The Golden Spiral (39 page)

“There!” Leo called out, pointing to the top of the stone stairway.

I followed his finger and saw Zo’s boot heels step off the stairs and walk the perimeter of the hole that was the basement opening.

“You came!” Valerie’s voice rose shrill and excited above the sound of rushing water. “I knew you’d come back for me. It’s just like in the stories.”

Dread filled me. What was Valerie doing here?

“I do love your pirate stores,” Zo said. “I’m glad you got my message.”

Valerie’s laugh echoed down the stairs. “I did a good job, didn’t I?”

“You were perfect. Would you be a darling and help me with this?”

“What’s he doing?” I asked, craning my neck, trying to get a better view.

A slab of darkness landed over the square of sky with a hard metallic bang.

“He’s trapping us in here,” Leo said, his face hidden by the sudden shadows in the room.

“It just looks like he covered the opening with a board. We could still get out.” I counted the paces off in my head. Five, maybe six to the door. Another seven or ten to the stairs. “I think I could do it,” I called over to Leo. I could barely hear myself over the roaring water. If Valerie was here, maybe Natalie was too. If I could reach her, maybe we could get help.

Leo shook his head. “Crossing the river right now is too dangerous. I don’t think any of us should touch the water unless we absolutely have to.”

“Why not?”

“Look at it.” Leo waved his hand over the water. “It’s still full of time. Who knows what being exposed to that much of the river will do. Especially to those of us who have a different kind of relationship with time.” He pointed at himself and Dante.

Then he pointed at V. The water had lifted his body as if on a pyre and the river turned ember red with his blood. V’s hands, once so strong and swift, had relaxed in death, the waves lapping at his lax fingers.

The blue current that sparked through the water gathered around him, growing in intensity and brightness. V’s body softened along the edges where water met skin. A silver-white shimmer appeared over his body, glittering like light, flickering like fire.

As the silver water washed over V, the outline of his body faded. Consumed from the outside in, V disappeared, washed away as completely as if he’d never been.

My heart ached to see him go. V and I had had our differences in the past, but he had turned out to be a true and loyal friend. He hadn’t deserved what Zo had done to him. I hoped that he was finally at peace in the river of time.

I shifted my weight a little, trying to estimate how long before the river rose to swallow our marble perch. I could see images flowing past me in the river, but now the past and the present and the future were thrown together without any sense of how they were connected.

There was a glimpse of me with Hannah at Disneyland.

There was the same scene but without Hannah by my side.

There was a fragment of a moment where I saw Dante smiling at something I said.

There was a wisp of Leo standing on a hill, gray clouds gathering behind him.

The images ran into one seamless thread that was quickly being twisted and knotted into a skein that might never be unraveled.

“You should go,” I said suddenly to Dante. “You and Leo should go to the bank. That would be safer than being here.”

Dante had started to shake his head before I even finished speaking. “I’m not leaving you,” he said. “I’m sure that was what Zo was counting on when he dropped that board over the opening. He knew we couldn’t wade through the river and we wouldn’t leave you behind.”

“Then take me with you,” I said. “I’ve been to the bank before. I’ll be okay to go again.”

Again Dante shook his head. “It might be easy to go to the bank, but with the barriers down, it might not be as easy to leave. I don’t dare risk it.”

The water level crept closer to our toes. Leo had already started to edge up farther on the cabinet to avoid the spray and splash of the river.

I scanned the room again, desperate for a way out.

My eyes found the towering black door. Valerie’s voice whispered in my ear:
How does anyone go from place to place? Through the door.

“Dante, listen, I have an idea.” I took a deep breath, trying to think it through before I said it out loud. “I’m going to open the door.”

Dante opened his mouth, but I barreled on, and the more I explained it, the more certain I felt it was the right thing to do.

“It’s the only way out. And I think it might be the
best
way out.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I think if I can open the door, then the river will flow through it, right? And since the door opens to the bank, then the river will be directed back onto the bank as well. It will return to where it belongs. We can fix the barriers Zo pulled down before it gets any worse.”

“You’ll have to step into the river,” Dante said, worried. “You heard what Leo said about how dangerous that could be.”

I touched the cloth wrapped around Dante’s eyes. I wanted more than anything to be able to look into his eyes right then. Not to see the quiet and constant belief that he had for me, but so Dante could see the strength and resolve in my own eyes. This was the right path, I could feel it. And I could fix this. I might be the only one who could.

I rose up on my toes and kissed Dante’s mouth. I savored the taste of his lips against mine. I felt the familiar electricity running in my veins as he kissed me back.

“Abby—” he started.

“I remember the rules,” I said quietly. “Do what I have to do. Change what needs to be changed.”

“Come back when you can,” he finished.

“I will always come home to you,” I promised. I gave him one last kiss and then stepped off the stone into the river.

“Abby!” Leo called, panicked. “What are you doing?”

“What I have to,” I called back. “Don’t worry. I’ll be okay.”

The water was already past my ankles, past my calves, and inching toward my knees. My teeth started to chatter. I hadn’t expected the water to be so cold. I would have to hurry.

I counted my steps to the door. One.

The electric blue aura crackled like broken ice around my legs. Two.

Numbness crept up my body, my fingers and toes the first to succumb to the unbearable cold. Three.

I could hear voices now along with the images swirling all around me. They sounded like my family—Mom, Dad, Hannah. They sounded close enough to touch. Four.

Music slowly enveloped me in a crescendo of sound. Five.

I was at the door. The water pushed against my knees, almost toppling me where I stood. I grabbed hold of the freestanding frame with hands that felt two sizes too big for my body. Struggling to keep my balance, I ran my fingers over the carved images on the door.

When I found the center point of the door, the spot where the two halves of the hourglass met in its timeless kiss, I placed my palm against the wood and pushed.

The door swung open on its silent hinge, revealing a yawning, gaping hole of darkness.

The river poured into the void.

I clung to the door frame as the churning, frothing water bubbling with images and sound funneled past me, threatening to wash me away with it as it flowed along the channel heading for its eventual destination: the bank.

The music in my head was loud and brassy. I couldn’t hear myself think for the constant chimes that rang like church bells all around me.

I clung to the doorway as the level of the water slowly lowered from my knees, to my calves, to my ankles. The river swirled into the darkness of the door until finally there were only a few puddles of water still lingering in the crevices and holes of the basement floor.

I had no real way of knowing if my plan had worked, but I suspected it had. No new water was bubbling up from the cracked floor. The images were fading along with the voices. Even the music was settling down to silence again.

I almost dared to breathe again.

And then I remembered. My job wasn’t finished. I had come to the Dungeon with one purpose in mind: to walk my own path through the time machine. I set one foot on the threshold of the door—and paused.

Turning around, I took one last look at Dante, standing as tall as an angel on the white-and-gold marble block, his body taut with tension, his face turned toward me even though he couldn’t see me.

Leo climbed down off the cabinet and rushed to my side. “Are you all right, Abby?” he asked.

“It worked,” I said with a grin. The numbness in my fingers and toes was fading, but slowly. “It really worked.”

“Of course it did,” Leo said. “It was a brilliant plan. Dangerous, but brilliant.”

My grin faded. I couldn’t make my eyes leave Dante’s face. “I’m still going through the door, Leo. I have to. For Dante. For my family.”

“I know,” he said quietly.

“Will he be all right?” I asked, glad that Leo knew what I meant and didn’t make me ask the terrible question that hung in the space between us:
Is he blind?

“He will be fine,” Leo assured me. “I’ll make sure of it.”

“Take care of him for me, okay?” I asked, placing my hand on his arm.

“Like he was my own brother,” he said with a wry smile.

I laughed. “You’d better.”

“Go,” Leo said gently, his eyes both bright and sad. “And don’t worry—you’ll see Dante again soon enough.”

I nodded, my heart taking hope in Leo’s promise.

I lifted up on my toes, my hand clutching the door frame for balance, and called out to Dante, “I love you—always and forever!”

Dante raised his hand at the sound of my voice. “Abby!” he called out. “I’ll be waiting for you.”

Turning back to the door, I smiled one last time at Leo and then faced the unbroken black void in front of me.

I crossed the threshold in two steady steps.

I stood for a moment simply listening to my breathing, counting the beats of my heart. I thought about nautilus shells, and about stars that gleamed golden in the sky, and about travelers through time. I thought about angels who were trapped in stone and angels who wore gold chains around their wrists. I thought about spirals that needed to be closed into circles.

The music, which I thought had gone, returned in a series of beautiful notes lifting up in a rising scale.

I gathered my courage and held Dante’s love like a diamond close to my heart. I stepped forward, ready to face the past that would become my future.

The door closed behind me, and then all was darkness.

Acknowledgments

When I sat down to write this book, I thought,
No sweat. I’ve done this once before. I can do it again.

Well, I should have known better. After all, no two books are the same—not in reading them, and not in writing them. I quickly learned that the methods and strategies that worked so well for me in
Hourglass Door
didn’t work at all for
Golden Spiral.
It was its own book and it wasn’t shy about letting me know who was boss this time around. (Hint: It wasn’t me.)

So I’d like to take this opportunity to thank those people who were slaving away with me while this book took shape.

My family, who understood when I had to bail on yet another Sunday dinner and who never sighed or rolled their eyes (at least that I saw) when I wouldn’t stop talking about my book.

A very special thanks goes to my brother, Dennis, who gave me a crash course in darkroom development one afternoon. Any technical details about the process I got wrong are clearly my fault and not his.

Thanks to my friends, fans, and fellow authors, whose
constant messages of support and enthusiasm via e-mail, Facebook, and in person did not go unnoticed.

Once again, my writing group rose to the occasion and read huge chunks of this book despite a tight deadline and still managed to give me valuable, useful, and indispensable advice. So thank you, Tony, Heidi, Crystal, Pam, Mary, and Kristen. You guys are the best!

Thanks to the team at Shadow Mountain—Chris Schoebinger, Emily Watts, Tonya Facemyer, and Richard Erickson, to name only a few—who care for me like family
and who are always in my corner, looking out for me and my books.

Last, but never least, I must thank the love of my life, Tracy, for countless instances of making dinner, doing dishes, and running errands so I could stay chained to my laptop and find the words I needed to tell this story. There are no words, however, to express my deepest love and appreciation for his endless encouragement and support. I could not have done this without him.

Aside from learning to bend my will to the demands of the muse and working under her unrelenting whip of deadlines, I learned two very important lessons about writing:

First, write wherever you are. In addition to writing at home, I wrote sections of this book at the Spanish Fork Library, the Whitmore Library, in the waiting room of Presley Orthodontics and Family Cosmetic Dentistry, and on my daily commute on the UTA TRAX train.