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I GULPED.
“Where does the Uproar come from?” I asked. “What world?”
“The Uproar traverses all worlds and mimics the Everywhere and Everywhen. It is the effect of our travels through time and space—an ethereal being, born of displaced energy, and which thrives on the death of travelers.”
“But I thought it fed on the blood of travelers.” I wrinkled my nose. “How does a spirit feed on blood?”
“What it’s after are the travel talents that flow through the blood of its victims.”
He’d mentioned that before, but it still didn’t make sense. “How is that physically possible?” I asked. “Wouldn’t the travel talent be genetic, passed down from parent to child through DNA?”
My father shook his head. “The travel talent is similar to the impurity that grew on your eyes, the impurity that makes up the Uproar.”
“Are you saying I’m possessed by some kind of impure travel spirit, and the Uproar wants to suck that spirit out of my blood to nourish itself?”
“So it would seem to the TSTA,” my father said, closing his eyes.
I didn’t know whether he was genuinely smug or trying to be. Whatever he was, I was confused out of my mind.
“Would that mean the Fire Falls also burned off our travel talents?” I panicked. We needed our travel talents to get out of the Fire Falls. They were necessary to our plan. Without them, we’d be trapped forever.
My father tilted his head and shrugged. “I hope not. I suspect the exterior healing of your eyes occurred because they were easily reached by the fire. I don’t know if or how the Fire Falls affected our insides.”
I felt Ivory twitch next to me. I couldn’t imagine that she was thrilled by the concept of time travel impurities either, with her Chauffeur talent and all. I looked in her direction.
Her hematite eyes narrowed, as tart and unwelcoming as the pucker of her lips. “How did you learn this?” she asked. “There is no mention of impurities in any of the studies. Or, is this another of your theories?”
My father opened his eyes and grinned. “Case studies,” he said. “I’ve gathered information through years of examining patients in different places and times, as well as their silhouettes. Some scientists would consider centuries’ worth of work over multiple populations to be empirical evidence.” He threw up his arms. “I’ve never looked at all of the data.”
Ivory balked. She turned to look at me, seemingly fighting hard not to roll her eyes. She twitched her lips as if she were about to say something.
But I never got to hear what she was going to say.
Ray ran out of the Falls, coughing and sputtering.
My father ran to him. “Breathe, Ray,” he said. “Breathe deeply and with purpose. You are safe.”
Ray looked up. He was soaking wet and wild-eyed. I expected him to crawl to his corner and curl up. Thankfully he didn’t. Instead, with my father’s hands on his chest and back, he breathed, harshly at first, in quick gulps; but then more slowly, until he was calm.
Valcas emerged from the water, like a dolphin popping out to say hi before retreating to his natural habitat.
Ivory smirked. “You’re just in time for dinner.” She gestured toward Ray. “Should I ask how it went?”
Valcas smiled. The sight of it warmed my heart. “It went well,” he said. “We were able to breathe inside the air space, and Ray collected the calculations we needed.” His grin widened. “From within the air space, I was able to use the travel glasses to communicate with others, outside the Fire Falls.”
“That’s wonderful!” I said, giving Valcas a huge hug, ignoring the fact that he was as drenched as Ray. It didn’t bother me. “If the glasses work to communicate inside the air space, then that gives us hope. There’s a chance we can use that space to time travel.”
I looked over at my father. “We can get out of here.”
He looked back at me with an expression that was difficult to read.
“Aren’t you happy about that?”
“Of course I am,” he said softly. His eyes rested where my arms enclosed around Valcas, as if to say: Be careful how you use your power over his heart.
Immediately, I dropped my hands. A smooth sheen of pink ran from the top of Valcas’ forehead and down the sides of his cheeks.
Valcas cleared his throat and stepped aside. “Ray’s prior estimate was nearly accurate. The air space is six feet deep and ten and a half feet wide; but, instead of four hundred feet high, it’s just shy of seven hundred feet.
“Of course, we managed to burn ourselves more than a few times by making contact with the fire layer, but the balm layer took care of that.”
Ivory looked up from her dinner preparations to smile at Ray. “Great job, Technician!” She plopped an extra helping onto Ray’s leaf plate. “Fish is brain food, you know. Now that you’re feeling better, we expect you to use it more often.”
Ray rolled his eyes and shook his head. In that moment he looked like he was, or at least could be, his old self again. Maybe a few extra passes through the balm layer had been good for him.
As we settled into our dinner, Valcas and Ray gave us more details on how they made their calculations. During most of the discussion, Valcas watched Ray with a new appreciation. True, Ray had impressed him earlier by figuring out that my father could be trapped behind the Fire Falls, but this was something bigger. Huge. Now Valcas looked at Ray with the same respect he had for my father.
“So, how do we get out of here?” Ivory asked. “Did you do anything in there besides measure the space?”
“Yeah,” I said. “If we can’t run through and avoid going out the other side, how do we get enough momentum to travel?”
Ray finished chewing and smiled. “We won’t be running through the Falls. We’re going to dive.”