The Hourglass Door (28 page)

He shook his head, digging his nails into his wrist. “Everyone. No one. Does it matter?” Dante asked, his voice low and hoarse. He displayed his red-and-black wrists for my inspection. “They marked me guilty.”

“But that doesn’t mean you are, does it?”

He wouldn’t meet my eyes.

I reached out and gently tilted his chin up, forcing him to face me. “You wanted to tell me the truth,” I reminded him gently. “So tell me.” I let my hand drop from his face to his wrist. I could feel his swift heartbeat through his marked skin. “I can take it.” Though I didn’t know if that was true at all. Dante’s behavior tonight had been erratic and confusing and it had turned all my emotions upside down. One minute he’d been distant and silent, one minute passionate and wild, one minute angry and frustrated.

Dante looked down at my hand on his wrist. Hesitantly, he covered it with his own. I felt that almost-familiar tingle of his skin on mine, and the world around us sharpened, crystallized into focus.

“You remember I told you my brother had gone to war?” Dante traced the delicate rivers of my veins as they snaked across the plains of my hand, through the valleys of my knuckles. “There was a note. Delivered to the enemy.” His finger trembled on my skin. “Countless people died. Including my brother.”

“You didn’t give the note to the enemy, did you?”

Dante’s finger stilled for a moment before resuming its aimless wanderings. “No. Zo gave the note to the enemy.”

I caught my breath. If Dante blamed Zo for Orlando’s death, then it was no wonder there was bad blood between the two of them.

One detail remained clear, though.

“Then you’re not guilty. I mean if it was Zo who—”

“It was Zo who implicated me in the conspiracy. Zo who told the authorities where to find me. Zo who testified of my guilt.”

“But he lied, didn’t he? You were innocent!”

Dante’s smile was bitter. “The laws of guilt and innocence were a little different in sixteenth-century Italy.”

“Didn’t you tell them the truth?”

“Of course I did. But they were looking to capture all the traitors—everyone involved in the betrayal. By then they knew Zo was the leader. Why wouldn’t they believe him if he told them where to find the last member of the conspiracy?”

“But why would he do that? What had you done to him that would make him hate you that much?”

Dante shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said softly. “But he hates me. And I don’t trust him.”

“And they sent you through the time machine anyway? Even though you were innocent? That seems a little extreme.”

“What better place to keep dangerous criminals than the future? We’d automatically be someone else’s problem. Besides, we’d all be far enough into the future that we couldn’t negatively affect the flow of time.” Dante shook his head, his eyes focusing far away from the here and now. “We were all reported dead, you know. To our friends. Our families. It was all very clean and efficient. If not exactly merciful.”

My head pounded with the unfairness of it all. Dante had been plucked from his life, falsely accused of treason, and then sentenced to the most cruel and unusual punishment possible.

I turned my face away so Dante wouldn’t see my tears of helpless rage. How could someone do that to him, to anyone? I brushed the tears from my cheeks.

I wished he hadn’t told me any of it. I wished I had gone to the Dungeon to celebrate opening night with my friends. I wished . . .

I looked back at Dante, who was sitting quietly in the moonlight, his hands resting loosely in his lap like they belonged to someone else. Tension covered him like a shroud.

I wished I believed him.

He needed me to believe him. I could see it in the tight set of his shoulders, in the pinched skin around his eyes and his mouth.

I drew in a deep breath, as though Dante’s words still lingered in the air, words that I could hold in my mouth and weigh the truth of on my tongue.

Born in Italy more than five hundred years ago . . .

Italy tasted like truth; he sounded too much like a native to think otherwise.

But five hundred and twenty-five years old?

Sent through a time machine as punishment for a crime he didn’t commit . . .

I couldn’t imagine Dante as a criminal; I shook the thought away.

But a time machine?

“What was it like?” I asked suddenly. “Going through the time machine, I mean.”

“Does that mean you believe me?” A grim humor crept into Dante’s voice.

I shook my head. “You have to admit, the whole thing sounds pretty crazy. Terrible and horrible, maybe, but still crazy.”

“I know. But it’s the truth.”

I locked my gaze with Dante. “Then tell me the whole truth,” I said. “Tell me what it was like.”

He was silent for a long time. So long, in fact, I wondered if he would say anything at all. Maybe I’d finally pushed him too far.

Then he did speak. As his voice spilled out into the night, he kept his gaze on me, steady and heavy, holding me captive to his words.

“The truth is, it didn’t look like a time machine at all. That was part of the beauty—and the horror—of it. It was just a door. A tall, narrow, dark black door covered with symbols and images that opened into shadow. The construction was ingeniously designed, elegantly simple. In theory, you simply walked through the door, through the shadows, and through another door on the other side. In practice, though . . .” A tremor ran through his body. I could see his muscles clenching with remembered tension. The starlight slid along his jaw like the blade of a knife.

I shivered, trying to imagine opening a door and walking, not into another room, but into another time.

“I thought I’d gone blind,” Dante said quietly. “It was so dark. Dark and cold. I hadn’t expected the cold.

“Even the air smelled old. Charred. Though that may just have been my skin.” Dante rubbed at the marks on his wrists. “I could barely feel my hands because of the pain. I had been so grateful they hadn’t broken my fingers, my hands, that the pain from them branding me hadn’t registered until that moment. The moment the door closed, I knew . . . I knew I couldn’t go back. I had no choice but to go forward.

“I remember hearing the creak of the hinges as the door closed behind me. I kept waiting to hear the click of the latch as well, but it never seemed to come. And then I heard the music. Music like I’d never heard before. It seemed almost tangible in the darkness. I could almost feel it resonating in my bones, could almost pinpoint exactly when the sound became harmony, became melody.”

Something about his words sounded familiar. I couldn’t help but think of the story Leo had told me once about magic and music and the dawn of creation. “The music of the spheres,” I murmured.

Dante nodded solemnly. “And then, when the music had faded . . . all I could hear was the sound of my breathing in that narrow darkness between the doors. I don’t know how long I stood there, trying to summon up my courage.”

“What did you do?” I asked, swallowed up in Dante’s eyes, feeling claustrophobic even under the clear night sky.

“Eventually, I started walking. And I counted. I counted every step until I had left everything behind. The door, the music, the past. I didn’t know what else to do.” He finally closed his eyes, breaking our contact, releasing me from the weight of his words, from the truth of his past. “One hundred eighty-five thousand, four hundred twenty steps.”

“You remember the exact number?” I felt the night’s dark air tingling in my veins from the deep breath I was holding.

“How could I forget? Every step forward was another day I walked into the future.”

“More than five hundred years?”

Dante opened his eyes and I felt the air rush out of my lungs. His mouth curved like a scythe, sharp and angular in the moonlight. “It goes by faster than you think.”

Chapter

17

I sat up on the cloak, wrapping my arms around me for warmth, tucking my feet under the hem of my heavy skirt. I wasn’t sure if I believed Dante, but he sounded like
he
believed it. “Then what? Assuming I believe you—then what? You traveled more than five hundred years in the future. To here. To now. What was the plan? What were you supposed to do? Just live your life?”

Dante ran a hand through his hair. “It’s hard to explain. I’m not sure I have the right words.” He plucked at the edge of the cloak. “Traveling through time . . . it changed me. It put me beyond the reach of time.”

“Beyond the reach of time? What does that mean? You’re not going to age? You’ll be eighteen forever?” I smiled to take the sting from the skepticism in my voice.

But Dante didn’t return my smile.

I swallowed. “What about . . . what about dying? You’re telling me you’re not going to die?” I couldn’t help but glance at his shoulder. I’d seen his unnaturally quick healing firsthand. But certainly he couldn’t mean . . .

Dante kept his gaze level with mine.

A chill swept over me. I started to shake. What was I doing here? This was insanity. This wasn’t real. None of this could be real. I stumbled to my feet and began walking away.

Dante rose to his knees, grabbing my cold hands in his, preventing me from leaving. His skin felt feverish against mine. “No, Abby, don’t leave. Please.” The moonlight burned in his eyes. “Just, let me try to explain. And then . . . and then, if you want to leave . . . I won’t stop you.”

I looked at those changeling, quicksilver eyes that were filled with such desperate need. I remembered the night at the Dungeon when Zero Hour had played. I remembered the night in the garage when I had bandaged up Dante from Zo’s blade. I remembered how both times I’d felt like I might be the only person who could save him. I remembered how much I had wanted to help him then, if only in some small way. I felt the same way right now. Maybe just listening a little longer would help. Maybe it would be enough. Certainly I could do that much.

“Okay,” I said, my voice quieter than I felt. “Okay. I’ll stay.”

He exhaled slowly.
“Grazie.”

I sat back down at the edge of the cloak. I still needed some distance between us.

“This is the way Leo explained it to me. Time is a river. The river bends and loops and meanders, but it always, only, flows one way—away from the past, toward the future. And all of us are carried through our lives on the current of that river. We live and love—and age—immersed in the all-encompassing waters of the river of time.”

Dante’s voice rose and fell in a mesmerizing, languid rhythm. I felt my breathing and my heartbeat match that same rhythm.

“And like the fish that swim in deep water, you are unaware of what is all around you, all the
time
that permeates through you. It’s invisible—but without it . . . you would never survive.”

Dante reached for my hand, pressing his palm fast against mine, twining our fingers together. I could feel the heat of his skin, the faint pulse of his blood rushing through his wrist so close to mine.

“The river is
now.
This moment. This breath between us. The space between your heartbeats. The moment before you blink. The instant a thought flashes through your mind. It is everything that is around us. Life. Energy. Flowing, endlessly flowing, carrying you effortlessly from then . . . to now . . . to tomorrow. Listen: you can hear the music of it. Of the passage of time.”

I could hear it. I could feel it, too—in the rise and fall of my breath, the ebb and flow of the air as it moved from my mouth to my lungs and back again. I could feel a tingle of energy, as though I had caught a snowflake made of pure light on my tongue and let it melt through my whole body.

“Do you feel it?”

I nodded, unable to speak, lost in the new layer of the world unfolding before my eyes.

I thought I saw a faint golden shimmer around our clasped hands, rippling in the air like a mirage on a hot day. But the shimmer didn’t extend to Dante’s hand. It was like a thick, black line had been drawn around his fingers, around his whole body, a second skin that breathed when he did, constantly flexing and adjusting to his movements. I blinked and it was gone.

He untangled his fingers from mine, drawing back until our skin was almost touching, but not quite. I could still feel his heat, the tension taut in the space between our hands. The hairs on the back of my arm stood up.

Dante reached into his shirt pocket, withdrawing the silk handkerchief Benedick used as a prop in the play.

“As I said—I’m beyond the reach of time. Passing through the time machine lifted me from the river, but I’m not dead. It left me—to complete the metaphor—stranded on the riverbank.” He draped the sheer fabric over his hand, hiding his long fingers, his branded wrist. “I am cut off. Exiled.”

I shivered at the bleak tones in his voice. I edged a little closer to him, wanting to feel his warm hand on mine again. “But it can’t be all bad, right? You’re still alive, aren’t you?” I attempted a smile.

His lips thinned humorlessly. “I wonder sometimes.” He crushed the cloth in his fist. “Part of being human—of being truly alive—requires you to recognize and to experience the passing of time. The time machine stole from me my past, my present, and my future, abandoning me on a desolate, barren,
timeless
bank. I can no longer feel the passage of time. At all. There is nothing.” He swallowed away the quaver in his voice before he continued. “There is no time to age me, so, in a sense, I’m immortal. Invincible, even—it’s why I didn’t bleed to death when Zo cut me. But if I’m not careful, if I succumb to the pressure, I’ll go insane.”