“There’s a song to a person,” she said. “There are notes that resonate with them. Perhaps it’s less like a sound and more like… acoustics, knowing how the notes sound in a particular room, then trying your best to weave them together.” She made a little tune to demonstrate the point, something to pull on the sweetness of Isra, but with her overworked mind and sleepiness, it didn’t last more than a few bars. Still, she could see the change in Isra’s face, a smile on her lips that reached up to her eyes, like they were sharing a joke together. There was nothing shy about it.
“Can you do that again?” asked Isra, almost as soon as the song petered off.
“Tired,” said Verity. Really, she shouldn’t have pushed it, but it was always tempting when things felt that they could readily flow. Even the song she’d sung up the hill, a simple song of strength, had been pushing it. A song for Isra, tugging on and enhancing her sweetness, was beyond even that and risked her losing her ‘voice’ for a few days, which had happened twice before.
“I wish I could feel like that all the time,” said Isra.
“You can,” murmured Verity. The world kept slipping away as her thoughts descended into dreams. The last thing she was fully conscious of was feeling the heat of Isra’s body through the blankets.
Chapter 29 — Historical Revisionism
That Alfric was a chrononaut was, in some sense, a surprise, but in another sense, made certain things fall into place. That was almost certainly what Filera had seen in him during their encounter at the temple, and it explained some of his rush to get things moving when they’d all started out. He’d wanted to do as much in a day as possible, because that way, if things had gone poorly, he could have started the entire thing over. Perhaps he hadn’t even been thinking like that, it was just something that had been ingrained in him by a whole family who had that ability. Hannah wasn’t entirely sure.
“Is Verity going to be okay?” asked Mizuki, looking at the closed door. “Also, that was going to be my room.”
“She’ll be fine,” said Hannah. “Alfric had a safety net he didn’t tell us about, and he wasn’t keen to use it.” She hoped Verity would be fine. She furrowed her brow and looked at Alfric. “But why didn’t you want to go after the bear then?”
“We had done well enough,” said Alfric. “I didn’t want to put anyone in danger.”
“But if one of us had died,” said Mizuki. “You’d just… redo the day? Make different choices?”
“If I’d been on the second day through, I’d have postponed the dungeon and not risked it without the ability to undo it,” said Alfric. “And, obviously, I would have told you all what had happened.”
“Obviously, ay?” asked Hannah. She pursed her lips. “The temptation wouldn’t have been there to make some excuse?”
“I don’t want to pretend to have a purity that I don’t have,” said Alfric. “I would have lamented the fact that it had to be that way. I might even have thought hard about whether it was possible to not follow through on the commitment to disclosure. But I want this party to last, and I was always going to tell you eventually, it was just a question of whether it would be on my own time or whether it would be necessitated by a reset.”
“But you told us now because you were worried that this ‘Lola’ was going to say something?” asked Mizuki. “Or that she already had?”
Alfric hesitated. “Yes,” he admitted. “Not ideal.”
Hannah frowned. “But as I said, it’s a safety net he didn’t tell us about, and there’s good reasons not to.” Something else slipped into place, which was the way Alfric had reacted when there was some question about his honor. He was protective of it, because a chrononaut depended upon trust. Otherwise people might think he was lying about days that had been redone and whether days had been redone. Or, possibly, he was defensive because people had questioned his honor before on this very issue. He seemed to be handling it well. “Decent reasons, anyhow, since I’m not sure about ‘good’.”
“Wait,” said Mizuki, looking at Alfric. “You’re worried that I’ll do something risky if I know you could just undo it?”
“You did something risky without knowing that I could undo it,” said Alfric.
“Well,” said Mizuki. “I mean, yeah, people do risky things all the time. You have to take risks in life.”
“Chrononauts call it risk hazard,” said Alfric. “If people know there’s something that can protect them, they’ll take more risks, which makes things more difficult for us when we’re trying to undo things and get a good day in place.”
“I guess,” said Mizuki. “But shouldn’t we take more risks? To get more from the dungeons?”
“If you died—you understand that seeing a party member die isn’t something that I want to have to go through?” he asked. There was something about the way he was handling the conversation that was… well, like he’d had it before. Hannah didn’t think he was lying, just that he’d probably had these kinds of conversations many times before and been mentally preparing himself to have this talk with them. “That not only would we have to delay a day for safety’s sake, but that I’d have to go through more brutal fights and injuries in a newly created dungeon whose layout and contents I wouldn’t know? Going through the dungeon that first failed time would be for nothing aside from the experience of it.”
“But you like dungeons,” said Mizuki.
“I’d lay off him,” said Hannah. “He’s the one taking beatin’s for us. Makes sense not to want more.”
Mizuki shrugged. “Just trying to understand. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“I’m not sure I understand the scope of your powers,” said Isra.
“I can undo a day,” said Alfric, turning to her. This, too, seemed like it was something he was well prepared for, but there were obvious, mundane reasons for that. “Not a full day, just back to the witching hour, in the dead of the night, before the sun is up. That’s the common point for all chrononauts, varying a bit by how far east or west they are.” He had a particular way of talking to Isra, which she seemed to take to, and Hannah resolved to mimic it as much as possible the next time there was something that Isra didn’t know. The girl did seem to know quite a bit about religion though, more than expected. “It’s the same for all chrononauts, only a single day back in time, with the only thing that varies being how many times we can do a day. My second time through a day I’m fine, but a third time through, I feel somewhat ill, and I can’t do a fourth. My parents can both do six, and I’ve heard of people being able to do as many as twelve. It takes some conscious effort, so I can’t do it if I’m knocked out, and it happens automatically if I die. There’s a complicated system of priority, but for now I think all you really need to know is that Lola takes her days before I take mine, meaning that either this is what she’s settled on for today, or the events of today that were impacted by her will be undone, and we’ll have no memory or experience of this conversation.”
“You said that you had an arranged marriage,” said Isra. “With this girl.”
“With Lola, yes,” said Alfric. “And not a marriage, necessarily, just a pact that we would propagate the power, and if we didn’t, we would find replacements for each other. Chrononauts have chrononaut children, but only if they breed with other chrononauts.”