She had been named after the Virgin Queen, who once offered the hand of alliance to Thule to seek their aid in fighting off Spain. That alliance had soured in the days of James the First. Ginny grinned—free to choose. She could actually feel that lovely, brightly plumed tail of history and
memory stretching behind her, a thrashing, vibrant past filling out and coming alive, smells and colors and tastes struggling to be made and fixed in place.
It was real—not just her imagination!
“Oh, my God,” she said, and her voice echoed from the walls. “It istrue, isn’t it?” She felt a lightness and liberty she had never known before. It made her giddy. She was shifting fates, in reverse. And then a gentle remonstrance enveloped her.
Wonderful it is—a beautiful stretch—but too far from where we are now. It cannot be reconciled. Not yet.
After…
That beautiful history faded as quickly as it had come, but the taste of honey-of-Thrace lingered on her tongue like a reward for her audacity.
“You’re real, aren’t you?” she whispered. “You’re real and you’re beautiful. But you’re sick…you’re dying, because the universe is sick and dying, right?”
No answer.
“But is it true—can I have another past? A better, happier past?”
No answer needed. Ginny felt for the box in her pocket. “When was I reallyborn?” she asked, suddenly catching on.
“I’ve been here a long time,” Daniel said to the looming silence. “Thousands of years. Millions. I don’t remember all of it, of course, but that’s what I’ve figured out. And I’m talking here just to pass the time, because this is all crap. In fact, I only remember a little bit about what happened before I took over Charles Granger. That’s the problem—the things I’ve had to do to escape the bad places, the dying places—one big leap at a time. And now there’s only one path, one escape.” He sliced the air with his hand, then jabbed. “Go straight through Terminus, come out the other side, whatever that’s like. So—who’s going through, and who’s going to get stuck here? Maybe you don’t know, because that’s not your job. But if anybody’s going through, I’m your ticket, hitch a ride.” The silence seemed to become deeper. “Are youthe Chalk Princess?”
Daniel felt acutely uncomfortable. There was something in the room—it just wasn’t responding. So sad. He just couldn’t remember something important—something essential.
“I mean, this is my audition, isn’t it? The others—they say they dream about another city. I don’t. So why were those monsters so interested in me—the Moth, Whitlow, Glaucous—whatever heis. What have I got to give them? The stone? I don’t even remember how it came to be mine. I think I killed somebody to get it. That’s how it always comes to be mine. Somebody has to die.”
He had stopped breathing for a moment, so he took a short breath, all he would allow himself, even if his
head was starting to swim.
“I’m a madness that moves from man to man. I’ve betrayed and lied and ruined and been ruined, but I’ve always escaped. What does that make me?” He closed his eyes. Suddenly, his head hurt with so much longing and need.
“We’re not going to find each other anytime soon, are we?” Daniel whispered to the stillness. Paramedics were called to the motel after Jeremy found his father sprawled on the floor of the bathroom. Something small had burst in Ryan’s head, paralyzing him and slurring his speech. Ryan never again mentioned the Bleak Warden. In the hospital room, the last thing he told Jeremy was,
“Save your mother. Always remember.” No explanation.
Jack was making his choice—stubborn, as always. He’d lovedhis parents—had wanted to be very like his father.
Three days later another stroke killed Ryan. His father was gone. It was one thing to gull the shills, fool the audience—entertain them with the brightness of the game. It was another to build his life on a firm, wonderful foundation of memories both good and bad—life solid, painful, but real. Jeremy had his cast removed just in time for the funeral. Magicians, comedians, buskers, and actors came from all over Washington and parts of Oregon and Idaho. He had never realized his father was so loved—which only showed how little he knew about anything important. Before vacating the room in the Motel 6, he opened his father’s trunk. Inside he found a stack of paperback books, mostly Clive Barker and Jack Kerouac (that was when he decided his new name would be Jack), three changes of clothes and five changes of underwear, none of which fit him—and the gray box, wrapped in a velvet bag. He opened the box and found the twisted stone, burned-looking but for a small, embedded red eye that seemed to shine even in the dark. The sometime stone.
The sum-runner.
Ryan had never told him where he’d found it. Perhaps it had belonged to Mother. Jack’s luck changed. It did not get better, exactly—not in the larger scale of things—but it changed.
“I’d like to be—to have been a little girl with friends and a good school, good teachers, a normal little girl. I’d like to grow up normal and fall in love—without dreams. Are Jack and I supposed to be in love?
Because it doesn’t seem to be happening—not yet.”
Outside, the sky grew brighter. Yellow and green light flickered through the high window, but Jack could not tell if dawn was coming. It didn’t matter. No more dawns, probably. He did not need to get up and move around—he was comfortable, for the moment.
“How long should I wait?”
Now the window spread a diffuse silver glow on the wall opposite.
Still nothing. Then:
What is yourother first memory?
Jeremy was stunned by how quickly he came up with his reply. “Something’s carrying me. I’m young, I don’t know too many words. A door opens—but it’s an odd sort of door, it meltsaside. And then—there’s my mother and father, but that’s not what they’re called—still, they’re like my parents. They love me. They take care of me. They’re going to be taken away from me.”
He made a bitter face, crossed his legs, and tried to lean back, but the chair creaked, so he bit at his index finger. What he had just said made no sense, but it felt right, felt real.
“That’s what you asked for. My otherfirst memory. I remember being young. And yet here, now, I don’t remember being young. I’m less real here than in my dreams…That’s not right. This is wacked. Take my word for it, this is triple wacked.”
Jeremy looked around, suddenly very frightened—more frightened than he’d been in the sack in the back of the van, or sprawled out bruised and wet on the transformed street, his hand sluiced by the storm’s cold runoff.
“You’re supposed to be Mnemosyne, right?”
A breeze blew through the room, cool but not unfriendly, pulling at his shirt, flicking his pants legs. Playful, sad. He blinked and shifted on the chair, then just listened. A quiet rushing hiss came from outside, more like falling sand than wind—and nothing else. Falling sand or endless quick, tiny waves on a beach. The room was dark. No dawn through the high window. Jeremy—no, he was Jack again—had no idea how much time had passed.
He looked over his shoulder. “Hello?”