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ENTA AND I dined halfheartedly, moving our food around on our plates. The few bites I managed to swallow were dry and tasteless, but that had nothing to do with Enta’s cooking.
“How is your research of Valcas’ past life going?” she asked, her eyes glazed over from lack of sleep.
“There’s a lot to learn.”
Enta nodded.
I stared at my plate, keeping quiet about certain nagging feelings that had been building since before I left the white tower. I missed Valcas’ green eyes and self-assured grin. I wished that I’d been able to have breakfast with him this morning while overlooking the sea. I wanted to talk more about time travel with him. And, even though I knew that he would forget about all the time we’d recently spent together in his past, I knew that I would never forget the closeness I’d felt while riding with him in the Estrel-Flyer.
I shifted in my seat. “Enta?”
“Yes?”
“When I visited the white tower in Valcas’ past, the Halls’ motorboat turned into an Estrel-Flyer, but when I traveled to Edgar’s workshop, the vehicle stayed the same instead of changing into something else. Isn’t that weird?”
“That’s very interesting. Although, not entirely uncommon. Edgar told me a little about his most recent dwelling, but I didn’t know it had come to that.”
“What do you mean? What has the workshop in the woods become?”
“I need more information to be certain. Did you notice any bodies of water on the grounds? For example, a source of water that usually flows yet stays perfectly still?”
“Yes,” I answered, my eyes now wide awake. “The silver brook—it looks like the brook at the Halls’ estate, only there aren’t any trees around its edges and it doesn’t move.”
“I was afraid of that.”
“Why? It’s beautiful.”
“I’m sure it is. Putting together what Edgar and now you have described to me, the workshop in the woods began as a made-up place, something that never existed in and of itself. As I understand it, certain elements were brought in from a real place, much like I have done here—”
“Well, yeah, the brook and Edgar’s workshop. Aren’t those real?”
“Unfortunately, no. Those things are only real where they actually existed. The workshop where you found Edgar had already transitioned into a nowhere. All that is represented there is what is left of Edgar—his memories, his writings, a lifetime of invention.”
A nowhere. My head ached with the new information. “But how can you tell?”
“Still waters. If the workshop in the woods were a real place, that brook would have been moving.”
I blinked, remembering another nowhere, the still pool of water on top of which Romaso, Shirlyn and I sat in the Pipette. The motorboat had not changed. And there was no impact from our arrival.
Edgar’s voice sounded in my head as clear as if he’d been standing next to me. “That will not be necessary here,” he’d said when I tried to get him to duck for cover after arriving at his workshop, worried that there would be an explosion of glass vials and jars.
Enta gathered up our half-empty plates—flat discs of ceramic, delicate dishware that would crack and shatter if dropped, incapable of surviving the impact of arrival. There hadn’t been any impact here at the homestead either time I arrived near the barn. Or at the white tower. Or the sod hut...
“How come there isn’t always an impact of arrival?” I asked.
Enta turned to look at me over her shoulder. “There could be multiple reasons.”
“Like what?”
She sat back down at the table and rubbed her eyes. “The impact of arrival does not affect made up places or nowheres.”
“Why not?”
“There’s no real place to tear open.”
“But the vehicles still change, right? Like how Edgar’s pickup changed into a horse and buggy here and how the horse turned into a gondola in Venice.”
“Yes. The vehicle of transport remains unchanged only when arriving at a nowhere.”
“Okay, so vehicles change everywhere but nowheres. Impacts happen only in real places. That would mean that a vehicle change with no impact is a made-up place.”
I frowned. A tingle rose underneath the skin of my lower back and trickled up my spine.
“Calla, what’s wrong?”
“There was no impact either time Valcas showed up on the Jet Ski at the lake. There may have been one in Venice, but Romaso and I didn’t stay near the canal long enough to find out.”
Enta raised an eyebrow.
“The gondola looked fine when we came back. Nothing was broken. There were other gondoliers nearby and no one said anything about an explosion or anything.” I shuddered. “Could Venice and Lake Winston be made-up places?”
“I don’t think so.”
“But—”
“As I said, there could be multiple reasons why there would be no impact. Edgar told me that you were knocked down twice at the lake by a bright white light. We both assumed that this was the result of Valcas’ arrival on the Jet Ski.”
I shook my head. “The first one happened just before he showed up, but the only thing impacted was me. The second blow hit just before Valcas helped me to escape. There was no impact when he showed up earlier to take me to dinner.”
Enta pursed her lips. “Then there was something else there. It must have had the ability to absorb the impact.”
“What was there?”
“I don’t know, but I feel terrible for having doubted Valcas.”
We sat there in silence for a long time before I excused myself from the table. The workshop in the woods was a nowhere. Something besides Valcas could still be after me. I wasn’t sure how I was going to fall asleep that night.