LYNX
Lynx, wait!” Jorgensen yells. “We must discuss this!”
His heavy steps crunch snow behind me as I veer wide around an icy fallen log and keep pushing up the mammoth trail. The Ice Giants have been rumbling constantly and shaking the ground. Clumps of snow routinely shake loose from the pine boughs and thump the ground around me.
“Quancee is gone more and more often, isn’t it?” he shouts. “Even your primitive brain should find that worrisome by now.”
Leaping off the trail, I thrash through a grove of willows, taking a shortcut I’ve used many times; it winds up the mountainside. It’s a difficult climb. Surely, he’ll give up and return to the Rust People village.
He shouts, “At least let me tell you where Quancee goes when it’s gone. Aren’t you curious?”
My steps falter. Does he know what the wasteland is? I desperately want to understand where she goes. I’ve studied every book in Quancee’s chamber but find no reference to it.
I turn halfway around to gaze down the slope at him. He stands in the middle of the mammoth trail looking up the hill at me, clutching his cape closed beneath his chin.
“She’s already told me,” I call.
“What did it say?”
“She told me she’s walking along the standing stones of time that dot the wasteland of the godhead.”
His loud laugh echoes through the trees. “Good God. Does it actually say that? How poetic. Did it say why?”
I hesitate, feeling like I’m revealing private conversations. “She’s looking for the place where she casts no shadow. The healing place where no light falls.”
Jorgensen chuckles as though greatly amused. “Decoherence has turned it into a mystic. Who would have thought? Must be trying to make sense of the gaps in its memory as its identity leaks into the environment.”
“Leaks?” I shift my weight to my other foot.
He hesitates as though trying to find words I will understand. “Let me see. How can I explain in a way that . . .” He sighs. “Quancee’s soul is seeping from its body and flapping around in the air. Isn’t that what Sealion People believe causes insanity?”
Swallowing hard, I answer, “Yes, but she’s not insane.”
“Not yet. Right now it’s just dementia setting in, but soon it will be. That’s the danger.”
“She is not dangerous. She’s the kindest and gentlest—”
“This affection you have for it is bizarre and unnatural.”
“I don’t care what you think!”
Jorgensen weaves through the willows until he’s two paces below me. “Please, let me tell you the unvarnished truth. Quancee is losing more and more of itself and trying to figure out why. You must have seen the same thing happen in elderly Sealion people. As their souls seep away, they begin to believe things that are not true. They think their family is stealing from them or hurting them. When Quancee completely loses itself in madness, there’s no telling what it will believe. In a worst-case scenario, Quancee could mistakenly wipe out every human village on earth.”
My mouth gapes in disbelief. “You just told the Rust People council that Quancee is so weak she can’t fight back.”
“I did. At this point, Quancee can still control itself. But in two days or ten? No guarantees. I could write out the problem for you mathematically, if you want.”
I shake my head. “Equations are nothing but magical supplications to the quantum-wave gods.”
Jorgensen’s brows lift. “Magical?”
“It’s the same thing as Sealion shamans begging the Thunderbirds for rain. If we get rain, we believe our prayers worked.”
Jorgensen bows his head and chuckles. “My, my. That’s so pessimistic, Arakie must have told you that.”
“Yes.” I nod. “He did.”
“Did he also explain that those magical supplications predict Quancee’s ‘absences’ will become longer and longer until the wave collapses, and Quancee simply isn’t there at all?”
Stubbornly, I say, “Doesn’t mean she’ll be dead.”
“Is that what Arakie told you? He was wrong, Lynx. When the wave function at the heart of her identity collapses, Quancee ceases to exist.”
“You can’t prove that!” My voice echoes through the night. “Her wave function may still exist. She’s just stepped into a realm beyond measurement.”
“Ah. Another Arakie-ism.” He gives me a condescending look. “You don’t even know what that means.”
“Actually, I do.” My lungs feel like they’re starving. “It means you can’t prove she’s dead, and I can’t prove she’s alive.”
His laughter trails across the slope below me. “Better start praying to your primitive gods, Lynx. When it gets to that point, you’ll be just as dead as Quancee is.”