Time Castaways #2

by Liesl Shurtliff

  “I didn’t know,” she said calmly. “I swear it. The adoption agency gave us no details when they matched us. I had no idea you’d already been named, not until we came to get you, and they showed me the terms of the adoption. It was then that I knew you were my son, knew it with every fiber of my being.”

  “Because you thought I’d help you get the Aeternum?” said Matt, not even trying to keep the venom out of his voice.

  “No,” said Mrs. Hudson, shaking her head. “Don’t you see? Mateo, you are my Aeternum.”

  “What are you talking about?” said Matt. “You’re saying by being your son I’ll somehow grant you eternal life and power? Are you planning to sacrifice me at some point?”

  “No, mon chéri, think of the poem.” She reached toward Matt. He stiffened as she slowly brushed her fingers through his hair and down his cheek. “The Aeternum will mend what is broken. Reclaim what is lost. The world will be yours.” Her voice caught in her throat as she spoke. “You and your father, and Corey and Ruby, you all mended my broken heart, and reclaimed my lost soul. You became my whole world. I made many sacrifices. I had to give everything up. The Obsidian Compass, the Vermillion, my crew and friends, my whole life as a time pirate, and everything in my past. But it was a sacrifice I was willing to make in order to have a family again, to have the future I wanted. I could not have the family I lost before, but I could make a new one.”

  Matt felt something loosen in his chest, a knot that had been growing and tightening for who knew how long, days or months or years. Matt slowly leaned toward his mom and rested his head on her shoulder. She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him on top of his head.

  “So does that mean the Aeternum isn’t real? It’s all just . . . a poetic metaphor?”

  His mom let out a long breath. “I don’t know,” she said. “Like any poem, I’ve interpreted it for my own life and desires, but that doesn’t mean that’s what Quine actually meant. There is evidence that the Aeternum—at least the one Vincent is searching for—is real.”

  “And I’m connected somehow,” he said.

  “It seems so,” she said. “But this should not come as a surprise to you now, seeing that you are the maker of the compass, and the compass is connected to the Aeternum.”

  Matt reached inside his shirt for his compass. The obsidian sparkled in the starlight. “I don’t even know if it will work again,” he said.

  “You’ll get it to work,” said his mom. “I have faith in you.”

  “But what if I fail?”

  “Well then, we’ll fail together. That’s better than winning alone, don’t you think?” She smiled down at Matt.

  “I don’t know,” said Matt. “It still sounds like . . . failing.”

  Mrs. Hudson laughed. “Then don’t fail. I command you, as your captain and mother, to succeed.”

  Matt smiled and felt a surge of confidence and determination run through him. He felt certain he could make the compass work again because that’s what was supposed to happen. It was his destiny. He was the inventor of the Obsidian Compass.

  The good feelings were short-lived. The next day Matt sat on the bow of Blossom with Jia, working on the compass. They had made good progress, or Matt thought they had anyway. Within hours they had managed to chisel away the obsidian around the two inner dials, even found a way to open it up. The inner workings had been miraculously untouched and undamaged by the obsidian. He needed to make only a few adjustments and calibrations, but still the compass would not work. Everyone kept telling him it would be okay, that he would figure it out, but he had his doubts, and they were all on edge, wondering how long it would take. How long would they be stuck in this nothing place?

  It was blazing hot. Matt wiped the sweat from his brow, then gazed out at the horizon. They were sailing slowly in whatever direction the wind blew them. There had been no signs of land or any other boats or ships, but still the adults kept a watch. Tui was standing guard now. She paced up and down the deck of Blossom, keeping watch for any sign of Captain Vincent or the Vermillion. Matt gazed at his hand and arm. He had removed the bandages. It was too sweaty and itchy in the heat. His wounds were healing okay, no infection. The rootlike burns had darkened in the sun so they were almost black against his brown skin, almost tattoo-like. His mom had tried to rub sunscreen on him, but it stung like a thousand bee stings, so she told him to work on the compass belowdecks, out of the sun. He tried, but there wasn’t enough light, and he felt claustrophobic in the cramped space. Finally, he resigned himself to just baking in the sun and keeping the scars forever. Corey told him it made him look cool, like an X-Men character. Matt wasn’t sure that made him feel any better. Weren’t the X-Men totally feared and ostracized from society? Matt had never been a popular social butterfly by any means, but he wasn’t a total outcast. He’d have to wear long sleeves to hide his scars, and maybe even those weird gloves with the fingertips cut off.

  But he knew that would do little good. Scars or no scars, everything was different now. He was different. He was still reeling over the idea that he was the real inventor of the Obsidian Compass. . . . He could barely wrap his head around it all, what it meant. He flipped back and forth from confidence bordering on arrogance to complete and utter terror. If he was the real inventor, then he was the cause of all the events that would take place because of the compass, for better or worse. And if the compass did all the things he already knew it had, then eventually it must leave his hands. Quine would somehow get possession of it, then his mother, then Vincent. Was that all by design or coincidence? Did Quine steal it? Or did Matt give it to him? Was he friend or foe? And what about the Aeternum?

  Three days passed and Matt still hadn’t gotten the compass to work. Everyone tried to give their insight and advice. Ruby found a jar of peanut butter, and Corey gave Matt the remainder of his bubble gum. Jia mixed the two together, creating the sticky concoction she always used on the Vermillion, and then Matt slathered it over the compass, hoping that would be the magic ingredient. It helped the dials turn smoothly. Otherwise all it did was make a greasy mess. His mom tried to fiddle around with it, which only made Matt tense. Annie wondered if a little gunpowder might make it work, and Chuck played his harmonica thinking some good music would do the trick. (According to him, good music was magic.)

  None of it worked.

  Matt knew he was missing something, some small detail that had slipped his notice, but he didn’t know what. He couldn’t think.

  Another day passed, and another. Matt kept working on the compass, though he was running out of ideas. And patience, and energy, and optimism. Eventually he started just making it look like he was working on it. Picking up tools, making tweaks, turning the dials. Nothing. His head had been aching for two days now.

  And he wasn’t the only one losing patience and hope. The rest of the crew started to grumble, and though Blossom appeared to have plenty of food, water, and supplies, they knew it couldn’t last forever.

  It was Jia who figured it out. The next day she tried to coax Matt to take a break from the compass and come swimming with her, Corey, and Ruby. He refused, of course. He could never take breaks when he was trying to solve a problem like this. She was just about to leave him when she stopped.

  “It looks like there’s a piece missing,” said Jia, pointing to the very center of the innermost dial.

  “Yeah,” said Matt. “I accidentally chipped it when I was cutting around the dials.”

  Jia furrowed her brow. “But the Obsidian Compass didn’t have a missing piece, did it?”

  Matt shrugged. “Maybe Vincent filled it in or something.”

  Jia continued to stare at it, her finger on her chin. “Matt . . . your bracelet.”

  “Huh?” Matt looked at his bracelet, then at the compass. The stone in the middle . . . it was very similar in size and shape to the hole in the middle of the compass.

  Matt quickly untied his bracelet, then tried to yank the twine away from the stone. “I need
scissors!”

  But then Pike was suddenly beside him. She pulled the bracelet from Matt’s hands and began to untie the knots, her fingers moving so fast they were a blur. In less than a minute, she had freed the stone. She held it out to Matt and dropped it in his palm, then ran away and disappeared somewhere.

  “I’m starting to think she’s not human,” said Matt, staring down at the pile of string that had once been his bracelet, and the stone nestled in his cupped palm. He turned the stone over between his fingers. He picked up his compass.

  He placed the stone in the center. Jia gasped. It fit perfectly. The compass made a small click and a light flared.

  “It’s fixed!” Jia shouted. “Everyone, Matt fixed the compass!”

  Matt felt strange. Dizzy, but also like he was falling. He was falling away, away from everything and everyone.

  “Matt?” he heard Jia call, though her voice sounded far away.

  He tried to shake his head, keep himself alert.

  “Matt, you okay?” he heard Ruby say, but her voice was just an echo, like she was calling to him from the other end of a tunnel. And then everyone was gone. Or he was gone.

  21

  The Future Awaits

  2070

  New York City

  Matt wasn’t sure if he was dreaming or traveling. It felt different, like something in between, more real than a dream, but different than the physical world. It was . . . metaphysical. There was no rush and roar in his ears, though he wouldn’t call it quiet. There was an absence of sound. He felt very light, almost weightless, like he was without form but still some aspect of his physical self was there, like his atoms had all separated but were still aware of each other and had a kind of magnetic force keeping them in the same realm. And then Matt felt himself coming together; his billions of atoms decided they wanted to form what they knew made Mateo—his brain, his heart and lungs, his bones and muscles, his blood, veins, and skin. When his eyes congealed (there was no other way to describe it) and his vision came into focus, he saw that he was in some kind of room or apartment. There were books, paintings, and furniture. The walls dividing rooms were transparent glass, but they were cluttered with text—words, lists, and phrases in at least a dozen languages, maybe more. He recognized some of it as Latin, Spanish, English, Russian, Chinese, and Arabic. Most of the writing looked to be everyday mundane lists or reminders, but he gleaned very little as the text was continually shifting and bouncing around. He caught a small grocery list that started out ordinary and grew increasingly odd—pickles, toothpaste, bread, sodium chloride, cetyl alcohol, BiClO. There were chemical compounds and mathematical equations scribbled all over, ranging from short and simple to long and incomprehensible.

  Strewn across the tables and chairs and stuffed in corners were tools and machines and gadgets, most of which Matt could not name or even recognize. A large brass telescope stood by a window that overlooked a cityscape. Matt wasn’t sure what city it was, but clearly he was on a top floor of a very high high-rise overlooking many other tall buildings, some sleek and pointing straight to the sky, while others twisted and coiled sideways and around each other in architectural wonder. It looked like something out of a Dr. Seuss book, Matt thought. Not at all feasible. But as Matt studied the buildings and the land he started to see things that looked familiar, some of the straight skyscrapers, and a big rectangular park in the midst of all the buildings, with trees and walkways, a lake and several baseball diamonds. Matt knew that park like he knew his own home. It was Central Park. This was New York.

  Something large zoomed past the window where Matt was standing, and he jumped back, heart hammering in his chest. Was that . . . ? Why yes, there was another and another. Flying cars! He could see at least a dozen right now, zooming between buildings, dipping and rising. He must have traveled to the future! How far into the future? Matt turned around and looked for any newspapers or magazines that might give him some idea as to the date. But for all the books on the shelves, there was very little paper elsewhere. All he found was a spiral-bound notebook, worn and warped, the pages yellow and curling. Something flared in Matt’s chest, like the notebook was calling to him. Matt picked it up. It was already flipped open to a random page.

  I look at myself

  And see nothing

  I look at you

  And see everything

  There is no me

  Without you

  Without us

  We are without

  The world

  Together we have

  The last line was not written in English. Rather, it was a single Chinese character. Matt recognized it immediately. It meant “eternity.” It was the symbol for the Aeternum. Matt had seen it in the letter from Quine that Vincent had shown him.

  “It’s rather rude to rifle through a stranger’s belongings.”

  Matt dropped the notebook and whirled around. “I’m sorry . . . ,” he began, looking for the person who had just spoken. “I didn’t mean to . . . I was just . . .”

  “Curious?”

  Matt jumped back. He still could not see who was speaking, but the voice sounded much closer now, almost directly in front of him. He felt a strange kind of buzzing in his ears at the sound.

  “It’s quite all right,” said the voice. “We aren’t strangers, really. I know you quite well, even if you don’t know me.”

  Matt jumped around again. Now the voice sounded like it was coming from the window, but still he saw no one.

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m here,” said the voice, still by the window, “and there,” this time it came from the ceiling, “and everywhere.” Now the voice seemed to be coming from all around.

  “Are you talking through some fancy surround sound system or something?” said Matt. “Are you trying to pull some kind of Wizard of Oz trick?”

  The voice chuckled. “It is a trick, and one of my more useful ones.” The air in front of Matt moved, or rather the particles in the air that had been invisible suddenly became visible. It was just a shimmer at first, and then it looked a little like a fuzzy television screen that grew clearer and clearer every second until a gloved hand was floating in the air.

  “How do you do?” The hand floated toward Matt, extending for a handshake. Matt was grateful it was a left hand. His right hand throbbed with pain from his burns and cuts. Matt tentatively reached out and shook the floating, disembodied hand. It felt like a real human hand, solid and warm, the fingers squeezing his own with just the right amount of pressure.

  “Are you . . . real?” Matt asked. “I mean, is there more of you? I mean . . . do you have a full body?”

  “Of course,” said the voice. “But it’s rather a lot of effort to pull myself all together, and to be honest, I’m not entirely sure I’m wearing pants. Best to remain invisible, I think.”

  Matt was too amazed to laugh, for as the voice spoke, the floating, gloved hand dissolved like a sandcastle in the rain.

  “How do you do that?” Matt asked as he watched the particles continually divide and spread until they were no longer visible.

  “We are made of trillions of cells, each one of them sentient to some degree. I have trained them how to separate and spread, yet still function as a single unit.”

  “That sounds . . . complicated,” said Matt.

  “It’s quite simple, really, but not easy. Do not mistake one for the other.”

  “Could anyone do it? Could I?”

  “Of course. And you will.”

  “Can you teach me? Now?”

  Matt thought the voice chuckled a little. “No, not now, but another time. I promise I will.” Matt had been trying to place the voice, the accent. It was all at once familiar and foreign. It sounded American, and then he caught a few elongated vowels and it sounded slightly British, and then a bit of a guttural sound slipped in that seemed French or maybe German. He couldn’t figure it out.

  “Who are you?” Matt asked, though he thought he knew the answer al
ready.

  “Marius Quine, scientist, inventor, and amateur poet, though I’m less known for the latter. Actually, I’m not very known for the former either, but fame was never the goal. Highly overrated, in my opinion, and not always an accurate gauge of anything worthwhile. Wouldn’t you agree, Mateo?”

  “How do you know who I am?”

  “This is the first time you’ve met me,” said Quine, “but it is far from the first time I’ve met you.”

  A chill ran up Matt’s spine. Vincent had said something similar to him before, and given that he had turned out to be an enemy pretending to be his friend, Matt was wary.

  “What do you want?”

  “World peace would be nice, but I’ve time-traveled enough to know that’s impossible. So now I’m just aiming for self-peace.”

  “Self-peace?”

  “Yes, peace with one’s self is almost as difficult to obtain as world peace. It’s a constant struggle, but it is achievable. So sorry. I’m getting carried away. What can I do for you today?”

  Matt had so many questions he wanted to ask about so many things, he barely knew where to start. He decided the beginning was best. “You gave my mom the Obsidian Compass. . . .”

  Quine scoffed. “I did not give it to her,” he said, clearly annoyed. “We made a trade.”

  This was news to Matt. His mom had never mentioned anything about a trade, only that Quine had given her the compass at a time when she needed it. “What did she trade you?”

  “This.” The hand formed again. Quine pointed to a dagger resting on top of a stack of books. He plucked it up and handed it to Matt. As soon as Matt took the knife, the hand dissolved again. “It belonged to your grandfather,” said Quine. “Your mother’s father.”

  “Oh,” said Matt. The knife looked old, simple in design, but well crafted with a silver hilt. The blade was shiny and sharp. “Sorry, I’m really confused. I made the Obsidian Compass, right? Not you?”

  “You did,” said Quine, “with some help from Mother Nature and peanut butter.”