by L. E. DeLano
“I’ll still be here,” Finn says. “I’m not from around here, remember? If the universe goes, I go with it.”
“No pressure, right?” I say sarcastically. “Now we just have to hope I can be hypnotized. First, we need to pick some command words.” I look over at Finn. “When I need to open my eyes, you’re going to say ‘open sesame,’ and when I walk to this mirror”—I prop the Aztec mirror up against the mirror on my dresser—“that’s your signal that I’m ready to transfer in the dreamscape. You’re going to say ‘bon voyage’—that’ll direct me to transfer out and then back here again.”
“Do we all understand the plan?” Finn asks. “Jessa will be traveling simultaneously both here and in the dreamscape, creating a counterwave and saving the universe. And then we all go get some coffee. Or tea.”
“How long will it take?” I ask Finn.
“Guess I should get comfortable,” Ben says, kicking off his shoes. “We could be here for hours, right?”
“Not that long. If all goes well, this should be nearly instantaneous,” Finn says. “Over in a heartbeat.”
“And if it doesn’t go well?” Ben asks.
Finn makes a grim face. “It’ll still be over in a heartbeat. Mine.”
Ben sucks in a breath. “Well. Okay, then. Let’s get this party started.” He grabs a couple of pillows and stacks them up against my headboard, and I start to lie back against them.
“Wait—am I sitting? Or lying down?” I ask.
Finn fishes something out of his coat pocket before he takes his coat off and hangs it on the doorknob.
“Lie back, but only semi-reclined,” he says. “You’ll need to be able to easily see this.” He holds up one of my mom’s scented candles that he must have grabbed from downstairs, as well as the clicker she uses to light them.
“A candle? What about your pocket watch?”
“It’s not as good for this. A candle flame can be quite mesmerizing. It has just enough movement to keep you interested, but not enough that your eyes might wander and distract you.” He pulls over the chair from my desk and sits down on it, then lights the candle.
“What scent is that?” I ask, wrinkling my nose.
“Ocean breeze,” Finn replies dryly. “But it smells more like an aged aunt.”
“I’m not so sure I like the idea of him controlling your mind,” Ben says dubiously. He looks at Finn. “No offense.”
“None taken—but only because I’m not controlling her mind. That’s not how hypnosis works. Hypnosis is actually self-hypnosis. I’m only here as a guide, directing her into a trance state—much like when you slip into a daydream and someone has to snap you out of it. Jessa can’t be made to do anything she wouldn’t want to do. That’s why it’s especially hilarious to an entertainer when a group under hypnosis acts like a pack of wild monkeys or says something untoward. They’re not doing anything they don’t want to do, I assure you.”
“Well, I definitely want to do this,” I say, settling myself in and getting as comfortable as possible.
“That makes it easier,” Finn answers.
“I’ll debrief Mario on the plan once I get there,” I say, taking in a deep breath and letting it out slowly. “I’m ready.”
“Now,” says Finn. “Listen to my voice, love, and look at the candle flame. You can blink when you need to; the object is to keep your focus upon it as you listen to my words. All right?”
I nod. “Okay.”
“Let’s start by having you relax your muscles, beginning at your toes and working your way up. Flex and release. Flex and release.”
My breathing begins to deepen as I keep my eyes on the flame and do as he asks, squeezing my toes, my calf muscles, and working my way up, slowly tensing and releasing. The flame is dancing in front of me, flickering and definitely mesmerizing. Finn’s voice is a soothing lilt as I begin to drift.
“You can feel a heavy, relaxed feeling coming over you like a warm blanket,” he says. “And as I continue to speak, that heavy, relaxed feeling will grow stronger … and stronger … until it carries you into a deep, peaceful state of relaxation.…”
His voice drops to more of a hum, like I can hear that he’s saying words but I’m not sure exactly which words. I vaguely wonder if I’ve slipped back into Danny’s dream as the flickering candlelight varies in color and pattern and …
I am looking at a very surprised Mario.
“Jessa?” He hurries over to me. “You’re all right?”
“I think I know how to stop the convergence wave,” I say, getting right to the point.
He glances up at the whiteboard and it springs to life, showing me all sorts of mayhem—zoo animals running through shopping malls and my school now being held in a warehouse surrounded by barbed wire, wars and strange-looking cities, and places of complete devastation.
“I was actually worried I wouldn’t be able to reach you in time,” he says. “We don’t have much of it left.”
“Listen to me,” I say. “I’m here because Finn has me hypnotized.”
Mario’s eyes widen, and then they narrow as he looks at me more closely. “That’s brilliant!” he says, reaching out a finger and running it along my arm. His finger slides right through me, like I’m a ghost. Only half there. “Are you registering this? In reality?”
I concentrate for a moment, and part of me is pulled back, feeling my body breathe, feeling Finn, silent now. His hand is touching mine.
“Yes,” I say. “I can feel both places. I don’t know how long I can hold this, though. But we’ve got a plan.”
“I’m listening.” Mario is looking at me intensely. “I gather it involves Finn?”
He no sooner says the name than I feel Finn beside me here.
“What are you doing here?” I demand. “You’re supposed to be in charge back in the real world.”
“Ben knows the command to make you transfer,” Finn says. “I’m here to help.”
“How did you fall asleep so fast?”
“I didn’t want to wait for the medicine, so I let Ben hit me.”
“He knocked you out?”
“He’s been itching to have at me for days now. I gave him his chance. Took the bugger two tries before it worked,” he grumbles. He reaches down for my hand, but his fingers slide right through.
“Sorry,” he says. “Forgot you’re not entirely with us.”
“The plan?” Mario prompts. He’s got a sense of urgency in his voice, so I cut right to it.
“We’re going to do what the oracles used to do and use two mirrors to make a stronger portal. I’ll use two mirrors to transfer simultaneously—the Aztec mirror in the real world, and a mirror here in the dreamscape. If I can keep my focus in both places, it might counter the wave and make it feed back on itself.”
Mario stares at the whiteboard, his lips moving silently as his mind tries to calculate the probability of it. He shakes his head.
“I don’t know, Jessa,” he says. “I can’t forecast this—there are too many variables now.”
“I’ve got to try,” I say.
“What do we have to lose, really?” Finn asks.
“You’re right.” Mario’s voice is grim. “We’re running out of time.”
I nod to Finn. “Open the door.”
Mario races over, and then gestures to Finn. “I’ll get you the mirror in the dreamscape,” he says. “Head immediately to your left—you’ll be in a curio shop. There’s a large mirror on a wheeled base. Use that.”
“Right,” Finn says. He gives me a nod and steps through as Mario opens the red door.
“I’ll force the door to remain open,” Mario says as the dreamscape shimmers to life in front of me through the door. I stand in the doorway and watch as Finn brings the mirror over, standing on the other side of the doorway with it.
“Ready?” he asks, tilting it so I can see myself perfectly. The people in the curio shop behind him are milling about, seemingly unaware of what is taking place.
&nb
sp; “And this is how we save a universe,” I say, reaching through the doorway to put my fingers to the glass. I can feel my conscious self as well, the smooth surface of the Aztec mirror cold against my fingertips, I feel the power pulsing through both sides, and then on Ben’s command filtering through from the waking world, I step through in both places—it doesn’t matter where. I just connect and go. I feel myself sucked into the in-between, pulled tight between reality and dreams, and whirling all around me are the flotsam and jetsam of hundreds of shattered realities, beating their way in, trying to take root. I push them away, slapping at the waves—the soldiers, the places that don’t belong, the redirected streams and the rewritten histories.
I can feel my conscious body panting with the exertion of it, but I also feel my strength, pushing it all back, sweeping away the loose ends until all that remains is what should remain. It seems to take hours, and I am shaking with fatigue, but as I transfer back and stumble into the room, I realize it’s been only the length of a heartbeat.
“Well?” Finn asks in disbelief. “Is it done? That seemed rather … anticlimactic.”
“For you, maybe,” I reply, sucking in a lungful of air and flexing my arms to wring out the last bits of overexertion. “I feel like I just cleaned house—for the entire world.”
Finn steps back through the door, leaving the mirror standing behind him. “You wouldn’t even know we just saved the bloody universe,” he says with a smile.
“That’s because you didn’t,” Mario says quietly, and he’s looking at a whiteboard full of splintering chaos.
35
The End of the Story
“No.” I shake my head violently. “We’ve still got the mirror. Just tell me what to do and I can do it.”
“It’s no use,” Mario says, and the calmness in his voice is infuriating. “Jessa, when you used the dual mirror, the portal created a shield around the origin, but it didn’t extend much beyond it.”
“So my reality is back to normal?”
“It should be.”
“But not the rest,” I say flatly. “I can’t save the rest.”
“You simply don’t have the kind of power to arrest this motion.”
“That can’t be,” Finn says. “We’re talking about countless lives—”
“We’re talking about your life,” Mario says, not unkindly. “And that lends desperation to your actions. But no matter how desperately you try—or Jessa tries—she simply doesn’t have the power to contain all of this. No one does.”
“But the prophecy!” I say. “You said I could stop it.”
“I’ve told you before,” he answers quietly, “it was a forecast, not a prophecy. The forecast was made on the assumption that you were a direct descendant—and therefore better equipped to deal with this situation, and that we would have learned enough in the passing centuries to guide you properly. We didn’t anticipate this level of convergence.”
“So you were wrong.” My words lash out, dripping with venom, with my own personal fury.
“Yes, I was wrong.” Mario’s voice is weary and heavy with sorrow. “It’s too far gone, Jessa.”
“You told me I could save them,” I say, and the complete uselessness of that word overwhelms me.
Finn moves closer, his fingers trying to twine around mine, but passing right through instead.
“And so you did, love,” he says. “You’ve saved your family. Your world.”
He’s calm, steady. His eyes carry the pain for both of us, and I feel like I’m being ripped into pieces. Like the wave has already hit and leveled me.
“I don’t want a life without you in it,” I whisper.
He shakes his head emphatically. “Don’t say that. You’ll have a life. You’ll have a wonderful life.”
I turn to look at Mario. “Will I remember him? When everything else goes away? Will I keep these memories?”
“Some, perhaps,” he says. “Not all.”
The thought tears into me like a twisting, burning knife, and I turn back to Finn. “I can’t…”
He looks at me with those green, green eyes, and I am lost. “You’ll remember me, love,” he promises. “And you’ll go on to college, you’ll write your books.” He tries to crack a smile, but it’s only a painful imitation. “Put me in a story. You told me once that’s how you live forever, isn’t it?”
I nod, but I’m blinded by tears. “I love you, Finn.”
“Ah, Jessa,” he murmurs. “When it all comes together, I’ll be here. Somehow, I’ll be here with you. I swear it. I’ll love you to the end of it all and beyond.”
I think of all the many lives I’ve known and those I will now never know. My families. My friends. My lovers and my selves. I owe them better. They deserve their lives as much as I do. All the Jessas that I could have been.
You guys should get together sometime, Danny said once. I’ve learned so much about myself, taken so much strength and knowledge from every bit of who I am, wherever I am. But it was all for nothing. In the end, Danny is one of the only people I can save. Danny, my family, my world, and myself.
And if I’m lucky enough to remember, I can write about the selves I’ll never meet again or be again. I can write about the man I love, and I know I’ll never feel this again. I cannot imagine putting a pen to paper and letting this kind of anguish pour out on the pages. Finn steps closer, and I wish I could feel his arms around me.
I glance over at the door to the dreamscape, and the tickle of a thought floats in my mind. Like a line of dialogue or a scene description waiting to form the rest of the story.… It teases my brain, and in my conscious reality, I feel my fingers tighten around the mirror.
You guys should get together sometime.
Mario was right. Danny never misses the important details.
“Finn?” I ask.
“Yes, love?”
“This isn’t how this story is going to end.”
“Jessa…” Mario’s voice carries a question, but I hold up a hand, stopping him.
“I’ve got an idea.”
“What are you doing?” he asks warily. “We don’t have much time.”
“This will only take a few minutes.” I step over to the red door again, and simultaneously, in the waking world, I feel myself standing in front of my bedroom mirror. “I know what I’m doing, Mario.”
“Jessa, whatever you’re thinking of doing—” Mario begins.
“You said yourself I wasn’t strong enough to save them all.”
“You’re not,” he says gently. “No matter how much you want to be.”
“But we are,” I say. “All of us. Together.”
“You want to … use your other selves? How?”
“As long as I’m hypnotized, anyone who transfers to my reality will be under, too—correct?”
“Yes.” His eyes widen as the possibilities begin to flesh out in his brain. “Yes—they’ll be in both places at once. And you won’t transfer over because—”
“Because I’m not really entirely in one place or the other.”
Mario is shaking his head uneasily. “Jessa, we can’t know if this will work. It may be the equivalent of spreading yourself too thin. It could tear you apart. Nothing like this has ever been done.”
“We’re out of time,” I say fiercely. “And it’s going to work.” I look at Finn—my Finn. No matter where he is, he is who he is, and so am I. And we—all of us—are going to keep these amazing lives we lead.
I concentrate, feeling my body in the conscious world. I lift my fingers there, I can feel it, and I touch them to the mirror glass.
“Hurry,” I say to the reflection in both places. “We’ve got work to do.”
Here in the classroom, I reach through the doorway into the dreamscape, and my hand closes around another. Another Jessa steps through from the other side, wearing our favorite leotard and leggings.
“Hey,” dancer me says. “Who’s next?”
We both reach through, and out steps
another me, glittering head to toe in sparkling gold and red sequins this time. And another, this one in faded jeans and a plaid shirt. We all give one another a nod, turning as one and reaching through for more.
“Keep ’em coming,” I urge, and another Jessa steps through, signing hello as she gets out of the way to make room for the next, who’s wearing ski gear, and the one after her, who has short hair and a nose piercing. I see Mario at the doorway now, and with a flourish of his hand, a group of Jessas appears, then dozens, tens to hundreds to thousands, and the room grows to fit us all. An infinite number of Jessas in their realities and throughout the dreamscape, all held in this moment. I feel every one of them as we reach and connect, growing stronger with each addition, taking in their power, their strength, their resilience.
I can feel the splintering wave as it moves through us from our various realities, pulling at us, trying to scatter us, but like a chain, link by link, we hold fingertip to fingertip, then hand to hand, tightening, circling and surrounding the wave, reaching out and pulling in fragments as we go. We enclose it, like it’s a fire and we’re cutting off its air, leaving it no fuel to burn or destroy. But it doesn’t go down easy.
I can feel some of it slip through, disintegrating before we tighten ranks again, pulling in. I hear Mario shouting over the sound of the vortex, directing us.
“Jessa with the ponytail—over there! That one! Now, Jessa with the tattoo—trace this stream—no, not that way—over here! You! With the house in the valley—grab that one—send it over here!” His eyes lock with mine. “Jessa—keep it together!”
I tighten my grip on their hands, bearing down hard as he continues calling out directions to the multitudes of Jessas, helping them chase down diverging streams, circling them back in, pulling them like gossamer flyaways, reeling them all back into the reality stream, pulling the flying fragments and melding them together.
My body shakes with the effort in the conscious world; I taste the blood of my lip where I’ve bitten into it. I feel the pain screaming through me, pulling sounds from my throat and from the lips of all of us, before everything spirals at a furiously dizzying pace, wrenching us this way and that, until, with a scream of fury, the wave peaks and falls.