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AFTER MY conversation with Valcas ended, I tried contacting Enta multiple times.
No one answered. Unsure where she’d be, I battled with myself over whether I should travel to her homestead or ask the travel glasses to take me specifically to her, wherever she was. Since there was no guarantee she’d be at the homestead, I chose the latter, focusing on a presently existing Enta as I ran through the clearing in Edgar’s Nowhere, hoping she wasn’t dead.
Some part of me expected to find grasses swaying below pastel skies when the light faded. Instead, the sky was dark. I didn’t recognize my new surroundings. Warily, I looked around, disappointed with what I saw.
Snow covered the ground. Trees bared of their leaves poked up through the snow, their branches glazed with ice. Flakes of snow fell from the sky. My body trembled from the chill of the wind. The cold seeped into my feet, burning the tips of my toes.
I brushed my hands across my arms. “Enta?”
A light shined in the distance. As it neared, a figure emerged alongside it, a person holding an old-fashioned lamp.
“Calla, is that you?” Her voice was familiar. I puffed out a breath. The travel glasses hadn’t failed me.
“Enta!” I reached out to embrace her, and then wrapped my arms around her snow-dusted cloak.
A white bonnet peeked out through her hood. Honey-colored eyes stared into mine, judging how I’d changed. “What a surprise. What brings you here?”
Glancing around at the wintry world, I hesitated. “Where exactly is here?”
A gloved hand motioned for me to follow. Our feet crunched along the snow, trailing a path of footprints behind us.
Enta exhaled, her breath visible in the air. “I’m inside one of the rooms at the White Tower.”
“You mean Jim and Sable’s White Tower as it is now—in its present?”
Slowly, she nodded.
Blood drained from my face. “But, why?” Returning to the White Tower was how I’d gotten Lost—past versions of the world that I’d traveled to repeatedly, until I’d driven myself to Susana, with my Uproar following closely behind me.
“I’ve been searching for something ever since Edgar’s death.”
Her words shamed me. Valcas and I had thought she’d been traveling through time and space to forget about Edgar. We’d assumed she was trying to get Lost. But here she was as clear-thinking and determined as ever, on a mission of her own.
“What are you searching for?”
The sky darkened. Enta glanced at her lamp. The flame flickered as if it was burning out. She picked up her pace.
“A tome, something that I’m certain is here, in one of these rooms. And yet there are so many places for it to be hidden.”
“Why not form a search with your travel glasses specifically for this tome? Searching behind all of the doors in the White Tower would take forever.”
“I can’t,” she said. “Sable ensured that it was unsearchable. It’s protected.”
“You mean enchanted?”
Enta shook her head. “More like an encryption, a firewall through which I cannot pass. I must find it manually, for lack of better words to describe the phenomenon.”
“Why not ask Sable to just tell you where it is? Maybe if you explain why you need the tome—”
“Impossible,” Enta said with a soft laugh. “If she’d wanted anyone to find it, she wouldn’t have gone to such an extent to block access.” She stopped and swiped her hand along a snowdrift. A fluffy sheet of snow fell away, revealing a door camouflaged in the same color that I wouldn’t have been able to see if it wasn’t for the silver knob.
She turned the knob and opened the door into the hallway. I scrambled in after her, eager to absorb the warmth and the light.
Enta regarded me, her face tight with concern. “Let’s get you a warm drink. You wouldn’t have come to see me if you didn’t have questions.”
I opened my mouth, and then shut it again. Her comment stung, but it held a kernel of truth. I hadn’t visited her this entire time, not until I had questions that only she could answer. Shame spread in ugly waves throughout my chest.
“I got Lost,” I admitted as she led me through a door that opened up into a kitchen, as if that would somehow explain away all the time I’d spent not visiting her when I wasn’t Lost.
Her body went rigid, except for the tremor I saw run across her back. “Lost?”
My hands began to shake. “After Edgar died, the TSTA charged me with an infraction for leaving a Daily Reminder in his past.”
Tears stung my eyes as I told Enta the rest of the story—how I’d tricked a past version of Edgar into giving me the recipe for his youth elixir, and what had happened when Valcas’ younger self wrote on the photograph Shirlyn had taken of us. I told her about the hearing, my conviction and the search for my father. Apparently, Valcas hadn’t filled her in on the details while we were in the air space behind the Fire Falls.
With the warm beverage forgotten, Enta held me as I told her about my days in Susana—enduring the Uproar’s torture, along with my inability to save myself or the others there with me. Until Valcas and my father saved me, allowing me to pay them forward by helping to free the Lost. I spilled words along with tears, explaining the roles of Nick and Ivory, the connection between Ray’s tattoo and President Bree and how I’d escaped, once again, by running away.
I told her everything, including the impossibility of a life with Valcas that didn’t end with my shorter timeline.
Enta dried my tears and looked at me with kindness. A gleam burned in her eyes. “The tome I’m searching for,” she said, her voice sharp. “It’s a record of Valcas’ birth. In order to reset time in the world where he was born, Sable left a Daily Reminder in her own past, somewhere here in the White Tower.”
I choked.
“Sable wanted to ensure that Valcas’ timeline was long like hers, even though he hadn’t been born in Aboreal. I’m unsure whether she created the Daily Reminder before or after her husband’s passing. But to Valcas, his timeline—that of the White Tower—is all he’s ever known.”
My heart raced as I took in the new information. “But how does that work? How does that change Valcas’ timeline if the Daily Reminder wasn’t left in his past?”
“Sable technically changed her own past, events that surrounded the life that she brought into this world.”
“So, then, the Daily Reminder needs to be somewhere she sees it every day, so that it’s part of her memory?”
“Yes, it’s likely somewhere on or near her person at all times. That version will be impossible for us to obtain.”
“That version?”
Enta’s eyes glittered. “I know that she kept a separate copy, one that James also knew about and revealed to Edgar before he’d died. Which just happens to be something Edgar asked me to find before his life ended.”
“She made a copy?”
“Yes, to protect against the reminder being overwritten or destroyed.”
“But I thought destroying any copy of a Daily Reminder destroyed all of them.”
“That is true, unless, of course, a copy remains that cannot be accessed. A single copy still in existence restores all of them. In other words, should someone destroy the tome that any version of Sable has with her, it will reappear unless and until the encrypted copy is either overwritten or destroyed. It’s a sophisticated form of backup. Sable is rather clever.”
“Wouldn’t she have been charged with an infraction?” I breathed.
“Yes, but I suspect she was able to pay whatever fine the TSTA gave her; but here’s the kicker, Calla. Sable would have been able to destroy the tome—the Daily Reminder—at the hearing in the presence of the travel commissioner and all witnesses present. It would appear to everyone as if the Daily Reminder had disappeared, that she’d rectified the situation. The TSTA must not have known of the backup copy because Valcas’ timeline remains.”
“If you find the tome, what will you do with it? What did Edgar have in mind?”
“Edgar was concerned with your happiness. He thought that possession, and possibly manipulation, of the tome would disturb the balance of Valcas’ existence and give you a better chance of escape. I’m sure Edgar never would have anticipated that you and Valcas would want to be together. Valcas hadn’t said anything behind the Fire Falls that would indicate—” she sputtered. “But given what you’ve just told me...”
“Everything has changed.”
I didn’t want to disrupt Valcas’ timeline in such a way that would be harmful to him. All I wanted was for us to be together. It was the whole reason why I’d come to Enta for help. Now that she knew about how our lives had changed, her search was no longer necessary. And it wasn’t the only way.
“Enta, there’s no need to look for the tome anymore.” My mind buzzed with the task of trying to find a way to fix things, and as soon as possible. I wasn’t sure anything I’d come up with would work, but... “I think I have a better idea.”