“Yeah. This will be my second one.”
“What did Jeff teach you?”
“How to pull on thought threads and convince the soul to go through willingly. He seemed to think I was a little clumsy with it.”
“Well, it was your first time. And not all of us are as precise and delicate as Jeff.”
“Are you going to teach me a different way?”
“In a sense. We all have our different methods. As long as the soul goes through, that’s what matters.”
They were in an apartment’s living room and faint sunlight shone through the windows. Astrid pulled back the curtains to see outside. It was a city, but she could not tell which one.
“Sometimes it’s amusing to try to guess where you are,” said Robin. “You can check what side of the road they drive on, look at license plates and newspapers, or you can just check your phone and have the GPS locate you.”
Astrid pulled out her phone and discovered they were in Bethesda, Maryland, and it was seven in the morning. Back on the ship, it had still been dark.
The apartment was small and cramped, with empty glasses and newspapers scattered about the living room. They found the bedroom drab, the tiny bathroom equally so. In the kitchen, a dead man lay on the floor, a coffee cup broken beside him, its dark contents splattered across the floor. He was in his seventies, with a beer belly and dark, sunken eyes.
The spirit of the dead man studied his empty body with a look of fear, and then he discovered that he was not alone.
“Oh, God,” he said, backing away. “No. No, I wasn’t that bad. I tried. I really did. You know that.”
“We’re not here to hurt you,” said Astrid. “We’re here to help you go home.”
She made a Door beside him and he leaped away from it as if it were on fire.
“Please! Have mercy. You can’t take me to hell. I tried.”
“I know you did,” said Astrid, approaching him. “It’s going to be all right.”
“Get back, you demon!” he yelled and darted into the living room.
“I’m not a demon,” she called. Of course, she wasn’t exactly angelic in appearance either. With her uncombed hair, black jacket, blue pajama bottoms and sneakers without socks, she must look strange, but she resembled a homeless woman more than any demon.
She heard the man weeping in the living room and turned to Robin for help. But instead of a man, a black terrier stood beside a pile of clothing. He trotted across the kitchen, his nails clicking on the floor and headed for the living room. Astrid watched as he stopped just in front of the man. He sat and cocked his ears forward, thumped his tail on the ground and gave a little yip.
The man regarded the little dog, and then reached tentatively to pet him. Robin licked his hand, then glanced back at Astrid.
She knew she was supposed to do something, as this was her training session, so she reached into the man’s mind, just as Jeff had taught her.
His fear made some thoughts clearer than others. And in sorting through these thoughts, a picture of his life became clear. This man was not a good person. He had beaten his wife and children until one day, his wife had left him, taking his daughters with her. Then, he had spent the next decades alone, drinking and cursing them for his sorry condition. He had been a misery to work with, yelling at the other workers in the machine shop, reveling in his power as a mid-level supervisor. He pitted people against each other, undermined colleagues and took credit for their hard work. He was vicious, cruel and a liar.
But what could Astrid do with this knowledge? All of these thoughts were on the surface, there for her to read like blaring newspaper headlines. Deeper, there were other things, smaller cruelties, harsh words, ugly looks, a lifetime of bringing harm to others in ways both large and small.
She searched through the threads, looking for something useful. Somewhere, there had to be something that would ease his fear of punishment. But she found him cursing at his mother while she wept, hitting a girlfriend hard enough to knock her off her feet, stealing from the till at work and blaming a coworker who lost his job.
“The mother,” said Robin, and Astrid wondered if the man had heard him. He continued to pet the dog. Perhaps Robin was using some power to keep the man calm.
She went back and studied the memory, the way his mother’s worn cotton dress clung to her full figure, the way her gray hair curled, her bare feet and the tone of her voice. Then, Astrid moved the Door into the living room and pulled the thread, focusing her energy just in front of the Door.
The man looked up.
“She forgives you,” said Astrid. “She knows you’re sorry. She says you’re her good boy.”
She waited, hoping it was enough, and the man stood up. He didn’t move toward the Door, and for a moment, Astrid considered running up behind him and shoving him through. She could do it, but she knew that was not the lesson Robin was trying to teach her.
Then, the little dog did something unexpected, he ran forward to the threshold of the door and sat. Astrid imagined the man’s mother patting his head, and from the look on the man’s face, he must have seen what she intended. She wished she could see it too, but her imagination would have to do.
He turned toward Astrid, tears in his eyes. “Promise me you’re not sending me to hell?”
Astrid couldn’t promise. By making the illusion, she was lying to him, no question. She had no idea if his mother forgave him. And she thought she’d rather physically throw him through the Door than tell him a comforting lie.
He watched his mother petting the dog, and Astrid glanced at the table beside the front door. A stack of mail waited, and she read his first name.
She imagined his mother saying his name, Joseph, and lifting her arms to embrace him. He stepped forward, and Robin hopped out of the way. The man went through the Door, and it contracted and vanished.
“If you’ll pardon me,” said Robin, and then trotted into the kitchen where his clothing still lay on the floor. Astrid waited until he returned a minute later.
“You did very well,” he said and sat on the chair to put on his shoes and socks. “I always try to give comfort to the dead. They’re frightened. Some fear hell and some are just afraid to let go.”
“The dog trick seemed to work well.”
“Most people like dogs. It sets them at ease and relaxes them.”
“And then you pull threads in their minds?”
“More or less. I calm them, then search and find what’s useful and then use it.”
“I’m not sure my aspect will help as much. I’m an owl.”
“Interesting,” he said, standing and zipping up his jacket. “No, I don’t suppose that would be very useful. Not the way Graciela and I have useful aspects.”
“Is she a dog too?”
“Yes, and she told me that I was allowed to tell you that. The only one who’s really secretive about his aspect is Jeff. I don’t really care if you know mine.”
“So Gopan is a cute little boy and you and Graciela are dogs. People like those things. They don’t like owls.”
“True. But no one ever promised your aspect would make your life easier. I wonder, though. Perhaps you have hidden wisdom.”
“I doubt it.”
“Yeah, me too,” he said, smiling. “Well, you should make a Door back to that ship. I promise not to mention to Jeff that you’re spending time with those Time Corps people.”
“Thanks. But I have a good reason. I’m doing a task for the Seelie, which Jeff already knows about.”
“Don’t tell me,” he said, putting up a hand. “All of the otherkind are nothing but trouble.”
“But you’re one of them. You’re not a regular person.”
“I’m a human being, just like you.”
Sh
e decided not to mention that she was Unseelie-born. Jeff surely wouldn’t give her away either. If Robin didn’t like otherkind, she wouldn’t give him any reason not to like her. She was about to make a Door when she thought of something.
“What do you think is beyond the Door? What if I just sent that man to hell or some kind of punishment?”
“Our job isn’t to sort the dead. We’re only delivery people. It’s best not to trouble yourself. Whatever judgment waits, there’s no way for us to know about it or to influence it.”
He made a Door back to his home in Ghana, while Astrid made one to the deck of Skidbladnir. It was not yet dawn here and most of the crew was asleep in the rigging.
Robin was right. Her aspect might not be useful. But it was a part of who she was. She returned to her hammock, pulled her blanket over herself and lay there, thinking of flying.
Chapter 22
It took Elliot nearly an hour to climb the stairs and walk through endless corridors to the forbidden area of the Library. Bennu had gone home for the day, and he was glad. If she had been there, she might have attempted to convince him to abandon his investigation.
Instead of a blank area in the Library, he could now feel the draw of the place in his mind, faint, but present, pulsing like a tiny mouse heart, so fast it was almost a vibration. At each forking hallway or series of doors, he paused to choose, sometimes doubling back, but more often finding himself even closer to the place. Other parts of the Library pulled at him too, each in their own way, and he knew he was becoming more and more attached to this place as time passed. The sensation was benign, but he did not wish to deepen his connection. He feared that with time, his desire to leave might lessen. Perhaps, like Malachy, he might become passive and accept his fate.
He knew the place the moment he turned the corner. There was an unassuming wooden door, one among many, with a simple iron handle instead of a knob. It was neither locked nor latched. He pushed it open, expecting to find a dark room of aged books or rows of inhuman scholars, kept separate from the ordinary scholars for reasons of safety or secrecy. Instead, the room was a storage area, as jumbled as a child’s toy box.
Shelves of books lined the walls, but there were also tables and boxes filled with reading materials of all kinds, electronic, stone, papyrus, skin and paper. Statues leaned together, some Victorian, others ancient, one was a knobby fluorescent green thing with a pulsing gelatinous covering. It looked vaguely humanoid.
There were doorways to either side, and he walked through the leftmost one into a room similar to the first. On shelves and in piles on the floor lay teapots of silver and earthenware, dishes, an oil painting of a boy in breeches, a pile of scarves and shoes and off to one side, a toy bird with real feathers.
The floor was covered in a mosaic picturing a Greek trireme, its sails full and its prow pointed slightly upward as it parted the water. The sea was all blues and violets with rows of identical curved white-capped waves, all rendered in bits of colored stone. An orange and red sun blazed just behind the ship, almost like a halo. The oddest part was the pigs. The animals swarmed aboard and leaped from the ship into the waves.
He paused and listened for anyone approaching. The place was silent. So far, so good. He let his mind wander through the nearby rooms, sensing each area’s pull on him, hoping for a clue. Was the answer in one of the books in the first room? Or was it buried in one of the chaotic piles? Or perhaps there was no answer at all, and this place was off limits to scholars for another reason. Maybe it was just a storage area.
As he entered the next room, he stopped in his tracks. This room had four columns, one at each corner, each facing the center of the room. Columns were not at all unusual in the Library, but these were topped with faces. There was an elephant, the African sort with large, fan-like ears. The next was a lion, facing a zebra at the opposite corner. The one in the corner closest to him was a cobra. All four had their eyes and mouths closed, as if sleeping.
Tapestries hung on the walls here, some in an ancient style, though they looked brand new. Of course, they may be thousands of years old to him, but might have come to the library quite recently. A blank blue plastic sheet hung nearby, small lights and pulses of color appearing now and then. In front of it sat a low table with stacks of rough woolen blankets in reds and purples, a pink laptop computer, two matching marble bowls, as black as the void, a Victrola, pan pipes, a dish full of pet identification tags and a rice paper painting of a woman.
Then came the sound of rustling, like feathers, then something taking off, of flapping wings. He felt the thing, a malevolent thing, both intelligent and insane, half-dead and inflamed. If Elliot was becoming a part of the Library, then this thing embodied the Library in its very being. He knew two things. It was not kind and it would not be merciful.
Elliot ran, tearing through the rooms, past the treasures and detritus, his bare feet slapping the tiles and mosaics, his breath loud in his ears, his heartbeat louder. He sprinted past the mosaic of the pigs leaping off the ship with its green waves. Had they been that color before?
The flapping was drawing closer now, the sound of giant wings, the thing pursuing him, drawing closer. He shot into the hallway, not bothering to pull the door closed behind him. He darted down passageways, leapt down staircases and kept running until he found a quiet spot to catch his breath.
He listened. No sound. Nothing. He continued down the stairs, moving swiftly, until he reached the kitchen and then his quarters. He closed the door and pushed the crate up against it. It would be useless to keep anyone out, but the sound of the crate moving would wake him if anyone tried to enter.
Now he understood the warnings. The Librarian embodied this place, it was his as much as his own feathered body was. And he was not a benevolent being.
Chapter 23
“Mares’ tails and mackerel scales make tall ships take in their sails,” said Hazel to Mr. Escobar. He scratched behind his ear with his hind foot and then studied the sky.
The high cirrus clouds overhead were wispy, streaking across the sky like the tails of running horses. It meant the winds in the high atmosphere were shaping the clouds, possibly signaling the approach of a warm front. The clouds before a front could also coalesce into the thin lumpy blanket formation that resembled the scales of a fish. Either one could mean a storm was coming with high winds that necessitated them lowering their sail.
Of course, in this time she could check the web for a weather forecast, and she would. But she liked the old methods. They worked in any time and place and gave her a sense of continuity, of stability. She might love the sea and always being on the move, but sometimes it was nice to have a small sense of predictability. The stars were constant in their courses, allowing her to navigate when she didn’t have more precise means. For those willing to learn the ways of the sea and sky, the water could be a lovely home, even if it could be dangerous. She verified her predictions with the onboard computer and told Mr. Escobar to prepare.
Mr. Escobar yipped out the order to lower the ship’s striped sail, and the crew obeyed. They were in the Gulf of Mexico, and Yukiko was resting after creating the illusion of a modern-day ship for the workers of the Panama Canal. Now, they were in open water, heading for the tropical island nature preserve where the monkeys had their home. In the nineteenth century, when Mr. Escobar was born, it had not been a preserve. But the island had been declared off-limits to developers in the late twentieth century. Today, in the twenty-first century, the monkeys on the island thrived, safe from the threat of human interference.
“Good thing you’ll be in another century,” said Huginn, flapping down from his spot in the rigging. “Most likely there’s no storm there.”
“I hope not,” said Hazel. “But there may be by the time we return. We made preparations. Are you sure you want to stay with Astrid in this time? I can ask some of the crew to stay with her.”
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“I lived through the 1880s once, and have visited it enough times. Besides, Astrid and I have some bird things to discuss.”
They dropped Astrid and Huginn on the beach with the assurance that they’d return in an hour or so, according to Astrid’s timeline. For Hazel and the crew, they’d be gone longer than that.
Hazel went below decks to her quarters, where the time machine attached to Skidbladnir was housed. The Professor had built it into a cabinet on the wall, and she flipped it open and set the coordinates. Then, after warning the crew, she turned on the machine.
In her personal past, the Time Corps required a synchronicity to travel. While running the time machine, events in the home world had to line up with those in the target world to create a rip in time. The synchronicity could be an earthquake, an animal stampede, even a person walking down a street. The easiest and safest event to replicate was a ship floating down a river. In most of the centuries before and after the mid-eighteen hundreds, Hazel and the Professor’s point of origin, rivers were used for transportation. So they could sail along, activate the machine, and wait for a rip to occur, then travel through it, closing it before any other people were affected. Had they done such a thing on a busy street, people would easily have slipped into times not their own. Eventually, the Professor figured out a way to travel without synchronicities, which made travel easier, but no less dangerous once one got to one’s destination.
Hazel was struck with a slight nausea and a touch of dizziness, but she did not allow it to trouble her. It was merely a side effect of traveling between times. She checked her time readings, verifying that they had arrived in 1885.
They disembarked, the crew buzzing with excitement, some of the youngest bouncing up and down, others tearing off into the rain forest. Not all of the crew were from this time originally, but many were. Some would be leaving the crew while new crew members joined. The crew of the Skidbladnir was fluid, and Hazel paid well, so the occupation was a popular one among the younger monkeys. A few years at sea earned them money and prestige. She knew that some of the monkeys worked on other ships, sometimes as advisers or navigators, often posing as pets. Hers was one of the very few ships where they could speak and work openly.
The Time Corps Chronicles (Complete Series) Page 100