The Hourglass Door (30 page)

“So, that day after breakfast, those matters of ‘personal business’ you had to attend to . . . ?”

He nodded, returning his attention me. “I had to come here to find my balance again. To take the twig out of the stream, so to speak.”

“And the pressure I felt? That’s the pressure you were talking about? The kind that can kill you?”

“Yes,” he said quietly, and I shivered at the flatness of his voice. “If I hadn’t seen you that day at lunch, hadn’t recognized what was going on, the pressure would have grown and grown. It would have killed you. It’s why I brought you here for just a flicker of time. You didn’t need to stay long to find your own balance again. It’s also why I had you keep your eyes closed. I didn’t want you to see . . . this.”

I remembered the sensation of an open vastness replacing the tight pressure strangling my heart. “And here I thought it was the chocolate that made me feel better.”

Dante smiled, squeezing my hand softly. “I figured it couldn’t hurt.”

He tugged me with him, walking forward at a brisk pace, but it was hard to tell how fast we were moving since nothing changed around us.

I was having trouble focusing my thoughts. Talking seemed to help so I asked Dante another question: “What were those echoes I heard earlier? What was that all about?”

“Time doesn’t flow on the bank, it just
is.
Everything is happening
now,
and everything has
already
happened, and everything has
yet
to happen in the future.” Dante shrugged like he knew he wasn’t making much sense. “Those were echoes from the past, the present, and the future.”

“I don’t understand,” I complained.

Dante smiled a little. “It’s best to think of something else while you’re here. Something that will keep your mind focused on things that
do
make sense. Sometimes I recite
Inferno:
‘
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita—
’”

“In English, please,” I panted, trying to keep up with Dante’s long strides in my heavy skirts. I mentally cursed Dave; if it weren’t for his stupid performance superstitions, I’d be in jeans and sneakers and much more comfortable.

“‘When I had journeyed half of our life’s way, I found myself within a shadowed forest, for I had lost the path that does not stray. Ah, it is hard to speak of what it was, that savage forest, dense and difficult, which even in recall renews my fear:
 
so bitter—death is hardly more severe!’”

“How uplifting,” I drawled. “It fits right in with all this.” I gestured with my free hand at the vastness pressing down on us like a fist.

“
Inferno
isn’t all like that,” Dante said, a flush staining his cheeks. “The language in some of the Cantos can be extremely beautiful. A few lines can sustain me for days here.”

“Days? How can you tell?”

He glanced at me, an unreadable expression on his face. “I can tell.”

I blanched as I realized what he was saying. Of course he could tell. Even in a place outside of time, he could tell because this barren hell was part of his permanent reality.

“Tell me one of those parts, then,” I said softly. “One of the parts you love.”

Dante thought for a moment, his steps slowing before stopping altogether. He reached out, cradling both of my hands in his grasp. He brushed the inside of my wrists with his thumbs. His changeling eyes glittered like falling snow. “‘I was among those souls who are suspended; a lady called to me, so blessed, so lovely that I implored to serve at her command. Her eyes surpassed the splendor of the star’s; and she began to speak to me—so gently and softly—with angelic voice.’”

I felt heat race through my cheeks, my throat, my wrists. A soft touch and some poetry and I melted. I was starting to understand what Dante saw in the writings of his namesake. “Who is she?” I asked. “The woman in the poem?”

“Her name is Beatrice. It is for love of Beatrice that Dante travels through the nine circles of Inferno and the nine tiers of Purgatory just to catch a glimpse of her in Paradise.” He ran his fingertips along the curve of my cheek.

I closed my eyes under his tender caress, trembling. For just a moment, the vast emptiness around me was filled with a golden light.

He brushed his thumb over my lips. “You’re my future, Abby. I don’t want to lose you. I
can’t
lose you.”

I felt my breath catch in my throat and my heart speed up its rhythm.

He leaned down and kissed me again, his lips soft and gentle. I felt a warmth rising through my body from the soles of my feet, tingling in my fingers and toes. The kiss seemed to last forever—and, I reflected, in a place outside of time, perhaps it had.

I heard him draw a deep breath. “We’re here.”

Surprised, I opened my eyes. “Where—” I began, but my words were washed away at the sight before me.

The river.

I suppose I expected to see a traditional river—a huge cataract of water rushing in white-water rapids along a deep ravine like the Colorado, or a wide, meandering highway of ripples and undertows like the Mississippi—but what I saw was unlike anything I could have imagined.

The vast, flat wasteland of the bank spread out before us like a pane of glass, but a few steps beyond where we stood, the glass seemed to ripple and shimmer, bend and convulse, creating a wide chasm of chaotic movement that shouldn’t have existed in a place of such frozen and unchanging sameness.

Time flowed wild and fierce in that chasm. I could see it passing before my eyes while I stood just a few inches away, motionless on the bank. My mind struggled with the dichotomy.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” Dante asked.

I nodded, unable to speak.

“I like to come here sometimes to see life in all its possibilities. What has been”—he gestured upstream at the ripples that constantly flowed—“and what might be.” This time he pointed downstream, where the silver thread unspooled into the endless distance.

I looked across the shifting surface to where the ground seemed to return to its smooth, flat expanse. “What’s over there?” I asked, pointing.

Dante hesitated. A hidden pain surfaced in the corners of his eyes. “It’s where we came from. It’s the past we left behind. We can never go there.”

“Why not?”

“We’ve been exiled here—to this side of the bank. It’s impossible to cross to the other side. The moment we touch the river, we’re pulled back into it. And even if there was some kind of bridge, we’d still need a door to take us home.”

“Past and future . . .” I murmured. “‘And never the twain shall meet.’”

“Shakespeare?”

“No, Kipling.”

My eyes returned to the swirling sheet of glass at my feet. Images rose to the surface of the glittering chasm, jumbled and uneven. I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t.

I saw a flash of me when I was eleven with my hair plaited in two tight braids down my back and a copy of
Lord of the Rings
tucked under my arm. I remembered that day. It had been my first solo trip to the library and I had been so sure of the way. I had wandered down unfamiliar streets for hours before I finally admitted the truth: I was lost. Desperate, I went into a grocery store and asked for the manager. He called my parents and gave me an ice cream and waited with me until they came to pick me up.

His name was Mr. Schroeder,
I realized.
I thought I had forgotten that.

I saw myself walking in a darkened hallway. I knew that someone or something dangerous waited for me at the end, yet I couldn’t turn back.

I saw the day my parents married.

I saw Valerie talking to V at the Dungeon the night of the Zero Hour show. In one ripple, Valerie gave him her phone number. In another, she didn’t.

I saw Natalie walking with someone in a splash of bright sunshine under a blue sky. They were on a college campus and a diamond glittered on her left hand.

I saw Dante. His face was buried in his hands and I could almost hear the black chains on his wrists clanking as the ripples tore the image apart, fracturing and splintering into darkness.

I saw I saw I saw . . .

The images were too many. Too fast. I knew if I kept staring at the river, I’d drown.

I looked at Dante instead.

He wasn’t looking at the river either. He was looking at me. His gray eyes had turned black. Sweat beaded on his forehead and the muscles along his jaw clenched. I felt the muscles in his wrist flex with tension as he squeezed his hand tight around mine.

“I have to send you back,” he said. “You can’t stay here. It’s too dangerous. I didn’t realize . . . I have to send you back.”

“Okay.” I was more than ready to go. I had a throbbing headache at the base of my skull. I felt years older and so exhausted I could barely stand up without Dante’s arm supporting me. It was getting hard to breathe again. “Let’s go.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I have to send
you
back. I can’t go with you right now.”

I frowned. “Why not? I’m not leaving you here in this place alone.”

I saw the muscles moving in his throat as he swallowed. “Bringing you here was a bad idea. I’ve upset the balance. I can’t go back for a while. And you can’t stay here. If you do . . . if you stay . . .” Dante shook his head. “I don’t know what would happen, but I’m sure it would be bad. I promised you I would keep you safe.”

Fear slid through my veins. “No, come with me, Dante. Please? I can’t go back alone. I don’t know how.”

Dante took a step toward me, and for an instant I thought he was going to wrap his arms around me and everything would be fine—

He shoved me hard and I stumbled backward, tripping over the hem of my dress. “I’m sorry, Abby,” Dante said, his voice seeming to come from miles away. The weird triple echo was back, but twisted somehow. “I’ll come to you as soon—
then
—now—
never
—as I can.”

I fell into the river. I tensed my body, thinking I would certainly shatter the glass chasm, but instead the waters of time closed over me without so much as a splash or a ripple to mark my passing. As I was swallowed up, I saw a dark shadow high above me, curving overhead, arching from bank to bank, bridging the gap between here and there, between now and then.

The transition was instantaneous.

I landed hard on my back, the breath knocked out of me. I looked for Dante—where was he? I needed his kiss to save me again. I didn’t want to suffocate and die in that horrible nothing-place beside the river—but I was alone in Phillips Park, the same empty swings, the same flat picnic benches, the same prickly grass where we had parked in what seemed a lifetime ago.

I checked my watch. It had stopped at five minutes to midnight.
Zero hour,
I thought with a chill. I tapped the watch face and the second hand hiccupped into motion.

It’s like I never left,
I realized.
He’s gone. And it’s like I never left.

I curled up in Dante’s cloak, breathing in the familiar scent of his body, and surrendered myself to oblivion.

Chapter

19

My vision flashes white. The sight of it fills me with dread. Is this another glimpse of the future? I promised Dante I would tell him if it happened again. I turn, looking for him by my side, but he is gone. I am alone. Lost in the stark whiteness that surrounds me, fills me, leaves me cold.

Color slowly bleeds into the white. My eyes water at the sight of so much color, of so much white. My tongue and throat scratch as though I’d swallowed a cactus. A dull ringing sounds deep in my ear, muffled and distant. My skin is tight and loose all at the same time.

The world turns upside down around me. I am lifted. I am drifting. I am divided.

The dull ringing increases, becomes sharp, insistent. A voice. An almost familiar voice. An almost familiar name. If only my thoughts weren’t drowning in memories. A tight vise squeezes my lungs. If only I could catch my breath again.

Then, like a clap, a shot, a shout—I sit up in my own bed, in my own house, in my own here and now. The dark pressure of the bank crackles off my skin like shattering glass. I gasp down a breath of cool, clear air, feeling the sweet release of time in my veins, feeling the heady rush of life returned, of balance restored.

I am whole again.

~

“Can I get you anything else, sweetie?” my mom asked, setting the glass of juice on the table by the couch where I was snuggled up watching TV.

“No, I’m fine.” A hint of exasperation crept into my voice. “Honest, Mom, I’m feeling fine. I really think I could go back to school tomorrow.”

Mom pursed her lips, pressing the back of her wrist against my forehead even though we both knew I wasn’t running a fever.

“Mom,” I whined, wincing at how much I sounded like Hannah at her most petulant. How old was I again?

“Drink your juice.” Mom patted my hand. “Someone’s here to see you. Do you want some company?”