The Time Corps Chronicles (Complete Series)

by Heather Blackwood

  Astrid stole a glance at Yelbeghen and found him rapt with delight, the smallest smile on his face. It vanished the instant he realized he was being observed.

  “The new fish are shy,” he said. “And they may not come this way for a while.”

  “I have a question. Actually, a few questions.”

  “Ask.”

  “Have you found out anything about why the world changed?”

  “I haven’t. You and I seem to be the only ones aware of it. Well, there may be others, but I wouldn’t know how to find them.”

  A school of tiny pale green fish swam past, turned and darted back the way they had come.

  “I was thinking,” said Astrid. “Was the ship Skidbladnir a dragon once?”

  “Did she tell you that?”

  “No, but no other ship I’ve ever heard of is alive, and she’s a dragon, so I thought you might know about her.”

  “Yes, I do. And yes, she was a drake. She never will be again.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “She committed a crime and was punished. Now she is bought and sold, traded and stolen, forever belonging to others. She went mad for a while, but when she regained sanity, such as it was, she accepted her fate.”

  “Is that why you wanted to buy her?”

  “She is old and deserves the protection of someone who will look after her. We’re family, in a way.”

  “I thought you only wanted her because she was rare.”

  “Well, that too. I won’t deny it. I would still like to talk to your cousin about acquiring her. I would pay him a great sum.”

  “She only belongs to him temporarily. I want to find Captain Hazel Dubois. She’s the ship’s rightful owner.”

  “So says the young woman who chastises me for keeping living things here. You stand there and tell me that Skidbladnir has an owner, even after knowing she is alive and was once free?”

  “No, not like that. It’s only … she belongs with Hazel. Don’t you think she’d be happier sailing the seas than puttering around the shores of your island?”

  “Perhaps someone ought to ask her.”

  They stood in silence for a long while, and a group of the new fish eventually swam by, glowing orange and gold, their long, sinuous bodies snaking through the water with grace and strength. Wherever they had come from, this was their home now. They did not seem to mind their captivity.

  “If I asked you for a favor,” she said, “would you grant it?”

  “It depends on what it is.”

  “Free your servants. Let anyone who wants to leave the island go.”

  “What makes you think I already haven’t?”

  “Because most of the people and things that were here when I first started visiting you are still here. You’ve even added to your collection.”

  From the ox with ninety-nine horns to the living statues, the sprites in the garden to the elderly manticore that lived in a cave on the far end of the island, most things were as they always had been.

  He looked up again at the lake for a long while before answering.

  “Two years ago I allowed anyone to leave who wished to. I would not keep an unwilling person or being.”

  “And me?”

  “I thought you enjoyed our visits.”

  “I do, but if I asked you to free me, would you?”

  “You are nearly halfway through our agreement of ten years of dinners with me. If I freed you, would you return to me willingly?”

  She looked up, thinking. Yelbeghen was her friend, and she would visit him in his home. She thought about having him over to her apartment, once she had one. Their friendship existed in this place, this remote place, and might not be the same in the ordinary world. But then, the thought of not seeing him burned in her. It would be a loss, a bigger one than she would have thought. The idea of his loss hurt.

  A large fish passed overhead, something carnivorous with protruding lower teeth and yellow eyes. It cast a shadow that darkened the room.

  “No, you are not free,” he said before she could answer, and he turned back and walked down the tunnel.

  After dinner, she gave him her latest drawing, a picture of the elderly manticore. He was a red lion with a scorpion’s tail and a man’s face, an old man’s face, marked by age and experience. The manticore was shy and she had only seen him once, so she didn’t think it was a particularly accurate portrait. But that wasn’t why she had drawn it. The old creature fascinated her, and she wanted to spend time with him, even if only through a drawing.

  Yelbeghen studied it silently, nothing in his expression giving her any insight into his thoughts.

  “He’s Asian, not white,” he said. “You drew his face as a white man.”

  “I only saw him once, and not up close. I know it’s not a true portrait.”

  “Obviously. But the way you treat the tail, upraised, as if he were about to sting, why?”

  “I thought it was more interesting than if he had it low behind him. It gives some movement to the image.”

  He set it down on the table. “It’s derivative. Your treatment of the subject is unoriginal. It looks like a drawing from a fairy-tale book.”

  “All art is derivative. Every artist draws from her influences, and I draw from mine. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I read a lot of fairy-tale books as a girl, and the manticore is a fairy-tale creature.”

  “Well, who of us isn’t, one way or another?”

  He was still testy from their exchange in the room beneath the lake. She took the picture, put it back into its protective folder and set it beside her purse.

  “It’s a good drawing,” he said at last. “You have talent, accuracy and feeling. But it’s not your own feeling. The way you draw is imitative, not simply derivative. You’re an artistic chameleon. I suppose it’s how you’ve always survived. Silent, watching, observing, processing. But beneath that, you are a real thing in a false world. And until you can be what you are, you will never be whole and complete.”

  “If you mean my body, I’ll never know what I originally looked like. I’m a changeling, and I can’t help it. I’ll always be a copy of Sister. I even took the name intended for her.”

  “There’s that, even though it wasn’t voluntary. But even your owl aspect is a copy of that little cold iron bell you owned for so long. Under the assumed human form, past the owl and the unchosen psychopomp job, what are you? Because your human form and your owl form aren’t your real shape any more than his human one is mine. You are as formless and as shapeless as the void itself. And you are afraid to show yourself.”

  “To you?” she said, angry at the turn of the conversation. She wasn’t hiding or a chameleon, she was simply herself. She had never pretended to be anything else. Who was he to say otherwise?

  “Especially to me.”

  “That’s ridiculous. I’ve come here for years, talked with you, eaten with you, walked with you. I’ve never lied to you. And if I have to say it, yes, we are friends. Good friends, I suppose. I’ve been nothing but myself, though you seem to relish the idea of hiding behind false forms. And if you want to talk about being a chameleon, then why do you always appear human to me?”

  “That’s simple. I’m large and frightening.”

  “And I’m not easily scared.”

  He smiled then. “That you are not. But come, let’s not quarrel. We can have our dessert on the upstairs balcony.”

  “I have another question,” she said, tossing her napkin on the table.

  “You have but to ask.”

  “Gerard said that Yelbeghen isn’t your name. It’s the type of drake you are.”

  “That’s true.”

  “What is your name? Your real name?”

  “Sevilen.”r />
  How quickly he had given it, and she felt guilty for never having asked before. But she hadn’t known that she was calling him by the wrong name. All this time, and it had been as if he called her “Door” instead of by her name. She knew that by some ancient laws, giving a person one’s name from one’s own mouth gave the person power over you. She didn’t know if this were true, nor did she have any desire for power over Sevilen.

  He stood by the doorway, watching her.

  “What?” she said. “I don’t have any other name. Just Astrid.”

  “I was only waiting for you to walk with me.”

  Chapter 21

  Seamus tossed Oren a spanner and then turned back to tinker with the inside of King Herod’s detached head. He popped out an eyeball and worked at the screws holding it together.

  This year’s Christmas automaton display at St. Louis Cathedral would be the crowning event of the day. Well, aside from Christmas Mass, he reminded himself. For all his faults, and he knew he had many, he was no faithless heathen. He would make the automaton show as fine and beautiful as he was able. It was only October and they still had months to go, but he knew better than most that mechanical things often went wrong at the last moment.

  During the Civil War, the automaton displays had been banned by occupying Union forces. But now, the conquered people needed something to lift their spirits, and though Seamus had been no supporter of slavery, he had developed an affection for his adopted city and its people.

  The cluttered room where they worked was upstairs in the cathedral, near storage rooms and a few quiet areas where the brothers who maintained the place performed any work that required an undisturbed space.

  Brother Joe hurried into their workroom, obviously flustered. “There are policemen here,” he said. “They’re looking for two men, but I don’t think it’s you two.”

  Seamus glanced at Oren, but his friend had already donned his look of serene assurance that allowed him to gain the confidence of others and allay their suspicions. Seamus kept working at Herod’s eye, not allowing his look or movement to betray the terror knotting inside him.

  “They’re looking for a Seamus Doyle and an Oren McCabe. I explained that you weren’t those men, but they insisted.”

  The officers appeared behind Brother Joe and he stepped aside, his round face the picture of fear and concern. He knew, thought Seamus. He must have doubts about their identities or he wouldn’t be so frightened.

  Oren tried to explain to the officers that they were Oren McCullen and Seamus Connor, but the officers were not convinced.

  “We are under orders to bring you in. You can explain everything to the sergeant,” one said, and the two of them were escorted outside, where a police wagon waited on a street beside the cathedral.

  As Seamus was loaded inside, he thought he saw something at the center of Jackson Square, a movement of the air, as if it was wavering. But then the wagon door slammed shut, and he and Oren sat in the dark, trapped, just as they had been so long ago.

  It had only been a matter of time, and twenty years was a good number of years on the run. They would be shipped back to Ireland where they would either be executed or imprisoned. In their youth, they had been sentenced to transport to Tasmania, but that practice was now outlawed. Death or prison were the only possible outcomes.

  “We’ll get out,” said Oren softly. “We’ll find a way. We did it once, and we’ll do it again.”

  “I’m wondering how they found us. How did they know where we were? We’ve managed to evade them for so long, working in plain sight at the university. How did they find us?”

  “It hardly matters,” said Oren. “I don’t plan on remaining a captive.”

  After a short ride, they were taken from the wagon and their paperwork was filed. Old physical descriptions of them from their prison days still matched. The date of their appearance in New Orleans coincided with their escape. There had been no mistake.

  That evening, they sat across from each other in a cell. They did not speak, and Seamus knew that Oren was formulating their escape. For his part, he couldn’t tear his mind from wondering how they had been caught.

  “The officer said it was an anonymous informant,” Seamus said. “I can’t imagine who that would be.”

  “That girl Hazel Dubois?” said Oren. “For a price, she might do it, friend or no.”

  “She never knew I was a convict.”

  “She’s a doxy. She can read men like a book.”

  “She’s not a mind reader. It wasn’t her.”

  It had to be someone with something to gain. But who? There was no one at the university who desired their positions. They were both professors of physics and mechanics, neither of them with extraordinary wealth or social position. All they had were their classes, their books and their inventions.

  The inventions. The machines. Who would be unhappy about those? Ah, but the white cat had said that September Wilde was unhappy, that she feared the creation of the machines.

  “It was September Wilde,” said Seamus. “She didn’t want us working on that machine. She was afraid.”

  Oren looked up at that. “Afraid enough to have us arrested?”

  “We won’t be making any machines that way. Remember what the cat said? She said the watchers stood at the doors. And Hazel said September Wilde was one of these watchers. She knows things others do not, perhaps she knew we were convicts. If we had dreams about her, somehow she might know about us. There’s no doubt that she wanted to stop us from making the time machine.”

  “The one from your dreams that lets you travel to the world of the flying airplanes?” asked Oren.

  Seamus had never heard the word before. Airplane. What an odd name for the flying machines in his dreams.

  “Is that what they’re called?” asked a woman in the doorway. It was Hazel, and she walked up to the bars, clutching her handbag. She opened it, pulled out a pad of paper and a pencil and handed them to Seamus.

  “Write to your bank, your solicitor, whoever you think can help. I’m going to get you out. But hurry. They said I could only talk with you for a minute.”

  “How were you allowed in at all?”

  “I know my clientele. Now hurry.”

  He understood. One of the officers must be a customer of hers, and she had either used her wiles to charm him, or she had threatened him with exposure.

  He took the pencil and began to write, not to his solicitor, but to his housekeeper. Mrs. Washington knew what to do. He had not been idle these twenty years. He had money set aside and could hire a lawyer, but not until he reached Ireland. He wrote down his full birth name and the town in which his family lived, his parents, siblings, everything. He looked at the list of names and a little flame of hope sparked within him. He might go to prison, but he might also see his family again.

  “You said airplanes,” said Hazel to Oren.

  “Airplanes, yes. That is the proper name for the flying machines. And the screens with the moving pictures are called televisions. I heard of one being displayed at the World Fair in 1936.”

  Seamus stopped writing. Nineteen thirty-six. Oren looked at the floor and clasped his hands between his knees.

  “I came through to this world through one of those doors that the cat spoke of.” As he spoke, his voice regained its Irish accent, the one he so assiduously tried to lose but which came back when he was upset or emotional. “I was praying at a temple of Epona, one of our gods, and the air moved around me and I found myself here. I stepped through time, and I could never get back. That’s why I was interested in the doors. That’s why I’m so curious about your dreams of a time machine now.”

  “I saw the air move like that at Jackson Square,” said Seamus. “It shimmered just as we were forced into the wagon.”

  A look of lo
nging crossed Oren’s face, and Seamus felt for his old friend. To be far from home was painful, and Oren must be the farthest of all.

  “The machine is not real,” said Seamus. “I have no idea how to even begin to make one.”

  “Neither do I,” said Oren. “I just want to go home. I killed an Englishman here in this world, and I’ve paid for it. Now I just want to go home.”

  “You said you were at a temple of Epona,” said Hazel. “I read about her. She’s an old pagan god. Her worship has been over for centuries. How could you pray to her and yet still know about 1936?”

  “In my world, the old gods did not die out. Your Christ god did not take hold in the same way as here.”

  “Another world,” breathed Hazel. “Not just another time.”

  “I believe so,” said Oren. “Our gods are not so different though. Do not look at me like that, Seamus. Epona was good and kind. She escorted the souls of the dead into the afterlife. Like an angel.”

  Seamus was less concerned with theology and more with the idea that another world was possible.

  “A rip at this temple,” Seamus said. “Do you remember where it was?”

  “Precisely. In this world, it’s a cloister for an order of your Catholic nuns.”

  Another question appeared in his mind. If September Wilde had been the one to turn them in, then perhaps it was not to prevent them from making a machine, but to force them to go to Ireland, where the rip at the cloister would be. But that meant that they’d have to get out of prison.

  Perhaps he was analyzing this too much. How many doors into other worlds were there, and how far did September Wilde’s knowledge reach? Whether September Wilde wanted them in Ireland or not, Seamus did not like being manipulated, and he didn’t like being forced. He and Oren would follow their own path, regardless of the plans of the strange woman.

  “Are you finished?” asked Hazel, gesturing to the pad of paper in Seamus’s hand. He gave it to her.