Summerhill (34 page)

“So you see,” Shoön continued, “you don’t need me to pluck you from the stream and dump you back in someplace else. You can swim there all on your own.”

There amidst the whiteness, Summerhill felt a great intangible weight lifted from him. He didn’t know what else to do, so he put his arms around Shoön and hugged her slight frame close to him and nuzzled at her shoulder. “Thank you,” he said. “I think I understand now.”

Shoön hugged him back, then gently drew back away from him. “And that’s all I wanted for you, Summerhill. Do you think you’re okay getting back out there now?”

“I think I am.” Summerhill got to his feet and brushed himself off. He smiled at Shoön again, and felt a little tug deep in his chest. “Before I go, though, can I just ask you one more thing?”

“Of course you can.”

Summerhill swallowed. “The last time we met. When you brought me back here instead of just letting your sister find me.” The image of Arasiel’s eager smile filled his mind. “Why did you really do that?”

Shoön looked into Summerhill’s eyes, wearing a textbook enigmatic smile. “Because, Summerhill,” she said as she touched a hand to his chest and leaned in to plant a kiss on his cheek. “You were always one of my favorites.”

Warmth spread through Summerhill’s entire body, originating from the spot where Shoön’s lips had touched him. “Thank you,” he replied. “For everything.”

Taking the dog’s wrist in one hand, and squeezing his paw in the other, Shoön led Summerhill off to a barely visible corner, around which he could hear the burbling of a freshwater brook. “And thank you for giving me the chance to see you twice more,” she said. “My sister would be quite jealous.”

I wouldn’t be so sure of that,
Summerhill thought, but he kept it to himself. “Goodbye, Shoön. I’m going to miss you.”

“Go. You need to get back to swimming, or you won’t be able to breathe, you silly dog.”

With that, Shoön gave him a pat between the shoulders, then shoved against his back, pushing him around the corner, towards the source of the stream.

Thirty-Four

Redefinition

Royeyri was nowhere to be seen or felt, but that wasn’t surprising. Given Shoön’s fish analogy, it was probable that the Syorii’s attempt to pull Summerhill through space and time was tantamount to trying to reel the dog in on a line, and in all likelihood, the metaphysical equivalent of that line had been broken. But Summerhill would worry about Royeyri later. The two clearly had a history that would work itself out eventually in some form or another. In the meantime, Summerhill was concerned not with the past, but with the future.

A row of skyscrapers, drab and familiar, stretched out before him. Their presence did not fill his mind with instinctual panic and chilling fear. No longer did they symbolize the death of hope and imagination; now he saw them as plants of stone and brick and metal growing from asphalt earth, plants that he had grown all by himself.

Outside one of the ground floor windows of the closest building, Summerhill stared at his reflection, searching his eyes for the telltale blue that he’d seen when he’d come to free himself before. But the face that gazed back at him had the same, dull, storm gray eyes he’d always had. There weren’t even the barest flecks of other color there in his irises.

But how could that be possible? He’d distinctly manifested the blue eyes when he’d come back to find himself. Maybe he just couldn’t see it, similar to how Katherine hadn’t seen the blue hue over reality when Royeyri had spoken to him. Maybe that was farfetched, but he didn’t have a better explanation for something he barely understood anyway.

Well, that detail would have to sort itself out on its own. For now, Summerhill was back here in his own past, and now his task was to help free himself by giving him the inspiration he needed to think. Where had he first spoken to himself without realizing it? It was that one tobacconist’s shop, right?

Countless adventures, months of hopping across realities, trudging through snow, and traversing time and space still couldn’t suppress what might well have been centuries of time spent in the World of the Pale Gray Sky, and so Summerhill still knew exactly where to go. At every intersection, his mind rebuilt its map of the city, and he made the most direct approach he could to the small tobacconist’s shop, his steps increasing in speed the closer he got.

But then, when he rounded the last corner and indeed saw his past self leaning against the wall, he also saw the other version of himself who had been speaking with him. From this distance and angle, he couldn’t see if this other self had blue eyes, but he didn’t dare take the time to peer closer and check. Instead, he swung back around the corner, out of view, and began panting.

What was going on here? How had he come back in time to find himself, only to find that he was already—

Summerhill poked his head back around the corner. Now, the other two versions of himself were walking down the street, toward the park where Summerhill remembered stopping to sit and think on a bench while talking to himself some more. Neither of them were looking back in his direction, affording him a few moments to stare dumbly without risk, and with each step they took, more doubts crept into Summerhill’s head.

Clearly, he’d been wrong about his self-given reprieve—or had at least been wrong about the timing of it. Just who or what this other blue-eyed Summerhill was—be it a different future version of himself or something altogether different—was a mystery he’d have to solve later. For now, Katherine was still in trouble, and she still needed his help, regardless of whether he’d sorted out his own existential quandaries.

Turning and heading in the opposite direction of his two look-alikes, Summerhill brainstormed for options. Freeing himself was already taken care of, which meant that, for the time being, he could focus on rescuing Katherine. But how?

The World of the Pale Gray Sky had been his prison, but it had also been his own world. That meant that he made the rules—made them and could change them with no one’s permission but his own, without having to break them.

He’d created the world, and he’d created it as a big, empty city. But not entirely empty—he’d populated it with buildings, with furniture, with vehicles, with all of the things that went into a city except for the people. Whether he’d fashioned it that way on purpose, knowing he’d someday need it, or whether it had all been a happy accident didn’t matter. He scanned the rows of buildings closest to him, looking for one that might suit his purposes, and quickly found one: a tall, narrow office building, its faces covered with large panes of glass that appeared dim and lifeless due to the sunless atmosphere.

And here, trapped in the prison of his imagination, he knew precisely how to draw together enough focus. He headed for the office building, trotting fearlessly into its shadow. No longer would he be afraid of something he knew could not hurt him. This was the last this place would ever see of him.

Summerhill strode into the lobby of the building. There were spaces for a doorman, for a receptionist, several chairs in the waiting area, but no people. There was a directory with numbers, but no names listed alongside them. The lights were on, but no one was home. Summerhill headed for the nearest office and barged inside. Its door was unlocked; there was no one to have ever locked it.

Over in one corner was a large printer. Summerhill picked up a large stack of blank paper and tossed it down onto the desk. He sat at the desk, then picked up a ballpoint pen from a featureless mug. The cap came free with a crisp snap, the plastic nice and cool, the pen having never been used. Summerhill doodled a tiny flower in one corner of the desk blotter, just to make sure the pen worked. It wrote blue—not magic blue, but normal, office ink blue.

Satisfied, Summerhill pulled the stack of papers in front of him. On the topmost page, he wrote out, in big capital letters:

PROMISES

He looked down at the rest of the page beneath his makeshift chapter title. It was blank and inviting. Rife for imagination, not dead to it. He brought his pen into position, then paused for a few moments to come up with the right words.

Summerhill broke through the veil between realities and appeared aboard the Consortium vessel just in time to save Katherine from the agents who had abducted her.

He relaxed his thumb and forefinger, and the pen slipped free and rolled onto the desk. Then he lifted his hand up, extended his fingers, and slammed his palm down flat against the paper as hard as he could.

Thirty-Five

Promises

Summerhill broke through the veil between realities and appeared aboard the Consortium vessel just in time to save Katherine from the agents who had abducted her.

She was still wearing the sleeveless tee and tank top she’d been dressed in back on the
Achilles
, and her wrists were still bound with the same cuffs. She was flanked by two guards, bipedal humanoids clad in black, like the team that had infiltrated the
Nusquam
. Both of them carried energy rifles at the ready.

The inside of the Consortium vessel looked very different from what Summerhill had expected. Given the strange six-eyed alien that had handled the negotiations with the Fifth Fleet, he’d assumed that the ship would be some kind of unpleasant insectoid hive, with organic passageways dripping with unidentifiable fluids and doors that operated like the valves of blood vessels. Instead, he was in a very sterile corridor in the shape of a perfect hexagon, the walls a very dark green, with complex circuits and cables that came into view briefly as various panels slid open and closed.

Katherine and her escorts were about thirty feet away. They were still facing away from Summerhill. His arrival apparently hadn’t made any noise, and the three marched along at an even pace as if there was no cause for haste or alarm.

Well, that could be fixed. “Let her go!”

The three stopped and turned in unison. The Consortium guards brought their rifles to bear. Between them, Katherine froze as her jaw dropped and her eyes widened. Summerhill couldn’t help but smile as her shock changed from disbelief to exhilarated hope.