The Keepers #4

by Ted Sanders

  Just a few of Isabel’s stitches remained. The Mothergate seemed to grow blacker still, vibrating. At its fringes, it began to roll in on itself, as if its outermost reaches were becoming solid and breaking apart, falling into the abyss. It was thickening faster than it could be swallowed. The gateway was closing. And now Chloe could feel it, a thinning in the hurricane force of the Medium as it usually was, so close to a Mothergate. Horace could feel it too, she was sure. She should have been frightened.

  “It’s time,” Horace said a few seconds later, taking Chloe’s hand. “We need to enter while we still can.” The Mothergate continued to fill itself, becoming a jagged monolith, a scar of bristling stone. The Medium slowed to a soft breeze.

  “So this is what winning feels like,” Chloe said.

  “I guess it is,” Horace replied.

  And then they stepped into the trembling, collapsing black together.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Starlit Loom

  IT WAS 1:46 IN THE MORNING. HORACE HADN’T SLEPT. SLEEP wasn’t coming anytime soon. His mind wouldn’t let it.

  Chloe and April lay in the next bed over. April was snoring loudly but peacefully, like a trilling bird. Meanwhile Arthur, an actual bird, had settled quietly into a roost atop a bookshelf across the room. Chloe was curled atop the bed beside April, motionless, eyes closed.

  He watched her, thinking of where they’d been together earlier that night—into the Mothergate, where Chloe had been . . . every Chloe ever. And him every Horace. It was a thing they should not have been asked to do together. A thing he would never surrender, not in a million years.

  Horace held the Fel’Daera in his lap, feeling strangely rested, full of an energy he had no right to. He was waiting. He had been waiting for one minute and forty-seven seconds. At seven minutes, on the dot—on the tiniest fraction of a dot, thanks in part to the incredible accuracy of the astrolabe—a traveler would arrive. April’s nickel. The nickel that Falo had flipped for them, when telling them about the multiverse. Horace had been sending it through the box for the last fifty-one minutes. Sending it, watching it arrive, and sending it again. Wondering. Experimenting. Seven sendings so far, with the breach set at seven minutes. And every time the nickel had arrived.

  But how?

  And more importantly, why did it ever not?

  He set the Fel’Daera on the bed and stood up, thinking, trying to let a completely unexpected thing come into his mind. Something . . . unpredictable. He let his thoughts roll for two full minutes, and then an idea came to him. A random idea that he was sure had not entered his mind yet tonight.

  He began to do jumping jacks—the worst exercise ever invented, particularly for the less coordinated. He flailed his arms and legs, struggling to make them work in unison. Once he found some kind of rhythm, he made the peace sign with his hands as he jumped—another random thought. And a bit after that, he started smacking his lips very softly, like a fish—pok . . . pok . . . pok. And then he crossed his eyes. He kept jumping, smacking, doing all of it at once. He was pretty sure he was doing a thing no one had ever done before. He was pretty sure he looked like an idiot.

  “Horace.” Chloe’s voice floated dryly to him in the dim light. Horace startled awkwardly to a halt, blushing.

  “Yeah?” he said, puffing softly.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “I’m . . . experimenting.”

  “Night experiments again,” she said. “With the Fel’Daera. Meanwhile I’m trying to pretend to be asleep.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m pretending not to know that you’re doing crazy things.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  She sat up, her feet dangling high above the floor. “I don’t understand what you’re doing, but there are better ways to wake a person, if you need them,” she said. She looked right at him, obviously not mad, waiting for him to explain.

  But he couldn’t explain.

  She stepped into the silence he left hanging there. “Is it the Mothergate?” She fiddled the fingers of one hand at her own face, and with the other did the same at his. “Not the stuff we saw inside, I mean. I mean the dying.”

  He knew what she meant. There was no way to talk about what they’d seen inside the Mothergate, and also no need. There would never be a need. But it wasn’t the death of the first Mothergate that was troubling him, either. That was a trouble so huge he could barely even see it, much less talk about it.

  When they’d returned with the news that the first Mothergate had collapsed, it hadn’t been news at all. Not to Falo and April, anyway. The two of them had felt it, of course—April through the Ravenvine and Falo through . . .

  Through what? Through the Starlit Loom, it had to be, even though the mysterious Tan’ji had not been revealed. By now Horace assumed the Starlit Loom just wasn’t a thing anyone ever got the chance to see, even though his own mother had seen it once, long ago. Held it, even. Horace wasn’t offended, exactly—there was no reason for Falo to reveal the Starlit Loom. Least of all to him.

  The closing of the Mothergate hadn’t been news, no, but Falo had asked a dozen questions about Isabel’s attempts to force it to remain open. She listened to their descriptions of Isabel’s crude and violent weavings, and agreed that what she’d done had probably hastened the Mothergate’s death—but only because Horace and Chloe had interrupted her. Unable to finish her terrible work, Isabel had sped the inevitable process along, as the Mothergate recoiled from what she was doing. But if Isabel had been allowed to finish, Falo felt sure, what should have been inevitable might have become impossible. She seemed more convinced than ever that Isabel, with her terrible new powers, had the ability to pin the Mothergates open, no matter how primitive her weavings might seem.

  And Isabel was only getting stronger.

  Now they were waiting. Falo and Chloe were confident that after this first failure, the Riven would wait before sending Isabel out again. She’d been temporarily weakened by the weaving she’d endured at the hands of Grooma, and weakened further still by her efforts at Nlon’ka. They couldn’t afford to send her until she’d gained the full strength promised by what Grooma had done—not unless the next Mothergate was truly on the verge of collapsing. Falo had told them all to get some sleep while they could, and April was definitely taking advantage of the opportunity.

  But here were Horace and Chloe, awake in the middle of the night, talking. Again.

  “It’s not about the Mothergates,” Horace said to Chloe. “It’s the Fel’Daera.”

  “Because of what Falo told you? About the box feasting on other futures?”

  Horace grimaced. “That’s not . . . can we not use that word? Feasting?”

  “Horace, I know it’s not the best news. Not the best story. But maybe—maybe—you’re worried about harming things that don’t even exist.”

  “It’s not that simple, Chloe. The future . . . those other universes . . . it’s complicated.”

  Chloe let out a sigh that was more of a growl. “I know. It’s so complicated, I’m not even convinced we’re supposed to be thinking about it.”

  “If we weren’t supposed to think about it, we wouldn’t be Tan’ji.”

  She went quiet for a minute, letting April’s snores fill the room. Then she said, “I’m not really feeling the need to talk about it, but I can’t stop thinking about when we stepped through the Mothergate. What we saw there. Do you think there’s a universe where there’s a Chloe who never Found the Alvalaithen?”

  “I don’t know,” Horace replied. “I suppose there might be.”

  “Do you think she’s as awesome as I am?”

  When Horace didn’t answer right away, considering it, Chloe said curtly, “She’s not, Horace. You’re supposed to say she’s not.”

  “She’s not. Of course she’s not. How could she be?”

  With a soft pop, the nickel reappeared in midair, glinting. Chloe jumped. The nickel fell noisily to the ground. April grunted
softly.

  On the instant, there was a soft musical knock at the door—tap, tap, tap-tap.

  Now it was Horace’s turn to jump. Arthur rustled too, letting out a babyish chirp. Before they could say anything, Sil’falo Teneves glided into the room, a towering angelic ghost. “You are awake,” she said softly to Horace, her matter-of-fact tone suggesting it was a thing she’d already known. Had she felt him using the box?

  “I couldn’t sleep,” Horace explained.

  “The heavier the burden, the busier the mind.” She glanced at the nickel lying on the floor, heads up. Then she waved a long, pale hand, beckoning him. “Join me, Keeper. There are things I would tell you.”

  Horace didn’t even think to ask what kind of things. He grabbed the Fel’Daera, slipping it into its pouch.

  Chloe hopped down from her high bed. April snorted in her sleep again, but didn’t stir. “I’m coming too,” Chloe said.

  Falo’s brows lifted high. “Are you?” she said melodiously, and it was impossible to say whether it was a challenge or genuine curiosity. She turned and swept from the room.

  Chloe followed her into the hall, Horace right behind. Falo was already far ahead, and they hurried to catch up. Ka’hoka was murky and empty at this time of night. Their footsteps rang out sharply in the shadowed, hollow quiet.

  “Ours is a secret world,” Falo said after a while, her voice like sudden moonlight on dark water. At first Horace thought she meant Ka’hoka. But quickly he realized she meant more than that. She meant the world of the Keepers, the world of the Tanu. “Secret upon secret,” Falo sighed. “We have kept them even from ourselves.” She glanced down at them from her lofty height, a look of warm guilt on her face. “Perhaps you have noticed.”

  “Never crossed my mind,” said Chloe innocently. And then she said, “Oh, wait . . . you mean all the lying. The whole thing where no one told us we’re going to die, that all the universes might explode, et cetera. Yeah, I did notice that.”

  Falo laughed, a quick staccato of soft drums. Chloe scowled. Falo said, “I make no apologies. One of the Mothergates is already gone, and the time for secrets is over. Even here at the end of things, when some might argue such things do not matter, I think it is important that you know everything. Therefore, I am going to share one of the last secrets with you now.”

  Horace caught his breath. “And what secret is that?” he asked.

  “It is time for you to learn why I created the Fel’Daera, Horace. Time for you to understand why I dared bring such a thing into the world.”

  Chloe stopped walking. Her face went slack, full of doubt, as if realizing she should not have come along. But even through the sudden pounding of his heart, and without missing a step, Horace reached back and took her hand, pulling her gently forward. Her hand was cool and strong. They walked this way for several moments, hand in hand, not talking, until at last by some unspoken agreement, they let go of each other.

  Horace felt unreasonably calm. He had been told many things about the Fel’Daera—that it was a mistake, that it was supposed to have been destroyed, that it had been created for a singular purpose, that it was never meant to be used as Horace had been using it. But now he was here with the Maker herself, and she had the answers to everything.

  They wound through the deserted halls of Ka’hoka, headed for Falo’s quarters, or perhaps the Mothergate itself. They slipped into the familiar rough stone passage and across the vaulted hall beyond, through the gleaming white doors, tall as a two-story building. The Medium, barreling even more thickly from the nearby Mothergate now that only two remained, poured through the Fel’Daera into every nerve in Horace’s body.

  Falo led them through the domed sitting room of her quarters, deeper into her home. A new corridor, this one lined with birdcages. Horace had to laugh—it was just like the tunnel of birds at the House of Answers, dozens of cages holding hundreds of birds. Except that while the birds at the House of Answers had been flitting and noisy, these birds were utterly silent and still. As tiny as mice, and colored like the sea—every shade of blue and green—they watched Horace and Chloe with bright black eyes, without a single peep.

  Falo led them past without comment, around two more turns, and at last they came to a large, low room—low by Altari standards. It was brightly lit and smelled faintly of sawdust and spice.

  This room, too, had a familiar feel. Tables and workbenches, almost at eye height on Horace, were crammed tidily with all manner of oddments—reams of fabric, slabs of wood, tools both ordinary and bizarre. A set of enormous chisels, big as baseball bats. A carving knife the size of a small sword. Panes of glass slotted into a storage bin, every imaginable color. A jar full of feathers, all shapes and sizes, some as long as Horace’s arm. A pyramid of small, perfect cubes that looked disturbingly like flesh. On the floor, a round pool of placid neon-green liquid. And books, everywhere, filling the shelves that lined the wall, lying about on every surface. Horace glanced at the page of a large red book as he passed. There was a drawing of a skeletal hand—an Altari hand, with its thumblike pinkie and its extra finger joints. Beneath it, a dense paragraph of text in a flowing, angular language.

  This was Falo’s workshop. Not so different from Brian’s, back at the Warren, but much neater. Falo kept walking, on to the far end of the room. There, a perfectly round doorway, wide as a train tunnel, opened into a chamber suffused with deep blue light. Horace and Chloe exchanged a look. Brian’s workshop had its own quiet chamber at the back—an almost sacred place where Tunraden sat on a stone pedestal, where Brian could open it to the power of the Medium, weaving thick golden strands of it to create Tanu.

  Chloe mouthed words at Horace now: “The Starlit Loom.” He nodded. They followed Falo through the door and into the placid blue light beyond.

  Sacred, yes. The chamber was as round as the doorway, and had that same faint electric smell Horace remembered from Tunraden. The Medium felt especially thick here; this room must have been particularly close to the Mothergate.

  In the center stood a pedestal made of wood. It looked like a squat, sturdy tree, with stubby branches. And then he realized it was a tree, or a part of one, only it was upside down. These weren’t branches, but roots—and yet the tree did have branches. Where the tree bore down into the floor, swallowed by the stone, it didn’t truly end. The entire floor—the entire room—was covered with a thick weave of intertwining branches, spreading out from the tree, becoming its crown. Rounded like thick snakes underfoot, and thinning into leafless twigs as they climbed the walls all around, the branches looked utterly real. Horace tipped his head back, his eyes darting upward along the encircling wall as the twining limbs rose, splitting into finer and finer threads, a hundred becoming a thousand becoming ten thousand becoming many more, a dizzying web of complexity, like a map of blood vessels in the body, or of neurons in the brain.

  Or the multiverse.

  And then a little gasp of awe slipped from his chest. High above, beyond the highest reaches of the stone tree, the ceiling of the chamber rippled and crackled. A low blue fire, or something like fire, burned there. It burned downward instead of up. The dangling tips of the small blue flames danced and rippled, sliding across the surface like leaves swirling in the wind, like butterflies swarming.

  “This is where you made the Fel’Daera,” Horace said, his sense of wonder threatening to drown him.

  “Yes,” Falo replied. “This is the Aerary.” She took a seat on a wide bench that circled the room, piled with soft, somber pillows as big as Horace himself. “Now sit,” said Falo. “Let us talk.”

  They crossed to Falo. Horace squeezed the Fel’Daera in its pouch as they passed the upside-down tree. He peeked into the tangle of its upended roots. A broad flat surface had been polished smooth there, buried in the seat of the trunk itself, exposing the looping rings of the tree. This was where it had happened. This was where Falo spun the Medium into Tanu.

  But there was no Starlit Loom here. No Tan’ji at all.r />
  Again, Falo gestured for them to sit. Horace wrestled for room among the huge pillows as Chloe clambered up beside him. He laid a hand on the wall behind them, wondering at the endless branchings of the tree clinging to the stone. Up so close, he was suddenly struck dumb by how swiftly the tree expanded. Each fork gave birth to an entire new tree, an explosion of new universes born from a single shared moment. Most of those histories, he realized, would be identical. But their futures diverged wildly, spreading farther and farther. Path upon path, tree after tree. Even so, this couldn’t truly be a map of the multiverse, he knew. There probably wasn’t a building on the planet big enough to hold such a map.

  “Have I overwhelmed you, bringing you here?” Falo asked.

  “Temporarily, maybe,” Horace replied honestly.

  Chloe didn’t say anything, or even look over, which was its own kind of answer. Although Falo hadn’t made the Alvalaithen herself, some earlier Keeper of the Starlit Loom certainly had—perhaps right here in this very chamber.

  Falo said, “You were experimenting with the Fel’Daera tonight, Horace. What did you hope to discover?”

  “Oh, that? I don’t know. It was stupid.”

  “You don’t strike me as particularly stupid,” said Falo. “Do you spend a great deal of time doing stupid things?”

  “You might be surprised,” he said. “But no, it was just . . . after what you told me about how the box sees the future, I just got to thinking about how it sends things.” He looked her in the eye, his curiosity reasserting itself. “And I guess I’m wondering how it isn’t insane to send something through the box.”

  Chloe turned to him. “Insane how?” she asked sharply, her fingertips gripping the tail of the Alvalaithen.

  “Well, when I look through the Fel’Daera, I see one particular future. One universe. But there’s no guarantee I’ll actually end up in that universe. And if that’s true, isn’t it dangerous . . .” He paused and glanced at the Alvalaithen. “Isn’t it dangerous to send something valuable into a universe I might never find? Or even, maybe, into a universe the Fel’Daera itself might erase?”