As the morning sun warmed Roni’s face, she winced and offered a slow moan that echoed in her head. Hangovers were something she thought had ended years ago in college. It took her twelve minutes to overcome the pain and get out of bed. She spent another five minutes navigating her way around the plates on the floor she had meant to get into the overflowing sink, discarding last night’s clothes onto the floor, and stumbling into the shower. After washing up, fifteen minutes passed as she rummaged through piles of dirty clothes searching for something semi-clean to wear.
Exhausted from the effort, she plopped down on the side of her bed and concentrated on breathing. To her right, she had a short bookcase with all her prized hardcovers neatly arranged alphabetically. No matter what chaos arose in her life, she could always look at that bookcase and it calmed her.
She lowered her head into her hands and closed her eyes. A full minute went by in which she held her mouth shut tight for fear of throwing up on the floor. When the feeling passed, she took a deep breath and opened her eyes.
On the floor, under a bra, she spotted the photo album — the blue one with thin lines of gold swirls painted on the front, the only one she owned. It contained the only photographs she had of her mother and father. The only memories she had of them. Most of her memories from the time of her mother’s death through her teens were a fuzzy mess, but whenever she wanted a clear image of them, she had her photo album.
Gram called it Roni’s “Lost Time”. Doctors had looked her over, tested her, and found nothing neurologically wrong. Psychiatrists went to work and said that the trauma of her loss had created a mental block into forming new memories as clearly. They suspected that once Roni had fully come to accept all that had happened, she would be fine and the block would lift.
That sort of happened, but not exactly. As high school came around, Roni had a short but intense phase in which she delved into the world of alien conspiracies. Though her experiences with Lost Time were drastically different than alien abductees, her sense of knowing others out there suffered similar things made her feel better. By the end of her freshman year, her new experiences locked into her memory in full color, texture, and sound. Her memory worked again.
But the period of Lost Time remained. She did not get back those memories, and the ones she clung to remained faint sketches of moments.
Back on her feet, with more pep but still a headache, she dressed, picked up the album and walked into her tiny living room. She managed to drink a glass of water. She considered ditching the day and wallowing in the few memories she had of her mother. No. She had to report to the bookstore.
By the time she wrestled her hair into an acceptable appearance and locked up the apartment, she had begun to feel close to human. Walking up toward In The Bind, she checked her phone for the time — another hour had gone by.
Why had Gram given her that vodka? Why had she accepted it?
Images of the cavern of weird beneath the bookstore rumbled around her head. Oh, yeah. There was that.
She inhaled the fresh morning air. If nothing else, Pennsylvania had some good, fresh air. Even living in Olburg, a small town of little note other than being within thirty minutes of Philadelphia — except now Roni would have to revise that statement. There was something of note about Olburg. Something big.
Walking along the brick sidewalk, a minefield with missing bricks and tree roots creating sudden swells in the path, Roni looked at the town as if she had never seen it before. She trudged uphill and while the neighborhood appeared pleasant enough — narrow homes lined with trees, a decent downtown within walking distance, a thriving community of artists, musicians, bankers, doctors, everything a town needed to function — yet it all seemed off.
How could all of what she had seen exist right underneath everyone’s feet?
She pressed the heel of her hand against the side of her head. She could barely describe what she had seen let alone comprehend how it mixed with a town like Olburg. Gram had promised answers but as Roni walked closer to the bookstore, she wondered if she really wanted to know.
When she reached In The Bind, Elliot waited on the sidewalk. He leaned on his cane and offered a light wave as she approached.
“Good morning,” he said. “Are you feeling okay?”
Roni smirked. “I’m a bit hungover. Gram’s vodka packed a helluva punch.”
He laughed. “That it does. Come walk with me. I’m going to fill you in on things.”
Gesturing to the front door, she said, “Did Gram ask you to do this?”
“Your grandmother rarely asks; she orders. And yes, this is the way she wants it to be.”
“She won’t see me? I thought she wasn’t still mad at me.”
“Do not worry about that right now. You’ve got a big day ahead of you. Trust me on this. You need to walk with me.”
Roni followed Elliot as he shambled his way further downtown. “Where are we going?”
“A quiet place that I really like.”
He led her toward First Street, turned right, and kept going. Most of the shops had yet to open for the day. Roni thought that was odd considering nine o’clock had come and gone, but then she remembered her date with Darin was on Saturday night. For a Sunday morning, she was surprised to see anybody awake yet.
After two blocks, Elliot stopped at the locked door of the Ol’ Olburg Gallery — a local art gallery that never opened on a Sunday. Mrs. Esther Simon owned the three-story building, renting the top two floors as apartments and running the gallery from the bottom, and she believed that Sunday was meant for prayer and nothing more.
Elliot glanced up and down the street before he leaned over the lock. He brought his hands up, closed his eyes, and murmured to himself. If he knelt on a prayer rug, Roni would have assumed he had taken up with his Muslim roots.
A soft click, and Elliot smiled. He turned the knob. The door opened, a bell jingled from above, and he walked in.
“How did you do that?” Roni asked.
“One of my specialties. Where Sully is good at locking things, I am good at unlocking them.”
“But how? You didn’t use lockpicks or a credit card or anything. All I could see was you whispering to it.”
“Patience. I will explain as much as I can. I promise.”
He waited for Roni to enter the gallery, then he closed the door, making sure to mute the bell. A desk had been situated off to the side of the entrance. Elliot slid open one of the drawers and pulled out a key. He used this to unlock another door which led to the main hall of the gallery.
This open area had several walls of paintings and four sculptures placed at different sections of the floor. Most of the work came from local artists of varying skill levels — paintings of farmland, family pets, and even an old galleon at sea. All of it had heart. Even the least among them showed a passion to create and express through paint or sculpture.
Elliot escorted Roni to a wall filled with color swirls in a series of abstracts. “Did you understand what your grandmother told you last night? Or were you too much in shock to take any of it in?”
“A little of both. I barely slept because I couldn’t stop thinking about it all.”
“Perhaps this will help. Take a look at these paintings. Imagine each one as an entire universe upon itself filled with stars and planets and life. The edge of the painting is the limit of the universe. To those inside, it may seem infinite but the truth is that it does have boundaries.”
“I’m not up-to-date on my physics but I’m pretty sure Einstein or Hawking or one of those guys showed that the universe curved around like a ball. You’d never reach an edge.”
“I asked for you to imagine. This is not an exact replication of reality. Besides, after everything you saw last night, are you really going to fall back on Einstein?”
“You’ve got a point there.”
Using his cane to underscore his words, Elliot continued. “Now, each one of these paintings is a universe — a place with its own physical laws, its own chemical make up, its own everything. Sully, Lillian, and I each have been given a special gift to aid in keeping order within our universe. We are the frame around the painting. Our job is to keep our painting within its frame and make sure the others don’t come into ours. Usually that is not difficult, but on occasion it happens — sometimes by accident, sometimes by a person like your Darin.”
“Special gifts?”
“Oh, yes. You have already seen how your grandmother controls the books and the chains that bind them.”
Roni nodded. “And Sully stood like a boulder.”
“That is but an offshoot of his true power. You will see what he can do later today.”
“And you?”
“I can touch the life essence of a soul. I can locate and heal all sorts of things. I’m also the fittest of us three, so I am often called upon to be our muscle. The older we get, the tougher our job becomes.”
“You are getting older, though, right? You’re not immortal or something?”
Elliot chuckled. “No. And I wouldn’t want to be. When we die, there will be others to take our place. That is the way it has always been. It is not always instantaneous, but eventually a full complement will reform. I imagine there must be similar groups in the other universes as well.”
“It’s just you three here?”
“That is right.”
Roni covered her mouth and laughed. “I always wondered how the three of you ended up together. You always seemed like the start of a bad joke — a Christian, a Muslim, and a Jew walk into a bookstore.”
“You should not assume anything about us simply by those titles.”
“But the Priests and the Rabbis and the Imams, they are the ones who call on you from all over the world, right? I’m thinking about all those trips you three would take. You told me that you had religious scholars and other friends around the world who would tell you about rare books they found, but that wasn’t true, was it? You were going off to fight whatever had slipped through from another universe. Right?”
“The fact that you see it that way tells me you are starting to accept the truth. To answer your question — yes and no. Most of the time, yes, we were doing our jobs to protect our world. But sometimes we actually did find rare books. Sometimes both things happened. And it is not always religious leaders who contact us. It is anybody in a unique position to know the truth and be able to respond.”
A moment of silence descended upon them as they observed the paintings. Roni wanted to speak or make a noise but something told her to stay quiet. From the corner of her eye, she watched Elliot. He seemed at complete peace, content to look upon the paintings and be still.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t act like this is all normal.”
“But it is normal. What you believed to be normal before was the crazy part.”
Her head throbbed waves of pain from the bottom of her skull up into the backs of her eyes. “I really shouldn’t have drunk so much. I don’t usually get such a bad hangover, though.”
Elliot frowned. “Did your grandmother use the bottle under the register?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“I think she was trying to help you acclimate. That bottle is a Relic with a capital R. Sometimes when we close off a tear from another universe, items fall into ours.”
“Wait. Are you saying she gave me vodka from another universe?”
“I suspect so.”
Roni didn’t know whether to be amazed or pissed off. The latter won out. “Are we going to stand here all day or can I go back to the bookstore?”
“Not yet. You have to understand. You have to make a choice.”
“I understand fine. There are countless universes out there and like these paintings, they are meant to stay separate. But that doesn’t always happen. So, you three are the stopgap. You go out there, catch whatever came through and send it all back, then you plug up the hole. Right? Now, what’s this about a choice?”
Elliot wagged his finger. “Not exactly right. You see, we cannot close the holes. We don’t know how. That is why we have your grandmother. She creates the books. We stop the gaps by containing them into the books.”
“What?” Roni had lost count of how many times her heart had skipped a beat. “Are you saying that all those breaches into our world still exist? That they’re all sitting underneath the bookstore, locked away in some kind of magic books?”
“Good,” he said with a broad smile. “That is correct. The cavern, the books, the chains — all of it is designed to house the tears between universes.”
She tried to digest this, but then recalled the question he had yet to answer. “What about this choice? What is it you want me to do?”
All the brightness on his face faded. “This group of ours — well, we are old. When Darin broke in, it set off an alarm that Sully had placed on the padlock. We knew at that moment that somebody had gone into the caverns. Yet ...”
“It took you guys a long time to get down there.”
“Yes. We were slow to hear the alarm, slow to get out of bed, slow to dress for a fight, and slow to actually reach the caverns. That is not to say that we do not have some good years still in us, but simply that we are not young people anymore. Protecting the universe tends more to the youthful side.”
Roni put her arm around Elliot’s waist and gave him a loving shake. “I’m sure the three of you have plenty of strength to spare.”
“You know, we originally were four. My wife, Janwan, passed away.”
“Because of all this?”
“No. Pancreatic cancer. Excuse my language, but fuck cancer.” He leaned on his cane so that his face came in close to her. “When Janwan died, your grandmother wanted your mother, Maria, to take over. But then, unfortunately, your mother had her accident. So, we decided to keep it just us three until the time would come that we found a good match for a fourth. That time is now.”
Elliot said nothing more. He stood there, staring at her. Addled by the overwhelming volume of shocks coming her way, Roni stood there staring back for a while before her eyes finally widened. “Oh. You want me?” She backed away. “No, no, no. That’s not ... that doesn’t make sense. Why would you want me? I don’t have magic powers. I’m not ready for this kind of thing. Besides, I’m an atheist.”
“Perfect! It is our respect for each other’s differing opinions that we hold as one of our greatest strengths.”
“I mean, everything you’ve said is amazing, and if I hadn’t been down there and seen it all, I would have thought you were nuts, but I did see it, I did experience it all, and it is amazing. How could I turn down a chance to be part of that?”
“Exactly.”
“But my life is in turmoil enough. I don’t even have a job.”
“The Society provides a healthy income, so you won’t have to worry about that. And, best of all, you can’t be fired. This is an appointment for life. Like the US Supreme Court.”
“What’s the Society?”
Rolling his eyes, Elliot said, “Unfortunately, this sort of universes ripping apart in each other doesn’t stay hidden and secret forever. A few centuries back, the Society was formed as an oversight committee to make sure we are accountable for what we do. Mostly, it exists as a method for those in power to feel like they have some control over us. They do not. You will learn all about it when you join us.”
“Hold on there.” Roni glanced down the hall, part of her thinking that a good sprint away from all of this would be a smart start. “I haven’t agreed to anything. This is a lot to accept.”
“I do apologize for throwing it onto you this way, but Lillian insisted. After all, we do have some urgent business to get working on, and your grandmother leads our trio.”
“Business? You mean saving Darin?”
“Exactly.”
Roni headed toward the door. “Great. Let’s put this decision of mine on the back burner and we’ll go help Darin. I’m sure by the time we’re done with that, I’ll be able to make a choice.”
Elliot did not move.
She looked back at him and crossed her arms. “Really? After everything I’ve seen and all that you’ve told me, you’re going to make me choose now?”
“You should never have seen the things you did, and the only reason we decided to tell you what we have is because we feel strongly that you will join us. But the rest of the secrets we still hold will remain secrets unless you do.” She started to answer but he raised a hand to shush her — too much like Gram. “I will go wait outside. Stay here a moment. Look at the paintings. Let your mind relax and open your heart to your thoughts. Only then will you know the true answer of what you want.”
He walked out and Roni resisted the urge to follow. Instead, she did as he had asked. She stood there, staring at the swirls of color on the canvases, and she tried to relax. But how could she relax when the last twelve hours had been overflowing with insanity? How could she go back to her mundane existence knowing what reality truly was?
Her pulse pounded in her chest. The decision had to be based on more than a gut feeling. After all, there was a massive chasm between dreams and reality. It could be fun to dream of living the life of an international spy like James Bond — the action, the adventure, the gadgets, and the close calls — but the reality of that life would be quite different.
She thought about the Old Gang. She had known them her whole life. They never appeared to be enjoying martinis while gambling in Morocco as an undercover agent. They were quiet people, living quiet lives. She saw now that wasn’t by mistake or happenstance. They had to maintain a low profile, an unassuming life, in order to keep their job a secret.
Any dreams Roni harbored of a future would disappear. No chance for fame or fortune or maybe even happiness. Once she accepted the job, she would be in it for life. That would be it. No change of career.
And what of love? Family? How could she build a relationship with someone when she had this enormous secret to hold?
Worst of all — while there would probably be times of great excitement, her one experience already had been more terrifying than exciting. This wouldn’t be fun-filled action like a movie. This would be a case of make a mistake and die.
Elliot walked up behind her. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but you’ve been standing here for almost an hour. If you’re going to join us, we’ve got to get working.”
An hour? Roni glanced up at Elliot, tears wetting her cheeks.
“It’s okay,” he said. “This life is not for most people. No need to cry. You won’t be disappointing any of us.”
She shook her head. “It’s not that. I think I’m mourning the life I thought I would live.”
“Oh?” Elliot put out his hand. “Then you’ll join us?”
She nodded and shook his hand. “Let’s go save Darin.”
But Elliot pulled his hand back. “No, dear. I did not offer to shake hands. I need you for a little balance. I left my cane in the hall.”
“Sorry,” she said and set his hand on her shoulder.
Together they ambled back, picked up his cane, and left the gallery. A few people meandered outside, but nobody bothered them. Walking side by side, heading toward the bookstore, Roni’s chest swelled. She couldn’t help it. As much as she looked forward to helping others and protecting the universe, she kept wondering what special power they would gift to her. She kept thinking — I’m going to have magic.