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“YES, CALLA. It’s me.”
Before I could say anything, before I could ask him all of the questions I’d been thinking about while walking through the woods, I felt his arms around me and his lips press against mine.
When I gasped, his lips pressed harder. This wasn’t anything like the time I’d kissed him at his palace, a manipulative move I’d made to take his travel glasses and run away. This was more like when his past self kissed me at the White Tower, after learning that the TSTA had charged me with two infractions, and that I was going to be taken away. His past self had wanted to come with me to my hearing, but I couldn’t let that happen.
Both of those prior kisses were good-byes. This one felt different than the good-bye kiss at the White Tower because I knew that this version of Valcas was real, not just a shadow of his past. But why did it feel so familiar? Why did this kiss also feel like a good-bye?
I started, pushing myself back slightly, breaking the kiss. Catching my breath, I said, “What happened, Valcas? What’s wrong?”
“Everything,” he said. “Everyone, Everywhere, Everywhen... all of it. It’s all wrong.”
“I don’t understand,” I answered, my voice breaking. “We’re together now. We’re away from the Fire Falls. You helped me find my father. We can be together now.”
Valcas exhaled a deep sigh. “No, we can’t.”
“What do you mean?” My cheeks flushed with panic. “You’ve more than proven yourself to me, if that’s what you need to hear.”
“That’s the worst thing you could have said to me right now, Calla.”
“I—I’m sorry. I’m sorry if I made you feel like you had to prove yourself. It was wrong of me. I didn’t know you yet, who you really are.”
“And you don’t. You won’t. We’re not right for each other. Our timelines won’t permit it. Just look at my parents, Calla. My father lived for the briefest glimpse of my mother’s life, of my life. Then one day he was gone. Now, take someone like Ray—”
“Ray?”
Valcas let go of my waist and held me out at arm’s length. “You and Ray are both Earthlings. I’m not even living under Aborealian time, like Ivory is. I was born in the timeline in the world my parents created. Chascadia’s timeline is closer to the White Tower’s timeline than any other world. But even that doesn’t help us. You and Ray are both—”
“I don’t want Ray, Valcas!”
He tensed, frowning. He avoided my eyes.
“I’m half Chascadian,” I said desperately, fully knowing that wouldn’t matter since I was born on Earth, under Earth’s timeline.
Valcas relaxed his stance. “I see how Ray looks at you. He’s talented... and good. You could make him happy. He could make you happy. You could give each other your entire lives.”
“You don’t mean that. You can’t—” I blinked back tears.
He let go of me and took a step backward. “Yes, I do.”
“So that was a good-bye kiss?” My words weren’t sad or whiny. They were bitter. “After all that we’ve been through together—the chase, the TSTA mission, the Fire Falls. You want to give up. Just like that?”
“I don’t see any other way. I’m sorry.”
“Okay, fine. Then we give up,” I said, pacing. “What choice do I have, seeing as you’ve given me no part in the decision?”
Having never been in a relationship before, I’d never broken up with anybody either. Valcas was dumping me. It hurt more than I could have possibly imagined—like he was tearing my heart in half with his bare hands.
Worse than the pain, was the unfairness of it all. What happened to my choice?—back when Valcas had told me I was the one who should tell him if he had no chance. In one quick blast, he’d turned my choice on its head. I hadn’t seen it coming. It wasn’t fair.
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
My lips quivered. The tears I’d held back finally broke free.
“Yeah, well, so am I. I’m sorry for trusting you. My father warned me not to break your heart, not to hurt you. At least I kept my promise. I can’t believe I trusted you!”
I hadn’t realized that I was screaming the words at Valcas until I heard the other, softer sounds in the woods—footsteps and voices.
Suddenly, I felt I couldn’t breathe. I felt the woods of Edgar’s Nowhere close in on me. I had to leave. I had to get away, to run.
I was tired of acting stronger than I was, tired of threading together strands of relationships that didn’t fit because they never should have existed in the first place. I was tired of being led toward a brighter future only to have it taken away from me again. I wanted the one thing that had never betrayed me, the only thing I knew I could rely on: the past.
I broke into a run. My legs were tired, but my muscles knew exactly how to react, even though I hadn’t run since being cooped up behind the Fire Falls. The pain in my muscles felt good.
As I ran, I imagined that I heard voices saying things like: Stop her; Don’t let her go; Don’t just stand there, go after her! I don’t know if those were real voices or my heart hoping them into reality. The one phrase I’m sure I heard came out of my father’s mouth, just before I slipped on the travel glasses: “We need to let her go.”
I didn’t stop to find out whether he’d actually spoken those words or to ask what he meant. I kept running, pumping my legs harder as the world around me became white and empty—as empty as I felt, knowing that whatever Valcas and I could have been was over before it ever began.
Love wasn’t in our future. Or our present. Which left only one possibility.
The past.
***
MY FIRST STOP WAS IN a frozen slice in time. I wanted to go back to Folkestone, where Valcas had shown me what slicing was, to explain that he’d never meant me any harm. If he only knew the damage he’d done. If he only knew the damage I was about to cause.
I’d wanted to travel to the slice in time exactly when the Uproar had attacked us, to finish what the Uproar started, but I wasn’t precise enough. The ground—the solid water—was glassy and smooth, unblemished. The untainted perfection of the place fueled my fury. I wanted to see cracked, splintered glass. I wanted to see it broken, just like my heart.
But I’d left my backpack at the workshop. No matter. I wiped the tears from my eyes and looked around for something else. Surely there would be some form of debris in the water.
A glint of metal caught my eye.
I slid the travel glasses up on top of my head, like a headband, and took a closer look. The metal was sticking halfway out of the solid water. I pulled it free, wondering how it had stayed afloat. I shrugged. What did it matter anyway? The slice in time could have been during the slightest fraction of a moment—just as someone had tossed the object into the water.
The metal instrument was heavy and bent at the edge. I smiled. I’d found a crowbar. I looked up to see the Pipette on my right and Valcas’ black and yellow motorboat on my left. I looked up at his face, his frozen smile. He thought he was so smart that day, wanting to frighten me so he could take me back to Mom. I laughed bitterly. He’d also found out just how resilient I was. He may have the strength of an Aborealian, but I was me, with talents of my own. A Remnant Transporter with my father’s Chascadian temper, and one whip of a traveler.
I restrained myself from smashing the crowbar into Valcas’ motorboat. But I let the water below me have it. As the metal impacted the glassy water, the jolt of the reflecting vibrations made my teeth chatter and my ears ring. Before the feeling subsided, I crashed the crowbar onto the ground, again and again, until my fingers were raw and my heart was numb. If the impact of my arrival hit, I hadn’t noticed.
I sat down, breathless, and looked at what I’d done. The waters of Folkestone Harbor looked like a mirror that had fallen from the sky and shattered in a million pieces.
Broken. Just like me.
The slice in time was more fortunate than I was, though. Because, tomorrow, it wouldn’t feel or remember anything.
***
I WANDERED FROM PLACE to place and time to time with the travel glasses for days, finding bits of food to eat and hidden places to sleep, ignoring any incoming communications through the travel glasses. I finally understood what Enta was doing, and what it felt like to want to forget.
But the more I tried to forget Valcas, the more I didn’t want to forget him. Ironically, it was not wanting to forget him that helped me decide where I would go next: to a place with purple-red sand dunes and an all-night sky with crescent-shaped moons. To the White Tower, where I hoped Valcas would fall in love with me again.
And if it didn’t work the first time, I would try again, and again. I would travel to the same time and place over and over until we were together again.
Even if that meant getting lost.