by Kari Maaren
“I don’t think so,” said Cuerva Lachance. With dismay, Freddy realised she was in one of her scarier moods. Her hair and coat billowed out to the left, though the air of the room was perfectly still. She was smiling in a way that made Freddy’s brain hurt.
“Oh, leave him alone,” said Josiah.
Roland backed slowly out towards the front hall. He nearly made it, too. “The chair,” said Freddy sharply to someone who couldn’t see or hear her. Roland being Roland, he had backed right into one of Cuerva Lachance’s chairs. He stumbled and fell, awkwardly, half on the chair and half off. Cuerva Lachance advanced across the room towards him, still caught in an invisible, intangible storm.
“You can’t protect them,” said Cuerva Lachance as Roland struggled to rise. “You can’t protect anyone. Why would you want to? Isn’t it easier just to look after yourself? Why go out of your way for two girls who don’t even like you?”
“Mel likes me,” said Roland, trembling.
“Mel likes everyone,” said Cuerva Lachance. “She doesn’t count.”
“Stay back!” Roland regained his feet, staggered backwards into the wall, and rebounded, propelling himself out into the hall. Freddy heard him knock something over. Then the door was open, and running footsteps were receding down the walk.
The impossible wind died down.
“That was interesting,” said Cuerva Lachance cheerfully. “Do you think he noticed anything?”
Josiah was making neck-wringing motions with his hands. “You are the most … infuriating … I can’t believe you … He was already a problem, and now he … My God, you annoy me.”
“I force you to have fun,” said Cuerva Lachance.
“This is what you call ‘fun,’ is it?” He glared at her. “Please put the house back to normal. I think the other me is trapped in a box somewhere. You’re completely out of control.”
“It’s my natural state,” said Cuerva Lachance. However, when he continued to look pointedly at her, she sighed and moved out into the hall. Josiah followed.
Ban said, “Intrigued yet?”
“Why did you want me to see that?” asked Freddy.
Ban made a complicated body motion that Freddy thought might have been her version of a shrug. “Who can say? You may find something to do with it eventually.”
“I can’t trust you,” said Freddy. “I can’t trust anything about Cuerva Lachance.”
“Of course not. But I just let you watch. I’m not telling you what to think.”
“Do you want me to think something in particular?”
“It wouldn’t be right if I just told you,” said Ban virtuously.
Freddy narrowed her eyes.
Ban nodded. “Remember: everything is backwards.”
“I don’t know what that means,” said Freddy.
Ban made the complicated body motion again. “Who does?” she said. Then there was just empty air where she had been.
18
By Thursday, Freddy was about ready to kill someone. She couldn’t shake the feeling that September twenty-seventh was a sort of mirage, always off on the horizon, never getting any closer.
She was tired of eavesdropping. She was tired of lurking on the margins, slipping behind the scenes like a ghost. She was tired of living in a house that didn’t stay the same shape from day to day. She was really tired of not being able to put the puzzle together. She had tried, but there were still pieces missing. She didn’t know who Three was. She didn’t understand why Three was so important or what “Everything is backwards” meant. She would have punched the wall if she hadn’t been afraid it would turn into something when she did.
It was ten after three. She was in her room, trying to read “Kubla Khan.” She was so desperate to know what was going on that she had been driven to poetry. She didn’t really expect to find any answers in Coleridge’s poem, but she couldn’t think of anything else to try. At any rate, it wasn’t working. The poem was mostly a description of the pleasure-dome, which seemed to have trees and rivers in it, for some reason. There was a bit at the end about some guy who seemed enchanted; she didn’t understand that part at all. Where had the guy come from? Why was everyone wanting to weave a circle round him thrice? Why would anyone experience holy dread while weaving three circles around a random enchanted guy who was building pleasure-domes in air for no apparent reason? Then the poem just stopped. That was her fault, she supposed. In the end, she had to admit there were no answers here.
It was unseasonably warm, and she had left her window open, which was why she noticed the voices in the yard. Sighing, she dragged herself to the window for a bit of requisite eavesdropping.
Peering through the leaves and branches of the trees, she saw Josiah and Mel. The elementary school was only about a block and a half away, so Mel tended to get home earlier than Freddy.
As usual, the eavesdropping didn’t work as well as she wanted it to, though it could have been worse. She wasn’t all that far away from the others, and they weren’t bothering to keep their voices down. “Snooping again?” said Josiah.
“There’s a mystery to be solved,” said Mel. “Of course I’m snooping.”
The next few exchanges were inaudible. Then Josiah said more loudly, “Take frogs, for instance.”
“I usually don’t,” said Mel. “Why frogs?”
“They start out as tadpoles,” said Josiah, “then metamorphose. As adult frogs, their physiology is completely different.”
“Not completely,” said Mel. “They’re still cold-blooded. They retain many characteristics—”
“The point is that looking at a tadpole, it’s hard to predict a frog.”
“So you’re saying my understanding of what’s going on is at tadpole-level right now?”
“Yes, but maybe that’s just what I want you to believe.”
“You know it’s not easy to confuse me, right?”
If Josiah replied, his words were drowned out by the organ’s first monstrous notes. Freddy saw both Mel and Josiah whip around to look at the house; then Josiah was running for the front door.
Freddy watched her sister stand in the yard, staring at the house. After a moment, she turned and walked past the hedge and out of sight. Mel really did snoop. She made up mysteries out of nothing. In this case, however, she was right about the mystery, and Josiah was right about the tadpoles.
The organ continued to scream out into the afternoon. Josiah 2 bounced into the yard, his hands over his ears. A moment later, Mel and Freddy 2 came into sight and stood watching the front door until the combined efforts of the two Josiahs shut Cuerva Lachance up.
Freddy’s ears were still ringing, and she missed most of what Freddy 2 and Mel said to each other then. The first words she caught were Mel’s: “Then Josiah can be in two places at once.”
At this point, Mel looked straight at Freddy’s bedroom window.
Freddy stepped rapidly back into the room, her heart pounding. She hardly heard Mel telling Freddy 2 about the long-haired girl at the window. Stupid, she thought. You knew she was going to see someone. How didn’t you know it was you? It was, as usual, dizzying to try to reconcile events she remembered happening a year and a half ago with events that were happening right now.
Josiah came into the bedroom without knocking. “Your sister is being annoyingly nosy again,” he said. “I said something about frogs.”
“I heard,” said Freddy. “We’re out there discussing the laws of physics right now.”
He rubbed his eyes. “I see her making it all into a mystery, and I think she might be Three. But I can’t be sure. It could still be any of you. Why doesn’t one of you just say something illuminating and put us all out of our misery? Don’t you know who it is yet?”
“No,” said Freddy, “sorry,” though she wasn’t. She added, “You may want to keep your voice down.”
“Next Tuesday cannot come soon enough,” said Josiah.
They watched, peeking out the window as subtly as they c
ould, as Josiah 2 and Roland arrived in the yard at the same time, and everybody stood under the tree and argued. They watched as Cuerva Lachance spoke from the tree. It was funny how strange it had originally seemed that Cuerva Lachance had been able to get into that tree. Now that didn’t even register on the general scale of weirdness.
When Cuerva Lachance materialised in the bedroom immediately afterwards, Freddy barely twitched. She felt an odd sense of loss. Sure, she had once reasoned away a marble rolling uphill, but at least then she had thought of impossible things as, well, impossible. With Cuerva Lachance, the impossible happened all the time. It made it hard to see anything as fundamentally real.
* * *
The weekend crept by. Nothing changed … or everything changed constantly, but not in a very constructive way. That was, Freddy decided, the problem with Cuerva Lachance. There was change but no growth. Josiah didn’t grow, either, because he didn’t change. Roland was right that there was something wrong with them, though he was wrong about what it was. The thought made Freddy shake her head at herself. Even her ideas about the confusion were confusing.
And then it was September twenty-seventh.
Freddy started shaking almost as soon as she woke up that morning, and she didn’t stop all day. She was going home. But she was different. But she was going home. She hadn’t always missed it when she was travelling. She did miss it now, strongly, when it was almost within reach. The clueless former Freddy was at school, getting thrown into a wall. Had she ever really been that oblivious? Would everyone expect her to go back to being that oblivious? What if she didn’t fit?
“Stop shuddering,” said Josiah irritably as he tried to give her a haircut after lunch. “Do you know how hard it is to cut hair this curly? Why can’t you have nice lank, straight hair like your little sister?”
“I always like it when I have curly hair,” said Cuerva Lachance, leaning against the fridge. A spider plant’s tendril snaked over her shoulder.
“Thanks ever so for the information,” said Josiah.
“I’m sorry,” said Freddy, but she couldn’t stop trembling. She felt as if she were about to open in a lead role on Broadway, and she hadn’t bothered to learn her lines.
“You’ll be fine,” said Josiah, snipping away. “People will notice, but you’ll get through it. Tell them the head injury made your legs swell.”
Freddy had forgotten she would have to pretend to have a head injury. She felt the shaking get worse.
“Honestly,” said Josiah, “if you don’t stop that, these scissors are going to end up sticking through your eye. Take deep, calming breaths. Think of kittens frolicking in a field of daisies. Slap yourself upside the head a couple of times. You know … the usual.”
“I’m just scared,” said Freddy, “that’s all.”
She hadn’t meant to blurt it out like that. Cuerva Lachance beamed at her. “Good for you,” she said. “Lying to yourself would have been much easier. I would have chosen that option.”
Freddy looked in the mirror when Josiah was done. The shorter hair did make her look more like her old self, but it couldn’t disguise the height, the different body shape, or the changes in her face. The tan had faded a bit, though not as much as she had hoped. “Maybe if I slouch,” said Freddy. “Or kneel.”
“It will all be terrible,” said Cuerva Lachance, patting her on the shoulder, “but let’s pretend it won’t.”
* * *
From the window of the master bedroom, Freddy and Josiah watched Freddy 2 and Josiah 2 enter the backyard. Josiah had never told Josiah 2 exactly when on September twenty-seventh he would be encountering the time portal, but he was obviously expecting something soon; he peered edgily about him as they walked towards the door. Freddy 2 was looking straight ahead, stone-faced. They moved out of sight onto the doorstep.
“You’re going to want to apologise in an hour or so,” Freddy heard Josiah 2 say. “You know that, right?”
“No, I won’t,” said Freddy 2.
Then they were gone.
Freddy breathed out. There was only one of her now. Suddenly, she didn’t know what was going to happen. It was more frightening than she had thought it would be.
“Cuerva Lachance,” called Josiah, “is it possible you just turned the back door into a time portal?”
There was a pause. “Oh dear,” said Cuerva Lachance from somewhere down the hall, “did I?”
“Attention span of a diseased gnat,” said Josiah. “So when are you going back?”
Freddy hadn’t thought of much else for the past few days. “Right away. They won’t be expecting it. I can sneak into my room and make sure they first see me when I’m sitting down.”
“It won’t work,” said Josiah.
“Nothing will work,” said Freddy, “but I can try.”
Heart thumping in her chest, she went downstairs. Perhaps as an apology for her creation of the time portal, Cuerva Lachance was allowing the house to stay relatively stable. There was only one corridor and one staircase at the moment. At the back door, Freddy and Josiah looked at each other. “Well,” said Josiah, “this is it, then.”
“Yeah,” said Freddy.
She didn’t know if she would miss the weirdness or not. She thought she sort of would and very much wouldn’t. Her own bedroom had only four walls that never changed into anything.
“It’s been fun,” Josiah said, sounding as if someone had forced the words out of him at gunpoint. Freddy smiled. She was pretty sure Josiah actually quite liked her now, even if he refused to show it.
Clutching her time-travelling bag, which was bulging with books from her house, she crept across the yard and into the lane and back into her own yard. Everything was still. As quietly as she could, she unlocked the back door and pushed it open.
She nearly shoved it into Mel, who had apparently been on her way out.
19
For one brain-freezing moment, Freddy and Mel stood and stared at each other. Idiot, Freddy’s brain screamed. Ducklings! She was following you. Mel’s eyes travelled from Freddy’s boots all the way up to the top of her head, which was so much higher than it should have been that Freddy briefly considered the kneeling option. There was no way of hiding anything. She saw the shock spread over Mel’s face, then the recognition. Unbearably, there had been a moment at the very beginning when Mel hadn’t known who she was.
Freddy pushed past Mel into the house. She ran up the stairs to her room, slammed the door, flung her bag in a corner, dived into her bed, and pulled the covers over her head. It was a completely stupid thing to do, but she could see no other option.
There was quite a lot of silence for quite a long time. The bedroom door opened. It didn’t have a lock. She should, thought Freddy, have shoved some furniture against it.
“Do you want to talk about it?” said Mel.
“Go away,” said Freddy.
Mel sat on the edge of the bed, bouncing a little. “I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” she said thoughtfully. “You seem a couple of years older, at least.”
“Eighteen months,” said Freddy, and then, “That’s impossible. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Ah. Growth spurt,” said Mel. “It’s encouraging to know I may not be short forever myself.”
What Freddy was mainly feeling was a monstrous embarrassment. It had come out of nowhere. She didn’t think she could stand to have Mel in the room for a second longer. “Go away,” she moaned, “go away, go away.”
“What I can’t figure out,” said Mel, “is how eighteen months passed for you while five minutes passed for me. I’m very interested in this phenomenon and would like you to stop being so dramatic about it so we can discuss the implications.”
She pulled back the covers. Freddy tried to yank them over her face, but Mel bundled them into her arms and flung them across the room.
The sisters looked at each other. Time passed.
“Why aren’t you in denial about this?” asked F
reddy at last.
“I’ve never found denial very useful,” said Mel. Freddy could see nothing in her expression but interest. “Observation tells me you’ve aged even though you haven’t had time for that. So we accept that and move on. How did it happen?”
Freddy sat up. There was no point in trying to hide anything from Mel now. “Time travel.”
“From the beginning,” said Mel.
She didn’t tell her sister everything. There were some bits of what had happened to her that she didn’t feel ready to share, as she wasn’t finished thinking about them yet herself. She left out Mika and the creation story, and she didn’t mention her doubts about Three or the puzzling role of Ban in all this. She thought Mel may have picked up on the doubts about Three anyway. Listening to herself, she knew she was making the whole experience sound more like a rollicking adventure than it had really been. Mel was certainly awash in envy. “This isn’t fair,” she said when Freddy fell silent. “Do you know what I would give to travel in time?”
“It wasn’t like that,” said Freddy. “It wasn’t just … fun. It was scary and way too weird for me.”
“I don’t think it was.” Mel propped her chin on her chubby little fist. “You’re different.”
Freddy shook her head. “I don’t know why you even believe me.”
“Are you kidding?” said Mel. “You go off for five minutes and come back a year and a half older, then tell me a story that explains it perfectly? Why wouldn’t I believe you? It’s still not fair. You’ve solved the mystery without me.”
“Not all of it,” said Freddy, and she opened her mouth to say something more about Three, then shut it without speaking at all.
“I don’t think I’m Three,” said Mel, considering. “I haven’t had any meaningful dreams or anything.”
“That’s not a requirement,” said Freddy. “I haven’t, either.” But she wondered. There had been a dream, hadn’t there? She remembered Cuerva Lachance floating on a piano.
“If you knew who Three was,” said Mel, “would you tell them?”
