City At The End Of Time (58 page)

Who is your real mother?

And why does she seek you?

Ginny closed her eyes. She was back in Milwaukee, then in Philadelphia. She was back with her parents.

They rarely stayed in one place more than a few months. And when they moved on, they arranged things so they left behind no impression—nobody remembered them. They could have circled back through the same towns, moved back into the same houses a few years later, and would have been greeted as newcomers. But they never did.

“We don’t leave footprints,” her mother had told Ginny as a child. Ginny remembered her attempts to make friends, meet boys. But then, inevitably—exhausted, discouraged—her family stayed too long in one town and the whole memory thing doubled back on them. Her mother wandered off or just vanished, as if erased from a giant blackboard. A few weeks later, her father vanished as well. Maybe they were taken by collectors, like the man with the coin or Glaucous. Maybe her parents sacrificed themselves to protect her. She would never know. Her entire family might as well have never lived. There was no proof they
had
lived, other than the library stone. Alone, carrying the sum-runner, her dreams began—and she learned she could shift. She had come so very far. Her entire life became a long bad dream; both of her lives,
here
and
there
. It was curiosity about
there
that landed her in her present trouble. A few weeks after her father’s departure, Ginny boarded a Greyhound and stared out a smudged window at rolling wet miles of fields and hills. In Philadelphia, she lived on the streets for a few months. Street people forgot things under the best of circumstances. She decided that wasn’t what she needed. She soon hitchhiked to Baltimore, where she peeled a tab off a flyer on a bulletin board, and that same night carried her backpack into an old two-bedroom row house occupied by goths and ravers—determined to settle in, stay awhile, leave behind some footprints. For the first time since her parents had vanished, she felt comfortable, at home—for a while.

Then she left the house in Baltimore and called the number in the newspaper ad. Ginny looked up at the blank wall, the peeling paint, the shadows moving slowly over the overlapping slats of wood.

Is this what you choose?

Is there a better past for you?

“Who are you?” she cried.

No answer. Foolish question. She already knew the answer—though it did not make much sense.

“What am
I
, then? I really don’t remember anything before I called that number—is that it? Who were my parents? I couldn’t just pop up out of nowhere, out of nothing, could I?”

A polite waiting.

“All right,” Ginny said, angrily determined to test the limits. “You asked for it, here it is. I come from a country called Thule. It’s a big island northwest of Ireland. The last contact with the outside world was…World War Two. The Germans occupied my island, but we pushed them out before the war ended. There were huge stone castles built on the crests of high hills and in the mountains. My parents worked in the royal palace on the southern coast, and I had the run of the hill-castles where the prince and princess were hidden, moving to a new castle every day. Everyone was afraid, but not my family. My brothers and I—I had three brothers—we used to ride gliders off the cliffs, and I broke my arm…”

Someone laughed—behind her, around her—delighted with her presumption. Her arm suddenly ached, and with this pain, all the memories flooded back: broad fields below the stone castles, brown and purple with sweet prickle-thatch, the taste of comb-laden honey-of-Thrace in the fresh spring air; her father’s concern as the palace physician set her arm without anesthetic, wrapped it in a poultice of lard and chalice-herb, then in a temporary wax-soaked cast stiffened with clean white pine slats…

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
is
true, 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
really
born?” 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
you
the 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
he
is. 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
loved
his 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 your
other
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
melts
aside. 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
other
first 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.”