“Why do you care?” Per asked again.
“Because the outcome of this event will have a great effect on the future.”
“You can see the future?”
He hesitated a moment before answering, “Yes.”
Per’s eyebrow went up again. “That was a lie.”
“It was almost the truth.”
“Almost the truth is not the same as the truth,” Per said. “Either you can see the future or you cannot.”
He swallowed. Guess I better go for it, he thought, a little desperately.
“I can’t see the future,” he said. “I’m from the future.”
He expected Per to react to this statement—to laugh, to become angry, to accuse him of being insane, to order him out of the shop—but Per simply nodded, and said, “I see,” in a calm voice that sounded as if he’d been told nothing odder than the day’s weather.
“I know it sounds strange,” he said.
Per shrugged. “It doesn’t to me. I don’t see time the way others do.”
“I’ve heard that you think things should be different than they are.”
“Heard? From whom?”
“From Gerda. Gerda Ingjaldsdottir.”
Per scowled. “Gerda talks too much.”
“It wasn’t her fault,” he said. “I asked her if she knew you. I only brought it up because I was staying in her house, and I thought she might know who you were. She took care of me when a horse ran over me. I asked her about you, and she said that you think that things aren’t happening as they should.”
“I don’t think that. I know it.”
“How?”
Per shrugged. “How does anyone know anything?”
Time to try another tack. “You say you know things should be different than they are. How should things be, then?”
Per gestured around him at his shop. It was the most animated Darren had yet seen him. “All of this. It’s all wrong. I shouldn’t be here. I should be somewhere else. Still in Trondheim, but not in this godforsaken hole of a shop. People coming to me, buying my wares. Everyone knowing my name, seeking me out.”
“Your skill is obvious.” He frowned. “But you could still become famous. You’re young.”
Per shook his head, and waved a hand at him. “No, it’s not that. I’m not some apprentice who thinks he should be rich. It’s more that… it’s…” He sagged a little. “Never mind. I can’t explain it. No one understands.”
“I think I would.”
The skeptical look returned. “Why would you be any different from the rest?”
“I’m from the future, remember?”
“Ah.” Per’s voice was thoughtful. “Yes. I’d forgotten.”
“So tell me, what else should be different?”
Per looked at him for a moment, as if he were trying to determine if there could be any way Darren could be planning on using this information against him. Then he seemed to come to a conclusion.
“Very well,” he said. “I cannot tell you how I know any of this. But I am certain of it, as certain as I am that you are standing here, that it is spring, that the sun will rise tomorrow.” He cleared his throat. “I should be married. Her name is Ingrid. She is beautiful, fresh as a flower. Her family… her family is wealthy, and have connections to nobility in Oslo. They helped me… encouraged me to bring my wares to other cities. Even as far as Copenhagen and Aarhus and Stockholm. We live in a nice house, on the hills overlooking the sea, not in this… this hovel.” He said the last word bitterly, as if it tasted foul. “We have three children. Two boys, one girl.”
Not “we would have had.” “We have.” The alternate reality was more real to Per Olafsson than the actual world.
“Do you dream about them?” Darren asked.
“Dream of them? Yes. Of course I do. But more than that. I see them. It is as if… as if…” He paused, his eyes darting back and forth. “It is as if both are happening at the same time. Right now, I stand in both worlds at once. I can see them all, see my home with Ingrid and our children, as clearly as I see you right now. The difference is, no one else sees them.” His voice became sad, the first real emotion he had shown. “It is like being surrounded by the ghosts of the dead.”
“That’s awful.”
“It is hell,” Per said. “I committed no sin, and yet I live in hell, tormented by the shades of loved ones who never existed.”
“It may be…” He stopped.
“What?”
“It may be that I am here to help fix that.”
“How?” The word was flat, an accusation.
“I told you that I come from the future.”
“Yes.”
“The one who sent me here… he has knowledge of the alternate realities we might have lived, had we made different choices.”
“This was no choice of mine.” Per gestured angrily. “Why would I choose this?”
“Not you. Each of us is who he is, where he is, not only because of his own choices. The choices of others, sometimes in the distant past, have led us here. In fact, I was sent here to fix things, because another from my time went back and messed things up. In fact, he messed things up so badly that he wiped out all of humanity.”
Per studied him. “Then how are you still alive?”
“I was spared. I don’t know why.” He shook his head. “I know it sounds ridiculous.”
“No more so than what I live with every day.” The silversmith paused. “And you think that perhaps one of the results of this man’s actions, this man you seek, was to change my life?”
“I think so. I was told to come back here and find you.” He shook his head. “But the only thing is… the event that I’m supposed to fix supposedly didn’t happen yet. It’s supposed to happen some time in the next day or two. But you’ve always felt like you should be living another life?”
“Always. As long as I can remember.”
“I don’t understand. If the divergence has already happened, how can I stop it?”
“Divergence?”
Again, there was the problem that any word that didn’t exist in the vocabulary of the time wouldn’t be understandable, however Fischer had somehow worked out the language issue. “The event I’m supposed to be here to change.”
“Oh.” Per looked thoughtful for a moment. “And you don’t know what is supposed to happen?”
“No. I have no idea.”
“Then it will be difficult to recognize when you see it.”
He sighed. “Yeah, people have said that to me before. We think it has something to do with this man, this one I told you about who went into the past and changed things. His name is Lee. Have you seen any strangers lately? Tall, blond, muscular. Handsome fellow.”
“I see strangers every day. Many of them look like the person you describe.”
“Yeah, I suppose that makes sense. This is Norway, everyone’s blond.”
“You think he may already be here, then?”
“It’s possible. On the other hand, the last time I went after him, he never showed. At least as far as I could see.”
“You have chased him elsewhere?”
“Yes. Elsewhere. And elsewhen. Scotland, four-hundred-odd years ago.”
Per’s eyebrows went up. “You have powerful magic.”
He gave the man a wry smile. “So I’ve been told.”
“It is a strange story you tell.”
“But you believe me?”
Per gave a little shrug. “As I have said, it is no stranger than the reality I live with every day. And if I have one skill, besides the one in my hands, it is to tell when I am being lied to. I do not think you are lying. Therefore there are only two other choices—you are mad, or you are telling the truth.”
“I’m not mad.”
“You do not seem to be,” Per said.
“Well, I didn’t expect to be believed this easily. It hasn’t gone this easily with others, believe me.”
“I can see that it wou
ld be hard to convince some that you are telling the truth. Many people do not want to believe that such things can happen. As for me, I wish it were not so, but I am forced to believe, it seems.”
“I’m sorry that things are lousy for you,” he said.
“As am I.” Per thought for a moment, and then said, “I suppose that the best thing to do is to have you stay here with me. If, as you say, I am somehow involved in this—how did you call it, divergence?—then it makes sense for us to stay together. My house has a second bed, and I have food enough for both of us if you can help with chores such as feeding the chickens. But I do not know your name. If we are to share a roof, I am surely owed that much.”
“My name is Darren.” He smiled. “Darren Carlsson.”
• • •
Per was about as striking a contrast to the vigorous, enthusiastic Malcolm Gillacomgain as it was possible to be. The entire house was wrapped in a cloud of despair, as if the depressed state of its owner was somehow affecting the space in which he lived. He worked hard, however, and with a meticulous efficiency. Darren watched him making an intricate silver pendant, and his handling of hammer, tongs, bellows, and other tools had a subtle grace and economy of motion that at least partially explained his lack of muscle. He made up for less strength by making every movement count.
Darren helped around the shop and the occupied rooms on the first floor, cleaning up, fixing food—he was relieved to find that here at least was a culture that had eggs for breakfast—and feeding the small and bedraggled flock of chickens kept in a hutch out back. But a lot of the time was spent in silence. During meals, during chores, and while working, Per showed no inclination whatsoever toward small talk.
It was near midday on his first day in Per Olafsson’s household that Per finished the pendant he was working on, set it aside to cool, and went to a cabinet to select the materials for his next project. Darren dozed in a chair near the wall, preferring the smithy rather than anywhere in the rest of the house. At least the continuous fire kept the place comfortably warm. When Per opened the cabinet door, he roused, stretched, and looked at his host groggily.
Inside the cabinet were hundreds of silver keys.
His eyes opened wide. “You make keys?”
“Yes. I have studied the mechanisms of locks extensively. I often am called upon to make keys, from large iron ones for doors in manor houses, to small silver ones for ladies’ jewelry boxes.”
He went to look at the jingling metal keys of all shapes, sizes, and types hanging from hooks inside the cabinet. His mind went back to the little silver key that he’d worn around his neck, the one that had mysteriously vanished the day he was shot by Lee McCaskill and transported to the Library of Timelines. Although he could not be sure—none of them looked identical to the one he’d lost—the scrollwork on the handle of the keys in the cabinet looked like similar workmanship.
“I wonder…” he said, but stopped. Could this have anything to do with the divergence? The missing key… and his grandmother’s wooden box. How could that have anything to do with anything?
Per looked at him curiously, but didn’t say anything. He decided not to pursue the topic. He wasn’t entirely sure how he would in any case. But there was something in Per’s expression that made him wonder if the silversmith might understand this situation better than he did.
• • •
Gerda Ingjaldsdottir showed up at the smithy just before sunset with a plate of boiled dumplings. “I cooked more than I could eat. I decided to bring what was left for the two of you if you were still alive. Both of you could use some fattening up. The women will not look at you twice unless you have some more girth to you.” She patted Darren’s stomach. “Have you always looked so underfed?”
“Um… yeah, I guess.”
“Did your mother not feed you well?”
“No, she fed me just fine.” He glanced down at the dumplings, which looked to be as heavy and bland as her porridge. I have to eat one, though, he thought, or it’ll seem rude. And after all, Gerda did rescue me when the horse ran over me. He picked one up and bit into it, confirming his impression. It was like having a mouthful of warm Play-Doh. He thought, not for the first time, that he would have given a lot for some salt and a bottle of hot sauce—anything to give the food more flavor—but he supposed that with no supermarkets available, you had to eat what was around, whatever it tasted like.
“They’re delicious,” he lied.
“Gytha Larsdottir died last night,” she said cheerfully. “So did Markus Christiansson. His throat was swollen up something terrible, his wife told me, poor thing. The plague isn’t done with us yet, it seems.”
“You know,” he said, speaking tentatively, and a little indistinctly, through a sticky blob of dumpling dough, “you might… discourage the plague, by… by washing your bedsheets and clothing more often. Gets rid of the fleas.”
Gerda looked at Per, who looked back at her and shrugged.
“Fleas?” she said, in complete incomprehension.
He swallowed. “Um… yeah. I mean, it could be… that, you know, fleas might have something to do with the plague. You know, they’re filthy little creatures, maybe they’re why people keep getting sick.” He hoped fervently that Fischer wouldn’t get wind of the fact that he’d told Per and Gerda information no medieval person would have had access to.
Gerda stared at him for a moment, and then burst out laughing. “How could little things like fleas make you sick? They’re everywhere. If fleas made you sick, we’d all be Sitting At The Feet Of Jesus by now.”
There she goes again. Speaking in capitalized words.
“I don’t know. It’s just an idea.”
“A pretty foolish one,” she said. “Your throat swells up and you get feverish and cough a lot and you die. Because of fleas?”
“Well, it’s not because of the fleas themselves, it’s because of little creatures that live inside the fleas.” He immediately regretted saying that.
Now she laughed for a full minute, and then reached up with one gnarled claw and patted his cheek.
“Poor boy,” she said. “Still haven’t recovered from that nasty knock on the head, have you?” She stuck the platter under his nose. “Here, have another dumpling. It’ll settle your brain. The brain’s for cooling the blood, you know. When you knock your brain around, your blood overheats and it makes you silly.”
Never mind, Darren thought. I give up.
She apparently took his lack of a response as acquiescence, and left the matter of fleas and the plague aside. “Oh, I also thought I’d mention that on the way here,” she said to Per, “I saw a stranger in town. He was walking along the road, he was, carrying a big knapsack but without so much as a walking stick, and I asked him where he was from. ‘No business of yours, old hag,’ he said, and I said, ‘What brings you here to Trondheim?’ and he said, ‘Naught that concerns you,’ and I said, ‘Why so rough in speech?’ and he said, ‘My reasons are my own,’ and I said, ‘That may well be, but a kind word is often repaid, but a harsh one repaid double,’ and then he seemed to take a little thought, and said, ‘Perhaps I’ve been too hasty,’ and I said, ‘Rude, I’d call it, not hasty,’ and he said, ‘Perhaps I could ask you for a bit of assistance,’ and I said, ‘What sort of assistance?’ and he said, ‘To give me some directions,’ and I said, ‘The sooner you ask, the sooner I can send you elsewhere, and the happier I’ll be,’ and he said something extremely rude that I’ll not repeat for fear of offending you gentlemen.”
Per and Darren both stared at her for a moment.
“So?” Per said.
“Oh, yes,” she said, blinking at them. “So then I said, ‘What directions would you be looking for?” and he said, ‘Is there a silversmith hereabouts?” and I said, ‘Yes, a fine one, by the name of Per Olafsson,’ and he said, ‘Would he be able to make a silver key?’ and I said, ‘I’m sure he would,’ and he said, ‘Well, then, old hag, tell me where I might find this Per Olafsson,’
and I said, ‘Down the road yonder, and get going that way or I’ll put my boot in your rear end to help you along,’ and then he said another thing that I’ll not repeat. But then I flung a dumpling at him, so I had the last word. He hasn’t shown up here yet, has he?”
Per shook his head.
“I suspect he might. Big fellow, blond, looks like he’s got a lot on his mind. Short temper.”
Per’s eyes met his, and one of the silversmith’s eyebrows rose questioningly.
“Gerda,” Darren said, “can you tell me more about what this stranger looked like?”
“Brown shirt,” she said.
“Other than his shirt.”
“Brown trousers, too.”
“I mean,” he said, trying to keep the frustration out of his voice, “distinguishing marks.”
“Well, now. I can’t truthfully say. I didn’t see any, but then, you know, most of him was covered up by the brown shirt and brown trousers. My dear husband, rest his soul, had a birthmark on his bottom that was shaped like a fish, but you’d never have known it because he rarely took his trousers off and showed anyone.”
“Do you think it could be the man for whom you are seeking, Darren?” Per asked.
A shiver ran up his back. Was he finally going to confront Lee McCaskill? He’d spent his days in Scotland looking for Lee and not finding him. This time, would he simply walk in the front door? More importantly, would he have brought his gun with him?
“I don’t know,” he said. “It could be.”
“Then perhaps your search is over,” Per said, as the front door of the shop opened, and a shadowed figure stepped inside.
But it wasn’t Lee McCaskill. There was some resemblance—a strong, angular face, sandy blond hair, broad shoulders. But there the similarity stopped.
Darren breathed a sigh of relief, and immediately regretted the feeling.
Maybe I should have been hoping it was Lee. Maybe then some of this would start to make some sense.
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