Wayfarer

Etta’s gaze sharpened on him. “So you just dismissed it? Because she was an unwell little girl?”

He held up his hands. “I would never use that term lightly. She described this traveler as shining like ‘the sun itself,’ golden, his skin and form flawless. She told me once that when he spoke, it was as if she heard his words in her mind, and that he could plant images in her thoughts. That even our shadows served him—shadows.”

Etta was at a compete loss for words, trying to reconcile this image of her mother with the stiff, immaculately put-together woman she’d grown up with.

So…all of this was…not a fantasy, but…Her mind stumbled over the words. Hallucinations and delusions. If she was following Henry’s thinking on this, Rose’s parents’ deaths had been so deeply traumatic, the psychological aftershocks so damaging, it had eventually ruined not only Rose’s life, but compelled her to ruin her daughter’s as well.

All of this was a lie.

Her blood was pounding wildly inside of her, like the flapping of a bird’s wings struggling against a fierce wind. A tiny figure at the edge of her memory tiptoed forward, hesitating, curling the ends of her bright blond hair with her small fingers. Quiet, as always, so as not to disturb. Perfect, as always, so as not to disappoint. Only watching the careful, meticulous strokes of her mother’s paintbrush against canvas from the doorway of her bedroom.

Wondering if the reason her mother seemed to rarely speak to her was because her language was color and form, when Etta’s was sound and vibration.

Henry reached out a hand for hers, but jerked it back when Etta flinched.

After a moment, he continued, “As a child, her grandfather helped put her off the notion, but years later, after she’d joined me in trying to restore the original timeline, she had a dream about that meeting with the ‘golden man,’ as she called him. Her fixation was renewed. The fierce, lively person I knew withered away, and in her place grew someone who was paranoid, erratic. Rose would go for days without sleep, then disappear for weeks, only to return more levelheaded, folding away more and more secrets inside of her. I wanted to help her, but she didn’t believe she needed help; not even as her delusions worsened, and she claimed she could feel people watching her from the darkness.”

Each word pulled at a new thread in Etta, slowly unmaking her.

“I should have fought her on her plans to spy on the Ironwoods by ingratiating herself to them, but it was like trying to bend steel with my hands. And then she vanished, and for years, I was afraid…I thought for certain she had…ended her own life.”

Her mother would never have surrendered. Forfeited her life that way.

“Are you all right?” he asked, his brow creased.

Who would be? she wondered.

“Why did she hide it, then, instead of just destroying it?” Etta asked instead. “That’s the only way to truly keep it out of Ironwood’s hands, right?”

“It gets at a struggle we’ve felt for years, the debate we’ve been locked in.” He reached down to the satchel near his feet, removing a dark leather journal. “This came into our possession almost twenty years ago, when your great-grandfather Linden died. It’s one of his ancestors’ journals, one of the old record-keepers who compiled information from old traveler journals and tracked changes to the timeline. From her understanding of her old ancestor’s legends, destroying the astrolabe would have a nullifying effect on any alternations to the original timeline.”

“Meaning,” Etta said, “it would revert to the exact thing you and this group are after—the original version of the timeline?”

“Yes, but at a steep cost,” Henry said, placing the journal back on the desk. “Do you know that passages collapse when a traveler nearby dies outside of their natural time?”

Etta nodded.

“Imagine losing the one thing that could reopen them in the event of someone becoming trapped—being forced to wait out years or decades in an unwelcoming time, separated from your family,” he said. “There used to be thousands of passages, and now, there are only a few hundred. Many would argue that, as more of us die than are born, our way of life will vanish as the last passages close.”

“But not you.”

“Not me,” he said. “I understand that not everyone uses the passages for their own selfish ends, the way Ironwood does. Many simply need them to visit members of their family and friends who can’t travel, or to conduct studies and research. Even your mother felt that way—unwilling to potentially risk losing her family in other centuries. But recent events have proven to me that this has become a necessity if we’re to restore what’s rightfully meant to be.”

The buzzing static in Etta’s ears finally exploded, swallowing his words. Some part of her strained against what he was asking of her; she didn’t want this information, didn’t want to know this, or put the pieces together.

“This doesn’t make sense,” she said, hating the desperation in her voice, as she reached for logic to protect her heart, “none of it. She wanted me to destroy it. She told me that herself.”

Unless he was lying about wanting to destroy the astrolabe, or what destroying it would do—but then, what was the point? He would be trying to convince her of all the reasons it needed to exist, and what they intended to do with it. But none of her usual red flags were being raised. If anything, he just sounded tired and angry—there was nothing calculating in his eyes or tone. He believed what he was telling her.