by Amanda Jay
Danger, the word echoed in his head.
Be careful of Onyx. She knows everything. And she's very, very dangerous.
But Onyx continued, "So, Ezra was forced to give one of you away. Of course, he never told anyone that he gave you away, Tom. Only Kay knew you had been brought over to begin with, and when you disappeared, I think she thought you were dead."
"He kept working on building the machine, but it was far more difficult now than before. Without Pulse Stones, it was becoming nearly impossible to design a power source. Ezra was desperate. That was when he reached out to me after so many years. He was getting close. He thought he figured out a way. But then Kaelyn had to go and die, and now Ezra is locked away." The indifference in her voice caused Tom to clench his fists.
"We tried to get the machine working on our own. When we couldn't, we even brought in Professor Muriel-- he worked quite closely with Ezra on the development of the theory in its initial stages, although the idea that Ezra never consulted him when he was building the machine, at least the second time, seemed to hit a bit of a nerve with him. He seems to think that--"
"How did she die?," Felix interrupted.
There was a small pause.
"Excuse me?" Onyx's voice wasn't cold. Well, it wasn't colder than usual.
"You said she went and died. How did that happen? Who killed her?" he repeated, more firmly this time.
"I know it must be rather difficult to come to terms with, Felix. But no one killed Kaelyn. Your mother was a very sick woman. I don't think she could handle the--"
"I don't care what you thought, she didn't kill herself. She wouldn't do that. Not to me." Tom had never heard this much conviction in Felix before. He sat, red eared, and glaring at Onyx from across the table.
"No, she certainly wouldn't do that to you, my dear fellow." A new voice boomed over them, as an extremely short man bounded into the room. "It just so happens that we are connected far more than we even realise. Felix, were there any times that you, perhaps, felt a pain in your left leg that you couldn't quite explain? Tom, have you ever felt a rush of happiness, or sadness, or even a flash of anger in your sleep, and you didn't know where it came from? Well, it probably came from your other. We all have them. It's clearer still when you have trouble deciding something, or when you were sure you have been somewhere that logic tells you you haven't visited before. It's an interesting concept, this parallel universe that Ezra managed to unearth."
He climbed into a chair facing Tom and Felix with some difficulty, and sat across from them, beaming. "Jolly pleased to meet you. I'm Julius Reuben Muriel."
He was greeted back with silence, as he surveyed the two boys.
Tom narrowed his eyes. "We went to your office. It looked like you were abducted."
"Oh well," Professor Muriel blushed a little, waving his hand as if to dismiss the thought. "I suppose I did put up a bit of a fight when Onyx came. But I do understand the importance of what she needed from me. Of what everyone needs from me."
There was more tense silence.
"You both really are mirror images of each other aren't you? It's really quite fascinating. It's a shame, to be honest, that all this cannot last."
Tom and Felix looked at each other for the first time, both thinking the same thing.
"Can't last?" Tom finally asked.
"I tried to get the machine working, but I haven't been able to, unfortunately. It would have been a lot simpler, I'm afraid, than what we have to do next." Muriel sighed, looking down at his hands.
"How did you get his journals?" Felix asked.
Muriel looked down again, his red cheeks now turning purple.
"She brought them to me."
"Who? Mother?"
"Yes, it was Kaelyn. She was worried about Ezra. Hysterical, almost. She had only just found out you see--"
"I think finding out about my meeting with Ezra really pushed her over the edge," Onyx interjected.
"All those years, Tom, she had thought you were dead. When she found out Ezra had just hidden you away until he could fix the machine, well, the first thing she did was come to me to see if I could help."
"You met her, then? Before she died?"
"She was... unravelling, Felix my boy. I'm so sorry. I hated that I couldn't help her. I didn't understand the situation myself then. When I tried explaining to her that I wouldn't be any use, well, she..." the Professor shook his head and covered his eyes with his hands. "Her face still haunts me to this day."
Felix remained unmoved. "When did she come to see you?"
Muriel opened his eyes and frowned slightly. "Sorry?"
"What day was it? That she came to see you?"
"Monday, last week. I remember because I had just filled out my weekly report, that I only do on Mondays, when she charged into my office."
"She was found on Wednesday. What did she do for two whole days after that, then?"
Muriel threw his hands up. "I wish I knew, my boy. I wish I knew!"
"And this machine," Tom asked. "So, it can't be fixed?"
"We even thought about breaking Ezra out of the City Guard to give him his last chance at fixing it," said Onyx. "But being there, well, you saw it yourself, didn't you Tom? He seems to have finally broken."
"Alright, so you can't send me back. What do we do?"
Muriel averted his eyes as Onyx took a slow breath.
"You understand, Tom, the true effect of you being here don't you? This City, the way it has fallen to ruin, the climate issues, the unrest? Now of course it is not your fault, you did not have any choice in being brought over, but it is a direct result of you being here, all the same." She was matter of fact in the way she said it. She didn't blame him. It was just the way things were.
Tom felt a funny type of pressure in his throat. He nodded tightly.
"I'm really sorry to ask you to do this, Tom. But it is the only way." Onyx slid a small brown bottle across the table.
"I am told it is painless. Just drink it in a sip, and it feels like you are going to sleep. It will all be over before you know it."
"What? This is madness. Tom, don't touch that!" It was Felix who reacted loudly. Tom's head was still dazed. Would they lie to him? About something so important? And more importantly, was he willing to let his life go? He wasn't afraid to die, he supposed, but he was afraid of leaving Skii alone.
Tom instinctively reached out for the bottle, his mind in shambles, his hand trembling, only to have the poison roughly slapped out of his hand.
"No one, and I mean, no one move," Skii's voice cut through Tom's nerves. She had a knife up against Onyx's throat and was glaring dangerously at Xuntak.
"Tom is not going to die. Not unless you all want to go down too."
TOM
It had been a typical, dust bowl of a day in Mliss, and Tom had been even more restless than usual. He had been younger then, with two perfect legs, and the complete lack of caution that came with it.
"Let’s shimmy up Meaty Max’s ledge," he had tried to convince Skii. "I hear he gets his cuts today."
"Meaty Max! Bearoux bless you. You never learn, do you, little one?"
Tom had rolled his eyes. Skii did have a point. Meaty Max, or Max the butcher, wasn’t known for showing any sympathy towards the Underbelly pests. Rumour had it that he had once taken a thieving boy’s hand clean off with his large meat cleaver.
But stories like that never scared Tom. Quite the opposite, actually-- he found them exciting. Tom didn’t love a lot of things, but the Twin Faced God knew he loved a challenge. And that evening, Tom was hungry. Hungry for more than whatever miserable stew was being ladled off at the Stew Pot. Hungry for a nice bit of chicken, or veal, or sausage that Meaty max’s shop of treasures held for him. Looking back, Tom realised he probably was just hungry to break his own wretched routine.
So it was without Skii’s knowledge that he had slunk off to the butcher’s, hoping she wouldn’t be too angry when she realised that he was gone. All the way th
ere Tom’s heart had raced. His mouth watered in anticipation of his dinner that night. He hoped there would be sausage. He had only barely tasted an inch of sausage once before, but he swallowed just remembering. The tender, juicy meat, the chewy texture that felt like he was eating something real, and best of all, the smell of them, sizzling over the fire.
Tom had clambered up the broken gutter next to the second storey room that Max used to store his weekly deliveries. The window was dusty, but Tom could see through it just enough to know the coast was clear.
That was easy, he thought to himself as he inched the window open and dropped through. The storeroom, or rather, its contents, were beyond Tom’s wildest dreams. There were legs of cured ham hanging like large clubs from hooks on the ceiling. There were delicious looking chunks of meat kept on blocks of ice. Stomach rumbling, Tom noticed the strings of sausages, wrapped neatly into coils, just waiting for him to grab them.
Thinking of how pleased Skii would be at dinnertime, he slowly started unraveling a few sausages. He wouldn’t take too many, not so much that it would cause a stir, but enough to feed them for a day or two.
It was perhaps his delight that caused him to be so distracted. He didn’t hear the approaching footsteps at all, and only realised that he was about to be discovered when he heard the doorknob turn. It took just a tick of the Eyes, but that was all Tom needed. Pure instinct taking over, he dropped the sausages and raced back over to the window. Still not thinking, simply reacting in the way he was so good at, Tom lurched himself over, and clung to the ledge with his fingers.
He was dangling many feet over the secluded alleyway that snaked behind the shops. The smarter move would have been to shimmy back down the gutter and make a run for it, but Tom had come to get sausages, and he thought it was bad form for him to leave without them.
He was just hoping that Meaty Max wouldn’t notice anything amiss in his storeroom, when the window above him burst open. Tom would never forget the face that appeared out of that window, red with rage, the purple scar that ran down the right cheek, and worst of all, the manic, twisted grin that displayed his rotting yellow-green teeth.
"Stupid little vermin," the man sneered, and then Tom saw the cleaver. It glistened in the sunlight as it flew up. Tom didn’t want to know what happened when it came back down. He let go of the ledge, and felt himself plummet down.
When he opened his eyes again, all he saw was blue. He remembered wondering, still in a daze, whether he had died. Whether this was the paradise Skii had often talked about. Skii, Tom thought, jerking himself up. He couldn’t die. He couldn’t leave her alone.
Thankfully, looking around, he had realised that he most likely was not dead, and that he was just in an infirmary. He had never been inside an infirmary before, at least, for as long as he could remember, but he had heard stories about them from those who got injured at the Wheel.
This isn’t so bad, he had thought to himself. It was cool, much cooler than it was outside, and quiet, with everyone speaking in low voices. Tom heard someone approaching and kept his eyes closed-- he didn’t want to be sent away from this comfortable place so quickly.
"Another one from the Underbelly," he heard a tired voice say. "Fell from a window trying to steal some food."
"Well, his leg’s about done for," said another, harsher voice. "It needs to go. These lot have no idea how to take care of themselves, living in filth and squalor. We just had someone in last week-- died of infection because he couldn’t take care of his wounds."
Tom was confused. His brain felt addled somehow, and hazy. It was only later on that he realised he was probably given some sort of drug to stop the pain.
His leg’s about done for. It needs to go. The words kept circling through his head. It took him a lot longer than it usually would have to understand what they meant, but when he finally did, it sent him into blind panic.
He tried to sit up, but he couldn’t move. Thick straps crossed his chest and arms, holding him in place. He was too weak to struggle against them, but tried anyway, to no avail.
"Shhh, stay calm," a voice rang out softly, and Tom noticed a blue-robed nurse in his cubicle. Her hair was up in a blue cap, and she wore a surgical mask that concealed most of her face.
"Stay calm," she repeated, bending down and pulling on a lever near the wheels of the bed. She gently started to push the bed out from behind the curtained wall.
"No," protested Tom, feebly. "I won’t let you…"
"I won’t let them either, Tom cat. Now be quiet and stay calm."
And Tom’s drugged up brain finally recognised the eyes, brighter because of the blue mask, and his panic evaporated. The rest of the events were a blur, but Tom knew that Skii had saved him. She somehow managed to smuggle him out of the infirmary and back to their attic. She had brought him ointments and balms from the apothecaries, and when the drugs wore off, whiskey, to take the edge off his pain. He didn't know how long he took to recover, just that he went in and out of consciousness, imagining doctors and healers and strange men who were trying to take him away.
She never said "I told you so," or scolded him even, for going behind her back. She knew he was sorry, and that was enough. It was what he loved most about her-- that she knew him, perhaps better than he knew himself.
His leg was never the same, but he hadn’t cared. At least he had a leg, which is less than what he would have had, if he hadn’t had Skii.
OF TIME (AGAIN)
Time is a funny thing. Much like water from a flowing river gently moulds and shapes sharp rocks on the river bed until they are but innocuous, silken pebbles, so time chips away at our memories, rubbing them down softly until they are not harsh, but soft, romanticised versions of the truth. Much like the soft focus of a camera, time blurs out the unattractive, dark shadows which flutter across a face, instead bathing it in a warm, sepia toned glow. Sepia toned. That is how most memories move through my mind. Softly fluttering and sepia toned, like someone threw a box of old photographs into a gentle summer breeze.
TOM
"Skii," Tom spoke, it wasn't a request or a question. He just couldn't believe that here she was, rescuing him once again.
"Tom, get up, and come towards me," she instructed. "I mean it, not a flinch from you." The warning was directed at Xuntak, even though the man simply continued to sit back in his chair, with a slight bemused expression.
Tom slowly stood up. He wasn't quite sure what he was supposed to do. If Muriel was right, and him being alive created this much trouble, well, he had little choice but to listen to them, didn't he?
He looked over at Onyx who met his eye not a trace of worry on her face.
"I don't think you understand," she said, completely unfazed that there was a rusty knife being pressed against her throat. "It doesn't matter if you kill me. It doesn't matter if every single person in this room dies. As long as Tom is alive, no one in this world will be safe.'
"And so you are just going to make him drink this poison, are you?"
"There is no other way. Don't you think we haven't gone over the possibilities multiple times over? Regardless of what Ezra and Kaelyn came to think of me, I'm not evil, you know."
"Tom, get over here now, do you understand me? Now."
Tom couldn't move. He wanted to, but for some reason he remained rooted to the spot.
"Oh, Twin Faced God be damned, you don't still don't get it, do you? It isn't Tom you want. It's him!' She pointed at Felix who, like Tom, looked like he was in shock.
"Don't be ridiculous," Muriel exclaimed. "She's lying. She just wants to save him. Of course she is lying."
But Onyx had narrowed her eyes and turned her head to study Skii closely.
"How can you be so sure?" she asked.
Skii glared back at her. "I am sure."
"You understand Skii, what a serious allegation this is? I know you can appreciate that we need to have more evidence than you being sure."
"Fine, I'll explain." She looked at Tom.
"Wait till I'm finished, okay?"
He didn't understand what she meant, but he nodded just the same.
Skii removed the knife from Onyx's throat, but she kept it poised ready to attack as she remained standing behind her.
"I know it isn't Tom because I was there when Ezra left him." She spoke the words fast, looking defiantly around the room.
"What?" the word left Tom's mouth as more of yelp.
"I was just a little one myself back them, and I'd found shelter in a crate in a small alleyway in the Underbelly. One day a man showed up, nicely dressed sort, you know Tom, the kind we sometimes, well, you know.
"This man, he had two boys with him. Twins, I thought to myself, and I was fascinated because I had never seen twins before, so I snuck closer to watch him. The man, Ezra, I guess, he was clearly very emotional. He was crying, I think, and was hugging one of the boys. He was saying sorry too, over and over again, and had bundled the boy up in this big coat, so I guessed that he was going to leave him behind.
"The other boy, the one not being hugged and cried over, well, he was a curious little one. He wandered over to where I was hiding, and I think we started playing. He was laughing anyways, and so was I, when Ezra found us again.
"'It's time to go, Felix' he said. I remember the name because I thought it was quite funny. You never hear names like Felix in the Underbelly. But the boy grabbed my arm and said he wanted to stay with his new friend.
"He tried to pry the boy away many times, but the boy in the coat was crying and the boy who was with me seemed happy. Ezra looked heartbroken. He left and came back and left again. Then he came back and gave me some money. He told me that I should call the boy Thomas, and asked if I would take care of him? Of course I said yes. Tom was my first real friend. Ezra told me where to find him too, if I ever needed him. I only needed him once, Tom, to buy medicine after your leg, you know. He kept tabs on us, from time to time. But that's how I know that Tom isn't the boy you want. He isn't the one Ezra tried to give away."