by Dawn Dagger
“There were two moms. I think. Anyways, the youngest boy would go and take care of their sheep in the mountains. They had sheep, by the way. Lots of them. Like, more than twenty-four.” I saw Dierdre stifle a giggle. “Anyways, he would take care of the sheep, and he would fall asleep, and have these wild dreams! One night he dreamed he was at a big, magnificent ball! In the ball there were twelve dancing princesses, all flattering him and giving him gifts and stuff. When he woke up he ran to his brothers and told them, and they laughed at him. They told him that he was stupid and a big dummy head and that he would never meet even one princess, let alone twelve. And none of them would ever give him gifts.”
“Well, that isn’t nice!” I exclaimed. “They should have been nicer!”
“Yes, they should have been! You know why?”
“Why?” Dierdre asked.
“Because he did meet twelve princesses!”
“Well, spoiler alert!” I teased.
Amy blushed. “Anyway, the young boy made jewelry, and that’s why his brothers hated him. He could wrap wires around pretty rocks and make the prettiest jewelry you’d ever seen. The brothers couldn’t do this, and were jealous. One day an old man came, willing to trade things. The boy gave him a beautiful necklace for a bunch of seeds. The boy had a bunch of jewelry, so it wasn’t that bad of a trade. Well, the old guy came back, like, a month later, and told the boy that all of the princesses in the castle wanted his jewelry, because one of the ladies there had worn the necklace!
“So he and the old guy traveled to the castle and he made a ton of jewelry, and gave it to each of the twelve princesses. They all loved the jewelry so much that they gave him kisses and presents and invited him to balls. In the end he married one of the princesses and became a super famous jewelry-maker king! And his stinking brothers had to take care of sheep for the rest of their lives!”
“Well, good for him,” Dierdre said, nodding. “I’m glad he had a happy ending.”
“Me too,” Amy said. “Well, Clayton, what’s your favorite story?”
“Oh, me?” I asked. “I’m not quite sure. Dierdre?”
“I like the story about the girl with the bread basket who sings in the fields, and who eventually marries a prince because he falls in love with her spirit. No one in the whole kingdom was so beautiful or gentle.”
“What was her song? Did she have a song?” Amy yawned.
Dierdre patted her lap and Amy laid her head in her lap. I felt my chest warm, watching them. What had made Dierdre warm up so quickly? I didn’t care, I decided.
Dierdre began to stroke Amy’s hair gently, humming. “Hmm… Let me think… I think it goes something like this:
Blue sky, oh blue sky,
Smile at me.
Sunshine, fall on my face.
And if it rains,
I will not cry,
For I love everything.”
As Dierdre began to sing, I felt my own lids drop, and I felt myself yawn. She was like a muse. Her voice was more melodious than wind chimes when she sang, and it made me feel happy. If stardust were sounds, I believed her singing was what it would sound like. I watched Amy’s eyes close.
“Flowers, oh flowers,
Look at the sky.
Look how he smiles at you…
Brook, oh brook,
Share me your song,
I want to sing with you too…
Birds, oh, birds,
I love you so.
My soft, feathered friends…
And tall, long grass,
So sweet, so soft.
Show me the secrets you have…
Handsome, handsome, boy,
You watch me from afar…
Come say hello, and smile at me,
The same way as do
The sun and the stars.
Handsome, handsome, boy…
You come closer still…
Come dance with me,
Come hold my hand…
And happy, we will be…
Still…”
Amy had fallen asleep in Dierdre’s lap. I loved Dierdre’s singing. It made me feel full, and healthy. I felt rested. Dierdre gently laid Amy’s head on a bundle of rags and lay down herself, smiling at me. “Goodnight, Clayton,” she murmured.
“Goodnight, Dierdre…”
12
It was hard, leaping with a growling stomach. I had given up my food for Dierdre and Amy, and I was regretting it. I burped up bile, and it churned my stomach, but I fought it off. The air began to take on a salty scent, and I focussed on that, and Dierdre’s voice, assuring me that we were finally in Georgia.
We touched down just outside of a very large city and I set the girls down, so I could take a break. “So,” I panted, leaning into my knees with my hands, “how do we find this obscure antique shop?”
Dierdre pursed her lips, scratching her matted hair with her long nails. “We… find an atlas? I remember… not exactly remember, but I know it’s by two prominent buildings. So… if we found a map, we could find it there…”
“That’s a good idea,” Amy nodded and Dierdre smiled softly, though her eyes were sad.
We wandered through the city, scraping through rubble and scavenging through the buildings that weren’t sagging. We found some food and fresh water, and it helped us feel a lot better, but we found no map.
Amy grew tired faster than Dierdre and I, and kept bumping into walls or banging her shins against steel girders as we ventured. I carried her until she fell asleep in my arms, then we decided to settle in for the night.
We lit a small fire in an old building with marble floors, and Dierdre and I ate stale bread and beef jerky while Amy slept on a pile of clothes. I watched our shadows grow tall against the walls of the building, sipping at the little bit of water I had left.
“Dierdre what’s wrong?” I finally whispered, turning to her. She was staring at one spot in the wall, as she had been for so long. Her face was so gaunt with distress, it was starting to physically hurt me.
“We can’t take her with us,” she murmured under her breath, not turning to me. At first I thought I heard her wrong, but when she didn’t continue, the twisting in my stomach told me I hadn’t.
“Wh-what do you mean?” I demanded, watching Amy’s chest rise and fall slowly as she slept. She was so dirty and skinny, but she looked so peaceful asleep.
Dierdre let out a groan so biting I felt it in my chest. She rubbed her face, hunching forward so her head could rest between her legs. I nervously ran my thumb along the face of the jaguar. I was sure I had rubbed it smooth.
“Clayton, we’ve screwed up… so, so many timelines as it is. I’ve failed at my job of keeping the timelines stable. We killed the guard in your time, stole the jaguar from the wrong timeline… I don’t know if we can repair everything we’ve done so far.”
“That’s not why,” I accused bitterly. The jaguar was warm in my palm, and it matched the angry heat in my stomach. “You just don’t want to deal with a little girl.”
She rolled her head to watch me out of the corner of her eye. It glittered like a blue gem in the firelight. “You don’t actually think I’m that much of an ass, do you? I’m not a horrible person!”
I swallowed the bile rising in my throat, a reaction to the pain in her glittering gaze. No, I didn’t. I didn’t think she was a horrible person. I just didn’t understand her reluctance to save this little girl. It killed me. Dierdre was better than that, I knew.
She heaved a long, slow sigh that shook her shoulders. It was a sound someone might produce when faced with Death. “The reason… the reason that your mother got kidnapped in the first place… that you have to go through all this is that…”
She went silent, struggling with her words. I could feel my heart pounding against my ribs as I held my breath. What was she trying to tell me? A single tear welled in her eye, then slid down her cheek, sparkling.
“You’re supposed to be dead,” she breathed. I felt my heart stop.
Time stopped. “You were supposed to get hit by that car, Clayton. You were meant to die. You were inconsequential to the world. In fact, once you died, your mom and dad rediscovered each other… But… I was, I was looking for the rattlesnake. I saw you and I couldn’t…” She rubbed the tears from her eyes, sitting straight. “I couldn’t let you die.”
I couldn’t breathe, my lungs shrivelled. I felt dizzy. I was supposed to be dead? I wasn’t supposed to be living? When I died, my mom would be okay? Everything was going to be okay if I only… If I just… I swallowed hard. My existence has tortured everyone…
“Your mom wasn’t ever going to be kidnapped. The bad guys thought you were special, because you didn’t die. They thought you time traveled. They were either trying to kill you, or recruit you. I’m not sure which one.” She suddenly flung herself back, so she was lying on the cool marble floor, staring into the darkness above. “Thomas told me to let you die, Clayton. He told me to go back, and to kill you.”
There was a long moment of silence, before I whispered, “But you didn’t.”
She turned her head, giving me a tired look. “Nope. I didn’t. Now… do you understand why I’m scared to bring her along? She’s supposed to be a hero in this world. She finds others and reverses the damage… I don’t want to risk destroying an entire world because we want to save… one precious little girl…”
“You don’t want to repeat the mistake that is me living,” I said hollowly. I didn’t mean to bite her, but she recoiled as if it were targeted at her anyways. I was such a mistake of existence that I killed off an entire planet. I was a danger to everyone around me. My mom, Dierdre… Amy. Amy would have been fine, if I had never gotten Dierdre sent here. I was supposed to get hit by a car and die in a ditch, where not a single person would ever remember me.
Dierdre suddenly burst into tears. “Oh…” The noise fell from my lips as her face contorted and she began to wail. I crawled over to her and pulled her head into my lap. Her body shook with her sobs, and I had no words to give her. I gently ran my fingers through her hair as she mourned whatever she thought she had done wrong. I tried not to think. I tried not to let hatred eat me away as I cradled Dierdre.
After such a long, long time of her howling wail, of sobbing her heart out, she faded into hiccups, then into just a gasping, shuddering breath. I hummed softly to her, lullabies I barely remembered, from a time I hardly knew. Then I hummed her own tune to her, holding her until her shaking ceased, and she suddenly fell asleep.
I moved slowly and gently, as not to disturb her, and reached for an old coat. I balled it up and slipped it under her head, hoping it would serve as a makeshift pillow. She didn’t stir.
I stood and quietly exited the building. I stood beside the entrance, wishing desperately the sun would rise and make all of the disgusting, suffocating darkness disappear. It was eating me alive. It was stealing the sunshine from Dierdre.
I sat down heavily on a cinder block, staring out into the eternal night.
I… deserved to die.
I should have.
My life was inconsequential to anyone, but my lack of death had ruined everything. What twisted, awful irony.
I thought about this for a long time. For too long a time. Finally, once my back ached fiercely, I stood up and stretched. I was alive. I couldn’t fix that. I just had to deal with it. So, while I was living, might as well make the most of it.
I would help Dierdre and Amy in any way I could.
I glanced back in through the doorway, at their peaceful figures, outlined by the embers of the fire. “Well,” I said, to no one in particular. Maybe it was to the jaguar firmly placed in the front pocket of the zookeeper’s jacket, close to my heart, where sometimes it felt as if it shared the same beat. “Let’s go find a rattlesnake.”
13
I figured I could find a map and the rattlesnake before either girl did. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful surprise? They would wake up to the rattlesnake. A completed mission. Maybe, maybe I’d even find a treat for them.
I steadied myself, then leapt as high as I could. I soared through the air, then landed heavily on top of a building. I slipped for a moment and tripped, gripping the side of the building. I swallowed and my heart raced as I watched a few tiles fall far, far down below.
I stood up and readied myself, then leapt to the roof of the next building, this time with less terror. I gripped the side of the rusted fire exit and swung myself down and into the broken window below. I landed inside a dark office building. Papers were strewn across the ground, computers smashed into desks and against walls.
I shuffled through all of the papers, then, to my great surprise, found a whole map. I peered at it, sitting down heavily into a sagging office chair. There were road lines and water lines, and names everywhere. Numbers too. I held it for a while, trying to figure out how to read the map, and trying to figure out where the artifact would be.
Dierdre knew the names of the buildings around the artifact. No, no, I can’t wake her up. I’ll worry her. And it’ll ruin the surprise.
There was a strip a few miles away, I determined, which housed various shops and hotspots, all highlighted in red. It didn’t take me long to exit the building and leap to where the buildings once stood. I loved leaping from tree-- building to building, gripping the bricks, feeling my muscles stretch and burn and ache. I was powerful.
I found the street where piles of bricks marked the resting places of shops, and I leapt onto the ground with a small puff of dirt. I paced along the street, trying to make out the names of the places on broken signs.
Finally I found a place that was still half-intact. The sign had fallen off of the room and blocked the door. Antiques and Other Ticks, it proclaimed.
“Well, this is the place,” I told my little jaguar buddy. I decided to name him. “This is the shop, Edward. I know it. We step into this building, and we are good to go. Exciting, ain’t it?”
He didn’t respond.
I took a deep breath and lifted the sign, tossing it aside. I ducked into the dusty, dark building, blinking away dust, but adjusting fine to the darkness inside. I examined the various tables and chests full of nonsense.
Necklaces that would be lovely on Dierdre, small dolls Amy would love, rich, expensive things that would have paid for a new house back in normal time. Watches, clocks, knives, pens… All sorts of useless things. Cups, battered clothing, furniture…
My eyes ran along the counters, until I noticed a small disturbance. The spot on the counter was coated in dust, except for a perfect circle. Next to it sat a dust-covered piece of paper, and I picked it up, shaking the dirt off of it.
Mayan rattlesnake.
My heart dropped into my stomach. It… it was the right place. It was the right spot. Everything was exactly how it should be. Except…
The rattlesnake was gone.
14
“What do you mean there’s no rattlesnake?!” Dierdre cried, so loudly it startled Amy out of her deep sleep. “It’s gone?!”
I grimaced, stepping back from her. “I-I went to the place, and I looked! The spot is there, but the actual rattlesnake itself is gone.”
Dierdre cursed so vilely that Amy clapped her hands over her ears, her little face turning scarlet. Then Dierdre, stopped, her own face going read. “Oh my God,” she whispered under her breath. “I’m so, so stupid! We already went over this!” She groaned and slapped her head hard with the bottom of her hand. She snarled and did it twice more, until I grabbed her wrist firmly.
“Dierdre! What, what did we go over?”
“They’re time artifacts!”
“Okay?”
“They directly affect time, and they’re directly affected by time. They can’t be duplicated outside of a timeline. Gerard stole the rattlesnake and took it to an out-of-time bubble, just like we did with--”
“Edward. With Edward.” I didn’t mean to interrupt. It just came out.
She rose a brow, but continued. “So, w
e can’t get the rattlesnake. But we can still get out!”
“I don’t get to hold anything?” Amy asked, tugging on my shirt and looking sad.
“Which also means…” Dierdre’s eyes widened with shock. The blue in her irises went pale.
“That while we’ve been screwing around here, they have my mom and the turtle?”
“No! No, the artifacts are the source of our powers! Just like with Tiberius and the Orb! They give us powers, because they’re outside of time!”
My heart twisted, and I choked on bile. Just like Tiberius and the Orb?
“Oh, no…” I whispered. Dierdre threw me a questioning glance. “Oh no! Dierdre! They didn’t betray us! They were trying to protect us! They didn’t want what happened to Tiberius to happen to us! Don’t you understand?”
Dierdre went as pale as the blue of her eyes. “Oh.”
“So, we…”
“Yeah. We screwed ourselves over.” Dierdre suddenly sat down, looking extremely sick. “We… destroyed our only way of getting home. And now we’re stuck.” She curled into her fetal position.
Amy sat down too, frowning. “You guys aren’t from here… and now you’re stuck?” She attempted to piece together from our frantic, broken sentences.
“Yes, and… yes. We… teleported here. Dierdre has superpowers, like I do. But the teleporting is broken right now. The snake was going to help us get home but it’s… gone.”
“Uh… will you… uh…” Her ears turned red. “You… you promised not to leave me.” She bit her lip, looking suddenly uncertain and scared. I couldn’t understand what she was trying to say.
Dierdre sat up finally, sighing heavily. “Yes, Amy. Yes. If we get off this rotten core, we will take you home with us. There’ll be food, showers, and really, really nice people who want to help us.”
The notions of hot water and a full belly struck a note with me, but Amy nearly toppled over with awe. “Okay! I promise, I promise I’ll be my best!”
“I know you will,” I reassured her gently.