by Geonn Cannon
“Did you hear something else?”
“No. I...” Her voice was soft, and her head was turned away from the torch so her face was in shadow. “I didn’t let myself dwell on it. The possibility of repeating what happened with Desmond. That I had led two more people I care greatly for into danger. And to once again survive when they didn’t. I refused to carry that weight in the middle of a mission.”
Trafalgar felt ashamed for making light. “Dorothy, I didn’t intend...”
Dorothy turned around. Her brow was furrowed, her eyes still hidden in the darkness. “When we walked into the clearing by the lake, I wasn’t sure what I was seeing. In one eye, the water was calm, but in the other I could see people thrashing. The tribesmen were like phantoms. I saw you.” Her voice broke. “Near the edge. About to fall. Just like Desmond. And I... I didn’t know if what I was seeing was real or illusion. I knew that if I threw myself into the water to grab you, and you weren’t really there, I would be throwing myself to my death. But I thought it was worth the risk.”
“How do I respond to that?” Trafalgar asked.
“You don’t.” Dorothy swept her hand over her face and looked away. “I know you were only teasing me. But I would have let it go unsaid without being prompted, and I’m grateful you gave me the opening to say those things. They very much needed to be said.”
“Thank you. And if I didn’t say it before, thank you for saving my life.”
“It was my pleasure to do so.”
When they began moving again, Trafalgar noticed the water seemed more sluggish than before. She hadn’t been bothering to lift her foot entirely with each step since it was easier to just slide it along the bottom, but now there was more resistance against her calves. She aimed her torch down and illuminated the flowing black surface. It looked more like oil than water, though the way it was breaking around her legs was--
It took her a moment to realize what she was actually seeing, and her blood ran cold. “Dorothy, stop.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Can you move to the edge of the water? Get back on solid ground?”
Dorothy looked at Trafalgar, then aimed her torch at her own feet. “Good lord!”
“No sudden movements,” Trafalgar said as calmly as possible.
“Snakes?” Dorothy asked. There seemed to be more snakes than water in the river at the moment, their scaly bodies rolling and writhing against each other.
“So it would seem.” Her heart beat a rapid rhythm against her ribs. She tried to swallow, but her mouth was dry. “I’m not terribly fond of snakes.”
Dorothy said, “The majority of species are entirely harmless to humans.”
“That cannot possibly be true.”
“I choose to believe it at the moment.”
“Fair enough.” Trafalgar shone her light at the wall. There was no ledge in this part of the cavern where they could get away from the slithering beasts. Moving the beam higher, she saw nothing on the walls they could grab to lift themselves up. “I have a horrible suggestion.”
Dorothy whimpered. “I know what you’re going to suggest. I don’t like it.”
“I know. But we have no idea when exactly the snakes began this little migration. They haven’t done anything to us yet. Much as you choose to believe they’re harmless, I choose to believe they’ll ignore us if we don’t do anything to draw their ire.”
“I told you I wouldn’t like it.”
“Courage, Lady Boone.” She tried to make herself sound more confident than she was. “Captain Neville and his men made this same journey. Certainly you don’t plan to turn around and go back now, proving once and for all that women have no place doing this sort of thing.”
Dorothy said, “That was lousy.”
“But did it work?”
“Of course it worked, damn you.”
Moving forward was more difficult now that she knew what she was walking through, but she tried her best to ignore it. Sweat broke out on her forehead and upper lip as she anticipated being bitten with every step. She was grateful that her boots extended past the cuffs of her pants, so there was little chance of anything slithering underneath against her skin. She placed her feet carefully and tried not to step on any tails.
The snakes, for their part, didn’t seem particularly interested in them. She could now hear the subtle hissing she’d originally taken for the sound of falling water.
“How many do you suppose there are?”
“That,” Trafalgar said, “does not seem like a calming thing to contemplate. I’m more than willing to let it remain a mystery.”
“I believe that--” Dorothy stopped suddenly and looked down. “Crumbs. Trafalgar, tense your leg muscles.”
“What? Why...” She felt it then. One of the snakes had wrapped itself around her ankle. She felt its head against her calf and the disgusting pressure of its weight as it coiled to rise higher on her leg. She flexed her calf muscles and let the beast wrap tightly around her. Once it reached her knee, she relaxed and felt a gap between her and the snake. She tried to lift her foot out of the loop, but the snake instantly tightened.
“Ahh. Thank you for the warning, but it didn’t help. Are you ensnared as well?”
Dorothy said, “I have one on each leg. They’re up to my knee. I can’t move.”
Trafalgar unsheathed her knife. There was no way to cut at the snakes without cutting herself, but if she could wedge the blade between its skin and her leg...
“Damn! I don’t recommend getting your hands close to the bloody faces.”
“Were you bitten?”
“Very nearly.”
Trafalgar was about to suggest another plan of attack when she was stopped by an unfamiliar voice which echoed off the sharp edges of the tunnel.
“Cut as many of them as you want. Another will take the place of any you kill. And even if you manage to free yourselves, my children have flooded the path back to the cave entrance. It would take only one bite from one fang to fill you with poison and render you helpless.”
Dorothy extended her torch. Its light filled the cavern ahead of them and, at the very edge of its reach, they could see the shadowy outline of their captor.
“Do you greet all your guests in this manner?” Dorothy asked.
“Guests? You’re not guests. You’re intruders.” She stepped closer, revealing she wore a dark cloak with green piping. Her arms were clasped behind her back. “This is how I deal with intruders.”
“Had we known this was your home, we would have been more polite about it. Allow me to make amends. I’m Lady Dorothy Boone, of London. This--”
“Miss Trafalgar of Abyssinia.”
Dorothy narrowed her eyes. “Have we met before?”
“We’re meeting now. And I remember.”
She came closer, revealing a woman much younger than Dorothy expected. She couldn’t have been older than mid-twenties, with her black hair hanging loose around her unlined features.
“You will have told me about your friend, the man who remembers time in reverse. He sees the future but forgets the past. I suffer from a similar affliction. I can see... everything. Past. Future. Everything I’ve seen or will see, playing in my mind like a loop.”
“That would drive a person mad,” Dorothy said, realizing only on the last word that the other woman was saying the exact same thing at the same time. She blinked in surprise and then said, “You would be a riot at parties.” That was echoed as well.
The woman smiled. “I don’t get out to many parties, Lady Boone. We have a choice about how we continue forward. You can be bitten by one of my pets, their poison will paralyze you, I’ll take you where I need you to be, and wait for the antidote to give you back your limbs. Or you can agree to come with me willingly. I’m patient, so I really haven’t got much of an opinion.”
Trafalgar said, “If what you are saying is true, then I suppose you know what our answer will be.”
A chuckle, and a slow nod. “You are co
rrect, Trafalgar.” With no apparent signal or command, the pressure around their legs relaxed and the snakes fell back to rejoin the flow. The woman turned and began to walk. “Follow me.”
Dorothy glanced at Trafalgar, who shrugged and started walking.
“It occurs to me,” Dorothy said, “that we never told you our names.”
“There was no proper introduction,” the woman admitted, “but in our time together, I will have had heard your names many times.”
Dorothy was stuck on ‘will-have-had.’ “And since we don’t have the benefit of foresight? What might we call you?”
“You may call me D’janira.”
Trafalgar said, “Is that actually your name?”
“No. But I like how it will sound coming out of your mouth, Lady Boone.”
Dorothy looked at Trafalgar again, apparently looking for some sign she understood their current predicament. Trafalgar could only sigh and shake her head, keeping her torch held high as they followed D’janira into the darkness.
Chapter Fourteen
Eventually the cave began to fill with a sickly green-yellow light. D’janira led them through a crack in the wall that opened into a large open area. Dorothy saw a few flat surfaces draped with furs and others with what appeared to be rudimentary kitchenware. She was very aware of the knife collection in a wooden case that made them look like they were on display. The green light glinted off their blades, proving just how sharp they were. The edges of the room were crowded with crates and trunks which had all suffered some degree of water damage.
D’janira unfastened the buttons of her cloak and slipped it off to reveal a sleeveless white shirt and black slacks. She folded the cloak carefully and hooked it on a high stone so that it could hang without touching the floor.
“You’re welcome to share my food and drink. There’s not much, but I can be generous.”
“I believe we’ll pass for the time being.”
D’janira smiled. “I know. But it will be there when you’re hungry later and go scrounging.”
Dorothy tried not to show her discomfort at the woman’s prescience. “If what you claim is true, why bother with formalities? You know why we’re here, what we want, and you know if we’ll be successful in asking for your help. We might as well get it out of the way now.”
“Yes.” D’janira sighed and looked at the ground. “Things would be much simpler if everyone shared my... affliction, ability, however you may categorize it. I could tell you everything that will happen between us. Bid you farewell. Move on with my day. But you would never be convinced. You would think there’s something you didn’t say or do. Some tactic you hadn’t tried. You won’t give up until you’ve actually made your argument. I can’t give you the final piece of a puzzle and expect you to see the entire picture. So it saves time to just let you play it out. As slow and boring as that is from my perspective.”
Trafalgar said, “Must be a tedious existence.”
“You have no idea.”
“So you know that we’re here to set things right,” Dorothy said.
“No. That’s not correct. You’re here to discover what went wrong. You want to know what happened when Captain Neville came into the caves and why that visit led to a catastrophe.”
Dorothy said, “I suppose that’s accurate. Whatever happened created a ripple effect and will eventually cause an airplane to be sent into the past. I assume from your unique relationship with time that you have some idea about what happened.”
“I do.” She walked to one of the flat surfaces and leaned against it. “There is something in this cave. Something special, powerful. It was what granted my unique perspective. It is my duty to watch over it, to defend it from people like your Captain Neville. He came to this forest in search of a river which could turn anything to silver. What he found was far more valuable.”
Trafalgar said, “A window to the future.”
D’janira nodded slowly, her eyes distant. “He was in an unusual position. If my claims were true, it was an invaluable resource. But he needed to find a way to trick me so he could use it for his own gain. But if tricking me was possible, then the skill must be flawed, and therefore less valuable. I told him every step he would take, every scheme he would attempt, and still he wouldn’t give up. I could sense his desperation growing and I knew that eventually he or his men would turn violent. So I told them that drinking from the Pratear would grant them the same knowledge.”
“And that is how he lost his memory?” Dorothy said.
“Exactly. I made sure he only drank a small amount. Drinking too much could have eradicated his entire recollection down to childhood. Once he’d consumed it, I guided his men out of the caves and sent them on their way.”
Dorothy tilted her head to one side, curious. “But if you know everything, past to future, you must have known he wouldn’t be convinced.”
“I knew he would come back, and that he would be too weak to return. I knew he would send the two of you into the cave instead of returning himself.”
“And this was an outcome you wanted?”
D’janira shrugged. “It was the outcome which was guaranteed by the set of events I had put in motion.”
Trafalgar held up her hand. “Wait. You’re speaking as if the future is a concrete fact. We’ve spent the past few days in separate timelines. Dorothy was briefly held captive in an airplane which, from my perspective, doesn’t exist. That implies time is fluid, the future and even the present are unwritten and can be changed.”
“Yes.”
Dorothy furrowed her brow. “Which?”
“Both.” D’janira smiled and raised an eyebrow. “Now you understand my curse even better than before. Just because I know what’s going to happen doesn’t always mean it will. I told Captain Neville which scheme he would try, which made him devise a new one. I outlined that for him as well, because it was the new version of events. And so on.”
“So things set in stone can be changed.” Dorothy thought about that for a moment, then drew her pistol. She aimed it at D’janira’s head. “Say I pull the trigger.”
D’janira said, “I know you won’t, because that isn’t the kind of person you are. But I can also see a scenario in which you attempt to fire that gun only to discover it’s waterlogged from the dunking you took earlier.”
Dorothy kept the gun steady for another moment before she lowered it. “But the point remains that we can change the future. We can affect the past and, in doing so, create a new future.”
“No.”
Trafalgar pressed two fingers against her forehead. “I’m very confused.”
“Every future that can exist does exist. One path within a maze doesn’t cease to exist just because you went a different way. Every turn is still there. Most people exist inside the maze and only see their immediate surroundings. I can see the maze from above.”
“You see the dead ends,” Dorothy said.
D’janira shook her head. “There are no dead ends in this maze. Only new mazes and different paths. Sometimes they lead to the same destination, sometimes they lead somewhere completely new. At the moment, what we’re experiencing, is a shattering of the walls. One path bleeds into the next. Chaos.”
“Okay.” Dorothy began to pace. “Let’s deal with the facts. Something Neville did while he was down here caused the anomaly which grows for fifty years until it’s large enough for Ackon Air Flight 372 to pass through. We don’t need to understand it, we just need to know what he did and how to stop it while there’s still time.”
“That’s not what you’re here to do.”
Trafalgar said, “We came to this forest to find Captain Neville and his men. Our mission evolved when we found out why he went missing last year.”
“It’s evolved again,” D’janira said. “The Burnt Empire is coming for the Pratear. They want it for the same reason your Captain Neville did. I’ve seen their attack, and I’ve seen you defending this place against it. That’s why you�
�re here.”
“And if we’re successful, the... the...” She waved her hand above her head to indicate the surface. “Things will go back to normal?”
D’janira said, “Things will be as they should be.”
“I don’t like that answer,” Dorothy muttered, “but I suppose I’ll have to be satisfied with it. There’s really no way we could surprise you, is there?”
“No.” D’janira smiled sadly. “Being surprised is a small pleasure that everyone takes for granted. I know that you’ll want to talk about this privately, without me lurking, and night has fallen. So I’ll take my leave.” She gestured to an opening in the wall that, upon closer inspection, was indeed artificially-created rather than naturally-formed. “You may spend the night there. You’ll find connecting chambers with food storage and a restroom. There’s also clothing so you can change out of these wet things. I bid you a good night. We’ll speak again in the morning.”
Dorothy said, “We could leave right now. Go back the way we came, climb back up to the surface.”
“I don’t believe you will. You’re close to your goal, Lady Boone. And neither of you is the sort to walk away when confronted with something this... unique. Besides...” She turned and offered a smile that Dorothy couldn’t quite classify. “The snakes are still out there in the dark. Sleep well, ladies.”
She vanished through an opening in the wall.
Dorothy looked at Trafalgar. “I can’t tell if we’ve just been threatened or warned.”
“In the past,” Trafalgar said, “if there’s any doubt, I’ve found it’s wiser to assume threat. Cora and the others will be worried about us.”
“Right. But I have the feeling any attempt to go back, even to let them know we’re safe, would be met with serpentine interference.” Trafalgar nodded her agreement. Dorothy sighed and looked down at herself. Their clothes had started to dry, leaving her feeling as if she was wearing a burlap sack. “So. To bed, I suppose.”
“And save the world in the morning.”
Dorothy grinned. “Yes. Always.”
#
Cora thought the jungle was foreboding during the day. But night was a completely different beast.