“Oh.” For some reason, that information made Reina deeply sad. Perhaps it was the way that, in calling Gideon Drake’s mother forgettable, Atlas was so quick to suggest that memory was a luxury not to be wasted on the unworthy. “And Gideon?”
“I suspect that if Mr. Drake had never met Nico de Varona, his life would look quite different,” Atlas said. “If indeed he were still living without Nico’s help.”
Reina shifted in her chair. “So that’s it?”
“What is?”
“The unremarkable are punished for their unremarkability,” she said.
Atlas set down his cup of tea, steeping the moment in silence.
“No,” he said at last, adjusting his tie. “It is the remarkable who suffer. The unremarkable are passed over, yes, but greatness is not without its pains.” He fixed her with a solemn glance, adding, “I know very few medeians who would not ultimately choose to be unremarkable and happy, were they able to do so.”
“But you do know some who wouldn’t choose that,” Reina pointed out.
Atlas’ mouth twisted upwards.
“Yes,” he said. “I do know some.”
He seemed ready to let her go, his episode of candor coming to a close, but Reina lingered a moment longer, contemplating her lack of satisfaction. She supposed she had thought the confirmation of Nico’s friend would solve her puzzle, but it hadn’t. The initial satisfaction of having questions answered was a cheap high, and now she was unfulfilled again.
“The traveler,” she said. “The one you rejected to choose me instead. Who was it?”
She knew without a doubt this would be the last question she was permitted to ask.
“He was not rejected,” said Atlas, before inclining his head in dismissal, rising to his feet and leading her conclusively to the door.
EZRA
Ezra Mikhail Fowler was born as the earth was dying. There had been an entire fuss of it on the news that year, about the carbon crisis and how little time the ozone had left, leaving an entire generation to turn to their therapists and proclaim a collective, widespread existential disengagement. The Uni
ted States had been awash in fires and floods for months, with only half the country believing they had any hand in its demolishment. Even the ones who still believed in a vengeful God had failed to see the signs.
Still, things would have to get much worse before they got better. Only when time and breathable air and potable water were running out did someone, somewhere, decide to change their stance. Magical technology that had once been bought and sold by governments in secret transitioned to private hands, allowing it to be bought and sold via trade secret instead. It healed some of the earth’s viruses, provided some renewable energy, repairing enough of the damage caused by industrialization and globalization and all the other -ations that the world could successfully go on a bit longer without any drastic change in attitude or behaviors. Politicians politicked as usual, which meant that for every incremental step forward there was still a looming end in sight. But it was delayed, and that was what was important. Any senator could tell you that.
Ezra, meanwhile, grew up in an unfortunate corner of Los Angeles. The sort that was too far east to have ever laid eyes on the ocean, and that also believed unquestionably that a river was nothing more than a slow trickle above cement. His was a generally fatherless nation, a community of misfortune for which mothers were primary caregivers and breadwinners as well, albeit for very little bread. Ezra had been a tribesman of his local multigenerational matriarchy until the age of twelve, when his mother died as the result of a shooting while at worship inside her temple. Ezra had been there, but also not there. He remembered the details of the event clearly for multiple reasons, her death notwithstanding: One, he and his mother had had an argument that morning about him running off somewhere the day before, which he assured her he hadn’t done. Two, it had been his first experience with a door.
Perhaps if he’d been braver or more aware of what he was doing he might have held his mother’s hand more tightly. As it was, the sound of the automatic rifle had sent him careening backwards in space, to the point where he wondered if he had actually been shot. He was familiar with the idea of a live shooter, having been made to run drills for it in school, but death itself remained a foreign concept. In Ezra’s mind, the idea of a bullet piercing any part of him was just like this had been: a collapse, his ears ringing, the entirety of the world tilting sideways for a moment. When the sensation cleared, though, Ezra realized he was either dead or very, very much alive.
When he opened his eyes the temple was quiet, eerily so. He walked around to the spot where his mother had been, feeling at the edges of the wood for evidence of bullets. There were none, and he thought perhaps he had made it happen by magic. Perhaps he had fixed everything, done it over, and now everything would be fine? He went home to find his mother asleep on the sofa, still in her nurse’s uniform. He went to bed. He woke up. The sun shone.
Then things began to happen oddly. The same burnt toast for breakfast as yesterday, the same terrible jokes on the daily morning news. His mother yelled at him for running off the day before, disappearing and coming home after she’d been asleep. She dragged him to the bathroom, shouting for him to wash his hair and get dressed for temple. No, no, he said instantly, no we can’t go there, Mom listen to me it’s important, but she was insistent. Put your good shoes on Ezra Mikhail, wash your hair and let’s go.
When the shooter appeared again, Ezra finally confirmed with certainty his suspicion that he had somehow gone into the past, which at first he took as a blessing. He tried several times to save his mother, thinking it his divinely appointed task. Each time things repeated as they had before, the situation altering like puzzle pieces to form the prophetic picture on the box. Exhausted, he eventually fell through the little vacancy in time for the thirteenth round and stayed there, and then, for the first time, he tried to open a new crevice for himself, something to lead him elsewhere. When he stepped out, he was three weeks beyond his mother’s funeral—the furthest he could take himself at the time.
Social services soon arrived to gather him into custody. Perhaps because he had already watched his mother die twelve times, Ezra numbly went.
It’s not a secret that the foster care system leaves much to be desired. Ezra had vowed never to run away again, never to tell a soul about what he’d seen and done, but life has a way of breaking its promises to children. Within a year, he was learning to use the doors with some regularity, securing control over their outcome. He did not age as time passed if he didn’t choose to, moving fluidly through it instead, and by his sixteenth birthday he was only fifteen and one day, having skipped through any instances of the time he couldn’t otherwise abide.
At seventeen (or so), Ezra was offered a scholarship to the New York University of Magical Arts, which was the first time he fully understood that he was not alone in what he could do. True, he was the only one who had access to the doors specifically, but for the first time, he understood that he was not the only magician in the world—no, medeian, they told him. It was a new word, unfamiliar on his tongue.
So what was he? Not a physicist, not exactly. He was definitely opening and closing tiny, Ezra-sized wormholes to navigate through time, that much seemed clear, but his magic was limited and self-concentrated. It was a unique power, dangerous.
Keep it quiet, his professors advised. You never know what sort of people will try to mess with time. Never the kind with good intentions.
Dutifully, Ezra kept his abilities a secret, or tried to. Eventually, though, the Alexandrian Society found him out.
It was a tempting offer. (It was always tempting; power always is.) What was particularly interesting to Ezra, though, were the others, his fellow initiates, or the four who would become his fellow initiates after one of them had been eliminated. Ezra was introverted by nature—a combination of poverty, inexplicable power, and his mother’s untimely death had combined to make him relatively standoffish—but there was one other initiate with whom he instantly shared a bond.