Chapter Eleven
I woke up hungry, miserable and stiff – but warm. Someone had started a small campfire near me. I pushed myself up groggily and peered through swollen eyes at my world. The sun rested on the eastern horizon, and the smell of burning wood was in the air.
I twisted to see the house, and my hope plummeted to the ground.
It hadn’t rebuilt itself, though it no longer gave off any smoke. Everything was ash and charred wood, a pile of black, except … the front door. It stood in all its glory, the worn, wood planks in their frame as if no fire had raged for two days around it.
Frowning, I blinked rapidly as I stood, uncertain I was seeing this right. How did the front door survive when the rest of the house was in ashes?
“Hungry?” Carey’s voice came from the direction of the shed.
I turned to face him. He had built a lean-to out of the extra wood left over from my days chopping tree trunks.
“Starving,” I replied and started towards him.
He smiled and beckoned me over to the makeshift shelter. “Bagels,” he said with a sheepish grin. “Kinda plain but I have tons of them.”
I said nothing and knelt, reaching for one without bothering to thank him. I ate three of the huge bagels before the hunger was gone and then downed the liter bottle of water he offered me.
Carey said nothing until I was finished, and I lowered the empty bottle. “So … how’s life?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t even know.”
“You went to Komandi?”
I nodded.
“Cold, isn’t it?”
“Very. Ice worms, dinosaurs and igloos … that happened, didn’t it?” I studied him. “I’m not going crazy?”
“No, you’re not. I hate visiting Komandi, too. Not a fan of the cold.”
“I’d be more concerned about the dinosaurs,” I retorted.
He laughed. “On Komandi, there are few predators. The planet is overrun with herbivores. It’s where we go to hunt.”
I shook my head, not caring what kind of dinosaurs they were. My gaze went to the pile of rubble left over from the house. “It’s really gone, isn’t it?” I asked, saddened.
“It is,” he confirmed. “But that doesn’t mean you aren’t meant to be a Caretaker. We each build our own home.”
I considered the idea with a frown. I could continue to live this bizarre life, dealing with aliens, or I could go home, serve my time and live a semi-normal life. I could pretend this insanity never happened.
But I’d never see Teyan again, if I did that.
Did it matter? It wasn’t like I could live in a world with monsters, and Teyan was clearly determined to save his from monsters. He wasn’t going to leave his people to stay with me. Where did that leave me?
My stomach sinking, I found myself reaching for the locket that was no longer there.
“How ‘bout it?” Carey asked. “You ready to become one of us?”
I gazed at the door, the only part of the house left standing. “I need to think about it,” I replied.
“Sure. The Caretaker chose you to succeed her. You have all the time in the world to decide.”
“Thanks.” I was a horrible person to begrudge an old lady who died in her sleep but I did. Restless, troubled by the idea I’d never see Teyan again, I stood. “I’m going to walk around and see if my phone charger happened to survive.”
“Good luck.” Carey leaned back against a pile of wood. “I can get us a ride to town if you want.”
I lifted my leg, where the ankle bracelet was still attached. “So can I,” I replied ruefully.
I walked away from him and circled the house again. There had been no basement, so I wasn’t worried about falling into a cellar and breaking my leg if I ventured into the charred home. In truth, I had no hopes of finding my charger or clothing but needed some time and space to think about my immediate future.
My gaze went to the end of the driveway and the fence that ran along the road. I didn’t understand how the portal between worlds worked but I doubted any interplanetary visitor was headed this way again, not until there was somewhere to stay.
Circling the house, I sighed unhappily when I walked through the space where my beautiful garden had been. I’d done one thing right in my life – and it, too, was gone.
I reached the scorched porch and paused, staring with no small amount of incredulity at the front door. Inching closer, I was able to confirm it hadn’t been touched by fire at all – even though the flooring beneath it, around it, and everything else was ashes. The heavy, thick wooden door that hadn’t ever fit right for the farmhouse remained when nothing else did. It seemed taller than it was, too, close to twelve feet when I knew for a fact the ceiling of the foyer was about nine feet tall.
Carefully making my way through the remains of the porch, I opened the front door and peered through it and across the backyard to Carey, who was on his phone, probably getting us a ride.
I stepped through carefully and stood in the foyer, gazing around in disappointment as I recalled how many times I’d opened the door for visiting aliens. I imagined the sitting parlors to my right and the stairs to my left and the kitchen down the hall, straight ahead.
I may have been upset, but I wasn’t going to miss the house itself. More the constant buzz of activity, the relatively simple life I’d led while here, and of course, my garden. I didn’t look forward to returning to New York to a real halfway house or worse – to jail. I kind of liked the open skies and quietness of the desert, despite the mid morning heat that was already uncomfortably warm. The prospect of losing this – and any chance of seeing Teyan again – filled me with an unexpected sense of loss.
Turning to face the front door, I tugged it closed and gazed up at it, unable to fathom how it had possibly escaped any damage whatsoever. Even the post-it note remained taped beside the bolt.
“Do not lock,” I read aloud.
Anger displaced my dismay. Was this how I was meant to live? Going from place to place and being forced to leave before I could get comfortable? I’d known no real peace since my seventeenth birthday.
Actually, longer. Since my father’s death left us destitute and scraping by. I’d had a job since I was fourteen, and my mother worked two shifts to make ends meet.
I was tired of this kind of life, of feeling like this – as if nothing I’d ever do would ever matter and any happiness I found would be fleeting.
It was stupid to believe I had a chance at anything with Teyan and even stupider to consider becoming a Caretaker, when everything I touched always turned bad. The door before me had miraculously survived a fire. We were alike – destined to watch the world around us fall apart, over and over.
“You and your stupid door,” I muttered to the Caretaker, glaring at the wooden monstrosity. Teyan aside, I wished I’d never been sent here.
I tore the post it note down and flung it then reached for the lock, bitterly realizing my sole disobedience of the Caretaker was one she’d never witness.
I locked the door and lowered my hand. My triumph didn’t last past the quiet acknowledgement that this solved nothing. All it did was –
Thunder smashed overhead so suddenly, I jumped. My eyes flew upward. In a blink, the sky was covered with gray storm clouds. A strong wind swept ashes past me, blinding me temporarily. I coughed and hid my eyes to protect them from the debris. Another crash of thunder made the ground beneath me tremble. The rain started then, fat drops that hurt when they hit me.
“Gianna!” Carey sounded panicked.
I twisted in the direction of his voice and risked a peek from the crook of my arm.
He was pale, alarm on his face. He dropped his phone as I watched and bolted towards me.
A gust of wind shoved me into the door, and I caught myself against it, squinting towards the sky.
The freakish storm wasn’t … natural. It appeared too fast and was too strong to be normal.
&nbs
p; “Unlock the door!” Carey shouted.
I froze for a second, not understanding the connection, before recalling how many times the Caretaker told me never to lock the door. Whatever was happening around me – the two were connected, even if I didn’t know why.
I obeyed and unlocked it.
In another blink, the storm was completely gone and the sky clear.
Lowering my arm, I looked around, dazed and then up at the bright blue sky. If not for my soaked clothing and the ash and debris stuck to the cloak, I would’ve doubted the storm happened at all.
“Oh, god!” Carey gasped as he reached me. “What have you done?”
“Nothing,” I replied.
He pushed me aside hard enough I fell to the ground. I caught myself and started to snap at him to be careful when I realized what was beneath my fingertips.
Dirt. Not ash or charred wood, but dirt. The concrete foundation was all that remained of the house. It formed a square around us. All signs of the abode being burned to the ground, of the pyre and shed that had been there ten seconds ago, were completely gone, as if someone had come out here and cleaned up everything. Not even the well was present.
Only the door remained.
“Carey, what’s going on?” I asked and climbed to my feet.
He was muttering and pacing, staring at the door then wringing his hands, completely oblivious to me.
Movement from the driveway caught my attention. Instantly, I thought of Teyan, and my heart soared at the thought of seeing him before I registered what was there.
No person was there, but something was nailed against the fence where nothing had been before the storm. The desert breeze lifted one corner, and it waved to me.
I glanced at Carey then started down the driveway at a trot. Careful not to leave the property, I went to the part of the fence where someone had piled something outside, beside the road, and leaned over to see.
It was a tiny memorial, the kind that I saw sometimes on the highway where someone had died. Several bouquets of dried flowers were accompanied by stuffed animals and at least one envelope partially buried beneath the sandy dirt.
When had people come by to leave the offerings for the Caretaker?
I leaned farther over to see the poster nailed to the side of the fence, and my breath caught. Unable to see it clearly beneath the dust covering it, I recognized enough to know it wasn’t the old lady’s picture on the fence. I leapt back from the fence and bolted to the driveway and then to the road, too frantic to heed the ankle bracelet.
I stopped in front of the memorial and gasped.
In loving memory of Gianna Dominico
My picture was nailed to the side of the fence. I brushed the dust away, hands quivering, and knelt. It was my yearbook picture from my junior year, before life went to hell. Nailed to the poster was a plastic baggy containing two newspaper articles. One was yellow and old while the other appeared relatively unscathed by the sun.
“I don’t understand,” I mumbled. After a moment of shock, I yanked down the newspaper clipping and tugged it out of the plastic covering. It was brittle and faded from the sun, but still readable. “On the ten year anniversary of the disappearance of Gianna Dominico, her mother continues to urge police not to give up searching for her daughter. The cold case has baffled state and federal law enforcement since the sudden disappearance of the nineteen-year-old following a fire at the …”
I stopped reading, and my mind felt frozen, heavy.
Ten years? Was this some kind of joke?
This can’t be happening. I stared at the photo of me, unable to process what I was seeing or how this was possible. The sense of my surroundings becoming surreal returned. For a split second, I wondered if I’d really returned to my world or one that only looked like it.
“What’s the damage?” Carey snatched the clipping from my hand.
Unable to respond, I continued to stare at my poster.
“Ten years. Okay.” He released a breath. “Could’ve been much worse.”
“I don’t understand,” I said hoarsely.
“What’s not to understand?” he replied and knelt beside me. “The door exists in the corridor between places, in a pocket where space and time do not exist unless both sides of the corridor are anchored in universes with similar passages of time. You locked the door. You closed the portal between worlds and broke the connection with our universes. Ten seconds in the corridor became ten years outside of it.”
“No,” I said and shook my head. “That’s not possible!”
“You went into a different dimension with dinosaurs, and you think this is impossible?” He was wringing his hands.
His logic hit me hard. “But ten years … my mother … she thinks I’m … and Teyan …” I stared at the poster, and my eyes began to overflow with tears. “I have to call her!” I pulled out my phone and stared at it. It was completely dead. Shifting onto my backside, I checked the ankle bracelet next. It, too, was dead. “Carey, I have to contact my mother!”
His gaze was on the door. “I don’t know what to do,” he said softly. “We never learned what to do if the doors got locked, only that we were never to lock them.”
“I don’t care about the stupid door or other universes!” I snapped and rose. I began walking, desperate to reach town so I could alert the police I was still alive and tell my mother as well. If this really happened, and I was ten years in the future, how much agony had she gone through over the past decade? I couldn’t imagine her reliving the pain we both experienced when we lost my father.
“We’re lucky you didn’t destroy a world. Although, we don’t know whether or not that’s true. We didn’t destroy your world. I think the portal was open to the Tili home world when you locked the door.”
Carey’s words stop me in my tracks. “What?”
“You won’t like this, but can you stay here? I’ll go to town and alert the Caretaker Council and the police that you aren’t missing anymore.” He drew alongside me as he spoke, features tight with worry.
“Are the Tili okay?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve got bigger issues right now, Gianna. The doors have never been locked – I don’t know what else might have happened since one of them was.”
My mind was on Teyan, and I looked back, towards the end of the driveway, where the visitors appeared and disappeared. If I hurt Teyan or his world …
And my mother and all our relatives …
My knees felt weak and my stomach roiled.
“Stay here,” Carey said. “I promise I’ll be back as soon as possible. Maybe some of the visitors will come through, now that the door is unlocked.” He began walking at a quick pace, towards town.
“Wait, Carey! What about me? Are you coming back?” I called after him, starting to panic. “What if someone comes through?”
“You’ll be okay.” His answer, while warm, was distracted. “You agreed to be a Caretaker. No one can hurt you.”
It wasn’t what I was asking, but I was gripped by such fear, I didn’t know what else to ask. I watched him walk away, helpless to stop him.
He paused and turned when he was about twenty feet away. “If a Nidiani named Jiod shows up looking for me, or if he comes through the portal, do me a favor and don’t tell him anything. You want to avoid him, just in case. He was the reason I came to see the Caretaker, and … Ten years.” An incredulous look crossed his features. “How much could he have done in ten years?” This question appeared to be for him, not me.
I blinked. What the hell was he talking about?
With a shake of his head, Carey turned and began walking again.
Don’t leave me. I couldn’t say the words aloud. I was working on not collapsing into a panic attack, but by the amount of effort it took to draw a breath, I was going to lose this battle.
How long would it take him to go twenty miles?
I wiped away tears. I was in no shape to join him, not when I couldn’t get th
e idea of my mother in pain, or Teyan dead, out of my mind. Woodenly, I returned to the end of the driveway and sank to the ground, staring into the space where the invisible portal was.
If no one came here, could I go to their worlds again? I didn’t quite understand how the portal worked, but I knew there were rotations. The visitors had always arrived in the same order every night and left at the same time in the morning.
I pulled the rock Teyan gave me from my pocket and rested it in my palm.
There were two images today. One, of my parents. The second was of him, standing at the portal on Komandi, smiling as I walked away.
“Oh, god,” I breathed. “Please, please, please don’t let me have destroyed his world!”