The Forbidden Lock

by Liesl Shurtliff

  Nobel did not answer. The door remained closed.

  “Maybe we should disassemble ourselves and break in?” Matt said.

  Jia shook her head. “I don’t think that will build trust with him, and we need him to trust us.”

  “Maybe we need to go back further,” Matt suggested. “Maybe before Captain Vincent came to Nobel?”

  “What good will that do?” Jia said. “You’d only be able to warn Nobel of Captain Vincent’s arrival, and I’m not sure how helpful that will be.”

  Jia was right. He needed to understand what Nobel had done for Captain Vincent in order to figure out how to fix it.

  Matt sat down on the doorstep and Jia sat next to him. The sun was lowering in the sky, and the Empire State Building looked like it was on fire. They’d been sitting there for ten minutes or so when a young girl came up the path, her arms loaded with packages. Matt squinted at her. She was pale with white-blond hair. Her head was down so Matt couldn’t fully see her face, but as she neared them on the path she looked up at Matt and Jia with ghostly blue eyes, very familiar. She smiled at them and waved.

  “Pike!” Jia shouted. She jumped up, but at that very moment the door flew open and Nobel stepped out with a rolled-up newspaper.

  “Get away!” he shouted, swatting them both with the newspaper. “Don’t you talk to my niece!”

  “Ouch! Your niece?” Matt said, trying to shield himself from the newspaper baton. “Pike is your niece?”

  Pike rushed toward them. She jabbered something in Swedish and all three of them froze. Matt couldn’t have been more surprised if he had seen a fish speak French. Pike was speaking to Nobel. She sounded excited and passionate and she was pointing at Matt and Jia. Nobel spoke back to Pike, looking warily at Matt and Jia. From his tone, Matt guessed that he was telling Pike that he and Jia were dangerous and not to be trusted, but Pike was adamant. She stomped her foot then blew past both Matt, Jia, and Nobel and went inside.

  Nobel sighed, then cast a dark look at Matt and Jia. “Come on, then,” he said in a bit of a growl. “My niece insists.”

  Alfred Nobel’s house was modest but comfortable. There was a sitting room to the right and to the left a dining room. Before them looked to be the kitchen area. Matt saw no signs of a laboratory, or anything remotely related to chemistry. In fact, most of the house had been turned into a giant library. Everywhere there were books, books lining the walls, piled on the floor and stacked on tables. It reminded him of Wiley’s library on the Vermillion, all the books stacked into towers and buildings from around the world. He remembered how he’d gone to visit him to find some information, and how kind and helpful Wiley had been to him. There had been others with him then, he thought, but he couldn’t remember who.

  Pike was unraveling the packages she had been carrying. Matt was not at all surprised to see that it was all yarn. Looking around the house now, he saw evidence of a lot of knitting. Baskets of yarn and knitting needles, blankets and sweaters and socks and hats.

  Matt was still marveling at Pike’s presence here, the fact that she was Alfred Nobel’s niece. Now he understood why Pike had been so fascinated with that book. She’d seen Alfred Nobel’s picture and recognized him as her uncle. That was why she had leaped over to the Vermillion. It wasn’t because of Captain Vincent or any sense of loyalty to him. It was because of her uncle. What he didn’t understand is how she got on the Vermillion in the first place and what, exactly, was her purpose in being there.

  “Marta says you are friends to her,” Nobel said, still looking at them with distrust.

  “Her name is Marta?” Jia asked.

  “You don’t know her name?”

  Matt and Jia both shook their heads. “We always called her Pike,” Jia said. “It’s a nickname one of the crew on the Vermillion gave her. I’ve never heard her talk before.”

  Nobel grunted. “Well, she understands English perfectly, and a good deal of German and French as well, but Marta is a stubborn girl and will not speak anything but Swedish.”

  Pike—or Marta—spoke something in a tone that Matt felt was somewhat cheeky. “What did she say?”

  “She said Swedish is the tongue of her mama and papa and she will never speak another.”

  That explained it, then. As far as Matt could remember, they’d never traveled to Sweden while on the Vermillion and none of them spoke Swedish.

  “Come and sit,” Mr. Nobel said, motioning to a chair in the sitting room.

  Matt sat in the chair. A photograph of a young man sat on the table next to him. He looked much like Alfred Nobel, though younger and clean-shaven. Matt was guessing this was his brother, Emil, the one who had died in the explosion in his laboratory.

  “You have a lot of books,” Jia said.

  “Literature was my first love,” Nobel said. “I wanted to be a writer, a poet, but my father thought it was impractical. And he was right, in many ways. It is impractical, but the desire is irresistible, to link words into rhythmical phrases that carry powerful meanings and ideas . . .” He brushed his hand over a book sitting beside him.

  “Science and chemistry have poetry, too, I suppose. The combination of the earth’s elements in various ways has its virtues and beauties, to make possible what was once thought impossible.”

  Matt understood that feeling. Everything that had happened to him he had once thought impossible. Some of it had been good. He never would have met Jia if he hadn’t built the Obsidian Compass, but he also knew terrible things had happened. Great losses, even though he couldn’t remember exactly what those losses were. He pulled out the bits of fabric from his pockets. They were more like a jumble of threads now, and they were faded, but even so, they still had an otherworldly quality to them, a faint glow.

  Nobel leaned in and Matt heard his breath catch. “Time tapestries,” he said.

  “You’ve seen this before?”

  “Yes, though I have never been able to touch or access it myself. Captain Vincent was the only one who seemed to be able to touch it, manipulate it.”

  “And you were hired to help him destroy it,” Matt said.

  A shadow fell over Nobel’s face. “I didn’t want to,” he said. “But he gave me no choice. His power. The things he could do . . .” He glanced at the photo sitting next to Matt and unmistakable pain slashed through his stoic features.

  “Is that your brother?” Jia asked.

  Nobel nodded. “Emil, Marta’s father.”

  “He died in an explosion,” Jia said. “We read about it.”

  Nobel stiffened slightly. His already pale face became white as a sheet. “You did, did you? Well, that was only his first death. I’m guessing the book didn’t tell you about his second.”

  “His second death?” Matt and Jia spoke at once.

  Nobel glanced at Marta, who was now busily knitting with her new yarn, her little hands flying with the needles in a smooth, speedy rhythm. “I had better start from the beginning, if there is a beginning,” Nobel said. He removed some books from the chair across from Matt and Jia and sat down.

  “Many years ago,” Nobel began, “when I was a young and hopeful chemist, I had a dream to create the most powerful explosive the world had ever seen, fifty times more powerful than gunpowder. I had been experimenting with nitroglycerin for years. Most people thought it was too dangerous, that it couldn’t be compounded and stabilized for safe production and use. I could see it had potential, and so despite warnings and criticisms I forged ahead. Emil was always by my side assisting with the work. We succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations. I invented dynamite, and the railway and mining companies were in awe when we showed them the tests. And then one day, the lab exploded.” He paused. His eyes went glassy. “I blamed myself. I wasn’t there. If I had been there, I believed it never would have happened. I would have taken the proper precautions. Emil was intelligent and a hard worker, but he and my lab assistant were sometimes careless. The nitroglycerin had to be kept under a certain temperature. I was always
careful to keep it well below, but something must have happened. Our burners must have overheated, gotten too close to our nitroglycerin stores. I don’t know. There was an investigation and the explosion was officially reported as an accident, but still I came under great censure. Everyone blamed the accident on me. I had tampered with things that should not have been touched. One French paper even called me ‘the merchant of death.’ I was horrified. I fell into a deep depression. I moved to Paris to try to get away from it all. I vowed I would never touch explosives again, but the heaviness of Emil’s death stayed with me. I had no peace. No rest. And then he showed up.”

  “Captain Vincent, you mean?” Matt asked.

  Nobel nodded. “I’ll admit, I felt wary of him from the beginning. Perhaps it was the shoes. Ridiculous shoes, something a clown in a circus would wear. But he told me he could bring back Emil, that he could make it so the explosion never happened at all. I thought he was a lunatic, but he showed me the most incredible things, impossible things. He took me on board his ship. He took me to the future. He showed me how he could manipulate time and space. I thought to myself that this man was either an angel from heaven or the devil himself, but I didn’t much care who or what he was so long as he could save Emil. I begged him to do it, and he said he would but only if I would help him. I said I would do anything. That’s when he showed me the time tapestries. I’d never seen anything like it. He pulled them out of people and sometimes animals. I could not understand its chemical makeup. It wasn’t solid, exactly, but neither was it liquid nor gas. It was something out of this world. The captain had the power to manipulate the fabric, to cut and rearrange and change certain things, but he wanted to find a way to destroy the fabric entirely. He wanted me to find a chemical that would effectively erase the time tapestries forever. He told me my dynamite had come closer than anything else, but it was still not quite right. Some semblance of the tapestry still remained. He wanted me to find a way to get rid of all of it.”

  “And you agreed to do this,” Matt said.

  “How could I refuse?” Nobel said. “He said he could save Emil. He said he could bring him back and make everything right, but only if I helped him, only if I succeeded with destroying the time tapestries. He’s my brother. How could I refuse? How could I?”

  Matt didn’t blame him. There were some people you would do anything to save. Anything to bring back. Matt thought of his grandparents and Uncle Chuck. His mom. There were others, he was pretty sure, but he couldn’t remember them. He couldn’t see their faces.

  “But how did you do it?” Jia asked. “How did you destroy the time tapestries?”

  Nobel shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “But the explosive worked,” Matt said. “We saw you on the Vermillion with it, and then Captain Vincent changed things, erased people.”

  “He took away Matt’s family,” Jia said.

  “I know,” Nobel said. “I know I must have done it somehow, but I don’t remember how I did it. I don’t know if Captain Vincent changed my own memories so I wouldn’t remember. Maybe he knew you two would come looking for me. Maybe he didn’t want me to be able to tell everything that happened, but then why would he allow me to remember anything at all? I do not know. I was not in the best shape after Emil’s death. Captain Vincent insisted I come on board the Vermillion with him, that I conduct my experiments there, so he could track my progress and offer any resources I might need. It seemed like one day Captain Vincent just showed up and the explosive finally worked as he wanted. But I honestly don’t remember what I did differently. I’ve looked over all my notes. I checked all my chemicals and ingredients, but I can’t see that I changed anything from the time Emil and I worked together, and then before I knew what was happening, Emil was back, just as the captain promised. The accident never happened at all. It was like it had all just been a nightmare. Little did I know that the real nightmare was just beginning.”

  “What do you mean? What happened?” Matt asked.

  Nobel scoffed. “What do you think? Things started to change all over the place. Buildings and people from other times and places. As you can see, Sweden is no longer Sweden, and I have heard reports that other places have suffered similarly. And Emil . . .” Nobel’s face darkened. Matt saw him put his hands into fists. “Well, let’s just say bringing Emil back was not a gift. It was almost worse than having him dead. He was different. I’m sorry to say he returned a little more like me, unhappy and stubborn. He was not the brother I knew. It was as though he knew he wasn’t supposed to be there. When he understood what I had done, what was happening with the world and the role I had in it, he was angry with me. He said I’d tampered with things that should not have been tampered with. I tried to make him understand, but he refused to hear me, refused to have anything to do with me or my business. He left, fled to Paris. I never saw or spoke to him again. I sent him letters, but he never responded, and then a year later I learned that he had died of cholera. His wife as well. This time I did not ask Captain Vincent for his help.”

  Nobel grew silent and seemed to retreat into a dark space in his mind.

  After a few awkward moments of silence, Marta spoke, still focused on her knitting. Nobel gave a ghost of a smile.

  “What did she say?” Jia asked.

  “She says I am forgetting the happy ending when she was brought to me.”

  “Wait,” Matt said. “Pike—or Marta—was born after Emil was brought back?”

  Nobel nodded. “Yes. I did not know of her existence until after he died. The second time.”

  Matt and Jia shared a look. He was sure she was thinking the same thing as him. If Captain Vincent had never brought back Emil, changed the past, Marta would never have been born, and if Matt, by some miracle, was able to fix the lock and bring back the people Captain Vincent had erased, what would happen to her? Would she cease to exist? Would she continue living?

  Marta looked at Matt with her ghostly eyes, like she knew just what he was thinking. She didn’t stop her knitting.

  “She is a strange little thing,” Nobel said. “I’ve always thought she had an otherworldliness to her, like a sprite or an elf. She’s always disappearing and reappearing, as though she’s slipping between realms. I sometimes think she, too, does not belong here, and that she knows it.”

  Matt remembered he’d had that same feeling about Pike when he’d first met her. He’d always thought she was a bit spooky, partly because of how pale she was and partly because she never talked, but now, thinking about her origins, Matt wondered if there was something else about her that made her different. Her existence was brought about by a change in the space-time continuum. That had to make you different.

  And then there was her seeming obsession with tying knots, knitting and weaving. He used to think that was just some kind of compulsion, a tic she couldn’t help, but now he wondered if there was more to it than that.

  “Marta,” Jia asked. “How did you come on board the Vermillion? Who brought you there?”

  Marta spoke, and Nobel translated. “She says you brought her there,” Nobel said, nodding to Matt, “that you transported her there from the jungle city.”

  “Me?” Matt said and at the same time Jia said, “What jungle city?”

  “She says a place with three circles, the place where you were born, where everything begins and ends.”

  Matt felt chills run down him. She had to be speaking of Ciudad Perdida, the Lost City of Colombia. That was the place he’d been found and adopted, though he couldn’t remember who had adopted him. Captain Vincent? And Captain Bonnaire? It seemed right but also wrong.

  “You were there?” Matt asked. “What happened?”

  Marta shrugged and spoke.

  “She says she doesn’t remember,” Nobel translated. “It’s all a blur to her now. Maybe Captain Vincent altered her memories too.”

  “Did Captain Vincent understand why you were on board the Vermillion?” Jia asked.

  “She says n
o. He suspected her presence at first. He threatened to discard her, but after she unlocked your safe and brought him the box with the letter, he trusted her fully.”

  “Why did you do that?” Matt asked.

  “Because you told her to.”

  Matt’s mind was racing to put together all the pieces, what his future self was thinking, what his goal was. Who was he? He looked down at the frayed and fading bits of time tapestry.

  “Do you know who they belong to?” Nobel asked.

  Matt shook his head. “I can’t remember. I only know that they were important to me, but even that feeling is starting to fade.” He couldn’t remember who they were, couldn’t remember their names or picture what they looked like, but he felt the pain of the loss as though he’d lost both his arms. He felt the phantom twitches of their presence. But he knew time was running out. If he didn’t find them soon, he feared they’d be gone forever. He would forget.

  Forget. Was there a sadder word in any language? If there was, he couldn’t remember it.

  “You truly don’t know what you did to make the dynamite work the way it did?” Matt asked.

  Nobel shook his head. “Nothing that I can think of. I suppose it’s possible Captain Vincent erased my own memories for this very purpose, so I would not have the ability to tell you.”

  “Possibly,” Matt said. His mind began to whirl.

  “What are you thinking?” Jia said.

  Matt shifted in his chair. “Nothing, really. Except I wonder if someone else could have done something to the dynamite? Changed it somehow, to make it work the way the captain wanted? Or at least appear to work.”

  “You mean he hired someone else besides Nobel?” Jia asked.

  “No,” Matt said. “I’m thinking maybe someone could have changed it without Nobel or Captain Vincent knowing. Someone from the outside.”

  “They would have had to be extremely sneaky,” Nobel said. “The dynamite was never out of my sight.”

  Yes, Matt thought to himself. They would have to be pretty much invisible.

  He glanced at Jia. She was frowning at him like she knew he was cooking up some harebrained idea. And he was. He was cooking up what was possibly his most harebrained idea yet.