The Time Roads

I hardly comprehended the rest of his letter. Something about the roads of time, of braving the perils before all the other scientists. Of gratitude. Of love. I knew not what else, because I dropped the letter onto the floor and raced toward the windows. Only now did I remember his talking about the appearance of new time fractures between Awveline City and Osraighe, and the last fine day of the year.

His balloon, I thought. It was large enough to carry his machine.

“Breandan!”

I flung open the windows. The golden towers and spires of Cill Cannig spread out before me, below a green garden bordered by summer roses. My gaze took that all in, then snapped upward to the skies. Yes, there, between the tallest towers was an expanse of gray clouds. And against that expanse, a bright red sphere, glorious and huge.

Already the sphere was shrinking as the balloon climbed higher into the skies. I could not move, could hardly breathe. Higher. Higher. Now the sphere was little more than a dot, wreathed in clouds and nearly invisible, and yet I could not look away.

Breandan, I hope—

The dot vanished. A bright flare of fire burst out, smearing my vision. I blinked.

The skies were empty. In the distance a plume of smoke rose up from the hills.

* * *

There is little to tell about the next few weeks—or rather, very little of those weeks remains true.

That sounds mad, I know. Let me attempt to explain.

It took several days to recover all the wreckage from Breandan’s balloon. The fall had shattered the carriage into pieces, which were strewn over the countryside. From what the Queen’s Constabulary could determine, the fire came first, then the explosion of the oxygen tanks. Nothing remained of Breandan’s golden octopus but a charred ruin. And of Breandan himself, nothing at all.

The Constabulary and Garda searched for ten days; they found no sign of body or bones.

That night I called for two bottles of wine and dismissed all my servants early. I drank until the fire burned low and cold nipped at my skin through the layers of my woolen robes. Once, around midnight, I nearly summoned my secretary, so that he might send a telegraph to Aidrean Ó Deághaidh. But that, I knew, would have been a terrible mistake. Aidrean would refuse to abandon his murder investigation simply to comfort me. He had his pride, and his sense of duty.

As had I.

And so I left off drinking and retreated to bed, where I fell into a restless slumber. My dreams consisted of scattered images of the past five years—of my first interview with Aidrean Ó Deághaidh, of the golden octopus and its leavings of iron dust, of Breandan’s face, illuminated with joy as he placed the miniature balloon into his new gigantic machine. Of Lord Ó Cadhla, as limp as a puppet, after hearing of his daughter’s brutal murder.

I woke just before dawn to the rattle of wind against my windows. It was a cold gray October morning. The skies wept with rain. One of the maids had left a window partially open, and a current of air blew through the room, carrying with it the scent of moldering leaves. My head aching from the wine, I stumbled toward the window to shut it. I paused and blinked to clear my vision. Below me, Cill Cannig looked as it always did in autumn. Copper-brown leaves whirled about. The trees stood stark and black against the dull gray skies. All around, I had the sense of a world, dying, dying into winter.

(Though all our gods and saints taught us that resurrection was our right.)

Now. I have attempted to describe in writing the next moments several times over. None of them fit what I remember. Though “remember” itself is a tenuous concept.

So. Let me just tell the story.

It was a cold, wet October dawn. I was standing by the window, as I said. This early in the day, the world seemed empty of human life, except for a few curls of smoke rising from a nearby chimney. And I, I was wishing I could undo parts of the last few weeks. Or months. Or years.

Then, of a sudden, a wrenching pain took me. My vision wavered and blurred. The wine, I thought confusedly, gripping the windowsill to keep my balance.

But it was not the wine. By will alone, I stared until my stomach calmed and the landscape steadied before me. It was an ordinary dawn, with smudges of saffron and indigo against the dull dark sky, the thin scarlet line running across the horizon. Ordinary, but unsettled, as though an earthquake shook my perception. I stared harder. There, in the distance, the clouds roiled. Again my stomach lurched, as though I stood aboard a plunging airship. The clouds narrowed into a funnel that raced toward me.…

Hours later, I came to, lying on the floor of my bedchamber. All I could remember was a terrible dream about the world tipping into chaos. A bruise over my left eye told me I’d fallen, but when my maid arrived, they could not remember anything of that eerie dawn. Indeed, they had difficulty pinning down memories of the previous day or even the week before.

More strangeness followed. Lord Ó Cadhla appeared at midmorning to report a peculiar incident. Commander Aidrean Ó Deághaidh had collapsed in Awveline City in a fit of madness. Of course the Garda there had taken custody of the man, and had him sequestered at once in Aonach Sanitarium, but it was odd that neither I nor Lord Ó Cadhla could remember why I had sent him away from Court.

If I had.

Part of me remembered a terrible tragedy, but the details refused to come into focus. Another part remembered a different tragedy, but that one too eluded remembrance. As the days melted away, I stopped struggling to recall anything from the past six months. It was enough to ensure that Commander Ó Deághaidh received the best care, and to plan his eventual return to the Queen’s Constabulary. (Though, to be sure, the doctors at Aonach Sanitarium were not sanguine.)

Those were the days of confusion, as I called them.

Now to explain how I remembered what had never been.

(Or rather it had been. Once. In a different world.)