Chapter Text
Stories were cyclical, true, but this, Sloane thought in exasperation, was ridiculous.
–
“Where’s all the time travel? Is that just a modern thing?”
Demi’s question was idle, mere curiosity. She had been splitting her time between our field team, when we needed her (or she needed us) and the Archives recently, and today we were lucky enough to have her. We were all at our desks, alternately working on paperwork (me, mostly), catching up on work reading (Jeff and Andy), and online shopping (Sloane, as always).
Jeff frowned, putting his pen down neatly along the edge of his desk. “There’s faerie hills, Rip Van Winkle…”
Ciara had wandered over, as she so often did, coffee cup in hand. She was part of the larger concept of the team. Difference combinations of us went out into the field or stayed back at the home office, but she was definitely one of us. Had been, since the whole Adrianna... Thing. “You mean a Six-eight-one.”
The book Demi had been reading lay open on the desk in front of her, mostly forgotten. It wasn't a copy of the Index, as far as I could tell, and entirely in Spanish, as far as I could tell.
Sloane said something to Demi, also in Spanish, that I couldn’t begin to hope to translate.
I stared at Slone in astonishment. She caught me out of the corner of her eye and snorted derisively. "What?"
"You speak Spanish?"
Slone rolled her eyes in that oh-so-eloquent way of hers. "My Duolingo streak is to die for." The sarcasm was thick enough to be a blunt weapon and obscure whether or not she was kidding.
–
Memetic Incursion in progress: estimated tale type 570 (“The Rat-Catcher”, “Pied Piper”)
Status: ACTIVE/IN PROGRESS
Demi knew she had done better, performed better, was objectively the better choice. She was the one who had put in the work, she was the one who had flown halfway across the country for the opportunity. They had specifically asked for her, for heaven’s sake!
But there he was, the music director of the philharmonic, giving her disappointing news while only having eyes for the girl across the hallway, white and blonde and beautiful, a picture postcard of a first chair flautist. Not like Demi, with her brown skin and black hair, with her slight accent and her shoes that had picked up the slightest of scuffs somewhere between the front entrance and the audition space.
On the edge of her hearing there was the faintest squeaking, a chittering coming from the rafters, and as Demi lifted her flute to her lips, she vaguely recalled something about the bat problem the old venue had been having for the last few years…
–
Demi shook her head, returning to the topic of conversation at hand. “But a Six-eight-one is only one way, years in the course of seconds. Not repeats.”
"Not time loops. Something like Groundhog Day," Jeff said slowly.
"Or Triangle," Sloane added.
Ciara nodded, face pensive. “Or instead of loops, going back in time, making a different choice, set right what once went wrong kind of thing. There’s an Asimov story, a Heinlein story…”
“If you count just looking into a potential future and then averting it, you’ve got A Christmas Carol and It’s a Wonderful Life,” Jeff added thoughtfully.
“It’s started showing up in fairy tale stuff too,” Demi mused. “A Shrek movie. Or that Cinderella movie."
I stared at Demi uncomprehendingly. She, to my surprise, flushed slightly. "The third one, I think it was on DVD?"
I had no idea what she was talking about, but Andy had twigged, apparently. "Oh, yeah, that one." He paused. "Mari actually watched that one the other day." Their adopted daughter was going through the Disney catalog through some DVD service like wildfire. It hadn't presented a problem yet and we were all hoping that it would continue to be fine. Sometimes with kids the best you could do was love them and hope for the best. Andy and his husband had avoided the Narrative thus far, and Mari was a sweet kid. We were all hoping for the best. "A Twist in Time."
–
Memetic incursion in progress: estimated tale type 510B (“Donkeyskin”)
Status: ACTIVE
Jeff wished his family hadn’t gotten the damned contract for the dresses. There were some wild things one could do with fabric and machine fabrication these days, but there were some things that still had to be done by human hand.
Like sewing ten thousand tiny diamonds onto a floor-length white silk gown.
They were real diamonds too, Jeff was pretty sure. Livvy sure seemed convinced, and the way his mother had been so exacting about keeping tabs on the whereabouts of every single little gem, well.
Plus, their client could absolutely afford it.
Jeff wasn’t exactly sure how rich the guy was, but he had to imagine it had to be pretty damned to have your name on buildings and stuff. And then there had been that other dress, the one of gold silk that flowed like liquid and draped like a dream. They had hand-embroidered that whole shining piece, gold-on-gold until it looked like a piece of the sun plucked from the sky.
He swore under his breath as the needle glanced off a diamond and snapped, the tip pinging away over his work table. Then his cousin was there, as if summoned by magic, the paper packet of replacement needles in her hand. “Thanks, Liv.”
She looked a little harried, a little wild-eyed and breathless. “Did you hear?”
With swift and practiced hands, Jeff switched out the needle on his machine. “Hear what? I don’t hear anything, I’ve been working.”
“The girl, the one we’re making this for, she’s coming in today.”
Jeff paused only a moment to shoot her a look. “With her father?”
Liv shrugged. Jeff shook his head and turned back to his work, threading the needle and lining it up next to the minutely sparkling gem again. “Won’t that be exciting for us all,” he said sarcastically.
His cousin rolled her eyes and moved off, probably to talk to Nina and avoid doing actual work some more. Jeff lined the next gem up on the moon-white silk and began to sew. At least he wasn’t making the shoes.
–
"I mean, the entire Index is built on repeats, in a way," Demi mused, the book still open in front of her. "But different..."
Another derisive snort from Sloane. "What, changing your fate?" She slipped into a brief imitation of a Scottish accent, still somehow infusing it with caustic sarcasm.
"Or your story."
Demi's words were softest poison and I still heard Sloane choke on the air they were in.
–
Memetic incursion in progress: estimated tale type 450 (“Little Brother and Little Sister”) (previous tale type: 426, 510A)
Status: ACTIVE
“Shh!” I hushed Gerry and we both froze. My heart was hammering inside my chest, feeling like a hummingbird about to burst. I could have sworn I had heard someone shifting in the bedroom that Andrew and Maya shared–our supposed adoptive parents. I always thought parents should be kind to their children, or at least not cruel, no matter what the fairy tales said.
They definitely didn’t hit them for cutting their hair. Or wearing pants. Or playing with the “wrong” kinds of toys.
None of that mattered now. None of it was going to matter again. We were getting out.
After a few moments of silence, I decided that it was probably a false alarm. Not that I wanted to take more risks than necessary. Silently, I nodded to Gerry and we resumed our slow creep down the hallway. I was just glad the big ranch house didn’t have any stairs to creak as we went down them.
We had hid the stash inside of a mason jar, coins scrounged from the sidewalk, the odd bill skimmed off the top of the money granted for an errand at the store, whatever we could get, it had gone in there. That jar had gone into the back of the pantry, a disused corner that we changed with the seasons so even Maya would have no reason to rummage through it. Not unless she got the idea to bake shortbread in the middle of summer.
The pantry door slid open silently, revealing the arrayed shelves full of canned and dry goods, bins of root vegetables, bags of flour. Gerry, a slim shadow in the dusk, slipped in, carefully shifting the cake pan in front of the jar and lifting it out even more carefully, without even the clinking of the coins at the bottom.
I turned so that he could slip the jar into the slightly-open knapsack I wore, nestling it gently on top of the paper map and change of clothes I had in there before he zipped it. I swear it felt like each zipper tooth felt like the gnashing of teeth, and sounded like it too. We paused again, straining our ears for any breath of sound.
Nothing.
That just left the kitchen door. Slowly, carefully, I turned the lock until it clicked open. Loud as thunder, small as snowflakes. Then turning the handle and I could sense the pent-up energy radiating from my brother. We were so close, we were almost free and out and away. I opened the door, just wide enough for a couple of skinny thirteen year olds to slip out into the summer night.
I eased the door closed as he hurried toward the front of the house, avoiding the gravel walk that wound around. The grass was quieter anyway. For a brief moment I paused with my hand on the doorknob, then let go.
Doing that seemed to break something free in me, something that it seemed had been holding tight around my heart for my whole life.
I caught up with Gerry on the sidewalk, the streetlights of suburbia shining down around us. He looked flushed, exhilarated, nervous–and most of all ready.
I took his hand, and we started to walk.
-
“Oh my god.”
I whipped my head around at my brother’s soft exclamation. We had found a corner of the Greyhound station to stack our two backpacks up and create a small space where we could count out the money jar and see just how far away we could get from this city, to give ourselves the best chance of getting away. “What?” I could feel the panic rising.
He shook his head, looking bewildered. “There’s more than I thought there’d be! Like, way more.” His tone was hushed, but I still glanced around nervously to see if anyone was taking an undue interest in us. Or the money.
I frowned, looking closer. He was right. There was even, I swallowed nervously, a folded bill that resolved itself into a twenty dollar bill when I smoothed it out. When I did so, a note dropped to the linoleum, folded up quite small.
I retrieved it, unfolding it with fingers suddenly shaky from nerves. There, in Maya’s neat, sparse cursive, was a short note. Be safe. And that was all.
As I met my brother’s eyes over the pile of money, I knew we were home free.
–
Demi put down the book she had been reading, frowning, and asked, “Where’s all the time travel?"