by Ted Sanders
He heard the dismay in his own voice, warped and unexpected. Apparently he wasn’t as distracted as he thought.
His mother heard it too, because she sat back and watched him through the pieces, her face softening. The table was so high, and the pieces so tall, that they couldn’t quite see over the tops of them, even with thick pillows to sit on. His mom snaked her arms out into the pieces and spread them, sweeping them from their positions, parting them like a sea. Horace did the same on his side, and they gazed at each other across the board.
“I don’t know, Horace,” she said. “I don’t exactly have a lot of experience with all this. I think my brain has just slipped into . . . emergency mode, or something. Clinging-to-the-raft mode. And since there actually is no raft, all that energy is just . . .” She knifed her hand at the chessboard. Her eyes were suddenly puffy and red.
Horace tried to think of something to say. But only one thing came out, a simple thing. The simplest thing. “I don’t want to die,” he said.
His mother shook her head—a tight, violent waggle. Her mouth was steely.
“Then don’t.”
He took a deep slow breath, blew it out fast. “Do you know why the Mothergate hasn’t closed yet? It’s been almost two days since the astrolabe.”
“I don’t know why. But I know that it will.”
“And what if the Riven get here first?” said Horace. “Isabel tore down the Nevren at Ulu’ru. She’ll do the same here. We can’t stop her from coming right inside, marching right to the Mothergate.”
“It would take a lot for her to do that.”
“Well, she has a lot.”
“What would you like me to say here, Horace? Look, I don’t want you to fight the hand that’s been dealt to you. That would be selfish, and pointless. I haven’t raised you to be either of those things.”
“Okay, so right back at you,” Horace said. “What would you like me to do here?”
“The same as ever. Embrace yourself. Use your head. Be logical. Remember what you’ve learned.”
“I’ve learned I’m going to die.”
“And there’s nothing you can do about it?”
Horace threw his hands up. “Well, sure, in fantasyland. I guess I could fade like Neptune . . . if I had even an ounce of will to do it, and years to let it happen. But that—”
He stopped himself midsentence, his mind reeling into a cascade of thoughts so intense and jumbled that there was no room for anyone else.
Faded. Years.
He lurched up from his seat. Chloe was already standing, staring, catching his mood.
“I need to see Falo,” he said. He pointed at his mother. “Get Brian. Bring him to Falo’s quarters. I need his brain.”
And then he left. Chloe swept up beside him, not bothering to ask him what was going on. She knew he needed to think. They ran through Ka’hoka, and eventually into the great chamber that led to Falo’s quarters, and the Mothergate. The Medium was a hurricane now, and the Fel’Daera was a furnace of power at Horace’s side.
Falo was waiting for them in her sitting room, folded into an enormous chair. “Keepers,” she said when she saw them. “You look . . . urgent.”
“I’ve got a question for you,” Horace said. “I don’t know if you’ll have an answer or not, and that’s okay.”
“Thank you, Keeper. I will not invent one, then.”
“Is there a universe in which the Keepers do not die when the Mothergates close?”
Falo’s head bobbed faintly, her lips seeming to gather the hint of a smile. “I cannot tell you there is not.”
“So it’s possible.”
“Yes.”
“Then why can’t it be possible here?”
Falo smiled. “I will not tell you it cannot.”
Horace’s heart pounded. “Do you know how it can be done?”
“No.”
But that was okay. If she’d known, she would have told them. And maybe it wasn’t up to her to know. Maybe it was up to them all. “Another question,” Horace said, his thoughts tumbling madly. “Where did Hiraethel come from?”
Falo waved a hand. “Elsewhere. Elsewhen.”
Horace frowned. “That sounds like something Mr. Meister would say.”
“If I sound vague, it’s only because I know so little. The Starlit Loom came from another place, another time. That is all I know.”
“But who made it?” asked Chloe.
“I do not know.”
“I thought you made it,” Horace said. “Not you personally, but the Altari. Some ancient Maker.”
“The Altari did not make Hiraethel,” Falo said, shaking her head. “In fact, it is far more accurate to say that Hiraethel made the Altari.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Chloe demanded.
Falo rounded on her, her face a question. When she spoke, she laid each word out slowly, like a brick in a wall. “What do you think we are?” she asked. “Where do you imagine we Altari came from?”
Chloe shrugged and shook her head impatiently, as if the question didn’t matter. But Horace could see in her eyes—and hear in her silence—that she hadn’t considered it before, hadn’t ever stopped to wonder what the Altari actually were.
And neither, he realized with a start, had he. He was embarrassed to discover it. It was deeply unscientific to accept the existence of a creature like Falo without once wondering what she was, or how she had come to be. His mind still raced, going almost nowhere. He could only think of one explanation, a tough one to swallow. He was not logically predisposed to believe that aliens had come to earth, but for the moment, it was the only explanation he could think of.
“Have you ever contemplated your hands?” Falo asked suddenly, surprising him. “Look at them. Study them.” She nodded, gesturing. “Go on, look at them, and consider everything they can do.”
Horace looked down at his hand, flexing his fingers. Chloe did the same.
“The human hand can thread needles and tie knots,” Falo said, singing the words as if they were a song. “It can pluck and crush berries. It can ball into a cruel fist or gently caress a cheek. It can plant a seed, climb a tree, tear down dead limbs. It can wield the pen or the sword, the paintbrush or the sledgehammer. Fingers can learn to read and to speak. A grasping hand can save a life, or take one.”
Chloe snapped her fingers crisply, making Horace jump. She stared down at what she’d done like she’d just witnessed something utterly new. Horace himself couldn’t snap, but he wiggled his fingers, one after the other, watching all his many joints flex in unspoken unison, tendons sliding beneath his skin.
“The human hand is a miracle of evolution,” said Falo, “a fine machine made finer by the marvelous brain to which it is so intimately wired.”
“Okay, so . . . that’s cool and all,” Chloe said. “Hands are rad. But what are you saying?”
“The point is,” said Falo, “the human hand has evolved to be versatile. Think of everything humans could not have done if evolution had given them the hands of a squirrel, or a frog, or a dolphin.”
“April was telling me about squirrel hands one time,” Horace said. “They seem to have really great hands, but they don’t. Relatively speaking. She said squirrels can’t even touch their thumb to their other fingers.”
“I do not doubt it,” said Falo. “Now think on that, and on your own hands, and tell me this. What do you see in the hand of an Altari?”
She stretched out her arm, flexing her magnificent hand. Her long nimble fingers curled and uncurled with a queasy grace—an extra knuckle on every digit, a kind of second thumb where a pinky should have been. Her hands were marvels, full of a strength and agility Horace could only dream of.
“I see all kinds of things that shouldn’t be there,” Chloe said.
Falo let loose a small, murmuring laugh. “I do not ask you to catalog our differences,” she said.
Horace looked down at his own hand again, flexing it. He touched the tip of his thumb to his pinky. “S
quirrel hands,” he muttered.
“What did you say?” Chloe asked.
“Our hands,” he said. “They’re like squirrel hands compared to Falo’s. They’re not as . . . evolved.” And even as he said the words, his eyes drifted from Falo’s hand up along her arm, taking her in. But not the differences. Not at all. Differences were easy, the consequences of one tribe eager to distinguish itself from another.
But was Falo of another tribe? Five fingers, after all—strange though they might be. Would an alien have five fingers? Wrist, elbow, shoulder? Collarbone, throat, chin. A mouth and a nose. Two nostrils, two eyes, two ears. Everything different, yes, in ways both big and small. But the even the big differences were so small compared to everything underneath.
Everything that was the same.
He stared at Falo, understanding. Not an alien at all. “You’re human,” he breathed.
Falo broke into a radiant smile. Lips, and teeth, and tongue. “Certainly we once were,” she said. “And perhaps we still are.”
“You changed yourselves,” Horace said. “With the power of the Tanu.”
“Yes.”
Chloe held up her hands. “Wait, wait . . . so you used to be a human?”
Falo laughed again. “Not me personally. I am not quite so old as you imagine. The changes the Altari made to themselves happened long before I was born. And they came in the usual fashion of such endeavors—not within living individuals, but within the traits passed on from parent to child.”
“Like breeding dogs,” Horace said. “Or plants.” Then he made a nervous face of apology. “I’m sorry. That probably sounds terrible.”
Falo shrugged. “You are not wrong. Among the early Altari—those who bonded with the first Tan’ji—there were certain traits that were desired. One of the early Makers devised an instrument, now long lost, that allowed them to alter the physical appearance of their offspring. Understand that there were very few of us then. Small changes that they managed to make spread quickly through our population.” Falo looked down into her open palm. “It began with the hands. We were Makers, after all. Our hands were everything.”
Horace wasn’t sure he liked what he was hearing. “But what about the rest? Your size, and your . . .” He didn’t want to be rude. He gestured at Falo’s whole body, indicating everything about her.
“I make no apologies,” Falo said. “I wasn’t there, and can’t say what I would have thought or done if I had been. But this is the story I was told: our powers made us gods. Ordinary humans feared us, worshipped us, treasured the gifts we gave them.”
“The Tan’kindi,” said Chloe.
“Yes. Tanu that required no Keeper. Such devices were weak compared to the Tan’ji that the Altari kept to themselves, but this only added to the sense that we were gods indeed. And there were some among us who reasoned that if we were to play the part of gods, we should look the part as well.”
Slowly, fluidly, Sil’falo Teneves stood, looming over them. She spread her splendid arms wide. “Our great height,” she sang, her majestic voice filling the room like a chorus of vengeful angels. “Our beauty, if you’ll allow me to say it. Our eyes. Our voices. All of these things made us unhuman. More than human. And with the powers we wielded, we were gods. Ordinary humans gave us names, some of which live on in stories even today. Prometheus. Hephaestus. Odin. Clíodhna. Freyja.”
Horace reeled. Legends. Gods. And of course they would be. But his mind raced on. “What about the Riven?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Chloe said. “They used to be Altari, so that means they used to be human, too. But why do they look so . . .”
“Different?” Falo asked.
“I was going to say butt-ugly.”
“The Tanu that allowed the Altari to transform as they did was lost long ago. Lost or destroyed. But in the years after the Kesh’kiri separated from the Altari, they attempted to re-create it. That re-creation—call it a failure, or call it a manifestation of the shadow that lay in their hearts—turned them into what they are today.”
“Okay, okay,” Horace said. “But all this started with the Starlit Loom.”
“Yes.”
“And it just . . . what? Fell from the sky?”
“No one knows. Or at least, I do not know.”
“The multiverse,” Horace said. “It’s like a branching tree. The paths split and split again. But if you go backward along those paths, you eventually come to a single place. A single universe. The one universe where Hiraethel first appeared. Am I right?”
Falo’s eyes were shining now, as if calling him forward down this line of thought. “Yes,” she said.
“And that means—it must mean—that the Loom started this all. A single Starlit Loom, in a single universe.”
“It stands to reason,” Falo said.
Suddenly a figure appeared in the hallway, emerging from deeper in Falo’s quarters. April, looking lost and dreamy, a little bit faded herself. In her hand she held a large, clear bowl filled with water. Something was moving inside it, darting in a circle.
A fish.
“It’s more than reason,” April said. “It’s true.”
Horace stood up. “April,” he said. “What is that? What are you doing?”
And then he understood. This was the fish from the Warren. April had released it from its prison. It was speaking to her still, and she’d been listening.
“You want to know who made Hiraethel,” April said. “I still can’t tell you that. Even Uroboros doesn’t know. But I can tell you how it got here, how it got to that first universe from which all the tangled universes then sprang. The Mother universe. The seed.”
“And how did it get there?” Chloe asked softly.
“It was sent there.” She looked up and around, swept her arm across the room, indicating everything. Indicating the entire world. “Sent from a place like this.”
Chapter Twenty
A Traveler’s Tale
CHLOE WAS CREEPED OUT.
The Aerary was crowded. All the Wardens from the Warren were here except Neptune. Joshua sat between Mr. Meister and Mrs. Hapsteade, looking surprised to have been invited. Brian had brought Tunraden with him. It sat at his feet looking bigger and more powerful than ever. Shockingly, he was wearing a button-down white shirt with absolutely nothing on it. It seemed ominous.
Teokas and Dailen were here too, looking magnificent as always.
They were all here to listen to April’s tale. Her fish tale. And maybe she was doing a good job of it, but it was hard to tell because the tale was a world flipper. An insane thing, really. And it frightened Chloe half to death. It didn’t help that April seemed frightened too. She’d taken off the Ravenvine, something she almost never did. It lay in her lap, a curling golden maze with a black flower at the center.
Overhead, the upside-down blue flames danced faintly. Everything was upside down here, it seemed. The uprooted tree in the middle of the room grew down into the floor and spread, crawling up the walls, dividing and dividing again. Just like the multiverse. And the stump from which everything grew, she knew, was the source of every path. It was like what April had called the Mother universe, the universe in which the Starlit Loom had first appeared. Everything else branched out from there—or at least, all the tangled universes had. All branching out from that first moment when the Starlit Loom arrived.
Chloe could keep it in her head, mostly. But it was hard, because on that stump sat April’s glass bowl, and inside that bowl the long, finless fish circled. Black and probably slimy. Around and around, its tail in its mouth. If it had anything smart to say, it was hard to imagine what it was. This was why April had taken off the Ravenvine, Chloe knew. She didn’t want to listen to it anymore.
Uroboros. Chloe might not be great with the physics stuff, but she had heard that name before. The serpent that ate its own tail. The eternity of time. Cycles of life and death. Creation and destruction.
No wonder April didn’t want to listen to it.
>
“Uroboros is blind and deaf,” April explained. “It can’t sense anything. Its mind is almost entirely memory. And that memory is the story of Hiraethel, and the fish, being sent here.”
“Sent from a place like this, you said,” Horace prompted. “Another world.” He was getting it, as usual, in a way that Chloe either couldn’t or wouldn’t understand. And there was something else brewing in his brain, she knew, something he’d latched on to back in the little library. Something about fading. But he obviously hadn’t worked it all through yet, because he hadn’t explained a bit of it. She could be patient. You had to be patient with Horace. Big things moved slow, and sometimes Horace’s thought were huge.
“Another world, yes,” said April.
Brian was keyed up too, leaning forward. “What other world? Where?”
“First, let us consider the multiverse,” said Falo. “You should think of the universes where the Tanu exist—the tangled universes—as being a single branch on a much larger tree. The branch itself has many splittings, many paths, each path a separate evolving universe. But those can all be traced back to a single point, at the base of the branch.”
“The Mother universe,” Horace said.
“Yes,” Falo replied. “The single universe in which the Starlit Loom first appeared. Technically, it is our universe—but all the other universes that sprang from it over time can make the same claim.”
“Just like the way many different humans can claim the same ancient ancestor,” April offered.
“Precisely,” said Falo.
“And you’re saying Hiraethel—carrying Uroboros inside it—came into the Mother universe from a different universe,” said Teokas. “A different branch, somewhere else on the tree. That was the seed for everything.”
“Yes,” Falo said.
“But how do you know?” Teokas asked.
Falo nodded at April, encouraging her.
“When I broke open Uroboros’s cage,” April said, “I could hear it. I won’t try to tell you what that was like. It was . . .” She shuddered. “I won’t tell you what it was like. I’m not sure I can. It was pure memory. Story. I didn’t understand the images, or the words. It was foreign. Not just foreign—alien. But I understood the bones of it, the arc of it.” She gestured at Uroboros, spinning her finger in a circle. “It’s a traveler. It was brought here.”