Across the Universe

by Raine Winters

  Oman furrows his brow. “Like what?”

  I shrug. “Something dark and cloaked. Something that can turn to smoke, like us.”

  “Not that I remember. But I promise to look around next time I visit.”

  I frown, disappointed, and turn back to my basin. I hear the rustling of Oman’s pocket behind me, the sound of his fingers brushing against glass, and when I look over my shoulder again he is gone. His orb floats in the clear bowl, the universe inside projecting onto his half of the room, swirling and sparkling with the same intensity as mine does.

  I drop my own orb into the basin before me and I become smoke, flying through the stars until I fall down, down toward the little blue planet called Earth.

  When I land on the beach, Noah isn’t there. The sand is damp beneath my feet and night cloaks the sky. Gentle waves lap at the shoreline, creating a soothing sound that calms the anxiousness left over from Dena’s funeral. I stay there for a while, just staring out at the lake, but Noah never comes to visit. I don’t blame him. Last time I spoke to him, I’d been quite harsh, even though he was just trying to understand the world I’d brought down from the stars with me.

  I trudge into the grass and walk on until I hit the road, where a neighborhood stretches out before me. Rows of quaint houses line either side of the street, lights shining through the windows while families lounge inside. I walk past driveways and mailboxes, parked cars and manicured lawns, following the curve of the road and enjoying the crickets chirping in the distance.

  I come to a yellow cottage with white shuttered windows and a light blue door. The panes of glass open a portal to a scene inside where a family of four sits around a dinner table. The parents fuss over their smallest child—Lizzie—who refuses to eat with anything but a spoon. Noah sits next to her, an amused expression on his face as he waits patiently for the chaos to end.

  Something akin to guilt clenches my stomach. I feel like I’m spying on an intimate moment, a piece of time I shouldn’t see, and it’s unfair for me to watch without Noah knowing I’m there. I convince myself that this is what Watchers are here for in the first place and tiptoe through a bed of bushes so I can get a better view of things.

  I can barely hear their muffled voices through the window, and I strain my ears to listen. Lizzie leans away from the table, her chair tilting back as she smiles, giggles, and dodges her mother’s hands.

  “I’m an alien!” Lizzie shouts. “I don’t eat with forks.”

  “Enough of that,” her mother says, grabbing her daughter’s hand and wrapping it around a fork. “Dinner is no time for games of imagination.”

  “I have no idea where she got this routine from,” the father adds.

  “It’s that story Noah told the other night. The one about the girl.”

  Noah slides farther into his seat, making himself as small as possible while his parents shoot daggers in his direction.

  “Not my fault,” he mutters. He says something else under his breath, but through the barrier of the window I can’t hear it.

  “Watch your mouth, young man!” his mother snaps.

  Noah adjusts his glasses and runs a hand through his hair. “Sorry.”

  Finally noticing the tension in the room, Lizzie uses her fork to skewer a few carrots and shoves them in her mouth. Her mother sighs and drops back to her chair. “Really, dear. Must you eat like a horse?”

  “So, kid, whatcha been up to after school these days?” the father asks Noah, intent on driving the attention away from Lizzie.

  “Not much. Spending time on the beach,” Noah replies.

  “Still writing, I see? Can’t find any spare time to join a sport or two? I heard the basketball team’s looking for recruits.”

  “He always was better at soccer,” his mother says.

  Noah rolls his eyes. “Can I be excused?”

  “You’ve barely touched your food, dear.”

  “You’ll need the extra protein to try out for football next year,” his father adds, punching him playfully in the arm. Noah raises his gaze to his mother, clenching his jaw and giving her a severe look. Her eyes toggle between her husband and her son several times before she makes up her mind.

  “Oh, fine. But no midnight snacks.”

  Noah leaps up from the table and exits into the next room. I travel with him, rounding the house until I hear his footsteps through the thin aluminum siding. Eventually I come to another window—this one’s open—and when I peek inside I see a bedroom. The walls are painted a dark blue and a desk butts up against a corner. The bed is draped in dirty laundry, and a dozen worn notebooks are stacked at the foot of the frame.

  Noah barges into the room, falling face first onto the bed and groaning. He has only a moment of solitude before Lizzie breaks through the door after him. She leaps onto the mattress, bouncing playfully off his back.

  “Watcha dooooing?” she asks.

  Noah rolls over and pushes her off the bed. She lands on her rear end, still giggling, as he answers. “Trying to get away from you.”

  Lizzie pops up, pulls the desk chair over to the edge of the bed, and climbs onto the seat. “Nah-ah. You’re trying to escape dad. You do that every time he brings up sports.”

  “Just don’t tell him that, and we’ll be square.”

  Lizzie eyes him with an intensity I didn’t realize a child could have. “What’s wrong, Noah? You seem sad.” She waits for him to answer, and when he doesn’t, she draws her own conclusion. “Do you miss her?”

  Noah grabs a pillow and chucks it straight at Lizzie’s face. She ducks just in time, and the missile collides with the side of the desk instead, knocking over a stack of notebooks.

  “Get lost, munchkin.”

  “I knew it!” Lizzie says gleefully. “Noah and weird girl sitting in a tree, K—I—S—S—I—”

  “Her name is Amara,” he snaps.

  “You like her.”

  “Do not. I’ve only seen her twice.”

  “Doesn’t matter. If you like someone you like them, and there’s nothing you can do to make it stop.”

  Noah sits up. “You’re seven years old. What do you know about liking someone?”

  Lizzie pouts. “I’m almost eight.”

  “It doesn’t matter. She’s not coming back. I ticked her off,” Noah says.

  “Why don’t you buy her something pretty? A necklace, maybe, or some flowers? It always works on mom after dad does something wrong.”

  “Won’t help if I never see her again. Plus, she might not even be human.”

  Lizzie shoots him a devilish smile. “Noah’s in love with an alien.”

  The word love turns my stomach to mush and quickens the beat of my heart. The concept nearly brings me to tears. I’ve heard Elli and Nim talk of such a thing—they say it’s a common theme in all the universes where life exists—but I’ve never felt it myself.

  What it would be like, to be loved. I imagine it feels like there’s something more than the void beyond The House, something even bigger than space and time and all the universes we watch.

  Lizzie leaps from the chair and begins to shout at the top of her lungs, her words coming out as a half-song, half-taunt. “Noah loves an alien!”

  She repeats it over and over until Noah jumps from the bed and chases her out of the room. His mom passes by in the hallway, grabbing Lizzie by the arm and stopping both of her children in their tracks with one lethal glare.

  “Stop it right now, you two. And Noah, close your window. It’s freezing out,” she says.

  Noah strides across the room, and I duck into the shrubbery lining the house right before he bends forward and pulls the window shut. I can feel the cool night air coursing over my skin, but my heart feels warm.

  Love.

  Wouldn’t that be nice.

  I dawdle around galaxies, swimming through stars and black holes and planets before returning to the Watch Room. I stand up and grab my orb from the basin, turning to tell Oman goodbye before I leave. At firs
t I don’t think he’s there—his basin is empty and he’s sitting nowhere nearby—but then I see the tip of a sandal sticking out from the shadows that cloak the corner.

  “Oman?” I ask. He doesn’t answer. I walk over to him, nudging his foot with mine. His leg flops to the side like dead weight, and a shaking gasp fills the air.

  I grab a torch from a sconce nearby and shift its light to fall upon the corner. Oman lays there, his shoulders half propped against the wall, but he doesn’t look like the same person I met earlier. His pale skin has gone translucent, showing the silver running through his veins underneath, and his hands hang limp and shivering at his sides. As I sweep the torch over him his fingers unclench and something clunks against the floor and rolls away.

  I bend over and catch whatever it is before it disappears into the shadows. As I stand up I realize it’s Oman’s universe—but not the healthy one that sparkled and swirled like before. It’s filled with destruction, just like Dena’s, planets and galaxies imploding in red bursts against the glass.

  I kneel next to Oman, partially to comfort him, but also because my legs have turned to jelly from fear. “How did this happen, Oman?” I ask.

  He takes another labored breath and lolls his head onto his shoulder so that his eyes meet mine. “Them,” is all he says.

  His pointer finger twitches toward the door and I instinctively spin around. The dim lighting obscures my view but I can just make out a cloud of black smoke curling underneath the door into the hall beyond. My blood runs cold as I rush to bring Oman to his feet. I want to chase down whatever just left the room, but I can’t leave a fellow Watcher in this kind of condition, either.

  “We’ve got to get to the Sick Room,” I say through clenched teeth as I heft his weight against the left side of my body. I roll both of our universes into the pockets of my dress and begin to drag him to the door when the threshold opens and Nim walks in. She takes one look at Oman before dipping her head back out of the room and shouting for help.

  Three more members of The House answer her plea. They surround me in a circle, each helping take Oman’s weight from my shoulders and rushing him out of the room.

  Nim strides to me and grabs my hands in hers. “What happened, Amara?”

  I pull Oman’s universe from my pocket and hand it to her. When she sees the destruction reflected in the glass, her eyes turn hard.

  “He was fine before I went to watch,” I say. “But when I got back he was laying on the floor and his universe was dying. How is this even possible? Didn’t you say this only happens once every several billion years?”

  “It must be a coincidence. A terrible one, at that.”

  I open my mouth, stop myself, and then change my mind again. “There’s something else.” Nim waits, her expression expectant. “Smoke. Like the kind we turn into when we leave to watch, only black as night. I only got a brief look at it before it filtered out under the door.”

  “Just a trick of the light, probably,” Nim says, but she looks worried. “One of the torches burning out, perhaps.”

  I shake my head hard. “No. Oman pointed to it.”

  Nim grabs me hard by the shoulders. “Listen to me, Amara. You’ve been through a lot these past few days. And this—finding Oman dying—it’s something no young Watcher should have to go through. Your mind is playing tricks on you as a consequence. It’s best to forget what you saw before someone thinks you’ve gone mad and throws you into the void.”

  She lets go, smoothing the front of her dress and clearing her throat before adding, “I should go check on Oman. Get some rest, Amara. Use the time to reflect. And then return to your duties as Watcher with a fresh head.”

  Nim leaves the room, her footsteps fading down the hall. I rush out after her, looking both ways down the corridor, but there’s nothing else there—no black clouds to speak of.

  I recall the hooded figures I saw on Earth and the way they turned to smoke. Then the same smoke, curling under the door.

  I try to tell myself I imagined it all. That my mind is playing tricks on me after the stress of seeing Dena die. But deep down in my gut, I know it’s not just a coincidence. It’s not just my imagination.

  And I have a sinking feeling it’s not the last ill-fated event to come.

  Chapter Eight

  There is only one place I feel safe right now, and that’s where the books are kept.

  I head to the Archives Room, praying I don’t run into Nim on the way. I manage to arrive there without any obstacles and find Elli seated behind the desk, shuffling through a mountain of parchment as she hums happily to herself.

  When she hears me enter, a huge smile alights her face. “Amara! Fancy meeting you here. What’s the latest news from your little blue planet? Have you seen a boy again?” I don’t smile back, and the grin evaporates. “What is it? What’s happened?”

  “Oman—one of the Watchers—he’s dying. His universe is being destroyed as we speak. I found him right after he fell ill,” I say.

  Elli draws a sharp intake of breath and pulls her hands away from the stacks of paper. She runs a palm through her hair, the ink caked on her fingers leaving black smudges on her near-white locks. “How can that be? Dena just got thrown into the void. The next universe to die shouldn’t come for another—”

  “—several billion years. I know,” I finish her sentence.

  “Maybe it’s just a coincidence. A horrible twist of fate.”

  “That’s what Nim said.”

  The thought of being compared to Nim makes Elli cringe. “It could also be something more sinister. You never know.”

  “That’s the reason I came here,” I reply. “I’m wondering if there’s any way to know for sure whether Oman’s universe dying is a twist of fate, or if it’s something The House should be worried about.”

  Elli raises an eyebrow. “Do you actually think The House would worry about it, even if you have proof it didn’t happen by chance?”

  My voice becomes pleading. “I have to try.”

  She sighs. “There are some ancient records we could check. A list of the prophesized end dates of all known universes that come into being, written by the Seers. But they’re not always accurate, and they’re hard to decipher. You’ll need my help.”

  I give her my best helpless expression and raise my voice several octaves. “Please?”

  Elli rolls her eyes and stands from her seat. “Fine. But don’t go telling Nim I indulged you. She’ll have my head for it.”

  As she rounds the desk, I pull a torch from the wall. I expect her to lead me down the same tunnel as before, but instead she diverts me into a grander passage. The mouth is twice as wide as the rest, and instead of books lining the walls, there are scrolls of rolled parchment. Strange symbols are etched into the shelves beneath each row.

  “What are these?” I ask.

  “The Seers of The House recite prophecies, as you know,” Elli says. “Whatever they say ends up here, stored for safekeeping. Those symbols you see are markers showing the passage of time. Only Archivers can navigate them.”

  “Then I’m glad I’m friends with an Archiver.”

  The torch flame dances over the vast array of records as we walk deeper into the tunnels. Elli diverts us many times around corners or through secret passageways in the walls. Within minutes I’m lost, struggling to keep up with her so that I don’t become stranded amongst the dimness and reclusiveness of the place.

  “They should be around here somewhere,” Elli mumbles, her fingers brushing against the shelves as she proceeds. It’s as if her hands can sense what’s written in the scrolls—like she’s going by feel rather than sight—and the idea makes me second guess the path I’ve chosen as a Watcher. Then I recall the stacks of papers on her desk, and I am relieved I chose a life of adventure rather than knowledge.

  “Maybe this tunnel,” Elli tells me after we emerge from a hidden passage into a particularly well-lit area. Maybe it’s just a trick of the torches, but the parchmen
t here is more yellowed than the rest. I furrow my brow and peruse the contents of the shelves with my eyes. One scroll looks no different than the rest.

  Elli ascends a rolling ladder and uses her weight to slide the device back and forth across the shelves. She pulls scrolls halfway from their resting place and then puts them back; some she removes fully but after a moment of browsing discards. It goes on like this for a long time, and eventually I grow impatient.

  “Are you sure this is the right tunnel?” I ask.

  Elli shoots me a withering look that rivals one of Nim’s. “Of course I’m sure. It’s my job, isn’t it?”

  I turn silent and let her take the lead, bouncing from shelf to shelf and immersing herself amongst the records. Finally she pulls one out from the rest and unravels the scroll until its contents drop clear to the floor. The wooden spool clacks against the marble as her eyes scan over the text.

  “Curious. Very curious,” Elli says, descending the ladder at the same time as she reads.

  “What’ve you found?” I reply.

  Elli drops the parchment on the ground and kicks it across the room so that the length unwinds all the way down the tunnel. The words are handwritten in symbols I can’t comprehend, and as I appraise the squiggles and lines my brow becomes furrowed.

  “It’s the same language as that written on the shelves,” I say. “How is anyone supposed to understand any of this?”

  Elli drops to her knees and uses one finger to direct her down the lines of text, shuffling backward with her feet as she goes. “You might not be able to understand it, but Archivers can. And from the gist of it, I’m in the right era. It talks about Oman’s universe—”

  Her voice cuts off in the middle of her sentence and she leaps to her feet, blinking hard. I rush over to her and stare down at the part she was reading, but I achieve nothing more than going cross-eyed at the strange figures drawn on the page.

  “What’ve you found?” I ask, my curiosity getting the better of me.

  “It seems to say Oman’s universe wasn’t due for destruction for another seventy billion years.”