Across the Universe

by Raine Winters

  And somewhere in that mess, there has to be a book about the Key.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Archives Room is busier today than it usually is.

  Archivers roam about the tunnels, dusting off shelves and cataloguing books. Elli sits at the desk mending the cracked spine of a particularly hefty leather bound volume. She looks more frazzled than usual, with her hair falling in frizzy tangles around her face and her eyes as wide as saucers. When I reach the counter and tap on the marble surface, she jumps in surprise.

  “Amara! Now isn’t the best time,” she says.

  I frown. “I’m sorry, but I really need to find some information. It’s important.”

  “What kind of information?” Her harried expression changes to pure curiosity faster than the flip of a switch.

  “The kind Nim and Dante don’t want me to see. It’s about—” (I look left and right to make sure no one’s listening in, then drop my voice to a whisper) “—something called the Key.”

  Elli leans over the counter and matches my tone. “And why is this Key so important?”

  “Because it could be what the Harbingers are after.”

  “And what makes you think that?”

  “I overheard Nim and Dante talking. Nim also said it’s hidden somewhere, but no one knows where. I was thinking the Archives Room would have something on it—about what and where it is.”

  Elli whistles, low and dramatic. “Sounds like something The House doesn’t want anyone to know about. That means any information on it’ll be tucked away in a corner somewhere. Somewhere that even most Archivers won’t know about.”

  My breath catches in my throat. “But how can Archivers not know their way around the tunnels? Isn’t that your job?”

  “Learning how to navigate through history is a skill that’s learned, not given. How d’you think I always know where to find what you’re looking for? I’ve had billions of years to teach myself what tunnel holds what books.”

  My face falls, frustration welling up in my gut. “So it’s hopeless. If you don’t know where to find a book about the Key, I doubt anyone else will.”

  Elli purses her lips, narrows an eye at me. “I might know one place we can look. A secret chamber, hidden amongst the tunnels. It’ll be difficult getting there, what with all the other Archivers around here today. We’ll need a distraction to slip by unnoticed.”

  “I’m sure we can think of something.”

  I can see the wheels turning in Elli’s head. She’s debating on whether to help me or not, weighing the possibility of us getting caught against her curiosity. “It’d be easier to wait for a less crowded time—”

  “What if it’s too late by then? If the Harbingers find the Key before we do—”

  “Fine, fine. We’ll go now. Just let me finish repairing this book.”

  I wait with folded arms and a tapping foot as Elli sews the spine back together. Once she’s done she sets the volume aside and rounds the desk, leading me down a tunnel on the right. As we pass by Archivers their eyes follow us suspiciously, and suddenly I feel like it might be harder to squeeze by unnoticed than I originally thought.

  “Why’s it so busy today?” I ask.

  “Annual stock appraisal. All the Archivers are tasked with cataloguing and cleaning the tunnels. A dusty job, as you can imagine, but nothing we can’t handle,” Elli says.

  “And to think I once believed being a Watcher was more interesting than alphabetizing a bunch of books.”

  My sarcasm isn’t lost on her, and she elbows me playfully in the side. “It might sound dull, but we keep The House running, just like you.”

  We turn down another corridor, and then another. The farther we go into the bowels of the Archives Room, the mustier the air becomes. The Archivers dusting the shelves have kicked grime into the air, and every breath feels like I’m inhaling a bucket of dirt.

  Elli stops in front of a random stretch of shelves. They look no different from the others, but she gives me a meaningful glance, and I know we’ve reached our destination. There are Archivers all around and though they don’t turn away from their work, they stare at us out of the corners of their eyes.

  “We need to find a way past them,” I mumble to Elli.

  She bites her bottom lip, lost in thought for a moment before her face becomes bright again. “You stay here. When it’s time, pull the red book off the shelf.”

  Before I can ask any questions, she dashes off around the corner. I wait in bated breath, and then—BOOM! A resounding thud echoes through the corridors. The Archivers race away from their duties, running in the direction of the noise.

  I scan the shelves frantically in search of the red book Elli mentioned. Five rows up from the floor I find it: a dusty, crimson binding hewn from dyed leather. Standing on tiptoes, I reach up and wrench the volume from its resting place. It comes halfway out and then sticks, hanging at an angle from the shelf. I stumble back as the act causes the wall to slide forward and then sideways, revealing an entrance into a hidden room. I wave my hands to bat away clouds of dust as I run inside.

  The passageway begins to slide closed behind me, the grating sound of marble against wood echoing out, and I begin to panic. Elli appears at the last second, squeezing through the crack as the wall seals itself off.

  “What’d you do?” I ask her.

  She looks at me, beaming. “Knocked over a shelf. Should keep all the Archivers down this way occupied until we can find what we’re looking for.”

  I look around. The room is small and dimly lit, with two cracked leather seats positioned in the center. Books and scrolls line the walls, the layers of grime coating the bindings a sign of how long it’s been since anyone’s come to read them.

  “Why keep anything in here?” I ask.

  “There are parts of history The House doesn’t want its members to know about,” Elli confides. “Black spots on an otherwise clean record. Mistakes the Leaders have made, Watchers who didn’t do their job as well as they should. Things like that.”

  “Why bother writing it down at all, then? Wouldn’t it be better to forget it altogether?”

  Elli shrugs. “Maybe. But The House writes everything down. It’s how the rules have always gone. Anyway, I’m glad for it now. Might mean there’s a chance we can still find what you’re looking for.”

  “Where do I start?”

  “One place is as good as any.”

  We begin to comb the shelves. I take stacks of books back to the chairs and skim through the first few pages of each one. I want to read them all cover to cover, but Elli reminds me we don’t have all day, so I resign myself to setting books aside right away when they don’t mention the Key.

  After scanning over twenty volumes, each one almost as heavy as I am, a hopelessness begins to creep over my heart. It’s then that I approach the shelves in the corner—that I pull out five more books and see it hiding behind all the others.

  I drop the stack I’m holding to the floor and reach up to gather the ferreted volume into my arms. It’s lighter than the rest, and the protection of the books lined up in front of it has saved it from most of the dust. Stepping over to the center of the room and flopping down on one of the chairs, I crack open the pages on my lap.

  My eyes dart over the swirling, handwritten text. The parchment the words are scrawled upon is wrinkled and yellowing. Within the first three pages I find what I’m looking for.

  “This one mentions the Key!” I shout out. Elli leaps off the rolling ladder she’s perched on and comes running to my side. Looking over my shoulder, she reads aloud the text scrawled across the page.

  “The Key unlocks all the mystical power of The House. Its value to our cause is infinite. In the wrong hands, the Key can become a weapon, or worse—the catalyst that leads to our destruction.” Elli sits back on her heels and shakes her head. “Leave it to The House to be overdramatic.”

  “Do you know what this mystical power is that it mentions?” I ask.

>   “Never heard of it. But whatever it is, I’m guessing it’s pretty important.”

  I continue to read where she left off. “The Key is the focal point of many prophecies—future events that have been foretold to threaten the integrity of The House. Upon hearing these prophecies it has been decided that the Key must be hidden away in one of the many universes we are charged with caring for, in the form of the life that exists there. The power of the Key will then be passed down through generations, taking root in the eldest son or daughter that is born until its final discovery. Even then, one such prophecy announced by the first Seer to ever be speaks of a future threat to the Key that, even when it is hidden, seems to end in its inevitable recovery and use against The House. We can only hope that this particular prophecy is false, but in the case that it is not, we must remember the Key’s origins—what form it is in and where it has been stowed for safekeeping—so that we can combat the threat …”

  “Well? What else does it say?” Elli needles after I trail off.

  “Nothing. The rest of the pages about it have been ripped out.” I finger the jagged edges of parchment sticking up from the binding.

  Elli draws a sharp intake of breath and wrenches the book from my hands, staring at the torn section in bewilderment. “Who would do such a thing? Defacing the records of The House is punishable by the void.”

  “I don’t know. Whatever’s on the missing pages, it has to say exactly where—or who—the Key is. Maybe it even mentions the prophecy of the first Seer. We need to find them.”

  “At least we’ve learned something new. It sounds like the Key is in living form. So it’s somewhere in one of the universes, walking around, completely unaware of what it is.”

  I cradle my head in my hands and groan. “There are billions of universes and without the rest of the pages we have no clue where to look!”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t look at all,” Elli says. “After all, the Key was hidden for a reason. Who are we to fool with the laws of The House?”

  “Since when do you follow rules?” My words come out harsher than I mean for them to and Elli stands up and backs away, her expression mutinous.

  “This isn’t a question about whether to follow the rules or not. It’s about messing with fate.”

  “And if the future is really up to fate, then according to the book the Key’ll be found regardless of what we do. I say we find it and protect it before anyone else can get to it.”

  “Well, whatever the case is, we need to get to the bottom of what the Harbingers plan to do with the Key, and why they want to mess with the balance of The House in the first place.”

  I stand up and gently tug the book free from her arms. Without it she looks empty, naked. An Archiver without a purpose.

  “I should take this to my room—hide it before anyone can steal the rest of the pages.”

  “No need,” Elli says. “I’ll keep an eye on this place now that I know someone’s defaced the book. It’ll be safest here, where I can keep watch over it.”

  I frown, debating on questioning her stance, but one withering look tells me she’s not going to budge. Reluctantly, I slip the book back onto its shelf, hiding it behind all the others, and stack the rest of the volumes back in front of it.

  “What if we can’t stop it, Elli? The prophecy of the first Seer, I mean. Whatever it is—what if we can’t save The House?” I ask, keeping my eyes focused on the books in front of me. I don’t want Elli to see the fear etched onto my face.

  She sets a hand on my shoulder and gently swivels me around. I relent, leaning into her side and letting her take me into her arms. She presses me against her chest, swaying soothingly back and forth.

  “It’ll be alright,” she says. “It has to be. Without The House, there’s nothing. There’s only the void.”

  I think back to Dena and Oman’s funerals, remembering the sucking, soundless blackness beyond the door. I recall how the dying Watchers were shoved across the threshold, how they blinked out of existence as if they never were.

  I imagine that blackness going on forever, infinitely, with no halls or walls or rooms in which to escape from the emptiness.

  I imagine ceasing to be.

  I hug Elli tighter, tighter than I clung to Noah when I kissed him. She is a reminder that I’m real, that I’m here, and that I’m not floating around in the void I’m picturing in my mind. But in the end, I know it doesn’t matter. Clinging and hoping won’t change a thing.

  The Seers are rarely ever wrong, and if the prophecy the book speaks of is really coming to pass, then it could mean the end of The House, the end of Elli.

  The end of me.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Once Elli lets me go and I leave the Archives Room, I still seek comfort. Part of me wants to find Nim—to fall into her arms like I did Elli’s and close my eyes until the threat to The House has passed—but I know my mentor would be furious if she found out I went looking for information about the Key.

  I settle with unlocking the drawer that holds my universe and visiting the Watch Room. Within minutes I’m flying through the vastness of stars and galaxies, winding my way between planets and solar systems on my way to Earth. When I land on the beach I find the lake surface as still as glass. I inch my way up to the edge until the surf rolls against my toes and watch my reflection ripple across the water.

  I do not look anything like Noah. He’s all color and intricacies and uniqueness. I’m whitewashed, paler than the sand beneath my feet, my silver eyes hard like metal. For the first time since discovering my little blue planet, I want to be an actual part of it—to live among the people here and get lost in the world. But I can’t. I stick out like a sore thumb, a smudge against a clean backdrop.

  Noah finds me staring into the lake hours later, sneaking up from behind and wrapping his arms around my waist. I lean back into him, letting my head rest against his shoulder.

  “I’ve been worried about you,” he says.

  “You shouldn’t. I’ve been fine,” I reply.

  I spin in his arms, pulling him down by the collar of his jacket until his lips meet mine. I know I can’t be a part of this world but I can at least pretend, and this is the easiest way I know of doing that. Sparks shoot through my body, making my heart flutter against my chest as Noah runs his hands down my back and through my hair.

  I push him back onto the beach, out of the surf and into the dry sand. He tumbles down to the ground with me atop him, the soft silt breaking our fall as I wind my hands around his neck and my legs between his. Even then, the thought of the void creeps its way into my mind—its emptiness and endlessness.

  I push my mouth harder against his, trying to lose myself in the moment. I can feel Noah pulling back, surprised by my hunger, my need. He rolls over on the beach, laying me down underneath him and lifting his head away from mine to look into my eyes. I know he can tell, even between the warmth of our kisses, that something’s not right.

  “What’s wrong, Amara?”

  “The House is in danger.”

  Noah sits back on his heels. “Is there anything I can do?”

  I shake my head. “There’s nothing anyone can do. I have no clue what’s going to happen. If the Harbingers succeed—if they manage to destroy The House—I don’t know what’ll become of me. Or you, for that matter.”

  Noah gulps hard. “Stay. Here, with me, I mean. It’s safe here—safer than The House, at least. You don’t need to be the one to deal with all this.”

  “If not me, then who? Elli, the Archiver? Her world exists in books and parchment. And Nim—she’s never broken a rule in her life. The Leaders won’t listen to me, either. I’m alone in this.”

  Noah takes my hands, pulling me to my feet. He draws me into his chest, leaning my head against his heart until I can hear the persistent thump, thump against his ribcage.

  “You’re never alone,” he says. “You have me.”

  We stay like that for a long while. Time doesn’t matter when I�
��m wrapped up in his arms. When the sun hangs low on the horizon and casts pink shadows across the clouds, I finally pull away.

  “I should get back. Nim will wonder where I am.”

  “I meant what I said,” Noah replies as I turn around. “You can stay here. Be one of us—human. A God among men. No one’ll ever have to know where you come from.”

  I halt, glancing over my shoulder and catching the hope that flickers across Noah’s face. “You know I can’t.”

  “Not even for love?”

  I give him the slightest of nods, inclining my chin into my shoulder once before answering. “Not even for life.”

  I burst upward into a plume of gray smoke, flying off into the atmosphere and breaking out into the stars. The swirling galaxy disappears beneath me as I rocket past meteors and comets, planets and black holes. And then, with only a single thought, I’m back in the Watch Room, sitting in front of my universe as it floats above a clear basin.

  But something isn’t right. The quiet of The House has been interrupted by an enveloping scream that echoes clear through the door of the chamber I sit in. A beat goes by, and then more shrieks filter in from the hall beyond. A cacophony of shouts rings out, combining to create a chorus of mismatched voices that are tight with panic and fear.

  I jump to my feet, scoop my universe out of the bowl, slip the orb into my pocket, and dash to the door. When I step across the threshold a crowd has already formed. I am small enough to slip by, pushing to the front of the mob in order to see what all the fuss is about.

  Two Watchers lay prone on the ground. One is a man—pale and sickly, his silver eyes staring blankly up at the ceiling. Next to him is a woman, face down on the floor, her hair obscuring her jawline.

  A fist closes around my heart, forcing a gasp of air up my windpipe and over my tongue. Every member of The House looks alike—same hair, same eyes, same skin. Until I flip her over, I won’t know, but from where I stand, the body looks like Nim.

  I stretch a shaking hand out, a silent tear rolling down my cheek. I hesitate before brushing my fingers against her shoulder—