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A SLICE in time.
The more I thought about it, the more sense I made of Edgar’s words. If I wanted proof, all I needed was to visit a slice in time. Like the slice where I’d taken Calla, just before she’d escaped my intrusion at Folkestone Harbor. She and Romaso shouldn’t have been remembered there. Neither were part of that past. Yet, the event had been captured without a Daily Reminder. In a slice in time. Perfectly frozen, forever.
My head spun, not because the concept was complex or mind-blowing, but because of the plan that formed. An impossible plan. One that required me to search for the truth by searching for a time in a place where I wasn’t ready to return.
But the way she looked at me—the feelings that she felt, captured by her recordings. They were real.
Calla’s recordings were not washed-out illusions. They were vivid representations of what she’d seen and felt at the White Tower. I’d replayed one particular recording so many times that the sights, sounds and feelings—all from her point of view—were as permanently recorded in my mind as they were in the travel glasses:
An Estrel-Flyer purred against a din of rushing wind. A chill stung my face, something I’d never noticed while flying, not until the recorder—Calla—pointed it out. Her grip on the driver—my past-self—was strong and trusting.
The firmament of darkness surrounded the White Tower’s painted grounds below. Dunes of red and purple were more beautiful than I’d ever noticed through my own eyes. The flight ended sooner than I would have liked.
I watched as my past-self took my—Calla’s—hand, helped me dismount the Estrel-Flyer and escort me—her—into the Grand Entrance to the White Tower. The walls glistened around us. Each knob of the snow-white doors sparkled like diamonds through endless space and time.
I looked up into my own face, the way it had been at a point in time before my eyes had been damaged by the travel glasses. My past-self smiled at me—at Calla. I’d never known myself to show such emotion. Her heart responded violently. Although I’d played and replayed this part of the recording in my mind, I inhaled along with the recorder at an image that left me breathless. The past version of me was faded and pale; that version of me was not real.
“You were quiet during the flight. Is everything all right?” my past-self said.
Calla’s lip twitched. “Yes.”
Each time I reached this point in the recording, I felt the depth of her lie. She’d realized her time spent at the White Tower was an illusion, and that the past version of me she’d grown to know, and dare I say love, was not real.
I wanted to find out for myself whether it was the truth—whether she had fallen in love with me, and I with her. Whether our feelings for each other were real, nonetheless, in that earlier place and time. Then, maybe, I could find a clue about the Daily Reminder that had been left in my past. But that would require me to face my past at the White Tower and my father’s death.
I clenched Edgar’s soapstone table with my fingers.
“Are you well?”
“I apologize. I just—”
“Perhaps I should warm your tea.”
“No, thank you. Please. That won’t be necessary.”
A beverage wouldn’t help. Neither would returning to Calla’s past, my past. Our past? Stars and spirals flickered just inches before me. A flash of light seared the space behind my eyes, the pain nearly blinding me.
I gripped the table more tightly. Such a venture would be nothing more than a feeding of my own pining and procrastination. I needed to find Calla and bring her back. But I didn’t know how. “Edgar, there is something I must tell you.”
“Go on.”
“Please, forgive me for my part in this, but—” I had to tell him. There was no other way. “Someday in the future you will invent an unauthorized method of time travel by altering a pair of sunglasses. You will enable them and their wearer to travel through time and space.”
Edgar choked on his tea (as if its flavor wasn’t ample reason enough). “I will invent such a device?”
“Yes, but you’ll also realize the dangers and adverse effects of using that method of time travel, and you will change your mind about giving them to...me.”
“Do I use them myself and become a famous traveler?” His eyes brightened as if he didn’t understand my warning.
“No.” I tried to ignore the heat creeping up my neck. “I steal the glasses from you and use them myself...not always for good.”
He frowned and dipped his head. “Ah.”
“I’ve come to visit to tell you this because of the trouble I’ve started and must fix. I need your help.”
He held his head in his hands, as if sharing my burden.
“I take full responsibility,” I continued. “Do not blame yourself. I’ve misused the good that you’ve created.” Despite the lump in my throat being the size of a small world, I swallowed. “Because of it, someone dear to me is now, I suspect, lost.”
Edgar’s teacup rattled as he struggled to grasp what I was telling him. “H—how do I help resolve this terrible situation?”
I clenched my jaw. My next question, if answered, could have been used to save him from the unfortunate fate that he would someday endure. “How does one find the lost, Edgar?”
He sucked in a breath, and then pointed at me, his finger trembling. “The Clock Tower. It will show you the way.”
“Which clock tower?” I’d seen plenty of towers in my travels, many of which donned clocks. I’d hoped for a more direct way of narrowing my search.
Edgar steadied his pale, trembling hands and placed them on the table. He leaned toward me. “Not just any clock tower, the Clock Tower. The timepiece of the Everywhere and Everywhen.”
The bones along my spine froze. I’d come to the right person, the right place. I finally had a lead, obtained from a man I’d betrayed. I was miserable, guilty, and yet elated. “Where is this tower? What distinguishes it from every other clock tower in all times and places?” I needed as many details as possible to form my search.
“It’s not a clock tower in the literal sense. It’s a tower built of clocks—a different timepiece for each of the worlds in the Everywhere and Everywhen. When a World Builder employs his or her talent, the tower grows; it sprouts a new clock. How I wish I could see it someday.”
“I should like to take you there.” He deserved that much. I’d be using his invention—the travel glasses—to travel, and he revealed where I must go. Perhaps I should have spent more time studying time travel theory. “But I can’t,” I admitted. “I’m not a Remnant Transporter.” It was impossible for me to transport him without Plaka or Calla.
Edgar’s cheeks sagged. “I understand. I’m a past version of myself, a silhouette. The ability to transport someone, or rather something, like me is a rare talent.”
“Yes it is. And the lost person I seek to find is one of the last two living Remnant Transporters.”