-Mom
I stared hard at the letter and read it over two more times. I had tried to convince myself that it was all a dream and not real, but deep down I knew it was true. She was from the past. Seth’s father, the general, was right. My mom was a princess. Now, after reading my mother’s words, I couldn’t deny it any longer. My life just got a lot more complicated, and a lot emptier. I felt bad for my mother then and now. I couldn’t even begin to imagine her life, being sent off to marry a man she didn’t know. I really needed to talk to Seth.
Everything was crashing down around me. Nothing seemed real to me now. My mother was gone. I could travel into the past and future. People here might not actually be from here, and there was no one that would remember my mother beyond my grandfather and me. She would just disappear like Seth did.
It wasn’t fair. The goddess let me meet Seth, and let me go back and get him, but now it seemed like she was making me choose between them. By going to the past to get Seth back I had lost my mother. Would it be the same in reverse now if I went back to get my mother? Would the goddess take Seth? I know neither of them was from my time, but it still wasn’t fair. Why couldn’t they stay here? Seth was here for three years. My mother was here for over nineteen. There was no reason to send her back right at the moment the goddess did. Why couldn’t I have a little bit of time with both my mother and Seth here?
I stood and paced my room. This wasn’t right. The goddess may have good intentions for bringing people together, and maybe she was the reason I was alive at all since my mother and I could have been put to death for her falling in love with my father. I have no clue what happened to the babies of women who were disloyal to their king, but I still felt robbed. I never knew my father, and my mother was now lost to the past. There had to be a solution. I looked up on the dresser as I passed it. The shiny green stone stared back. Was that stone the key? Could I go back and bring my mother back also?
A plan was forming in my head. If I could find out how to get to my mother, could I take her back to the future with me? I had no clue how the time travel thing worked. The last time was more of a fluke than anything. I was just following the thread that bound me to Seth. I didn’t have the same connection with my mother, but there had to be a way. I wasn’t going to give up on her. She traveled to an unknown world to protect me, I would do the same for her.
I walked back over to the new stone in my collection. I rubbed the smooth green rock in my hand as I debated in my head. There had to be a way to get to my mother and save her from the past.
I had two options. First, I could go and ask the man down the hallway how to travel in time. Mr. Sangre was a time gatekeeper after all, but I doubted he would tell me any more than he already had. I’d asked him before how to find Seth, and he didn’t really tell me how to do it. The second option was to ask the goddess, but I was unsure if that was a good idea either. She had just ripped my mother out of my life, and I wasn’t exactly sure I could be civil to her at this point. If she asked me why I wanted to learn, I’d have to lie to her so that she wouldn’t try to stop me.
“I see the dilemma,” a deep female voice said from somewhere in my room. I could not see her, but I knew that it was the goddess.
“You should see it. You created it,” I replied. I had to bite my tongue from saying more. She had taken my mother from me.
“I have taken nothing from you,” the goddess answered. She didn’t seem at all worried about my growing anger.
“You took her back. There was no reason to take her back right now,” I replied to the empty room. It was easier to not have the goddess there physically. I had the feeling she knew that, too.
“I told you that you cannot change the past without changing the future,” the goddess answered. There was no anger to her voice, or even judgment. She simply stated the fact.
“But I thought you meant big events,” I answered, sitting down and finally halting my pacing around the room. The new green stone was still between my fingers.
“My deal with your mother was to allow her to stay here as long as you were growing up,” the goddess answered. I still could not see her, but got the feeling she was right beside me now. “In my mind, growing up was always going to be the time that you figured out how to time travel.”
“But I’m not grown up. I don’t really know how to time travel, and I still need my mother,” I complained, trying to keep tears at bay. Yes, going off to college, living on my own, having a new exciting life made me feel grown up a bit, but I wasn’t there yet. I still needed my mother.
I felt a breeze caress my back in the windless room. I knew it was the goddess and would have been upset by the comfort she tried to offer, but now my anger was gone and replaced by sadness.
“Mari, you are strong. Life will never be easy for you with the gift you have. No one else remembers it all like you will. You will find no one like you, but know that I believe in you,” the goddess said cryptically.
“Strong or not, I need her back,” I answered stubbornly.
“But this isn’t her time,” the goddess replied. That was true, but it still didn’t make it right.
“What makes it not her time?” I asked. “She spent more time here than in the past. The life she knew was here. How can this not be her time?” I tried to logically fight with the goddess. I did have a valid point.
“I didn’t make the rules, and I cannot change them. One must return to where they are born,” the goddess replied. Her voice was farther away now. She sounded as if she we standing on the other side of the room. “But not all is lost. Mari, you can see your mom any time you wish. That is why I made sure to wait to take her from you. You now have the power to travel to her. I cannot change the past, or her fate, but I made sure you would never have to stay apart from her.”
“But how?” I asked desperately.
“You’ll learn in time. This cannot be rushed. You will learn,” the goddess’ replied as her voice began to fade. I felt that her presence was gone from the room. I was alone again.
The goddess’s words were comforting, but it wasn’t enough. I sat back down on my bed and looked closer at the green stone. The etchings on the back were illegible, as they had been before, but I knew the secret to that now. I wanted to add a drop of blood and see if it would work, but I had to stop myself. I couldn’t run off quite yet. I needed to make a plan. There was no way I could leave her in that time, forced to marry someone she wasn’t in love with. No matter what the goddess said, my mother needed me, and she needed me to save her. I was going to get my mother back, but I’d need some help. I needed someone with a good grasp of what I was walking into. I wasn’t going to be unprepared this time. There was one person I could count on.
I got up and ran back to my grandfather’s study. I needed to talk to Seth right away. He was up in the Twin Cities with his adoptive family, and he didn’t have a cell phone. Only he could use the excuse that he was too old for a cell phone. But I knew that it wouldn’t matter. There was one way to talk to Seth. He was Mr. Sangre’s adopted child, after all, and Mr. Sangre happened to be sitting in my house.
Grandfather was still asleep as I entered, and I moved closer to Mr. Sangre while trying not to wake my grandfather. It was hard to look at my grandfather. He looked like he had aged ten years overnight. The strain of losing my mother was tough on him. Mr. Sangre looked up from his book as I came closer.
“Do you have a phone number that I can reach Seth at?” I asked. Since we had returned to when we had left, Mr. Sangre should have already met the boys on their return weeks ago. Seth didn’t have a cell phone, but I doubted that he lived in a house without a landline phone in it.
Mr. Sangre looked startled by the question.
“I can give you the number to call Ty. He stayed back at their house on the lake for the holiday,” Mr. Sangre said.
I looked at him. That was weird. Why would I call Ty instead of Seth?
“But I’m sorry to be the one to tell you t
his, Mari. You won’t be able to reach Seth by phone. He didn’t come back with Ty.”
My world crashed down. I didn’t just lose my mother in my trip to the past; I had lost my boyfriend, too.
Chapter 2
Pieces of My Past
I looked at the clock. It was already eight p.m. Sometime during my crying I had fallen asleep. I glanced at my phone. It was ringing again. That must have been why I woke up. I didn’t rush to answer it, since it wouldn’t be who I wanted to hear from anyways. A ringing phone made no difference now since Seth wasn’t here in my time. Who else would be calling me? It didn’t matter. Unless it was Ty calling. No one else would remember Seth, and I didn’t want to deal with that again. My heart broke the last time they were all forgotten; I didn’t think I could handle it again. I should talk to Ty and see what was going on, but I just wasn’t ready. I didn’t take the number from Mr. Sangre. Instead, he’d left it on my desk next to my phone at some point.
Tears built behind my eyes as I thought about everything. Sleep had been easier. I didn’t think when I was sleeping. The world I didn’t want to deal with could just fade away. How could the goddess take both Seth and my mother? It wasn’t fair. She didn’t even let me have one of them. How was I supposed to go on without both of them in my life?
The phone kept ringing, and I was tempted to not even pick it up. But it could be Ty. Maybe Ty would have answers about how to help me. I really needed a friend right about now. Ty could help, maybe.
I picked up my phone and didn’t even look to see who was calling. I was on autopilot as I just pushed the on button.
“Hello,” I answered.
“Mari,” my best friend from high school, Amy, squealed into the phone. “I have been calling you for days.” She was practically shouting now. “I’m so in need of seeing you.”
“Hi, Amy,” I replied, trying to fake some cheerfulness.
“Just hi?” Amy responded. “Not even a ‘how’re you doing?’ Or ‘how many hot guys have you dated in the past two months while we were forced to live states away from each other?’”
I had to smile a little. It was Amy, after all. There was no getting her down. She saw the rainbow behind every storm. Her cheerfulness was always contagious, even when I was sad.
“Hi, Amy. What’s your ‘hot guy’ record up to now?” I replied, knowing that was exactly what she wanted to talk about.
“I found three new ones in the first week. You really should have stayed here in Chicago with me. I was missing my partner. I mean, come on! It was you that the guys were chasing after. Your red hair always made you stand out. You would have pulled in twice as many, and then I’d have had so many more to pick from,” Amy babbled on. “What was so important in that frozen state that you could only text me and never call me back? I missed you, chicka.”
“I missed you, too,” I replied. I cringed a little. I had been a bit neglectful of my Chicago friends.
In truth, I had missed her. We’d been inseparable in high school. But once I went off to college in Minnesota, things were just different. I couldn’t relate to the life Amy was living back here in Chicago. She was going to clubs, and hitting the same old places we hung out in while we were in high school. I doubt she even made any new close friends. She was a big city girl in every way possible, and I was in a small town that was lucky to have two fast food joints in it. I knew what she would say if I called. It was what she told me every week of the summer before I left. Why the heck did I want to go off to some little liberal arts college in the middle of nowhere? What was wrong with me?
“Well that’s great. Then you’ll be up for going over to the Jones place later,” Amy babbled on.
“Um, I’m not really up to going out tonight,” I replied. And I wasn’t ever going to be up for going to my high school ex-boyfriend’s house.
“That is exactly what I knew you would say. That’s why I already talked to your grandfather, and he said it would be good for you,” Amy answered. “He said you needed to get out and blow off some steam. He agreed that a party would be a good idea.”
“What?” My grandfather hated how all the teenagers partied.
“You’ve avoided me since you moved off to the middle of nowhere. You owe me. I got the whole I have to spread my wings and fly thing, but really… Minnesota? Why so far away? It’s almost like you were trying to get away from us.” I could almost hear Amy pouting through the phone, like I personally insulted her by moving away. “Are you ready to come back here now? I bet you miss it. The Chicago life. Or any city life for that matter. How could you not?”
“I’m not moving back,” I replied. We had been arguing about this for over a month before we just stopped talking. She was convinced that I had enough time away, and needed to come back.
“Sure you’re not,” Amy teased. My friends really thought I’d move back after a semester. Actually, most of them gave me two weeks before I’d miss home. It didn’t happen. “Then I’ll pick you up in ten minutes for the party?”
“Ten minutes?” I asked. She lived farther than ten minutes away.
“Ten minutes,” Amy responded before hanging up without waiting for me to protest.
I sat up and pulled my fingers through my hair. There was no way I wanted to go off to a house party, but I was sure Amy wasn’t going to take no for an answer. I had no chance to talk her out of it. If I had just not answered my phone, I could have avoided all this. I looked down at my shirt and jeans. I was wrinkled, but didn’t care. I didn’t need to impress anyone at the party. After going off to college, and seeing something outside the little circle I grew up in, I was sure I didn’t have any plans to come back. No one at this party would even understand that. We’d grown up in Chicago, living our lives all around each other. No one else wanted to even venture to another suburb. Everyone just wanted to continue living on their parents’ wealth and having fun.
My hair was combed enough with my fingers, and I grabbed a sweatshirt. As I pulled it over my head, I heard a knock. That was faster than ten minutes. She was probably sitting in my driveway the whole time.
“Coming,” I shouted at the door.
The door opened, and my grandfather stepped into the room. He had changed his clothes since I saw him sleeping this morning, but he still looked different. The bounce in his step was less evident, and his smile didn’t reach his eyes. Sudden loss was hard for anyone to take. He was dealing with the same pain as I was, and I was sure I looked the same.
“Hey, sweetie,” he said quietly.
“Hi, Grandpa,” I replied, unsure what to say to him. I sat back down on my bed.
“Amy should be here soon. I wanted to be sure you were awake when she arrived,” he said, explaining why he was up in my room. He rarely came up here, said it was too girly for him, but he was just giving me space. He was pretty cool like that.
“I got her call,” I replied. “But I don’t exactly want to go.”
My grandfather smiled and laughed. “I figured as much. You are so like your mother. If I let you, I bet you would hibernate all day in your room. No, even more than all day. I bet you’d hibernate all Thanksgiving weekend in your room.”
I shrugged. That was the plan. I didn’t need to leave my room for anything but food.
“You can’t do that, Mari. You can’t let your life halt because your mother disappeared from it. I’m grateful James was here and let me keep my memories of your mother. I can only imagine how hard this must be for you, too. It feels like she should be here, but she isn’t and we can’t change that. I’d never change the fact that she came from the past in the first place. Your mother made my life worthwhile.” He stopped by my dresser and picked up the green stone Dee had given me.
“Taking an interest in chalcedony now?” He turned the stone over in his hand. “Like my missing carnelian?”
I wanted to smack my head. Yep, he would have noticed that. Even in his grief my grandfather noticed that his framed carnelian necklace was gone. I hadn’t
even had time to come up with an excuse. I pulled up my sleeve to show him the reddish-brown lines. They were faded now, or maybe it was the lighting.
“Well, I planned to put it back after I used it, but it kind of got smashed into my arm permanently,” I replied sheepishly.
My grandfather set the green stone down with a stern look on his face. “We’ve talked about taking items from the house without permission.”
I knew exactly what he was talking about. I had only gone into his office once to snoop when I was eight. All the old stuff was enticing to me back then. I wanted to touch it all, and that wasn’t the best thing—handling all the old artifacts. I got caught and was punished badly enough that I never once even went back into that room without knocking first. I learned my lesson well that day.
“I swear I was just going to borrow it,” I added. I wasn’t planning to keep it.
He smiled then, and laughed at me for my response.
“James explained it to me. He told me that the carnelian was actually from the goddess, and that it was always meant for you. I was just teasing you.” My grandfather laughed. It was more hollow sounding than normal, but it got him to smile a little. “It must have been the reason you were in there years ago. It probably called to you. What is this one? It looks like chrysoprase.”
“I have no idea what it is. It was given to me by Seth’s friend. I think it’s also from the goddess.” I shrugged. It was strange to talk to my grandfather about it, but he was part of this new weird world now.
Grandfather rubbed the stone and stared hard at it, like it held the clue to where my mother was. I stood up and hugged him. He would always miss her as much as I did. He never married or had kids, but he never felt the need to with me and my mother in his life. Even with me going off to college, he always had my mother around. Now his great big house would be empty when I went back to college. He would be all alone.
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