“Hi.” He leaned over and kissed her cheek and then took her hands in his, her old, wrinkled skin in his smooth, young fingers. Phoebe saw the tears rimming his eyes, and she knew now, for certain, what his arrival meant.
“What took you so long?” she said anyway, smiling through tears of her own.
“I just saw you yesterday. And the day before that, and before that . . .” His smile grew at the thought, but quickly faded.
“It’s been years,” she said, thinking back, all the way to that last night. Number fourteen. Had that been a year after arriving here? Even then, it had been strange, trying to make sense of seeing this thirteen-year-old human from across the galaxy, just as she remembered him, when she was already twenty. Had she acted oddly toward him? Even cold? It had been so different than the first visits, when they would hide out in the cargo hold of the Styrlax ship, talking for hours, or that one time when he’d found her on a hike near the star system Chimerex, where they’d thought for sure they’d found a home. They’d camped together in the scrub forest of ice cactus, and that had been the first time it had been weird because she had been almost sixteen then, and he’d still been mostly a kid. . . .
“I could tell during that last visit,” said Liam, “that you had a life to go live. And I knew it was going to be amazing, and full of adventure, and . . .” His breath caught in his throat, and he wiped his eyes. “You were even more amazing than you’d been when you were my age, but I was still me. . . .” She saw him shudder and then take a deep breath. “Sorry, I’ve been awake for days.”
“It’s okay.”
“But I was right. It’s been good, hasn’t it? Life?”
Phoebe’s grin widened even as her tears flowed. “It has been wonderful. You must have seen at least a glimpse of it, on your way here.”
“Yeah, sorry, I didn’t look too close—”
“It’s okay.”
Liam looked away. “You got married, had kids—”
Phoebe gripped his hands tighter. “But I’ve never forgotten you.” That may not have been totally true. There had been whole stretches of her life when she’d been so absorbed in the moment that she wasn’t sure she’d thought about him at all—and yet hadn’t he always been there? Even just a fleeting sensation? She knew now, upon seeing him again, that he had. And what did that mean? That something from so far in your past could travel with you, through all your life?
Liam crouched and turned so that he could see the landscape as she did. “It’s beautiful here,” he said.
“It looks like Mars.”
He nodded, his breath hitching. And oh, Ana, he was so young, the smoothness of his face and his shaggy hair, and his thin, agile arms, and had she ever been so youthful? Had she ever had so much life ahead of her?
A breeze swept over them. He shivered and she rubbed his arm as best she could.
“You’ll still get to see me, one last time,” she said.
“Yeah. I’m finally going back, right after this. To the steps in the Styrlax ship where I left.”
“When you get there, you’re going to realize how we can keep in touch. Each time you wake up, you’ll tell me where you are, and when I can reach you.” Liam looked at her quizzically. “Don’t worry, the way it happens is that you figure it out. And your idea works, although I don’t think I’ll be the one receiving your last message. But my great-grandson knows what to do. So, even after this good-bye, and the next, we will still be in touch.”
“Okay.” Liam’s face hardened.
Phoebe gripped his hand. “I remember how you said good-bye.”
“Do I do okay?”
“It was perfect.”
A last flash in the sky, a rolling boom, and then applause in the distance, as the ceremony of the living came to an end.
Another clunking inside her. Another light-headed slide. The edges of her vision began to sparkle, pinpricks of light. A lack of oxygen . . .
Phoebe breathed in, a deep, rattling breath, and pulled Liam closer. “Sometimes I look up at the stars,” she whispered, “and think of you, asleep in your stasis pod. You’re almost to Aaru now. My whole life has passed and yours is still to come. Sometimes I think of my old home and I can’t wait for you to see it. I wish I could come find you there.”
Liam let his forehead fall against hers. “I love you, Xela.”
She nodded against him, wanted to kiss him, but she was an old lady and he was still a kid and it was better to just remember that they had, more than once, so long ago.
More spots. A weight now on her chest.
“I don’t want to say good-bye,” said Liam.
“Then don’t.” A sob caught in her throat, and she gasped. It was too hard to push the air. “Here.” She moved her hands with great effort and slipped the chronologist’s watch that Liam had given her from her wrist. Pressed it into Liam’s hands. “So you’ll always remember me.”
Liam clutched it tight, entwined his fingers with hers.
“I will never forget you.”
The sky dimmed. The heat faded. The world became distant against her skin. The strange double beats from the pump—Leno had once called it a broken clock—slowing, slowing.
Phoebe took one of Liam’s hands and placed it over her heart. “You’ve been here, all along.”
THE END
Acknowledgments
My first notes related to this story are more than a decade old. As you can imagine, it changed quite a bit from those early musings to these final pages. I began writing Chronicle of the Dark Star in earnest on June 11, 2013, and completed it on February 28, 2018. While I knew fairly well where the story was going, the details of the journey were surprising right up until the very last pages. What a thrill that was.
Now that this tale is told, some thank-yous are in order: to my family for your love, support, understanding, and countless dinner conversations about space travel, supernovas, and far-off worlds; to my friends for listening to countless updates about these books over many years, and chiming in with much-needed encouragement, and on occasion, a desperately needed plot point; to my readers: your letters, notes, and all-around excitement have made writing this story a particular joy; to the wonderful booksellers and librarians who have helped these books find their readers; to Debbie Kovacs, Walden Pond Press, and HarperCollins for bringing this story to life; to Vivienne To, whose stunning artwork graces these covers; to Robert Guinsler and the team at Sterling Lord, Literistic, for your support and guidance; and finally to Jordan Brown, editor and friend: look what we made!
—Seattle, WA, June 2018
About the Author
Photo by Annie Emerson
KEVIN EMERSON is the author of the first two books in the Chronicle of the Dark Star, Last Day on Mars and The Oceans between Stars, as well as The Fellowship for Alien Detection, Any Second, the Exile series, the Atlanteans series, the Oliver Nocturne series, and Carlos Is Gonna Get It. A former science teacher, Kevin is also a drummer and a singer. He lives in Seattle, Washington. You can visit him online at www.kevinemerson.net.
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Copyright
Walden Pond Press is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
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THE SHORES BEYOND TIME. Copyright © 2019 by Kevin Emerson. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Cover art © 2019 by
Vivienne To
Cover design by Katie C. Fitch
* * *
Digital Edition FEBRUARY 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-230679-1
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-230677-7
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1920212223PC/LSCH10987654321
FIRST EDITION
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The Shores Beyond Time Page 32
