Eternity's Edge (12 page)

Nathan took a step closer. His throat narrowed painfully. She was more woman than girl now — too young to be his mother and too old for the playful banter they once shared. Shifting his weight nervously, he nodded. “I'm glad I could make it.”

Kelly rushed forward and gave Francesca a warm hug. “It's so good to see you again!”

Francesca returned the embrace, her eyes staying focused on Nathan, as if probing his mind. Nathan cringed. His mother used to do the same thing, and a familiar sense of inescapability swept through his body. He would never be able to hide a thought from her, so he might as well give in.

She angled her bow toward him. “You've figured out the gift, haven't you?”

“I think so.” Nathan lowered his head. Just looking at her scalded his soul. Somewhere in the cosmos his real mother needed help, and here he was, probably a billion miles away. Sure, being here was important, incredibly important, but his heart ached to find her.

Francesca glided forward, reached out a hand, and touched his cheek with her fingertips. As her smile weakened, a tear dressed her eye with wetness, and her voice returned to that of a little girl. “The gift is scary, Nathan. I'm not sure what to do with it.”

Her touch felt cool and soft, just like his mother's. Trying to keep his voice from cracking, he reached for a lower tone. “Are you still on a mission to play the huge violin?”

She nodded. “But it's more complicated than that. When your mother described the violin, she only saw it in a vision. She wasn't really there. She and your father were trying to break through to another world, the Quattro world, I suppose, but they failed.”

Nathan looked at the sheets of music on her stand, a variety
of compositions from the classical and romantic periods. “I see you've been experimenting,” he said.

“Different pieces have different effects, but …” She pulled out a music book from behind the stack. “This one works the best. And it's the only baroque piece that works at all.” She nodded at Dr. Malenkov, who stood next to Gunther near the door. “My father and I arranged it as a duet.”

Nathan smiled at the title—Vivaldi's
Four Seasons
. Somehow it didn't seem so strange that his mother's Earth Yellow twin would come up with the same duet. “So you figured out how to get through to that world?”

“Only in one sense. I can walk through it like I'm in a dream.”

“In a dream?” He bobbed his head slowly. “Something like that happened to me, too.”

“Because you have the gift.” Her bright smile widened. “But I learned something very important. I can take my father with me in the dream if we sleep while touching.”

“Now that's really strange,” Kelly said. “Touching can make people dream together?”

“If one of the sleepers is gifted. My father never remembers the dream when he wakes up, so I'm not sure if he's dreaming it, too, but it feels like he's really there, because he talks to me and gives me advice. I wish I could show you, but what we're about to do is a waking vision, not a sleeping dream.” Francesca lifted the violin and set the bow over the strings. “Are you ready to join me, Son? It's always faster with two playing.”

Nathan held up his mirror. “Don't we need this?”

She shook her head. “Not just to look. The interdimensional wound is so deep at this spot, we can pierce it visually with only music. We'll use the mirror for when we actually travel there. I want you to see what's going on while it's relatively safe.”

“Sounds reasonable.” He handed the mirror to Kelly and lifted his own violin. “Let's have a look.”

“What do
we
do?” Daryl asked, nodding at Kelly. “Do the ungifted just stand here and play Old Maid?”

“You can stand with us,” Francesca said. “But you won't be able to see what we see. Just listen carefully and you'll hear what's going on. You might pick up on something important.”

“I guess that'll do,” Kelly said.

Turning to Nathan, Francesca bowed her head. “Here we go. From the top.” She played a long note, as crisp and clear as her older self ever played it. Yet, it rang out like a death knell, raising haunting memories of the recent funeral, the last place Nathan had attempted this piece. It would take all his strength to play without trembling.

He joined in, at first with an echo of her introduction, then with a blindingly fast run along the fingerboard, pausing at the high end with a series of eerily beautiful half notes. With each stroke of their bows, white mist erupted, as if brushing up thin dust from the strings of a violin long abandoned in an attic.

The streams of mist flowed together. Like two serpents slithering up a pole, they wrapped around each other, growing thicker with every note that sang from the enchanted strings. Soon, they created a funnel-like swirl, the same cyclonic fog that had sent Nathan and company to the misty world. The lower tip of the funnel hovered over the carpet next to his shoes, and the outer edges brushed against his bow arm as he continued playing.

He leaned forward to get a glimpse of Francesca on the other side of the swirl. Her eyes began to glow. Rays of white poured forth, like twin searchlights scanning the room. As the mist spread, two other spotlights intersected the first ones, creating a crisscross set of wandering headlamps. It seemed as though two cars were trying to find their way in a foggy parking lot.

Nathan blinked. Were those two other lights coming from him? He turned his head. The lights followed. He aimed them at the swirl. As his glowing vision penetrated the cyclone, images
flowed through his senses— a long, glassy path; a dark chasm on one side, a foggy swamp on the other. It looked exactly like the misty world he had already visited.

“I think it's big enough.” Francesca stopped playing and nodded toward the funnel, now at least five feet wide. “Everyone step in and huddle close.”

Nathan lowered his violin and followed her into the funnel. The mist felt cool but not as wet as the funnel he had traveled in before. It felt more like dry ice vapor than fog. Kelly and Daryl joined them, but Dr. Malenkov stayed on the outside. “Gunther and I will keep watch,” he said, patting Gunther on the shoulder. “You will be unaware of your physical surroundings while you are in there, so we will be your eyes in this world.”

Francesca set her feet and raised her bow again. “We have to keep playing, or the viewing portal will collapse.” She began the duet from the first measure. Nathan joined her again, trying to pour in the passion the piece deserved, but the overwhelmingly strange surroundings kept tugging at his concentration.

As the foursome stood within the swirl, the mist absorbed the eyebeams and spread the light throughout. Particle after particle of mist reflected the light with a pinpoint flash, each one a different color. As the number of flashing points grew, the reflections created a tapestry of tiny strobes that slowly eased their frantic pulses, finally staying lit in their chosen color.

Soon, the picture was complete, the living image of the misty world. Nathan and Francesca stood upon the glassy walk, safely away from the chasm on one side and the swamp on the other. This time, darkness didn't shroud their initial view. The long walkway, easily visible within the first fifty yards or so, led away in both directions, vanishing in cloudy curtains in the distance.

Nathan slid his shoe along the glass. It felt real enough, hard and smooth. As before, music filled the air, a sweet combination of perfectly blended, yet unidentifiable instruments. If all
of this was just a vision, it had any virtual reality game beat by light years.

Gesturing with a curled finger, Francesca walked alongside the flowing mist. “This way.”

Nathan hustled to stay at her side. “This leads to the vision stalkers,” he said. “I've been here before.”

“But you're not here now.” She flashed a grin, that little grin he loved so much on the ten-year-old version of this young lady. “The stalkers won't give us any trouble as long as we stay quiet. They can't see us, so once we get to their domain, we will be able to go wherever we wish.”

She marched quickly along the path, her violin and bow swinging with her gait. Nathan followed, glancing at his own violin as he rushed past the surrounding mist. It was so strange. Somehow he was still playing the Vivaldi duet in the Earth Yellow bedroom. He still felt the passion of the melody as he subconsciously stroked the vibrating strings, yet he carried that same violin now within a virtual reality world he had recently visited in concrete reality. But which reality was the
real
reality?

He shook his head and hurried to catch up. He had to push the weirdness out of his mind and concentrate on Francesca's instructions. She was a girl on a mission, and he had to figure out what this was all about.

After going through the bank of fog, they emerged into the enclosed mirrored circle with the images of earth emblazoned on the walls. At least one new jagged trail marred the crystal surface, a path of green that stretched between Earth Blue and Earth Yellow. The room seemed darker this time, as though the lights had been turned down for the evening. A gentle song played in the air, the now familiar nondescript vowel sounds, creating a soothing, repetitive chant. Nathan took in the lullaby-like melody. Maybe it was nighttime here, and most of the people had gone to bed, or whatever they did to rest.

Even in the dimness, most of the room's features were still visible. As before, the triangle of supplicant domes sat at the center of the terrazzo floor, but this time, no white-haired stalkers crowded the glass enclosures. One man walked around the periphery, but he neither paused to look within a dome, nor slowed his pace as he passed by.

As the man approached, Francesca took Nathan's hand and let out a quiet “Shhh.” The stalker slowed for a moment and angled his head as if listening. Then, with a slight shrug, he continued his march until he reached an open door in one of the mirrored walls and disappeared inside.

Francesca whispered, “Remember, they can hear us.”

“Have you seen the supplicants?” Nathan asked, pointing at the domes.

“Yes. I wasn't sure if they'd be dangerous, so I didn't try to contact them.”

“They're not dangerous.” Nathan strode up to the closest dome and gazed inside. Scarlet sat with her legs crossed and her head bowed. Her chest expanded and contracted in a steady rhythm. In her sleeping posture, eyes closed without a hint of tension or wrinkle, she seemed peaceful … angelic.

Just as Nathan poised his knuckles on the glass to knock, Francesca tugged on his sleeve. “No time for afternoon tea. I have to show you the violin.”

He paused and pulled back his hand. She was right. He'd have to visit Scarlet later. He glanced at the red-clad girl's lovely face again and sighed.
If there ever would be a “later.”

Francesca crept noiselessly around Scarlet's crystal prison until she reached the place where it abutted the next dome. She stepped over the point of intersection and into the small, curved triangle in the midst of the three abodes.

Nathan followed, peering into the other domes as he joined her. In the one to his left, another female sat in Scarlet's posture, a younger girl with long blonde hair that draped her pale yellow
dress. To Nathan's right, a male teenager also slept, copying the pose of the other two.

Nathan slid closer. The boy, about his own age, seemed troubled, though he never opened his eyes. With dark hair in wild disarray, he cringed every few seconds, as if suffering through a nightmare.

Turning back toward Scarlet, Nathan let his gaze wander to the wall beyond her dome. The image of Earth Red towered above, blemished with shapeless clouds of orange and purple hovering over the points of injury inflicted by the other worlds. As he slowly turned to take in the entire vision, Earth Blue moved into view behind the boy's dome, and Earth Yellow behind the other girl's.

Francesca knelt and set her finger on a glass-panel inset in the terrazzo beneath their feet. The same size and shape of a door, the panel reflected the ceiling above as well as the top edges of the surrounding domes. Nathan swept his fingers over the mirror-like glass, but they didn't appear in the reflection, nor did their bodies. They were like ghosts in this place, able to haunt but unable to cast a shadow.

She moved her finger along a row of seven nickel-sized lights set in the glass, evenly spaced across the center. Looking up at him, she whispered, “Watch and listen.”

As the misty world's background lullaby continued to play, the lights on the panel alternated between white and red, as if responding to each note of the song. He knelt with her and concentrated on the tones. There was a pattern, a definite code. When the third light from the left flashed red, he pointed at it. “Middle C.” He then moved his finger to the first light. “That's an A, one octave down from middle A.”

She grinned. “That's my son! I knew you'd figure it out.”

“I figured out that it's a code, but that's about it.”

“It's a musical combination to get through this door.” Francesca touched each light in turn. “You have to produce
a perfect A – B – C, and so on for each light, but the octaves change every time I come. I just have to listen until I pick them all out.”

“Not very secure, is it?”

“It's not as easy as it sounds.” She lifted her violin and bow. “I have to be fast and accurate.”

“What happens if you get it wrong?”

“You don't want to know. Let's just say you'd hear enough dissonance to make Shostakovich proud.”

Nathan frowned. “Very funny. I like Shostakovich. Mom and I always argued about his music.”

She smiled and winked. “Just watch for approaching stalkers. When I play, anyone around will be able to hear me. We'll have to hurry, because the glass only stays open for a few seconds.”

Nathan scanned the room. No one was coming. “Let's do it.”

She lowered her gaze to the floor panel and played A through G at various octaves, so fast that her fingers seemed to blur. From left to right the lights flashed to red, then back to white. She played the string of notes again, and the lights flashed blue in the same order. Finally, on the third run, the lights flashed yellow, then faded to black.