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“THE FALLS aren’t wide enough to be able to get in motion, though, right?” I asked, looking down at my hands. Still thinking, I added, “You could easily end up in the fire layer if you run toward the air and don’t manage to transport quickly enough.”
I felt Valcas’ arms circle around me. “If we start at one end of the Falls, within the air layer, and run to the other side of the Falls inside that space, perhaps there will be enough room.”
“How thick is the middle layer, Ray?” I asked, looking up.
Ray’s eyes were glassy with pain. I didn’t know whether that was due to his mental anguish over the Fire Falls or the fact that Valcas sat behind me, cuddling with me in front of everyone. Immediately, I felt bad. We were in an awful situation, and here I was worried about a nonexistent love triangle. As if.
“The space is six feet deep, ten and a half feet wide and four hundred feet high,” he said. “The air acts as a cushion between the fire layer and the soothing liquids. But I was in so much pain—” He shook his head. “I’d have to go back through again to be sure.”
Ray shuddered.
I could only image how horrible it was to relive the pain over and over instead of being able to forget most of it the way I had, remembering the balmy coolness of the healing layer the best.
I felt Valcas nod behind me. “I’ll go with you, Ray,” he said. “We can go back through the healing layer as necessary. I’ll try recording what I see with the travel glasses.”
Ray’s face paled, but he attempted a brave smile.
“No,” I said. “I’ll go with Valcas. I can use my pair of travel glasses.”
“You won’t be able to get the exact calculations,” said Ray. “Precision is important for our escape.”
I sighed. “Ray, you don’t have to do this.”
He looked at me, and then at my father. “Yes. I do.”
“Besides,” Valcas said, standing up. “You and Plaka have some catching up to do.”
***
I WRUNG MY HANDS AS I watched Valcas and Ray ready themselves to go back through the Falls, Valcas equipped with his travel glasses and Ray equipped with his brain.
Once they were through, Ivory looked at me and smirked. “I don’t feel like being a third wheel in this conversation, so, um, how about I keep an eye on dinner while you and your papa go for a walk?”
“But what if something happens to them?” I frowned.
Ivory shooed us away with her hands. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll come find you if I need to. If they hurt themselves, I know of a good doctor.”
My father sighed. “Come, Calla. Ivory is right. We won’t be able to do anything for them until they come back through. We should let them carry out their mission.”
Hesitantly, I walked through the tunnel with my father, wondering whether I would be able to ask the questions I’d saved up for him all my life.
I trusted Ivory with my life, but I was grateful that she encouraged us to go off alone. Some matters need to be kept private, personal relationships especially—things that individuals treasure, nurture and hold close. I wondered how much personal stuff my father was willing to share with me.
I decided to start at the beginning.
Once we were out of earshot of Ivory, I asked, “So, how did you meet Mom?”
My father’s shoulders went stiff. “Your mother never told you about us?”
“She got mad at me every time I asked about you,” I said. “Sometimes I thought she couldn’t stand to look at me... you know, because I look so much like you.”
He stayed silent for a few moments. Then, slowly, his story became reality, giving me a history and a past. I learned that day who I really was.
“Like Valcas,” he said, “I was a rogue traveler from a future world, Chascadia. I dabbled in unofficial objects, using them to travel alone and stay out of the TSTA’s way. Unfortunately, it appears that every way leads to the TSTA.”
“What’s your unofficial object?” I asked.
My father laughed. “The baglamas. It does more than play music. And, here behind the Falls, where its travel properties are useless, its music keeps me company.”
I didn’t have a response so I stayed silent, hoping he would continue with his story. The last thing I needed was to go off on a wild tangent about traveling when he was prepared to tell me about who he was. And who I was. But then, who said this would be the last time we chatted? Finding him marked the beginning of the possibility of a future relationship.
“I’d love to hear more about traveling with a musical instrument,” I said. “But I’m missing a lot of background about you, about myself.”
My father’s response made my eyes grow wide. He put his arm around me, the way he’d done with Ray, the way he did when trying to provide comfort. “We have all the time in the worlds,” he said. “And we will have that time whether or not we escape the Falls.”
I smiled. He finally sounded hopeful, not just about getting out of the Fire Falls, but for us as father and daughter.
“Your mother, Doreen, was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, which is saying a lot given how many places I’ve visited and how many people I’ve seen. Even though everyone seems to think I’m a great man because I am a Remnant Transporter and a healer, I too have ghosts in my past and actions that I regret.” He sighed. “I’ve had plenty of time to think about those regrets—alone, here in the caves. But enough about that. You wanted to know how I met your mother.
“One day I was roughing up some guys in the northeastern part of the United States, Earth, in an alley behind a restaurant where your mother worked part-time as a waitress. You see, back then, I already knew about my talent and I was very proud—it made me feel powerful. I felt I needed to show it off, to dispense justice, to hurt the bad who hurt the good.
“From the corner of my eye, I caught a young woman looking at me, with dark eyes as large and deep as the teardrop moons in Chascadia. They were beautiful... and angry.”
“Angry?”
“She objected to my treatment of the hoodlums I was punishing. When I turned to look into her disapproving eyes, I finally understood that I was misusing my talent. That was enough time to give the hoodlums the upper hand. Before I knew it, I’d been knocked out cold.
“When I opened my eyes, there they were again: two dark, soulful eyes, angry and condemning, but also concerned. This time when I looked into them, I fell in love.”
“Ah,” I said. Love at second sight? That was odd. “Did you two date?”
My father shook his head. “I didn’t know where to begin, how to explain where’d I’d come from and who I was. I kept her at a distance, but I came back from time to time, to be near her. Sometimes we exchanged a few words, other times we watched each other from afar, but always, it was as if we were drawn to each other.
“One night she cornered me in the alley and demanded that I explain who I was, where I was from—her beauty was terrifying. I couldn’t resist—”
I cleared my throat. My attempt at covering up the noise, brought on by a sudden discomfort in the subject matter, had failed. Hearing my father describe his desire for a woman was weird enough, but he was talking about Mom.
He chuckled, pulled out a light stick from who-knows-where and popped it. A yellow-orange glow lit the way as we walked toward the inner caves. It was the first time I saw the inside of the deeper tunnels and could walk along them without feeling the walls. Out of habit, I glided my fingers against the stone anyway. Ingrained within the smooth texture of the walls glinted flecks of color as tiny as grains of sand.
“At first she didn’t seem to understand,” he continued, seemingly uninterested in the tunnel’s beauty. “The idea of time travel was foreign to her, a far-off fantasy, much like me. When I learned she was pregnant with my child, I grew scared. I, with all of my talent and power, was scared... for me, for her and for our baby. You. By then, the TSTA had caught up with me. I’d done nothing to earn one of their infractions, but I had already been under attack by the Uproar.”
“Was that why Mom started working for the TSTA? So she could help Valcas find you?”
My father frowned and shook his head. “I never knew that she worked for the TSTA.” His voice lowered. “I never knew she’d been part of the search. Although, I expect her involvement had more to do with you than me.”
I wasn’t so sure, but Mom had said she’d been trying to protect me. Maybe my father was right.