The Time Corps Chronicles (Complete Series)

by Heather Blackwood

  “There seems to be a lot you don’t know.”

  “And that’s the honest truth,” said Red Fawn. “Now, I want to ask you something. How did all of you know that time had been reset? All of you searched for each other. It was unexpected.”

  “We had dreams,” said Felicia. “All of us but Neil had dreams about our previous life.”

  “Ha!” Red Fawn pointed a finger straight at Janeiro. “I told you they were involved. That’s got the Messenger’s fingerprints all over it. Dreams of pasts that didn’t really happen, those dreams didn’t originate in their own minds.”

  “I don’t know,” said Janeiro. “The dreams were really memories.”

  “Of a time that never happened. It was the Messenger. I’m sure of it.” Red Fawn turned to Felicia. “See, the Seven are subtle. The Three even more so. The Seven aren’t like me and Janeiro here. Half the time when one of them shows up, you’re going to piss yourself in terror. And if you’re asleep when they come, you’re as like as not to forget the dream upon waking.”

  “So this Messenger gave us dreams?”

  “Looks like it. Which raises the question: Why would he do it? Why would he want you all to remember each other?”

  Janeiro and Red Fawn exchanged a glance, but Felicia understood.

  “Because he wanted us to try to find each other,” she said.

  “Or because the General ordered him to,” said Janeiro.

  “The General?”

  “The Prince of Hosts, the one who, long ago, helped cast out the Liar. He’s one of the higher-ups. He’s a brother to the Messenger and the Healer. Well, if you really get down to it, we’re all siblings.”

  “So you’ve mentioned.”

  “But we’re as different as you and the other humans are,” said Janeiro. “Some are good and some bad.”

  “And the bad side won. Astrid is gone.”

  “She sacrificed herself, but the worlds were saved. And she’s not alone out there.”

  “I’d hardly call void wyrms good company.”

  “There are drakes too, including her friend.”

  “She was forced to dine with him as part of a deal. He never released her from the bargain.”

  “There are always sacrifices,” he said, but with such sadness that she wasn’t tempted to point out the years of Luke’s life that she had missed or her husband’s missing limb, Neil’s torment over being a golem, Yukiko’s taillessness, Elliot’s loose grip on sanity, Sister’s internal and external scarring from her years of servitude, Hazel’s painful past, Huginn’s amnesia or Pangur Ban’s kitten who died. All of them, even her, had paid and paid again.

  Luke studied the readout screen on the computer attached to Seamus’s many monitors. Felicia had taught him what a steady heartbeat looked like, what proper oxygen levels were and how the IV bag worked.

  He touched his chin, looking far older and more thoughtful than his years should have allowed, and in that moment, she recognized him.

  She had met him before, in her past and his future. He had been a doctor.

  Of course he had.

  The set of his jaw and the shape of his eyes had been familiar to her then, but she didn’t know why. Then, in the spirit hospital in Purgatory, she had almost known him.

  He had been called Dr. Fairfax back when she had fallen through a time rip and ended up in 1961 in Seamus’s universe after St. Louis Cathedral and New Orleans were destroyed by Oren McCullen’s hexapod machine. Luke was the doctor who had been there when she awoke in the hospital and who had been remarkably calm about telling her the date, including the year, even when she had not asked. He had known she was a time traveler from the start. He had been one himself.

  Luke must have felt her watching him because he looked up at her and then back at his father.

  Chapter 48

  Skidbladnir had changed. Hazel walked her deck, but it was unfamiliar and strange. It was made of fiberglass or some other modern material instead of long wooden planks. The dragon head was gone, replaced with a computer inside, and the red and white striped sail, once so glorious when filled with the sea wind, had been replaced by an engine that roared and vibrated through the ship. The Professor’s time machine remained. Skidbladnir had been reborn.

  This is was what happened when an immortal ship was destroyed.

  Hazel wondered about it, as drakes could be killed. But Skidbladnir’s punishment, for she now understood that her ship had once been a living drake, was eternal. Hazel would one day die, and the ship would live on.

  A few members of the crew sat on deck, playing dice. Hazel opened her mouth to order Mr. Escobar to set a course for his home island, but she stopped herself. He could not operate the navigational computer, and though it was still unfamiliar to her, she was learning. She went to the computer.

  “Dragon?” she said.

  “Present.”

  “I have a question. Would you like to be free?”

  “I do not understand.”

  “Astrid told Elliot that Yelbeghen, the drake, said you could live offshore on his island. You were once a drake, like him, and he said you might like to be free.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “Then tell me this, what do you want?”

  “I want to sail on the sea.”

  “What else?”

  “I want to see the world, to feel the wind, to go over the water, and into the sky, if I can.”

  “Do you want to stay with me as your captain?”

  “You are a skraeling, but none of my other captains have sailed me as far as you have. I desire you to stay with me.”

  She waited to see if the dragon would say any more, but she did not. Hazel set the coordinates. “How long will it be before we reach the coordinates I just set?”

  “Six days.”

  “Let’s go then.”

  Neil and Elliot chatted about something at the stern while Hazel and Mr. Escobar walked out to the prow.

  “The crew members don’t know what to do with themselves,” said Mr. Escobar.

  A ship like this didn’t require a crew. Even one person could sail it effectively. Hazel did not fail to notice the way Mr. Escobar looked out over the waves. She knew that he was thinking the same thing she was.

  “How long have you been a sailor?” she asked.

  “Nearly twenty years.”

  “Will you find another ship?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve been with Skidbladnir so long that I don’t think I’d like another ship. Besides, the seas are dangerous in the mid-1800s, and I wouldn’t want to be in any other time.”

  She understood. They both came from the same era, albeit different worlds, and without a time machine, he would have to pick a time within this single merged world, and stay there.

  “Did you have a mate? A sweetheart?” She wasn’t sure what term to use.

  “I did.”

  He said nothing more, and she did not press him. Her first mate kept his own counsel.

  Days later, when they reached the crew’s home island, Hazel paid the crew in gold, as was their custom, and each crew member lined up to shake her hand. It was a human gesture, and she appreciated the thought. They scampered off into the trees until only Mr. Escobar was left. While the rest of the crew changed out with new crew after their contracts expired, Mr. Escobar had been with her from the start.

  “Time to go home,” she said and set the time machine for 1867, Mr. Escobar’s home year. She flipped the switch, and they moved through time.

  He went below decks and returned with a little bundle of belongings tied up in a blue handkerchief.

  “You know how to contact me, don’t you?” she said. “I’ll check that hidden spot in that rock formation. If you need anything, if you
get bored or want to sail again, you leave a note. You wouldn’t be crew this time, you’d be my guest. My friend.”

  “I am already your friend.”

  He took her hand and bowed over it, like a gentleman from her own time, and turned, walking up the beach and into the trees. She saw him pull off his vest, the one he had always worn because it had pockets, and toss it onto a bush. Then he leapt into a tree and was gone.

  Chapter 49

  It was Christmas and Neil went to his quarters to retrieve the gifts he had purchased for Elliot and Hazel. He opened the storage compartment over his bunk and pulled out the canister of high-quality surfboard wax to go with the new surfboard he and Hazel had gotten Elliot. Now that almost two months had passed since Astrid had gone, it was time for Elliot to get back to his old pleasurable pursuits. Once they returned to Julius’s house in Los Angeles, Elliot would find the new board waiting in the garage. It had been Hazel’s idea to give him something to look forward to instead of ruminating on his cousin.

  It would be Elliot’s first Christmas without Astrid, and though his friend did not say anything, Neil noticed his occasional distant looks. Elliot kept Astrid’s sketch books in his quarters, and once, Neil had found Elliot paging through one of them. There was nothing wrong with that in itself, but Elliot’s internal light had dimmed a bit, and Neil wanted to see it come back. He also knew that these things took time.

  For Hazel, Neil had purchased a few books of sheet music and a garnet pendant. Looking at them now, they seemed uninspired, but he knew that nothing he could purchase would really suffice.

  He wrapped the gifts using some old newspaper, as none of them had remembered to bring along real wrapping paper, and took them to the cabin.

  “You know Neil wants you to,” said Elliot to Hazel.

  “Wants her to do what?” asked Neil.

  “You want her to play something on her violin.”

  “I always want her to play something.”

  “I will after we finish with the tree,” said Hazel.

  The tree was a small artificial tree that Hazel had picked up in a drugstore before they left. It came with a set of red and green plastic decorations. It was tacky and ugly and, to Neil’s eyes, perfect.

  The ship rocked gently as the sun went down, and as soon as it vanished over the horizon, it was officially Christmas Eve according to the old-fashioned way Hazel reckoned time.

  Elliot joked about the tree and made Hazel laugh. She sang an old Yule song and Elliot joined in for the chorus. Neil sat in a chair to one side, his feet stretched out in front of him, the scent of sea air in his nose and an unfamiliar feeling inside. Then he named it. Contentedness.

  The world was not ending. No unstable time loops threatened lives. His friends were adjusting to their new lives. The two people he loved most, his best friend and his wife, were with him, and he was a free man.

  Sure, he was aware of the emptying hourglass of his life. While the others would die and go to the afterlife, he might blink out. Bang, like a candle, as the character Tweedledum had once said.

  But though Hazel had breathed life into him, and Elliot had whispered to his earthen form that he wanted Neil to have a soul, there was no way for him to know for sure if he had one or not.

  He was a thing of earth, made of river earth and blood, sacrifice and fire. He was of the earth, like the other golems, which was why he supposed the void wyrms could not pull him into their rips. He was rooted to the earth, while humanity was part spirit.

  He alone among the Time Corps had not received the dreams. Maybe it meant he had no soul, so this Messenger person did not bother with him. If he had remembered Hazel begging him to find her, he would have torn apart heaven and earth to do it. He might have forced March to take him to her. He might have tried to make the captive drake do it, if she could. He would have done anything.

  He understood the struggle of the Twelve, of the sides in the great war, of the conflicting philosophies of restraint and kindness or of freedom that included cruelty.

  He thought of March, out in the world, in a young body, and for a moment he missed him and their philosophical talks. But even though March would make rulelessness sound appealing, Neil no longer agreed with him. He wondered about the idea, but Hazel and Elliot were finishing up the tree, and it was not time to discuss it.

  Hazel left and came back with her violin, and Elliot dropped into the chair beside Neil. Hazel played, and as always, she was transformed into something greater than her slight, freckled, physical form. He watched her fingers dance over the strings, the push and pull of the bow, the press of her chin against the instrument.

  He might have no soul, but he still hungered for life. He wanted to hear every piece of music, to view and ponder every piece of art, to feel every sensation and breathe the cold, clear air under a starry night sky. He wanted it all.

  And if he had no soul, then he would never be the wiser. It would not stop him from living. But another thought occurred to him. Astrid had said that there were various parts to the afterlife, some populated by humans, some by other creatures like the drakes and the sidhe. He might have a soul like theirs, or one inhuman and unique.

  Elliot listened to Hazel play, his head slightly to one side, his gaze far away. Neil didn’t think Elliot looked sad. No, he had a look of longing. This wasn’t the way he looked when he thought of Astrid. Neil knew the woman who occupied his friend’s thoughts at this moment. Elliot hadn’t seen her in some time, not since his captivity in the Library.

  Neil let his eyes close. Elliot and Hazel were two poles, between which he could exist. They would anchor him to the regular world. Or maybe they were the axis upon which his world spun. For whatever he might be, he knew he could love and be loved in return. Perhaps any knowledge other than that was unnecessary.

  And if he had an inhuman soul, then when he died, he would take a long walk through the afterlife, and find those he loved best. And they could sit together again, just like this.

  Chapter 50

  “Tell me how she is,” Elliot said to Yelbeghen.

  “Don’t you want to come inside first?”

  “Fine, but we don’t intend to stay long.”

  Elliot, Hazel and Neil were on Yelbeghen’s island, and Elliot knew he ought to be on his best behavior. The drake was now his only link to Astrid. But like Hazel and Neil, he was not fond of the man. The creature rang an interior alarm bell of mammalian self-preservation, and Elliot wanted to get as far from him as he could.

  “She is well,” said Yelbeghen, turning toward the house and heading up the path. Elliot fell into step beside him. “She’s a mother of sorts to our young.”

  “Neil said that the other golems were instructed to kill her because she was some kind of drake. Is that what they meant?”

  “Well, she’s not one of us, but she is kin, in a fashion. If March could see possible futures, he might have seen this. She’s not floating in space, not precisely. Like the void wyrms, she exists there, but there are places in the void that are physical locations. You yourself were held captive in the Library which hangs in the void. There are other places there, some very much like this one. These places are like islands. Astrid can have visitors, as the other drakes can take human form. Even if they could not, she does not fear us in our natural shape. She has a place to live, and she can create original art. She is content.”

  “But she can never leave.”

  “Her vigilance keeps your world safe. She exists as an immense Door and as herself simultaneously. But no, she cannot leave.”

  “The things I saw in my visions, when I wasn’t right in the head, they came true. All but one. I saw Astrid when she was all dead and rotted, like a corpse. Does that mean she’ll die some day?”

  “Perhaps. You saw many things, from what Astrid tells me. She said she was in you
r mind, and it held much more than visions of her death.”

  He tried to remember, but all he knew was that the universe had felt so large and that he had understood things. But it was only a memory now. He retained little.

  “Could you take me to her?” Elliot asked. “Astrid managed to bring people to the Library. Maybe you can do the same.”

  “You would die quickly. Her island is a void place.”

  “Could it be changed to one I could inhabit? Or could she come to the Library to see me?”

  “You would return to that place?”

  “Only if I had a way back and I was sure the Librarian wouldn’t try to kill me.”

  “I can ask one of my sisters about it. She might know. She is far older and wiser than I.”

  They had reached Yelbeghen’s house, and he opened the front door. Elliot glanced back to see Hazel and Neil walking through the garden in the central courtyard.

  “You miss her, don’t you?” said Yelbeghen.

  “Of course.”

  “I have something for you. It’s for you and Sister both.”

  Sister was back at the Time Corps safe house in Los Angeles, but she and Elliot e-mailed and texted regularly. Yelbeghen took Elliot into a sitting room appointed with a black marble sculpture of a woman and an angular white sofa. To one side, right under the window, sat an antique writing desk. Yelbeghen pulled open a drawer and handed Elliot an envelope. He recognized Astrid’s handwriting immediately.

  “I’ll deliver your return letter to her,” said Yelbeghen. “Writing supplies are in the top drawer.”

  Elliot slipped the letter from Astrid between the pages of her sketch book and slid it back onto his bookshelf. He didn’t understand everything in it, as parts of his mind that she had accessed were now closed off. She said she understood about the General, the Messenger, the Healer, the Liar, the tortured innocent, the catalyst, the son and his father. At first, she thought he meant the members of the Time Corps, but roles existed twice. Many things happened twice. She said she understood it better now.