Adventures of Elegy Flynn

by Chambers, V. J.

  “There’s also the time paradox issue,” said Kellen. “See, if you change something in the past, then in the future, you can’t be motivated to go back and—”

  “We know what a time paradox is,” said Henry. “That was half the reason we did this anyway.”

  Elegy raised her eyebrows. “It was?”

  “We had a bet,” said Derek. “I said they wouldn’t happen. Because people have been using the time portals for hundreds of years, and nothing bad has happened so far.”

  “That’s because people like me are out busting my ass stopping you idiots from screwing everything up,” said Kellen.

  “The time police,” said Henry. “That’s crazy.”

  “Yeah, it’s pretty cool,” said Derek.

  “People are still saying cool in the twenty-third century?” I asked.

  “The bar translates things,” said Kellen. “You hear your own language. That includes slang.”

  I looked around at the bar again. It was pretty amazing, wasn’t it? Could any of this possibly be real? Really? I turned back to the weird kids from the future. Yeah. It was real. Or I was crazy. Either way...

  “The real question is,” said Elegy, “why are two kids like you making bets about time paradoxes instead of living it up? Don’t you have friends? Girlfriends? Lives?”

  Derek and Henry both stared at the bar.

  “We’re not exactly popular,” said Derek. “We thought maybe if we did something big, like kill Hitler, then...”

  “Then you’d get a date,” said Elegy. She rolled her eyes. “You really didn’t think this through, did you? If it had worked, no one would have known Hitler ever lived in the first place, would they?”

  “I guess not,” said Henry.

  Elegy gestured at their drinks. “Drink up, boys.”

  They hesitated.

  “Go ahead,” said Elegy.

  Derek took a tentative drink.

  “Look,” said Elegy, “you’re obviously pretty intelligent guys, if you’ve thought through time paradoxes. And you’re brave too, if you went ahead and snuck through a time portal. So my guess is that all you need is a bit of confidence. Which you’ll find in the bottom of those drinks. Go ahead, drink.”

  Henry took a drink.

  “Here’s what’s going to happen,” she said. “You’re going to finish your drinks, and I’m going to drop you off right wherever all the girls hang out, and then, knowing full well that you’re worthy of them, you’re going to march in and talk to them.”

  “Um...” started Derek.

  “Nope,” said Elegy. “No arguments. You can do it.”

  * * *

  An hour later, I was sitting on a couch that I didn’t remember seeing when I first walked into the bar. I didn’t want to think that it had just materialized on its own because I wanted something to sit on besides a bar stool, but there it was.

  Elegy had gotten the kids nice and tipsy and then dropped them off in their own time, making them promise never to mess with time ever again. Then she’d told me I could amuse myself by reading some magazines, and she and Kellen had disappeared into a room behind the bar for a long, long time.

  Occasionally, I heard muffled noises that let me know what they were doing. It was a little embarrassing.

  I tried to concentrate on the magazines that Elegy said I could read, but I couldn’t help but think about how completely strange everything was all of the sudden. What was I doing in a time-machine bar with a Fate and a volur and teenagers from the future who tried to kill Hitler? Also, my rum runner buzz was wearing off. I hadn’t realized how much easier the alcohol had been making it to accept everything.

  I thought about Richard. I remembered how he used to be nice and sweet. I remembered how controlling he’d gotten lately. I wondered if I really did want to go back, assuming I could even convince Elegy to take me back. She’d seemed pretty adamant that I wasn’t going anywhere.

  Kellen wandered out of the room in the back. His hair was a little mussed. He was carrying his leather jacket. He came over to me and threw it over the arm of the couch before settling down next to me. I looked around for Elegy, but she didn’t seem to be following him.

  “I think she drank too much whiskey,” Kellen said. “She’s sleeping it off.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I wasn’t aware that goddesses could get drunk.” Or have sex with people, for that matter.

  Kellen laughed. “Elegy’s quite a believer in alcohol. Nothing a good drunk can’t fix, according to her.”

  I thought of Richard. “I don’t think being drunk’s really a good cure for anything.” It made Richard meaner, that was for sure. “What kind of damage did she do to those kids, teaching them that they have to get drunk to talk to girls anyway?”

  He shrugged. “She’s a Fate. She’d know if she was screwing anything up too bad.”

  “Right.”

  Kellen leaned back on the couch. “I kept telling myself it was because the timelines were messed up.”

  “What? The fact that Elegy drinks a lot?”

  He chuckled darkly. “No. The fact that she doesn’t feel the same way about me as I do about her.”

  I sat up straight on the couch. “See, that’s the problem with the friends with benefits thing. It’s never mutual. Someone always wants more.”

  Kellen looked stricken. “Is that what she said we were? Friends with benefits?”

  “Well, not exactly. I think her exact words were something along the lines of, ‘Volurs are only good for a roll in the sack.’“

  Kellen stood up from the couch. “Volurs? As in plural?” He looked at me sharply. “Does she sleep with the other volurs?”

  I shrugged. “How would I know?”

  “Oh right. It’s your first day in the bar.” Kellen walked over to the pool table. “It kind of sounds like she does, though, doesn’t it?”

  “I...” I didn’t know what to say.

  Kellen selected one of the cue sticks that was hanging on the wall. He tested its weight. “She’s just so amazing, you know? How could a guy not fall for her?” Kellen started putting balls up on the pool table. He didn’t rack them up, though. Instead, he just started aimlessly hitting balls around the table.

  I got up and went over to him. “Maybe she just can’t like you back that way or something. She is a goddess after all.” Hadn’t Elegy said something like that? Hadn’t she said there was no future in the relationship?

  Kellen didn’t look at me. “Yeah, I guess it would be tough for her. I’m nothing special.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true,” I said. “You, um, you seem good at pool.”

  Kellen shot me a withering look over his shoulder. “You’re really not very good at cheering people up, Catherine. I’ve told you this before.”

  “Yeah, well, I haven’t heard it before,” I said. I guessed I wasn’t much of a cheery person. “Besides, you think you need cheering up? I’ve basically been kidnapped. She said she won’t take me home.”

  Kellen set the pool stick down and leaned on it. He studied me thoughtfully. “She took you away because your boyfriend was hitting you, huh?”

  I went back to the couch. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “That’s not like her,” said Kellen. “I’ve been travelling around with her on and off for a long time. She doesn’t do things like that. She doesn’t help people.”

  I picked up a magazine. “She helped Hitler.”

  “Because she’s supposed to. Because that’s the fabric of time. She doesn’t do things that would mess stuff up. Why would she snatch you right out of your timeline like that?”

  “You’ve met me before,” I said. “Haven’t you asked me about this already?”

  “You were always just here,” he said. “I never thought about how you got here. You don’t talk about it.”

  “Maybe I want to go back.”

  “To your abusive boyfriend?”

  “Maybe it’s better than being stuck in a bar com
pletely out of time for the rest of my life.”

  “No way. It’s awesome here.” He hung the pool stick back up. “Look, I’ll make you another drink. A drink’s always good.”

  “Are you both functioning alcoholics or something? I don’t think a drink is going to make everything better.”

  But Kellen was already behind the bar. “I don’t know if I can make anything as fancy as Elegy did. But I can throw together a cranberry and vodka or a seabreeze if you’re interested.”

  I went over to the bar. “I don’t want a drink. I want to go home.”

  Kellen bent down behind the bar. “I know the cranberry juice is down here somewhere.” Abruptly, he stood up again. There was a piece of paper in his hand. “Whoa.”

  “Whoa?” What was that piece of paper? It looked like a newspaper clipping. It was narrow and folded on grayish paper.

  “What day was it when Elegy picked you up?”

  “Wednesday.”

  “No. Like the date.”

  “August tenth. What does that have to do with that piece of paper?”

  “And the year?” Kellen asked.

  “Two thousand eleven. Is that important?”

  Kellen swallowed. He set the piece of paper down in front of me. It was from a newspaper. It was an obituary. My obituary. I read it through once. Then I read it again. My hands were shaking. “Is this a joke? Where did you get this?”

  “Your boyfriend was going to kill you,” said Kellen. “If Elegy hadn’t brought you onto the bar, you’d be dead.”

  “No,” I said. “Richard would never have done that.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I remembered his angry, contorted features. I wasn’t sure. I picked up the obituary and read it again. “So she saved my life,” I whispered.

  “It makes a little bit more sense,” said Kellen. “I mean, if you were dead, you would have been out of the fabric of time anyway. Your thread would have just stopped. So if you’re in the bar, then you don’t mess anything else up. It’s kind of the same thing, from the perspective of time.”

  “Being in here is like being dead?”

  “Is there vodka when you’re dead?” Kellen lifted up a bottle of cranberry juice triumphantly. “Sure you don’t want a drink?”

  “Yeah,” I said absently. “Okay.” I was supposed to be dead. Elegy had saved me.

  “It still doesn’t make sense, though,” said Kellen as he put the drink together. “Why you? Why would she save you, when she lets everyone else die?”

  “Maybe I was lonely.” Elegy was standing in the doorway to the room behind the bar. “Maybe I wanted someone to hang out with me on my own timeline for once. All you volurs experience everything completely differently than I do.”

  “Th-thank you,” I said. “I mean, for keeping me from being killed.”

  “No problem,” said Elegy. “Kellen, who said you could mix drinks? This is my bar. I mix the drinks.”

  “Lonely,” said Kellen. “I don’t buy it. You’re not lonely. You’re Elegy Flynn. You’re a Fate.”

  Elegy gave Kellen a little shove out of the way and took over where he’d left off making the drink. “I could be lonely.” She put a hand on his cheek. “You’re a fantastic lay, but you’re not the greatest conversationalist.”

  Kellen looked hurt. “Well, you don’t really talk to me much, do you?”

  She kissed him. “You’re too gorgeous. It distracts me from talking.”

  Kellen shook his head. “Right. Whatever.” He stalked out from behind the bar.

  “Did I say something that pissed you off?” Elegy asked.

  Kellen picked up his jacket from the arm of the couch. “You just can’t take me seriously, can you?”

  Elegy looked confused. “I didn’t know I was supposed to.”

  “Of course not.” He shrugged the jacket over his shoulders. “Where’s the bar right now? Are we still hurtling through time?”

  “No,” said Elegy. “I left it in the twenty-third century.”

  Kellen headed for the door. “Great. I’ll hang out here then.”

  “I can take you somewhere else,” Elegy said. “Why don’t you let me make you a drink? A drink will make it better.”

  He shook his head. “Not really. I’m trying to have a dramatic exit here.” He started to open the door. Then he paused. “You had that obituary, so you planned to pick up Catherine. You knew it was going to happen, and you went and got her. So she’s important. You wanted her. You didn’t do it just because you were lonely.”

  “Kellen, wait,” said Elegy.

  Kellen opened the door and ducked outside, slamming it after him.

  Elegy sighed. “I guess we weren’t exactly on the same page about what sex meant in our working relationship.”

  “You think?” I said.

  “He’ll get over it,” she said. “Or at any rate, I’ll pick up Kellen from a different point in the timeline next. Some time before he got mad.”

  “Well, that’s healthy.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Why did you save me?”

  She shrugged. She stirred the drink she’d made and gave it to me. “I just did. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, okay?”

  I realized now that I didn’t want a drink. I looked at it, but I didn’t drink any of it.

  “You’re supposed to be dead now,” she said. “While you’re in the bar, it’s okay, because in the bar you’re out of time. But if you go outside the bar, the Fates will see you. They’ll kill you. You have to stay in here now. It’s the only way you’ll stay alive.”

  I nodded. It could be worse, I supposed. I could be dead. What the hell? I took a drink of the cranberry and vodka. At least the drinks were good here. And free.

  “I didn’t ever want to hurt him, you know,” Elegy said.

  I looked at her.

  “Kellen,” she said. “I didn’t want to hurt him. It’s just...” She looked around the bar, and she suddenly looked very sad and very old. “Maybe I am lonely.”

  2: Will Shakesprick

  For Andre.

  At least I know you’ll get the jokes.

  Elizabeth Peters slammed the door of the bar behind her. “I’ve done it,” she said, striding across the room to slump down in a stool. “And now I’d like some wine.”

  Lizzy was a volur. That meant she traveled through time fixing problems that time travelers made in the time continuum.

  “What did you do?” I asked. I’d been asleep when Lizzy left earlier, and so I didn’t know what her current mission was. My name was Catherine. I was trapped in the bar because if I left, I’d be dead. See, my boyfriend... Never mind. It was a long story. The point was, I couldn’t leave. So I got to travel through time, but I was stuck inside this bar. Which looked like a sports bar from the 1980s, even though Elegy claimed it could look like anything she wanted. Elegy was a goddess of Fate. She was unnaturally obsessed with the 1980s. In fact, right at that second, she was blaring “If You Leave,” by OMD over the bar’s speakers. I was having Molly Ringwald flashbacks. “Where are we? When are we?”

  “I see you finally woke up,” said Lizzy. “How about that wine?” she asked Elegy.

  Elegy was dancing behind the bar and lip-syncing the song with her eyes closed. She ignored Lizzy.

  “I didn’t mean to fall asleep,” I said. “I was just getting bored listening to Elegy go on and on about Kellen’s meltdown the other day. I witnessed it, and she’s already told me the story three times. She started into it with you, and I couldn’t help yawning.”

  Elegy stopped dancing. “I didn’t know you were bored listening to me talk about Kellen,” she said. “You could have said something.”

  “I did say something,” I said.

  “Oh, when did you do that?”

  “Only about seven times. I distinctly remember telling you that I was getting really sick of hearing that story,” I said.

  Elegy studied her fingernails. “Oh, right. I though
t you were joking.”

  If Elegy hadn’t saved my life, I might have hated her. She was ridiculously annoying.

  Lizzy tapped her fingers against the bar. “Could I have a glass of wine now, please?”

  “Wine?” said Elegy.

  Lizzy raised her eyebrows. “Yes. I’ve saved Shakespeare, and now I’d like some—”

  “What?!” I interrupted. “Shakespeare?”

  Lizzy and Elegy both turned to me and nodded.

  “Someone was trying to kill Shakespeare?” I asked. On the last time mission I was on, someone was trying to kill Hitler.

  “No,” said Elegy. “Don’t be silly.” She turned to Lizzy. “I’m sorry. You can’t have any wine, because it didn’t work.”

  “Well, then, how did you save him?” I asked Lizzy.

  “Weren’t you listening?” said Elegy. “She didn’t save him. It didn’t work.”

  “What do you mean, it didn’t work?” said Lizzy. “I distracted that dolt of a time traveler for over an hour.”

  “It didn’t work,” said Elegy, “because he just went back to his own time, found a time portal, went to a different point in Shakespeare’s timeline and did it again.”

  “Did what again?” I asked.

  “I do not believe it.” Lizzy got up off the bar stool. “That idiot. He’s a university professor. He should know better.”

  “Did what again?” I asked. Again.

  “He outed Shakespeare,” Elegy told me.

  “Outed?” I said.

  “Isn’t that what they call it during your time?” Elegy said. “Came out of the closet?”

  “Out of the...” I trailed off. “No way. Shakespeare was gay?”

  “Yep,” said Elegy.

  “He wasn’t gay exactly,” said Lizzy. “He was sort of... adventurous.”

  “He can’t have been gay,” I said. I was completely floored by this. “I need a drink, Elegy.”

  “Sure,” said Elegy. “Rum runner?”

  “Please,” I said.

  “Wait,” said Lizzy. “She gets a drink?”

  “She’s my sidekick,” said Elegy. “Sidekicks get drinks.”

  I glared at her. “I am not your sidekick.”

  Lizzy glared at me. “Aren’t you the lucky one?”