‘And does it work?’
Ernst smiles. ‘So they say.’
‘But you’re not so sure?’
There’s a moment’s silence, then I gesture to Ernst to raise me up on my cushions. He does, making me comfy.
‘There,’ he says. ‘That’s better, eh?’
I study him a moment, realising how much I love the man. How many lives we owed each other. Then ask what Ernst knew I would ask.
‘Is she coming?’
He looks down, dark shadows crossing his face. ‘You … said you didn’t want to see her.’
‘Did I? When was that?’
‘Oh, a while back now. And then you had the stroke.’
‘I have been busy.’
And he nods. Like he’s run out of words.
‘So when did I last see her?’
‘I …’ He pauses. ‘Two years … maybe three. Objective, that is.’
I open my mouth and close it again, stunned by his words. Three years since I’d last seen her?
‘So we never made up?’
‘She tried. Only you didn’t want to know. You … you couldn’t forgive her, Otto.’
‘No?’
Only I have no recollection whatsoever of any of this. In fact there’s nothing since she left me that time.
Brain cancer and a stroke. That explained some of it, only …
‘Where’s she now?’
Ernst hesitates again.
‘Can I see her?’
He looks up sharply at that. ‘Can you …? Well, sure. I can arrange that. If that’s what you want.’
I try to smile, but only find myself grimacing. ‘Okay. Then do it. Ask her, Ernst. Ask her to come. I’ll see her now.’
502
And finally she comes.
She hesitates at the doorway looking across at me, taking in the whiteness that dominates the room, like it’s some kind of tomb and I’m already dead.
‘Otto …?’
‘Come here,’ I say, amazed by how beautiful she looks. Older, yes, but still the woman I fell in love with in what seems like centuries ago now.
She comes closer, the smile on her face pained. Three years, I remind myself. She hasn’t seen me in three whole years.
‘Katerina … bring me a mirror.’
She looks down, then shakes her head, a tear coursing down her cheek. ‘No, Otto. You don’t want to do that.’
Only I do. I have to know the worst. Know what the cancer’s done to me.
As it is, I look down at my hands and see how aged they are. An old man’s hands. Like Kolya’s earlier.
‘Bring a mirror.’ But my voice is frail, and when I look at her, there’s a strange horror in her face and she turns and runs from the room. Katerina. My eternal love. The other half of me. Gone once more. Run from me again.
503
An hour passes before Irina, the eldest of my girls, makes an appearance. She’s alone and carries something wrapped in a white cloth. A mirror, as it turns out.
Too weak to do it for myself, I have her hold it up, then stare.
Is that really me? That sad-eyed old man gazing languidly – stoically – into the glass?
If it is, I do not recognise him.
I look to Irina, seeking explanation, but she just bursts into tears. Wiping them away with the back of her hand, she sets the mirror down on the floor, then comes and sits by me, taking my cold, frail hands into the warmth of her own.
‘It’s so nice to see you, Papa. We didn’t think you’d ever wake up. We used to come here – us girls, that is – once a week, every week. Only nothing ever changed. And I guess … I guess she just got tired. And Will … Will’s a lovely man.’
Will’s a cunt, I think, surprised by the sheer violence of my thoughts. A total fucking weasel, slipping into her bed while I’m not there!
I close my eyes, tears welling once again.
‘Papa?’
‘Yes, my love?’
‘You know it’s ended. The War, that is … or whatever you want to call it. Within this loop, anyway …’
‘And Kolya?’
‘Kolya? We’ve come to an arrangement. He leaves us be and we leave him be. And generally it works. Though there are days …’
‘The youngster?’
She looks surprised that I know. ‘I spoke to the old man,’ I say.
‘Ah …’
Irina hesitates, as if running some tricky calculations in her head, then gently squeezes my hands again.
‘I need to go. But I can come back later, with whoever else is free. If that’s what you want? You probably need to rest after all your visitors … I …’
‘Irina … darling … will you do one thing for me?’
She smiles – broadly this time, ‘Of course. What do you want?’
‘I want you to get your mother to come back here. On her own. I … I need to talk things through with her.’
‘But, Papa …’
‘Just do it, yes?’
Looking grave now, she nods, and in an instant is gone, the imprint of her lips upon my cheek bringing me close to breaking down altogether. As it is a single tear forms on my eyelid then slowly falls, glistening in the whiteness before it settles on my chin.
Will she come? Will she really dare to come a second time?
Yes, and what must she be feeling right now? That she’s betrayed me? That she has proved the point I made about her and that bastard Shakespeare?
Kill me now, I beg, my head fallen back on the pillow like a sculpted shape of lead. Let me not be this awful parody of life.
Only I have no choice. Death holds me in its hand. And no escaping it.
For a time nothing. Only silence and the whiteness. And then the door eases open once again.
‘Otto?’
Her voice is soft and loving, almost a whisper.
I make a small snuffling sound and slowly open my eyes. ‘You came …’
She walks across and, smiling, leans close and kisses me. ‘Of course I came. Why would I not?’
‘I thought you’d left me. Abandoned me to Fate.’
I look past her at the door, then back at her. I want to ask her about everything. How – particularly – she gave up me for him. All the stages of it. How her love for me shrank even as it grew for him.
Only that way torment lies. So best not ask. Best say goodbye … and die. For what’s to live for if she’s not in my life?
She sits, pulling the chair closer to the bed, then takes my hands in hers.
‘All those times, Otto, All those times when you were gone. Months, almost years when you were elsewhere in Time. I was always faithful. But this was different. No one expected you to come back from this. He cut your throat, Otto, and there was nothing we could do about it. There was no way we could jump you out of there. And the blood you lost … When we got what we thought was your corpse back, it seemed to us all that Kolya had won. If not the War then certainly his personal altercation with you. You were as good as dead, Otto. And still I waited.’
‘So when did it happen? When did you … stop being patient?’
‘That’s unfair. You were as near dead as makes any medical difference, you know that? I sat here most nights, hoping and praying for some sign of improvement, but there was nothing. I cried endlessly, until I could feel nothing. And Will … he waited. He was patient beyond belief, despite all that stuff with Kolya’s films.’
The reminder is too painful. ‘How could you, Katerina? After all we went through, after all we shared?’
But when she makes to respond, I raise my hand. This much has worn me out. I have no energy left to argue more.
That much she seems to understand, however.
‘I’ll go now,’ she says, ‘Get some rest, I’ll see you in the morning.’
‘Morning?’
‘Yes, it’s night right now.’
‘I see.’
But sleep is dragging me down once more, like a drowned man, and I succumb. And
wake to find the doctor at my side, taking my blood pressure.
‘Good morning, Otto. How are you feeling?’
‘Alive,’ I say. And he nods and unstraps the monitor.
‘That’s good. Alive is good.’
And we both laugh; he strongly, I weakly.
‘Will I … improve?’
He looks to me. ‘Now, that’s a difficult one. You see, Time we can change. You we can’t.’
‘And?’ I ask, sensing he’s keeping things back from me.
‘Well, to put things at their simplest, Time has fucked with your system, Otto. Which is why I’m going to put you on a new drug we’ve developed. We call it Kairos Ignis. “Time’s Fire”. It’s something that our team conjured up. It’ll act to stabilise your state.’
‘Forgive me, but that’s rather vague. What does it actually do?’
‘It delays things. Stops you ageing quite so fast as you have been.’
‘So it’s a short-term solution?’
‘You want the truth, Otto?’
I’m not sure I do, but I make a small, nodding gesture with my head.
‘Okay … it’s like this. Every day we lose a bit more of you. Motor activity. Memory. All of the normal functions of the brain. But this slows that down. Reduces the losses.’
‘So I’m still dying?’
‘Second by second, I’m afraid.’
I close my eyes, Death, I think. It’s been waiting for me all this time, Up River. As patient as ever Will was.
And, thinking that, I come to a decision.
‘Doctor?’
‘Yes, Otto?’
‘Can you leave me now? Oh, and would you send Katerina again. I assume she’s out there, waiting.’
‘You assume rightly. But do you really want to see her again? Last time you met your vital signs went through the ceiling.’
‘I’ll be okay,’ I say. ‘Really, I … I need to see her. Straighten things out.’
‘Then see her you shall.’
He leaves. But for all his certainty, I’m not so sure Katerina will return. I mean … after what I said.
Even so, she comes.
‘Otto?’
She seems … quiet, contrite. Looking at her, and remembering the image from the mirror, I can’t see how it’s her fault that she fell for Will. He’s an attractive, talented man.
‘Does he love you?’ I ask, surprising her.
‘Will?’ She hesitates, but I sense that there’s no real hesitation. Not in her heart. ‘He loves me,’ she says quietly. ‘Yes.’
‘I’ve been thinking,’ I say, ‘And I know one thing for certain. I’ll never make love to you again. Not in this physical form.’
I see the pain that statement brings to her and look down. Saying this is breaking my heart, but it must be said. ‘You see, the way I look at it, I have two options. To rant and rage and leave you with unpleasant memories of me … Or make my peace with you and give my blessing.’
‘Your …?’ Her mouth drops open, realising the significance of what I’ve just said. ‘Your blessing, Otto?’
‘Yes. My blessing.’
‘Oh, Otto … you beautiful, beautiful man!’
Only I am tired now. ‘Bring him,’ I say, my eyelids closing once again. ‘An hour from now.’
And as I close my heavy eyes, so she kisses each lid in turn, with the softest, gentlest of kisses, and I smile, the smile of a finally contented man, feeling blessed to have known her. To have had her there at the centre of my life.
And sleep.
504
This then is the last of it.
Yes, but first I must thank them for their drug, which has brought me both the time and the clarity of mind to make sense of all I’ve lived through. And now, perhaps, to understand some very small part of it.
And to Kav, who has become a frequent visitor in these final days, joining me in that white room, his dead eyes smiling back at me.
As for me, I am a ruin. A fallen building, made up from the broken stones of a former life. My girls still come to visit me. I see the joy and sadness in their eyes. The love. Survivors all of them. All that is but one.
As for she whom I love most in this world and others, she watches always from the doorway, at a distance now, humbled, so she says, by my act of generosity, my letting go of her.
But little does she know. In those nights that are not nights, in that blanched and featureless cell, how much I long for her, crying myself to sleep recalling all we were to each other. But so it is. It is gone. All of it gone. And no returning.
So this I offer you. This commentary, set in Time. And as it ends, so I end too. Otto Behr, who was Reisende, time agent. Who crossed time itself to win a girl.
Who loved and feared and died. And was no more.
Six
And the Ruination of Worlds
505
Twenty years pass.
Out on the blighted beach of an ancient sea, beside an ash-charred battlefield piled high with corpses, a single figure moves through the drifting smoke, making their way slowly between the battle-weary figures in full combat dress, who, at the figure’s passing, kneel, bowing their heads.
The figure is clothed in dark, padded leathers and, as it comes closer, we see ‘it’ is a she, her long jet hair falling, curling, to her waist, a massive, high-powered laser clutched against her chest.
Beneath a torn and ragged flag, its oak shaft embedded in the clinging sand, she stops, looking down at the fallen warrior who lies face down beneath the fluttering banner, and, placing her boot firmly on his shoulder, turns him over …
Bloodied bone. Mud and ashes cling to his ruined face. She shakes her head, seeing at a glance that this is just another corpse, not the ancient and evasive one she’d hoped to find.
As she looks up, surveying the devastation, so we see she has her mother’s eyes, and recognise just who she is. For this is Martha, the Lost Girl. The Abandoned Child. Empress of all the Minor Worlds. Reisende. Mistress of the Time Lanes.
A wave rolls up the beach, the water thick with sludge, oil flowing about her booted feet, washing past her and then back. Like Time itself. And as it does, so she looks up at the stars.
And jumps …
There is silence. And then another wave rolls up the beach and back, washing ash and blood back into the great ocean. But she is gone. Back into the Lanes. Back to her pursuit.
506
Years pass. Long years, and yet time’s passage is the briefest augenblick, the merest flutter of the lashes.
We see it all as the gods do.
For have you any doubt? The gods exist, and they like to play their games. To stave off boredom, the sheer ennui of millennia; the dull drag of day follows day.
And maybe that explains it all. Maybe that’s all there is to it. All of it games, mere games, and our human lives just moves upon the board, the click of bone against wood.
Yet among the spreading trillions of humankind who fill every nook and cranny of the explored galaxy, there is a single one who is unique. The Lost Girl, they call her. But she has other names – the King-killer for one; or the One Who Was Foretold.
And so we see her, surveying the destruction she has wrought, the dark scar of a million ruined craft; mighty ships that once were powerful, but now drift slowly in the vacuum, shutting out great swathes of the star-spattered night, from hub to rim, like spilled ink on a blackened page.
So it is. About her Space unfolds like Russian dolls, layer upon hidden layer; here where her pursuit ends; here where all trace of the one she followed vanishes, sinking down into the endless layers of nothingness.
Here, at what has been known since time began as ‘the bottleneck’. Here in deepest space; where a thousand battles have been fought; where great emperors have wagered their massive fortunes …
And lost.
She smiles. Maybe this time she will capture him. Only how can she be sure? He has evaded her a thousand times in a thousand different ways.
The Master of Time, he calls himself. Lord Chronos. Or, in a simpler vein, Kolya. Here before all others and here when they have gone.
She stands there on the bridge of her craft – the most powerful ever built; the product of mankind’s zenith – and sniffs the air, as if, like a dog, she can sense him, close now; closer than he’s ever been. Yet still no trace.
Instinct, that’s all she has. Instinct and a mastery of this latest phase of the game, where a single move might take a thousand years.
‘Picture this,’ she whispers, remembering her dead father’s words.
But this is beyond picturing. For one cannot imagine the complexity of each move in this latest phase of things.
She turns, looking to the one who’s ever there, his head shaven, the dark scar of the intrusive surgery he suffered eons past mimicking the greater scar in the heavens. The one whose name was lost. Her father’s saviour. There for him and there for her also.
Picture this.
Only He who is her Enemy has gone well beyond picturing. Beyond simple imagining. Out there – somewhere and in some fashion – he has reconstructed thought itself; taken the Time equations and made a song of them.
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THE BEAR AND THE NIGHTINGALE
Katherine Arden
‘Frost-demons have no interest in mortal girls wed to mortal men. In the stories, they only come for the wild maiden.’
In a village at the edge of the wilderness of northern Russia, where the winds blow cold and the snow falls many months of the year, an elderly servant tells stories of sorcery, folklore and the Winter King to the children of the family, tales of old magic frowned upon by the church.
But for the young, wild Vasya these are far more than just stories. She alone can see the house spirits that guard her home, and sense the growing forces of dark magic in the woods …
Atmospheric and enchanting, with an engrossing adventure at its core, The Bear and the Nightingale is perfect for readers of Naomi Novik’s Uprooted, Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus, and Neil Gaiman.
The Master of Time: Roads to Moscow: Book Three Page 45