by Claire Davon
Finally, though, he shifted, easing off of her and out of her, and rolled to the side. They lay together, their shoulders touching for long moments until she turned her head and looked at him.
“Hungry?” Sonder asked. As if on cue, his stomach rumbled, the noise loud in the quiet room. “We should eat something before we go to Akrotiri.”
After a moment’s reflection, Fiona decided she was. First they needed to shower, and then breakfast. Her stomach rumbled as if in agreement. There was a new place she wanted to try. Its views weren’t as spectacular as some of the ones at the very top of the island, but Fiona had heard they had excellent Tyropita, a yummy breakfast cheese pie she was dying to dig her teeth into.
The wad of Euros that lay on the bureau was large. Under different circumstances she wouldn’t like having that much cash around. It was safer, though, and hard to trace. The small lottery wins she’d timed to win weren’t very big, a strategy she’d planned to get spending money but not raise alarms. She didn’t want to take the chance of using credit cards and have them traced back to her current location. It had been funny to watch Sonder with the money. He had treated it like a rare object and she had found out that cash barely existed in his time. Watching him puzzle out the cost of things would have been entertaining if it hadn’t been so critical. Sonder had no identification, no paperwork to allow him access beyond the borders of their current location, and certainly no credit cards. They wouldn’t be easy to get for a man who didn’t exist in this time. She didn’t realize how hard it was to move in society without credentials. There had been one or two tricky situations where she had had to shift things just a little bit to avoid suspicion. She hoped that the winnings she had helped herself to hadn’t created drastic changes in someone else’s life.
All too soon she knew they would have deal with the goings-on that had put them where they were. They would have to face the Event. If three months with this man had taught her anything, it was that she didn’t have to do this, whatever “this” was, alone. Sonder would be there. She still hadn’t gotten used to the fact that “sooner” or “later” were irrelevant terms when you could jump through time. But even though she had those powers, others didn’t, and the world marched towards an end so complete that nothing was left of humans two hundred years in the future. She wasn’t alone in this, not anymore. Whatever needed to be faced, they would face it together. Armed with this knowledge, she held her hand out to her lover, and gestured towards the shower stall in the bathroom behind them.
“Shall we?” she said. “Let’s get soapy.” She shot Sonder a meaningful glance before finishing “and try that café on Firostefani.”
Chapter 2
The waiter looked at them expectantly, his pen poised over his order pad.
“My name is Rogald and I’ll be your server today,” he said in unaccented, American English. “May I start you off with something?”
Fiona choked on the water she’d just taken a sip of and liquid flowed back into the glass like a faucet in reverse. Sonder gave her a quick glance, shock visible on his face before he smoothed it out. Together, they looked up, into the familiar, yet strange, face of the man neither of them knew at this age.
The waiter, a young man in his late teens, or early twenties at best, stood there with the bored impatience of a college kid doing a summer job against his will. It was a typical look in the United States, but she wasn’t sure how an American would be working at a local Santorini café. The unemployment rate in Greece was high and he seemed like an unlikely choice to work at the café.
“Coffee,” Sonder said, sliding his hand over Fiona’s and squeezing it as if in warning. She took the lifeline, swallowing against the tickle in her throat and the dismay rising in her mind.
“Yes, coffee, please,” she managed to gasp out. She flicked a quick finger at his nametag. “Could I also get some orange juice, Rogald?” Saying his name sounded weird. It came out choked, a strangled sound. The waiter shot her a glance, as if bewildered by her strange behavior.
“Sure.” He said it neutrally, with a shrug. The young man slid the cap onto the pen, and the pen onto the pad and turned away.
The bone structure and height of the man who would become the older Liberator was already in place. She remembered him at just around six feet, attractive with taut muuscles. At this moment in time his frame was covered by a gangly body, one that hadn’t filled out yet in adulthood. His hands and feet looked too big for him and Fiona decided that he was still growing. Fiona tried to pull through a memory of the Liberator who was on the opposite side of the Guardians, the group she had first fallen in with. She had thought he was her enemy when she first lurched into this new reality, but then he had been helpful. He was a bit of a blur, as were a lot of events from three months ago.
But there was no doubt it was Rogald. It shouldn’t be, but he was standing in front of her. The impossible had become possible.
“Fiona.”
Sonder’s voice brought her back to their small café table. This part of Firostefani was inland from the spectacular views that marked the cliff face of the island, drawing less traffic than its more showy counterparts. The small shop, done in blue and white, still opened out to a great vista. It was early in the morning by vacation standards, and the tourists who was awake were crowding the cafes that dotted the more scenic areas. The décor was sparse. A white board propped up on a chair by the door told of the daily specials in English and Greek. The tables were square and off white, with no tablecloths. Their chairs were blue, echoing the décor. Two other couples, both appearing to be native to the island, were in the café, but it was otherwise empty.
“Sonder, how on earth?”
Firostefani was slightly removed from the larger Fira, but within walking distance of their hotel on this small island. It was quieter than the other villages of Fira and Oia. After they’d explored the other, more well-known towns, they had focused on this one. Time travel was amazing, but sometimes there was nothing like feeling the ground under your feet and the wind in your hair. Fiona still thought of time as linear and usually chose to go from one place to another as she would have before she discovered her powers. Most of the time.
Sonder frowned, his eyes going from Fiona to the back of the teenager they would later – earlier – know as the older Rogald, the man who often opposed Sonder’s former compatriots. The boy seemed unaware of their scrutiny, scratching behind his mop of brown hair with his pencil, shuffling his feet and looking bored. Fiona wondered how he had come to be here, now. It couldn’t be coincidence. She was learning that there was rarely such a thing as happenstance in the world.
She felt as if she was living in one of her grandmother’s old clichés, and a goose had walked across her grave. The sun continued to rise over the small island, its rays warming the ground, but she shivered.
“I don’t know, Fiona. I…no question it’s him…” He trailed off when the aforementioned new/old person stomped back to their table with mugs of what looked like American coffee and a dish of baklava on a tray. There was also a pitcher of cream and bowl of sugar with a spoon. The Greeks did not trust Americans to be able to handle their coffee, Fiona had found. It was a wonder they didn’t just supply Starbucks to the tourists.
“Ready to order?” It was just short of sullen. Most of the local cafes were run by natives, and Fiona wondered why this aggressively American boy was here. And how he was here, now.
Her mind whirled, trying to absorb the implications. The Tyropita she’d been looking forward to seemed like an appalling idea now. She wanted to turn and run, away from this café, away from the teenager she would know as the older Liberator, the one who took the brief journey into the Event with her, two hundred years in the future. She remembered the devastation it had wrought, the wasteland, a barren Earth where nothing lived. The how or why was shrouded in mystery and their mad trip there hadn’t told either her or Rogald anything useful. She had been sure they would die, and they would hav
e, but Fiona had been pulled back to this present by an unseen force.
They had been silent too long. Rogald shifted, his look going from bored to wary. He seemed to be wondering if these tourists were going to be difficult. The fact that he was clearly American, and not native, did not dissuade Fiona from thinking Rogald felt that way. Every inch of him screamed boredom, and low-simmering anger.
“Two Tyropita,” Sonder said, handing the menu back to Rogald. “And some tomatoes and feta to start.”
“Sure.” Rogald chewed on something that Fiona thought was gum and gave them what he no doubt hoped was a smile, but was instead a collection of teeth and ennui. She saw echoes of the Liberator he would become in that countenance. Their acquaintance had been brief, but it had made a lasting impression. That sort of thing happened when the person took a trip with you to the apocalypse.
“You don’t look Greek,” she hazarded before he could turn away.
Rogald shrugged, his expression stiffening at the same time as his body. He jerked a thumb back towards the kitchen, visible through a blue painted archway, lined with decorations.
“Grandparents. I got pawned off on the relatives for the summer. Mom and Dad didn’t want us tagging along on their second honeymoon, so they farmed us out to whoever would take us. I landed here and this is how I pay them back. I’ll get your order going.”
A part of her wanted to find a fixed point she could rely on and go forward in time to find out what happened. But she’d found out more about time travel in the few months she’d had the power. She couldn’t shift somewhere twice to the same time and place. There was an elastic force that stopped her, although she couldn’t put a name to it. She’d learned the hard way when she’d made a mistake with a small Netherlands lottery. She’d tried to go back and get the right numbers but all she did was bounce back to her current time. She couldn’t take the chance that she would mess up something regarding Rogald by going forward. Not without a good reason and curiosity wasn’t it.
Fiona had little idea what the rules of time travel were, even now. When she asked Sonder he looked uneasy and stammered something about paradoxes and the grandfather effect that didn’t help much. She still had a lot to learn.
“Fiona.”
Sonder was tapping her hand, trying to get her attention.
When she looked at him he took a breath, as if reluctant to speak.
“I have my Guardian equipment. We could use it.”
She tilted her head, but said nothing.
“You have that look. The one that tells me you want to go and find out about Rogald,” he continued. “I don’t want you making a forward jump just to find out what happened to him. I’ll take my chances with the Guardians. I don’t let you do it. I’m fast, I won’t set off the sensors.”
He sounded confident, but she heard a thread of doubt through the words. They couldn’t be sure of anything when it came to the Guardians. She took a sip of strong coffee and with a grimace added more sugar to it. The sun continued to rise, slowly relieving the island of shadows.
Fiona knew if she continued down the path she was on, her boyfriend would do as he threatened. He wasn’t high-handed as much as he was sure of himself. He didn’t have the ability to time jump like she did, but he had far more experience with the process. She would be a fool not to listen. She knew she was impulsive and sometimes unwise, but she didn’t like to think she was an idiot.
“I’m that obvious?” The idea that anyone could see through her that clearly was a little unnerving, even if it was her boyfriend.
His low chuckle was her answer.
She looked back through the swinging doors where Rogald had retreated to. She ached with impatience, but knew Sonder was right. Whatever had happened, whatever was going to happen, this could not be an accidental meeting.
Fiona picked at the tomatoes that had just arrived. Seeing Rogald brought something home for her. Their break from reality was over. In hindsight she supposed she was waiting for the next move, the next shoe to drop. After all, both the Guardians and the Liberators had time on their side just as she did.
She wondered if the Guardians or Liberators had known the younger Rogald would be on Santorini with them. She had thought that they managed the time stream when needed, but didn’t control it. What if she had been wrong?
The thought was terrifying. Everything came rushing back, the trolley, the town of Pepperell, the Event looming two hundred years in Earth’s future. What scared her the most was the responsibility that came with her new power to manipulate time, without device or direction. The idea that she was this Traveler, the one who was outside the control of the warring factions, had been one she had tucked away and not looked at. Whether she was or not, she’d dodged the question, choosing instead to spend time with the man who had haunted her dreams for years.
It had been a pleasant few months, and Sonder was everything she had dreamed about. He was a strong man, and they clashed from time to time, but the crazy, wild passion between them was growing, their bond strengthening. He could be frustrating, but she had never felt so loved, so protected. She had hoped it would go on forever.
Foolish dreams, like foolish plans, always came to an end. She looked at the young Rogald. Vacation time was over.
Chapter 3
“Ready to go to Akrotiri?” Sonder asked, rising from the table as he tossed Euros down on the check. Fiona looked at him and then without a word, added more to the total to cover a tip. It appeared tips were not only uncommon in Greece, but in Sonder’s time as well, fifty years from her original future. He looked from her to the bills on the table when she put in the extra amount, but said nothing.
She wasn’t sure why they had waited until now to go to the ruins on the other side of the island. They had explored parts of Santorini, and the surrounding Greek islands in great depth. They had been to Mykonos, Chios, Crete, Rhodes, among others, but she had managed to dodge laying foot on the village on their adopted island, the one preserved in time by Theran eruption. There were plenty of lovely islands to explore, and they had taken advantage of that, but few were as compelling as the one they stood on, with its rich, violent history. She had read about the island after they had arrived, fascinated by the broken island’s savage beauty. The volcanic eruption on Thera, or Santorini, was currently thought to have occurred in what would now be considered 1540 BCE, or so, thirty five hundred years in the past. It destroyed most of the island and wiped out many of the civilizations around it, including, rumor had it, the thriving Minoans here and on nearby Crete. The Minoans may have been the basis for the story of Atlantis, but they were long vanished. Whatever the truth was, it was lost to time and natural disasters.
“I’m ready.” She rose, but glanced back at Rogald, who was taking orders in a now-busy café. “What about him?”
Sonder followed her gaze, and shrugged. “It’s a mystery we won’t solve today. We need to plan, to strategize. You couldn’t reach the Liberator base, even if we knew how to find it, and we don’t know where the other Rogald is. We could get to the Guardian base with my equipment. It’s our only choice.”
Fiona shook her head in the negative, but she burned to do something. He seemed to see Fiona’s desire to act, and put his hand on her arm. “It will keep, kale mou. We have time.”
The teenaged Rogald seemed to have heard his name because he lifted his head from the pad and gave them a look. It was part questioning and part “what’s it to you” youth angst.
Fiona looked down quickly. She suspected that even though Rogald would have no conscious awareness of it, the kid knew that something was strange about the couple who had asked too many questions and was now leaving a large, generous, tip. Her mind spun, the implications too much to take in all at once. Thinking about the paradox would drive her insane.
“We need to know,” she said, and let out a sigh. “But I would be terrified to use your equipment. It can keep. For now.”
#
They had been
on the island long enough to know that Akrotiri was about fifteen miles from Fira. The distance made them decide to use the car they’d bought when they arrived. It was small, white, and only good for basic needs like short-term transportation and grocery shopping.
Fiona felt a reluctance, an aversion, not to visit the Minoan Bronze Age ruins. She had to fight the urge to tell Sonder to turn back, go back to their rental, forget Akrotiri and head for the volcano or another, inoffensive destination. They could take a day trip to Folegandros instead. The nearby island had been recommended by several locals. There was a museum there, she’d been told, something called the Ecological and Folklore Museum. It would have plenty of Greek history for them to explore. They didn’t need to go to Akrotiri. It would keep until tomorrow. Or Thursday. Maybe even Friday. That would be great. She bet that museum was better. It was just as big a part of the culture as Akrotiri was.
Fiona almost told Sonder to turn around and go back the way they came, and take a boat to the other island. Instead, she gritted her teeth and said nothing. If she felt this strongly she suspected that she had to go to Akrotiri, and see what was there to find.
She felt the pull in both directions. She wanted to turn and run, but also needed to be at the ruins. To her surprise, as they got closer, the desire to flee faded, and eagerness enveloped her. She also felt dread pulsing deep in her stomach, the kind of fear she associated with peril. Fiona knew that there was no danger here. The town was just relics, destroyed by the now-quiet volcano in the middle of Santorini’s shattered remains.
She felt as if she was on the precipice of something, like her life was about to change again. She looked at the man next to her. Fiona wasn’t at the point that she thought her life would never be joined with a man’s, but she’d had enough questionable relationships that had made her wonder. Now there was this man, who under normal circumstances would have been a toddler when she was an old woman, if she was even still alive. Sonder was there to share her life in ways she hadn’t known she needed to make herself feel complete.