I sat there, bored, in a dimly lit room that was as cold as a cave and just about as scenic. Valcas had run off again after we’d left Sable’s place. Technically, we were still on her property—underneath her backyard—where her family had built an underground training facility. My spine had prickled in anticipation of adventure as we’d descended into a well that opened up to an underground staircase lined by moss-covered stone walls. That feeling went away as soon as Ivory led us to a conference room similar to the one at TSTA Headquarters where Mom showed Valcas and me the video recording and slides of Ray and Ivory.
Feeling Ray looking at me, I realized I’d stopped paying attention again. How he could remain so focused all the time was beyond me. I looked up at the screen, which was now bright white.
“Is that supposed to be a picture of the Uproar?” I asked.
Ivory snorted. “And this is why I like you—despite the fact that you stopped paying attention long before I ran out of slides.”
“Sorry.” I blushed. “How are we supposed to find the Uproar? It’s nothing but light. It sure packs a punch, though,” I said, remembering how it had knocked me to the ground twice at the dock.
Ray ran a hand through his hair and shrugged. “I’ll bet it does. Like you said, the Uproar is something that can be felt, similar to the traces of past individuals brought into a different time period and then left there by travelers.”
“You mean like silhouettes?” I asked.
Ray nodded, grinning. His dark blue eyes sparkled as if he’d read something more in my response.
“What?”
“What’s it like to be able to transport someone else from another place and time?”
“Nothing, really,” I said. “The hard part was trying to figure out how to get them to agree to come with me.”
His mouth fell open. I furrowed my brow, completely confused as to why someone with Ray’s talents would be interested in something as simple as my experience with Romaso and Shirlyn’s silhouettes.
Ivory stood listening with her arms crossed. “Them?” she asked.
“Um, yeah. I traveled to seventeenth-century Venice to find a guy named Romaso and asked him to travel with me to twentieth-century England so I could find Edgar’s daughter, Shirlyn.”
Ray and Ivory looked at each other and smiled.
“So then,” I continued, “I got this bright idea to search into Valcas’ past, only I didn’t know what color his eyes were before the travel glasses changed them. After I figured that out, I planned to travel to his past once I found transportation. And I would have gone there alone, except that the presently existing Valcas thought it would be a good idea to try to run all of us over with a motorboat near Folkestone Harbor—”
“He did what?”
I started. Ivory’s eyes smoldered like charcoal. She looked absolutely outraged.
“Yeah.” I blinked, remembering. “At first, transporting Romaso and Shirlyn’s silhouettes was a huge mistake. We had to escape, and I was so distracted that we ended up in a Nowhere. From there I had to explain what was going on—Romaso’s memories from the day before had already washed away by then, and I somehow managed to convince Shirlyn to go along with me to Valcas’ past. Romaso just kind of followed along. The guard at the White Tower was surprised that I was able to bring two people with me from different places and times, and so that’s how I found out what a silhouette is.”
Ray grabbed my shoulders and looked into my eyes. “Calla, do you know what this means? Do you know what you are?”
I gulped, and then slowly shook my head. “No,” I said quietly. “I just figured that was something any traveler could do.”
Ray dropped his hands and stared at me.
Ivory clicked off the projector, walked over and knelt down beside us. “Does Valcas know about all of this?” she asked.
“I think he knows about most of it—he saw me take off with both Romaso and Shirlyn. Why? What does it mean?”
Ray cocked his head to the side and wiped his palms on his jeans. “Most travelers are never able to transport individuals from other places and times. Fewer than fifty percent of us get a once-in-a-lifetime chance to bring others with us, but that usually only happens in extreme emergency situations. It never happens again, but the experience alone marks extraordinary ability.” He sat back in his chair and looked at me, mystified. “During your hearing, when you mentioned having interacted with silhouettes, I thought you’d been fortunate enough to have your one and only chance. But this…”
I stood there staring, hanging on to Ray’s every word.
Ivory smirked. “Well, now that we’ve got your attention, guess what? You, my sweet, are what the TSTA calls a Remnant Transporter.”
A REMNANT Transporter?
My eyes did just about everything but cross and swap sockets.
“Did you both know that I was something like this when you agreed to join the mission?”
“I kind of suspected,” said Ivory as she stood up and started arranging papers. “But I didn’t realize your talent had manifested. Each of our talents is hereditary. Ray comes from a long line of Detail Technicians and my father was a third-generation military Chauffeur. And Valcas seems to be just as much in awe of you as he’s always been with your father. Your mother’s a nice lady, Calla, but as far as I can tell, the talent is probably not coming from her side.”
I nodded. I knew it. I’d probably always known there were things about me that were different than the rest of my family—things that I’d only hoped were traits I’d inherited from my father. I never imagined it would be anything like this, though.
“Do you know my father too?”
Ivory shook her head. “No, but I look forward to meeting Plaka when we find him. I really do.”
I got up out of my chair and stretched. The first little bout of training had ended up being more informative than I’d thought it would be. I wondered what was up next.
“So, what other training are we going to be doing?” I asked.
“That’s really all I have for you two. Valcas should be back any minute now. He’s going to train you separately for the rest of the day so that you can gain more mastery over the travel glasses. He said something about communicating versus recording versus traveling… Whatever that means.” Ivory smirked again. “That leaves me to go work out and Ray to do whatever exercises he does to stay brainy and amazing.”
Ray rolled his eyes as Ivory threw her arm around his shoulders and led him out of the room.
I poured myself a glass of Aborealian water and waited around for Valcas to show up. As I waited I swiped my fingertips across the watch the TSTA gave me, stopping when I got to EST, East Coast Standard Time, the area of the United States where I’d spent most of my life. Mom had grown up somewhere in Massachusetts. From her, I’d inherited my love of water—lakes, rivers, oceans. I frowned, wondering whether I’d ever given her credit for that before. I didn’t remember having told her in person. And I had no idea how soon I’d be seeing her again.
When Mom’s work assignments, her trips away from home, had gotten longer—and I now realized more intense, as a TSTA Facilitations Communicator—we’d left Mom’s hometown to live with Uncle Al at Lake Winston, where we’d often visited during summer vacations. At first, I’d loved it there.
Each year, tourist season began with a countywide celebration. I remembered Mom holding me near the lake while fireworks blasted from high up on the mountain, on the other side. Sprinkles of light in burning golds, fiery reds and glowing greens filled the dark sky above us and reflected off the lake. We watched while eating popcorn, hot dogs and lobster rolls that the local crab shack owners brought by in a red cart. We washed down our snacks with homemade fruit sodas and waited until the echoes of thunder from the grand finale died down and the smoke cleared, signaling the beginning of another summer.
During that time of year, Lake Winston drew crowds of people, both locals and tourists. Many families vacationed ther
e. Some were made up of young couples beginning their lives together. Some were old couples enjoying the rest of their time with each other. But most often, there were families with parents and children—families complete with a mom, a dad and kids. Having no brothers or sisters of my own, and having never met my father, I watched the lake families a lot, curious to see how they interacted and wondering what it would be like to be part of such a family. I soon learned that they were quite different than my tiny family of Mom, Uncle Al and me.
I also learned that the kids who laughed and played together could be just as mean as those I’d met in grade school, the kids I’d left behind after graduating from junior high—back when I started high school completely online. The kids at the lake, both the locals and the tourists, certainly weren’t impressed by me. The one afternoon I did try to reach out to them, I’d been helping Uncle Al clean up the grounds near the dock.
A boy about my age, with shaggy brown hair, had run from his group of friends to catch a runaway beach ball. I stopped and stared as he picked up the ball. He smiled at me. Too shy to smile back, I waved my hand to let him know I saw him.
“Hey there!” he’d called out. “You can hang out with us for a while if you want to.”
I’d looked up at Uncle Al, who was collecting metal soda cans and scraps of garbage from the grass around the lake and placing them in a plastic trash bag. He’d peered at me with his black eyes, and then raised his bushy eyebrows at the boy.
“What’s your name, son?”
“I’m Kevin,” the boy said. “Kevin Staunch. I live across the lake.”
“A local boy.” Uncle Al nodded in approval. “Run along, Calla. Go and have some fun. I’ll get this junk back home.”
When Uncle Al was out of sight, Kevin’s smile turned into a sneer. He grabbed my hand and pulled me over to the rest of his friends—one girl and three more boys. We didn’t play with the beach ball, though. It soon became clear that Kevin had another game in mind.
“The old man who owns the lake has a girl,” he said. “Says her name is Cow-la.”
“Calla,” I corrected. “He’s not my father; he’s my uncle, my mom’s brother—”
The other boys leered. “Sounds like Cow-la to me,” one of them said.
Blushing, I looked over at the girl for help. She was skinny with thin hair and an upturned nose. She wrinkled her nose as she looked me up and down. “Well, she looks like a cow to me,” she said.
“You know what they do to cows,” said another boy, as the group formed a circle around me and clasped hands.
I shook my head. “No,” I said, tears forming in my eyes.
Kevin sneered again. “Tip them,” he said, grabbing my shoulders and shoving me toward another boy in the group. The boy caught me and threw me to the ground. I lay there staring at the grass and the dirt, waiting for the burning in my cheeks to cool before I looked up.
The girl stepped forward. “Here, let me help you,” she said. She offered her hand, but something in her eyes made me wary.
“No,” I said as I stood up and brushed grass and dirt off my clothing. “I don’t need your help. I’m going home.”
I tried to run—to break through the circle of clasped hands, but the group of grinning children resisted and pressed in closer toward me, trapping me inside. One of the boys grasped me by the waist and squeezed the soft, flabby handles of flesh that bulged over the waistband of my jean shorts.
“Moo!” he yelled out.
The kids laughed and jeered. Closing in before I was able to stand up again, they continued taking turns shoving me toward each other and the ground.
I EMPTIED my water glass and blinked at the TSTA watch. It was three o’clock in the afternoon, EST. I’d been waiting roughly twelve minutes, and Valcas still hadn’t shown up. Everywhere and Everywhen, I read from the watch face. I wondered where and when Valcas was. I wasn’t looking forward to one-on-one training with him, and the Lake Winston memory hadn’t improved my mood.
“READY?”
I jumped. The voice—Valcas’ voice—had come from somewhere behind me.
I spun around in my chair. “How did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“I didn’t see you come in. Did you travel to the space right behind me?”
Valcas grinned.
“Well, did you?”
“No, but I suppose I could have. You were absorbed in your own thoughts again, lost in that faraway place where you transport yourself while thinking. You do that a lot. It’s not difficult to catch you by surprise.”
I shrugged. “I suppose not.” My response was nearly a sigh. I wasn’t sure whether I was annoyed with him or just tired. “At least I won’t have to worry about the impact of your arrival,” I said.
Valcas nodded, motioning for me to follow him out of the conference room. “I’m impressed by how much you’ve learned already.”
I gave Valcas a well-deserved eye roll. “It’s not like I had much of a choice. Like I told Commissioner Reese, I’ve had a crash course in all of this stuff since meeting you.”
Valcas’ jaw tightened.
“I get it,” I said. “I’m not mad at you anymore. Your people skills could use some work, though. You’re worse than I am.”
At that, Valcas tilted his head back and laughed. “I can’t disagree with that. Let’s get out of here. I want to show you something I think you might find more interesting than charts and data.”
We walked out of the conference room and through a tunnel with a long ramp that led back outside. I squinted at the violet-blue sky. It was bright outside even though, as Ivory had said, there was no sunlight in Aboreal. “This place is kind of weird. Do you come here often to visit your mother’s side of the family?”
“Not unless it’s absolutely necessary.” Valcas shrugged. “I don’t agree with most of the customs here. My mother checks in from time to time to deal with the upkeep of her family’s estate.”
“What about your father?”
“What about him?”
I frowned. I wasn’t sure whether Valcas’ father, Jim Hall, was still alive. I imagined he’d be nearly as old as Edgar. “Never mind,” I said. “It’s really none of my business.”
Valcas didn’t say anything else on that topic, so I let it go.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“How much did Edgar tell you about slicing?”
“Huh? What’s slicing?”
Valcas chuckled. “Okay. What did you learn from Edgar while hiding out at his Nowhere?”
I wrinkled my nose and looked away. “Edgar taught me about friendship.” Frowning, I added, “I never met anyone like him before. He was so accepting and grateful for my company.” My voice broke. “I wish he were still alive. I miss him.”
Valcas cleared his throat. His arms twitched toward me, and then fell back again at his sides. His actions gave me the strangest feeling—that he wanted to comfort me, but that he either didn’t know how to execute such a basic human kindness, or was afraid of how I would react to his touch. He hadn’t hesitated to comfort Mom after my TSTA hearing, so I knew he was somewhat capable. I felt a twinge in my stomach. My brain told me that I didn’t want him to touch me, but…
I shook my head and sniffed. “Edgar lectured me on the physics behind time travel. Most of that went over my head. I suppose I could have paid better attention, but I was more interested in how the travel glasses worked so I could figure out how to escape—”
“To escape?”
I blushed.
“Oh, right.” Valcas frowned. “Me. You wanted to escape me. Look—” His hand grazed his glasses and then stopped. He dropped his hand and shook his head. “I’m sorry about that. But we need to get past it if we want to continue with our mission. I don’t know if I’ll ever make up for what I’ve done. Please realize that it was in your best interest… and Plaka’s.”
“I’m trying, but how else am I supposed to discuss the subject of time travel when mo
st of my worst experiences traveling involved you?” I hugged my arms tightly around my ribs. Most of my best experiences traveling had involved him too. “Anyway, Edgar also told me basic information about how to use the travel glasses—info that I’d already learned from you about how to search and travel.” I felt a slight smile reach my lips. “We spent an entire afternoon on the Blanching Effect.”
“Seriously?”
“Yup.”
Valcas chuckled. “Good old Doctor Porter’s discoveries about the bright white light?”
“Yeah, not to mention his son Porter Jr., and Porters the Third and Fourth.”
“That sounds like quite a long afternoon. What else did you learn?”
“Edgar didn’t know that the travel glasses could be used to communicate like a telephone. He discovered that while I was there.” I glared at Valcas, remembering when he first spoke to me through the travel glasses, against an all-white backdrop after he’d been shackled and bound.
Valcas nodded. His face gave away no indication that his first contact with me through the glasses as a communication device had been out of the ordinary. “I added that feature to the pair he made.”
“You did?”
The smugness on his face answered my question. I was starting to get good at reading his expressions even though his dark glasses constantly covered his eyes.
“But, how?”
“Inventiveness runs in my family and I had a good teacher.”
“You mean Enta?”
Valcas nodded.
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