White Space

Emma. Eric—his essence, that color—suddenly surged. We’re already free, because we can choose.

NO NO NO. The whisper-man’s panic was electric. WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

Emma. The cobalt edged with a glister of gold that was Eric shone so bright he could’ve been the deep waters of Superior at sunrise, a Now, the promise of a different world—and maybe he was all those and more: not only himself but what endures in memory and across times. Emma, no matter what …

NO, I WILL GIVE BACK THE BOY! PULL ME THROUGH AND I WILL—

Keep going, Emma. Find your Now. Find a way out.

No, Eric, she thought. We can’t. It will still—

Go where you can, where you have the best shot …

NO NO NO NO—

And don’t listen to it, Emma. We have the power to choose, and this is my choice. Eric was calm, his thoughts like a long drink of cool water on a desperately hot day. I choose for you.

Eric, don’t. In that last instant, she finally sensed what he meant to do. Wait!

Don’t look back, Emma—and then …

He let go.

EMMA Where I Belong

NO! SHE MADE a grab, reaching out with her mind, her hand, her will—and missed.

That was enough to break them. Her hold on Rima slipped, and then they were all spinning away from one another in streamers of light, like falling stars. In response, the Dark Passages roiled, swelling as the darkness converged in a tidal surge over Rima, so faint, and the rainbow-swirl that was Eric locked in his fatal embrace with Casey and the whisper-man. The Dark Passages rolled over and swallowed them up, and then she just couldn’t see them anymore. The colors died and, with them, Eric’s voice. The whisper-man’s howls cut out, and then there was nothing: no Casey, no Rima. No Eric.

She tried to stop, slow down, but the cynosure wouldn’t let her. Lens and beacon, focus—and a path now, one she couldn’t leave. Later, she thought Eric himself gave her that one final push as he broke away, so she wouldn’t be able to stop even if she knew how. But she didn’t, and now these beings were swinging around. Sniffing her out. She could feel them noticing the beacon from the galaxy pendant, and knew she was almost out of time.

Got to get out. But how? Where could she go? If these really were doors to other Nows, then she—or a piece of her, another version—must exist in each. She belonged everywhere and nowhere. Would she, on her own, break a Now to pieces? What would happen if she met up with or even slipped into herself in another Now?

Can I do that? Maybe. She was different. The whisper-man said so; it had taken her while she was awake, dropping her into her many alters, because she was a creation with no set path.

Then put me where I belong, she thought fiercely. She felt the cynosure crackle with a new and vicious heat. Drop me into the Now where I’ll find them again: Eric and Casey and Rima and Bode and—

PART SIX THE SIGN OF SURE

EMMA Elizabeth

1

“ELIZABETH.” A SLIGHT buzz to the z. Whoever this man was, he had a lisp, so the name seemed to have been mouthed by a rattlesnake: Elisssabess. A pause. “Elizabeth?”

“Wh-what?” The word burred on her tongue, slow and hesitant. She sounded like a Little Mommy My Very Real Baby Doll with a faulty motherboard. Or HAL, from 2001, getting his memory banks yanked. “Whaaat?”

The same man said, “Elizabeth, is that you? Can you hear me?”

“H-hear?” She felt the sounds as much as she heard them, a kind of fading in and out, there and gone, as if her brain were an ancient radio and she had to feather the knob to get the scratchy broadcast bounced halfway around the world to gel. She realized, belatedly, that she was standing. Swaying, actually. Worn wool chafed her bare feet. A sheet, or maybe a very long nightgown, clung to her legs, chest, and back. Her skin, hot and damp, smelled sour, and her lank hair reeked of sweat and grime. Bad dream? Her chest, her stomach, the inside of her skull … felt very strange: flat and hollow, a limp glove of a girl—all skin, no innards. The last time she’d felt this wan and washed-out was when she was ten and coming out of anesthesia after the surgeons put in her plates. Then, her mind had slowly bled back into her body, the blood inching through to plump up arteries and veins and the pink sponge of her brain and guts, the way air leaked into the nooks and crannies of a deflated Macy’s Day Parade balloon. I’ve been sick? Where was she?