by Lizzy Ford
We returned to the kitchen, grabbed snacks and drinks, and went to the living area to talk.
My mom joined us later in the afternoon, and we spent the rest of the day cleaning. I was beginning to believe we’d never see a Tili when a knock came at the front door around the time the portal was open to the Tili home world.
I launched off the couch fast enough to startle my mom. Unable to subdue my eagerness to see Teyan, I jammed my feet into slippers and hurried to the door.
Upon opening the door, my heart fell to my feet.
More Komandi. These were dressed for warm weather. I stepped aside. No one spoke and only one of them glanced my way. The downtrodden men and one woman appeared tired.
“This way,” I said, disappointed not to see Tili at the door.
After showing them to their rooms, I went to the kitchen to help my mom warm up dinner and placed it in the dining room in the guest wing. The Komandi didn’t speak as they exited their rooms and gathered at the table. They appeared in rough shape with ratty clothing, circles beneath their eyes and smelled as if they hadn’t bathed in weeks. They also ate as if they’d been starving. Always a little leery of them anyway, I didn’t have the heart to ask them what was going on. They clearly needed a break.
They ate in silence and returned to their rooms, leaving a mess for the three of us to clean up.
No one else came through the portal.
The following morning, the Komandi left much the same way as their predecessors had: with bags of food and complete silence.
I watched them go and checked my schedule. They were headed to the Woli world, not their own.
Something about the change in them bothered me. I hadn’t really cared for the Komandi before but they had gone from cheerful, if sexist, warriors who smiled and laughed too loudly and drank too much to the sullen visitors this week who barely acknowledged anyone. I knew nothing of war, but I imagined they weren’t winning, or they’d probably not be so subdued.
They disappeared, and I closed the door. The sun was rising, and Mama was already cooking breakfast. I hadn’t seen Carey yet.
Wrapping a throw blanket around my shoulders, I started back towards my bedroom to put on warmer clothes when someone knocked at the door.
I retraced my steps curiously. It wasn’t unheard of for visitors to come during the morning rotations. Most of the time, they left in the morning, but previously, when the former Caretaker had been here, they arrived early on occasion as well.
Opening the door, I gasped.
Two Tili stood on the porch, a man with red tattoos and a woman with purple. Startled to see them, I couldn’t speak for a full minute. They were dressed much differently than when I had met them before. Their clothing was lighter, as if it were summer on their home world. They wore leathers edged with crushed velvet and embroidered in bright colors but no cloaks. Both carried packs and were armed. Their skin changed color as I watched, from black to gold.
“Caretaker,” the man said. “May we enter?”
I hastily stepped out of their way. The questions swirling in my head were so loud and so many, I didn’t know what to ask first.
“We have waited many winds for you,” he said.
“For the portal to open?” I managed.
“No. For you,” the woman replied. A few years older than me, she was taller and lean with muscle. “My cousin sends envoys every month. I’ll have to tell him he was right about the portals eventually opening again.”
“Your cousin is …”
“Teyan,” the man replied.
Maybe he hadn’t forgotten me. My heart began to race. “How is he?” I asked and closed the door.
“As well as can be expected,” was the short response from the man. “Have you food, Caretaker?”
“Yeah. Sorry.” Anxious to hear about Teyan, I spun and led them to the kitchen. I sought some way to ask again how he was in the hopes of getting a better answer but was drawing a complete blank.
Teyan sent envoys looking for me. Or … maybe they were just testing the portals. At the moment, I didn’t care. The news he was alive was enough to make warmth bloom inside me and to toss my thoughts into chaos.
We went to the dining area, where my mom had already begun to set out food.
“Teyan is fighting the war?” I asked finally as the two visitors sat.
“My cousin is leading the war,” the woman said proudly. “Four of his five brothers were killed, along with his sister. The fifth brother lost his leg and advises Teyan.”
My friend would be in his late twenties now. Was he married? Had kids?
Wait … she said he lost all his siblings but one? Almost his entire family was dead?
I frowned, recalling how he’d talked with warmth and affection about his sister when we’d been in Komandi.
“The portals don’t usually close and re-open to the same point. How is it they did this time?” the man asked and speared two thick pieces of French toast with a fork.
“It’s a long story,” I mumbled, embarrassed to tell them. I was reluctant to ask about the war and uncertain how to process Teyan losing his family. I knew that pain from my father’s death. I couldn’t imagine it magnified by five times or how naïve it was of me to believe he and his life wouldn’t have changed. “All the portals were closed?” I asked instead. “I had thought only one was.”
“All of them,” Teyan’s cousin said grimly. “He tried them all on every world.”
Ugh. Maybe seeing him again was a bad idea. I felt so guilty about my mom’s pain; I hadn’t considered Teyan would be hurt, too. At the same time, I couldn’t help the way my stomach burst into butterflies knowing he’d tried to find me. Sorrow and excitement seemed wrong to experience simultaneously, but I couldn’t think straight.
“Sweetie, I’m going to town for a mail run,” my mom said and ducked her head in. She observed the two Tili, and I could tell she had questions. “There’s more food in the kitchen.”
“Okay. I’ll be here,” I murmured, distracted.
She left.
I thought I heard my mom talking to someone when she reached the front door and cocked my head. I hadn’t heard a knock. Assuming it was Carey checking for messages from the Council, I went back to my task at hand.
The two Tili wolfed their food down. All the questions I had for them were gone, and I tried to think up any topic of discussion.
“How goes the war?” I asked lamely when I could think of nothing else to ask. My thoughts were on Teyan’s sister, who I’d never met, and on what he’d gone through over the decade.
“Terribly,” Teyan’s cousin replied. “The Komandi alone stand beside us to fight the monsters.”
Whenever one of them spoke of monsters, I wanted to ask what exactly they meant. If they didn’t consider dinosaurs to be monsters, then what were these creatures they fought?
“We have lost six out of every ten of our people and the Komandi seven out of ten,” the man reported. “What the other peoples don’t understand is when there are no more of us to fight, the monsters will go to their worlds and eradicate them next.”
Stunned by the amount of damage he was talking about, I could think of nothing else to say. I had been about to ask when Teyan was coming to visit, but the question seemed foolish. If his people were dying around him, he wasn’t going to leave them to hang out with me.
I pushed my French toast around on my plate, troubled. Perhaps it was stupid to believe Teyan and I could ever be real friends, let alone anything else. He had been at the back of my mind since I last saw him, and I wasn’t certain what that meant. My life was here. His was there. It wasn’t like he lived in Europe and we could meet somewhere in between.
We lived in two separate worlds, and his was wrought with war on a scale I wasn’t able to imagine. That he’d bothered to check on me should have been gratifying enough, but I wasn’t satisfied simply knowing he was alive. I wanted to see him again, and it was selfish. Stupid. Thoughtless. Here he’
d lost his entire family, and I was interested in a coffee date.
“Teyan is healthy?” I asked his cousin.
“He is,” she confirmed.
“I’m really glad to hear that. I hope he’s safe and well.”
“He is and powerful,” the man replied. “The other Tili clans look to him to lead us.”
It didn’t surprise me at all to hear this. The unflappable teen boy whose confidence and sense of self had amazed me was clearly always destined for something incredible, like saving the Five Peoples. I understood his decision to befriend me even less in this light. What did he see in me?
What did the Caretakers see in me to consider recruiting me in the first place?
I would never know or understand, and I’d definitely never see it in myself.
“Everyone else he allied with has died. Many, many people have pledged their allegiance to him, but he has only pledged his to a few, and you are the only one alive,” the man continued.
The woman nodded, as if checking up on me were part of their duty, because that was how strong of an oath they took to one another. It depressed me further to hear so many people close to Teyan, including the best friend to whom he had taken two tokens of alliance, were dead. What kind of life had he lived during the ten years when we hadn’t seen one another? It had to have been horrible. In comparison, my life was an absolute blessing.
My guests sat back from their plates, full. I assumed their world was similar to that of the Komandi – daylight when it was night here. “I’ll show you to your rooms,” I said and rose, hiding my unhappiness.
The visit I’d been waiting so long for couldn’t have gone any more normally – and I was devastated by it.
Walking to the guest wing, I surveyed my surroundings, and some of my disappointment eased. Even if I never saw him again, I still had a beautiful home, an honorable profession and my mom with me. I didn’t really need anything else in my life. I had the potential to heal from my past, the wide open desert to comfort me and a future here where I felt safe. This was a good life, even if it often felt as if something was missing from it.
I showed the Tili to their rooms then went to the garden. It grew so fast, its fruits and vegetables had to be harvested at least once a day. I didn’t mind, because I kind of needed some time and space to think.
I wanted to think about my future, but the only thought in my mind was that Teyan had lost his entire family. He was alone, and I hadn’t been there for him. I was a shitty ally, but I had suffered through something similar when I lost my father. I could have at least comforted him or mourned with him or maybe just hugged him, if he needed it.
When I thought again how he had spoken of his sister, tears filled my eyes. I blinked them away and forced myself to focus on the garden.
Maybe it would have been better if I never met anyone who knew him, when I could wonder and envision him with his sister and brothers somewhere happy. The truth was more painful than I expected, and I was embarrassed by how selfish I’d been in wanting to see him again.
I didn’t deserve him checking up on me when I’d been afraid to go through the portal and do the same for him.
Chapter Seventeen
My mom’s run to town lasted longer than I expected, and I spent the morning and most of the afternoon alone. It took me some time to rein in my emotions, and I cried twice before managing to calm myself enough not to break down again.
Carey was presumably resting in his room after his visit to his home world. I didn’t have the desire to talk to him, not when I was recovering from learning about Teyan’s family. The Tili were likewise sleeping or at least, out of my hair for now. The peace and solitude were welcome when I was so confused about what the right thing was to feel and do. I’d waited over six months to talk to the Tili, and I’d come away realizing how futile it was to wish for any kind of relationship with Teyan or to see him again.
After stacking today’s harvest into baskets and weeding, I dusted off my hands and went to the front door, hoping for another letter from the mysterious Council. An envelope hung on the door, and I quickened my step, curious. Plucking it free, I started to open it when Carey snatched it out of my hand.
I faced him, startled.
“I owe you an explanation,” he said with a deep sigh. “Please don’t read this.”
“Um. Okay. Why not?” I asked.
“Can we talk?” His eyes were troubled though his smile was as quick as always. “There’s something I should’ve told you before.”
The trickle of unease was back. “Yeah. You can help me take the harvest into the kitchen.”
He nodded.
Concerned about him, I returned to the garden and picked up one of the five heavy baskets of food. At the rate the garden was producing, we were going to have to start our own farmer’s market or take the excess food to town and donate it somewhere.
Carey was quiet, upset. We went back and forth until all the baskets were in the kitchen. Even then, he seemed distracted. I leaned against the counter, watching him, uncertain what was wrong. My instincts were causing my insides to twist.
“A couple of Tilis came in this morning,” I told him when he said nothing. “Hey, how is it all the portals were closed? I only locked one door.”
He blinked out of his pensive silence and met my gaze. “They’re connected,” he replied. “This door is the master, the first discovered and the only one that can simultaneously lock all the other portals when you lock it. It was a defense mechanism built into the portal system, in case something on the other side ever threatened your world. It was much easier to lock one door than fifty.”
“And me doing it was the first time it happened since you started Caretaking?”
“Yep. First time we know of, since the Discovery a hundred years ago. In fact, none of the other doors have working locks, which was a secret your former Caretaker revealed to me before she died. Only this one does, and only she knew this. It was a secret I’m sure she meant for me to tell you, since you are her successor. We were all trained not to lock any of our doors so as not to disrupt the portals. For whatever reason, of all the apprentices she’s had, the most crucial door in the portal system chose you to become its Caretaker.”
Did I hear faint resentment in his voice? Not that I would blame him. It was insane to think someone had given a complete novice the duty to safeguard the most important portal known to them. It also seemed like a miracle to me that no one had ever locked any door. I used to lock myself out of my apartment once a year. It seemed as likely the former Caretaker would absentmindedly lock this one at least once in her tenure here, perhaps out of anger at her mentor or general curiosity.
That I was the first ever in a hundred years made me feel like the least worthy Caretaker that ever existed.
“You wanted to tell me something?” I prodded, now that I had his attention.
Carey sat down on a stool at the breakfast bar. He was frowning, and he sighed. “Yeah. The reason I came to visit the Caretaker a few months … well, I guess, ten years ago, was for advice. I had an unofficial apprentice, a young man from Nidiani. He showed potential, so I planned to support his appeal to the Council to undertake Caretaker training after I’d evaluated him. The Council agreed to let me evaluate him, and I began to train him. But early on, there were issues. I overlooked them. I mean, newbies make mistakes, and he never hurt anyone. So I ignored them.” He paused and began fidgeting with one of the peppers in the baskets on the counter between us. “Things got steadily worse. I didn’t want him to wash out, because it’s such an honor to become a Caretaker for anyone not from your planet. I’m the equivalent of a rock star on our planet, and I wanted him to be the second non-human Caretaker in existence.” His small smile slipped.
He fell silent.
I waited, suspecting he had only bad news to impart. “What happened, Carey?” I asked when he was quiet for too long.
“Apparently, a lot,” he joked wryly. “When I came to the C
aretaker, I was seeking her help to either fix the behavior of my potential apprentice, or her moral support to revoke my support for him to the Council. It would’ve been tantamount to treason on Nidiani but I was raised on your planet and I believe in the Caretakers duties and protecting the portal system. I sent a letter addressing the issue to the Council yesterday, hoping for a quick response. I received no response so this morning, I left through the portal and returned to the seat of the Council for the first time since I’d been back.”
“I thought you said you went there after leaving me six months ago,” I replied, frowning.
“I kinda lied,” he said, cheeks red. “I’m sorry, Gi. I was embarrassed about my apprentice when I came here ten years ago and had a really bad feeling about him six months ago. I wanted to see how he was doing before I went to the Council. I went home and learned …” He drifted off. “Anyway, I spent six months on Nidiani trying to understand all that had happened. When I left this morning to visit the Council, everyone was gone, from the Caretaker candidates waiting to be sworn in, to the ambassadors to the elders who oversaw the Caretakers in general. I found traces of them in missing persons reports from local law enforcement, old newspaper articles, and the like.”
My mouth was dry. “What happened to them?”
“Gone. Vanished. They all disappeared the same week I was here, ten years ago, when my apprentice had gone to the Council for a progress report.”
“You don’t think …” I paused, mind racing. “Um, who was sending me letters if not the Council?”
“I’d say it was him, and the ambassador he’s sending is also him. There were no disappearances in ten years when the door was locked. When the portal opened, forty nine Caretakers, all but the two of us, went missing in six months.”
“But what is he doing with everyone?”
“I can’t begin to imagine,” Carey said. “My gut tells me he’s taking them through the portals. I don’t know why.” He ducked his gaze, and my instincts warned me again. I had no idea what that meant.
