A dying woman travels through time to significant points in her life, but things are not as she remembers them. Accompanied by a handsome young stranger and her childhood cat, the fate of both past and future now lies in her aged hands.
Chapter 6. A NEW PLACE IN TIME
The sun blazed in Sylvan’s eyes as she and Aron slipped out of the apartment door. Though she was virtually blind, she could feel its warmth infusing the air, bringing an instant sheen of sweat to her face.
An arm came around her shoulder, gently guiding her into the shade of a tall Whitespire birch. Sylvan blinked furiously. When her vision began to clear, she wasn’t surprised to see Aron staring down at her. Worry masked his face with color.
“What’s wrong?” she asked as the possibilities presented themselves. The fact they were traveling through space and time was only the beginning.
“Everything. Nothing.” His look cleared. “We’re here, aren’t we?”
“Where’s here?”
Aron gave a sweeping gesture.
That makes as much sense as anything, Sylvan thought to herself as she surveyed her new surroundings, a busy avenue lined with shops, cafés, and stores. Though the sidewalk under her feet was cracked and old, it seemed to carry more of a loving, relaxed feel than the vacuousness of disrepair. The storefronts, too, were friendly, with hand-painted signs and arty decorations, something one would not see in the third decade of the twenty-first century, at least not in Portland.
A burst of laughter came from the balcony of a restaurant where a crowd was sharing drinks. For a moment, Sylvan felt as if she knew them, was compelled to join them in their reverie. With her off the shoulder cocktail dress and heeled patent leather sandals, she would fit right in. Where had she come by such clothes, she suddenly wondered. They were nothing she had ever owned, of that she was certain.
From her arm hung a satin evening bag, just big enough to hold the red diary. She peeked inside to be sure, but there it was, nestled between a floral handkerchief and a flat Japanese wallet. Then she remembered something else.
Frantically she stared up and down the lane. “Where’s Brie? Have you seen her? Did she come with us?”
Aron laughed. “Look up.”
Sylvan raised her gaze to the thick foliage of the birch tree. Nestled in its filagree of leaves was the gray cat, her amber eyes as big as gold dollars.
Sylvan gave a sigh of relief. There was something about the cat’s presence that made these time shifts bearable.
“Better?” asked Aron.
“Much. Now all we have to do is figure out what’s next.”
Sylvan moved to a green slat bench and sat down, beckoning the cat to join her. With a grand leap, Brie plummeted from her bower, landing with the lightness of a mirage on Sylvan’s lap. Sylvan stroked the long back, only half-musing on how the cat from her childhood had managed to join her now that she was so obviously in her twenties.
“Ha, you silly girl. I’m just glad you’re here.” She pulled the cat to her for a furry hug, then drew out her diary and began to write.
A shadow crossed Sylvan’s page, and she looked up in alarm. When had the sun sunk so low on the horizon? Hadn’t it been full above them when they arrived in the scene? Now it was dipping behind the buildings, leaving only long, stark shadows and twilight. Streetlights began to blink on, and colored fairy lights twinkled in the trees. A lone star, a planet, shone in the velvet sky. Retained heat simmered up from the sidewalk, and the air smelled of dust.
Sylvan sat, pen poised over paper. She’d managed one sentence, more of a heading really: “A new place, a new time. A new place in time,” then no more words came. It was as if her mind was washed clean, so she made a little sketch of the café front instead. The umbrella tables, the night people—surely that should push her inspiration—she was a writer after all.
It didn’t. Her thoughts had become fragmented and not all there. Though her intention had been to catalog the changing events—she’d succeeded quite well with the birth story—this was different. She didn’t know where she was or even when, and she especially didn’t know why she was there. Without a frame of reference, where could she even begin?
A cry pulled her from her contemplation. At first, she couldn’t place the source, then she saw him collapsed on the sidewalk twitching and moaning.
“Aron!” She tossed her book aside and ran to the young man, pushing through the onlookers who were already beginning to gather. “Aron, what’s wrong?”
His dark eyes were wild, and his face frozen into a grimace. Blood flowed freely from his head, from the injury he’d suffered when she first discovered him in the hallway of her childhood home.
“What happened? Tell me.”
His eyes fixed on hers, then fluttered shut. “The old wound,” he whispered. “It will not heal…”
“Why? Why won’t it heal?”
“It will not heal until… Until the work is done.”
“Out of my way,” came a voice as someone pushed through the crowd. “Step aside. I’m a doctor.
The elderly man crouched down by Aron and checked his pulse, then touched the vein in his neck. He bent closer, then sat up again.
He fixed Sylvan with sympathetic eyes. “I’m sorry, miss, this man is dead.”
Chapter 7. IF YOU TRAVEL FAR ENOUGH, DO YOU MEET YOURSELF? coming next Saturday.
For previous chapters, look here.
