“Shawna . . .”
“I’m fine,” I snapped. “Believe me, damn it!”
As I said it, I felt a momentary dizziness, and put my hand on the counter for support. At the same moment, Brent’s expression cleared. “Well, if you’re sure,” he said. “I really do need to get back.”
I blinked at his sudden capitulation. “Uh . . . yeah. I’m sure.”
“Great.” He kissed me on the forehead. “I’ll check in at the end of the day. Call if you need anything.”
I opened my mouth to say . . . something . . . but Brent had already turned away to pick up the coffees he’d ordered. Leaving mine waiting for me on the counter, he walked out, whistling, as if nothing strange had just happened at all.
I stared after him, almost as shaken by that performance as by what had happened . . . and then hadn’t happened . . . a few minutes before. I couldn’t believe he’d given in that easily. He’d always been so solicitous of me, so concerned whenever I seemed sick, or just a little depressed. A minute ago he’d been sure I’d hit my head, must have been wondering how he could convince me to go to the ER . . . and then, suddenly, he’d just accepted that I was fine, as though whatever I said was so, and that was all there was to it.
What the hell?
Carter, at least, still looked concerned. “You’re sure you’re all right, Shawna?”
I looked into his eyes. “I’m fine,” I said, trying to put the same conviction into it as I had with Brent. I felt another instant of vertigo, and leaned harder against the counter: and just like Brent, Carter turned away, as though he’d forgotten anything strange had happened.
Just like he’d forgotten the murderous attack on his shop not ten minutes ago.
Just like the whole world had forgotten it.
I took a deep breath. My dizziness had faded, but I still felt deeply tired. I shoved my phone back into my pocket, picked up my coffee (even though I’d already drunk it, three hours ago, I felt like I needed it again), and pushed through the door onto the sidewalk. I stepped out from under the striped awning and looked up, into clear blue sky. I looked both ways at the normal amount of traffic, moving normally: no careening white vans loaded with killers.
Across the street, a huge poster of Johann Sebastian Bach wearing sharp-looking mirrorshades stared at me from a shop window. ROCK ’N’ BACH, read the sign above his head. Rinaldo, I thought. I saw him in here as the attack started. Maybe he remembers something.
I was so focused on that idea I walked out into traffic. Tires squealed to my left. My heart leaped, and I spun, expecting to see one of the killers’ vans . . . but it was nothing but a beat-up blue Mojita four-by-four. The bearded young man driving it leaned out of his window and yelled at me, but whatever he said didn’t register through the pounding of my pulse. Behind him, someone honked.
I checked the other way, saw an opening in the traffic, and hurried across the other lane and between the cars parked against the curb. The Mojita’s tires squealed as the irritated driver sped away. I glanced back in time to see the woman driving the electric Avro minicar who had honked at the pickup driver give me a dirty look, but she didn’t have enough horsepower in her suitcase-sized motor to allow her to do anything but ooze on down the road in huffy silence.
Feeling less tired after that fresh surge of adrenaline, I pushed through the door into Rock ’n’ Bach. The store was empty of customers; it usually was, which always made me wonder how Rinaldo stayed in business. There were eight rows of CDs (obscure jazz titles, forgotten Broadway shows, complete sets of symphonies by classical composers I’d never heard of), one row of used (and a few new) vinyl records, and one row of DVDs, mostly of concerts and musicals, although there was a whole bin (the “Caligari Collection”) devoted to German Expressionist films, a peculiar passion of Rinaldo’s.
The counter, just to the left of the entrance, was occupied by Sara, Rinaldo’s clerk, who’d worked there for as long as I’d been coming in. Late-middle-aged and sour-faced, she exuded all the warmth of a frozen pickle (see above, me wondering how Rinaldo stayed in business). I gave her a smile, which she did not return, perhaps for fear her face would crack. “Hi,” I said. “Is Rinaldo in?”
She pointed. “Fourth row, third bin.”
I blinked. “What?”
“Rinaldo. First Italian-language opera written for the London stage. Composed by George Frideric Handel in 1711. We have two recordings and a DVD of the Glyndebourne production.”
I laughed, though I wasn’t feeling amused. “No, Rinaldo. Your owner.”
Her frown deepened further, approaching scowl territory. “Is that a joke? I’m the owner.”
“What?”
“Since I opened the store twenty-two years ago.”
“But . . .” I didn’t have anything to say after “but,” so I stopped. We stared at each other. “Then who . . . books the acts at the Human Bean?”
“I do. Always have.”
“Even the DNA Eruptions?”
She pointed again. “Second row, second bin, under ‘Nerd Grunge.’ Although I personally prefer the Naked Singularities. Physics puns are funnier than biology puns.”
We stared at each other again. “Did you see anything strange happen outside this morning?” I said finally, remarkably calmly, I thought, since inside my head I was running and screaming, in ever-diminishing circles. “Wind? Rain? White vans filled with terrorists?”
No question: I’d driven her into full scowl mode now. “Are you drunk?” she said coldly. “I don’t allow drunk people in my store. I think you should leave before you alarm the other customers.”
I looked around. Nope, still no other customers. But I didn’t want to say that, in case there actually were, and I just couldn’t see them. Clearly Sara and I had very different ideas of what constituted reality at that moment. “I wish I was drunk,” I muttered, then walked out.
Everything looked perfectly normal outside. Except I knew it wasn’t. I’d seen my best friend murdered. I’d seen the Human Bean ravaged by gunfire, the windows broken. I’d seen it start to rain as a terrifying storm broke over the city.
The sun shone from a clear blue sky. The Human Bean remained unravaged. My best friend had apparently never existed. Neither had Rinaldo, a man I’d spoken to weekly.
Maybe I should go to the ER, see a doctor, tell her I was hallucinating. Maybe I had somehow fallen over the couch in the Human Bean and hit my head. But they’d lock me up for observation, and I didn’t feel crazy. I felt confused. I felt conflicted. I felt tired. But not crazy.
Of course, I wouldn’t, would I?
My hands were trembling. I clenched them into fists, then set off for the studio. Somewhere familiar. Somewhere safe. Somewhere I could think.
At the corner, I turned and looked toward the mountains, and felt a chill. The storm clouds were still there, swelling in the sky, rushing toward us, closer than they had been when I’d walked to the Human Bean with Brent, as black as ever beneath their deceptively snow-white front. But I had already seen them pour over the city, had been caught with Aesha in the swirling wind and first drops of rain . . . in fact, my clothes were still a little damp.
My clothes were damp. How had I not noticed that before? My clothes were damp. I had been caught in the rain with Aesha. I had. And yet . . .
Swallowing hard, I turned my back on the mountains and hurried down the pedestrian mall toward my shop. I looked up.
WORLDS read the sign that I had last seen reading WORLDSHAPER POT. The workmen were struggling with the H. I fumbled my keys from my pocket with a shaking hand, hurried under the scaffolding to the front door, opened it, slipped inside, closed it, and leaned back against it. I left my sign saying I was CLOSED. I stared around the shop. It looked the same . . .
But the studio didn’t.
I hurried past the counter into the back. The mugs I had
thrown after I had gone for coffee with Brent, and before I had met Aesha, weren’t there. The studio remained pristine: no clay dust surrounded the wheel. The slab of clay I had cut still sat on the workbench inside its plastic wrap. Once again, it was as if the past three hours had never happened.
It happened, I told myself fiercely. The images were burned in my mind: Aesha’s slight body ripped apart by gunfire, the blood, the smell, the . . .
It all came rushing back with such force I had to turn and dash for the bathroom, where I retched into the toilet, though there was little in my stomach: I had never had my lunch, after all, and for me, the muffin I’d eaten for breakfast was four hours ago.
If I had eaten lunch at the Human Bean, what would I be bringing up? I thought, as I clung to the porcelain bowl until I was certain the spasms had passed. Food I ate in a past no one but me remembers?
Shivering violently, partly from the bout of vomiting, more from the cascading feeling of normality overturned, with no hope it would suddenly be righted, I pulled myself to my feet with a hand on the sink, then turned on the tap and scooped some cold water into my mouth, rinsing it of the foul taste of bile. I spat, and then raised my eyes to the mirror. They looked red, and my face was deathly pale, but otherwise I looked the same as I had when I’d gotten up that morning. How could everything have changed so suddenly?
Something had happened, either to me, or to the world. But I looked the same. Except for the strange fatigue, I felt the same. I had unbroken memories stretching back to that morning . . . this morning. So, unless I was hallucinating, something had to have happened to the world.
But what power could change the world like that, rewrite the past, reset the present?
Alternate worlds, I thought. Schrödinger’s cat. Different timelines.
I’d read science fiction novels, watched movies, read articles, seen science programs on TV. I knew about the many-worlds hypothesis. But outside of science fiction, nobody had ever suggested you could really move from one world to another.
Yet what other explanation could there be?
Hallucination. Drugs. Stroke. The same old possibilities ran through my brain, but I shook my head violently. No. I was myself. I was sure of it. It wasn’t me that had changed, it was the world.
But how? And why?
I pulled a paper cup from the dispenser by the sink and took a long drink of cold water, filling and refilling the cup five times. Then I crumpled it and tossed it into the wastepaper basket. I looked at myself in the mirror again.
“Now what?” I asked my reflection, my voice shaking. “What happens next?”
As if in answer, the bell at the front of the shop jingled. The sign said CLOSED, but I hadn’t locked the door.
Brent? I hoped so. I regretted sending him away, wished I’d told him to stay with me, wished I’d let him take me to the hospital. Even if he didn’t remember Aesha, he remembered me, he remembered he loved me, he remembered I loved him. Suddenly I was desperate to see him. I jerked the door open. “Brent, I’m sorry—”
But it wasn’t Brent.
A stranger stood just outside the bathroom: the man in the cowboy hat and the long black duster.
FIVE
INSTINCTIVELY, I REACHED for a weapon: unfortunately, the only thing that came to hand was the soap dispenser, and its defensive possibilities seemed limited, unless I managed to squirt soap in his eyes.
“Shawna Keys, I presume?” the stranger said. He had a deep voice, otherwise unremarkable—no discernible accent.
I didn’t let go of the soap dispenser. “Maybe. Who are you?”
He took off the hat. Without its shadow, I got my first good look at his face.
He was older than me, maybe early fifties. He had a tanned, lean face, with high cheekbones. His long black hair, drawn back in a ponytail, was beginning to develop Doctor Strange-like wings of white at the temples. Beneath the sapphire-blue eyes I had glimpsed before, and a blade-sharp nose, sprouted a pencil-thin mustache. “My name is Karl Yatsar. I have come from Ygrair.”
Ygrair? “Never heard of it,” I said.
He blinked. “Is that a joke? Ygrair is not an it. She is the Mistress of the Labyrinth. Your teacher. Your benefactor, who gave you this world.” He frowned. “As you well know.”
I took a step back into the bathroom, and raised the soap dispenser higher. “You,” I said, “are a crazy person.”
He stared at me. “Are you telling me,” he said, carefully enunciating each word, “that you do not remember Ygrair?”
“I think,” I said, enunciating right back at him, “that I just made that rather clear.”
Silence, then, for a long moment. “That is . . . unexpected,” he said. “Unprecedented, in fact.” He frowned. “Verging on the terrifying.”
“It’s been that kind of day,” I said. “Now. Are you going to tell me what the hell you’re talking about?”
His frown deepened. “There is a lot to tell.”
“I’ve got time.”
“I am not so sure.” He glanced toward the shop’s front window, then back at me. “If you truly do not remember where you came from, you will find what I tell you very hard to believe.”
“Try me.”
“But if you have no memory of Ygrair, can you really . . . ?” He cut off the end of that question, which he must have intended for himself, anyway, since I found it meaningless. Then he nodded once, sharply. “Very well. May we at least converse somewhere other than in the doorway to the lavatory?”
Lavatory? Who calls it that? “I don’t know,” I said. “Standing in the doorway of the ‘lavatory,’ I can always jump back inside, lock the door, and call the cops.” And rub Policeman Phil’s nose in the fact I wasn’t making up my predawn stalker-voyeur.
“That would not be wise.”
“Sounds pretty wise to me.”
He sighed, and ran a hand over the top of his ponytailed head in a very ordinary gesture of exasperation. “Miss Keys. Please. I have no intention of harming you. Quite the contrary. You are the most important person in this world to me. Possibly in any world. I mean that utterly and literally.”
“Any world,” I repeated. “This tendency of yours to sound insane is not making me any more inclined to sit and have a quiet, non-crazy conversation with you.”
“I am not insane.” For the first time, a little annoyance crept into his voice. “Nor are you, though if you truly do not remember your origins, you may well think you are, after what has happened today.”
“I remember my origins,” I said. “I grew up in Appleville, Oregon. My mother still lives there.” But as I said it, I felt a cold tingle down my back, as though a spider with eight tiny shoes of ice had been hiding in my hair and had just made a break for freedom. “Wait. What do you know about what happened today?”
“I saw it happen,” Yatsar said. “Then I saw it unhappen. I saw the attack on the coffee shop. I saw people murdered, including the friend who accompanied you. I remember them. Does anyone else?”
The ice-shod spider ran back up my spine to cower in my hair once more. “No,” I said. “Explain that to me, if you can.”
“I would be happy to. Shall I come in, or will you come out?”
I sighed. “Fine.” I finally let go of the soap dispenser, edged out of the bathroom, giving him a wide berth, and pointed him toward the front left-hand corner of the shop. In that often-sunny spot (though not today, with the scaffolding out front), I’d artfully placed three chairs, upholstered in green vinyl, around a low, round, glass-topped coffee table, upon which I had equally artfully placed the latest copies of Ceramics Illustrated, Glazes and Greenware, and my favorite, The Compleat Potter. I sat in the chair on the left, precariously perched on the edge in case I had to make a break for it. Outside, beyond the spindly metal framework of the scaffolding, pedestrians strode along the still-sunli
t cobblestones, for all the world as if nothing strange had happened today, unaware they were reliving the morning. Distantly, filtered by glass and brick, I heard one of the young men once again hanging my sign swearing about something. But no metal letters crashed to the street, so I decided I could ignore it.
Yatsar put his hat on the table, covering the magazines, then unbuttoned the duster, took it off, and threw it over the back of the third chair. I immediately understood why he’d been wearing it. “Are you an actor?”
“I have been,” he said. “Though I was a better playwright than thespian. Why?”
I raised an eyebrow. “The tights, the . . . um . . . doublet, is that the word? The puffy pantaloons. The belt with the big buckle. The knife. Or sword. Is that thing legal, by the way?”
He looked down at himself. “It is a dagger, and it was not only legal, but necessary, in the last world. The clothing was also typical of the last world, which seemed to have been Shaped by a great fan of the Bard. The hat and coat,” he indicated them, “were merely what came readily to hand when I arrived in this world, and served well to hide the rest.”
The last world . . . Shaped by a great fan of the Bard? This world? I closed my eyes briefly. Just talking to this guy would have been enough to give me a headache, if I hadn’t already had one, following hard on the heels of my earlier feeling of fatigue. I opened my eyes again. “Very well, Mr. Yatsar . . .”
“Call me Karl.”
Hell, why not? “Fine. Karl. Call me Shawna. Now talk. From the beginning.”
* * *
Karl Yatsar frowned at the girl . . . no, woman; she must have been at least nineteen when given this world to Shape, and that had been ten years ago, in the First World. Still, she looked half a child from his increasingly ancient viewpoint. He had not been prepared for this eventuality; had not even though it possible, that a Shaper could forget she was the Shaper. Yet here she was, and here he was, and the Adversary . . .
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