Page 60 of Middlegame

“Do you speak entirely in metaphor with everyone, or am I lucky somehow?”

Erin’s eyes seem to darken. “Oh, you’re luckier than you know. You’re lucky I’m the one they chose to watch over you. You’re lucky they hurt me. And you’re lucky your sister is one of the tenacious ones. The guns are fragile. They need their triggers to keep them in check. The other pairs they separated didn’t make it. You did. They want to know why. They want to understand you.”

“They who?” asks Roger.

“The guards at the Impossible City. The Page of Frozen Waters. But the King of Cups most of all. You could be what he’s been looking for his entire life—and he’s not the sort of man you want paying attention to you. He’s not a humbug, like some other wizard figures I could name. This isn’t that kind of story. He’s the real deal.”

Roger scowls at her. “Do you know what happened to me tonight or what?”

“You remember I had something to do with it,” says Erin. “That’s fascinating. That means we’ve been here before more than once. Time is like skin: it can scar if you cut it enough times. Your sister, she knows how to cut it, but she isn’t allowed to pick up the knife unless she’s given permission. You gave her permission, and she cut time.” She tilts her head, looking at him calmly. “You did this to yourself.”

“You told me to.” He’s not sure why he’s so certain of that—it’s a feeling more than a fact, something snarled in the rapidly fraying cobweb of memory carried over from a timeline that never happened. “You said I had to.”

“Is that so? Well, if I said something like that, I probably had a damn good reason.” Erin sobers, the dark levity draining from her face, and looks at him. “I speak in metaphor because you’re a Jackdaw, you’re Jack Daw, and they didn’t stuff you with feathers, they stuffed you with words. Things that make too much sense will drop right through you. Metaphors snag and stay. You need things that will stay with you. You need to figure this out. I can’t help you.”

“You’re helping me now.”

“No, I’m planting seeds in your subconscious, because I know that come tomorrow morning, you’ll think this was all a dream.” Erin takes a step closer. “I wouldn’t even be doing this much if we weren’t in the immediate lee of a timeline reset. When you cuckoos break the laws of reality, it creates a soft spot before it scars. The world is out of order. It wants to get back into order, and that gives me more flexibility than I’d normally have. I am all about taking advantage of flexibility. That’s what I was designed to do. I’m like you, Jackdaw; we come from the same lab. I’m just not as important, or at least that’s what the people who made us like to think. You and me and that crazy sister of yours, we’re going to change the world, but only if I can keep you alive and innocuous-looking long enough for you to figure out how. You’re not going home for Thanksgiving?”

Roger shakes his head before he stops to think about it. “No,” he says.

“Good. Your parents aren’t to be trusted, not anymore. They were safe enough when you were a kid—never really safe, but safe enough. They’re not safe now. They’ll turn you in and take your replacement in the same afternoon. If you can stay here for Christmas, too, that would probably be for the best.” Erin’s smile is entirely devoid of pleasure. “You’re the word boy. Find an excuse that they’ll believe.”

“What are you even talking about? If you know so much, why aren’t you helping us?”

“But I am helping you,” she says, and for once, there’s nothing mocking or strange in her tone: she’s telling the truth as she understands it. “You’re not ready to hatch yet, let alone stand up and fight. If you attract attention now, you’re dead, both of you. So I need to keep you safe and kicking until you break that shell and start claiming what’s yours. You can’t skip to the end of the story just because you’re tired of being in the middle. You’d never survive.”

Roger looks at her for a long moment, puzzling through her latest words, comparing them to the ones she started with. Finally, he asks, “Are you saying that because we’ve already tried?”

She smiles, quick and sharp as a knife’s edge. “Now you’re getting it. Go home. Go to sleep. Forget all this, but remember to tell your parents that you’re not coming. That’s the only thing you have to hold onto.”

“Erin—”

She turns on her heel. “See you at the Impossible City, Jackdaw,” she says, and then she’s gone, slipping into the maze of Berkeley’s streets and leaving him alone.

Roger stares at the place where she was for a moment. Then he starts to walk again, slowly at first, but with increasing speed, until he’s running, taking the last two blocks between Dodger’s place and his at a dead sprint. He has to try three times to fit his key into the lock.

There’s always a blank book next to his bed. He tries to remember to write down his dreams, but all too often, his mornings are a haze of need-coffee, need-cigarette, need-pants because class starts in five minutes. He grabs the book, grabs the nearest pencil, and drops to the mattress, starting to write with fevered speed. He writes until his wrist aches and his hand feels tight and hot, like it’s grown three sizes, even though it looks the same to the naked eye. When he’s done—when he’s written down every scrap he can remember, every feeling, every impression, and every word that Erin said—he stares at it for a moment. Then he slumps over sideways, exhausted.

He’s asleep before his head hits the pillow.

Morning announces itself with its usual lack of tact: by sending sunlight flooding in through his bedroom window, where the curtains he failed to close last night do nothing to protect him. Roger groans and rolls over, burying his face in his pillow. The zipper of his jeans digs into his skin, and he realizes with bemusement that he’s fully clothed. He’s even wearing his shoes. His head aches like he’s hungover, but he was at Dodger’s last night, and Dodger doesn’t drink. Pot and the occasional recreational hallucinogen, sure. Alcohol, though, that’s not her style. She doesn’t like being sloppy, and when he’s with her, he usually doesn’t either. Dodger is merciless when she feels like she has an advantage.

Still groggy, he sits up. His dream book is askew; he must have woken at some point in the night. He picks it up, opens it, and peers at the scribbled notes inside. None of them make any sense. It’s like he’s written the outline of some dystopian nightmare about Over the Woodward Wall, all mixed up with familiar faces.

“Golly, Zib, I don’t know what I’d do without you,” he mutters, and chuckles dryly, a sound that turns into a cough as the crud that’s settled in his lungs overnight shifts and cracks. Smoking’s going to be the death of him one day. The thought makes him realize how much he needs a cigarette. He stands, leaving the book behind, and heads off to start the morning.

It will be much, much later before he realizes that this was the moment when he decided which part he was going to play. By then, it will be a thousand miles too late.

VARIATION

Timeline: 13:11 PST, November 22, 2008 (six days later).

The doorbell rings. Dodger tears herself away from an ecstasy of Thanksgiving garlands, shouts, “I’ll get it!” and races for the door, leaving her craft supplies scattered across the table.

In the kitchen, Heather Cheswich laughs and slides the yams into the oven. It feels like she’s been waiting years for Dodger to invite people to Thanksgiving dinner. She loves her daughter more than anything, but a mother worries. A mother worries a lot. Dodger has never made friends easily or seemed to mind spending most of her time alone with her math books and her chessboard. Even chess, which initially seemed like a way to get the girl to socialize—hard to play a two-person game by yourself—yielded none of the social benefits Heather was hoping for. After less than two years of competitive play, Dodger retired, claiming it wasn’t fair.

She’ll never admit it, but Heather was starting to fear that her brilliant, beautiful little girl would be alone for her entire life, never realizing there was any other option. So naturally, when she wanted to bring her classmates home for a real family meal, both Heather and Peter were delighted to agree. Buying a slightly larger turkey was a small price to pay for knowing Dodger is finally making friends.