Mirrored Time (A Time Archivist Novel Book 1)

by J. D. Faulkner

  “Sorry. I’m not laughing at you.” He shrugged. “Being a traveler comes with a lot of perks. Jumping the streams makes you immune from time, in a way. If you continue to travel, you won’t age.”

  That got her attention. Her brow wrinkled. “What?”

  “If you continue to go through the time streams, the aging process stops. Physically, you stay the same. If we could figure out how to bottle it, we’d make a fortune.” He made a sweeping gesture to the view in front of them. “Welcome to the Fountain of Youth.”

  Gwen couldn’t find her voice. She stared at Rafe.

  He laughed. “Kind of sprung that one on you, didn’t I?”

  She jumped up to pace, her hands gesturing wildly in front of her. “So I’m what? Immortal?” Her voice squeaked on the last word.

  “I mean, as long as no one stakes you through the heart, obviously. You get used to the sunshine.”

  “What?” Her voice came out shrill. He better be joking.

  He laughed again. “Sorry, bad joke. Come on, sit back down. I won’t bite.”

  She glared at him but sat down. “Not funny.”

  “I’ll try to be serious, although it’s quite the chore.” He patted her on the knee. “Let me explain, before you decide to bite me.”

  “Rafe!” Her voice was exasperated.

  “Sorry, sorry, I’ll be good.” He raised his hands up in front of him in mock surrender. “The time streams don’t make you immortal—not exactly. If you stop traveling, you will start to age again. There might be a few stunted months from your trips, nothing noticeable.”

  He frowned. “And you can still be killed. It’s more difficult, but still possible.” He clapped his hands together. “There, that should clear things up.”

  “Not even close.” She crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Do you want me to get to the interesting stuff?”

  “As if being told you weren’t going to age wasn’t interesting.”

  “What was that, Gwendolyn dear?”

  She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. “Nothing. Do go on, sweetie.” Her smile was wicked.

  He shuddered. “Don’t start.”

  “I should think it’s fair play.”

  “But I am such a sensitive kind of guy.”

  She snorted. “Right.”

  He laughed and leaned back, crossing his arms.

  When he stayed silent, Gwen began to fidget. “Well?”

  He pursed his lips. “I’m beginning to know why Alistair is always so closed-lipped. It’s difficult to know where to start.” He picked up a pebble and rolled it through his fingers. Gwen bit her lip to prevent her exasperation from showing. “The Guardians fear the idea of change, of choice. They want us to believe we have no power over our destiny. Instead of protecting people, they care more about control. It’s why Alistair did the test without them. He knew they would try to force you down a certain path—one you don’t have to take.”

  Thoughts whirled in her brain, half-glimpsed truths colliding with still so many unanswered questions. She seized the first question she could think of. Maybe with a few more answers, things would start to organize themselves in her mind. “What’s so terrifying about change? Besides, I thought the defeated Archaic didn’t pass down his power. Wasn’t he the only one who could change time?”

  “The Guardians would tell you that any change to predetermined events threatens the entire existence of time. Here’s the puzzle. If I leave here and go to a point in the future, what happens when I meet you back at the Archives?”

  Her head spun. “I don’t understand.”

  His smile was apologetic. “Let me try again. I was born in the future, right?”

  “If you say so.”

  He gave her a look. “Really? You can accept that mirrors take you to different universes, but you can’t accept I was born in a different time than you?”

  “It does seem a bit far-fetched.”

  He snorted.

  “Like everything else,” she grumbled.

  “Bear with me, okay? Just focus on how fluid time is, then it doesn’t seem like such a big deal.”

  Sure. “Maybe not a big deal to you.”

  He cleared his throat. “I was born in the future, yes?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Yes, sir.”

  “Oh, sir. I could get used to that.” He winked and continued. “Born in a future that in your world hasn’t happened yet.”

  Her brow furrowed, but she kept silent, only nodding for him to continue.

  “I’m sitting here, though, next to you. So obviously, I’ve been born.”

  “So?”

  He leaned forward. “Doesn’t my existence here mean the future is predetermined?”

  She blinked, his argument falling into place. “Oh.”

  “Exactly. There is one version of every traveler. So only one chain of events will lead to me. Think of all the tiny happenings that needed to line up for me to be born. Just the tiniest change, and I wouldn’t be sitting here.”

  “But you are sitting here …” Her voice trailed off, as she tried to understand.

  “Quite handsomely, if I might add.”

  She glared.

  “Fine, judge a man for trying to inject humor into the situation.”

  “Rafe.” Her voice held a warning. “Explain what you mean, or I’ll find a way to make sure those events don’t line up.”

  He laughed. “That’s just it; you can’t. I am here, so those events have lined up. Nothing you can do to stop it. Blame the Guardians; it’s their doctrine that means you have to put up with me.”

  She ignored his joke. “If there is nothing I can do, and a very specific chain of events have to happen for you to be alive … then there’s no way to change the past; it’s all already happened.” The thought was discouraging. Why have such an amazing gift if there was no purpose to it?

  “Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner.”

  “So what’s the point if it already happened? What if I wanted to save a life? If they didn’t survive in your future, there would be no reason to try. I would already have failed.”

  “The Guardians would say it was destiny.” He shook his head. “An idiotic idea if there ever was one. I don’t hold to the idea of a linear time. I think it’s more like light refracting off a bright surface. And to me, this place proves it. We are so stuck in seeing time linearly that we can’t see the truth in front of our very eyes. This place exists in many times at once. So can we. It means time is fluid, shifting. Event A doesn’t always have to lead to Event B in a straight line.”

  “You lost me.” She shook her head. “If something happens between those two events, something monumental, it would change what was meant to happen. You wouldn’t be born.”

  Running his tongue over his teeth, he frowned. “Time for another complication.”

  Gwen groaned, rubbing her hands over her face. “God, you sound like Alistair.” She giggled at his stricken face.

  “Save me from that future.” He laughed and shook his head. “The Guardians would say it couldn’t be changed. I would say it could be. There are thousands of different universes, each one created from a change. Who’s to say I come from the same universe as you?”

  “So you’re an alien?”

  He rolled his eyes.

  “What? I didn’t know you were the only one who could try to be funny.” She tried to think through the idea. “So you’re saying an event that happened in your past … I could change in my future and it would just make my universe diverge from yours?” What kind of nonsense did I just say?

  “Exactly. Regular humans have choices. If you were just Gwen, legal assistant extraordinaire, I could come back to this moment again and again and lead you to a different choice. Each would lead to a different universe.”

  “It’s charming you think I could be so easily led.”

  “Oh, I can be very, very persuasive.”

  She snorted. “Regardless, I still don’t u
nderstand how it wouldn’t be breaking the rules. You would be changing the past. If I mocked you so terribly that you cried—” She grinned at him. “—then you couldn’t come back and change that. The girly tears have already been shed.”

  “Delightful.”

  “Not my fault you’re such a sensitive flower.”

  He chuckled. “Anyway, your question. I couldn’t change it in my past. I cried.” He pretended to glower. “Still, I could come to a point in your life where that didn’t happen. Then there would be two time streams even if just one past for me.”

  Her head hurt. This was like Schrodinger’s cat all over again. While the box is closed, Rafe exists in a state of crying and not crying. Ugh. “I still don’t get why the Guardians find this idea so dangerous.”

  He nudged her. “The Guardians are charged with protecting the time streams.”

  “As you have said. Repeatedly. It doesn’t explain anything no matter how many times you say it.”

  “Hey! Do you want to tell the story, or should I?”

  She smiled. “Oh please. Do continue.”

  “The Guardians think these small changes would lead to destruction. They think one change has the power to cause entire universes to crumble in on themselves. To them, time is nothing more than a house of cards. And even the smallest gust of wind can bring it tumbling down.” He flattened the blades of grass with a swipe of his hand. “It’s why the idea that we have choices, that time refracts instead of continues along in a steady path, is so dangerous to them. If we have a choice, how much more fragile does this house of cards become?”

  “So how are these choices any different than the power to change—which we aren’t supposed to have.”

  “You could allow a human to seize every opportunity and create new universes, but you can’t change your own past. So to go back to your idea of saving someone’s life, I couldn’t save that person in my universe. But, I could go to a different time and save them; they just wouldn’t be my version.”

  She rubbed her temples. “So really, you can’t save them.”

  He lifted one shoulder. “If you want to be specific, I guess not. Our interaction with human lives makes their lives unchangeable, to a point. We can’t prevent something that has happened to us. So if something happens to a person when they are around us, well, we can’t stop that either.”

  “It seems so useless.”

  All playfulness left his face. “This is why the Guardians have insisted on testing every single person who has access to the time streams. They want to make sure no one can change things that they think are meant to be. I’m not sure how they police it, although they are remarkably successful. It helps that, up until now, the Guardians had exclusive access to the testing room. Your test required a certain amount of secrecy—and more than a little skill at breaking into safes.”

  “That’s why you stole the key!” Gwen’s voice was high.

  “Well, not every day do I get the chance to thumb my nose at the establishment.” He sounded smug.

  “Why do I doubt that?” She smiled at him. “Why so much control over the test? I had already entered the time streams. Couldn’t I do it the same way again?”

  “Who knows their motives? Did I know I could make gateways from mirrors before I took the test? Not specifically. But I sure as hell knew the river outside my city was not ordinary.”

  He rubbed his arm, as if remembering a long ago pain. “To the Guardians, uncontrolled entrance is dangerous, and a person with the power to change time is the most dangerous of all. The Guardians created the test to make sure no one else had that same power. Or, I guess, should they ever find that person, that they would be able to control them.” He shrugged. “I think they like being able to keep track of everyone, and that’s easy when they are the experts on interpreting people’s gifts.”

  “I thought no one could ever have the power to change time again after the Archaic was defeated?” Always talking in circles. Maybe time traveling should come with a User’s Guide, or a PhD in Physics.

  Rafe shrugged. “They say there is an exception to every rule. I think the Guardians want to be sure it can never happen again.”

  “Wonderful. So you’re telling me even in time travel, there is someone who wants me to stand in line to get my time traveler’s license?”

  His laugh echoed through the temple. “Something like that. Alistair can handle them. He and the Guardians may not get along, but as keeper of the Archives, he plays an important enough role that the Guardians don’t have complete control over him.”

  “And this all happens in the basement of my local courthouse.” Her voice was bland.

  “Not quite. You have to think that because we can make gateways to anywhere else, any time else. There may be an entrance at the courthouse; however, the Archives exist in many varying places and times all at once.”

  Gwen leaned her head back against the fallen wall, closing her eyes with a sigh. “Will this ever make any sense?”

  “Patience, young grasshopper. You just learned about the Archives. It’s not going to all make sense overnight.”

  She opened her eyes to see him standing, hand outstretched to help her up. When she clasped her fingers around his, he pulled her to her feet.

  “Time is relative and all, but we should get back to Alistair. I can take us back to the Archives, and it shouldn’t be too long since we left. But this place exists with rules of its own. We could have been gone for minutes or hours.”

  He laughed. “Part of its charm. I give it five stars.” He started digging through his pockets, pulling out another small mirror, less decorative than the one that had taken them to the temple.

  Gwen touched his arm. “Thank you for taking me here. And thank you for not asking me what I saw in my test.”

  His face was solemn. “What the room gives you is more important than what the room shows you, but I still haven’t forgotten the things I saw. And I wish someone had taken me away from it all.”

  There was a hidden pain in his eyes that Gwen wished she could soothe, but she just smiled. Alistair was safe. Rafe? She had a feeling Alistair’s words could be equally pertinent to him: And now for another complication. So she stayed quiet while he wrapped his hand around her arm and the temple around them faded into black.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ALISTAIR LOOKED UP from his reading when they walked into the room. Carefully marking his place in the small leather book, he laid it on the table next to him.

  “Feeling better?”

  “She might be. The diner is probably in a mad dash trying to restock their ice cream.”

  Gwen glared at Rafe, her cheeks pinking. Having Rafe tease her was one thing. Having her dignified boss know how much she could inhale in one sitting was a little embarrassing. “I do, thanks. Sorry about earlier.” She rubbed her thumb over the top of her compass. “It was still too fresh.”

  Alistair inclined his head. “Again, I apologize for my earlier impatience. I should have respected your need for time away from all this.” He looked around the room as if seeing it for a first time. “The Archives can quickly become the sole focus of your life.” He blinked. “It’s best to remember there are other things outside these hallways—more important things.”

  He sighed and shook his head. “Enough philosophy from an old man. I know you didn’t leave the test empty-handed.”

  Gwen held out the compass.

  “Of course. If you would give me just a moment, I would like to consult my books.” He disappeared without another word.

  She stared at the closed door before giving Rafe a questioning glance.

  He shrugged, collapsing into Alistair’s abandoned chair. “Who knows with that one?” Shifting in the seat, he folded his arms and closed his eyes.

  Sitting next to him, she watched his face, hoping he would speak. Minutes passed and his eyelids didn’t so much as flutter. With a huff, she leaned back in her seat. Either he had the enviable talent of falling aslee
p in any position or he was faking it.

  Gwen took the opportunity to study his face. He had a high forehead and thick dark eyebrows, often quirked at a teasing angle. His cheeks were rough with stubble, and the dark shadow made it easier to notice a thin scar running over the edge of his jaw. It was old enough to be almost invisible. In the flickering of the fire, it stood out with a silvery glint. He mumbled, and Gwen’s gaze jerked to the fire, afraid to be caught staring.

  A quick peek showed his eyes were still closed. She continued her quiet contemplation. All of his features worked to make him handsome, although there was a roughness to his features that would prevent anyone from ever calling him pretty.

  He reminded her of the Roman statues she had studied in her art history class. The artists had never been afraid to add a few flaws, lips that were too thin or a nose that was a little crooked. Still, it was definitely an interesting face.

  A dark eye cracked open and peered at her. “Enjoying the view, or should I wake up now?”

  Her face flamed, but she kept eye contact with him as he stretched his back in a bone-popping arch. His lips quirked.

  “I didn’t have much else to look at.” She shrugged. “It passed the time.”

  He clutched at his chest and fell back in his chair. “How shall I survive the pleasure of such honey-tongued compliments?”

  Gwen was saved from answering when Alistair walked back in the room. A small form darted past his feet and jumped up onto her lap. She wrapped her arms around the fluff-ball of a cat, the animal rumbling and rubbing up against her arm.

  “I see you’ve met the cat.” Alistair’s voice was dry.

  “Does it have a name?” The purring increased as she rubbed its head.

  “Not one I prefer to repeat.”

  Rafe snorted, and Alistair’s expression became pained.

  Gwen glanced back and forth between the two. “Is there some joke I’m not getting?”

  Alistair sighed in defeat, and Gwen bit back a smile. “Cappuccino. The demon cat’s name is Cappuccino.”