Timescape (19 page)

“That's my name,” the boy said. “But . . . but I don't know you. What is he talking about?”

“Look at his eyes, Xander,” David said. “Don't you recognize them? This is how he knew you and me, but not Toria. Remember? When we first met him, he knew our names. You asked how he knew us, and he said something like, ‘Well,
I
'
ve
met
you
.' It was weird, because I thought, how do you meet someone but they don't meet you? He
had
met us—when he was a kid. He remembered. But at the time, we hadn't met him.”

Xander nodded, but his face still held on to a puzzled expression. “This is too weird.”

“What are you guys talking about?” Jesse said.

David said, “You know about the portals, right?”

Jesse simply stared at him.

“Maybe you don't call them that,” David said. “The time traveling? Going to different times and places?”

Jesse looked at each of them in turn. He scrambled up. “I have to go get my father.”

“Wait,” David said. “We're Kings too. If you know about the time traveling, then maybe you'll believe this. We come from the future.”

Xander laughed. “Oh, man, that's a line.”

David smiled, but continued. “You're our great-great-uncle.” He could've said “We're from Mars” and not have gotten a more confused-worried-startled look from Jesse. “I know it sounds crazy. Look, how old are you—like, twelve?”

“Fourteen.”

“Fourteen? Well, you look younger than your years when you're ninety too.”

Xander was looking at David, a half smile showing his amusement.

“So.” David put his fingers to his temple and calculated. “Then it's . . . 1929! Right?”

“Thirty-one.”

David waved his hand in front of himself. “I don't know Jesse's exact age. Ninety something. But I was close.”

Jesse looked toward the pounding, then back to David.

“Okay, see this?” David bent and picked up the wall light.

Xander saw it, and said, “Whoa! That's—”

“Shhh,” David said. “Don't say anything.”

Jesse stepped forward. “Hey, put that down.”

“Dude!” Xander told him, holding his palms out. “Get rid of the knife, all right?”

Jesse looked at it as though he'd forgotten about it. He said, “What about
that
?” He nodded toward the hammer in Xander's hand.

Xander hooked the claw onto his back pocket.

Jesse folded the knife blade into the handle and pushed it into his front pocket.

“Okay,” David said. He held up the wall light as though he were displaying it to his class for show-and-tell. “See this blank area where you haven't carved anything yet?”

Jesse nodded.

“It's going to be another warrior. He's getting stabbed by this guy's spear.” He smiled at Jesse.

Jesse's mouth dropped open. His eyes went wide, and he stared at David. “How did you . . . ? Let me see that.” He grabbed the wall light and squinted at the blank area.

“And,” David said, “I don't know if you even know this yet, but you—or somebody—is going to carve all the way through.

You're going to make slits in the eyes, along the spear, in a kind of sunshiny pattern above the stabbed guy.”

“Yeah,” Jesse said. “I was planning to do that.”

“Because it's a wall light, right?”

Jesse handed the carving back to David. His legs folded, and he sat on the ground. He looked at David, really looked at him. He did the same with Xander. He said, “So you guys came through the holes?”

“You sent us,” David said.

“Me?”

“When you're an old man. You come to help us, but . . .”

“But what?”

“Nothing.” David caught Xander's eye.

His brother shook his head, clearly sharing David's thought:
He doesn't need to know he gets stabbed.

“So you know me as an old man?”

“Yeah,” David said. “You got a long life ahead of you.”

Jesse smiled. “Am I hip?”

“Hip?” David said. “Oh, you mean cool. Yeah, you're totally hip.”

“You're a good guy,” Xander agreed.

David shifted his foot, and it came down on the brown paper sack. He felt something squish inside.

Jesse leaned over and snatched it up. He opened it, then pulled out a sandwich, half flattened.

“Sorry,” David said.

Jesse smiled and held it out to him. “Hungry?”

“No, thanks.”

Xander shook his head.

Jesse produced a piece of hard candy in a wrapper. He tossed it to David, and a second one to Xander. David set his down and shook his head at Xander.

“So,” David said. He picked up the wall light. “Why are you making this?”

“Don't you know?” Jesse said. “Didn't I tell you?”

David frowned. “We haven't known the old Jesse that long. Just a few days.”

“But you said I'm your great—”

“Great-great uncle,” David said. “But we didn't know you even existed until a few days ago.”

“That's too bad,” Jesse said. “Maybe I'll come find you sooner now . . . after you're born.” He smiled, and David's heart ached: he recognized it.

“I don't think so,” Xander said. “We already know that part of our past.”

“But that's okay,” David said. “You come when we need you.”

CHAPTER
forty

Jesse pointed at the wall light. “Sometimes people come through the holes. Dad thinks they
stumble
into them the first time, you know, by accident.”

“The first time?” Xander said.

“Sometimes they come back,” Jesse said. “They figure out where the holes are in their time. Maybe they mark them or something. Maybe they don't move around the way they do when Dad goes into one and has to come back.”

“Your father goes over?” Xander said.

“Oh, yeah. That's what we do.”

“
We?
You go?”

Jesse's face grew long. “Not yet. Dad says I'm too young.

But someday. How old are
you
?”

“Fifteen,” Xander said.

“Twelve,” David said.

“Wow,” Jesse said. “Your dad must be hip.”

“He is,” David said. “What about the wall light?” He was starting to believe it was for this that Jesse wanted them to find him. Then it dawned on him: this was what he meant when he said “Come see me.”

“Well,” Jesse said, “we don't know how, but the people find their way back here.”

“Why?” Xander said. “What do they do?”

“Explore, I guess,” Jesse said. “They usually come back armed. Spears, knives, clubs. Dad says they're just mean-spirited and looking for trouble.”

“Then what?” Xander said.

“Usually we catch them, hold them till we find the hole they came from. Sometimes we have to wait until we feel the hole looking for them.”

“The
pull
,” David said.

“Yeah, like that,” Jesse said. “Then we throw them back in.”

“You
throw
them back into the portal . . . the hole? You and your dad?”

“Mostly Dad and my older brother, Aaron.”

“Hold on,” Xander said. “Doesn't the door stay open till they go back?” He looked at David. “It does when Phemus comes through.”

“Door?”

“The door over the port . . . the hole. You know, through the antechamber.”

“Ante-what?”

“The little room where the portal door is.”

Jesse's face lit up. “You go through a door? And there's a little room for each door?”

“Yeah,” Xander said. “Don't you?”

“Not yet,” Jesse said, excited. “Dad's building them now! He put one together just to see if his idea worked. It did, so we're building a bunch of them. And a house that we're going to live in!”

“You're building the house?” Xander said. “Now?”

Jesse touched his ear and held his finger up, indicating the pounding. “That's what he's doing.”

Xander looked that direction. “Oh, this I gotta see.”

“Jesse,” David said, hefting the wall light. “You were going to tell us about this?”

“Right,” Jesse said. “Like I said,
usually
we catch them. Sometimes they get away or we never know they came through. One started coming regular. He'd go into town, steal stuff. Killed some people too. Dad went after him, ended up going over to his time, some ancient civilization. Dad realized there were a lot of superstitions back then, some things that scared the bejeepers out of people. So he made a little statue of some deity they were really afraid of. He put it in the area where that guy was coming through, and he stopped coming.”

“So they're like talismans,” Xander said. “Magic symbols that keep evil away.”

“But it's not magic,” Jesse said. He smiled. “We're just using their own superstitions against them. We've done it for
eight
people-groups now. Works every time, so far. We're going to put them in the hallway, where the holes are.”

David stood. He handed the wall light to Jesse. “So, you figure out what scares them, what their superstitions are, and make a light.”

“Yep.” Jesse got up. “Want to see the house?”

“Yes!” Xander said.

“But we can't,” David said. “We have to get back. I think we're already late.”

“Dae,” Xander said, “if Dad and Keal knew how much we could learn here . . .”

“I don't think it's our choice,” David said. He pointed at the hammer hooked to Xander's pocket. The handle was pointing straight back, quivering in the direction they had come.

Xander grabbed it before it could fly away.

“If we try to stay, we might lose the items,” David said. “Or they'll drag us back kicking and screaming.”

He pulled the corner of blueprint out of his pocket and held it up. It bent over his thumbnail and fluttered, as though in a strong wind. It confirmed the hammer's directive.

“Hey,” Jesse said, pointing at the paper. “Where'd you get that?”

“It was in the antechamber,” David said. “In the small room with the hole that brought us here.”

Jesse smiled and shook his head. “Dad looked all over for it. That corner got stuck on a board when he grabbed the blueprints a couple weeks ago. When he moved the board to get it, it blew away.”

“This is the blueprint for our house?” David said.

“Mine now, yours later.”

“Much later,” Xander said. “Next time we come, you can show us the house.”

“You'll be back?” Jesse said, like a kid heading to Disneyland.

David understood; he'd felt it when he first met old Jesse: the chance to share a secret with someone who cared, someone who really got it.

Jesse extended his hand to Xander. “Until then, great-great-nephew.”

Xander shook his hand.

Jesse held out his hand to David, who glanced at it and then up to the boy's face. He didn't see some kid he'd just met; he saw Jesse, the Jesse he knew and loved and had cried for that very morning. Fourteen or ninety-something—he was still Jesse. David brushed aside Jesse's hand, stepped in, and hugged him. He squeezed him tightly, then took a step back.

Jesse offered him an awkward smile, and David felt his face flush. He said, “I'm . . . just glad you sent us to find you.”

Xander tossed the hammer. When he went after it, stooping low to grab it, David realized he hadn't tossed it; it had flown out of his hand. Xander crashed into the wall of bushes and disappeared.

“Gotta go,” David said. “Take care of yourself.”

“I guess I do,” Jesse said.

David ran after Xander.

CHAPTER
forty - one

THURSDAY, 8:30 A.M .

David lay sprawled on the antechamber floor. Xander sat next to him, breathing heavily.

The portal door slammed shut.

Keal leaned over David, casting a shadow over him like an angry god. “You're five minutes late,” he said, his voice rumbling. He was holding the planer and saw.

“That was incredible,” David said.

“Guess who we met?” Xander said.

“How would I know? The guy who built the Taj Mahal? What's his name, Shah Jahan?”

“How do you even know that?” David said.

Xander said, “Try the guy who built this house.”

“The guy who—” Keal gaped at them. “You saw Jesse?”

“At fourteen,” David said. “But he looked twelve.”

“Fourteen?” Keal said. “Years old?”

Xander nodded. “He was pretty cool.”

“Hip,” David corrected.

“Right, hip. Just like now.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Keal said. “Are you guys punking me? You're kidding, right?”

“Keal,” David said, “that's what he meant when he said, ‘Come see me.' He didn't mean at the hospital. He meant back then. He remembered that we
did
go see him when he was a kid.”

“Maybe if we didn't go,” Xander said, “it would have changed things. He wanted to make sure we did what he knew we had to do.”

“Did you save his life or something?” Keal said.

“No, but he may have saved ours,” David said.

“What, just now?” Judging by the rising tone of his voice, Keal was growing more confused by the second.

David laughed. “He told us how to keep Phemus out of the house.”

“What? Really? How?” Keal dropped down onto the bench.

“Scare him,” Xander said.

“Oh,” Keal said. “Yeah, why didn't I think of that? I got a Casper the Ghost mask in the car.”

“Really,” David said. “We need to find out what superstitions he believes and make a wall light.”

“What, like the ones in the hallway?”

“Exactly,” David said. “Jesse was making one when we met him just now.”