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“SLICING IS more easily observed than explained,” Valcas said, taking my hand in his.
He started running, dragging me along with him. My feet pressed forward while my stomach tumbled inside of me. My travel glasses were still in my backpack, so I had to trust Valcas completely. We were going wherever he had in mind to take us.
The world around us whizzed past. I squinted my eyes as the white light surrounded us and grew brighter. Then I closed them, letting Valcas and his travel glasses transport me.
When I opened my eyes, I gasped, not because the world around us changed again. I was getting used to that. This time was different.
We stood above a body of water. I looked down, half expecting to sink, but the water below me felt solid. We weren’t just above the water, we were standing on it.
I stomped my foot and then looked down, sliding my eyes and toes along the ground. The water was motionless, resembling glass molded into ripples. But it wasn’t silver, like the still waters of Nowheres, and it didn’t appear to be wet.
“What is this place?” I asked.
“Take a closer look,” Valcas said. He let go of my hand and took a step backward.
I scanned the water below me and took a few steps. Each time, my foot came in contact with solid ground. But it wasn’t technically ground. I bent down to touch the water, expecting it to be frozen and slippery, like ice. My finger pressed and then scraped along the glossy material. It was smooth and solid, like glass. Cool, but not cold. I sucked in a breath. This was amazing. More than amazing, but I still had no idea what it was.
I looked up at Valcas who watched me, amused.
“There’s a lot more to see here than water,” he said.
I stood back and looked around again, taking small, careful steps, because in the back of my mind the “water” should have been slippery. But it wasn’t.
A few feet away I saw a small motorboat. It was tan and white with Pipette painted across its side. My eyes widened as I studied the figures inside the small boat. A blonde girl sat in the driver’s seat, clenching the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles were white. Her golden hair stuck straight out from her head, hanging there in midair, as stiff as straw. Next to her sat a bronzed teen boy, with dark curls just like mine, holding on for his life. Had he been smiling, I knew his almond-shaped eyes would crease at the edges and his cheeks would dimple. But he wasn’t smiling. Neither was the dark-haired girl behind him—the only one wearing sunglasses. A past version of me. Everyone’s mouths were open as if they’d been screaming. I glanced back and forth between the two girls and the boy as the memory took shape and sharpened inside my mind.
Shirlyn, Romaso and I were inside the Pipette, lifeless and completely frozen in time.
My jaw dropped.
I knew where I was, where Valcas had taken me. He’d brought me to Folkestone Harbor, England, just before I’d tried to travel to Valcas’ past, and Shirlyn and Romaso got dragged along with me.
I spun around in the opposite direction, where I knew another boat would be. Sure enough, a larger motorboat painted yellow and black was there, facing the Pipette, with Valcas inside. He, too, had his mouth open, but instead of looking panicked, the corners of his lips were upturned, in a frozen smile, as if he’d been delivering his favorite joke.
I clenched my teeth, remembering. After boarding the Pipette, I’d put on the travel glasses to shade my eyes from the tartness of the sun’s glare coming off the water. Yep, that was stupid. But that was what I’d done. Valcas had taken advantage of the opportunity. Or at least he’d tried.
His words that day rang in my ears as I stared at the frozen replica of him: “Is the water so bright, Calla?” He’d spoken to me through the travel glasses, using the glasses’ communication feature. Then he’d warned me to watch out... just before trying to run over the Pipette and those of us inside of it with his motorboat!
I spun around again, this time toward the version of Valcas that lived and breathed beside me.
“Fascinating, isn’t it?” He smiled.
My heart thudded violently in my chest. “You tried to kill us!”
Valcas shook his head and frowned. He clearly didn’t expect that reaction from me. Was he crazy? His people skills reeked!
“I would never try to kill you.” He sighed. “I was trying to get you to come back with me that day.”
“I know. Mom told me that much already. Valcas, you were chasing us down with a motorboat!”
He placed his hands out in front of him in a placating gesture. “What is it going to take to get the point across to you that I never meant you any harm?”
“Did you bring me here to apologize again?” I asked.
“No. This is an example of slicing. I brought us to that exact moment. The travel glasses can transport their wearer to an active place and time. They can also transport one to an inactive place and time, an immovable moment. I knew you would recognize this moment, and I wanted you to observe it more closely.”
I shook out my hands and took a deep breath, trying to relieve some of the tension. No, I decided. He’s not crazy. He’s completely bonkers.
“What do you notice about the larger motorboat?” he asked.
I glanced in the direction of the larger boat and then looked back and forth between it and the Pipette. Confused, I walked toward the yellow and black vessel for a closer look. The front of the boat was fixed inside the solid water surrounding it, like a gigantic model ship displayed in waterline. But it wasn’t pointed toward the Pipette. Not exactly. From farther back it had looked like the two boats were facing each other. I remembered feeling as if Valcas’ motorboat was coming straight at us from inside the Pipette too. But...
I frowned as I examined the front of the yellow and black motorboat. It was shifted far enough to the side, in such a way that, had both boats traveled forward at the same time, they wouldn’t have collided. They never would have crashed. And Valcas had known that the whole time!
“But I saw you coming straight toward us!” I yelled. Which, of course, was why I’d yelled for Shirlyn to turn around.
Valcas nodded. His lips were pressed in a tight line.
My gaze flashed between the harbor and the yellow and black boat. I drew back, wondering whether Valcas had found some other way of reconstructing the scene. Maybe this was a trick, an alternate reality that he’d made up.
“I was trying to scare you,” he said. “I thought it would help you see reason, but I failed.” He looked more foolish than sorry.
I took a deep breath and lowered my voice. “So how come you didn’t kill both of us by time traveling to me? We were both wearing the travel glasses. I hadn’t figured out how to use the device Enta added to the travel glasses to block you out. Edgar said that if someone tried traveling to someone else wearing a pair of travel glasses, one set would consume the other and both people wearing the glasses would die—like what happened with Enta’s twin daughters.”
Valcas’ frown deepened. “I never knew Enta had twin daughters,” he said. “And I wasn’t time traveling to you in that moment.”
My jaw dropped. “What do you mean?”
“I was recording.”