She sat in a summer dress of silvery white, atop a little wall overlooking the brook. He stood with one foot on the wall, leaning forward, elbow on knee, moodily watching the fallen cherry blossoms float on the rippling water passing. Slim white trees stood to either side of the crystalline stream.
Upstream, uphill, the fountainworks in the wide gardens poured into the stream in little waterfalls. White peacocks walked among the rosebushes and statues. Beyond, atop the green hill, commanding a pleasant prospect, an ancient mansion loomed, columns and windows gleaming bright beneath dark roofs of slate.
“Lee,” she finally said, “I don't care what you believe or who you think you might be. Those beliefs don't affect who you are. Or who I am, or who I want to be. And I want to be Mrs. Catherine Asteria.”
“I tell you, I can step from this age into another, or fly through the aeons with the speed of dreams. It's a power whose temptation I sometimes can resist…”
“Lee, I don't see that it matters.”
“Oh, it matters. To others if not to you,” he said. “For I have brothers who can do the same; some of them are my enemies. Our heritage is passed in the blood. Any child you bear me might likewise have this curse of timelessness.”
“Curse?”
“There is always a danger to time traveling, a temptation to change the past again and again, until one goes too far. It is addicting…”
Lelantos Ophion Asteria was a handsome man. Gold was his hair, and green his eyes. His face was gold as well, tanned by wind and sun.
She said warmly, “We've been seeing each other ever since Mont Blanc. I've seen you under pressure, during emergencies, during snowstorms, when we were cut off from the other climbers. I've seen how you act, how you think. That's what I fell in love with.”
He shook his head. “Hear me out. You may not be so quick to marry me if you knew all.”
“I know enough,” she said firmly. “Do you think I haven't thought about this? Suppose you were a member of a cult or some weird religion. I'd still marry you. Because all these months could not have been an act. And if your beliefs don't change how you act, what you are, then I'll live with them. I'll love them, because they're yours. But I don't have to believe them.”
He reached down with one hand and she placed her slim hand in his. Fondly he smiled as he squeezed her fingers.
Catherine said, “My brother-in-law believes in ghosts and says he's seen them. My sister doesn't and she hasn't. They're happy.”
“She might not be, if she were haunted.”
“What are you saying?”
He straightened up. “Our family has a marriage custom. A test… Before we marry, you must spend a night in the library of Ophion House, in the museum room.”
She turned her head away, looked down at her shoes.
“What's wrong?” he asked.
“I know that rich men have to be suspicious of women who want to marry them. Maybe sometimes they put on weird acts, or stage strange effects to scare off the insincere. If you have something like that planned, don't bother. If you don't know me well enough by now, Lee, if you don't trust my motives, then we can call it off.”
He reached out and gently put his hands on her shoulders. She rose to her feet, but kept her head turned away. With one finger on her chin, he tilted her averted face up toward him.
Smiling down into her eyes, he said, “I have something wonderful to show you, my dear, my love. Come along.”
He put his long, buff-colored coat around her shoulders. “But it's not cold today.”
“Not today,” he said, and he took her by the hand and led her up the hill.
At first they passed the trees which lined the stream, and when they came among the trees, autumn colors were blooming among the leaves. And with their next few steps, they trod upon a multi-colored carpet of fallen leaves, and bare branches overhead swayed in wintry winds.
When they reached the gardens, he picked her up, so that her slim white shoes would not be wetted by the snow. The fountains were clogged with ice, the marble goddesses and heroes were pale with frost, and the dry grape arbors had icicles depending from the lattice work. She shivered against his chest.
He put her down once they had circled the main house, and little shoots of spring grass were shooting up amidst the profuse beds and congregations of Maytime flowers.
By the time they approached the main door, the grass was green and long, the sun was hot, and the elms and oaks had gone from buds to thick and verdant summer leaves.
A double row of oaks lined the drive leading to the main doors of Ophion House. Lelantos gently pushed Catherine into hiding behind a tree, and pressed close behind her, his arms to either side of her, supporting her. She was nearly fainting, and stood grasping the tree for support, staring at the house.
She saw that his Roadster stood idling in the circle before the doors, festooned with ribbons and flowers, with long strands tied to the rear bumper trailing shoes and cans. On the stairs of the portico, a noisy, cheerful crowd stood facing the doors, men dressed in handsome black tuxedos, women garbed in silks and satins, with flowers woven in their hair.
“It is now a year later,” he breathed in her ear. “I wanted you to see our wedding day.”
A great cheer went up from the house, and the women threw rice into the air as the bride and groom appeared at the door.
Catherine clutched the bark to the oak, and her breath caught in her throat. “That's me!”
“That's you. Run forward now, and you might catch the bouquet.”
But Catherine did not move. “Oh,” she sighed, “Oh my… I look so happy. Look at how I'm laughing! Look at my dress! It's gorgeous! I want a dress just like that for my wedding!”
Her face flushed with joy, standing on tip-toes, the bride smiled and waved toward the oak trees as if she knew they were there, as a lacey white veil, sheer as smoke, floated around her flower-crowned head. The bridegroom winked in their direction. Then the crowd swirled in around the newly-married pair, shouting with good cheer.
The couple fled the pelting rice, laughing, and leapt into the waiting Roadster. With a humming roar, the machine whirled down the lane between the trees, a cloud of dust speeding away behind it.
The noise of the crowd faded away like the sound of an old newsreel. Lelantos walked toward the house, drawing an amazed Catherine drifting, eyes wide, behind him. By the time they reached the lowest step, it was dusk, and the crowd had vanished. When they reached the door, the stars were gleaming cold in the dark above, and the hall clock was whirring and ringing midnight.
“How can this be possible?” Catherine breathed softly.
“All men can reach with their minds into the past and future, with memory and imagination. My family was forced to learn how to bring ourselves along as well.”
“Forced?”
“We come from a future of fire. The smoke of the burning has blotted out the sun, moon, and stars. It is a time of darkness; the streams and seas are turned to blood. Earthquakes swallow islands into the ocean and throw down mountains. Mankind has died in plague and poison, or burnt, or choked, or starved, or drowned or been buried alive. The first father and mother of my family, Lif and Lifrasir, the last of all mankind, escaped death by fleeing down the corridors of Time. We don't know why. Perhaps the moment when there was no future left at all allowed the past to open up her gates. The pair fled to the farthest future, after time itself had ceased, exhausted, and discovered the empty towers of Metachronopolis, the golden City Beyond Time. New names were given them, Chronos and Rhea, when they mounted the diamond thrones and donned the robes of pallid mist. They opened the mirrored gates of splendor into the creation reborn.”
She looked around at the summer night, at the rustling trees and the silent statues in the moonlight. “I thought things would blur and flicker when we time-traveled.”
“I only stepped on the same hour each day as we came up the hill.”
“And what year is it now?
”
“It is midnight of our wedding day; as we came up stairs, I only took strides measuring an hour. The house is empty; all have gone to celebrate.”
“But why didn't things jump when we went from one hour to the next? I didn't see the stars spin, or the clouds whip past.”
“Nature admits of no discontinuities, no gaps. The force of Time will always mend itself, to make things appear as likely and as near to right as they may be.”
“And if you go back and shoot your father before you were born?”
“I would never shoot my father. He owes me money.”
“No, seriously.”
“Time would conspire to supply you with a father as near to yours as it might do. Even his name might stay the same. You have encountered odd and inexplicable coincidences? These are the scars of time, the ripples of my brothers as they pass among you. Where time cannot make a clean and even compensation for some paradox, unlikely coincidences attempt to supply the deficit. If they can. If they can.”
“And if no coincidence will stretch that far?”
A strange and haunted look came onto his face. “Without the strong foundation of cause and effect to sustain oneself, one fades. One becomes a paradox, an apparition, and then a ghost, a shadow, a whisper, a memory, a forgotten dream, and eventually… nothing.”
He shook his head and opened up the door, “No more. You must go in; you know where the museum is. Wait there.”
“For what?”
“To see if you will change your mind.”
“Lee, I'm scared.”
“Then kiss me. But you still must go in.”
The corridor was tall and dark, and Catherine walked down the hall alone. To either side, moonlight glanced off standing racks of armor, displays of weapons and coats of arms, grim portraits, tall vases, and the polished wood of the banister.
She climbed the sweeping stair one hesitant step at a time, flinching at the echoes of her footsteps, staring up at the glitter of moonlight amidst the crystals of a darkened chandelier. Then she walked down a hallway carpeted in plush red, until she came to the tall doors leading into the library.
The doors opened with a whisper of hinges.
To either hand, rows on rows and shelves on shelves of books rose up in the moonlit gloom. Wheeled ladders clung to high shelves. Overhead, balconies led to even higher shelves lost in the high-vaulted darkness.
At the far end of the room, windows two stories tall shimmered in the moon, their diamond-shaped panes embracing starlit pines beyond. The slanting silver light fell along the long table which stretched from door to window.
To either side of the tall windows, glass cabinets and shelves held old swords, busts and pottery, racks of ancient coins, stone arrowheads, strange rusted shapes of metal. Standing to either side of these cases, near doorways opening left and right, were manikins, garbed in embroidered jackets, faded with archaic dust, or wearing lace point dresses from another age. One manikin was outfitted in scale mail, plumed helm atop, with hoplon and tall spear nearby; another wore the once-bright uniform of Napoleon’s Hussars, a rusted sabre dangling at its side.
Catherine came slowly forward, her footsteps silent on the carpet. The smell of old books and old leather was around her. She pulled her fiancée’s long buff coat, which she still wore, more closely around herself, and she shivered.
There seemed to be an extra manikin standing near the museum, one dressed in a long vestment of metallic pale fabric, whose color the dim light did not reveal.
Catherine stopped. The woman in the metallic dress turned, and shimmers rippled up and down her dress front. Her face was thickened and lined with age, her features overpainted with makeup which could not hide the sagging lines of dull bitterness beneath.
Her hair was like a young woman's hair, lustrous and piled in intricate shining folds. It was neither dyed, nor was it a wig, it looked like real hair somehow made to look young by some art or method unknown to Catherine.
Next to the other woman's ears hovered two small ornaments, like earrings, except that they were not attached by any means Catherine could see. As the older woman turned her head, the floating ornaments kept station, turning as she turned.
“Mother?” Catherine asked.
“I hadn't remembered that I said that when I first saw myself. I suppose I look that old to you; pain ages a person, you know. Pain and disappointment.”
The older woman looked carefully at Catherine. She whispered to herself, “I could never have been so young and innocent…”
Catherine said in a tense, hollow voice, “You are my future self.”
“The family picks their wedding nights to bring their prospective brides to see themselves. It's the one date no one ever forgets.” Sarcasm edged her tone.
Catherine stiffened. Her stomach felt empty. “I don't think I want to hear what you're here to say.”
“No, you don't. I've come to tell you not to marry Lee.” The old woman's eyes narrowed, glistening with cynical wisdom. “You don't want to live through the fights, the reconciliations, the false hopes, the betrayals, the divorce. Just the bother of finding a church that permits divorce will leave scars, memories that don't die and won't shut up. ”
“This can't be true! I love him…”
Lines gathered around the corners of the older woman's mouth. “If there wasn't something he loved more, it might have worked. If he had been willing to work at it. Or even given an inch, just half an inch.”
Catherine shook her head. “I don't want to believe it… Wait a minute. If I listen to you, you'll eliminate yourself!”
“That's not how it works, dear. My world will change for the better. Perhaps I'll remember how it would have been, if I want to, like remembering a bad dream. I'm not that different than how I would have been had I not married Lee; I'll survive.” The elder Catherine laughed, a small, sad hiccup. “Of course, that's what he always says. He always thinks his changes will improve things, even when he starts to fade.”
Suddenly, the older woman eyes were glistening with tears. She turned away.
Catherine stood still, not knowing what to do or say. The library loomed dark around her.
The older woman said in a forced tone, “I had forgotten what I looked like, how full of hope I was. How foolish I was. And this place, this library, all those damned things on the wall.” She waved her hands toward the museum shelves.
The older woman turned. “You don't even know what I'm talking about, do you? They can only reach areas of time they know; Lee has to read these books—they're all history, you know—and run his hands over these artifacts to get into the mood to find the time they come from. Otherwise the mirror is just fog. He can't get into the future, unless he can clearly see how it will be.”
“What caused the… the divorce?”
“Come along.”
The older woman turned toward one of the doors and opened it. Rose-red light, as of the dawn, spilled through the open door. On that side of the door, the windows of the little reading room beyond showed twilight. Birdsong rang through the air. On this side of the door, it was midnight, and the windows here showed the same landscape, the same trees and statues, except for the stars floating in the black night.
Catherine stepped into the room. Here was a fire place, several chairs, a small table. The room was filled with rosy shadows. Along the ceiling flickering shadows leaped and flowed, but there was no fire in the grate.
The older woman stepped toward the window, and pointed. “Look.”
Outside, there was a bonfire roaring. Scraps of blackened paper, pages from books, floated and swirled in the boiling clouds. Covers of books cracked and burned in the mass of the fire. There were piles of other books upon the lawn and; a man who looked like Lelantos, except that his hair was white, was tossing books one at a time into the flames. Tears were trailing down his harsh, lined face.
“When is this?” Catherine said, looking out at the future version of Lelantos. The books w
ere not alone. On the lawn next to the pile of unburnt books loomed the wreckage of slashed portraits, broken busts and other artifacts from the collection in the museum.
“Another date I won't forget,” the older woman said. “It is the time he really tried to give it up.”
“Time travel?”
“Lee can't find any future further forward than this. He couldn't imagine himself ever giving it up; he couldn't imagine what the house would look like without all his ancient artifacts cluttering it up. But every time he goes back in time, more paradoxes collect. He gets more forgetful. Once or twice it got so bad he turned insubstantial. That scared him. He went back, and, even though he couldn't touch anything, he managed to undo what he had done, and he was solid when he came back again. I don't mind when he does it for some good reason, like the investments when he plays the market, or to help us during the war—there's going to be a war in a few years, dear—but going back to the Middle Ages to play with Arthur and his knights, or when he's off to Troy to try to save Hector's life… I even think he sneaks off to watch gladiatorial games in Imperial Rome. In fact, I'm sure of it. He's addicted to bloodshed. He went back to watch the battle of Poitiers a dozen times. Once he told me that one of his brothers goes back to Hiroshima just before the atom bomb, and commits terrible crimes, horrid things, rape and torture, just to do them, just because he can get away with it, because all the evidence will be burnt away and no futures depend upon what will come out of it. But I don't think he was talking about a brother. He was talking about himself. He was trying not to smile when he told me. He can't quit. He'll never quit. And one day he'll just evaporate.”
At this point the older woman was openly in tears. Catherine was looking at her in fear and dread.
She thought: Is becoming this old wreck all I have to look forward to?
The older woman clutched her arm. “You've got to promise me you won't marry him! It's not worth it!”
“How can I know I'll be happier if I don't?”
“I've never met a version of us who never married him. Of course not,” her elder self said, wiping her eyes. “Those versions can't get back through time to meet us.” Her makeup had streaked and run, but then, of its own accord, flowed back up her face and corrected itself.