Chapter 4
One Timeline; Two
Camden arrives a short while after, half his hair tied up in his usual ponytail. He presses a hand to his sister’s shoulder, and she pats his back.
Camden holds up a woven mouse he grips by the tail in his other hand, a mishmash of scraps of straw and burlap and fabrics worn out beyond reuse. “I have a present for Astra.”
“Little busy,” Katelin says.
Camden looks between Seneca and Icarus, then drops his eyes to Astra, who’s still the closest one to the two newcomers by far, easily within reach of Seneca to grab her, to stab her with a knife squirreled away in a shirt, a waistband, a sleeve, somewhere I can’t see. Easily within reach of Icarus to gouge her with talons curved into fatal points, to tear at her sensitive flesh with his beak, to peck at her, to rip at her, to pummel her with bony taloned fists made of scaled toes, to arrack my stepdaughter.
I can see a hundred ways they attack my stepdaughter and send her to Lucius, shattering my heart and my promise to Freedom.
But neither does any of those things. Seneca watches with a small smile, and Icarus allows Astra to hop around him, firing off a thousand questions, then a hundred more before the golden eagle can answer.
“She’ll be happy to see the mouse,” I murmur, voice tight. I square my shoulders and arch my neck. “Astra, please come here.”
Jabez approaches Seneca and Icarus, body tense from pain and fear. I take a few steps closer, resisting the urge to race forward and barge between the two newcomers and Astra, in case doing so spooked them. I do not want them going after Astra, but with her so close, I have to get her away first. I could blast them with my portal magic, but I cannot risk Astra getting caught within the blast itself. I don’t know what kind of magic Seneca or Icarus may possess, and I do not want Astra getting caught in the crossfire.
“Why isn’t he talking?” Astra asks, achingly oblivious. “Why can’t he speak?”
Normally I wouldn’t mind; I’d slow down and explain things clearly and honestly but simply until she understood at the level that satisfied her curiosity. But in this case, her curiosity and obliviousness has gotten her into the situation.
“Go over to your…” Seneca looks up at me from where she still sits on the log, the question clear in her expression, but she seems to recognize what’s going on— that I want Astra away from her and Icarus.
“Brook is my stepmother. I have two moms! Isn’t that cool?” Astra bounces on her paws as Jabez tries to lead her away, steps stiff.
She ducks under Jabez when he leans, pressing his shoulder gently into her head to nudge. He doesn’t move his neck; I don’t think he can from pain. He hasn’t said much and doesn’t say much about how he feels, but he has tells that I’m slowly learning. He has subtle actions of what he does or doesn’t do that give away how he’s feeling, even when he says nothing.
“Yes, that’s very cool. That’s very special that you have two mothers,” Seneca murmurs, nodding along. She jerks her head at me. “Why don’t you head over to your stepmother? She seems pretty worried about you.”
Astra turns toward me, eyes wide with innocence. “Why are you worried, Brook?” She turns back to Seneca. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Seneca, but why don’t you go back over to Brook. I think she’s very worried about you.”
Astra trots over to me. When she bunts her forehead against my foreleg, then winds around my legs, tail trailing behind her, I feel myself begin to relax, but only by a little. Astra rubs her cheek against my leg.
“I’m sorry you were worried,” she says.
“I wish to ensure your safety,” I reply. “That is something I cannot and will not budge on.”
“I know,” Astra says, bouncing up to put her forepaws a little above my wrist.
She cranes her neck backward, and I see Jabez cringe, shifting his shoulders at what I assume is a reaction to the extreme range of motion Astra’s doing. The snake’s fangs are still embedded in Jabez’s neck, and, pressed right up against his vertebrae how Wyatt said they were, he cannot rotate his spine how he should be able to. The wounds have scarred over in gnarled patches of furless skin, angry and reddened from where the snake’s venom dripped for the entirety of the time the Amethyst Throne had him chained.
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The pain.
Jabez told me it was ok. He survived. It’s not. The King has taken everything.
The monster. He has to go, but how? We can’t touch him.
I look up at the King’s castle, both so close and so far, untouchable from the Sea, looming in its size and simple presence. I can almost feel the energy of the Amethyst Throne from where I stand.
xxxx
“Can you get back?” Camden asks.
Seneca shakes her head. “No. The King. Our King, the one on the Carnelian Throne, has all but destroyed Ragdon. He took everything from the ground, and he’s made everything built but his castle uninhabitable, much like here. I’m not sure there’s anything to go back to, even if we could, but still, I think it was a one-way kind of journey. Neither Icarus nor I could ever figure out a way to travel between the timelines of Ragdon, and only when Arcane shed the Midnight Tear in that unusual event of doing so could we travel between the timelines? The average being must admit it was really rather unusual.”
“How did Arcane bring two timelines together?” Katelin asks.
I nuzzle into Astra’s forehead when she sits down and leans into me.
“I don’t think he officially did,” Seneca replies. “Only Icarus and I left our timeline of Ragdon. Everyone else stayed with the King. Our King, the King on the Carnelian Throne.”
Camden rubs his chin.
“The Midnight Tear splits a timeline into two,” he says. “I guess that Arcane might’ve possessed the ability to interfere with the timelines, but I thought a Midnight Wolf could only split a timeline into two. How would he have been able to access another timeline of Ragdon he’s not a part of, then bring two beings back to this timeline of Ragdon?”
“What happened when you went from the Ragdon with the King on the Carnelian Throne to this Ragdon with the King on the Amethyst Throne?” Katelin asks.
I prick my ears, taking a step to put Astra beneath my abdomen. I ready myself to portal myself and Astra away. There’s few places to go on Ragdon; the Sea is the only place inhabited apart from the King’s castle or the Barracks. A few live elsewhere, but virtually all live in the Sea. When the Guard and Soldiers came for me and Astra in the Field, they almost killed us. I cannot be caught alone again. Under such an attack, I cannot portal away. I need a bit of time to summon the magic needed to portal and direct the energy, even if I’m just telling my magic to take me and Astra anywhere else.
Icarus chatters, giving Seneca a pointed look. The feathers on his head raise, as he pushes himself up off the ground to stand. His talons curve in long, deadly points.
“Icarus says that he was sucked into whiteness and he was floating for a while, but that when he was spat back out, he was on a Ragdon that looked very similar but not quite the same. I was near him, and that’s when we realized that we were in another timeline of Ragdon. We’re here now.”
“Why can’t he speak?” Astra repeats, looking up at me.
“It seems Icarus has his own way of communicating,” I say. “He and Seneca have been talking with each other. He chirps to communicate. We talk like humans do to communicate.”
“Icarus can shift into a human,” Seneca explains, “but the binding on his wing keeps him from being able to do so.”
Astra’s face falls and she pouts. Her ears fall to the sides. “That’s sad. We should go talk to the King and explain that he should take off the binding.”
Katelin huffs a laugh that she stifles behind her hand. She pushes her hair behind her ear, then smoothes down her shirt. “Astra, I appreciate your positive thinking, but I don’t think the King will listen to that.”
“Why not? If we explain it really clearly, then he’ll have to listen because it’s the facts.”
“He’s… he…” Katelin sighs, and I can tell she doesn’t want to have to explain to Astra that the King doesn’t think like she does.
“The King on the Carnelian Throne doesn’t care about facts,” Seneca says. “He only care about what he thinks is true, whether or not it actually is. The objective truth doesn’t matter to the King on the Carnelian Throne. To him, what he thinks is true becomes the truth.”
“Why?” Astra asks.
I sigh, wishing I had the words. I wish I knew some way to explain in just a few sentences. I wish I knew the answer myself. I wish I knew why the King —this King, the King on the Amethyst Throne— was the same as the supposed King on the Carnelian Throne in that he preferred the truth to align with his own beliefs, even if that then twisted truth did not align with reality.
“The truth has to be real,” Astra protests when no one speaks.
“Reality can be tricky,” Camden says, lips twisting into a wry angle. “The truth can be manipulated. What’s true depends on what someone believes. If someone can change what you believe, then they can begin to change what’s perceived as true.”
“But that doesn’t mean that what’s right and what’s wrong are any different. You have to be nice. Making someone not be able to fly isn’t nice. That would be like if someone made me not be able to run. That would be mean. The King shouldn’t do that.”
“You’re right, you know.” Seneca pulls a knee to her chest, forearm bracketing around her shin. Her green shoes dig into the peeling bark of the log. “What the King on the Carnelian Throne isn’t nice, but it’s more complicated than black and white, Astra.” Seneca leans on a hand, shoulder coming up to her ear as she takes a breath, licking her lips. “Right and wrong can be subjective, depending on who you ask. You and I would probably agree on a lot, but if you asked your King or mine, they’d give you a different answer.”
“That’s…” Astra huffs, stomping in a circle. She harrumphs, lashing her tail, careful not to hit me with the grey plates at the end. “That’s stupid. That’s not right. You… you can’t curse someone. You can’t do what they did to my father. You can’t be happy when they killed my mom. That’s not right. You can’t argue that it is.”
I duck down and press my muzzle into Astra’s shoulder, letting her know that I’m here. She can feel whatever emotions she is, but I want her to know that I’m here to support her however she needs me to.
Astra whimpers.