“Alamina?”
Alex was dumbfounded. “Isis, stop!”
The cat’s tail stopped spinning, and she dropped to the ground with as much grace as possible, landing (of course) on all four paws.
She immediately started grooming herself.
“Alamina?” Alex repeated.
“I... don’t... know that name,” Elizabeth said, trying to catch her breath after all that exertion. “Who are you?”
“I’m Alex,” said the boy. “Don’t you remember me?”
Elizabeth stood up straighter. “My name is Elizabeth,” she said. The music had stopped, and she was regaining her wits. She didn’t recognize the boy in front of her at all, and she didn’t recognize the name Alamina, either. He had obviously confused her with someone else.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know you. ... Where are we?”
“At the center of the maze or the labyrinth or whatever it is,” said Alex, watching as a second woman stepped through the gap behind Alamina, who for some reason was calling herself Elizabeth. She wore an expression of fierce determination that seemed to be a regular part of her facial features.
Behind her, two huge dragons pushed their way through, tearing down pieces of the wall around the edges of the opening to make it large enough for them to pass through. And after them, a man with a long white beard and ample belly made his entrance—a man who looked for all the world like... Santa Claus. He strode over to a big wooden chair and sat his ample bottom on its seat.
“Ah, much better,” he declared, exhaling contentedly.
Ruffus trotted up to the bearded man and started sniffing at his feet. The man, in turn, smiled and reached down to scratch the behind the bloodhound’s ears.
Alex felt as though he had stumbled into a costume party.
Well, it was Halloween.
Isis’s eyes brightened. “Hello, Chris,” she said, padding across the floor and jumping into his lap. He rewarded her by rubbing her back just in front of her tails, and she responded with a contented purr.
“Hello, old friend,” he said. “And thank you for not calling me ‘King Nicholas.’ Living up to formal names and ceremonial titles can get exhausting after a while!”
Alex wondered briefly how the cat knew the old man, He did not, however, consider the possibility that the man might really be Santa Claus, and that Santa Claus traveled extensively for his job—which meant he likely met any number of cats, dogs, parakeets, hamsters and goldfish in children’s homes around the world.
He did not consider these things, because he wasn’t focused on the bearded man. His eyes kept being drawn back to the woman who was calling herself Elizabeth—but whose true name, he was sure, was Alamina.
...
Her eyes, likewise, were fixed on him.
“I do know you,” she said at last. “Or, at least, I feel I should.”
Then, suddenly, a realization dawned on Alex. He didn’t know where it had come from—perhaps from some other time entirely—but he suddenly knew who the woman standing in front of him was. Or had been. Or, perhaps, both.
“You’re her,” he said simply. “You’re the girl I sent the map and compass to.”
The girl reached inside her coat and pulled out the two talismans. “These?”
“Yes,” he said. “Likho sent them to you, magically.”
“That explains how they just ‘appeared’ in our treasury,” said Dreqnir. “Karanadreq will be relieved to know she did not make a mistake with the inventory.”
Taradreq laughed at this, but neither Alex nor Elizabeth was paying attention to the dragons. Elizabeth didn’t know who ‘Likho’ was, but she did know that she couldn’t have come this far without the map and, especially, the compass. “Thank you,” she said, although it seemed far too small a thing to say, considering what the boy had done.
Nicholas looked up from petting Isis and addressed Alex: “Am I correct in concluding that you have the other two talismans: the flute”—he motioned toward the instrument, which still lay on the floor where Alex had dropped it—“and the Wild Card”?
Alex nodded, pulling the Lou Gehrig baseball card out of his pocket.
“Then we have all we need,” he declared, standing.
“For what?”
“To banish the evernight and return to the realm of time.”
Alex looked puzzled. “What do you mean, ‘return’?”
“Just as I said,” Nicholas declared. “We are at the center of the labyrinth, which is, by its nature, a place out of time. That is why it’s so difficult to escape from this place. Only the one who holds all six talismans can do it.”
Elizabeth turned to him. “Six? I thought there were seven.” She ticked them off on her fingers: “The pocketwatch... the compass... the map... the spectacles... the flute... the wild card... and the axe.”
Nicholas shook his head. “Well, there are technically seven talismans, but the axe is not among them.”
Elizabeth frowned. “But the Pathfinder of Destiny. You said...”
“You assumed,” Nicholas corrected her, a twinkle in his eye. “The axe is not the Pathfinder of Destiny. You are.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Oh, don’t get me wrong,” he said. “The labrys is, indeed, a magical tool, but only in the hands of the proper person. I was a little worried when you allowed Illian to keep it in her care. She could not have breached the walls that barred us from the heart of the labyrinth. Only a Time Wielder could have done that. Only the Pathfinder of Destiny.” He pointed at her to emphasize his point. “You.”
“This is all very interesting, Alamina,” said Alex.
“Elizabeth,” she corrected.
He ignored it. “But now that you’re here,” he said, “we still need to find our way home.”
“And before you can do that,” Nicholas said. “You have to know where ‘home’ is.”
Alex opened his mouth and was about to say, “Iowa.” But then he remembered he had never felt at home there. He had come all this way, he realized, and he still didn’t know where home really was.
“I know where home is,” said Elizabeth. “It’s Ridley Manor, my home in Yorkshire.”
Nicholas smiled and nodded. “Yes, it is. And there’s your answer.” He was smiling not at Elizabeth, but at Alex.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
Nicholas scratched his beard. “How can I explain this,” he said, pausing and frowning as he cast his gaze upward. “You came here for a reason,” he said at last. “To find your way home.”
Alex nodded. He remembered again what Likho had said: that the entire world depended on him finding his way home. But why?
“Your home is not where—or, more importantly, when—you thought it should be,” Nicholas continued. “You see, you and Elizabeth were both living in the wrong time. Each of you was supposed to be in the timespace occupied by the other, and because of this mix-up, the entire world has been thrown off-kilter, so to speak.”
“A knot in the timeline?” said Taradreq.
“Not exactly,” Nicholas answered. He plucked a thread from his coat and held each end between a thumb and forefinger.
“It’s natural to think that time runs in a line, from one set endpoint to another,” he explained. “But that is not how it works. If the truth be told, time runs in a circle, and the world’s very existence relies upon that circle remaining whole. If it is broken at any point, it ceases to function; like a broken gear on a bicycle.” He looked at Alex. “Like the one I brought you for Christmas four years ago.”
Alex’s mouth dropped open.
Nicholas went on: “If the gear on a bicycle breaks, the chain will come loose, and you won’t be able to get anywhere at all.”
“So. time runs in a circle? Like the face of a clock?” said Elizabeth.
“Sort of,” said Nicholas. “As long as it’s not digital.” He winked at Alex. Elizabeth, being from the nineteenth century, looked clueless.
“You can jump on or off at any point on the circle—if you know what you are doing. You just can’t break the circle, or there will be nowhere left to go. Time will literally collapse in on itself, and everything will cease to exist. That’s what very nearly happened.”
“But why?” asked Alex.
“Because somehow, you and Elizabeth switched times. For most people, this wouldn’t matter. But for you two, it’s different. One of you is a Time Wielder, and the other a Memory Master. Your gifts are exceedingly rare. Indeed, one would be hard-pressed to find two more gifted individuals in the entire annals of history. If you don’t switch back, things that need to be accomplished never will be—things upon which the fate of the world depends. It will break the circle.”
Elizabeth stared at him. “So, that’s why we’re here? To switch back?”
Nicholas nodded. “That’s why you both had to come here. The center of the labyrinth is a place out of time. It’s a crossroads where all times meet and no time exists. From here, you can step out into any time you wish—if you can get out.”
Alex nodded toward the Minute-Hour, who seemed to be coming out of his stupor. “He has been stuck here for... I don’t know how long.”
“Neither do I,” Nicholas admitted. “Time loses its meaning here, so it’s impossible to know.”
Asterion’s eyelids flickered open, and he got slowly to his feet, rubbing his eyes and looking around him. He looked at the dragons, at the spearmaiden, and at Nicholas. But before he could say anything, his gaze settled on the hole at the far end of the room—the hole through which Elizabeth and the others had come. When he saw it, his mouth fell open and his eyes grew wide. He clenched both fists and sprang forward, racing at full speed toward the aperture.
“I’m free! I’m free!” he shouted as he leapt into the void.
Then his voice cut off, and he was gone.
“Where did he go?” asked Alex.
“A glacier in Scandinavia,” Illian said matter-of-factly. “He’ll wish he had dressed a little warmer.”
But Nicholas was shaking his head. “It doesn’t work like that,” he said. “There’s no telling where he is now. When you leave the center of the labyrinth, you might end up anywhere at any time. Unless you set your destination before you leave, you’re just as likely to end up in Madrid during the Spanish Inquisition or in sub-Saharan Africa during the age of the dinosaurs. There’s no telling.”
“Oh, dear,” said Elizabeth.
But Alex was far less concerned about the bull-headed man than he was about how to get home—even if home wasn’t where he’d thought it would be.
“How do we set our destination?” asked Alex. “Do we click our heels together and say, ‘There’s no place like home’?”
Elizabeth looked at him, baffled.
“It was a joke,” he said.
Nicholas looked at Elizabeth. “You are a Time Wielder and the Pathfinder of Destiny. As such, you simply need to focus on the path before you, the way you did when you brought us all here.”
He turned to Alex. “Your task is a little less direct, but well within your means to accomplish. Because of your gift, you have it within yourself to travel to anyplace for which you have a memory.”
Alex frowned. “That would be fine,” he said. “Except, if I’m supposed to switch places with Alamina... er... Elizabeth, and I have no memory of Yorkshire. I’ve never been outside of Iowa!”
Nicholas smiled. “You are a Memory Master, and because of this, you can gain access to any other person’s memory that they agree to share. I believe Elizabeth would consent to share hers.”
“Of course,” she said.
“Then all you have to do is recall the memory you wish to share, and send it to Alex through your mind’s eye.”
Illian spoke up: “What about the rest of us? Will we be stuck here?”
Nicholas waved a hand reassuringly. “Not at all,” he said. “But you will have to choose between accompanying one or the other of your friends. You will need to find new lives in new times and new places, but I’m quite sure all of you are up to the challenge.”
Dreqnir looked distressed. “But what will happen to Dragehjem without a queen?”
“I’m sure Karanadreq is more than up to the task,” Taradreq replied.
“I’ve never had a home, except in Nigel’s service,” said Illian. “Anything else will be a welcome change.”
In the end, they all chose to stay with the person they’d come with: the dragons and Illian with Elizabeth; Ruffus and Isis with Alex. As to King Nicholas, he chose to go with Alex, explaining—quite reasonably—that it made the most sense for him to return at an earlier time, so as not to miss out on any Christmases.
Elizabeth found a piece of paper and spent several moments writing something on it. Then she gladly shared her memories with Alex, and the two of them, so closely bound together by destiny but only recently united, made ready to part ways.
“Where will I end up?” she asked him. “What can I expect?”
He told her about television and video games and compact discs and VCRs. He told her about Back to the Future and Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure; about Iowa and the corn maze that had brought him here. “A lot has changed in 1991,” he said.
She chuckled. “I’m sure it has. Or will.”
She laughed again, and then they both grew somber. The boy stepped close to her and threw his arms around her.
“I guess we won’t see each other again after this,” he said. “A century is a long ways apart.”
“You never know,” she said, hugging him back. “I am a Time Wielder, after all.” She laughed. She didn’t even really know what that meant.
Before they parted, she slipped the note she had written into his hand. “Give this to Miss Owl,” she said. “It will let her know that I’m all right, and that I want her to take care of you.”
He took the note and put it in his pocket, next to the Lou Gehrig baseball card, patting it twice to be sure it was secure.
Then he smiled, and let her go, and turned toward the aperture. Waving goodbye to the dragons and Illian, he ran toward it and leapt through—in precisely the right way to come out at the entrance to the labyrinth in the back of Ridley Manor just before the turn of the twentieth century. Then Elizabeth, in her turn, jumped through the breach she had created and found herself in a cornfield in rural Iowa on a Halloween morning.
Yes, morning.
Daylight had returned, and the evernight had ended. The same was true in the Yorkshire of Alex’s new-old time, although the sun was hidden behind a blanket of fog.
King Nicholas found his sleigh waiting for him on the roof of the manor, and Carol was there to greet him with a tight and very relieved embrace. It was Christmas Day, she told him, and he had missed his customary rounds. But the Alfur had managed to rebuild the factory, and she had taken the reins to deliver every single one of his toys in the good king’s absence.
Cary looked over his shoulder, nodded and snorted a “hello.”
“Good to see you again, old friend,” he said. “I think it’s about time we head home.”
...
Chapter Twenty-Two
Homecomings
Miss Howell was surprised to see the boy standing at the door to Ridley Manor.
“May I help you, young man?” she asked. Her gaze moved briefly to the bloodhound seated beside him and the odd-looking cat—with nine tails! —weaving her way between his legs and circling around him, purring.
“Hello,” said Isis.
“Hello,” said Ruffus.
“Hello,” said Alex.
Then he reached into his pocket, and a look of panic crossed his face. He found the note Elizabeth had given him, but the baseball card was gone!
“What’s wrong?” Miss Owl asked in a hooey-hoo voice.
Alex looked puzzled but just shook his head. Maybe the card couldn’t come with him, because Lou Gehrig hadn’t been born yet. Of course, he—Alex—ha
dn’t been born yet, and that hadn’t stopped him, but this mystery was one for another time—and one he certainly didn’t want to share with the woman in front of him. He was here, in this time and place, all by himself, and he didn’t want to alienate his only potential friend by telling her some unbelievable story about being from the future.
As it turned out, though, Elizabeth’s note told her exactly that:
Dearest Miss Owl,
I’m so thankful for everything you’ve done for me, and I’m sorry for being so difficult to get on with. I’m afraid I never got over my parents’ passing, and I left you to deal with everything that went with that. I realize now how terribly unfair that was, and how unfair it is to ask you what I’m about to ask.
You may find this unbelievable, and I scarcely believe it myself, but I wasn’t supposed to be living there with you. I’m not sure how, but I was living in the wrong time, and I’ve been able to return to my proper place in history. At least, I hope so. This must sound like madness, and I don’t blame you if you laugh out loud at how preposterous it all sounds, but I can assure you I’m not making it up. Something tells me that you’ll take me at my word, but even if you don’t, I still have a momentous favor I must ask.
The boy with whom I sent this note is named Alex, and he is the one who was supposed to have been living in your time. Sending him back there, I’m told, will set things right, but he’s just a child still and all alone in the world. If you would be so kind as to look after him, as you looked after me, I would be forever grateful (whatever “forever” might mean in a world of twisted time!). Teach him what you taught me, and learn from him, as well. I have a feeling he will have a lot of things to share as he grows older. It’s just a feeling, yes, but feelings are something I’m learning to trust.
Give him everything you would have given to me. My parents had so many dreams for me, and I set them aside because of my grief at their passing. Perhaps, however, some good may still come of their intentions. Perhaps young Alex can make use of their generosity in ways I never could.
The Talismans of Time (Academy of the Lost Labyrinth Book 1) Page 19