesitated and then said, “Is the stuff dangerous?”
Though her tone stayed light, Horace thought he could hear a little strain in her voice. He glanced at Chloe and said, “Mr. Meister seems to think it’s fifty-fifty on the danger issue. With the stuff.”
His mother laughed ruefully. “If he thinks it’s fifty-fifty, it’s probably more like eighty-twenty. On the dangerous side.” She smiled faintly, then waved her hand toward the kitchen. “Get yourselves some food. Then you can get to work on the things.”
They carried plates of warmed-over pizza and bottles of root beer up to Horace’s bedroom, where Chloe closed the door and immediately started into a monologue about how awesome Horace’s mother was. “You don’t even know how lucky you are, Horace. My mom is—was—a zero. Literally. That’s the score you get when you abandon your family. But your mom was already a ten, and now that it turns out she knows all this stuff, she’s like an eleven. Plus she wants me to call her Jessica.” She frowned suspiciously, as if trying out a new, dubious-looking food. “Jessica. Jessica.”
“That’s not so weird,” Horace said. “Besides, your dad knows stuff too.”
“Not like this. And I love my dad, but your mom is . . .” She trailed off, looking suddenly conflicted.
“I think it’s safe to say my mom has had an easier time than your dad,” Horace pointed out gently.
Chloe sank onto Horace’s bed and huffed out a sigh. “Fair,” she said, and took a huge bite of pizza.
Horace wasn’t hungry. He took the Fel’Daera out of its pouch, trying to clear his head. He examined the silver sun. It seemed so obvious now that it wasn’t a mere decoration. But what was it?
“Anyway,” Chloe said, mouth full, “about tomorrow night. You realize that if this mystery Keeper is human, and we go out with the daktan to lure them in, we’re basically going to be recruiting for the Wardens.” She pointed her pizza slice at him. “We’ll be doing exactly what the old man wants us to do.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You heard what he said before: ‘We can’t abandon a new Keeper who might be friendly to our cause.’”
“So?”
“So Mr. Meister doesn’t care about the person. He’s just hoping to find another soldier for his cause.” She took another bite.
“Meanwhile, you care deeply about the person—if it is a person,” Horace said skeptically.
“You’re missing the point. We don’t even know what the old man’s cause is.”
This was a conversation they’d had before, and it always made Horace uncomfortable. He remembered the claims of Dr. Jericho, on that long, terrible night in the nest: the Wardens kept secrets; the Wardens were simply using the young Keepers to achieve their own hidden goals; the Wardens marched toward ruin.
“We’re Wardens ourselves now, remember?” Horace pointed out, trying to push the memories away. “We joined them because they want to keep the Tanu safe from the Riven. Including our own Tan’ji. That’s the cause. Whatever else we don’t know about Mr. Meister, we know that.”
“I’m just saying, sometimes he seems more like a collector than a protector. I mean, look at Brian—he’s like a bug in a jar.”
“Come on. That’s not fair.”
“It’s not even about Brian. It’s about what Mr. Meister is willing to do to us. Look, I’m on this team, okay? I’m on your team, and Gabriel’s and Mrs. Hapsteade’s. The Riven hurt my family and you guys helped me save my dad—but that doesn’t mean I just blindly accept everything Mr. Meister tells us. He wants us to go out there tomorrow with the daktan—the bait—in the hopes that we’ll catch him a new recruit and a new Tan’ji. But we don’t even know if the lost Keeper is human. We could be walking into danger.”
“Since when are you so worried about danger?” he said. He pointed to the scars on her arms, her shins, her throat.
Chloe uncapped her root beer, took a long swig, then belched profoundly. Beside her, Loki’s eyes opened wide and his ears went flat. “Good point,” she said, wiping her lips with the back of her hand.
Horace pushed his still-untouched pizza away. All of that stuff could wait. He needed to figure out the silver sun. Maybe then the Fel’Daera would give them the answers they needed. He bent over the box again, trying to concentrate.
A minute later, Chloe peeled a pepperoni from a slice of pizza and held it up. “If you sent this through the box right now, it’d come out tomorrow still warm, right?”
Horace nodded, knowing from his experiments that it would. Items came out of the box exactly as they went in, as if no time had passed for them while they were traveling.
“That’s fabulous.” Chloe held the pepperoni out to Loki, who sniffed it politely and then looked away. She bent down and asked the cat softly, “You don’t even like people-food, do you?” The cat touched his nose to hers. “What about time-travel food?” she cooed. “Would you like that?”
“I thought you came here to help,” Horace said.
“I am helping. I’m trying to keep your brain moving.”
“My brain is moving.” He threw up his
hands. “We get here and all you can talk about is awesome mom blah blah and Mr. Meister secret agenda blah blah, and when you finally do want to talk about the Fel’Daera, it’s about future pizza. How is that helping?”
She blinked at him. “I like to be distracted when I’m trying to figure something out. Usually it just comes to me.”
“Have we even met? That is not how things work for me.”
Chloe slid to the floor beside him, wiping her hands on her thighs. “Sorry,” she said. “Show me.”
“Okay, thank you,” Horace said. He laid the Fel’Daera on the floor between them. “So like I said, whatever it is I’m missing has something to do with this.” He touched the silver sun, its rays gleaming around a glossy dark center.
Chloe bent to look close. “Maybe it’s like a switch. Or a dial.”
“Maybe, but not a physical one. Brian said I’d control it with my mind. Telemetric, he called it.”
“Like with me and the dragonfly,” Chloe said. On cue, the dragonfly’s wings whirred to life again for just a moment.
“Right,” Horace said. “So how do you do that?”
“Beats me.” She swung her eyes toward the ceiling, thinking. “It’s like I . . . let myself flow into it? But it seems like you should know.”
“Why? The box is mechanical. I open the lid, I look.”
“Yeah, but it’s all mental once the lid is open, isn’t it? Your thoughts affect the future you see.”
“That’s true. But I don’t really feel like I’m controlling anything, making it happen. I’m not pushing a button.”
Chloe leaned back against the side of the bed. “The problem with you, Horace, is that you’re too logical. I’m telling you, you’ve got to think less and feel more.”
Horace rolled his eyes. This was one of the fundamental differences between them. Chloe had mastered the Alvalaithen largely through intuition, through gut and instinct. Horace, however, was methodical and clinical. The more he understood about the box’s function, the better.
“You’re rolling your eyes,” Chloe said.
“I’m not like you,” Horace said. “I’m a scientist. I need to be logical.”
“Okay, so let’s logic it out. How could the box do more than it already does?”
Horace sighed. “It could be more accurate.”
“It’s super accurate now. That night in the nest? You saw pretty much everything true.”
“I could do better. But yeah, I don’t think the box has a focus knob or anything like that. The accuracy thing, that’s on me.”
“Maybe you could see farther away—to other places,” Chloe suggested.
Horace made a face. “No, that doesn’t make sense. The box is a window. I look through it and I see what’s on the other side of the glass. The location doesn’t change, only the—” He stopped, an idea suddenly blooming in his head. He scooped the box up off the floor.
Chloe sat up straight. “What?”
“Maybe I can see farther away. But not to different places. To different times.”
“What do you mean?”
Horace clutched the box to his chest. “Maybe I can see farther into the future.”
“Try,” Chloe said, her face alight with excitement. “I won’t say anything. Pretend I’m not here.”
Horace tried. He pushed his thoughts toward the Fel’Daera and the silver sun, trying to let himself flow into it.
Suddenly Chloe gripped his arm. “Wait. What if you see too far?”
“What does too far mean?”
“I don’t know. What if you see like . . . twenty years into the future, and you find out we’re married, with three kids?”
Horace just stared at her, waiting for her to realize what she’d just said, or to say she was only joking, but she just shrugged at him angrily. “Well?” she insisted.
“Well, I can only see the future right where I’m at, so . . . if I see both of us still here in this room in twenty years, I think we have bigger problems than having three kids.”
She released his arm and chuckled.
“Besides,” Horace continued, “Brian says he’s going to marry you.”
Chloe sat up straight so fast Loki flinched. “What?!”
“Quiet, please,” Horace said, bending over the box. “I’m concentrating.”
Horace pushed his thoughts toward the Fel’Daera and the silver sun, trying to let himself flow into it—whatever that meant. He didn’t expect to feel anything—half his brain was thinking about Chloe—but after a full minute of gentle questing, his thoughts settled into a kind of hollow. A fingerhold. A ripple in the box’s function. “Wait,” he said, breathless. “Wait.”
It was there—not a structure, but an idea. A passage deep in the black center of the silver sun, pulsing with power. He pressed against it, ever so gingerly. He sensed the sun’s gleaming rays, so bright, so unknowably full, a balloon about to burst. He pushed harder, hoping to push that power further into the future. But almost at once his focus slipped, and he lost hold.
“I almost had something,” he said.
Chloe clapped softly. “Try again. You can do it.”
He tried. He found the fingerhold more easily this time, but again when he pushed it, it slipped away. He closed his eyes for a moment. He could feel the silver sun there, waiting, swollen with energy but still somehow resisting him. “It’s there,” he told Chloe. “I can feel it. It wants to move. I just can’t quite get it.”
“You will, though.”
But he wasn’t sure he would. And Chloe’s unwavering belief in him—while well intentioned—was not actually helping. “I wish you wouldn’t say that,” he said. “You make it sound like it should be easy. It’s not easy.”
Chloe frowned. “Nobody said anything about easy,” she growled. She watched in sullen silence as Horace kept trying. She finished her pizza, then ate most of Horace’s without asking. Eventually she clambered onto his bed, reaching up to pull a small selection of books off Horace’s neatly crowded bookcase. She curled up and began to read.
Horace spent the next hour trying in vain to push the Fel’Daera’s sight farther into the future. He tried pushing with the box open, and then with the box closed. He tried it with a marble inside, and then tried again as he sent the marble traveling. He tried pulling, even though that seemed wrong. Nothing happened. Chloe spoke only once the whole time, muttering directly to the book in her hands, slowly and scornfully, “Nice pants, Lurvy.” But still she kept reading, leaving Horace to his work.
Hopeless work, it seemed. At last, at quarter past eleven, he stopped trying. According to Brian, whatever the silver sun did was something the box wanted to do. And it clearly did not want to be pushed like this. He examined the silver sun again and laughed ruefully. Twenty-four spokes. Twenty-four hours.
“I’m so stupid,” he said glumly, his voice croaking hoarsely. He looked up and saw Loki on the bed, watching him through thin-slitted eyes. He was surprised to see that Chloe had fallen asleep, a book beneath her head like a pillow.
“I can’t see any farther into the future,” he told the cat. “It’s twenty-four hours. It’s always been twenty-four hours.” Loki let his eyes float closed, purring gently.
“I should just give up, is what you’re saying,” Horace said. He laid back on the floor, frustrated and exhausted, and set the box on his chest.
Suddenly Chloe murmured sleepily. “Never give up,” she slurred.
“You’re asleep,” Horace said, and then he waited for her to tell him that she wasn’t. To tell him again to keep trying.
But the words never came.
HORACE WAS STILL lying there a half hour later when his mother knocked and leaned in. She smiled at Horace and the box, then caught sight of Chloe’s tiny sleeping form.
“She really asleep?”
Horace sat up. “She was mumbling a while ago, but I think she’s out.”
“Should we move her?”
“No, it’s okay. I’ll just .
. . sleep on the floor or something.”
“You say that like you might not sleep at all,” she said, nodding at the box in his hand.
Horace weighed his next words, looking down into his lap and wondering if he was brave enough—or weak enough—to ask his mother what she knew about the silver sun. But before he could even make the decision, she asked a question of her own.
“Horace, how long were you in the Find? A few weeks?”
Horace swallowed, thinking. “A week. Not even.”
“Not even a week! Are you aware how fast that is? Especially for something like the Fel’Daera?”
He shrugged, embarrassed and irritated at the same time. “I had help,” he said, thinking of Mr. Meister’s hints and advice.
His mother laughed. “What, from Mr. Meister? Not much, I bet. If the Find was an avalanche, he’d bring you a teaspoon and politely suggest you dig yourself out.”
“That’s . . . pretty accurate, actually. But so what? So the Find was fast for me—so I’m a prodigy or something. Is that supposed to make me feel better? Because it doesn’t. It mostly just feels like a lot more pressure.”
His mother plucked at the carpet with her bare toes. “I get that,” she said earnestly. “Success yesterday is no guarantee of success today.”
“Exactly!”
“But it is evidence, objectively speaking, so treat it that way. The Find was fast for you. Maybe you should ask yourself why.” She reached out and rapped him softly on the head. “Keeper,” she said, and then left the room without another word.
Evidence, Horace thought. Right. The Find had been fast—a simple fact. It didn’t prove anything, or promise anything. The truth was, he’d gotten through the Find partly through hints and partly through dumb luck, but also partly—maybe even mostly—through his own inquisitive nature. He had asked questions and looked for answers. That’s what he’d always done. That’s what he had to keep doing now.
And there was another fact, as simple and as true as anything else he knew. Even his mother had said the word. No matter how it had happened—fast or slow, easy or hard, help or no help—he was the Keeper of the Box of Promises. And the silver sun, whatever it did, was a part of the box.
