Summerhill (32 page)

Was this what Arasiel had in mind for him all along? No, that didn’t feel right. She was coy and charming, and she played by a set of rules that Summerhill didn’t quite understand, but it didn’t seem like he was supposed to die here and now. She was clearly relishing the thought of his existence coming to an end, and she’d shown both regret and patience that his time wasn’t sooner.

That meant that he wasn’t going to die here. And if the wasn’t going to die, then he just needed to find out what he
was
going to do.

There was a twinkle in one corner of Summerhill’s vision. His eyes moved to track it, and his breath caught in his throat at what he saw: the blazing blue light he’d once seen so long ago, streaking across the daytime sky with all the vibrant clarity of a shooting star leaving a trail across the curtain of night.

No, it was even brighter than that, more real, more permanent, and it was moving away, so, so fast. On instinct, Summerhill reached for it, but the jerking of his arm caused his body to spin out of control again. Having lost sight of his prize, he flailed as he tried to reorient himself, but his panic made doing so even more difficult.

He couldn’t have come this far only to fail now. He hadn’t jumped through so many hoops, gone to so many places and done so many strange things only to fall out of the sky now. He hadn’t crossed dimensions, cheated death, and explored parts of himself he never knew existed just to
lose
in the end.

It was like Arasiel had said: there were people, people like him, who had been out there, who had taken the chance to reach for their dreams, and who had seized nothing less than the impossible. The builders of the
Nusquam
had constructed a craft that sailed between realities; the hero from the mountains had set out to cross the Plain of Ice to save a dying world; a girl named Katherine had left her humble home, traveled across the universe, and escaped interdimensional law enforcement more than once.

Summerhill kept himself steady. He balled up his hands into fists, he bit his lip, and kicked at the air with his legs. This made him spin forward more than he’d intended, though, and in mid-tumble, he felt a sudden weight in his shirt pocket shift and then fall free.

A small metallic disc spun in a shimmering golden blur, reflecting sunlight off its surface as it dropped out of reach, falling faster than Summerhill. It took the dog a few seconds to focus his eyes on it, and a few more to realize what he was seeing, but when the ticking hit his ears over the sound of the wind, all doubt was gone: it was his antique pocket watch.

Nothing less than the impossible. Cruise ships didn’t actually sail to other realities, heroes couldn’t escape death forever, Katherine had never been seen again, world-spanning cities didn’t exist to house just one person, timepieces didn’t appear out of thin air and dogs couldn’t fly.

Summerhill thought back to when he and Katherine had been stuck inside the nevereef, forcing their minds onto reality. He tried to find focus, to pull his thoughts together and find whatever part of his spirit or will he needed to call on, but panic kept taking over in its place. His arms flailed and his legs kicked as he scrambled in an attempt to fall faster before the watch dropped out of his reach.

Whether it was a matter of aerodynamics or sheer determination, Summerhill managed to close the gap by a few key inches. Swinging with an outstretched hand, he finally got his fingers to bat against the edge of the spinning watch, slowing it down enough so that on his next pass, he was able to snatch it up. Somersaulting once more in midair, the dog brought the watch up in front of his face so he could read the words engraved on the hunter-case:
To One of My Favorites
.

He came out of that somersault and stretched himself out into a perfect dive. Just holding the watch in his palm, feeling it tick and knowing that it was real, filled him with renewed vigor and resolve. He gripped it tightly, then gritted his teeth, hoping and imagining and finally
believing
that his force of will was stronger than the force of gravity.

Breaking free of his plummet, he swung back upward in a terrific arc, rocketing back into the sky, the trees and rivers below shrinking away as he spared a look down. Laughter erupted from his muzzle as the wind whipped through the fur on his face, blowing his ears back and pulling his tail out like a streamer that trailed behind him. He twirled and spun, the air whipping around his body, carrying him aloft and propelling him forward as he reveled in how it felt to fly.

He’d seized nothing less than the impossible. He’d made what he wanted out of reality, just like he and Katherine had once done as a team, sharing something special for so brief a time. Summerhill was alone now, but he’d find Katherine, he’d rescue her, and together they would experience the impossible together all over again.

First, though, there was the matter of the blue light. He knew it was the same light that had drawn him out onto his journey in the first place. Now he needed to follow its lead once more.

He scoured the sky until he relocated the beam of blue light racing amongst the clouds. As Summerhill sped up to chase after it, it sped up in turn. He tried to anticipate its movement and abruptly changed direction to intercept it, but the light veered off in the exact opposite direction he’d been expecting.

It seemed to be aware that it was being followed. Summerhill focused even harder on flying faster, but the light kept stringing him along. It took him on an exciting series of twists and turns and high-arcing loops like it was playing a game a tag all across the sky.

This was a game Summerhill was determined to win. If the blue light wanted to toy with him and lead him someplace, he was happy to play along, but one thing he wasn’t going to do was concede defeat.

After several exhilarating minutes of cat-and-mouse, the light flared up in brightness by an order of magnitude and shot toward the ground. Summerhill raced after it, losing sight of it for a moment amidst the trees before he spotted the obvious point of impact: a blazing blue rectangle of light emanating forth from the trunk of a large tree. He slowed down, braking himself with his limbs against the air, then slowly wafted the rest of the way down to the ground. He settled on his feet and shook out his mussed-up fur, his heart still pounding in the aftermath of flying.

While he waited for his pulse and breathing to calm down, Summerhill looked at the pocket watch in his hand. Its ticking was like a gentle heartbeat, in a way, steady and regular, reassuring, like resting an ear against someone’s chest. He gazed at the gold-plated surface, ran the pad of his thumb over the inscription, then popped the case open.

Where once there had been only the burnt-out edges of an old photograph, now the inside case held a picture of Katherine, her blonde curls spilling down over her ears, the leather cord of her pendant visible against her neck. The sepia tone did nothing to diminish her hopeful smile.

After closing the pocket watch and sticking it back in his pocket, Summerhill looked up at the tree before him. Blue light radiated from the frame of a door set within the trunk.

Standing next to the door, exactly as Summerhill had expected, was another version of himself, irises glowing with the same blue that came from behind the door in the tree. This other Summerhill looked back at him, smiled, and nodded with silent approval.

Before Summerhill could ask any questions, his other self said, “Find Katherine. Make sure you stick with her and everything will be fine.” And then, in the literal blink of an eye, he was gone, the same way he’d disappeared so long ago.

There had been no grand revelation. Summerhill was no closer to discovering the truth behind who this other self was, but it didn’t matter. He still felt a reassurance he hadn’t felt since he’d first left the World of the Pale Gray Sky, invigorated with a sense of purpose that he was sure he would live up to.

Katherine. She was out there, in some reality, at some point in time. She’d begged Summerhill to do something to save her, and that’s just what he was going to do.

With some trepidation, Summerhill wrapped his fingers around the doorknob. When he turned it, there was the simple sound of a lock coming undone, and then the glowing blue light shone through the door itself, illuminating a distinct and complex pattern in the wood grain, similar to the one in the door that led to the world of ice and mountains. The antique pocket watch was still ticking faintly in his ears as he pushed the door open and stepped inside.

Thirty-Two

Cosmology

A flat surface almost like a pane of glass stretched out underneath Summerhill’s feet, reflective like a waveless ocean that had gone still and silent. The dog stared down at it with apprehension before a few hesitant steps proved that it would support his weight just fine despite its fragile, delicate appearance.

The perfectly smooth surface sparkled as if sprinkled with glitter, but this was merely an illusion, created by the reflection of the sky full of stars above. Summerhill lifted his head to gaze up at it. Not only was it full of stars, it was full of planets, of nebulae, of entire galaxies, impossibly close, whirling and wheeling about at equally impossible speeds on any cosmological scale.

Summerhill turned in a circle and looked, the flat plane under his feet stretching out forever in every direction, the whole of the universe hanging in the sky above. Galaxies seemed to sparkle as stars within became novae and supernovae. Every time he blinked, entire civilizations rose and fell, worlds were born and died, stories were told and then lost forever.

To try to comprehend it all would be maddening. Time moved too quickly. Summerhill was too far away. But it was all there, really there, playing out for him like some kind of wonderful and tragic cosmic play. He marveled at the enormity of it all, at the humbling sensation of having even this fraction of all creation pouring into his eyes. He despaired as it impressed upon him his own insignificance, and he wept with joy at the sheer beauty of it all.

And this was just one universe out of what might be, as far as Summerhill knew, an infinite number of universes. He could launch himself into the stars above, into just one of the many galaxies passing by, and still never get to see or experience everything there. What he was looking at now was pure potential.

With one leg, he kicked off of the surface of the horizontal plane and let himself float. Time wheeled on by, so fast to his perceptions, countless stars continuing to burn while countless worlds continued to orbit around them. Summerhill could make this his very own celestial playground, wandering his way through reality, changing and altering that reality, ignoring any and all ties and responsibilities and acting on whim alone if he so chose.

The haunting skyscrapers of Summerhill’s memory shot up at the edges of his mind. He now understood the World of the Pale Gray Sky, its purpose and its form and its function. The cosmos he was floating through now represented the tiniest fraction of what he might one day be capable of, there mere sight of which inspired him and filled him with a drive and a yearning to explore, to create, to experience. It was the very antithesis of the dull, lifeless oppression of his old life.

If the things he could do were based on the strength of his thoughts and his resolve pitted against the rules of reality, the World of the Pale Gray Sky, with its monotony, tedium, and isolation, was the perfect way to lock that down. Summerhill could think of no better way to quash his imagination and potential, to strip himself of his power to change rules, to change worlds.

It was so perfect, in fact, that the simplest explanation he could think of was that he must have been the one to put himself there in the first place.

He didn’t know when he’d done it, nor did he know why—but then the when and the why and the how weren’t important right now. What was important was that, if he had been the one to imprison himself, then it only made sense that he was the one to give himself the reprieve he’d earned, however retroactively. Cause and effect were reversed, it was true, but he knew, in that moment as he drifted slowly through space, that past-Summerhill, all alone in the World of the Pale Grey Sky, would grow to learn this lesson of responsibility he was learning now.