by Gabi Moore
He put one hand on the wall and rested. Lilly stood behind him with one hand on his back. She could feel his lean muscles under the shirt he wore and took in the sensation of the touch. She wished there was some way she could give him comfort, some way she could make him find his parents without the need to go inside and seek them out. But she had no way to do it unless she too was an elemental worker. Right now, she only knew what he’d taught her. Perhaps later, he could show her more…
“Have you ever faced something so horrible in your life?” he asked Lilly. “Have you ever been in a situation where any decision you made could turn out bad? I worry I’m approaching this whole thing wrong and I need guidance. But the only guidance I get is from my dead grandparents and they don’t seem to stick around very long.”
“At least I can smoke outside,” they heard the voice of Edward sound behind them. “No one seems to mind pipes so far. This tobacco is beastly; I need to get a better variety.”
They turned to see the funny little Englishman in a tailored business suit, with a pipe in one hand. He inhaled the fumes one final time and placed it back in his pocket. “They say it will be the death of me, you know,” Edward announced to them. “Tobacco. Can’t understand why. I thought it was invented by the natives in this country and they seemed to be a healthy people.”
“You have a way of appearing at the most charming times,” Dion said. “Did you know that that floor polisher almost had me arrested for theft?”
“But it worked, didn’t it? The ghouls couldn’t stand the noise created by it. They are sensitive to light and noise. I almost gave you a camera with a flash to take down there, but I felt it would be better to let you have the floor polisher since the operation of it was simple. By the time you solved the method of using a flash on a camera, it would have been too late.”
“It did work to keep the ghouls at bay,” Lilly agreed. “And the ghouls had mirrorshades.”
“So now have you shown up to give me some wisdom?” Dion asked.
“I can’t dispense what I lack,” Edward laughed.
“Then what ever shall I do?” Dion asked with a fake southern accent.
“Both of you are talking in circles,” Lilly said. “Edward, why can’t you just get to the point?”
“Because it would be too easy. And the longer I drag this encounter out, the longer I get to wear this suit and smoke my pipe. It’s the little things you miss once you’ve passed over. So many things…”
“You have never told us why you are involved,” Dion snapped to him. “Why didn’t they send Isaac Newton or Julius Cesar to help out?”
“Well, Mr. Newton would spend the entire time tracing out sun patterns. And what good is Julius Cesar without an army? I’m sorry, you are stuck with me. I made many mistakes the first time around. This is their way of giving me a chance to fix what I broke.”
“We’re going to walk through those doors and Officer Karanzen and his good squad will be waiting for us,” Dion made clear. “What do I do when that happens? I need to get to the Earth Element Grandmaster and have her blessing. I can’t approach the next element grandmaster until I have done it.”
“You must be ready to let him know there are people with your best interests in mind. Don’t worry, the moment he tries to give you some trouble, I’m sure he’ll see the logic of backing away from you. It’s not Karanzen you have to worry about; it’s the earth elementals who don’t want you obtaining full power. The ghouls in particular. They are furious you’ve made them look bad to the mall owners and will do everything they can to keep you from reaching the elemental grandmaster.”
“Are they going to pull that cleaning crew stunt again?” Lilly asked. “Because I don’t want to deal with it again. Our friend Emily will never come back to this mall and I think she may be scared for life.”
“They’ll try something else this time and they may be very direct how they do it. I would watch out because you have no idea where they will strike. And, rest assured, the security guards will be nowhere to be found if you need their help.”
Dion looked at the doors and took Lilly by the hand. “Okay,” he said to them both. “I can do this. It looks like I’m the only one who can get my parents back, and prevent even worse things from happening.”
Edward raised a hand. “You can’t even conceive what you are up against. I would tell you more, but they only let me share so much information. But I’m sure you’ll come through, dear boy. In fact, you must…”.
Edward pulled out his pocket watch again and looked at it. “Oh, lovely, time is up. You two take care and I will see you again.”
Then he vanished.
Dion and Lilly walked through the glass doors into the entrance to the mall again. Once again they walked down the corridor lined with shops on each side and slowly approached their destination.
For a few minutes, they thought it might be possible to go upstairs and find the pharmacy where the elemental grandmaster had her shop. Dion and Lilly strolled into the main concourse and saw nothing. There were no security guards, no ghouls, nothing that appeared out of the ordinary. Just a bunch of shoppers finishing their activities for the day. Mothers pushing children in strollers. Groups of kids walking down the main hall, looking in the windows of stores, and men in front of a TV display who drooled over the big game on the latest twenty-five inch console.
It was the picture of domestic tranquility.
They walked toward the escalator with every intention to take it to the second floor where the pharmacy was located.
Lilly had never liked escalators and was happy using the stairs. She’d heard a story about a kid who got his foot caught in one and the ambulance company had to be called out to free him. From that day on, she’d avoided them. As a young kid, she froze when trying to go down one and had to have someone help her get on the track. There was something unnerving about escalators that worried her. It was as if by climbing on one you placed your future in the hands of an inhuman machine. It wasn’t something she wanted to do and couldn’t understand why anyone would do it. She felt the same way about elevators, although for some reason they didn’t bother her quite as much.
Just as they walked up to the escalator, two of Karanzen’s guards blocked their path. Dion and Lilly turned to the other sides only to see them blocked by his men as well. They turned to walk back when they found Officer Karanzen approaching with two more.
“Just couldn’t take my warning could you?” he said to them. “I thought I made it clear you weren’t supposed to be back in the mall.”
“What have I done to be banned from it?” Dion asked. “You never did spell out any charges.”
“First of all,” Karanzen snarled. “There is the matter of the floor polisher you took without authorization. Then there are the other items, which have mysteriously disappeared while you’ve been in the mall. I won’t get into the disruption of you being here creates. I don’t need it and I don’t want it in my mall.”
“You keep saying ‘my mall’,” a voice said to their right. “You seem to think this mall is your property.”
It was Dion’s grandparents.
They had, once again, appeared from nowhere and were right next to Officer Karanzen. The look of shock on his face told Dion all he needed. Even the security guards backed up a bit. His grandfather and grandmother had a presence that made it not wise to cross them. Lilly had felt it a bit when they’d appeared outside the mall, but now it was on full display.
“Major Auriel Bach?” Karanzen said to him. “I know you. What are you doing here? I thought you were--”
“Gone very far away?” Dion’s grandfather said. “Gone further than you could ever fathom? I’m the young man’s grandfather and I understand you have some issue with him.”
“He’s causing a problem in the mall. I’m hired to make sure the mall remains safe. I don’t need anyone here who causes problems.”
“Problems?” Dion’s grandfather said. “The way you handled th
e problems at the Chosin Reservoir? You’re lucky I let you keep your command after that happened.”
The faces of Dion’s grandfather and Karanzen faded into a cloud as Dion saw the security chief in a distant land in a military uniform. A soldier was leaning on a tank in a snow-covered landscape as he poured over a map. Karanzen was on a radio in a desperate attempt to communicate with someone.
“I said we’re lost!” Karanzen yelled into the apparatus. “Can you give me the coordinates we’re supposed to have? I have five men with a tank and me. We need to get back to the main column. Look, I know Chinese troops are in these hills. They’d love to find someone like us who don’t know where they are. Hello? Hello?”
He slammed the radio telephone receiver down on the tank’s side and swore. Karanzen, wearing a captain’s uniform, looked at the hills around him. It was getting dark. On top of the tank, an enlisted man held a pair of binoculars and scanned the horizon.
“Can’t see a thing, sir,” he told him. “No movement anywhere. If there are Chinese Army in these hills they are doing the best job of concealment anyone could….”
The man with binoculars fell away from the tank as the air filled with bullets. The bounced off the tank and kicked up dirt from the ground. Karanzen dropped the radio and ran behind the tank, as he tried to take cover from the rifle fire. Two other men were with him.
“Can you see how many?” he asked the man to his right. They were strapping on their helmets as fast as they could. At least one of them carried a carbine.
“Could be four, could be five,” the man said. “Hard to tell and they’re shooting out of the sun to make it difficult to spot. For all we know it could be the entire Red Chinese Army out there.”
Then the fog faded again and Dion saw his grandfather facing Officer Karanzen. But the security chief had lost his composure. No longer was he the fearsome defender of the mall but a man who’d just had a secret he fought to suppress revealed to people. Dion looked around and wondered how many of them had the same vision he’d just seen. Lilly looked at him with confusion, which meant she’d seen it too. The rest of the guards just stood there, as if nothing had changed. But the tension between Dion’s grandparents and the rough security officer was now finished.
“So long as he doesn’t cause any more trouble,” Karanzen said to Dion’s grandfather and walked off. He stopped three steps away and turned to his security guards.
Dion’s grandparents turned and walked back the way they came. Soon, they were gone, vanished as they had done before.
“Be sure to keep an eye on him. I don’t want those two out of your sight.” Karanzen moved away toward the rear of the mall in the direction of his office. Whatever had transpired between him and Dion’s grandfather left a powerful impression.
The other security guards began to move away and head toward their posts. All except for the ones who were stationed in this part of the mall. They walked back and kept their gaze on Dion and Lilly.
“We need to find someplace to get away from them,” Dion said to Lilly. “Is there some restaurant or store we can duck into for the time being?”
“I’m not sure what is around this part of the mall. There are a few places I can think of, but not many. Wait, what’s that?”
A small store with a modest front proclaimed itself to be “The Time Shop”. A large watch swung from the bracket over it and another sign talked about daily specials. At first, she thought it was a restaurant, but then Lilly thought it might be a place that sold watches. It didn’t look too big from the outside and she speculated it might only be a thousand square feet on the inside. Nerveless, it looked to be a good way to get out from the watchful eyes of Karanzen’s men.
“Let’s go here,” she said, pointing to the store. “They won’t follow us inside and they can’t wait outside forever. Eventually, they’ll have to move elsewhere.”
“Yes, at least it will give us a chance to plan on what to do next,” Dion said and followed her into the store. They pushed the door open and went inside.
A lady behind the counter greeted them the moment they were beyond the door. “Hello,” she said, “thank you for coming into The Time Shop. Did you have a year in mind?”
“A year?” Dion said and turned to look at the inside of the store. As far as he could see, there was only the one counter and another glass door on the other side. Nothing was on display at the counter and all he could see was the lady, who appeared to be in her thirties, a cash register and the glass top. There were no calendars, small items for sale, or anything else.
“I’d like to know the future,” he joked to her.
“That is a little bit expensive. We can’t send you directly to your future as our insurance won’t cover it. I can send you to another future if that’s what you want.”
Dion looked at Lilly and shrugged. “Did you have any one in mind, Lilly?”
“Haha, thirty years sounds good to me,” she said. “Exactly what do you sell here?”
“Time,” the lady told her. “Most people want the past, but some need to know the future. How much money did you want to spend?’
Dion laid some bills on the counter. She looked at them and shook her head. “I can’t give you much for that little amount. Is thirty minutes fine?”
“Sure,” Dion said, still uncertain what they’d been told and agreed to today.
“Please sign these forms,” the lady behind the counter said and handed both of them clipboards with papers on them. They looked at the forms and found them to be in a foreign writing neither one could read. Dion hesitated to get the seer stone out of his pocket. It had to rest on top of the document for it to work the first time. But to bring it out would reveal that he had one.
“How can I sign something I can’t read?” Lilly asked her.
“Look, do you want the thirty minutes or not? I have someone buzzing to come back. Make up your mind because there are paying customers we have to take care of first. I don’t have time for this.”
Lilly and Dion quickly signed the papers and handed them back to the worked up lady.
“Portal is good for thirty minutes,” she informed them. “You have that much time on the other side and then you have to come back. Don’t miss your portal time because if you do it’s not our fault if you’re stuck where I send you. There is a penalty on people who miss their portal time and neither of you two looks like the kind who can rack up a lot of temporal debt. I’m just giving you a fair warning.”
“Okay,” Dion said. “Now what?”
“What you came in here for.” The lady sighed. “I wish they’d find me a better post. This year doesn’t cut it.”
She reached down under the counter and clicked a switch. The glass door on the other side opened to reveal a man walking into the room with a briefcase. He was dressed in loud clothes. He let out a huge sigh and turned to the woman.
“That was a little bit longer than I wanted to be there,” he told her. “Next time I’ll pick someplace familiar for the trip.”
“Just schedule it in advance if you want to go more than five hundred years in either direction,” she said. “Now please step aside, sir, as I have more people who need to use the door.”
She turned to Dion and Lilly.
“Your turn,” the woman announced. “Remember, you only have thirty minutes so don’t wander too far. Time is of the essence.”
Chapter 10
Dion and Lilly walked through the door and heard it shut behind them. Dion turned around to look at the door and discovered it had turned to a wooden one on the other side. While he tried to figure out where they were, Lilly stepped forward and glanced over their new surroundings.
They were no longer in the mall. If this was the mall, it resembled nothing like one she’d ever seen before. She turned and saw a small double-paned window with sunlight streaming through it. The smell of bleach came from a bathroom to one side. The small room they were in was tastefully decorated in used furniture with pastel p
aintings on the walls. The only thing odd about their surroundings was the door, which they’d used to enter the room. Over the top of it, the words “Supplies” was written.
Lilly smelled the intense scent of coffee through the air. This had to be some kind of eating establishment, but she had no idea what kind.
She and Dion walked down the hall connecting the room to the front of the place and found another counter. Over the counter was a menu of sorts in chalk on a blackboard about all the different kinds of coffee you could purchase. The prices seemed outrageous to her, but it could be that the coffees were rare and not found in many restaurants.
What kind of place was this?
Dion walked up to the counter and looked at the woman behind it. She didn’t resemble the lady on the other side the least bit... This woman had glasses, was dark in complexion and had her hair tied in rows across her head.
“You two are from The Time Shop,” the lady said to them. “Aren’t you?”
“We were just in there a few minutes ago,” Lilly said. “I don’t know how we ended up here.”
“I can always tell. It doesn’t matter which direction they come, always something that gives them away. How long are you here for?”
“We paid for thirty minutes,” Dion told her.
“Then you better stay close. That door you came through will only take you back a half hour after you came. Any other time and it takes you to the closet. I had it installed a few months ago when someone contacted me from the corporation. They pay me enough to keep it so that it cancels out my utility bill.”
“So what kind of place is this?” Lilly asked.
“It’s a coffee shop in Chicago.”
“Chicago?” Dion said. “But we were in Ohio!”
“The way it works is the door takes you somewhere other than where you are going to be or where you have been. I guess you’ll never be around Chicago for any length of time or you wouldn’t be here now. Did she ask you how many years you were paying her for?”
“I told her thirty,” Lilly said, “but really, I had no idea…”