He saw flashes of things, bits of memories of his life, though much of it was blurred. He couldn’t see the people clearly. They were more shadow, intangible. There were two in particular that seemed to follow Matt wherever he went, and he knew these were the shadows of those whose time tapestries he had. They were with him throughout his childhood, when he first boarded the Vermillion, when he went to Paris and stole the Mona Lisa. They were with him in India at the Padmanabhaswamy Temple, and in England when he met Queen Elizabeth. There were moments where he breezed through and others where he lingered, like when he was stranded on a barren island in the middle of the ocean. Matt couldn’t remember why he had come to this island, but those two blurred shadows were with him, like phantoms, and they huddled on the beach together, shivering all night. He felt the panic rising in himself, the hopelessness, almost as if he were experiencing it again in this very moment. He was afraid. He didn’t know what to do, even though he could see very clearly what he needed to do. He had the Aeternum right with him, the stone tied into his bracelet. Didn’t he know how it worked? Maybe in his panic he’d forgotten. Maybe he just needed to be reminded. He had a vague memory of being helped, of someone or something pointing him in the right direction, but no one came and nothing happened. He saw himself spiraling, losing hope. And then he remembered that it was his future self who had helped him at this time, and now it was time to make that come to pass, to finish the loop.
He lowered himself to the island, pulled together the cells of his arm, and wrote a message for himself in the sand.
You know how to call the compass, Mateo.
He wondered if he was breaking the rules. Maybe a little, but what was the benefit of being a time traveler if you couldn’t help yourself out a little every now and then? Not too much though. A little was the key. There needed to be a balance. It was all about balance, because somewhere along the line the balance had been disrupted. The pillars of the universe had been broken. He could see it quite clearly now, like he was viewing the whole universe through a giant telescope. He could see how disordered it was, jerked out of alignment.
But he couldn’t fix that now. He still didn’t know how for one, and there was something else he needed to do. Someone besides himself that he needed to help.
Jia.
He pulled himself back into his time tapestry and went back to where he had been in the Hall of Supreme Harmony.
“Don’t worry about him,” Yinreng said. “Find Quejing. She’s the real enemy. We cannot let her get away.”
But Matt knew they wouldn’t find her, because she was already gone by this point in time. Jia had told him he’d come and taken her away very shortly after they’d arrived. He hadn’t understood this when she told him, but now he saw it all laid out in his mind’s eye like a choregraphed dance. He saw many things now that he hadn’t before. In this state, he sensed everything in a totally different way. Before he had been a mouse on the ground with no sight or sense of direction. Now he was an eagle in the sky with an aerial view of the world. Past, present, and future were spread out before him, not in a single line, but an intricate web, a sphere. He traveled along the threads to different events and points in time quite easily. His compass had merely been a mechanism to do what his brain could do much faster and easier.
He traveled back in time, to the day he’d first arrived in China. Still in his disassembled state, he followed Jia inside the Hall of Supreme Harmony where with quaking knees she met with her father and Yinreng. He was tempted to take Jia away then, save her here and now from Yinreng’s evil plot. But he knew that was not what was supposed to happen. The Jia he needed to save was hidden behind one of the tapestries. He could just see a small piece of her face poking out. He floated toward her and waited until the hall was cleared. He pulled himself back together. It was easier than he would have thought, like his cells all knew their proper place and order and came together simply by thinking about it. Within a minute he was standing in full physical form before the young Jia. She was so small, no more than six or seven, about Pike’s age, he thought. Her hair was shorter, and her eyes did not hold the brightness that always greeted him. The tunic she wore, though made of fine silk befitting a child of the emperor, was dirty and ragged. She looked thin. He wondered how long she had been hiding from Yinreng in these tunnels. He could well believe she was actually an orphan.
Jia was alarmed by Matt’s presence, at first. She held tight to her little hammer, and for a moment Matt thought she might hit him with it, but her fear seemed to dissipate when he spoke her name, not her given name, but the pet name her mother had called her.
“Nĭ hăo, Jia.”
She lowered her hammer. “Who are you?” she asked.
“A friend.”
It was not hard to convince her to come with him. Jia had told him that she felt she knew Matt from the beginning, that she foremembered him, and that she believed he would take her to her mother. All he had to do was tell her he would take her away from the Forbidden City and she practically jumped in his arms.
He was uncertain how he would travel with her, but he found it was not a problem, that when he disassembled himself he could take her with him, in a similar way that Blossom or the Vermillion could take all passengers wherever and whenever they went. He was the vehicle now. He traveled back a day, as the emperor had said that was when Captain Vincent had come to visit him. He floated around the Forbidden City, invisible, holding on to Jia, until he spotted the Vermillion sitting in the moat surrounding the gates of the city. It, like Blossom, had turned into a junk, but the sail bore the flag with the compass and V at the center.
Matt landed on the deck of the Vermillion. He pulled himself together, and at the same time Jia formed as well. She teetered a little as her feet touched ground. She looked at her hands and wiggled her fingers, then looked around.
“Where are we?” Jia asked.
Matt knelt down next to her. “You will be going on a long journey.”
“With you?”
Matt shook his head. “Not now. I will come later. But I won’t remember you then. And you will have to pretend you don’t know me either. Do you know how to pretend?”
Jia smiled and nodded. “It’s my favorite game.”
“Then this will be the best game of pretend ever. You will be an orphan. You have lived in an orphanage your entire life. No one was kind to you, but you like to build and fix things.”
“I do like to build and fix things! See?” She held out her little hammer.
Matt smiled. “Good. Some things you will not have to pretend.” He held out the amulet the older Jia had given to him mere minutes ago. Her eyes grew wide at the sight of it. “Do you know what this is?”
Jia nodded. “That’s the emperor’s. He only gives them to important people.”
“You are very important, Jia.” Matt pressed the amulet into her tiny hand. “Keep it safe. You’ll need it when you return home.”
Jia nodded solemnly, clutching the amulet in her fist.
Footsteps sounded from behind. Matt stood and turned to be faced with Captain Vincent, Brocco, and Wiley. “What are you doing on my ship?” Captain Vincent had his sword drawn. Brocco put his hands on his guns, and Wiley clutched the books he was carrying in front of his chest as though they might protect him from attack. They all looked a little younger than Matt remembered. Matt had to recalibrate his brain a bit, thinking of what had happened to this point and what hadn’t, what Vincent knew and what he didn’t. This was years before Mateo first boarded the Vermillion, even before he was born, but after his mother had left, of course, because Vincent had the Obsidian Compass now. It was hanging at his chest on the gold chain. Something twitched inside the captain’s jacket. A white rat poked its head out, sniffed, then scurried onto the captain’s shoulder. Upon seeing Matt he hissed, bearing long yellow teeth.
“A pleasure to see you, too, Santiago.”
Captain Vincent seemed startled by Matt’s familiarity with his
pet rat. He studied him a little more closely and a look of recognition settled. “You . . . ,” he said. “I’ve seen you before. You snuck onto the Vermillion.”
That was right. The captain had seen him only once before, when Matt accidentally came on board the Vermillion, just after he’d first built the Obsidian Compass.
“That’s interesting,” Matt said. “I’ve seen you many times before.”
“Who are you?” the captain asked.
“A friend from the future,” he said.
Captain Vincent looked skeptical. He glanced at Jia. “And the girl? Who is she?”
Matt bid Jia to come forward. She did so hesitantly, looking between the three men. “This is Jia. I want you to take her on board as one of your crew. She will help you.”
“Help me how?”
“In your quest for the Aeternum.”
Captain Vincent lowered his sword and raised an eyebrow. “How do I know you’re not trying to trick me, that you’re not just planting a spy on my ship?”
“You don’t. It’s entirely possible she is a spy. You can discard her if you want, but you won’t get the Aeternum without her. I promise you that.”
The captain stroked his short beard, calculating. In one swift movement, he stepped forward and pointed his sword directly at Matt’s neck. “Who are you, truly? What is your name? Don’t play games with me, boy.”
Matt could feel the point of the sword right at his throat, but he wasn’t afraid. In fact, he was rather amused. He smiled at the captain. “Sometimes I am called Mateo Hudson. Other times I’m called Marius Quine.”
Captain Vincent looked stunned. “Mateo,” he breathed. “Marius Quine . . .”
“It will be up to you which name I claim forever.” And even as he said this, he knew it was true. His identity was at a crossroads. It could go either way. He had felt that in his time tapestry. His life was not as concrete as some, but whatever was done with the Aeternum would seal his fate forever.
Matt dissolved himself.
Captain Vincent dropped his sword.
“Crikey!” Brocco shouted. All three men staggered back, searching all around them. Matt hovered just above their heads, invisible.
“What just happened?” Wiley said. “Where did he go?”
“Is he a ghost?” Brocco said. “Are we being haunted?”
“Perhaps,” Captain Vincent said. “A ghost from the future.” He picked up his sword, put it in his scabbard. He then looked down at Jia as though he’d nearly forgotten all about her. “And what am I to do with you?”
Jia just stared back up at him.
“Perhaps we should leave her, Captain,” Brocco said. “I don’t think we should trust a ghost. What if she is a spy?”
“Mighty small spy, don’t you think?” Wiley said. “How much trouble can one little girl be?”
The captain stroked his jaw, still gazing down at Jia. “We’ll take her with us,” he said. “For now. We can always discard her if she doesn’t prove useful, if she does indeed turn out to be a spy. Come along.” He held out his hand to Jia. “You’ll have to learn English.”
“I’ll teach her!” Wiley said. “I’ll teach her to speak and read, just like you taught me.”
“Very good,” Captain Vincent said. “Prepare for travel.”
Matt waited, invisible, until the captain had turned the dials, and the Vermillion disappeared with Jia on board.
She was safe. For now, anyway. He still needed to save the older Jia. That would perhaps not be as easy as saving the younger Jia had been. He had no blueprint for that. He didn’t know how it was supposed to happen, or if it would.
He felt his way back along his time tapestry to when he and Jia had faced Yinreng. He took himself to just the point after he’d disassembled and left to go save the young Jia. Now he followed the older. The guards pulled her down a corridor and locked her in a cell, then stood guard outside the room. Matt slipped right through the door. The cell was pitch black. He couldn’t see Jia, but he could hear her breathing. She sounded like she was having a panic attack. He swirled around the room until he felt her form huddled on the ground.
Footsteps sounded from outside the door, and voices grew louder. One of the voices sounded angry.
“Open the door at once,” said the angry, commanding voice.
There was the sound of clanking keys.
There was no time to explain to Jia now. He did not want her to face Yinreng again. He was certain he would kill her, and Matt knew if that happened, he would not be able to bring her back.
The door clicked. Just as it opened, Matt dissolved himself and Jia with him.
25
Alfred Nobel
1874
Stockholm, Sweden
Matt and Jia landed in the middle of a cobblestoned road. He pulled himself together right in front of a horse. The horse whinnied and reared up on its hide legs, and Matt knew he was about to be trampled by its hooves when Jia smartly yanked him out of the way and they rolled to the side of the road. The driver shouted something at them and cracked his whip and moved on.
“Nĭ hăo, Jia,” he said.
“Matt? Oh, Matt!” She attacked him with a hug so tight, Matt could hardly breathe, but he didn’t mind. In fact, he kind of wished she would never let him go.
“I was so frightened!” Jia cried. “How did you do that? How did you get me out of there?” And then she gasped, releasing him. “You figured it out. You learned how to make yourself fall apart?”
Matt nodded. “Yes.” He held up his hand and made it dissolve and reappear.
Jia gasped again, covering her mouth. “And did you save me? The younger me, I mean.”
Matt nodded. “You’re safe on the Vermillion,” Matt said. “And we’re far from China now. Yinreng can’t hurt you.”
Jia smiled at him. He smiled back. He almost thought she was going to kiss him. Or was he supposed to kiss her? This seemed like one of those moments, but he didn’t know what to do.
A car sped past, spraying mud all over them.
“Ack!” Matt wiped the mud off his face. He glared at the yellow sports car racing down the road, swerving around the horse and carriage that had nearly trampled him.
A car . . .
Matt looked around. There were cars in the streets, both old and modern, even models that looked like they’d come from his future. There were carriages and bikes, too, but the cars weren’t the only thing that seemed out of place. There were clashing fashions and buildings and languages. Across the street, a man was selling hot dogs from a cart. Matt could smell it from here and it reminded him of New York City and Mets games and . . . and something else, a memory he couldn’t quite reach though it tickled at the corners of his brain.
In the distance Matt could see a building he knew very well. The Empire State Building stood like a glass and metal behemoth amongst the smaller structures.
“Where are we?” Jia asked.
“Sweden,” Matt said. “Or I thought so anyway. I came here so we could visit Alfred Nobel.” Now he wondered if he would even be here.
“I guess this place has suffered time rifts too,” Jia said.
“I guess.”
A boy was selling newspapers. Matt hailed him and glanced at a paper. He couldn’t read any of it, but he noted the date. It was July 20, 1874.
“Is that date significant for some reason?”
“Not specifically. I wanted to come some years after Nobel had invented dynamite, so we could ask him what he did for Captain Vincent.”
“That makes sense. Maybe the boy will know where he is.”
Matt asked the newsboy, as well as he could, about Mr. Alfred Nobel. The boy just stared back at Matt, then held out his hand.
“I think he wants some money for his information,” Jia said.
“I don’t have any. Do you?”
Jia rifled through her pockets and found a small bronze coin that looked ancient. The boy studied it with suspicion but must have deci
ded it was worth something. He placed the coin in his pocket and pointed in the direction of the Empire State Building. He said something Matt couldn’t understand, but he thanked him and he and Jia struck off in the direction the boy had indicated. They had to ask a few more people along the way where he could find Mr. Nobel. Everyone pointed in the same general direction until Matt finally realized they were all pointing to a mansion on the hill, just behind the Empire State Building. It was a grand and imposing brick house with many windows and three chimneys.
The hill was much higher and steeper than it looked from the base. By the time they reached the top, they were both breathing hard. They took a few minutes to catch their breath and then they both stepped up to the door.
“I guess we just knock?” Jia said.
“I guess.”
He knocked three times, and a minute later the door swung open and a man peered out.
It was Alfred Nobel. Matt recognized him from his picture. He was pale with light blue eyes that were somewhat bloodshot and a scraggly beard that needed trimming. He looked careworn and disheveled. “Ja?” he said, along with another question in Swedish that Matt was guessing was something along the lines of “Can I help you?” or “What do you want?” Matt did not speak or understand Swedish. He would, at some point, he was pretty sure, but he knew that Alfred Nobel spoke perfect English.
“Mr. Nobel,” Matt said. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but we’ve come to you for help. You once worked for a man named Captain Vincent. He—”
But Matt did not get to finish his sentence. At the mention of Captain Vincent, Alfred Nobel slammed the door.
Matt and Jia looked at each other. “Now what?”
“We can’t just leave,” Jia said. This time she knocked on the door. “Mr. Nobel? Please! We need your help!”
“Go away. I want nothing to do with whatever it is you are trying to accomplish.”
“Please, Mr. Nobel!”
The Forbidden Lock Page 25