Time Weaver

by Jacinta Maree

  “Help me – help me – help me.” Her voice barely lifted, but he could hear the fluid in her lungs as she spoke. “P-Please.”

  Klaus’ eyes narrowed with rage. “I should leave you.”

  “Please—”

  It wasn’t a full wish, but it was enough to tickle his Collector’s code. The genuine desire was there, and fearing the punishment, Klaus hobbled over to her. He rubbed his hands together to draw in spiritual energy before carefully distributing it along her broken body. Catherine relaxed beneath the healing, her eyes fluttering blissfully once free from the pain. She sighed with relief. “Thank you. Thank you.”

  He pricked her with his blade before collapsing back into the dirt. The wish had weakened him, draining his mind of thought. For the next few moments, they both didn’t speak and recovered silently amongst the dirt. The overhead sky was covered by thick tree branches, fanned out across the entire mountain. Klaus ran his free hand over the stone cast.

  “What have you done to me?”

  Catherine eased up and glanced at him. “We can fix it.”

  “How?”

  She quickly changed the topic. “We need to get out of here. Will it cost me much time to teleport back?”

  “No more wishes. I need to recover first,” Klaus said breathlessly.

  Catherine whispered, “I’m sorry about stabbing you. They weren’t going to stop.”

  “Then perhaps you should have stabbed them.”

  She glanced away guiltily. “You rest. We weren’t far from Westicher. Shouldn’t be too difficult to walk there.”

  Klaus watched her stand unsteadily and scan the area for the dropped dagger. He growled and looked away. Hours passed until Klaus had the energy to stand without support. The poison dripped out of him like sweat. He felt around the puncture wound and was able to detect the splintered end of the bone shard lodge in his arm. Thanks to the hard stone, it was impossible for him to dig it out.

  “Can you walk?” Catherine asked.

  “Ja.”

  She walked over to carry Klaus over her shoulders, but he quickly shrugged her off. “Nein. I’m fine.”

  Hours passed. The sun rose, heating up the air around them. Catherine stumbled to a stop, propping her arms against the tree trunk in an attempt to stay upright.

  “I can’t take another step. I need some water,” Catherine whimpered, her tongue roughened from dehydration. “Please, Klaus, I don’t care how much it’ll cost. I want a drink.”

  Klaus sat down on a fallen log and wiped the sweat off his brow. “Don’t be so quick to throw your time away.” He unwound the handkerchief and examined the tattoo again. The coordinates remained the same. Elizabeth would be at Westicher, and no doubt Nikolas would be watching. He’d see her among the others, the Guardians, and know of Klaus’ plan.

  The bullet wound ached as he absentmindedly touched his stone arm. It was then he noticed tracks in the soil. Footprints. Lots of footprints. He pointed it out to Catherine. “Someone lives around here, we’re close.”

  They struggled up the hill and eventually came across a field of Vitis vinifera. “Hallelujah!” Catherine rushed toward the entrance of the winery. Crowds lined the fields, following tour guides explaining about the different type of wines and the process in making them. Klaus’s stone arm remained covered by his large coat, the only visible part being his clenched hand that he kept close to his heart.

  “I’ve left a message for the others at the Und Hänsel Gretel letting them know I’m okay.” Catherine informed as she and Klaus waited inside the winery around a table. “There will be a car arriving to take us the rest of the way.”

  “No mention of me?” Klaus asked.

  “Thought better not. I’ll just tell them you deserted me after the commotion.”

  “Good choice. But what of Elizabeth?”

  “I’m sure she’s fine.”

  “She will be worried,” he insisted. “She does that, she worries.”

  “Not unlike yourself.” Catherine bit her lower lip to hide her smile. She poured them both a glass of wine, offering one out to Klaus. “The car won’t be here for a while though. We could use this time to get to know each other. How did you and Elizabeth meet?”

  Klaus accepted the drink cautiously. “Not poisoned, is it?”

  “No, I promise.”

  He was still reluctant to drink. “Her father and I knew each other. I met Elizabeth when she moved into the mansion after her mother passed away. I helped her train for a short while. She was rather pathetic at combat; can’t shoot straight to save herself,” he chuckled.

  “She matters to you though, doesn’t she?”

  Her words tied up his tongue. Every time he thought of Elizabeth, a hopeful tightness gripped him. Klaus glanced away, uncomfortably. “Don’t they serve anything stronger than wine?”

  “How does it work exactly?” she asked instead.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The rules with Collectors. I’ve never had any personal experience with them. I mean with, well, your kind before.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re asking me.”

  “You must have rules, right? Boundaries to what people can and cannot wish for? Or is anything possible?”

  “Well.” Klaus cleared his throat. “We cannot be ordered to kill or track other Collectors.”

  “Why?”

  “We have a natural repellent, helps Collectors hide from threats. We also have a powerful instinct to survive, able to react to dangers faster than any known creature on earth. Our indestructibility was a parting gift from our master Chronos. We work for him, he provides us with the code and the blade, and in return, we split the collected time for him. Half to us, half to him. Keeps him immortal.”

  “Chronos? What is a Chronos?”

  “The original Time Collector.”

  Catherine shifted back. “Where is this Chronos then?”

  “I have no idea,” he admitted. “I’m not even convinced he is a real person, but a presence, like a thought or a dream.”

  “Are there any other restrictions to wishes then?”

  “Nein, technically, you can have any wish, as long as you can afford it. You can wish to kill a man, but it may cost you thirty years. You can wish to fly to the moon, but it’ll cost you over a hundred. Anything is possible, if you have the time. Most people barely live to fifty, so such wishes cannot be achieved. Wishes cannot be pulled out of nowhere. It must come from something. Like alchemy, exchanging items of equal value, but when a person dies, the contract is void. The wisher must be careful in their desires, for it could be taken away from them after death. That’s not to say a broken contract would bring a dead person back to life, but it could mean taking away certain things.” He thought on it for a moment. “Like wealth or a working heart.”

  “Is it even worth wishing from a Time Collector then if you end up losing what you want?”

  “Your lives are so short. Why not make the best of whatever time you have left? Either way, you will die. Why not die happy? If you’re smart about it, even with an invalid contract, your wish could remain.”

  She nodded her head slowly. “Wish for something that if it’s taken away, doesn’t mean you lose its benefits.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Do you have to use the sentence, I wish, though?”

  Klaus chuckled. “No, there’s no exact phrase that has to be pronounced. It’s an understanding between both parties. Like out in the forest, you didn’t exactly wish to be healed, but I understood your desire enough to act on it. If it’s genuine, then it can be made real.”

  Catherine smiled. “Thank you again for that. So where do you come from? You’re not just born as a Time Collector?”

  Klaus again calmly nodded. “Ja. All Collectors had normal mortal lives once. Even though we are Time Collectors, we are still living, breathing beings. We still need to eat and drink, like normal mortals. If we stop collecting, we’ll run out of time and die a normal death
.”

  “So you’re not immortal?”

  “Technically, no.” Klaus went to lift his glass, but his grip trembled.

  Catherine leaned closer. “Listen, let me fix it for you. It is my fault after all. And partly yours.”

  Klaus perked his eyebrow. “How do you intend to fix…” But he didn’t need to finish the question to understand what she meant. Gratitude fluttered within him. “Are you sure?”

  “It won’t cost me much, right?”

  “Not a lot, but make sure you are specific. Every detail counts. There’s a shard stuck in there, but I can’t get to it because of this irritating coating. Hopefully, if I remove it, the wound will heal itself.”

  Catherine thought on it for a moment, and then cleared her throat. “Okay. Okay, I’m ready. Klaus, I wish your right arm wasn’t covered in stone.”

  The wish ran up into his spine, tingling his fingers. Klaus secretly revealed the Collector’s blade from his inner jacket and immediately Catherine flinched. “Please be careful.”

  “You won’t feel a thing.” He tuned her hand over and gently pricked the end of her finger. The stone coating on Klaus’ arm rippled back into soft, human skin. He could feel tingling under his arm as warmth extended from his shoulder down to his fingertips. He wasted no time. The moment his skin was breakable, Klaus drove his blade into his shoulder and pried the remained bone shard out. The broken shiv fell to the ground soundlessly.

  Relief washed over him. “Danke. Thank you.”

  Catherine smiled, picking up the shard and pocketing it. “My pleasure.”

  Klaus flexed his right hand, uncurling his fingers. A small smile crept across his face, softening his eyes. As he celebrated silently, his arm trembled. Pins and needles orbited the stab wound, and shifted back down his arm. Klaus kicked back from his chair. “What?” He couldn’t do anything other than watch his skin discolor back into grey rock, and painfully his fingers curled again into a fist. “Nein! Es hat nicht funktioniert! (No! It didn’t work.)”

  “Klaus, I…I don—!” Catherine stammered.

  The bone shard was out. He was positive of that, but traces of it lingered. He grabbed his arm, picturing a life with a limb frozen to his chest. Panic flared once he noticed the pain travelling further into his back, tightening his muscles. It’s going to spread?

  “We can still fix this. Lady and Lord Moore can—”

  Fear pushed him away. He turned from Catherine, his mind in shambles as he tried to find the door. He didn’t know where he was going. He didn’t know what he was going to do.

  “Wait! Where are you going?” Catherine stood, but Klaus disappeared from of her sight.

  Chapter Thirty-Four:

  Darkness covered the ground beneath her feet and left tingles over her skin. With Nikolas’s grip on her, Elizabeth felt the world around her shift into a foreign cosmos. Colors flickered, breaking through the dimensions of space and time, and stepping out of the dark void onto the outskirts of a winery. Elizabeth’s eyes squinted against the setting sun. Nature chirped around her, bringing contrasting warmth from the chilly underground tunnel they stood in just moments ago. Hudson’s wish carried them to Catherine, leaving them on the skirts of a winery. Elizabeth felt awe of a Collector’s abilities and came to better understand Klaus’ fear of Nikolas. A man who can teleport and control shadows at his own whim. Klaus, of course, had his own set of abilities, but nothing of this grandeur.

  The gremlins scrambled back into Nikolas’ shadow. The woman, Catherine, was inside, but Klaus was nowhere to be seen. Gremlins scoured every inch of the property, expanding as far as Nikolas could reach before sling-shotting back into his pocket.

  “Not here?” Nikolas growled. His attention moved to the estate. “She’ll know.”

  “What? Who?” Elizabeth turned just as Nikolas disappeared from sight. She? As in Catherine? Realization struck and she rushed inside after him. Yet, Nikolas was too quick.

  He approached Catherine silently where she sat alone beside the back window, gazing out across the fields. From behind her, he gently reached out and touched the back of her head, trying to dig into her memories as he had done with Elizabeth. But before he could pull up any images, something hard knocked him back. Pain popped to the front of his eyes, and around him the gremlins bubbled. Immediately, blood started to weep out of his nostrils. I’m too weak. The only reason why Collectors were able to do what they do was thanks to the transformation of a soul. It became energy, matter to construct and deconstruct at the users’ desire. With Nikolas, the only time he took was his own.

  Catherine heard his yelp of pain and turned around. Like Hudson, she recognized Nikolas’ face and immediately reached for the bone dagger in her pocket. She swung, but Nikolas caught her wrist. Catherine kicked out of his grip. She was fast, able to weasel out of his reach before he could secure a grip on her. She used the furniture to barricade his approach, tipping the table over and smashing the glasses in the commotion. But she couldn’t run from his gremlins. Both her ankles were lassoed to the ground, held there by sticky black matter. Catherine tripped and fell, landing on her back.

  “What on earth?!” She swung downwards, slicing through the gremlins. They squealed and tunnelled back into Nikolas. Nikolas’ attention went straight to the dagger and his eyes enlarged with need.

  Elizabeth ran inside and heard the banging of furniture at the back of the room. Most of the winery had emptied, leaving only the staff behind who also moved in to check out the noise. There, she saw Nikolas towering over Catherine. “You…how did you get that?” He pointed to the shiv while drawing out his own Collector’s blade.

  Elizabeth’s mind spun. She charged and tried to hit Nikolas over the head with a wine bottle, but he turned and caught it. The Collector code gave them incredible reflexes, and this was a fight Elizabeth wasn’t going to win. Which meant Catherine was at the mercy of a man she knew was capable of murder.

  “Nikolas! Don’t!” Elizabeth started to beg. Nikolas turned his back on her. The remaining staff ran away in panic at seeing him reveal his weapon. The gremlins bit Catherine’s hand, pinning her wrist to the floor. For the second time, Elizabeth was going to have to watch someone die. Her father first, and then Benjamin. She had already lost too many family members to the Collectors. Her mother and Sara both. She felt as helpless as she did at William’s gates, begging him to help her. Elizabeth closed her eyes, her voice scratching as she spoke. “Oh, God please just stop him!”

  As the words left her mouth, her mind immediately went to her old house in the Pitts. She remembered the slanted tilts it was built on, the warm hearth that nested their fires. Nikolas froze and Elizabeth opened her eyes in time to see the horror cross his face. He looked at her from over his shoulder, and without breaking eye contact, the roof folded away into grey smoke. Magic pulled the earth sideways, the ground beneath their feet sunk as the room blurred in a spinning motion. Catherine disappeared. The winery disappeared. It felt as though they stood still and the rest of the world spun backwards. All that remained clear was Nikolas. His large bewildered eyes, his face tightened. Then, as though suddenly, everything stopped. Fishy smells hit her. Noises of busy traffic. She stumbled forward, dizzy in her disorientation and caught herself on the wall. She was back home, clinging to the grime sleeked walls in the Pitts. Familiarity stung with its own type of pain. She staggered backward, her head tilted up at the crooked buildings above. What? What happened? People wove around her as she walked out into the middle of the streets, looking for Nikolas.

  “Isn’t that her?” Elizabeth turned at the sound of whispers. People slowed to gawk, some being as bold as to point straight at her. “Why is she here? Isn’t she in recovery?”

  “Nikolas?” Elizabeth hissed as she quickly ducked down an alleyway. When she glanced up, she was faced with a wall covered completely in posters of Arthur’s face. Among the clutter of his self-made shrine, there were also declaration of civil-war, of a terrorist organization to defeat a
nd a call to rise against the traitors. It was no tragedy. It was murder.

  What on earth is happening? Elizabeth stumbled back and quickly turned around. Protesters lined the streets. Flyers turned the roads into a sea of dirty crumpled sheets. Elizabeth darted around the crowds to a newsstand selling the local paper. All over the press there were talks of scandals, devastation, panic, and unrest. It had been four days since the destruction of the Beaumont manor. Four days since Harold, Lady Claudia, and Timothy Beaumont had died. Within those four days, Arthur had scrambled to secure power of the country. To secure his family name. Secret meetings were made. Mysterious fires set over parliaments. Men of opposing politics were killed. Families threatened and fled. Rumours about Jeremy Beaumont’s return from war flooded the headlines side by side with details of Arthur’s and Elizabeth’s secret wedding. Elizabeth Beaumont, the new Lady of the house.

  Elizabeth flicked through the paper to find two pages focused on just her. …And where oh where is our new fair lady? Only daughter and heir to late Doctor William Wicker, the white hair beauty hasn’t been seen since the attack at the Beaumont estate. Claims of woman hysteria and exhaustion has ailed our mysterious Cinderella where she recovers in the privacy of the new Beaumont estate. Sir Arthur Beaumont’s quick thinking and bravery was what saved our damsel in distress from meeting the same fate that took our Governor, Lady Claudia and her eldest son, Timothy’s, life. It is still unknown when we will get to see the new happy couple amongst the turmoil of a country’s grief.

  Elizabeth stumbled back. Oh no. Oh God, please no. Arthur Beaumont had survived. She had thought Arthur had perished in the Beaumont tragedy, but alas there he was, as terrifying as a nightmare. And she was married to him. Elizabeth pocketed the newspaper.