Tempus

by Tyra Lynn

  “There are things that will never be known, Jessie. I can’t answer those questions, as much as I wish I could.”

  “What does any of this have to do with me? You said my dots are insignificant, so what does any of it, any of it, have to do with me?” I suddenly felt on the verge of hysterics, it was overwhelming.

  “I don’t know.”

  I heard the door swing open wide and felt Gabriel before I saw him. I released his father’s hand and jumped up in time to be enfolded in strong, warm arms. I held on for dear life. My anchor.

  “What is it, love?” Gabriel said in a soothing voice. “I’m here.”

  “Gabriel, I told you it would be too much.” His fathers' voice sounded chiding, but not angry. “It’s too much for anyone.”

  “You started with the wrong thing.” Gabriel replied. He sat on the chair I’d just left empty, and pulled me onto his lap. “What’s the last thing he told you?” He asked me.

  I wasn’t sure. My mind searched for the answer. “You made him buy the mirror because you almost jumped through it to me.” That sounded so absurd. All of it was absurd, except the feeling, the memories, of Gabriel.

  “Every answer I give you, you will have another question. I won’t be able to answer most of them; there simply is no answer for most. You do understand that, right?” His voice was so soothing. I nodded. I felt like I was twelve years old again. Younger, maybe.

  “I am here for you, it’s why I came. My father is here for me. The serendipity of the situation is that, while my purpose was to find you, we have stumbled upon something that may help my Father. Our reasons may be different, but our goals have found their commonality in you. I want you, my father wants the source of the reset, we both want to fix time, and you are somehow involved, or can help.” He waited and let it sink in.

  “But what could I possibly have to do with any of it? I’m just a normal, insignificant,” I glanced at Mr. Knight, “nobody. I’m just a normal person with a normal life.”

  “You were never insignificant to me.” He pulled me closer. “Though I did think you were mostly normal, until last time.” I wrinkled my nose at him. “That was the first time you told me about your ‘glimpses.’ That was when my father wanted you to try the mirror.” I had flashes of memory, lifting my foot toward the mirror in the library. “We couldn’t do it. That’s never happened before, to our knowledge, being actively prevented from doing something.”

  “Prevented? What does that mean?”

  “Hmm. This is hard to explain, because you can’t feel it, or notice it. It’s a subtle thing, but it’s like running into a barrier.” He shifted his weight, felt a little restless beneath me. “There are all these movies and books about time travel, and most of them have a measure of truth in them, accidentally, of course. Some are absurd, like you can’t go to another time where you already exist and see yourself. It can’t be done. Nothing bad happens if you try, you simply can’t do it.”

  His father spoke up then. “The Grandfather paradox. It’s not a paradox at all. I could not go back in time and kill my own grandfather, even if I could go backwards, which I can’t. I could do nothing to influence the death of his soul. Neither could you, or anyone else, for that matter. I have existed, I existed before my physical form came into being, and you cannot undo a soul’s existence.”

  I looked up at Gabriel and he kissed my forehead. “This is too much for one day, isn’t it?”

  “This is too much for one lifetime.” I grumbled.

  He laughed. “It’s not. My father and I are well adjusted.” His father cleared his throat and Gabriel shook his head. “I am at least.”

  “I still don’t understand anything.” I didn’t.

  “How about this idea. Think about every movie and book you’re familiar with where time travel is the subject, and know that approximately half of it is true.” He kissed my forehead again, playfully.

  “Why are you so relaxed right now? Aren’t you worried you’re just going to have to tell me all of this all over again?” I believed they were telling me the truth, even if I didn’t understand, and I had a fear that the ‘reset’ thing was going to happen. I could remember Gabriel's voice, Please don’t forget me this time.

  “It could happen, but not soon.” Mr. Knight spoke. “Gabriel thought he felt it coming a little earlier, he’s much more sensitive than I, but it didn’t happen.” I saw him glance at Gabriel. “We can typically feel it well ahead of time, an ‘advanced warning,’ if you will. Not always, though. Occasionally, not often, there are only a few minutes.”

  Gabriel's arms tightened around me again. Please don’t forget me this time. “I don’t care much for those.” He said.

  Mr. Knight leaned forward over his desk. “Jessie, we are trying to unravel this time issue, and normally we would not allow someone from outside to learn any of the things we have told you. Gabriel has fought hard to convince me otherwise, and I have concluded that either you are a key player somehow in this, or that once it is resolved, you’ll have no recollection of us, or anything we’ve discussed.”

  I stiffened with his last words. Even after I had remembered Gabriel this time? If it went back far enough, could he be erased from my memory? I wouldn’t let that happen! I was going to burn everything into my heart, my mind, my soul. I would not let myself forget this time, or any other time. Never again.

  Suddenly Gabriel sat forward, pushing me away a little. “There are only a couple of hours until your father gets here.”

  My dad! How was I going to act around my dad? I felt like a different person than I was this morning. He would notice, I was sure of that. I felt my phone vibrate, then make the message noise. I looked at Gabriel.

  I reached down and pulled it out of the case. I had a serious fear of checking the message, but I didn’t know why. It could be Julie, or Katie. Gabriel scooted me off his lap, forcing me to stand up.

  “You should check it.” He said.

  Mr. Knight bent his head to a book, and Gabriel turned his back and walked to a window. I pushed the button. It was from Steve, and my heart stumbled over itself. It was a mixture of guilt and something else. I took a deep breath.

  ‘Hey beautiful. Thinking of you.’ It said.

  What was I going to say? Should I ignore it, pretend I didn’t get it? That seemed so wrong. I couldn’t lie, though. Lord, help me think of something to say, I thought.

  I just stood there, staring at the phone. Gabriel turned to face me, trying to smile. “You should answer, I think.”

  “I don’t know what to say.” I felt like a horrible person. These last few days with Steve, he was wonderful. Too good to hurt, too good to cause pain. Why this now? Life sucked.

  “What would you have said, if today had happened differently?” Gabriel's voice was so quiet I could barely hear it.

  I looked at my phone and typed, ‘Ditto, lol. :-)’

  That’s probably what I would have typed, or something similar. I waited a few seconds to make sure there was no response, and then put my phone back in its case.

  Gabriel had turned his back while I typed. His arms were folded across his chest and his shoulders were stiff. The light through the window created a glowing silhouette. Archangel. I knew he wasn’t, but he looked like he could have been.

  I wondered if I would have to physically lift my hands for him to feel them. I didn’t move physically, but I imagined with all my might that my hands were on his shoulders. I imagined rubbing them gently, and watched as they visibly relaxed, the tension appearing to release a little.

  “You were more right than I realized, Gabriel.” His father’s voice from behind startled me, and I was so embarrassed I wanted to crawl under the floor. “I’ve read of it, but never have witnessed it in all my years. Not like that. Animae implexus.”

  Gabriel turned around, a slow smile spreading across his face. I had no idea what his father said or meant, but it must have been good. I felt the pull from Gabriel's direction, stronger than e
ver. I could have resisted, if I had wanted to, but my feet moved and carried me with them.

  When I stepped into his arms and stopped, I still had the sensation of moving forward, as if I were stepping inside him, as if we were overlapping. It didn’t feel like we were separate people. I wondered if it was visible to someone watching, it felt like it would be.

  I could have stood there forever. The feel of his heart under my cheek, the warmth of his skin through the fabric of his shirt, the weight of his arms around me, the scent of him filling my nose—this was where I belonged, where I was supposed to end up. I felt it with certainty, and my arms instinctively tightened.

  “This won’t last, will it?” I asked. I realized that if they found the problem, it was surely before this moment. If that was true, then...

  “What do you mean, love?” He whispered.

  “If you find the cause, if you don’t find the cause, either way, time will go back, won’t it? Back to somewhere?” Right this second that seemed impossible, but my heart knew it wasn’t, and my heart knew it was right.

  It was only one word, but one word too many. “Yes.”

  CHAPTER XXV

  This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

  —Ralph Waldo Emerson

  There was not a lot of time before my dad arrived for dinner. I still was not sure how I was going to act ‘normal’ in front of him. Nothing felt normal at all, not even a little bit. Gabriel and I had just been laying here in his room, wrapped around each other, for an hour.

  The more we lay here, the more came back, the more I remembered. These last few days had been repeating, over and over. Gabriel was beginning to think he was responsible, was doing something to trigger it. His father seemed to think it meant they were closer to learning something important.

  Unlike me—forgetting everything—they remembered every detail. That was helpful in trying to find a solution, but in other ways, it was torture. This was much harder on Gabriel than on his father, and harder on both of them than on me. I just started where I left off, as far as my mind knew. Tormented. I understood what he meant now.

  His father seemed to think that my memories were only triggered by being around Gabriel, that if Gabriel were not around, what memories I had independently would eventually fade. Fade like a dream. I could and couldn’t imagine it. Right now, with the memories jumping at me left and right, it seemed impossible. Remembering this morning, that first sight of him through the trees, I remembered nothing but the glimpse and my dream.

  My dream! “Gabriel! I would have remembered! I dreamed about the heart on the tree! I dreamed about it after my glimpse, but before I knew you were a real person! I mean, like a real person here! Before the store, before I saw you for real!”

  I was suddenly excited, but he didn’t seem to share my same enthusiasm. He leaned back where he could look into my eyes. “You still saw me though, in the mirror. Since we met, time has not reset prior to your glimpse.”

  I tried to figure out what he meant. I saw him in the mirror on Monday, we later met, and we spent time together, lots of it. Time reset. We met, repeat, repeat, and repeat. “What’s the earliest then? The earliest after Monday afternoon?”

  “Tuesday morning a couple of times.” He replied.

  “How long is it normally, before something happens?”

  “Hmm. As I said before, the first time we met lasted sixty two days.” His arms constricted around me. “There was almost a month after that.”

  “But usually, after the first time, how many days?” I needed to know.

  “Jessie, do you know why we never check to find out when we are going to die?” He pressed his cheek to mine.

  “Why?”

  “We believe that every person’s heartbeats are numbered. You can subtract from them maybe, but you can never add. It’s been tried, trust me, and is unsuccessful without fail. Knowing that, imagine knowing the exact number of your days, especially if they are much shorter than you’d hoped.”

  “You would then have every day after colored by that knowledge, and be left to either try to make a difference you may have never been intended to make, and subsequently fail, or squander your days in an attempt to change the inevitable. Either way, how would you live life to its fullest, as was intended?”

  “With the absolute understanding of inevitability, the preceding knowledge of one’s' own death would become more burden than benefit, under any circumstance.” Gabriel closed his eyes, shutting me off from the emotions roiling inside them.

  “What does that have to do with my question?” I asked.

  “Everything.” He replied, opening his eyes again, letting me see the pain inside them. “Because every time I feel it coming, every time I have to let you go, it’s like a little death. A little death inside, and then a prayer for resurrection which I’m never confident will come.”

  “But you’ve argued with your dad about it, talked about destiny and all that, how can you not be confident?” His uncertainty made me feel uncertain.

  “Saying you are certain, and being certain in practice, are entirely different propositions. When you are talking about the most important thing to you, the possibility of losing it…”

  “You would find me.” I whispered.

  “I would. I’ve thought a million times of the ways to do it, if time goes back too far. I know when and where you live, I would know when and where to find you, but it’s not quite as easy as it sounds, not for a traveler.”

  “I don’t even understand what that means. What is a traveler, exactly?” He and his father had used that word over and over, and I still didn’t understand it.

  “The simple explanation is that I can travel forward only, primarily within a certain time-frame covering a few years. For instance, I came here at precisely 100 years after the current year in my time, nearly the same day. When I return home, I will return to the instant I departed, and vice versa, when traveling through the same mechanism. Anyone watching here or there would never notice me come or go.”

  “But I saw you step into the mirror.” I reminded him.

  “That’s why my father held my hand. You would have seen nothing otherwise. That connection allowed you to see.”

  “So if he hadn’t done that, you would have disappeared?” I asked.

  “No. You would have seen me stand in front of the mirror a few seconds, and then we would have continued on our way doing whatever we had been doing. You might have noticed something, similar to one single wrong frame on a thirty frame-per-second movie, but your brain would discard it.”

  He stopped and got a thoughtful look. “The only way I would disappear to your eyes would be for me to never use that mirror again to come here—unless—I used your mirror, the one in your room. The time would be off, but not by much.”

  “The one in my room? What do you mean?”

  “It’s just an idea. I need to talk to my Father first, though, and ask some questions.”

  “Okay, so what would make it difficult for you to come back here, if time went too far back?” I still didn’t know.

  “We explained to you before about setting a path, like a doorway, do you remember?” I nodded. “If time goes back past that, the mirror is ‘reset,’ then there is no path. I might not even find that mirror, if I do, it may not lead here. There are too many variables.”

  “But if I am always here, what does it matter when or where you show up? My name’s not going to change; who I am’s not going to change. I’ll still be me, and I’ll still be here. Even if you show up in Detroit in two thousand one, you just come here.” Duh, it couldn’t be any harder than that, could it?

  “It’s not so much that I couldn’t physically come here and find you.” He put his head down.

  “Then what is it? What is the big problem?”

  “Love between two people from different times is a little more complicated than,” he let out a sigh and rubbed his hands together, “than a norma
l relationship. Normal ones are hard enough.” He looked around the room, then at his door.

  “Case study.” He said. “We had a friend, we’ll say his name was Robert, and Robert met a woman in the future and fell in love, we’ll call her ‘Annie.’ They were together a long time, and it was undoubtedly love. Robert had to return home. Had things gone as planned, Annie would have never known he was gone. While Robert was ‘home’ taking care of neglected duties, there was a fire in his home and the mirror he used was destroyed, erasing it from the future.”

  “Robert then spent most of his time in search of a way back, a way as near as possible to the time and date he left her. The closest he ever found was about a year prior to their first meeting. He went back with the understanding that, to her at least, he was a stranger. He found her, introduced himself, and attempted to develop a relationship. She was involved with a man that Robert knew of, a relationship that had ended; that he believed would end again.”

  “Unfortunately, Roberts presence caused the other man to change in both attitude and action, and those changes affected his relationship with Annie. Ultimately, Annie agreed to marry the other man, prior to the time she had originally met Robert.”

  “Then it wasn’t meant to be, right?” I asked. “If it was meant to be, it would have happened. Your dad said you can’t erase a soul, so if Robert and Annie were meant to be, and they married and had children, those children would have a soul and couldn’t have been erased.”

  “Try to explain that to Robert.” He laughed a sad laugh.

  “What I mean is that, if it is meant to be, for us, then it won’t matter how many times we start over, or when or where. None of that matters, right?” That gave me something to hold on to.

  “That’s the theory, but not everyone believes that theory is correct, not unless it affects the world as a whole. If the body is a vessel, and the soul exists separately from it, both before and after the existence of the body—but the body has an effect on the souls perceptions—then isn’t it possible that everything is changeable, even the soul itself?”