Travel Glasses

by Chess Desalls

  “There’s an entire sea behind one of these doors?” I asked, mystified.

  “Yes.” Valcas grinned. “Right here behind this door, which just happens to be where we’ll be having brunch.”

  The door opened onto a wide terrace filled with round cloth-covered tables that overlooked the sea. Soft music swirled past a buffet table of fragrant pastries, sliced meats and a type of fruit juice that I’d probably never forget—laramile. I looked out at the waves as they lightly lapped the white sand beach. The sky overhead was clear, blue and sunless. Valcas gestured for us to line up at the buffet table where we each filled our plates. Then we all sat together at a table near the edge of the terrace.

  “How long is the hallway?” asked Shirlyn. “From the outside, the wall doesn’t look like it ever ends.”

  “It expands with necessity. I still haven’t gone through every door.”

  “But how do you know which door goes where?” I asked.

  “It takes decades of practice, but the doors are grouped together into areas and places that are geographically nearest each other.”

  I thought of the room where we had dinner earlier that morning. “Was the room with the fireplace, the place where you met us when we arrived earlier, in the main house or somewhere else?”

  “That was inside the main house.”

  “Oh.”

  “You seem very interested in all of this, Calla.”

  I buckled under the intensity of Valcas’ gaze. He wasn’t wearing his glasses. I almost wished he was wearing them now so that I would be less flustered.

  “Shirlyn told Romaso and me that your parents created this place. It’s really impressive.”

  Valcas grinned. “I’m glad you like it.”

  We focused on eating for a while. The music grew noticeably louder as our chewing slowed. Shirlyn begged Romaso to dance, so of course he danced with her, leaving Valcas and me alone at the table with our empty plates. I looked over at him. He was watching me with thoughtful, searching eyes.

  “You have more questions,” he said.

  I absently twisted the ends of my napkin. “Yes. Quite a few, actually.”

  “I want to hear your questions.”

  “Will you answer them?”

  “That all depends on the questions.”

  I sniffed. Of course it did. It always did.

  “I can’t answer anything that you don’t ask,” he said. “Please, let me hear them.”

  Valcas bent his head closer to me. His smile didn’t melt my confidence the same way his eyes did. Come on, Calla, pull yourself together.

  “Okay, well, what do your parents do that requires them to be gone for so long?”

  “They’re travelers.”

  “Yes, I understand that. How do they travel, though? What method do they use?”

  Valcas regarded me with a new intensity. “The TSTA sells specialized travel equipment and transportation, for a price. The equipment is designed to blend in with the buyer’s environment so that it does not attract any unnecessary attention. Only very wealthy families participate since the business tends to be so cumbersome and expensive. Have I answered your question?”

  I nodded. His answer helped me to make more sense of what Shirlyn had said about her family time traveling by yacht.

  Valcas continued in a hushed voice as if he was sharing a very personal secret. “If only a more readily accessible accessory for the transport existed. Take these glasses, for instance.”

  I nearly spit out a mouthful of laramile as he removed a pair of sunglasses from his pocket and placed them on the table.

  “Glasses?” I winced.

  “Yes, if someone could just wear these and go anywhere he or she wished to travel, it would be so much easier, less expensive, convenient…” His voice trailed off, eyes staring out toward the sea. He turned back to me and handed me the glasses.

  “I believe this particular pair belongs to you. The guards found them in the grounds this morning in the area where you were discovered last night. One of the guards described a dark-haired beauty who was wearing these on top of her head before they fell. That must be you.”

  “Thank you,” I replied, both stunned and self-conscious. It struck me as odd that both versions of Valcas had made some comment to me about me being beautiful. I quickly slipped the travel glasses into my skirt pocket.

  Valcas smiled. “Do you dance?”

  I shrugged and looked over at Romaso and Shirlyn, longing to experience even just a shade of whatever it was that they felt for each other. I felt Valcas stand up next to me. When I looked up at him I saw that he was offering me his hand.

  I took a deep breath and took his hand. “I was once a half-decent follow during a five-step waltz.”

  “That’s perfect,” he answered. “I know that dance.”

  Shirlyn giggled as Valcas and I passed by her and Romaso on the terrace overlooking the sea. Romaso whistled and gave me a playful wink. I could have punched him, but I smiled instead.

  AFTER BRUNCH, Shirlyn insisted on taking a nap. Valcas offered to take Romaso and me fishing behind one of the other white doors that housed a lake, but I bashfully declined, encouraging Romaso to go along without me. I wanted to see if I could contact Edgar again with the travel glasses. Our prior conversation had ended on a really bad note. I wanted to make sure that he was all right and find out what Enta’s reaction was all about.

  I also wanted some time to look around on my own without the distraction of a certain pair of gorgeous eyes. My time there was limited. I had no clue what time that night everybody’s memories would wash away, turning their brains into pumpkins. My best guess was midnight, but my sources of information were not very reliable. Either way, I didn’t want to have to explain who I was and why I was there all over again.

  The thought crossed my mind that I could introduce some type of object with a writing on it, a letter maybe, that would help to explain my presence at Valcas’ home. That could buy me some time in the white tower. Then I could destroy the object before anyone found out about it. The whole idea seemed pretty complicated, not to mention dangerous. Having the TSTA after me was the last thing I needed, though, so I abandoned my ridiculous idea in its entirety.

  Instead, I did something that made perfect sense. I plopped down onto my pillow bed in the suite I shared with Shirlyn’s silhouette and tried to call her presently existing father with a pair of sunglasses.

  “Edgar? Edgar,” I whispered.

  He didn’t answer. Neither did Enta.

  I looked the glasses over in my hands, making sure that green-eyed Valcas had given me the correct pair. Dark and sleek, they looked the same as when I last used them. I brushed away a couple grains of reddish-purple sand that were stuck in one of the hinges. Satisfied that these were the travel glasses, I slipped them into my backpack and listened quietly for a few moments to make sure Shirlyn was still asleep. Then I quietly left my pillow bed and opened the door into the hallway.

  Countless doorways stood along the hallway walls, each leading to a place filled with potential sources of information. There wasn’t another person in the hallway as far as I could see. Taking my backpack with me, I quietly left the suite. The fireplace room was a few minutes’ walk away if I turned left. Valcas had said that particular room was inside the main house and that the doors were geographically arranged.

  Figuring that I wouldn’t find much by searching the guest suites, I turned left and walked toward the section of doorways that I guessed would lead to additional rooms inside the main house. I counted to 210 as I walked, stopping after roughly three and a half minutes’ worth of seconds. It was so quiet that I could hear the soft squeaking sounds my running shoes made as I walked across the shiny white floor.

  I opened a door to my right and peeked inside. Mouthwatering smells of savory meats and baked goods wafted toward me followed by the sounds of shouting and the clanging of pots and pans. A kitchen. I closed the door. The two doors on either side of t
he kitchen were locked. I turned around to the opposite side of the hallway and tried doorknobs until I found another door that had been left unlocked. When I opened it, I heard voices inside. Two plump women were sitting before a fireplace, mending articles of clothing by hand. As they sewed they gossiped about one of the cooks who had “taken a fancy” to the daughter of the lead guardsman. I realized that I was intruding on a private conversation and closed the door before they noticed me.

  The next door opened with a faint creak. A comforting and familiar smell tickled my nose. Library books. I made sure the hallway was still unoccupied before entering the room and carefully closing the door behind me. Shelves of books lined a shallow square room. Both the walls and the shelves reached three stories high, dwarfing two tables that sat in the center of the room under piles of games and picture books. I browsed a row of titles. Each book spine was embossed with a single first name. Mortimer, Catherine, Gregory, Gregory II, Salvatore, Ashta, Kendall, Alfred, Alfred II and Alfred III, to name a few. There were hundreds, thousands of different names as far up the shelves as I could see. How strange, I thought. What kind of books were these?

  I reached for the volume entitled Mortimer. As I opened the book, a projection of light sprang forth from its pages, touched the ground and then grew upward into the shape of a person. Stunned, I dropped the book to the floor where it landed, still open, with a thud. The three-dimensional projection looked just like a real adult human being with stocky limbs, brown hair, brown eyes and a nose that was a touch too long. It had the same bright and vivid glow as the photos in Sable’s family album, but the image that formed was solid and opaque. Having been completely absorbed in my inspection of the projection, I didn’t notice that the projection was also looking at me until it spoke.

  “Hello Valcas, it’s me, your good friend Mortimer. What would you like to do today? Shall we read a book? Play a game of chess, perhaps?”

  Goosebumps spread across my arms and shoulders as I stood there staring. At a complete loss for words, I watched Mortimer as he walked over to one of the two tables and began setting up a chessboard. I reached for the next book, Catherine, gently placing it on the ground next to Mortimer’s volume before opening it. A lovely round-faced young girl sprouted up and introduced herself to Valcas in a soft sing-song voice.

  “Why, hello, Valcas,” she added with a curtsy. “It is a nice day to visit with friends.”

  “Oh look, Valcas! Catherine has come to play,” Mortimer called out from the table. “Let me find a game more suitable for three players.”

  My lips tugged into a frown as I began to realize the eerie sadness of what I was seeing. This was not a library filled with reading material. Each volume contained an illusory playmate, a superficial friend likely designed by Sable and Jim to entertain Valcas while they were away. My heart burned with sympathy for him. It was as if he were being tricked and abandoned at the same time.

  “He must have been such a desperately lonely child if he had to turn to these book people for company,” I whispered to myself.

  The door behind me slammed shut with a loud bang. I spun around to see Valcas taking in the scene with a pained expression. Absorbed in the library and its contents, I hadn’t seen or heard him enter.

  “You really shouldn’t be in here. What are you looking for, Calla?”

  “Nothing.” The lie escaped my mouth faster than I could think. “I just went for a walk. I didn’t mean to—I’m so sorry.”

  “You understand what you’ve found in here, though, don’t you?” he growled.

  “Maybe. I mean, I think so. I’m not sure,” I stuttered, my lower lip trembling.

  “Then let me tell you something.” Valcas reached past me to close the books of Mortimer and Catherine, causing the projections to vanish in a puff of smoke. “You need to understand that you really are no different.”

  “Excuse me?” I tried to step back and look away, but Valcas and his pain-scorched eyes halted me, demanding my full attention.

  “No doubt you’ve experienced something similar in books, movies, novels—whatever you use as an excuse to get away, to suspend reality. Literary characters, like these projections, draw you in and cultivate feelings of friendship on your part. Although, no matter how much you learn about them, how much time you spend with them—how far you can see into their thoughts and words, how they interact with others, their looks, what they wear—they will never, ever know you.”

  His voice rose markedly louder, even though he was just inches away. “They do not consider your feelings, couldn’t possibly care what you look like, and don’t even know you’re watching, listening, reading. Meaningful interaction is wholly absent.”

  Valcas paused, placing one hand on my cheek while he firmly looked into my eyes, his blazing green eyes now cloudy with emotion. “Do you understand now?”

  “I wouldn’t have thought—” I choked back the rest of my sentence to wipe away tears that had been slowly building.

  Valcas released me and turned away to look up to the third story, the top level of shelves that held the books I imagined he last opened as a teenager. He gritted his teeth.

  “An author’s creations, Calla. Imagined personalities. Whether or not based on existing counterparts, these fictional characters are not real. Much like I was to learn that the contrived personalities with whom I so often spent—no, wasted—my time, were not real. The reality is that in that moment, pleasant or otherwise, you really are alone.”

  I reached out to him. “Valcas—this was a mistake, a very big mistake. It won’t happen again. I promise.”

  I meant every word I said. If he were to give me another chance after causing him so much pain and embarrassment, I would go back to personally asking him my questions. There would be no more searching the tower on my own. I was done.

  Valcas nodded and reached for my hand, grasping it firmly as I accepted. Together we walked out of the library and into the hallway where he led me back to the guest suite.

  “I’ll come back for you and Shirlyn when dinner is ready,” he said in a low voice, his fingertips brushing mine as he let go of my hand.

  I AVOIDED dinner that evening. Unable to face Valcas so soon after what had just happened, I ran and hid in the bathroom of our guest suite when I heard a knock at the door. Shirlyn pleaded with me to come out, but I told her I wasn’t feeling well and to go on ahead without me. I literally felt sick. Shirlyn must have taken pity on me because she left me alone after I told her I wasn’t hungry. It took a lot to ruin my appetite.

  I heard voices in the hallway, but I couldn’t make out what anyone was saying. Please, please, I prayed, go on without me. Thankfully, the door closed without any further requests that I go to dinner. I left the bathroom when all was quiet again. I knew that Valcas wouldn’t remember anything that happened in the library the next morning. I envied him for that, knowing that I would never be able to forget.

  As I shrank into the pillow bed, I tried to remember what I used to brood about before meeting Valcas. He single-handedly managed to take my brooding to all new levels. Yet, if it hadn’t been for Valcas I never would have met Edgar, and I would still be back at Uncle Al’s cottage alone and unhappy. My heart ached for poor Edgar. I really hoped he was feeling better and wondered whether he’d made it back to his workshop in the woods. I pulled myself out of bed and reached for my backpack. The travel glasses were nestled inside. I removed them from my backpack and placed them on my face.

  “Edgar, are you there?”

  A familiar face in a blue bonnet appeared against a white background. “Hello, Calla. He’s here, but he hasn’t been speaking.”

  “Oh. Edgar’s not any better?”

  “No. He’s much worse. I’m afraid to transport him home. I don’t think he’s strong enough. We’re going to need your help, Calla.”

  “What can I do?”

  “I need someone who can travel to go to his workshop, find a recipe and gather ingredients.”

&n
bsp; “What kind of recipe?”

  “Edgar has run out of elixir. If I had the recipe, I could try to brew it for him. However, I’m not sure I would have all of the ingredients that I expect are somewhere in his workshop. I would need to leave him here to be able to search properly, but he’s too weak. I can’t leave him alone.”

  “The youth elixir? Did he really invent something that can extend his life?”

  “Yes.”

  Enta’s request for me to travel to Edgar’s workshop weighed heavily on me. I had barely scratched the surface of Valcas’ past. Leaving now would mean starting all over again. I pushed this thought to the back of my mind. I could always return to Valcas’ past. Edgar needed me now. Of course I would help Edgar. It was the least I could do after all that he’d done for me. Unfortunately, when it came to the actual traveling part, I had a slight problem.

  “I don’t know how to get outside to a vehicle to be able to travel to Edgar’s workshop.”

  “How did you get there? Couldn’t you just use the vehicle you used to arrive?”

  “I don’t know where it is. We traveled here in one of Edgar’s motorboats, which turned into something called an Estrel-Flyer, some kind of flying motorcycle. We were captured and questioned, and now I’m trapped inside this bizarre world. Not only do I have no idea how to get out, but I did something really stupid today and I think I’m going to be watched more closely from now on.”

  “I see. Who traveled there with you?”

  “Shirlyn and Romaso. I wanted to travel here without them, but then Valcas showed up at the harbor in Folkestone. I think he was already there waiting for me. Shirlyn and Romaso were in the motorboat with me when I used the travel glasses to escape.”

  “I see,” Enta said again. “I’ll take care of Edgar as long as I can. I trust that you will do what you can as well.”