Inquest

by Emily Thompson

  “I got into your dream that one time, too,” Twist pointed out.

  “You have?” Samay asked, appearing astonished.

  “Well, it was sort of a fluke,” Twist said to him dismissively while he silently chided himself for speaking so openly.

  “Should we give it a try?” Jonas asked, sounding hesitant.

  “How?” Twist asked, suddenly less sure about the whole idea.

  “Here, let’s just see if I can make you see what I see,” Jonas said, reaching for him. Despite the calm fog that came with the touch, Twist’s nerves tightened as Jonas pulled him close enough to allow Jonas to easily reach the back of Twist’s neck, Jonas’s hands still only resting harmlessly on Twist’s shoulders. “Close your eyes,” Jonas said. “That might help. And calm down, will you?”

  “Right…” Twist said, taking a deep breath as he closed his eyes. He let it out slowly, willing his nerves to loosen into the chilly mist that now filled his Sight. “Now what?”

  “I’m going to touch your neck,” Jonas said. “That should be the strongest connection. Then I’m going to look at something. Tell me if you can see it.”

  Twist did his best to stop thinking about the dragon watching them and to ready himself as Jonas gently placed his warm, rough palm on the base of Twist’s neck. The white, calm fog burned away the darkness behind Twist’s closed eyes and stole all of his anxiety in a flashing moment. When the fog subsided to the edges of his mind, Twist found his mental landscape now as empty, bright, and cool as a misty, early morning moor. Not knowing where to look in all of the white, Twist spent a few moments searching blindly.

  “All right,” Jonas said, his voice echoing oddly in the fog. “Can you see anything?”

  Twist opened his mouth to say that he couldn’t, but he paused when he caught a slight shadow in the fog. His attention dove for it swiftly, trying to pull it clear, but a sudden gravity tore Twist’s awareness from its footing and filled his inner eye with darkness. For a moment he knew only chaos as his Sight turned within him in a brand-new way. Then, suddenly, Twist saw light in the dark. Countless tiny points appeared before him in the shape of a wide, flat, glowing disk of smokelike swirls. A single bulge of intense light filled the center, while enormous, curving arms of floating points of light twirled around it like cream on the surface of tea.

  “Well?” Jonas’s voice called from far away and very near all at once.

  “I see something,” Twist said, hearing his own voice echo back to him. “I think…”

  “What is it?” Jonas asked.

  “I don’t know…” Twist said slowly. But then, all at once and without warning, he simply knew. “The Andromeda Nebula!” he said the moment the thought occurred to him. Then he gasped. “No, it’s not a nebula at all. It’s a whole other galaxy, far outside of this one.”

  Instinctively disregarding everything he’d been told before, he somehow knew that each tiny prick of light was a brilliant sun, unimaginably far from the one that still draped subtle warmth on his back. He could see the dense cluster in the center and almost felt the pull of the enormous, star-crushing gravity that held the billions of worlds connected in that elegant dance. And it was so much more immense, and so much farther away than anyone had ever imagined, yet hanging now before his mind’s eye, close enough to reach out and touch.

  More than any of the world-changing thoughts that filled his mind so quickly, he was staggered by the sheer breathtaking beauty of the sight. He’d heard that one could see this celestial apparition with just a spyglass on a clear night, but he knew that no one but he and Jonas had ever seen it as clearly as this: spinning gently in the heavens as millennia drifted silently by at an incredible pace. When the vision slipped from his mind, he knew it was Jonas pulling away. He let go, letting the sea of foreign worlds vanish into fog and then nothing at all.

  Twist felt the weight of his own body begin to slip and reached out instinctively to hold himself steady. His hands found Jonas and clung for a moment, while Jonas moved to steady him as well. Twist shook his head, clearing the strange feeling of weakness from his mind.

  “You all right?” Jonas asked, his voice no longer echoing.

  “Yes…yes…” Twist muttered, standing straighter and backing away. The fog cleared completely from his mind as Jonas’s hands fell away from him. The memory of the apparition Twist had seen filled his mind once again, as clear as any thought of his own. “Good heavens,” he breathed, looking at Jonas. “You just…see things like that all the time?”

  “Yeah,” Jonas answered with a shrug. “Why?” Behind him, Samay was studying his star maps intently.

  “But it’s astonishing!” Twist said, overcome with wonder. “I look at the sky and see nothing at all, compared to a vision like that. That little smudge is a galaxy! A whole other galaxy! Is it as big as this one? How many stars did I just see at once?”

  “I don’t know,” Jonas said, smiling slightly now. “Billions, I’d guess, but I don’t have the lifetime to count them.” Samay looked up to Twist, confusion clear on his face. “I mean, I can usually work out what I’m looking at, but that doesn’t mean I can see every little detail.”

  “Still…” Twist breathed, completely unable to imagine living a single day in a universe like the one Jonas had lived in for his entire life. “Why the devil aren’t you a scientist? You could change the scope of astronomy in a day.”

  “No one would believe me,” Jonas said flippantly. “But you saw what I was looking at, which is really the point.”

  “Wait, how did he see anything?” Samay asked, pointing to Twist. “His eyes were closed. What did you just do to him?” he asked Jonas.

  Twist’s nerves snapped tight.

  “It’s just a little Sight trick,” Jonas said dismissively. “It only works with us. No big deal. But, Twist, how much of what you saw did you understand?” Twist caught the anxious light in Jonas’s eyes and agreed that changing the subject quickly was imperative.

  “I’m not sure,” Twist said. “I knew the name of it, didn’t I? It was the Andromeda Nebula, wasn’t it? Or rather, the Andromeda Galaxy.” Jonas nodded with a smile. “And I could almost feel those stars all spinning around in the center,” Twist went on, his excitement rising. “And I knew it was so very far away. And those were all suns, weren’t they? Some hundreds of times bigger than ours, and some as small as this tiny little planet.”

  “The Earth is tiny?” Skye asked, highly confused. Myra stood beside her with a similar expression.

  “Compared to what I just saw, it’s the merest speck!” Twist said urgently to them both. As Myra gasped, entranced by the concept, Jonas began to laugh lightly under his breath.

  “Well, yeah,” Jonas said when Twist looked to him, surprised. “You had to already know that the universe was fairly large.”

  “I only thought I knew,” Twist said, finally regaining his calm. “I had no idea until I actually saw it like that…” He shook his head. “If every man on Earth could see the heavens the way that you do, it would change us forever.”

  Samay glanced between them with a calculating eye and opened his mouth to speak.

  “That’s a nice idea,” Jonas said lightly to Twist, before the dragon could say anything at all. “But what do you think? If I feed you images like that of the planets, can you calibrate this machine to match?”

  Twist looked back to the thousands of mechanical parts and the crystal planets and stars that surrounded that gleaming golden orb at the center. Tens of thousands of clockwork pieces felt like a handful now. He thought of seeing more of the heavens in the flawless detail that Jonas so brazenly took for granted, and smiled.

  “It would be no trouble at all,” he said, eager to begin.

  Jonas decided that, before they began to work in earnest, Twist should be given a chance to become acquainted with what the planets truly looked like. Twist jumped at the suggestion, excited as he was by the glimpse he’d had. Samay suggested they visit the observatory, whi
ch was housed in an adjoining domed building, off to one side. Jonas’s mood brightened instantly at the mention of a telescope.

  “You won’t be able to see anything in the daylight, though,” Samay said over his shoulder as he opened the arched doorway at the back of the room.

  Beyond the doorway, Twist saw a circular room with a flat wooden ceiling. Rounded bookshelves lined the walls almost completely, save the narrow windows that shed a dim light into the space. Thick wooden columns of highly polished oak stood out in the middle of the room, like trees in a dark wood. A small yellow dragon was coiled around one of the columns like a snake, poring over a volume through the spectacles that rested on its softly smoking, pointed snout. It read by the softly flickering light of the lick of flame that danced at the end of its extended red tongue. The dragon glanced up at Twist and the others with curious lavender eyes.

  “I can see the stars perfectly well, day or night,” Jonas said casually as Samay led them to a spiral staircase to one side of the room. The yellow dragon returned its attention to its book.

  Twist followed Myra up the staircase and into a full dome of perfect crystal, leaded with rays of white silver that ran straight from the apex to the base. In the center of the dome stood an enormous telescope of cherrywood and gold, standing on a massive mechanical base that held it up at an angle, like a cannon that might send a man to the moon. The apparatus nearly didn’t fit inside the huge crystal dome, making Twist wonder how it could be used at all. Before he could voice his question, however, Samay answered it by pulling on a golden lever that stood up from the floor to one side.

  A mechanical growl filled the room instantly as the sound of gears and bearings echoed off the crystal. The dome then opened slowly along the silver leading, each petallike section of crystal leaning out to mimic a giant flower. The mechanical sounds stopped when the dome stood fully open, leaving the observatory suddenly silent in the thin, chilly wind.

  “You people never do anything simply, do you?” Jonas asked Samay.

  Samay shot him an unhappy glance. “Didn’t you want to use the telescope?” he asked with a gesture to it.

  “Oh yes, please,” Jonas said, smiling widely as his gaze danced over the gleaming surface of the instrument. “Just give me a second, Twist,” he said, already heading for the lower end.

  Samay began pointing out the controls as Jonas sat in the padded chair that hung just below the eyepiece. Jonas turned wheels quickly, causing the huge telescope to swing around with the fine sound of well-tended clockwork. He aimed the behemoth with obvious ease, adjusting it carefully on a point in the clear blue sky. Once he’d found whatever it was he was looking for, he peered into the eyepiece and let out a gasp of wonder.

  “Would you just look at that!” he said, his sudden joy flashing brilliantly through the buzz in Twist’s neck. “There are so many of them…and they look so young!”

  “What do you see, Jonas?” Myra asked, standing near him. Slightly apart from them, Skye peered at the golden palace around them with a calculating eye.

  “Galaxies,” Jonas answered Myra, a sly smile filling his face as he stared into the telescope. “Countless galaxies. They’re everywhere! Out there in the black, behind all of the stars…”

  “What?” Samay asked, frowning into the blue sky. “What are you talking about? What did you aim at?”

  “Nothing,” Jonas said on the edge of a laugh. He leaned back and turned to Twist, his eyes glowing a brilliant blue. “I could never see all of the way into the empty patches before. Not on my own. But with this,” he added, patting the side of the telescope lovingly, “I can see almost all the way back to the beginning.”

  “The beginning of what?” Twist asked.

  Jonas laughed and shook his head. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “Oh, come now,” Twist chided. “You can’t go around saying fantastic things like that without explaining yourself properly.”

  “It would take a year to explain myself,” Jonas said flippantly with a smile as he climbed down from the control chair. “Thank you. That was frightfully entertaining. But I suppose we should get to work, shouldn’t we?” he asked Twist. “You wanted to see the planets, didn’t you?”

  Twist smiled instantly. “Yes, please.”

  “Can I play with that again, later?” Jonas asked Samay with a gesture to the telescope.

  Samay had taken his place at the telescope’s eyepiece and was now peering through the lens. He leaned back with a frown. “All I see is blue sky,” he said, looking to Jonas thoughtfully. “As long as you tell someone what you see, you are certainly welcome to use the telescope as much as you like.”

  “As you wish, Sammy,” Jonas said with a smile.

  “That’s not how you say my name,” Samay grumbled.

  “Whatever,” Jonas muttered disinterestedly. “Now, you,” he said to Twist. “Have a seat.”

  “Where?” Twist asked, seeing no chairs beyond the one connected to the telescope.

  “Anywhere,” Jonas answered. “I don’t want you to have to worry about losing your balance. I can show you the planets with just my eyes.”

  “Then why did we come out here?” Samay asked with a gesture to the observatory.

  “You said ‘telescope,’” Jonas said with a smile. Samay gave a sigh. “Now, Twist,” Jonas said, clearly eager to begin.

  “Oh,” Twist muttered, sitting down on the wooden floor where he stood. He tucked his ankles comfortably under his knees while Jonas knelt down just behind him, his back to the telescope.

  “All right, now try to stay as relaxed as you can,” Jonas said, his hands falling onto Twist’s shoulders. Twist let the chilly fog in Jonas’s touch billow into his mind, calming his excitement. “Myra,” Jonas said, glancing to her, “be a dear and keep an eye on him, would you?”

  “Oh!” she gasped happily, already dropping to kneel in front of Twist. “Yes, of course I shall.” She smiled sweetly to him but kept her metal hands clasped in her lap.

  “Why is that needed?” Twist asked over his shoulder.

  “We’ve never done this before,” Jonas said. “Anything could happen, and I’m going to be distracted.”

  “Don’t worry,” Myra said confidently. “I’ll pay very close attention.”

  “Thanks, poppet,” Jonas said.

  Twist gave her a smile before he closed his eyes and took a deep breath, pulling the fog in his Sight closer around his awareness. He felt Jonas’s hand move for his neck and bowed his head absently. The fog deepened instantly as Jonas’s palm pressed gently against the base of Twist’s neck, and Twist surrendered easily into the strange, calm, misty landscape that filled his mind. He felt Jonas’s careful attention, like the warmth in his touch, as he seemed to pause.

  “Now, who’s out…?” Jonas asked, his voice echoing inside Twist’s mind.

  Almost immediately, the chilly brightness cleared from Twist’s attention, turning blue. For an instant, Twist almost felt that he were flying through the sky, racing up away from the Earth. Then, just as quickly, the blue cleared into pinpricked black. His attention took on an amazing speed, flying out into the wide, empty silence. A single glowing dot caught his eye, growing suddenly to fill his inner vision.

  A brilliant ball of golden mist hung before him, unimaginably huge, glinting in brilliant light like a second sun. Twist’s curiosity drew him closer to skim through the very edge of the cloud-like surface of the sphere. The thick, misty atmosphere that blanketed this rocky world struck him as caustic and foul, despite the breathtaking beauty of the planet before him.

  “This is Venus,” Jonas said, distracting Twist enough to edge back away from the sphere. “It’s between us and the sun, but do you see how it pulls at us?”

  The image in Twist’s mind widened as he seemed to move away, giving him a clearer image of the path the planet took. Suddenly, the image sped up. Twist watched as the planet streaked away to one side, only to return from the other side a moment lat
er and then stop again. The stars in the background shifted with the motion, as if Twist himself were moving ever so slightly.

  “Oh, I see it!” Twist said, hearing his own voice echo back to him.

  “Good, now let’s take a look at another one,” Jonas said as the vision shifted and began to fly again.

  In moments, Twist found a new world turning slowly before him. This one had hardly any atmosphere at all, revealing a harsh, windy landscape of rusty rock that was topped with a wide white cap at the northern pole. Twist’s attention brushed languidly over the red desert, flying easily through a thin blue sky that tasted of iron and sour ice.

  “This is Mars,” Jonas said. “Someday I’ve got to show you this one’s future. You wouldn’t believe what mankind is going to get up to in a few hundred years. But anyway, do you see how it moves?”

  Twist watched the rocky planet spin through its orbit, pulling ever so gently at the Earth, much like Venus had, and also bobbing about ever so slightly as if being tugged by unseen forces. Next, Jonas showed him the river of enormous boulders that ringed the space just beyond Mars. He told Twist that Jupiter wasn’t visible at the moment, and so showed him Saturn instead. Twist marveled at the striking view as his attention flew over the dusty rings like a skylark. Jonas then showed him the sapphire surface of the gigantic Neptune, before taking him back toward the sun again to steal a glimpse of Mercury: burnt, pocked, and boiled to a cinder in the heat of the star.

  “And see there?” Jonas asked, focusing his powerful eyes on a brilliant arabesque that rose out of the impossibly huge sun like a writhing wretch trying to claw out of hell. “Watch how we move around the sun.” Twist watched in stunned amazement as he watched the sun spin like a top, drifting in and out gently. He noticed that the stars in the background wobbled just a bit, too.

  “Jonas…” Myra’s voice said softly, somewhere out in the real world. “He’s looking a little pale.”

  Twist wanted to say that he felt perfectly fine and wished only to see more of this incredible new world, but his voice wouldn’t come. The planets vanished instantly into white mist, blinding Twist’s inner eye. He felt the fog pulling gently at his mental grasp, until he remembered how to let go of it. The fog cleared from his mind slowly, before Jonas carefully took his hand off of Twist’s neck.