Eternity's Edge

  “Sorry. I didn't know that.”

  “Listen. Red's fit to be tied. Time is flying there, and she's sent me about a thousand messages. I can't keep up. I told her to cool her jets, but she says she's only sending a couple a day. And when you get back into cell range, you might want to put your phone on silent. It'll chirp like a coffee-addicted canary if you don't. She's probably sent you, like, a hundred text messages.”

  The mention of coffee perked Nathan's nose. He opened a kitchen cabinet, searching for the source of the aroma. “So what's going on in Earth Yellow?”

  “That Mictar freak tracked Francesca down, so Gunther took her and her father into hiding. Daryl's living with Kelly's father and grandfather, posing as an exchange student from England. It works out great, because Kelly's dad is handy with tools, so he helped her get her network stuff up and running. They have a pretty cool setup now.”

  “Can we find Francesca? We'll need her to play the violin.”

  “Red hasn't heard from her in a while. Gunther knows how to make contact, but I guess the heat's been on, so he doesn't want to risk it. The last time Red talked to him, he said that wherever he goes, people report him to Mictar — something about Gunther not being in their dreams. Any idea what he's talking about?”

  “Maybe, but it would take too long to explain.” Nathan withdrew a partially open canister of Folgers coffee from the cabinet. A small envelope fell in its wake and settled on the counter.

  “Anyway,” Daryl continued, “the bow is ready. Red wants to come home before she graduates from high school.”

  “Let me think a minute.” Nathan read the front of the envelope. The script said, “Daddy” in Kelly's handwriting.

  He glanced down the hall at the bedroom door. He could use her help in deciding what to do, but the phone was attached to the wall by a cord. He'd have to come up with an idea on his own.

  He and Kelly could go back to Earth Yellow. Maybe Gunther and Francesca would see them in their dreams and come out of hiding. But he really couldn't decide until he and Kelly solved the mirror puzzle and found the key to locating his parents.

  “I'll have to get back to you,” he finally said. “Tell Daryl Red to hang tough. We'll get her back home before she's an old lady.”

  “She's going to be ticked, but I'll tell her.”

  Nathan hung up and ran down the hallway. When he careened into the bedroom, Kelly stood close to the mirror, her gaze fixed on the reflection.

  “Paul,” she said softly. “Your middle name is Paul.”

  He eased close to her side and watched her eyes in the mirror. “Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and … uh … James something.”

  “Close enough.” She slid her foot over the spot where Jack had stood. “Do you think he was real?”

  “Hard to tell. He gave me something to check, though. I'll do it as soon as we get a chance.”

  She pointed at the mirror. “The colors faded.”

  “Faded? I don't see anything.”

  “Do you hear the notes? They're a lot softer now.”

  He shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “How does the circle of fifths work?”

  Nathan drew a circle in the air and pointed at the top. “In C Major, we need to find a C-natural and work around from there. Since you have perfect pitch, you should be able to pick it up.”

  “But I hear more than one C-natural.”

  He forked three fingers. “The C-natural we need,” he said, using his other hand to point at his middle finger as he wiggled the other two fingers in turn, “must have G-natural on one side and F-natural on the other.”

  “Okay. I get it.” She took the envelope from his hand. “What's this?”

  “Something I found in the kitchen by the coffee.”

  “The coffee?” She opened the envelope and slid out a folded card. “It's my handwriting.”

  “I noticed.” He leaned over to get a look, but she kept the card folded, reading the Hallmark poem on the front. “Is it to your father?”

  She nodded. “When I was little I used to write notes to him and put them next to the coffee. I knew he'd see them first thing in the morning.”

  “Are you going to read it?”

  “But I didn't write it. Kelly Blue did.”

  “Must have been right before she died. Her father never got a chance to read it before he got murdered.”

  “I guess it will be all right.” She flipped open the card and held it close to her eyes, blinking as she tried to focus. Nathan drew back while she read out loud.

  Dear Daddy,

  This is very hard for me to write, for a lot of reasons, but I have to say this in case something happens to me. You see, Nathan and I are about to do something very dangerous, and if I don't come back, I want to make sure you know what's on my mind.

  I always knew that Mom was the one who broke up your marriage, but when she left, I treated you like dirt. For some reason, I punished you for what she did. Now, I know you're not perfect, and you drove her crazy with all the sports you were into, but you didn't deserve how either one of us treated you. Mom broke your heart, and I should have been there to mend it. Instead, I stomped on it and smashed it to bits. I'm so sorry!

  Without Mom around, you had such a hard time! You always wanted a son, but you were stuck with a daughter, and you didn't know how to raise me, so you did it the only way you knew how. So, instead of being an expert in makeup and girly gossip, I know how to do a pick and roll, clean spark plugs, and shoot a can off the top of the last fencepost.

  Kelly, her fingers now trembling, turned the card over and read the back. Her voice rattled.

  I love you, Daddy, and I'm so sorry for how I've treated you. I take back all the terrible things I said about hating basketball, fixing cars, and hunting. In fact, I'm even wearing that safari outfit you bought for me, and I let Nathan use the one you bought for Uncle Bill so we would match. I'm sorry for saying it was ugly and didn't fit. It feels really good right now, like you're giving me a warm hug. If this is my last day on earth, I will die wearing your gift of love.

  Remember what Nathan told us about forgiveness. If I don't see you again on earth, I hope I see you in heaven.

  Kelly pressed the card against her chest. Her face twisted. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she lowered her head and wept.

  Nathan laid his hand behind her head and pulled her close. As she cried on his shoulder, the room seemed to grow cold as if haunted by the father and daughter who once lived there. It was a sad home, indeed. He could almost feel the aching hearts. After years of turmoil — a broken marriage, misplaced expectations, and too many unspoken words of love — Kelly Blue's father died without knowing what his daughter wanted to tell him. Yet, he died a hero. He blocked a shotgun blast to save a life.

  Nathan gave the imaginary ghost of Tony Clark a nod. You died to save me.

  One of the note's sentences repeated in his mind. Remember what Nathan told us about forgiveness. Apparently Nathan Blue had been bold enough to tell Kelly and Tony about what mattered most. He firmed his chin and nodded again. He would do the same. As soon as the time seemed right.

  After a minute or so, Kelly drew back, sniffing. “Can't … can't dwell on this. We have to … to move on.” She stuffed the envelope into her back pocket and shuffled to the mirror. Leaning close to the squares, she slid sideways along the carpet, listening to each one. As she eyed the mirrors above her head, her voice strengthened. “I'm too short to reach the higher squares.”

  Nathan pushed the trunk close to Kelly's feet. She stooped to listen to the lower squares and straightened as she moved from row to row, then climbed on the trunk when she reached the third row from the top. Finally, she paused just to the left of the center of the mirror and pointed at one of the squares. “I think I got it. This orange square is the C note we want.”

  He stood on tiptoes and touched the square to the left and just below the one she indicated. “Is this the F?”
r />   She nodded and pointed at the square to the right of the C and one row down. “And this green one is the G.”

  “I don't see the colors.” Nathan picked up his violin and bow. “Okay, listen for these notes. They should make a circle that goes down from the G and then around to meet the F. Since they're squares, it won't be a perfect circle, but it should be close.”

  He played a note. “That's a D-natural.”

  She pointed at the square one row down and to the right of the G. “Got it.”

  He played another note. “A-natural.”

  “Right here.” Again she moved down a row and one to the right. “Just play the note. You don't need to tell me what it is.”

  As he played through E – B – F-sharp – D-flat – A-flat – E-flat– B-flat, Kelly moved her finger from square to square, making as perfect a circle as the squares would allow. When he finished, Nathan set the violin down and studied the mirror, mentally drawing the circle Kelly had outlined.

  The twelve squares enclosed thirteen others, but one lay in the geometric center. He pointed at it. “What note is coming from that one?”

  Still on the trunk, Kelly bent slightly to set her ear close. “Another C-natural. Middle C.”

  “That's gotta be it.”

  When Kelly dismounted the trunk, Nathan slid it to the side and picked up his violin and bow again.

  “‘Foundation's Key’?” she asked.

  “Yep. Let's see what's there.” With the tune now memorized, Nathan played it through. Within seconds, the squares again showed their four-hundred different destinations.

  Together, Nathan and Kelly moved close to the mirror and studied the chosen square. It held a night scene, a cemetery with dozens of tombstones of various shapes and sizes dotting a hillside and casting long shadows in the light of a rising moon.

  In the midst of the purplish canopy above, a dark gash of emptiness stretched from one horizon to the other, taking up about a fifth of the sky.

  Nathan touched the glass where a tombstone rose, the very same marker Jack had knelt beside, but the inscription was far too small to make out.

  As if summoned by his desire to read the letters, the scene rocketed toward them, like a camera zooming in on a target. Could Scarlet know what he wanted to see? Was she the cross-dimensional camerawoman? When it stopped, the tombstone spanned the entire mirror.

  Nathan moved his finger away from the name and read it out loud. “John Alton Flowers.” As he stepped back, his hand trembled. “It's Jack. He's really alive in the dream world.”

  “How do we get him out?”

  “I'm not sure, but I can't worry about that right now.” He touched the image of the tombstone again. The view eased back until the dark gash in the heavens draped the square reflection. “It must be Earth Red. Gordon mentioned a rift in the sky.”

  “So, do we go there?” Kelly asked. “Flash a light and take off?”

  “I don't think so.” He nodded toward the hallway. “That call was from Daryl Blue. It's already been a couple of years on Earth Yellow, and the bow's finished, so Daryl Red wants us to come back and get her before she dies of old age.”

  “I don't blame her. Two years away from home! I can't imagine!”

  “But do we give her a break, or follow what we learned in the dream?”

  “Learned from the dream? You mean to kill the supplicants?”

  Nathan wagged his head. “Not that part. I could never kill Scarlet, or anyone else.”

  “Of course you wouldn't want to kill her, but your father said Patar would guide you in the right way, and Patar didn't exactly mince words.”

  Nathan stared at her. She was dead right. The other Nathan's empty eye sockets were a pretty good clue that Patar wasn't messing around. But if he could find his parents, he could explain to his father what was going on. Maybe Dad didn't know everything about Patar. He'd never condone killing the supplicants, even if it meant saving the universe … Or would he?

  “I meant the part about the key,” he finally said. “We know where it is now.”

  Kelly pointed at the square in the lower left corner. “Look! It's Daryl Red! And she's with my father … I mean, Tony Yellow.”

  Nathan crouched to get a good view. Daryl sat at a desk in front of a green-screen computer monitor, typing madly while Kelly's father stood next to her holding an umbrella over her head. A strange gadget was poised at the edge of the desk's surface. It looked like an old radio with a miniature satellite dish spinning slowly around. A drizzle of rain clouded the background of trees and shrubs, and droplets fell from the sides of the umbrella. Two orange extension cords trailed away beyond the mirror's edge.

  Her mouth hanging open, Kelly touched the glass. “She does look older. But what did she do to her hair?”

  Nathan took a closer look. Kelly's vision improved whenever she viewed Earth Yellow, so it made sense that she could notice details. Daryl's red hair had been pulled back and fastened tightly by a banana clip that left the rest of it in a mess of glitter-sprinkled ringlets blown about by the moist breeze. Her serious stare at the monitor gave her the aspect of a college student conducting research for a major project. She did, indeed, look at least two years older.

  “Maybe we should go there,” Kelly said. “We can get the bow and play that violin.”

  Nathan touched the square they had singled out earlier. “But this has to be the key. We can't ignore everything we learned in the dream, especially since Scarlet said we needed to use it.”

  Kelly nodded. “I guess you're right.”

  After finding a screwdriver and a flashlight in the garage, Nathan pried the key square loose and pulled it away. The other squares dimmed and slowly reconstructed the reflection, but the image of the dark cemetery in the square in Nathan's hands remained steady. Using the screwdriver again, he removed the square that had shown Daryl on Earth Yellow and placed it on top of the other one.

  He draped the camera strap around Kelly's neck and held up the flashlight. “We'll use this for our flash. It could come in handy in that dark place we're going.”

  “I have a better idea.” She picked up the violin and headed for the bedroom door. “Let's pack everything we might need and flash the mirror from inside the car. If Scarlet doesn't mind transporting everything, a stocked vehicle would come in even handier.”

  After stuffing the trunk and backseat with pillows, blankets, boxes of nutrition bars, and bottles of water, as well as the violin, the camera, and the two mirrors, Nathan tossed his empty backpack into the rear and slid behind the steering wheel. Kelly sat in the passenger's seat and propped the central key mirror on the dashboard. Since the car sat on the driveway in the same cold drizzle that apparently still plagued Daryl Red on Earth Yellow, the air within carried a moist chill.

  “Let's drive out to cell range,” Kelly said. “We can get an update from the two Daryls.”

  Nathan started the engine. “Gotta hurry, though. No telling how long the mirror will keep showing that cemetery.”

  While he drove, the rain eased up, allowing sunshine to peek around the fast-moving clouds. The holes in the dark blue sky seemed closer, bigger, even brighter. He kept glancing at his open cell phone. When the signal bars rose to an adequate height, he slid his finger toward one of the numbers. The phone suddenly trilled. Nathan read the screen. “Text messages. A bunch of them.”

  Kelly blinked at the display. “Can you go to the most recent?”

  “I think so.” Slowing down to pull onto the shoulder, he worked the phone's keys with his thumb. “I'll read the ones that came in this morning, starting with the earliest.”

  After shifting the car into park and cutting the engine, he read the tiny text.

  “Nathan, if you don't get your butt back to Earth Yellow pronto, I'm going to strangle you with a violin string. Love and kisses, Daryl.”

  “Nathan, I can't wait until doomsday. Then again, maybe doomsday is almost here. Signed, A Candle in the Wind.”

 
“Nathan, Kelly's dad keeps asking me out, and he's getting more aggressive. I told him to buzz off and get interested in Kelly's mom. Signed, The Other Woman.”

  “Nathan, if I don't hear from you today, I'll strangle Tony with a violin string, then myself. Well, I would if I wasn't so yellow. Signed, Daryl Red Singing the Blues.”

  He turned to Kelly. “That's the latest.”

  “How long ago did it come in?”

  Nathan checked the time stamp. “Just a few seconds.”

  “Then you can probably send her a message before her day is over.”

  “It'll be faster if I just tell Daryl Blue what to say.” He turned on the phone's speaker and pressed a speed dial. “You can listen in.”

  After half a ring, Daryl answered. “Nathan! Finally!”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Everything's wrong. Your land line doesn't work anymore, so I couldn't call you. Daryl Red's ready to kill Tony, and —”

  “Yeah, I picked up on that.”

  “But that's not the worst of it. We lost power at the observatory overnight, and we're almost out of generator power. In a few minutes, we won't be able to communicate with Daryl Red at all. She knows about it, and she's ready to jump off a cliff … if she could find a cliff in Iowa. And who knows how long cell service will hold out?”

  “Can you send one message for me?”

  “I'll try. We might only have a few seconds left.”

  He glanced at the mirror in the backseat, the square that would open a portal to Earth Yellow. What should he do? Go to the nightscape scene in the circle of fifths square and hope that Daryl somehow survives the ordeal? But even if she could cope, what if Tony kept his eye on her and not on Kelly's mother? That would mean no Kelly Yellow. Not only that, if he and Kelly traveled to the place Patar indicated, what might happen? If he succeeded in healing the interdimensional wounds and repelled interfinity, how could he ever risk allowing interdimensional travel again? Daryl Red would never be able to get home. He would save the universe but ruin her life and maybe a lot of other lives on Earth Yellow. Sure, that would be a reasonable trade-off, but who was he to make a decision like that?