“Whew,” Samantha says, pausing
to calm her nerves. Della is more
overcome by confusion than anything else, but the fear is visible on the
bramblekin’s face.
“The Hell was that about,” Della
asks.
“Those were gods,” Samantha
says. “Or at least extremely powerful fae.
Either way, bad news.”
“Why’s that,” Della asks as they
forge on down the path.
“Gods,” Samantha begins, “or fae
in general, are really only interested in two things: their domain, which is the part of the world
they have power over, and garnering worship from mortals, which is how they get
power aside from the influence their domain has in the world.”
“Is that why the seven seals are
there,” Della asks.
Samantha looks sidelong at Della
and says, “My, you have been doing
your homework. In a word, yes. The gods, from what I understand, proved to
be more trouble than they were worth. So
they were banished to another side of the Coil behind seven seals. And yeah, from the looks of things, I’m gonna
go out on a limb and guess that la
mujerta succeeds in breaking them.
So now we just have to figure out how she does it.”
“So we talk to whoever made it,”
Della says, “and see if they can shed any light on how it’s done.”
“That’s the plan,” Samantha
confirms. “I’m not quite sure what good
it will do, though. Que será, será, or whatever.”
Della thinks this over for a
moment. “What do you mean, you’re not
sure what good it will do? If we just
saw that the gods are coming back, and if we know how the revenant is going to
use the Sandstorm Hourglass to make it happen, then can’t we use that
information to stop her?”
“Well, you’re sure gonna try, I
bet,” Sam replies. “But what we saw back
there is the future – not a possible future, but the future. Whatever you do in the coming however-long-you-have,
things will unfold in exactly that way
when the time comes.”
“That doesn’t seem possible,”
Della insists. “I mean, if you knew how
things were going to go, couldn’t you alter the course of events to change it?”
Samantha scoffs at her young
companion’s naïveté. “You read, right?”
“Yeah.”
“You’ve heard of Cassandra?”
“Sure. Apollo gave her the gift of prophecy, but
then she snubbed him, so he cursed her.
After that, nobody believed anything she had to say, even though she was
right every damn time.”
Samantha spreads her laden hands
wide, as if to gesture, There you go.
“But that’s just a story,” Della
presses on. “What would happen if I were
to go back and try to stop the sinking of the Titanic?”
“All right, fine,” Samantha says
in exasperation, rolling her eyes. “How
would you do that?”
“Well, I’d warn them,” Della
says.
“Sure. But how?
You would need to do something specific, so tell me what you’ll
specifically do.”
“For starters, I’d tell them to
watch out for icebergs.”
“Won’t work. They’re headed into iceberg territory, of course they’ll be watching out for icebergs.
They’d look at you like you’re stupid and nothing would change.”
“OK, then I’d look up the
details of the crash, and tell them to watch out for icebergs at that specific
time and place.”
“Won’t work,” Samantha
repeats. “Your prediction is so specific
that you’d be immediately dismissed as a crackpot. Whoever you tell would either forget what you
said or toss your note in the trash, and nothing would change.”
“Fuck it, then,” Della says, “I’d
bring back money, and since I’m time traveling anyway I can take steps all the
way back to get period-appropriate currency, and I’d buy a ticket and warn them
my damn self.”
“Won’t work,” Samantha says for
the third time. “You’ll either miss the
boat, or shit will go down in such a way as to cause you to fail.”
“Like Hell! What if I head up to the bridge and tell the
captain, ‘Hey, look, you wanna steer clear of this iceberg coming up,’ how
could that go wrong?”
“You’re not crew,” Sam
replies. “You’d be kicked out, or if you
managed to force your way in, the ensuing scene would distract the crew from
the very threat you’re trying to warn them about. You’d go down with the ship, and nothing
would change.”
“OK, so I bide my time until
just before I need to spring into action, then head up to the bridge and warn
them right in time to point at the iceberg itself.”
Samantha stares straight ahead
down the path and answers flatly, “You trip.”
Della tamps down the rage rising
in her chest. “What?! I trip?! What kind of bullshit is that?”
“You wait until the last second,
something comes up to stop you for a second and a half. So you trip, you don’t get there in time; and
even if you manage to alert the captain to the oncoming danger, he won’t be
able to turn the ship in time to avoid disaster. Nothing would change,” Sam finishes with an
air of finality.
Della fumes for a good few
minutes as they proceed down the winding bramble path.
“Here’s what you’re not
understanding,” Samantha says to break the silence and tension. “You think that time is a path, like this one
we’re walking on – if you could see ahead, then you’d be able to change course
based on what you saw, and avoid undesirable outcomes. Or attain desirable ones. Whatever.
“But time is not like that. Going back and forth in time like we’ve been
doing tonight, it’s not like getting a video feed of what’s ahead. It’s more like taking your own personal
timeline and tying it into a knot: you
go forward, back, then through, but you haven’t changed the string. It still goes wherever it goes, there’s just
a knot in the middle of it now. That
knot might be connected to other knots and strings by the threads of fate and
destiny, but it still starts where it starts and ends where it ends and it’s the
same damn fibers twined together to make the same damn string the whole time.
“Time is more like a river: it carries you through by the force of its
current. Though you might look ahead or
back every now and again, to see what’s coming and where you’ve been, the whole river is there the whole time. Beginning to end, the course is laid out and
set in stone. Or dirt, what-have-you. You won’t change the river by swimming in it,
the course is set and all you can do is the best you can. Even if that fails. Which, let’s face it, it does sometimes. But you can’t go back to the start of the
river and move its head, nor can you head to the end of the river and move its
mouth. The river is just there, it does its thing, and all you can do is go with the flow. Or fight against it, whatever. River don’t care.”
Della chews on this for a few
moments before Sam adds, “Also, you should read The Wreck of the Titan by Morgan Robertson. It, ah, might give you a fresh perspective on
this sort of thing.”
“So what the Hell is the point
of time travel,” Della asks, “if you can’t fuckin’ change anything?”
“What’s the point of what we’re
doing right now,” Sam asks in response.
“Well,” Della considers, “forewarned
is forearmed, I suppose. Even if we can’t
stop or change what we’ve seen, I guess we’ll be better prepared for what comes
between, and maybe even a little better-positioned for whatever’s on the other
side.”
“Bingo,” Sam says with a wink
and a smile. “So you see? Even if the fates cannot be defied, we still
have interesting things to do.”
“So what about free will, then?”
“Psh, what about it?”
“Well,” Della asks, “If
everything’s fated, if the future is set in stone, then what’s the point of
doing anything?”
“That depends on how you decide
to make your points, I guess,” Samantha says after a moment’s consideration. “A wise guy once said something to the effect
that humanity is free as an undammed river is free. Do you like rollercoasters?”
“Um, sure,” Della says.
“Well, rollercoasters are on
rails. Hell, you’re even buckled in with
no place to go. You can’t do whatever
you like on a rollercoaster, but it’s still fun, right?” Della nods her assent. “So you see?
Just because your life is on rails, that’s no reason you can’t have fun
along the way.” At Samantha’s beaming
smile, Della’s anger and confusion sublimate into a sense of the profound. She is still confused, still angry, but the impression
of a bigger picture – a glimpse of transcendence – eclipses the lesser emotions
tugging at her mind.
The bramble path winds ever
onward. Della and Samantha journey in
silence, broken only by the steady rhythm of their footsteps and the occasional
rustling of brush in their passing. There
are no insects or other woodland critters to disturb the silence – every sound
that Sam and Della hear is of their own making.
An hour passes.
Two.
Della glances at her watch, but
it only has “No signal” to say. It fuckin’ figures.
Thing’s great for telling me exactly what time it is when I’m in tower
range – but here, it’s just an expensive and stupid-looking bracelet. She wishes briefly that she had gotten the
date when she was in the temple with the gods, but a moment’s consideration
reminds her that they were in the mountains, and likely well out of signal
range. She is done ruminating on time
and fate and loops, has grown tired of her own thoughts. She turns to her companion and says, “So this
is a real quiet place.”
“Quiet is safe,” Samantha
replies without hesitation. “The bramble
can be very dangerous, but I made sure to hold a safe route in mind. The writs only protect us between the
bramble, when we’re in your world. So I
wove another intention into the spell.
Otherwise, we’d likely be up to our necks in all kinds of unsavory
critters by now.”
“I see. So how much farther do we have to go?”
Samantha shrugs. “No idea.
Thomas said he has no clue how old the hourglass is. He’s had it – well, his exact words were ‘over a century’.
But it’s quite the curious timepiece, not even the mages were able to
figure out what it was for, so it could be very old indeed.” Some moments pass as they walk in
silence. “Look around,” Sam says at
last. “You see how things are getting
greener? Younger-looking? We’re heading into an old part of the bramble
– which is to say, a time when it was young.
If we found a door now, I’d guesstimate we’d be at two hundred or two
thousand years ago.”
“That’s quite a margin of error,”
Della says after some thought.
“Well, the bramble’s a funny
place.” When Samantha doesn’t add more,
Della leaves it at that.
After some time, Della is unsure
of quite how much, Samantha’s glamour fades.
Della chooses to ignore it. The
springs of Samantha’s joints sound in time with her steps, marking the passing
seconds. Della counts for a full ten
minutes, then loses track and focuses on the path. Massive trees give way to saplings, which in
their turn fall away to ferns and plants that Della doesn’t recognize. The one constant is the thorns; always, there
are thorns. But their browns give way to
greens, with reddish tips that gradually fade to yellow.
After another interminable
silence, they turn a corner and another door looms in the distance. Like the last, it is a heavy double door;
unlike the last, it bears no carvings or intricate handles. Stained wood and polished brass give the
sense of an elegant simplicity.
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