by L. E. DeLano
But those were dreams for another time, and another life. He lived in the now, and this, for him, was as good as now could get.
He sighed, settling his head more comfortably on the tree root, and reached out to touch the water once more. His fingertips grazed the surface, and his eyes, within the pool, were as green as the leaves above. He saw his lips curve into a smile and then they moved, forming words.
And in the rustling of the leaves above, he thought he heard a voice whisper, “Come over.…”
I set my pen down with a long, cathartic exhale of air. I did it. I wrote something. And oh, does it feel like pure relief.
“Are you all right, love?” His eyes are concerned and I wave him off.
“It just feels good to be writing again. I couldn’t for a long time. But I think I’ve finally bounced back.”
“Of course you did,” he says, grabbing his mug and sitting down next to me at the table. “When every mirror could be equal parts adventure or precarious situation, you don’t have the luxury of not bouncing back.”
“No, I guess we don’t. Either of us.”
He turns his mug back and forth between his hands. “D’you know why I came here?” he asks.
“You need me to lead you to Eversor.”
“I’ll find Eversor, love, never doubt it. And when I do, there will be a reckoning,” he says firmly. “But I wasn’t tearing reality apart and lobbing padlocks at a Dreamer’s head just for the likes of her.”
He brings his hand up to cup my face, and the look in his eyes stops the breath in my lungs.
“I was looking for you. This Jessa. Because I find you intriguing.”
He’s weaving a potent spell. I pull away out of sheer self-preservation.
“Sorry,” I mumble. “I’m just … I don’t think we should…”
He drops his hand. “I’m trying to jump to the middle, when we’ve barely begun to know each other,” he says, shaking his head. “I apologize. Perhaps we should go back to the beginning. Start over.”
He extends his hand. I smile as I reach out to shake it, but he turns my hand over and kisses it instead.
“Captain Finn Gallagher, at your service,” he says. “And you are…?”
My lips twitch with a smile. “Jessa St. Clair,” I reply.
He leans in. “You forgot Emeline,” he whispers.
“No one’s ever going to let me forget it.”
He breaks into a lopsided grin. “Well now, love. That’s a proper beginning. Let’s see where the wind takes us.”
“Okay.”
“And now … are you up for an adventure?”
18
A Night to Remember
It’s cold. Holy cow, is it cold.
“You’re sure this is the right p-place?” I ask through chattering teeth. “I can’t f-feel my face.”
Finn reaches over and adjusts my scarf so that it covers my nose and mouth, then he gives my knit cap a tug and pulls it down tighter over my ears. He’s wearing a fur-lined cap of his own, complete with ear flaps, along with a scarf, parka, gloves, and boots, just like me. It’s dark here, snow is falling lightly, and I have no idea where we are.
“This is the place,” he assures me. “Set it up with our counterparts earlier. After this afternoon’s debacle, you seemed like you could use some fun.”
“Freezing into a human Popsicle is all kinds of fun,” I agree. “I can’t imagine Eversor would look for us here.”
“It’s not all that bad. You’ll be warm soon enough.”
I turn slowly, taking in the scenery. Sparse trees dot the landscape, and we’re not far from the shore of a lake, glossy and black in the darkness. Behind us is a large lodge, and even though my mind tells me I don’t know this language, I can easily read the sign.
“It’s a hotel,” I say.
“Very good,” Finn praises me. “And where are we?”
I think for a moment, searching my memories.
“Norway. We’re in the eastern Finnmark region, near the Russian border. My father came here to study fjords.” I think back. “Ten years ago. Hey! I speak Norwegian!”
“And I work in Kirkenes—that’s our town—at the docks. But today we’re visiting a nature reserve. We’ll have to be back on the bus in ninety minutes.” He gives the tour bus a thump, and we move away from the large side mirror we’d been looking into.
I give him a nod and slowly turn around again as we walk. “Wow!” I exclaim. “Norway!”
“We’ll have to return again in a few months when the sun is shining. The Varanger fjord is quite spectacular.”
I see it in my memory, and he’s right. Spectacular is an understatement, and I definitely want to see it in real time. Right now, though, I’m acutely aware that I haven’t eaten over here, and I’m hungry.
“Can we get inside and warm up?” I ask. “I’m starving, and if we stay out here much longer I’m going to turn into a block of ice.”
“Well, we don’t want that,” Finn says with a grin. “I know just the place for dinner, and just the floor show we want to see. Come along, then.”
I follow him up the trail to a large, raised platform with an enormous fire pit at its center, and he motions me over to it. There is a group of people standing about, drinking coffee from mugs or sitting on benches near the fire. I feel a blanket drop around my shoulders and I smile at Finn as I pull it around me.
“What’s this for?”
“Wouldn’t want you to catch a chill,” he says. “Hold mine, will you? I’ll get us some food.”
My stomach rumbles again as I smell it now, and I see him waiting patiently as someone behind a table ladles two bowls full of something and sets them on a tray for him, along with two steaming mugs and several wedges of bread.
He gestures with a tilt of his head as he walks back, and I see an open spot on one of the benches near the fire. He joins me there, and I spread my blanket on my lap as he sits and then sets the tray down across our knees.
Lapskaus. The word comes to me without effort. It’s a beef stew and it smells incredible. I bring the mug of coffee to my lips, nearly scalding them before I remember to blow on it and cool it off. Finn is dunking a chunk of bread into his stew.
“Good?” he asks.
“Really good!” I answer around a mouthful of my own bread. “But do we have to eat outside?”
“You don’t want to miss this,” he answers. We eat in silence, wolfing down our stew until someone near the edge of the platform rings a bell. A spotlight shines out toward the nearby trees.
I can feel them before I can see them, shaking the ground as they lumber out of the darkness. My bread drops from my mouth and my brain is having a hard time reconciling this particular memory, even though I know it’s absolutely true:
Those are mammoths. Genuine, they-ought-to-be-extinct woolly mammoths.
“It’s time for their nightly feeding,” Finn says. “Watch.”
I stare in awe as bales of hay are pushed off the edge of the platform, tumbling over the railing. The mammoths stomp the ground, shaking the bench beneath me, trumpeting and snuffing as they break the hay bales open and begin to feed. I feel Finn’s fingers under my chin as he gently closes my gaping mouth.
“First time seeing a mammoth?” he asks.
I look at him incredulously. “I saw one on Friday morning. Just not breathing.”
“Would you like to feed one?” he asks.
“Feed…?” My mind and mouth are just not connecting.
“Come on,” he says, taking the tray off our laps and setting it on the bench next to him. He leads me by the hand to the edge of the platform, and one of the park workers who dropped the hay bales hands me a tree branch full with leaves.
“Just hold it out over the railing,” Finn says, closing his hand over mine and helping me, since my arm is frozen in place. Holy cow. Mammoths! Right in front of me!
One of them raises his head, his trunk twisting in the air as he makes a snuffing soun
d and lumbers over.
“Easy…,” Finn says. “When he grabs the branch, be sure and let go.”
“Right,” I say, nodding a little too fast. “Right. Let go.”
Part of me wonders if I’ll have a hand after this, but I make myself hold the branch out farther. The mammoth plucks it from me and I let go quickly. He shoves the whole thing in his mouth, chewing and smacking noisily. Then he lowers his trunk and steps closer.
And closer. He’s rubbing his head against the railing, clearly wanting more, and the park worker lets out a laugh.
“All right, Dex,” he says, reaching out and patting the mammoth’s shaggy head. “Wait your turn.” He motions me closer. “You want to pet him?”
“Pet him?” I can’t seem to stop repeating people—I think because I have no words of my own in my brain at the moment. I shuffle forward, putting my hand out, and as my fingers tangle in his shaggy coat, he raises up, blinking slowly. I scratch lightly between his eyes and he tosses his head, pushing into my hand.
“He likes it!” I laugh with delight, scratching harder, as Finn pushes another branch through the rungs of the railing to him. He slurps it down noisily, shaking his head side to side when he finishes, clearly wanting more. The park worker tosses another bale over the railing and Dex goes after it as it bounces along on the ground.
“I just pet a mammoth,” I say, staring at my hand. I look up at Finn, and he’s grinning at me, clearly enjoying my excitement.
I take a moment to regroup, searching back through my memories in this body. Mammoths are an endangered species, but no more uncommon than the elephant around here. I’ve been to the preserve here before, and other me doesn’t find it nearly as exciting as I do.
I’m leaning over the railing, staring at them as they eat—there are even a few calves, fuzzy and utterly adorable. Finn taps me on the shoulder.
“Are you ready for the grand finale?” he asks.
“What could beat this?”
He reaches out, taking my hand. “Come on, I’ll show you.”
He pulls me back over to the bench, where he spreads one of our blankets down so we have a warmer seat.
“We need to turn our backs to the fire,” he says. “If we want the best view.”
I sit as he directs, making room for him on the blanket beside me as he pulls the other blanket over our shoulders. My stew has cooled off, but I don’t care. The coffee is still hot, and just as we’re finishing the last of our dinner, it begins.
The first wash of color streaks the sky, rolling across in a wave of brilliant green, shimmering into a yellow-orange and then streaming out to the horizon, where it fades into pinks and purples. Just as it dies out, another wave takes its place, then another, playing across the sky in colors so fierce and fiery, they take my breath away.
I let my mind wander back over the memories of this Jessa—just until they reach the edge of where Finn and I began here. I pull my mind off that thought, refusing to indulge it. This is them. Not us. We’re just visiting.
So we sit together and watch the magnificent northern lights, with the mammoths snuffling in the background, and heat of the fire toasting our backs. I can feel the solid warmth of him beside me, and I just breathe and let myself be in the wonder of it all.
“Thank you for bringing me here, Finn.”
He makes a slight sound and I turn my eyes away from the sky to look at him.
“What?” I ask.
“It’s nothing,” he says with an odd smile. “It’s just—that’s the first time you’ve called me by name since I found you.”
19
Date Night
“No. Absolutely not. I mean it, Finn.”
“I’ll sit six rows behind you at the theater. I won’t even come into Mugsy’s.”
It’s Monday night, and Finn has this bizarre idea that he’s coming along with me on my date tonight.
“I will not spend my evening with Ben with you creeping on me from a distance,” I tell him as I shift from foot to foot. “No way.”
“I don’t like this.”
“Really? I hadn’t guessed.” I pull out my phone, which is lighting up with Ben’s text. “He’s driving over to pick me up now, so you need to leave.”
He doesn’t move, so I stare him down.
“Oh, very well,” he splutters. “Make sure he brings you home promptly.”
“What? You’re my mother now?”
“I don’t like this.”
“You said that. Go.”
He stomps off across the backyard, and just in time. Ben pulls up out front a few minutes later, and we’re off to take in the early showing of Interstellar Spawn at the movie theater near the mall in Manortown. It turns out to be a one-star flick, which makes it even more awesome because Ben and I are snarking on it all the way through. By the time we hit Mugsy’s, we’re laughing our butts off over some of the more ridiculous plot points.
“Hey, at least the atmosphere on the planet was breathable, right?” Ben says as we wait for our coffees. “Never mind that all that scientific testing they were doing—an airborne microbe that dissolves your vital organs within seconds—just zoomed right by them somehow.” He makes an airplane motion with his hand, glancing it off the top of my head.
“But how were they to know they’d find the alien dinosaur eggs,” I say. “You know, from the dinosaurs who live in the snow at the top of the mountain?”
“They were alien dinosaurs,” he reminds me, grabbing our cups as I grab the plateful of cookies and muffins we selected. “They don’t need a warm climate. And I loved how a three-ton dinosaur could skate across the ice and not fall through because of his sharp dinosaur hooves.”
We slide into a booth and I’m still chuckling as I put sugar in my coffee.
“I’m glad we got to hang out, St. Clair,” he says, taking an enormous bite of a muffin. “I was afraid he wouldn’t let you off the leash.”
“Ben…”
“I still don’t see why he needs to be here,” Ben says. “People are already talking about him.”
My eyes snap open wide. “Who?”
“Chloe Merrick texted me to tell me that she saw him walking near your house this morning. And he’s coming back next semester.”
“Who told her that?”
“He did,” Ben says. “She stopped to talk to him when she realized who he was.”
I’ll just bet she did. I realize I’m making a face and carefully smooth my features. “She is such a gossip. I swear, she talks about everybody.”
“He’s the juicy news,” Ben snarks, wadding up the wrapper from his muffin and tossing it down on the table. “And speaking of news—”
“Wait!” I interrupt. “Me first, because you are not going to believe where I was last night.”
“Last night?” He looks alarmed. “You traveled back out somewhere with him?”
I hold up a hand to stop him before he starts griping. “Ben. I saw a mammoth.”
“A m-m—” he stutters slightly, his eyes widening, and I finish the word along with him, nodding enthusiastically.
“Mammoth. I saw a mammoth, Ben. I got to pet it.”
“How…?”
“In that reality, they never died off. To the people there it was like visiting a zoo and seeing an elephant.”
“Where?” It’s clear Ben is having as hard a time wrapping his head around this as I was.
“I was in Norway!” I gush. “Speaking Norwegian! And then we saw the aurora borealis, and there were little baby mammoths, and oh!” I sink back with a sigh. “It was amazing. Just plain amazing.”
“I’ll bet.” He looks uncomfortable. “Guess a bad movie kinda pales in comparison.”
I realize how I must sound, and I reach across to hold his hand. “I don’t mean it like that. I’m having fun tonight.”
“Me too.” He looks slightly mollified, and he turns my hand over, squeezing it. “I like it when we laugh together. And just generally are together. Alone.”
I take a drink of my coffee, letting that one go by. “So what’s your news?”
His eyes widen. “Oh yeah! So get this: Eversor—and it was Eversor trying to rob the museum in Mexico—”
“You’re positive?”
“I saw the security camera footage on a TV station website out of Mexico City. It’s her, all right.” He leans forward. “And she was after—get this—an Aztec mirror.”
“A mirror? That can’t be a coincidence.”
“What are the odds, right? She broke into a display that held an obsidian mirror, taken from an exhibit with items from an archaeological dig in Mexico. They were able to retrieve the mirror, but she got away.”
“Let me guess … it was like she vanished into thin air.”
“Pretty much,” he says. “Oh, and one other thing … it’s likely she was under the influence of some sort of narcotic. They said she was babbling and half out of her mind with hallucinations.”
“That would explain why she looked so sick,” I ponder. “She’s lost thirty pounds at least since she was here. She looked like she hadn’t slept in a month. If she wasn’t trying to murder me, it’d be sad.”
“So get this: I decided to do a little more digging into the Aztecs—hell, I was up at five thirty this morning scouring the Internet,” he confesses sheepishly. Ben loves a good research project. “It turns out that the Aztec exhibit at the Museum of Natural History in New York carries items from the same archaeological dig.”
“Any mirrors?”
“Not sure yet. I’m fixing to work on that some more tonight. But at least we’ve got something to report to your Dreamer guy.”
“This is great,” I say. “Ben, thank you.”
“Easy-peasy,” he says. “And now you owe me.”
My coffee stops halfway to my mouth. “Owe you what?”
He rolls his eyes. “A copy of the movie on DVD when it comes out. I need to brush up on my ice-skating skills, and I figured I’d watch the dinosaur for pointers.”
I’m laughing again—not that it’s hard to do around Ben. He’s always good for that.
“And I want the director’s cut,” he goes on. “If they have one.”
“Why, it’s practically an ahhhrt film,” I say in a really snooty voice.