“—like to believe you, Ignatius,” the old man is saying, his words instantly translated in my ears. “This council has devoted itself to the betterment of humanity. For years, we’ve assembled the finest scholars from Jerusalem to Firenze to the distant shores of Tangier, and gathered in secrecy to share all our earthly knowledge. Now you come to Constantinople and enter our hidden chambers unannounced to tell us that you’re some sort of … anomaly with mastery over time, who intends to singlehandedly stop the Holy War?”
“Not singlehandedly,” I say. My lips fall into sync with words I’ve never spoken, in a resonant voice that is not my own. What’s even more disturbing is that my silhouette, cast against the wall by the torchlight, belongs to a man.
I’m reliving someone else’s memory. I’m slowly being enveloped by it until my mind and body become one with the man I’ve inhabited. At first I struggle to remain myself, but the memory overpowers me, hijacking control of my speech, my movements, my thoughts.
“You see,” I go on, “when one phoenix dies, the mantle passes to a newborn in whom those powers will one day manifest. And with those powers come the collective memories of every phoenix who came before.” I gesture excitedly around the room. “I have witnessed years beyond my own, distant lands I have never traveled. And I have seen the noble deeds my phoenix ancestors have performed, centuries of miracles all made possible by our unique gift. Accidents averted. Lives saved. Even the tides of battle turned to a new victor.”
Somewhere in the crowd, a man scoffs. “Tell me, phoenix. If your race is so benevolent, so omnipotent, then why are the history books still so rife with blood, pestilence, and war?” He jabs a thick finger at one of the sanctuary walls, which is lined with ancient tomes. “Human history is no stranger to woe and violence, so forgive me for laughing at this heresy.”
There are a few rumblings of agreement throughout the council, but I feel heartened by the contemplative silence from the other members. At least a few among them believe, and that’s a start.
“You tell me to look at all the blood that has been shed in the annals of our existence,” I reply. “But for every terrible act remembered in those books, there is at least one atrocity that will never have to be remembered.” I pound my chest over my tunic. “With only one of us alive at any given time, there is a limit to how much one man can do. This Holy War that threatens to torch the inhabited world is a massive and ever-changing Hydra. To pinpoint any single cause in the past is nearly impossible.” I smile upon the council. “But with your guidance and wisdom, joined with my ability to revisit the past, together we may finally lift the darkness that looms over this land. So tell me, brothers: will you join me in ending this Crusade?”
After a few moments of pregnant silence, the council erupts into a cacophony of voices—boisterous agreement, vigorous dissent and skepticism, accusatory cries about sorcery.
It only takes words from one scholar to stop them, a gruff voice in the back. “I believe you, Ignatius,” he says. It’s neither shouted nor enthusiastic, but it cuts right through the chatter. The rest of the council falls quiet.
“I believe you,” the councilman repeats and stands up. The part of me that’s still Renata recognizes him immediately the moment he pulls back his hood.
It’s the same crusader who tried to slice me in two on the softball field during my first visit to Patchwork.
“I also believe,” he continues, “that you are an abomination.” Even as the council breaks out into gasps, the crusader patiently descends from the top row of the amphitheater. One scholar even rises to intercept him, saying “Stay your tongue, Tantalus!”
Tantalus brushes roughly past the dissenting scholar. “What your kind does is filthy and unnatural,” he seethes at me. “You act like you are some savior, that the world is divided into men with evil in their hearts and the innocents who suffer because of them. But darkness lies in all our hearts. Humanity is one machine, and each person, a cog within it. Mankind can only grow stronger if it is forced to learn from its mistakes, to persevere through suffering. What better suffering to teach us than the madness of war, a war that we created. By correcting these mistakes, you simply doom our race to weakness.”
As he saunters menacingly out onto the dais, I hold my ground. “Every day, sacred places crumble,” I say. “Every day, our cities burn and innocent blood flows through the streets and down the hillsides … yet you would have me just stand by and watch?”
“No,” Tantalus says. He stops so that our noses are nearly touching. His breath reeks of lamb and mead. “I wouldn’t have you stand by and watch. I would have you die.”
Only then do I notice the whisper of the metal blade sliding out from its concealment beneath his robe. He brings his hand around in an arc, the blade set to slice right through my throat—
But he doesn’t have mastery over time like I do.
A quick trip to and from the dark realm of memories, and I’m back in the council chambers, ten seconds earlier.
“No,” Tantalus is saying again, the stink of his breath washing over me. “I wouldn’t have you stand by and watch. I would have you—”
I clamp down on his weapon arm and twist. With a howl, Tantalus drops to his knees, but not before the long dagger concealed up his sleeve clatters to the floor.
The scholars, seeing the treachery unfolding, sweep down onto the dais and attempt to restrain Tantalus. But he is sinewy and strong, and he muscles his way through them, fleeing for the chamber doors. Two other council members join him, including the one who had questioned the deeds of the phoenixes. Together, the three mutinous scholars retreat to the exit.
Tantalus stops, even as his two counterparts try to urge him out the doors, and he turns back to me. “You may have time on your side, Ignatius. I may not have the power to stop you.” He narrows his eyes and levels a gnarled finger at me. “But so help me, I will raise something that does.”
Another spike of heat sears through my brain and when the blinding light fades from my eyes, I’m back in my own body, alone in the chamber. The torches along the walls have all been extinguished, and the only light is what’s pouring down through the jagged chasm.
“What,” I say, “the fuck.”
Now not only do I have to deal with my own memories haunting me in this weird place, but I have to relive the memories of others as well. Not to mention this revelation that I’m the progeny of some time-twisting, war-stopping, Crusade-ending superior race. If I’m to believe Ignatius, then my phoenix ancestors apparently prevented all sorts of catastrophes. Meanwhile, I’ve done what? Created a puerile secret society and made a complete train wreck of my love life? When I can’t even live my own life with honor the first time around, how the hell can I be trusted to better the lives of others?
I guess I just have to hope that greatness comes with time.
Of course, it’s impossible to say how much time I’ll have when there’s someone out there trying to stop me before I “ripen” into the benevolent phoenix I’m supposed to be.
I may not have the power to stop you, Tantalus had said. But so help me, I will raise something that does.
What if Tantalus had succeeded? What if Osiris is that “something” else, and he’s been on the phoenix hunt for hundreds of years, since the era of Ignatius and that Crusade?
The locket grows warm against my chest, reminding me that time is still in motion here. The chasm is too deep for me to possibly climb back out, so with no other options I cross the chamber and heave open the heavy iron doors.
I step out into a winter scene. It’s daytime in Patchwork, for once, although the sun hides behind an overcast sky. The harsh, cold wind quickly numbs my cheeks and dries out my skin as I try to regain my bearings. Unlike the council chambers I just exited, this place is from my life. The Maine pine trees coated with a thin layer of ice. The mountain lodge, as gargantuan as I remember it, with its log cabin exterior and picturesque glass windows. The way the thick curtain of falling s
now mutes everything, even the enormous mountain peak in the backdrop, so that the scene looks like a half-colored-in drawing from an artist’s sketchbook.
The five-bedroom luxury cabin belongs to Slade’s absurdly wealthy parents. A bunch of us came here for a ski weekend in February. This memory could be the ideal landing spot for me, I realize—a secluded lodge, isolated during one of the worst blizzards in recent years. Sure, Osiris managed to follow me to Vermont and the road trip to Pennsylvania, but with any luck the Nor’easter will slow him down and give me time to fortify the cabin.
The thought of Osiris following me all the way up to this middle-of-nowhere ski lodge gives birth to another thought. All this time I’ve been thinking of him as a stranger. Maybe he is, and he’s just an incredibly skilled tracker after all these years.
But what if he has such an intimate knowledge of my whereabouts because he’s somebody in my life?
I have a flashback to the frat house and the man lurking in the backyard shortly before the fire. It’s hard to conceive that Mr. Slattery, questionably intentioned though he may be, could possibly moonlight as some immortal assassin. A lonely teacher with a midlife crisis and a thing for jailbait, absolutely. But a cold-blooded killer?
My thoughts about Mr. Slattery evaporate the moment I realize I’m no longer alone.
From around the corner of the lodge, cutting effortlessly through a tall snow bank, comes a hulking red creature. It’s hard to distinguish much of its facial features from this far away, especially with the thick mane of crimson hair obscuring its face. Its arms are so thick and long they nearly drag beside the creature as it saunters forward.
I’m less worried about its arms—which look like it could pulverize my bones in a single bear hug—and more concerned with the enormous battle axe that it’s lugging along. I can hear the grating of the axe blade against the stone walkway beneath the snow.
At least now I have a pretty good idea of what was thundering after me when I was on the amusement ride.
At the same time, I hear rustling in the branches above. Those reptilian imps, the ones that had been watching me on my hometown street, fill the evergreens around me, fighting for front-row seats to the coming event. All the while, their red eyes peer out through the falling snow like demonic Christmas lights. In a throaty rasp not much louder than a whisper, they all begin to chatter, excitedly repeating the same name over and over again.
“Thanatos …”
“Thanatos!”
“Thanatos, it’s really him!”
When the creature—Thanatos, apparently—reaches the front of the house, it stops and stares me down. I know that part of this world has been trying to keep me here, kill me even, but there’s a sizable difference between a few poisonous frogs and an enormous red mutant with an axe.
Thanatos hasn’t moved since he stopped in the snow bank and it’s freaking me out. He tilts his mangy head to the side.
That’s when I realize he’s challenging me.
Challenging me to run for the lodge.
He may be a goliath, but my instincts tell me he’s faster than he looks. Good thing I have the best stolen base percentage in the softball league.
The earth rumbles somewhere in the distance. I still don’t fully understand how time functions here, but with Patchwork quickly unraveling, I have to believe there’s not much time remaining for me to get through the lodge’s front door.
I take off in a full sprint before I can chicken out.
Thanatos isn’t caught off-guard, and almost immediately starts shadowing my movements across the yard. The snow that’s accumulated slows me down, and the sandals I wore to the luau aren’t exactly softball cleats or snowshoes. I trip over one of the walkway lights hidden in the snow but maintain my footing.
Meanwhile it becomes apparent that I’m going to outrun Thanatos to the door. He’s more agile than he looks, yes, but he’s slow to accelerate.
Just when I think I’ve beaten him, Thanatos stops and hoists the axe over his head. I reach for the ornate, carved door and hurl it open right as he wheels back and releases the Renata-sized blade.
I hear it whistling through the air at the same time that I feel the warm breath of the lodge, flowing out the door and into the cold. I hurl myself through the entrance a moment before the blade sinks its teeth into the edge of the doorframe. I try to push the door closed, but the head of the axe jams it open.
Thanatos thunders toward the door. His black eyes are fixed unblinkingly on me. No longer encumbered by the axe, he lopes even more quickly than he did before.
I grab the leather straps wrapped around the axe’s handle, still soggy from Thanatos’s sweat, and I push as hard as I can. At first it won’t budge, because the blade is firmly wedged in the wood. When Thanatos opens his jaws and I see the shredded bits of animal carcass stuck between his teeth, I throw my back into it. With a satisfying shick sound, the hundred-pound axe slides out of the wood and thumps heavily to the snow.
I back into the lodge just as Thanatos reaches out a clawed hand to snatch me through the threshold.
Frostbite
February
I slam the lodge door shut, hard enough that even the creature’s sinewy hand can’t hold it open. My trembling fingers struggle to twist the deadbolt into place, and I stand still until I confirm that I can no longer hear his heavy footsteps or grunting.
Then I let my head slump against the door and take deep breaths.
It’s then that I hear shuffling behind me that informs me that I’m not alone.
There are seven people gathered around the expensive Italian leather couches. Not strangers, not bloodthirsty axe-wielding mutants, but people I know.
Ivy on the love seat, squeezed in next to Garrett Holmes from the football team.
Troy on the couch with Dana Holland and Marcie Graham, who’s sitting too close to him for my taste.
Wyatt stretched out on the oriental carpet closer to the fireplace.
And Slade, crosslegged on his “throne,” a regal chair he told us was reserved for “the king of the lodge.”
Even though this means I’m about to do yet another day all over again, I’m momentarily grateful and relieved to be in a room where no one—mutant or otherwise—is trying to kill me. And more importantly, to be in a room where my friends aren’t lying dead in a mountain of charred frat house rubble.
Together, the group stares at me while I continue to breathe heavily against the door. I figure they must also be wondering why I’m wearing only a bikini top and grass skirt, but when I look down, I’m dressed in a snow parka and jeans. In my gloved hand, I hold a large bag of pretzels, which I must have just rescued from Troy’s truck.
“Jesus, Renata,” Slade says. “Breathless much? Were you chased around the house by a pack of wild cougars?”
“The only cougars around here,” Ivy says, “were the ones on the ski lift you were shamelessly hitting on last night.”
Slade kicks his feet up on the ottoman and leans back. “Hey, it’s not age—it’s experience.”
“And as we all know,” Wyatt says from the floor, “the Latin word for experience is Chlamydia.” The whole room laughs.
Troy scoots over on the couch, physically pushing Dana across the leather cushion to make space for me. He pats the gap between him and Marcie Graham. “Take a seat, cupcake.”
Nice save, Troy. I toss the pretzels onto the coffee table and join the three of them on the couch, at least to rest my legs which still burn from all the running I did in Patchwork. When Troy slips his hand around my back, I grimace—the wound from the frat house cave-in not only traveled with me to Patchwork, but back to reality as well.
With the pain comes a sickening revelation. Since my jumps back through time have continually resurrected my friends, restoring them to healthy, younger, living bodies, I assumed that I’ve been regenerating as a younger version of myself as well.
But now I can see some curious details I overlooked until now. How e
very time I go back, I wake up in different clothes, but I never feel like I’ve entered a “fresh” body. How my fatigue and soreness continues to accumulate as time goes on. I tenderly touch the welt from getting hit by that line drive in April, and trace my finger along a recent scar on my arm, a puckered line where I burned myself baking cupcakes for Troy’s birthday, two weeks before prom. Neither of those war wounds should be here now as I stumble through time back into February.
Yet here they are.
I haven’t aged backward at all. This is the same physical version of me that boarded that prom cruise at the Boston Seaport.
Which leaves me feeling weird sitting next to my boyfriend … because if my body remains the same between jumps, then I’m still getting older while Troy has gradually gotten younger each time.
If this cycle continues for long, I’ll be the cougar around here.
On the love seat opposite us, Garrett rubs his hands together. “As much as I’m enjoying this basking by the fire crap, I think we need to heat things up around here. How about …” He turns and eyes Marcie Graham hungrily. “… a friendly game of Truth or Dare?”
Agreement echoes around the circle, especially Slade, whose eyes light up like it’s Christmas Eve. And that’s when I realize where exactly in time my voyage back to reality dropped me.
On the last February 8, just before dusk, right as the others were clamoring to play Truth or Dare, Troy and I excused ourselves from the game. After all, when your significant other is in the room, dares can be dangerous, and the truth even more so. The others have the benefit of being free and single.
But it wasn’t the fact that we skipped the game that makes today such a memorable milestone. It’s what we did behind closed doors in one of the lodge’s bedrooms.