“Is it bad for her to see her mother die?”
“She won’t remember. And she came into the world fairly recently. Not so different, really.”
“Are there Doors to—to wherever baby souls come from?”
“Not my department. I think they just show up. But who knows? There might be spirit midwives somewhere out there.”
“That sounds better than what we do.”
Jeff was partway down the stairs but he turned toward her, lifting a finger. “Now don’t think like that. We’re not bad or evil or dark. We don’t wear black and harvest souls for Satan or anything like that. We help souls go where they’re supposed to.”
“Fine, but what would have happened if we couldn’t get that woman to go through the Door?”
“She’d have hung around the house for a while, maybe a few years, maybe a decade or two. She’d be able to visit with her daughter for a little while, sit in the same room, follow her. But eventually, the girl would grow up and would lose the ability to see her. Then, the mother would go gradually insane. Watching her husband date and her daughter live without her wouldn’t cause it. Being in the world of the living would do it. It would be bad.”
“How did she die? Is there any way we’ll know?”
“Not without an autopsy. She was lying down beforehand, which meant she probably felt unwell. If you want to try to figure out what killed her, you can, but it’s best to just move on. Knowing the cause of death doesn’t make this easier.”
“Was all that stuff true? Is her family waiting for her?”
“That I don’t know. There’s something on the other side. That we can be sure of, or there wouldn’t be a Door. If no one had a soul or if souls blinked out of existence at death, then there’d be no need of us. As to what’s on the other side, your guess is as good as mine.”
Chapter 11
“There’s nothing!” snapped Hazel, sliding her chair back. “Not in this time or any of the others I’ve checked.”
“Your websites and files do not hold the collective knowledge of the ages,” said Mr. Escobar, her first mate. “Perhaps you should check other sources, other people.”
They sat together in her quarters, Hazel at her desk and Mr. Escobar on the shelf above her, perched between the Global Positioning Satellite device on one side and a brass sextant and glass-faced compass on the other. Nearby sat a stack of books, a few interestingly shaped shells and an old mechanical toy jackal with green jewel eyes. Various navigational devices both ancient, modern and, to Hazel’s way of thinking, futuristic, crowded her shelves. All of them were useless to her right now.
In a cargo crate against one wall lay Neil’s body. His clothing was still intact, but the outer layer of his skin was crumbling. Beneath the surface, he seemed to be solid stone, though Hazel hesitated to do anything more than scratch him lightly with her penknife. The crew had wrapped him in canvas and laid him in straw, carrying him to Hazel’s quarters at her insistence.
She had managed not to cry in front of the crew, and thought once they were gone, she would give in to her emotions. But instead of feeling grief, she had experienced a dark determination. Killing Mr. March again would be so very gratifying. Oh yes. It would. But the act would be useless. Instead of hunting him, her time was better spent discovering what Neil was and how to bring him back. It gave her something more important to engage her thoughts than mourning. He didn’t have to stay dead. This world, the hub world, was filled with strange beings and rules that did not exist in her home world which was ruled by science. If March could come back from death, perhaps Neil could as well.
“I haven’t just been looking online,” she told Mr. Escobar. “I’ve e-mailed a number of people. Iceland, Wales, Botswana, Paraguay. Anyone I thought might know something.”
“And the Twelve?”
“We’ll be in Los Angeles this afternoon. Julius is my best hope.”
“Because he is a learned man?”
“Yes. If he doesn’t know, perhaps he knows someone else who does.”
Hazel would talk to the Twelve, to Santiago, Yukiko, Astrid, any and every weird being she could find. Someone would know what could turn a man to stone. Someone would know what the strange lettering on the roof of his mouth meant.
She reset the settings on the temporal uplink that the Professor had installed on her computer. It allowed her to receive signals through time or when she was out of typical wireless range. Depending on what time she was in, the device could be incredibly useful. Like she had done so many times before, she searched the net for images of letters from various languages. There were so many from so many cultures through so many times. But who was to say that the letters in his mouth were even in a human language?
Mr. Escobar hopped lightly onto the desk and touched her arm. “We will help him,” he said. “And if he is permanently deceased, we will give him a fine burial at sea.”
Chapter 12
The Library contained the collected wisdom of the ages, which was useful if one knew where to look for it.
After all this time, Elliot still did not.
Imee was gone, dead if Malachy was to be believed. Elliot didn’t think the tortoise was lying, but he might be mistaken. Without a body, Elliot clung to hope.
He pulled his rolling cart through the enormous iron library gate and toward the long stone-paved street that ran the length of the marketplace. The row of booths somehow attached to the Library at specific times, allowing goods and people to come through in both directions. Elliot wasn’t privy to the schedule. Malachy had told him to go to the market, and he went, without money but with the assurance that anything he purchased would be paid for by the Library.
People of all sorts crowded the marketplace, some pushing and haggling loudly while others glided silently through, pointing at items and slowly removing coins from concealed locations on their persons. Clothing varied from gauzy robes to canvas pants, long, fur-lined coats to nothing much at all.
The first stall at the edge of the marketplace sold glass vessels in sizes ranging from giant bowls, large enough to hold bathwater, to vials tiny enough to fit inside a locket. They glittered cobalt blue, blood red and grass green in the light, some of them dangling from strings, swinging in the breeze. A nearby vendor sold rugs, another, exotic fruit. Elliot paused and consulted his list. Yes, he’d need more fruit than usual. A group of twelve scholars was scheduled for arrival that evening, all of them subsisting solely on a diet of fruits, vegetables and fermented liquids. He wouldn’t purchase anything just yet though. He had more important work to do.
Looking up past the long corridor of stalls, he studied a low mountain range in the distance, misty and indistinct. There was a world outside of the Library, and this street through the marketplace was a pathway to get there.
He dragged his empty cart along, crunching over a pile of spilled nuts and bumping past shoppers. He passed a bookseller, a fruit juice stand, a shop filled with colorful knit hats, a dress vendor and a pair of brothers selling wooden musical instruments. Hazel, who loved music, would have liked that stall, while his cousin Astrid would have enjoyed the collection of tiny sketches on flat stones at another booth. Neil would have stopped to listen to the man playing a whistling tune on an ocarina, and the booth full of tiny clockworks would have fascinated the Professor. He wished they were there with him.
But his friends had failed him. Astrid hadn’t created a Door and Neil hadn’t arrived with a time machine. Out of all of the members of the Time Corps, not one had come. He knew they were trying, that he wasn’t abandoned, but why was it taking so long? Well, he wouldn’t sit idly by. He would take events into his own hands. If he had to get himself out, then so be it. He was no helpless princess locked in a tower.
The booths flashed by as he hurried, eager to find the doorway or ship or whatever waited at the end.
Malachy had told him that Imee had simply gone to the end of the market, and was gone. That answer was unsatisfying. Imee was human, like Elliot, but he had one thing that Imee did not. He could sense time disturbances, and if she had gone through some kind of portal, or even a Door like the ones the Professor or Astrid could create, then he might be able to sense it.
He kept on until he passed another booth, selling glittering glass creations, some swaying on strings. He stopped dead in his tracks. A rug booth stood next door, and he had seen both before.
It looped. The marketplace looped back on itself. A woman bumped him from behind, muttering an apology in a brutal, clipped language. He dragged his cart to one side and looked back, only to see the huge iron entry gate through which he had come. It was still ajar, and beyond it, an Egyptian garden stretched, sprawling and elaborate. The sand-colored Library loomed high, imposing and lifeless. It appeared to be parked, settled on land with a sky above, as ordinary as a free-floating inter-dimensional library could be. He knew that it was only an illusion, and that anyone looking out from one of the Library’s many windows would see only the void.
If the marketplace looped, then how did anyone get through? And why hadn’t Malachy told him? Well, if this was the beginning and end of the marketplace loop, then he now had one more piece of information than he had possessed before.
“Hey, watch this for me a minute,” he said, shoving his cart up against the side of the glass stand without waiting for a response from its proprietor.
He moved down the aisle again, trying to recall what booths he had seen just before ending up back at the glass booth. There stood the familiar man playing the ocarina, the clockwork booth, and now another, selling fine, nearly transparent paper. That was it.
“Is this the end of the marketplace?” he asked the man at the paper booth.
The man nodded, not looking up from a box of tiny paper fragments, so small that Elliot thought they might be confetti.
“Did a woman from the Library come by here a week ago?” he asked.
“Lots of people come here. I wouldn’t know if anyone was from the Library.” The man took a silver spoon from his sleeve and scooped a few spoonfuls of paper fragments into a silver bowl.
“What about scholars? Do they come past this spot?” Elliot knew that this was one of the entrances that visitors used when coming to the Library. He did not know the others, but had listened to enough conversations in the dining area to know that most of them used this path.
“They do. Some scholars came earlier today.”
He must mean the new group of twelve scholars that Elliot was preparing for.
“I’m trying to find out if anyone left from the Library,” said Elliot.
“There were Greeks last week. Some left, and fewer returned.” The man set the silver bowl on a display shelf and set the box of paper fragments under the table.
Elliot looked through the end of the marketplace to its beginning. The space between this booth and the glass booth was seamless and undetectable. His wooden cart still leaned against the glass booth and the gray mountains still rose in the distance. He studied the air, the ground, the people, and detected no time slips, no anomalies. The booths and people did not change, the same pile of spilled nuts lay on the ground, just as it had on his first trip. Nothing indicated that this wasn’t an ordinary corridor in an ordinary bazaar.
Fewer returned, the man had said. But the Greek delegation had not grown smaller. All of the same people had been at every meal before Imee left and after. The missing person was Imee. It had to be. And if she had been with the delegation, then he knew whom to ask.
He almost sprinted for the Library, but without anything to serve to the Greeks and the new group of scholars, he would be punished. There were worse things to be tasked with than cooking and serving, and he did not intend to lose his opportunity to speak with the Greeks. He purchased the items on his list as fast as he could, not bothering to shop for the best deals. He even purchased an expensive bottle of vodka from a man wearing a bear skin. If the Library kept him hostage, then it could very well pay extra for the privilege.
That evening, while serving stewed fruit, green salad and rice wine to the new scholars, he stole glances at each member of the Greek delegation. They seemed to enjoy the novelty of their fried chicken with corn on the cob. He had even baked two pumpkin pies for later. Well-fed scholars were cheerful scholars, and hopefully talkative ones.
He mixed the vodka with raspberry juice, making sure each Greek delegate received a large glass before moving on to the other group. The scholars in the new group all appeared human, with no extra eyes, forked tongues or extra digits, but all were absolutely silent during their meal. Perhaps their diet and silence were religious observances. In other circumstances, he might have been interested enough to ask. He served dessert and studied the group until it was time to collect the dirty dishes.
“May I ask you something?” Elliot said to the gray-skinned girl from the Greek delegation as he took her plate. He had noticed that she seemed reasonably friendly and was less prone to bickering than some of the other scholars. “Did the other kitchen servant, the woman named Imee, did she go with you into the marketplace?”
The girl looked up at him and blinked, perhaps shocked that a servant would speak to her. He knew that in ancient Greece slavery was common. But she was dressed in modern clothing.
“She did,” said the girl. “Was she your friend?”
“She was. What happened to her?”
She set her hand on his, her skin feverishly hot, almost uncomfortable. “She cannot return.”
“She’s alive then? She isn’t dead?”
“No, not dead. She is in a home for the insane in Thessaloniki.”
Chapter 13
Astrid deleted the voice mail from her boss, Mr. Augustus, and sighed. He wanted to see her before her shift began that day. Sometimes she wished she could join the Time Corps. As a psychopomp, she needed to stay in her own time and be available for a summons at any moment. If she was honest with herself, she didn’t relish the thought of actually doing any of the dangerous work for the Corps, though sightseeing through history or the future might be fun. Mainly, she wanted the money.
Sure, the Corps helped take care of Sister and they let them both live in their house, but Astrid had to chip in for groceries and utilities. That meant she had to keep her cruddy job at Luna Park, at least until she left for art school at Columbia in early September. Time Corps members earned a salary, and could always make a nice fat bank deposit in the past and then collect it with interest.
A thought rose up in her mind. The Time Corps had plenty of money. There was no reason for them to insist on her keeping her job at Luna Park. Well, almost no reason. Either they wanted to keep her busy, or there was some advantage to her working there. On second thought, Julius owned the house, and it might not have even occurred to him that she didn’t like her job. The Professor was the de facto leader of the Corps, but he was more focused on finding Elliot and getting Felicia home than on her employment preferences. Well, it didn’t matter, because she was fairly sure that Mr. Augustus was going to fire her for abandoning her pretzel cart when she ran off with Gopan.
Once she arrived at Luna Park, she passed the game booths, rides and snack carts, noting that the ocean breeze was unusually strong and cool. She headed for Mr. Augustus’s office and knocked. He called for her to enter, and when she did, she froze in shock. The man standing with Mr. Augustus was familiar to her, a tiny centaur with a white powdered wig, brass-buttoned navy jacket and a powdered face, complete with a false mole on his upper lip. His name was Gerard when he was in this form, and he had been both her captor and teacher when she had briefly lived in the Seelie world.
“First of all, you’re fired,” said Mr. Augustus. “That stunt with leaving your cart was unaccep
table.”
“I did leave the cash drawer with an employee,” said Astrid. “No money was lost.”
“And you also left your inventory sitting there.”
She drew breath to argue, but it was none of Mr. Augustus’s business that she had been on-duty as a psychopomp, nor did she care to allow Gerard to have that knowledge. Mr. Augustus’s orange hair looked more streaked with gray than she remembered, and she wondered what toll his time with the Seelie had taken on him. Yukiko had told her that Augustus worked with the Seelie, doing their bidding, and was somehow enslaved to them. He had owned a music shop and had employed Hazel back in the nineteenth century in her home world. As one of the Twelve, she supposed he was as immortal as his siblings. No wonder he looked weary.
“Look, I’m only here a few more weeks,” Astrid said. “Then I’m going to New York. Wouldn’t it be easier to keep me than to train a replacement?”
“I’ve already hired someone else. I have your last paycheck.”
Mr. Augustus handed her an envelope and Astrid had a sudden thought. Mr. Augustus might be firing her to help her. He was one of the Twelve, though that was no guarantee of ethical behavior. Some of the siblings were downright evil. But Mr. Augustus had been the one to assign her to the pretzel cart when she hired on, a place with salt and knots, things that repelled the sidhe, both Seelie and Unseelie. The only reason she had not been affected was that she had been raised in the human world. Perhaps he was once again attempting to assist her.
“It’s good to see you again,” said Gerard, stepping forward to kiss the back of her hand.
Astrid searched his expression for any sign of hostility or deception, but found none. Gerard, and his other form, Ghislaine, had been kind to her, even though they had been part of her imprisonment. They had done their best to help her learn to make Doors, and had never been cruel. Like so many other Seelie, they had to follow the orders of their higher-ups. The Seelie and Unseelie were both rigidly hierarchical.
The Time Corps Chronicles (Complete Series) Page 95