The Twisted Tale of Stormy Gale

by Christine Bell

  “Right, so you got it, then?” Bacon asked hopefully.

  “Of course I got it.”

  “Thanks, Sis.”

  He sounded pathetically grateful and I gave him a quick grin. “No problem.”

  Until that point I’d been so wrapped up in my own feelings that I hadn’t considered whether I would tell him what happened, or about Dev and the asylum. On one hand, he wasn’t a child and he deserved to know. On the other, he would feel just as guilty about it as me, and what purpose would that serve?

  For the gazillionth time since his death, I wished Gilly were there to give me some advice.

  Sick to death of my own self-pity and determined to shake off the melancholy, I stopped quibbling, took the bull by the horns and gave it to Bacon straight.

  “Here’s the situation,” I began, closing my carpetbag, and trying to keep my voice light. I told him almost everything but left out the sex part—because who wants to hear that about their big sister?—and any mention of how I left things with Devlin.

  He stared at me, trying to gauge whether I was serious or not, for a long moment.

  “Yeah.” He nodded. “Yeah, he does look like him, now that you mention it. Man, he was so nice to us, ’member?”

  Sigh. I ’membered.

  I tried to push the big lug toward the door, but he dug in his heels.

  “So is he okay now?” He sounded so forlorn I wanted to cut my tongue out for telling him. I couldn’t for the life of me recall why I thought it was a good idea. I guess maybe misery really does love company. For someone who detests lying to someone they love, I prepared to make a hypocrite of myself and geared up for a doozy, because I knew Bacon wouldn’t let it go.

  “He’s okay. When I left, he was sleeping like a baby. And I asked him earlier if he wanted to come with us, but he’s a really busy guy, so he said no. Now that he knows we’re okay, he’s going to live happily ever after. Probably get married and have twin boys named Mackenzie and Jack, buy them ponies and so on. It’s going to be great,” I announced cheerfully, grabbing one of his big mitts in mine and pulling him toward the door. He narrowed his eyes in suspicion, but lucky for me, he allowed himself to be led away and soon we were on the street hoofing our way to the beach.

  It was only about a ten-minute walk and I set a grueling pace, mostly due to the circumstances, but also to keep Bacon out of breath so he would stop asking me questions: did I think Devlin was going to be okay? Could we could come back and visit him sometime? Loads of questions, none of which I wanted to answer, because the answers were just too sad. I was totally disgusted with myself, but no matter how I turned it, I didn’t see any possible way to make this a happy ending.

  We approached the beach, and the brackish smell of the water assailed me just as the breeze kicked it up a notch. I scanned the area quickly and had Bacon do the same. It was deserted, as would be expected in October, and we moved to the copse of trees we had come from only the day before.

  Lord, has it really only been one day? So much had happened and I was so wrung out, it seemed like a month or more.

  Once we found our landmark tree, I set down my bag, calling to Bacon over the whipping winds. “Get out the APGs, and I’ll put together my TTM. Dev was messing with yours and I don’t want to take any chances with it.”

  He nodded and pulled the goggles out of the bag. I reached in and grabbed various pieces, losing myself in the intricate task of rebuilding the TTM.

  “Uh, hey, Storm?” Bacon called a few minutes later.

  “I’m almost done, just a couple more minutes. Did you find the wormhole yet?”

  “That’s what I wanted to tell you. I don’t see one.”

  I put the half-assembled TTM down and held out a hand for the APGs, donning them quickly. As I moved through the various loops and lenses, I noted that my perception stayed the same no matter which lens I selected. I went through all seven once, then again. No striations, no change in color, no ripples in the atmosphere. Nothing. It was almost like the lenses were just plain glass. I closed my eyes briefly as realization dawned. Dammit, Devlin.

  I should have known that he would take some precautions. Replacing the lenses with glass would be the safest thing to do on the off chance I somehow got to them.

  Okay, so this was a minor setback. I had a legendary eye for wormholes and, as I knew we were in the general location, it was only a matter of time until I spotted it.

  “Glass,” I shouted to Bacon, pointed to the lenses. “It’s okay, I don’t need them. See if you can find it while I finish.” I had added the last just to keep him busy. If Hogwarts had a wormhole-spotting class, Bacon would have failed miserably.

  I bent to pick up the time-travel device so I could complete the assembly, but was halted by another unpleasant epiphany. If Dev had taken the time to sabotage the goggles, why would he carry all the pieces to the TTM in his pocket for me to find? I knew, just as surely as I knew all of my names, he wouldn’t.

  I continued, determined to finish the task and find out what was missing so I could evaluate just how dire the situation was.

  A couple of minutes later, I found out. The temporal displacement module was missing. It was nothing but a tiny sensor and a needle that moved to and fro. In fact, it didn’t really alter the functionality of the machine at all. But what it did do was allow us to gauge when to stop. Without it, accuracy, even to within a decade, was impossible.

  Prognosis: pretty fucking dire. Sticking around to fix it by dismantling Bacon’s TTM and swapping parts out would take at least an hour. Not to mention that no time-travel devices were exactly alike, so there would need to be additional adjustments. At the end of the day, without the proper tools, we still could be off by as much as a year.

  No, we needed to get out of Lordship ASAP. We’d have to just go where it took us and hope for the best. Wherever or whenever we ended up, we could take our time and fix it properly. This trip had been doomed from the start and I was finally resigned to that fact that its conclusion was going to be no picnic either.

  I looked up to see Bacon squinting at various points in the air, closing one eye, then the other, occasionally swiping at the air like a bear trying to knock a beehive out of a tree.

  “Got anything?” I asked him, managing with some effort to keep all the sarcasm out of my voice.

  “Not yet.”

  “All right, then, you set the TTM and I’ll look for the wormhole.”

  As I began the hunt, trying to keep my eyes unfocused in hopes of spotting a ripple, I heard a sound. It just barely penetrated the rush of the wind and the crash of the waves. I stopped and strained to hear more clearly and was rewarded with the sound of a baying bloodhound. My heart stuttered and I froze in sheer terror as the sound got closer. Please, no.

  A moment later, a lean brown dog came around the bend and entered our little thicket, jowls flapping as it howled and barked. A sharp whistle sounded, and the hound went silent.

  Not twenty feet away, Devlin of Leister rounded the corner looking loonier than ever, wild-eyed, with my torn underwear clutched in his hand. His mouth a tight line, his jaw tense.

  There had always been some small part of me that took comfort in the fact that I had endured so much pain in my life, almost like it might make me somewhat immune to more. Part, “Okay, I’ve had my share of misery, so in the interest of Even Steven-ness, the rest of my life should be easy, right?” Combined with a dash of, “And if not, fine. After what I’ve seen and been through, there isn’t much you can do to me that could be worse, so whatever.” But as I stood staring at Devlin, that part of me shriveled up and died. Apparently, fate was intent on making this a teaching moment. The lessons? You never become immune to new pain, you don’t get credit for old pain and it ain’t up to you to decide when you’ve had your share of it.

  Devlin’s eyes stood out in stark relief against his face, so pale and so full of sadness and bitterness, it took all I had not to look away.

  The hound tr
embled with excitement as Devlin reached to pat him, murmuring words of praise as he continued to skewer me with his stare.

  “Hello, Dorothy.” He inclined his head in a stiff nod, “Bacon,” he said, his voice thawing slightly. “Good to see you again.”

  “Hey, Master Dev,” Bacon said, his eyes alight with unrepressed happiness. Dev returned his smile halfheartedly as he surreptitiously stuffed my underwear into his pocket.

  “Stormy said you were sleeping but I hoped I’d get to see you before we left. This is great, like a reunion, right?” Bacon asked, sensing something was amiss as his eyes flitted from me to Devlin and back.

  “Yes, just like that. I had hoped I would see you before you left as well. Where are you headed?” he asked Bacon in a deceptively casual tone.

  “Don’t,” I pleaded.

  “Don’t what, Dorothy? Don’t try to get the answers I have spent my whole life trying to find? Don’t try to stop this from happening again?” he asked, his voice raw with hurt and edged with desperation. “You don’t want to be with me. You’ve made that abundantly clear. But dammit, don’t rob me of the answers I deserve.”

  “They aren’t my answers to give,” I said, begging with my eyes for his understanding.

  “What’s happening, Stormy? I thought you told him. I thought he didn’t want to come.” Bacon asked.

  “Give me the TTM.” I held my hand out to Bacon.

  Accustomed to me bossing him around, he gave it to me without a word. I kept his hand in mine as Devlin began to walk toward us, closing the distance quickly.

  Looking down at the TTM, I noted with relief that Bacon had already set the date and location. I planted one foot for leverage and pivoted toward the spot two few feet behind us where I thought I’d seen a ripple. Praying it was the real deal, I depressed the lever and yanked on Bacon’s arm with all my strength. A moment later, Devlin’s shell-shocked face flickered before my eyes, and we were gone.

  Chapter Seven

  West Grove, Pennsylvania, Christmas Eve, 2010

  We ended up spending two weeks in 2004 fashioning a new temporal displacement module, but we finally made it back home. I think I’d been outside of the house maybe twice since then—once to buy twelve pints of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, and once to chase some pious-looking carolers off our front porch.

  I just couldn’t get my shit together. Everything, from washing my hair to making tea, felt like a Herculean effort. Christmas was usually my favorite time of the year. Every year we would make a few special trips the month before and hoard tons of treasures, then sell it all on eBay. Flush with cash, we’d clean out all the toys stores in town and bring loads of gifts to all of the homeless shelters and Boys and Girls Clubs. We’d have bikes and books and video games, chocolate Santas and stockings stuffed with goodies. Then we’d hit the food banks and stock them up with turkeys, potatoes and pies.

  This year, Bacon did all the work. I didn’t even have the heart to deliver the gifts with him. I was in glass-half-empty mode, and even though their faces would be alight with joy at their gifts, I knew half of the kids there didn’t have fathers, or had drug addict mothers, or no home to go to. Worse, they stood little chance of breaking that cycle. Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la.

  I couldn’t work but I couldn’t relax either, and the only time I felt even close to normal was when I was sleeping. I dreamed of Dev and of Gilly, and in that second before waking, that moment between dreams and reality, I felt right again.

  But then I invariably woke up.

  The ugliest, most selfish part of me wished that I could just travel back to the day the TTM was lost to Devlin and stop Bacon from leaving the room that night at all. Then I would never have heard of the Loony Duke and I could go back to my old life. But Devlin would never have known that we were all right, and after all he’d been through, I didn’t have the stomach for that. And even if I did, one of the many problems inherent in time travel is that if something happens as a result of time travel, it cannot be undone. Once the state of that time period has been altered, it cannot be altered again without serious consequences. And since we’d been in London on a time-travel mission when Bacon played cards with Devlin, we had already changed things once. We couldn’t go back and fix it, no matter how much I wanted to.

  By the time we got back home, despite the lies and the fact that he did not agree with my choices or my methods, Bacon forgave me almost right away. Partly because he saw how devastated I was, and partly because we’re family, but mostly because he is a wonderful person and he doesn’t have it in him to hold a grudge. He did, however, try to convince me to go back and get Devlin.

  “He is obviously your soul mate. Fate handed him to you when we were kids, now again as a grown up. And what if you only get one, then what?” he asked for the twentieth time.

  “We promised Gilly we’d never tell,” I reminded him yet again.

  Bacon stared at me, his soft eyes filled with pity, his thoughtful expression making him look much older than his nineteen years. “And if Gilly was alive he wouldn’t make you keep that promise. If he knew how sad you were right now, there isn’t anything he wouldn’t do to make you feel better. Don’t you know that?”

  “I do,” I agreed. “Gilly had a weak spot for us, and he would have sacrificed anything for our happiness, even it meant revealing a secret as potentially dangerous to the world as time travel. And just because he might have been willing to risk that for my happiness, doesn’t mean I am.”

  “The thing about being a martyr, Storm, is that you end up dying alone.” He gave me a sad little smile and walked out, leaving me alone once again with my Chunky Monkey, reruns of I Love Lucy blaring in the background.

  I dreamed of Gilly again Christmas night. It seemed so real, like I could touch him. And whoever said you can’t dream in color is so dead wrong, because in my dream, Gilly’s lively blue eyes crackled with barely repressed glee, just as they had in life.

  We sat together on a pair of swings not unlike the ones he had gotten for us when we were young. We swayed forward and back, just enjoying the sun on our faces and being together. He spoke first, and the sound of his voice and that gentle, lilting brogue he’d never quite shaken was a balm to my soul.

  “What are you doing, lass?” he asked, the glee in his eyes dimming.

  I almost played dumb and said swinging, but opted to just answer the question. “Wallowing, I guess.”

  “Nah, wallowing means it’s overdone, undeserved. You have every right to be sad. You’re nursing a broken heart. The question is, why?”

  “You know why. Because it can’t happen,” I responded sharply, instantly regretting my irritable tone. “Sorry, it’s just hard.”

  “Do you love him, then?

  “I do. I think I loved him from the day I saw him bumbling down the street on those skinny legs, so oblivious to everything around him, so filled with hope. He was like a bright light. I wanted a piece of that light so bad.”

  “That’s what you and your brother are to me, lass. The two brightest spots of my life. More than my inventions or the adventures. I love you unconditionally. And if you love him, then I know he has to be a good man. You couldn’t love another kind. And I trust you to know what’s best, even if it means sharing our secret. See, if you truly love someone, you have to trust them, even if it terrifies you. Not everyone will let you down or hurt you. Haven’t I shown you that? Hasn’t your brother?”

  I woke with a start, in that heart-pounding “I feel like I’m falling” way. My face was wet and I felt robbed that I hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye.

  Knowing that Gilly would visit my dreams again and feeling like I had to take immediate action, I tamped down my disappointment and jumped out of bed, trying to stay calm, trying not to let the little ember of hope flickering within me run amok.

  I went straight to my desk and unlocked a large drawer, pulling out the Risk Index Module. Breathless with fear and anticipation, I hooked it up to the computer and be
gan frantically typing in the data.

  Twenty endless minutes later I sat, my finger paused over the Enter key. Closing my eyes, I pressed it and waited as the RIM whirred and clicked.

  When all was quiet, I opened my eyes, cracking them first like a child playing hide-and-seek and pretending not to peek, then opening them fully to take in the results flashing on the monitor in front of me.

  Forty-nine percent.

  My breath hitched as I allowed it to sink in. There was a forty-nine percent chance that Devlin’s absence from his world would cause such a major change in history, that life as we know it could be altered. We had never even attempted anything with a risk factor of higher than ten percent before. Forty-nine was…so far out of the question it wasn’t even worth contemplating.

  And just like that, my little ember of hope fizzled and died. Even if I wanted to go back and get him, I couldn’t. Deep down I think some part of me had always known that.

  I closed my eyes again and slumped forward, pressing my face to the cool walnut desk, finally, truly beaten, too sad to even weep.

  Bacon found me in that same spot when he woke up a few hours later. He called to me softly, thinking I was asleep.

  “I’m awake,” I said, not even attempting to inject any emotion into my voice. After sitting in that position for hours and thinking about Dev, I was numb. I couldn’t feel my face, and I didn’t care.

  Bacon moved across the room until I could feel his hulking presence behind me.

  He let out a soft whistle. “Forty-nine, huh? Well, that won’t do, will it?” He began tapping on the keyboard.