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As he spoke, I saw it all, as if I had been right there at the birth of the world. Out of the darkness sprung her children, brilliant celestial bodies without form. Spreading to the edges of the abyss, they each were rigid in their power. “There are five of them—Land, Sea, Cosmos, Shadow and—”
“—and Light,” I finished for him. I could see her so clearly, a bright unstoppable glow that flowed outside of the bounds set for her by the universe. But wherever she moved, a swirl of darkness followed in swift pursuit.
“The Light and Shadow are the most powerful of the five—identical twins, born from the same vein of the Mother’s power. Two very different sides of the same coin, so to speak.”
I watched the sisters try to outrun each other, neither of them ever making much ground on the other. They swirled around, wrestling violently for dominance, darting through each other’s mists. Inexplicably, I found myself silently rooting for the Light’s inevitable triumph. My body tingled with energy as she looped around her phantom sister, pushing out the ebony fog with her stream of rays. The music stopped then and I was wrenched from the past. Kalen had placed his finger on the string, snuffing out the tune. He glowered at me with a knowing look.
“And what coin is that?” I asked. The starry void had already tapered out to the fringes of my vision, and the gray, creped face of the Preceptor emerged again. I fought the twitch in my fingers, that instinct to pluck another string and crawl back into the unknown, just at the sight of him.
“Well—” The Preceptor began.
“Truth,” Kalen interrupted. A strange tension thickened between the two men.
“Yes, exactly,” the Preceptor confirmed. “They both manipulate truth in unique ways,” he explained. “One illuminates while the other shields, but both can alter itsreception. The similarities in power, however, did not make them allies. They hated each other.”
“We will skip the tragic ending if you please, sir,” implored Kalen. “I’ve explained most of it to her already. She will need to know only the history of the other Sages.”
Sighing, The Preceptor obliged. “As you wish.”
He seemed disappointed by this, like he lived and breathed just to tell these stories, and anyone who cut him short had slighted him. With a frown, the Preceptor searched the wall, tracing his nails along the lines of time.
“Well,” he said finally, landing on just the right one, “all of the Sages were born from the universe herself, but she conceived their physical bodies to personify her love for a mortal.”
“Conceived?” My jaw fell open at the suggestion. The power that ripped from the universe as she created her children warmed my cheeks even while I watched from thousands of years removed. Surely no mortal could come so close as to actually—
“Not literally, Gwyn” Kalen interrupted my thoughts, lifting his hand to his brow line and frowning. “Let the man explain, please.”
I closed my gaping mouth.
“There was a time in this world when the universe kept all of her knowledge from the living—mortals and beasts alike. There was famine, sickness, and death. And the living began to grow tired of her selfishness, stopped praying to her, and the like, but it just made her grow colder. Until one day a priest, Thesion, put on a show of devotion for her.” As he finished, he snapped another chord on the wall with vigor. His voice danced lyrically over a melody as the Time Catcher called out to me once more.
I was sitting on the steps of a plaza in a city I had never seen. The sun was hot, and the streets buzzed with commotion. Wooden carts lurched behind enormous stallions whose hoovesclipped at the cobblestones. The smell of summer trickled through the air, bergamot and the sea. I inhaled deeply, feeling the calm that always came along with being alone in the middle of the hectic lives of other people.
A young boy, dressed only in a white robe approached me then, his palm an offering. I took his small fingers in mine, letting myself feel the warmth of his olive skin as he rushed us through the crowd. The gathered parted, expecting me, and revealed a tall, homely man high up on a dais of discarded apple crates.
The curls of his cropped hair were a whorl of gray that bled into the sky he shouted at mercilessly, invoking the glory of the Mother. The knowledge she held that he claimed would save them all. Looking out at the congregation, emotions varied from pensive and thoughtful to irate. The crowd began shouting at him, and throwing whatever they had in their hands of little importance—cores of fruit, tears of cloth, some even chucked a few decently sized stones. He flailed about still yelling, now, to spite them. Thesion began condemning the hecklers who laughed at his lunacy.
Above, a plume of clouds forced the sun behind them. Lowly they rumbled, blanketing the city with dread. When the plaza finally darkened, Thesion’s belted torso twisted towards me. A face that felt a thousand emotions at once. A pair of eyes that held no thoughts. They poured out of his soul into mine.
And then he slit his own throat.
My cry broke into the silence of the Preceptor’s room. Kalen rushed to my side immediately, embracing me to keep my legs from buckling.
“He killed himself,” I half shouted into Kalen’s chest, shaking.
“She was said to have been so moved by his act of faith, she cast his soul back down to earth, making him immortal.” The Preceptor marched forward through the story without any showof concern for how effected I’d been by the vision of Thesion’s death. “With him, the Mother sent five of her greatest gifts to bless and rule the living. Thesion became their father in a lot of ways, helping them harness their gifts until each came of age.” Through the opening under Kalen’s biceps, the Preceptor kept his focus on the tangle of metal, one hand sliding smoothly over the bald crown of his head.
Kalen tensed as I lifted my head from the protective warmth of his cloak. I gave his arms a squeeze of encouragement, trying to reassure him I was okay, even when I felt anything but. He let me go reluctantly but didn’t step out from the space that lay between the Catcher and myself. Lifting my shoulders up and back, I tried to stir up some confidence.
“What are the gifts of the others?” I asked, hoping the Preceptor didn’t need the instrument to tell me. Relief flooded into me when he stepped back from the wall.
“Most obvious,” he said, “is Gabriel. He dictates the flow of Time.”
Kalen spoke up then, seeing the lines of my forehead tense.Knowing I was still having trouble grasping the natural movements of this new world, he had tried to explain in terms I could relate to. “Gabriel can stop anything in the universe from moving forward in Time, he can also propel things backward through it. Like moving a fish upstream.”
I thought of the Gabriel I remembered, the one I’d met in a vision. A lean, sand-colored frame bedecked in robes of violet and indigo, wielding an authoritative grace as he spoke to me. His face was so sanctified and reserved, while his tongue had been sharp even in its reprieve. The way his eyes darted toward the action at the center of the room but held no concern for the outcome. Like a man who always had both the past and present bound to him. A man who knew what to give and what to demand because it had already been done, hereandthere.
“As for the others, let’s see,” the Preceptor pulled one pale finger to the temple of his head, lightly scratching as if to tease the memory forward.
