by Adam Rex
“Or maybe I do all of this, every time. Maybe I always fail. Maybe I always say, ‘Maybe I always fail.’ Every twenty-eight billion years I sit on a bus and say that.”
Mick crawled over the back of Merle’s bench and thumped down beside him. “If yeh believed that, yeh wouldn’t be sharin’ this pig’s breakfast with us.”
“If I believed it, I’d know I don’t have a choice, and I’d be doing it anyway.”
Scott sighed. “This is why I don’t like time-travel stories.”
At fourteen Merle didn’t like time-travel stories either, if only because they never had anything useful to teach him. But he’d read and watched them all.
As a boy he believed that time travel must be possible because it felt possible. Natural, even. When a terrible thing happened, didn’t the human mind keep looking for solutions, even after the thing had passed? If I could just not have been so loud, I could save them. If I could only have been more brave.
Every new technology seemed to be preparing human minds for the time travel discovery that could only be right around the corner. Instant replays. Undo buttons. Games that let you save your progress and face the boss monster again and again. After his parents were gone, Merle had a lot of time to himself, and he filled it with physics textbooks and books of folklore and crackpot websites. Friends were a distraction. When the past was repaired, he would have all the time in the world for friends.
At his high school graduation, he was a full four inches shorter than the next shortest boy.
The ceremony was watched over by the usual trolls, the same sort of Redcaps that surveilled any gathering of more than twenty humans these days. But after Merle threw his mortarboard in the air with the rest of his class and pushed back through the crowd to find his aunt, he found her standing stiffly beside a tall and stately elf. A sickeningly familiar elf.
“It was a … a lovely ceremony,” Aunt Meredith said haltingly, as if she were fighting for breath. “Such a … orderly ceremony. The graduates weren’t any problem at all—”
“I am not here as a peacekeeper, lady,” the elf said in that way some of them had, where their voices seemed to come at you from everywhere at once. “I want only to congratulate your nephew. Privately, an’ it please you.”
Aunt Meredith was snuffling. She pulled her fingers across her eyes. “Allergies,” she murmured.
“It’s okay, Tante,” Merle told her. His heart was going sour in him. “I’ll meet you at the el stop.”
Other graduates and their families passed, giving them a wide berth, watching out of the corners of their eyes. Aunt Meredith lingered a moment, uncertain, but when Merle nodded again and jerked his head, she bustled off and left him alone with the fairy.
He was one of those regal, Tolkienesque elves that made you feel fat and unlovely. Six-five, lean, sloe-eyed, with short green mossy hair. A soldier’s haircut. A strange mix of both human and fairy sensibilities: a silk hoodie, leather shorts, wristlet braided from dandelion greens, Converse One Stars. Off duty, obviously—only the pink dragon insignia on his red cap told you he was a captain of the Trooping Fairies of Oberon.
People his aunt’s age and older loved to tell one another how unnatural it all still seemed, even fifteen years on: spotting a centaur waiting to use an ATM, assorted gnomes at Coney Island, the Questing Beast sniffing garbage cans outside the Pick ’N Save. They said it with this tragic air, as if it wasn’t a gift to have memories of the world as it was before. Merle would give everything to be surprised by the sight of an elf under his high school bleachers.
“Do you remember me?” asked the elf.
Merle huffed. “Is that a joke?” He felt faint.
The elf pretended to watch other graduates pass.
“My name is Conor, by the by.”
“Right. Sure it is.”
“I want you to know I took no pleasure from that day. I assayed only to do my duty.”
“Then your duty sucks. You have an evil duty.”
“If that were so, then my glamour would have failed me, and I would have died, and your mother would have lived. My actions were just.”
“Don’t give me that bull. Her gun backfired, is all. Don’t you … don’t you dare tell me you won because the universe wanted you to.”
The way Conor was glancing around, Merle wondered if he was waiting for all the other humans to clear out. What happened when there were no more witnesses? Maybe then the elf finished what he’d left undone, six years before. At last they were alone, and Conor frowned at his feet.
“You’re being watched, Merle.”
Merle felt a chill. “What, right now?”
“Always.”
Merle hiccuped, nervously. Whenever he’d imagined this scenario, he’d always carried himself with a little more dignity. He hadn’t been wearing a black satin gown, for example.
“They suspect what you’re up to,” Conor continued. “My superiors. They haven’t seen fit to share their suspicions with me, but … I remember seeing you before, Merle.”
“Yeah. Six years ago June. I remember that too.”
“No, not six years. Centuries. I observed a dispute over a tower that would not stand, and you were there. And yet you were older, no longer a boy. I think you understand me.”
Merle thought maybe he did understand. A thrill ran through him.
“And … you’re telling me this why?”
Conor looked up finally, studied Merle awhile before answering.
“You know, the Fay have always taken human children,” he said. “I might’ve taken you that June day. Raised you as my own. You weren’t so old.”
Was that some kind of weird threat? Merle hiccuped again, felt empty-headed. Darkness creeped like a stain around the edges of his sight.
“I wonder if I did right, leaving you there with your mother and father. I wonder if I could have taken hold of a wheel then, stopped it spinning. What threads might be lost if I had?”
“You talk a lot,” Merle slurred, swaying. “Is it your glamour making me feel like this? You hoping for a mysterious exit? I’m not going to faint, so you’ll just have to look me in the eye and leave.”
“Take care, Merlin,” Conor said. Then Merle drooped, and fade to black.
After a couple of years at university, Merle had a reputation for being obsessive about western European folklore and brilliant at quantum physics, and not much else. It was understood that if you needed an explanation of the Pauli exclusion principle or wanted to know who built Stonehenge, you should get someone to let you into basement lab three, because day or night that’s probably where Merle was.
A couple grad students poked their heads in.
“Hey—Merlin.”
“Yeah, hey—Merlin.”
“What,” said Merle. He didn’t look up from his soldering.
“Hey … how many pookas in a quark?”
“How many …,” Merle repeated idly. Then he turned his head to scowl at them. “How many pookas in a quark? That doesn’t even make sense.”
“What’s the problem?”
“Well … you presumably have a lot of quarks in a pooka, but pookas in a quark? One’s a subatomic particle. The other’s one of the shape-shifting Fay. Don’t you know the difference between physics and fairies?”
“I do.” The first grad student scoffed. “I just didn’t think you did.”
The other student laughed.
“That’s really funny,” Merle told them. “Come closer and I’ll show you how a soldering iron works.”
“See ya, Merlin.”
“Yeah, see ya, Merlin.”
Professor Strohmer entered as they left. He stood and watched Merle work for a moment before speaking.
“You’re back in the lab already?”
“Not back in it; still in it. Hey, watch the hoses. That’s liquid helium you’re tripping on.”
Strohmer picked the remains of a microwave burrito off an adjacent stool and sat down. “You smell, Merle.
And I hope you realize I’m only telling you this because you smell. You need a shower and you need to go to sleep.”
“I have classes.”
“You do have classes. You have my class, for example. And you know as well as I do that you’re going to skip it and hide in here all day with your … chimera.”
Merle clucked his tongue. “What do you mean, chimera?”
“Well …,” the professor began, adjusting his glasses. “It can mean a few things. But I meant ‘something hoped for which is nonetheless impossible.’”
“It’s not impossible. Just … very, very hard.”
“I know what you’re trying to build, Merle. And why. I heard about your parents.”
Merle flinched. “How did you hear that? I never told—”
“I’m sorry. Word gets around. But we’re talking about time travel, Merle. Time travel to the past, no less. It’s science fiction. It’s a f … it’s a—”
“Fairy tale?” Merle said, turning. “You were gonna say fairy tale, weren’t you.”
“Merle—”
“You notice how members of my generation don’t use that phrase? I wonder why that is.”
“I think I’ve been giving you too much leeway, Merle.”
“Hey—you know what else chimera can mean? It can mean a mythological monster made up of different animal parts. Like a griffin or a sphinx? And I know sphinxes are real, because there’s one LIVING ON TOP OF THE LAUNDROMAT NEAR MY HOUSE.”
“Okay, calm down—”
“I HAVE TO ANSWER RIDDLES TO USE THE CHANGE MACHINE.”
Strohmer got up from the stool. “I’m going to try this again some other time.”
“Wait,” Merle said, and stepped back. “Sit down. I’m sorry. I’m just a little … off. I haven’t slept in two days. But I can’t leave the lab just yet. I’m waiting for something.”
Strohmer had his hands on his hips, watching Merle like he was watching a dog rolling in filth, wondering if he should correct the behavior or just let nature run its course.
“You know I respect your opinion,” Merle added quickly. “Your work with fairy metals is the main reason I chose this school.”
Everyone knew by now that Fay treasure couldn’t be trusted. Maybe some satyr would pay you in gold pieces, more than he should have, even; but if you didn’t go and spend them quickly enough, you’d find you had a purse full of buttercups or some such.
Professor Strohmer had been the first to recognize that those buttercups must have been imbued with a kind of energy when they were changed into gold, and that they released this energy again when they changed back. Other scientists took his research and found a way to stabilize the gold somewhat, so that it held its energy like a battery and only let go a little at a time. Suddenly any mundane thing could be powered by fairy gold, with unpredictable results. Even old guys like Strohmer had to admit that what they were doing might not strictly be science anymore.
Merle had a robot owl that he’d hacked and tinkered with, and this owl had a fairy battery that would keep it running for centuries.
“Those fairy metals have given us a lot of things,” Strohmer reminded him. “We’re going to beat global warming because of fairy metals.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m just saying … maybe this whole crusade of yours is a little misguided? The resistance movement your parents were a part of has all but died out. I know we’ve lost some things, some freedoms, but … have you read the new paper in Nature? The average human lifespan has increased by almost five years just since the Fay came! Some believe that a baby born this year may live to two hundred!”
“Yeah, a lot of animals live longer in captivity,” Merle muttered.
The professor exhaled, then slapped his legs and rose from the stool again, looking for his exit strategy.
“Hey, speaking of kids, whatever happened to your toy owl? I remember when you started here, that thing never left your shoulder.”
“He’s helping me with an experiment,” said Merle.
“Well … when he gets back, tell him I said you should both power down for a while.”
“If I did my math right, you can tell him yourself in …” Merle consulted his watch. “Six minutes.”
Merle must have had a look on his face. Strohmer eyed him suspiciously.
“What happens in six minutes?”
And then, suddenly, Archimedes was there. He appeared, flapping, just above their heads. He clasped a golden octagonal ring in his talons.
Strohmer started and tripped over the helium hose in earnest. Merle was short of breath. “Okay. Wow. It worked.” He checked his watch again. “I guess I got the math wrong, though.”
“What just—” Strohmer sputtered. “Where was he?”
The owl landed and held the ring out to Merle.
“Nowhere. He was nowhere. I sent him into the future, one year ago.”
“Why is it always a year?” Scott asked now, on the bus. “Couldn’t you just have sent Archie five minutes into the future?”
“Could,” Merle admitted. “But then I’d never have seen him again. Remember, the earth’s always looping around the sun. In five minutes, the planet and everything on it would have moved five thousand miles to the right, and Archie would’ve popped up in empty space somewhere. Same with your mom. In a year the earth’ll get back around to exactly where it was when she left, and she’ll materialize in the same airport terminal.”
Scott pictured it: his mom appearing suddenly, a little woozy maybe, wearing a bracelet made of fairy gold and wondering where her chauffeur had disappeared to.
Their tire grazed a pothole, and the music started playing again. Tiny spotlights fractured off the mirror ball and swam in schools around the inside of the bus. The unicat chased these around while Finchbriton pecked at the mirrors.
“Here’s what I don’t get,” Scott told Mick. “You say most Fay aren’t spellcasters. Your magic is like really good luck. So how do you turn worthless things into gold?”
“We don’t,” said Mick. “I mean, not deliberately. It’s like … yeh know when you’re walkin’, an’ yeh think yeh see somethin’ valuable on the ground maybe? Silver, or a diamond, or even just a quarter. But then yeh look closer, an’ it’s only a candy wrapper, or a piece o’ glass.”
“Sure.”
“Well, when one o’ the Fay thinks he sees a treasure, he’s almost always right.”
“Hey,” said Erno, and he glanced over at where Harvey was sleeping, then back at Scott. “Hey, your dad’s still driving the bus, right? Because the TV says he’s at a French disco.”
John (or rather Reggie Dwight, or rather two goblins masquerading as Reggie Dwight) was shown exiting a cab and entering the club above the caption “‘Knight’ Out on the Town.” Then they flashed a few clips of Reggie from his movies and music videos, and then they showed the cab-to-club footage again in slow motion.
“What was that?” John called back from the driver’s seat. “You say I’m on the telly?”
“I would never say telly, but yeah.”
“Who’s got the remote?” asked Emily.
“Hey, Fi,” said Scott. “Can you reach the volume?”
“I see no volumes,” Fi answered.
“I got it,” said Polly, and the bus speakers blared with the voice of the entertainment reporter, which had all the artless tenor of a toddler announcing to a crowded room that she has to go tinkle.
“… cameras inside, but sources say he danced the night away with nearly everyone in the club. Vive la différence! Including this American college student studying abroad.”
A redheaded girl tried to keep from grinning before the cameras outside the club. She wore a tiny T-shirt that showed that she was from Colorado, or Wyoming, or just a fan of rectangles. “I asked if I could take his picture with my phone?” she said. “So he took my phone and he put it in his mouth.”
“In his mouth?”
“It was a really small phone. Th
en he swallowed it? Then he said I could get my pictures back in twenty-four hours. Do you think that means we have a date? I gave him my number, but he didn’t write it down.”
“Did he punch anyone?”
“He punched three people.”
“Tell us about the punching.”
“He punched one guy who asked to be punched ’cause his girlfriend’s a fan? Then he punched a girl I think by accident ’cause of his dancing. Then later he punched a guy who wouldn’t let him cut in the bathroom line.”
“ARE YOU KIDDING ME?” John bellowed from the front of the bus. “Oh my lord.”
Goodco had only targeted John in the first place because they were rubbing out knights—it was nothing personal. But now it was like the goblin impostors were going out of their way to behave badly.
“All the better to make John look like a lunatic if he tries to tell the world what Goodco’s up to,” Emily suggested.
“My career is over!”
“Shh!” Erno shushed back.
“Those goblins are ruining my life!”
“Shhh!”
The cameras had gone back to Entertainment News Central or whatever they called it. The show’s logo rotated on three big screens, and the anchorwoman stood rigidly in front of them like a pedestal with a smile on it.
“Reggie Dwight’s bad-boy behavior began when he punched Queen Elizabeth II at a horse racing track last November. Fans of Reggie Dwight and royal watchers the world over want to know when the singer-actor and the Queen of England will sit down together and bury the hatchet. Sources close to the queen say that Her Majesty is still upset over Sir Reggie’s unprovoked attack, but officially she’s keeping ‘mum.’ It could be that rambunctious Reggie won’t rest until his queen says ‘good knight.’ Now in celebrity baby news—”
“TURN IT OFF TURN IT OFF TURN IT OFF,” said Prince Fi from atop the TV, where he crouched in a ball with his arms wrapped around his head. Polly did as he asked. Fi sighed and uncurled. “Like the foul wind of a thousand harpies,” he explained, straightening. “Every television is surely swarming with demons too coarse for Pandora’s box.”