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SEVERAL NIGHTS later, I left my parents chatting by the lake and walked back to the cottage. They’d gotten along well over the past few days, even better than I’d expected. Seeing them together made me happy, and I should have felt complete. I’d found my father behind the Fire Falls. He’d freed me from Susana. And Mom was away from work for the first time in years. We were together. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing.
After walking upstairs to my room, I switched on the light and shut the door behind me. My room felt comforting and familiar. All of the clothes and personal items I’d left behind were still there. My backpack sat in the corner by my desk—Valcas had returned it to me during my recovery after being Lost in Susana. Shirlyn’s diary and the zobascope helped me pass the hours during that time.
But now I was back home where books crowded my shelves—hordes of them, filled with pages about places and characters that, at one time, I’d felt belonged to me. That I was a part of their written lives. Now I couldn’t stop thinking about books as writings on physical objects. They weren’t Daily Reminders because they weren’t intended to change the past; the authors’ words were either recordings of past events or inventions of new ones, written for the purpose of sharing ideas and entertaining readers. In a way, they were fixed, like slices in time that could, but likely would not, be overwritten.
I kicked off my running shoes, lay back on my bed and stared at the ceiling. I was back where I’d started, on Earth. After just a few days away from it all, my travels through time and space felt like a dream from a lifetime that I’d never lived—as if I were a fictional character in one of my books. Had my father accepted my Uncle Al’s offer of an extra pair of clothes, I may have questioned whether there was a world called Chascadia. Fortunately, he continued to wear his cloak and had tuned up the baglamas more than once. But how long would he stay?
I’d already decided that if he left, I would go with him. I’d follow my father wherever he needed me to heal the Lost and the hurting, but not just because I cared for those people and felt compelled to help. Quite honestly, I felt that without them and the chance to use my travel talent, there would be a void in my life that could never be filled. But would traveling with my father be enough?
I rolled over on my side to face the nightstand. A small replica of the overhead light reflected in the lenses of my pair of travel glasses. That pair of sunglasses had been everywhere, and everywhen. I smiled, knowing that no matter how lonely I felt, I could look inside them to review my memories as well as many of Valcas’. He’d given me a gift by searching for me and entering my life.
It had been days since I’d last spoken to him. I reached out and trailed my fingers along the rims of the glasses. Unsure whether he’d want to talk to me, I slipped the glasses over my eyes to search for recordings of him inside the glasses instead.
My breathing slowed as I relaxed, making it easier to search—to feel connected. The first image to surface was a washed-out version of Valcas, one of his past-selves I’d met when I’d first visited the White Tower. His eyes were green, his smile wide; but he was not real. He was a silhouette whose entire being was faded and pale. I let the image float away, intentionally conjuring up one that I’d recorded while trapped behind the Fire Falls.
A yellow-orange glow clouded the scene. It was evening behind the Falls. Valcas sat across from me, near a pile of my father’s light sticks. He smirked in response to one of Ivory’s jabs, and then looked at me.
His smirk deepened as he squinted. “What are you doing over there?”
“Recording.”
“Without warning?” He moved closer to me. “I wouldn’t have known whether you were playing back recordings or trying to communicate with someone outside the Falls.”
My cheeks grew warmer than I’d remembered them getting that day. “If I’d told you I was recording, would you have moved somewhere else or changed how you were acting just now?”
“Perhaps,” he said, still grinning.
“Yeah, well. Where the truth remains hidden from the outside, the inside imprisons the hidden.”
He tilted his head back and laughed. “You still remember that?”
“I’m not sure how I’d ever forget it.” He’d made a strong impression on me back when I was more of a prisoner than a friend.
His fingers traced the temples of my glasses, creating a trail of tingles along both sides of my hairline that reached all the way to the tips of my ears.
The scene disappeared as he removed my glasses, leaving my heart pounding. The only way to remember the kiss that followed would be to find it somewhere inside my own mind, a memory which was already fading and far less accurate. I hadn’t thought to burn it inside the glasses afterward.
While I was still distracted, another image of Valcas surfaced. At first, I thought I was so deep into searching that every recording of Valcas was about to come up whether I looked for it or not. But then I noticed that this image was different.
His face appeared against an all-white background. A pair of sunglasses covered the green eyes I’d seen in my recordings. I watched his mouth move before I realized he was calling my name. This wasn’t a recording from inside the glasses; neither was it a memory. It was likely that the eyes behind the glasses were no longer green, which meant...
I caught my breath. “Valcas?”
He smiled. “Is this a good time to talk?”
“Of course,” I said, sitting up. “How are you? Where are you?”
“I’m well. For now, I’m staying at the White Tower. I came here to check in on my mother.”
“Yeah? How’s she doing?”
“She’s fine, and she wishes you well.”
“Really?” I grimaced, remembering Sable’s less than warm reception of me in Aboreal. “Did she actually say that, or are you assuming her wishes from how she acted when you talked to her?”
“Calm down, dearest. I explained everything to her. In fact, she’s the one who suggested I contact you.”
“Okay, but why?”
“I’ll get to that later. I don’t want to ruin the surprise.”
“Surprise?”
He pointed to his pair of glasses, conveniently ignoring my question in favor of asking one of his own. “Were you going somewhere?”
“Oh. No. I was just—” I was just flipping through recordings of you because I missed you, even though it was my idea to spend time apart. “I was just...remembering.”
“I see.”
“Are you going to be staying at the White Tower from now on?”
The corners of his lips curved upward, just slightly. “That’s yet to be decided. I think I have a better plan, but I haven’t worked out all of the logistics yet.”
“You won’t stay and live with your mother?”
“I can always visit home, just like you can. Are you enjoying being back at Lake Winston?”
“Mom’s been getting along well with my father. Uncle Al’s doing great...”
“Are you happy?”
“I’m not...unhappy.”
He frowned. “What’s wrong, Calla?”
“Nothing, I just—” I sighed. “Okay, fine. I miss you,” I mumbled.
Valcas pressed his lips together as if suppressing a grin. “I see.”
I sniffed. “You keep saying that.”
“Yes, well, if you’re already bored of Earth, I’m happy to stop by and take you somewhere else.”
“You mean like on a date?” I grinned.
“Yes, but I can’t promise it will be on Earth for very long.”
“I see.”
“Ah, now I have you doing it.”
“Doing what?” I blinked, and then laughed. “Okay, how soon can you come to visit?”
“Take off your glasses and go outside. I’ll meet you there.”