16...

“The Key”

She rose shakily to her feet and made her way over to the door, leaning against the frame. She

caught a glimpse of Akish vanishing down the hallway on her left. Their parents’ voices also echoed from

that direction. One door stood off to the right.

Note clenched tightly in hand, Pima rushed the door, flung it open, and ran inside. Not stopping

to throw more than a cursory glance at her parents where they stood over their diagram-strewn table, she

cut a path straight across the room to the next door. And then through the next, and the next.

She had to give them as much time as possible. She had to go as far back as she could.

She slowed when she reached the third door. Same room. Same table. But her mother was absent. Instead, her father was sitting across from the man she recognized as Neeman’s father.

The sight distracted her for a second too long, and she crashed face first into the door.

“Jaru? Jaru?”

“Hmmm?”

Neeman’s father laughed. “You seem a little distracted today. Is there something…anything...you

might want to tell me...”

Jaru flashed a smile. “I’m not supposed to say anything, but Amoli...she’s…”

“Is she?”

Jaru tapped the side of his nose and grinned wider.

“Congratulations! How far along?”

Pima shook her head to clear it and grasped the doorknob. A shock ran through her. The door

swung open, and on the other side...nothing.

She teetered on the edge. She felt an overwhelming urge to step off into that blackness. She’d

reached the end, and a small part of her was curious to see what lay past the final door.

She heard her father’s response as if through water. “Not long. We haven’t told anyone yet.”

“What strange times these are. Our families are growing. Our careers are advancing. We’re about

to change the world forever. These are truly the best years of our lives.”

“I don’t know about all that, Vidish, but it certainly is exciting.”

A hand appeared in the darkness, reaching out for her. Pima extended her hand, placing it in the

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apparition’s. She let her breath out and took a step forward, but instead of pulling her in, the apparition

caught her and shoved her back. As soon as her feet hit solid ground again, she scrambled back toward her

father.

“Here we go!” Vidish said, returning to the table with two glass bottles. “Cheers!” he exclaimed,

handing one to her father and lifting his in the air.

“Cheers!” Jaru raised his glass to his lips and took a sip. “Okay, now about these numbers. I’m not

sure…”

“Dad.” Pima pushed herself along the wall. Her head was pounding; her vision swam. She had

come as far as she could go. Before she took that final jump off the cliff, she had to make good her

promise.

“Dad. Here.” She held out the paper; he looked right through it. She moved so that she stood in

the light and her shadow fell across the floor; he turned the other way. She screamed and yelled. “Dad!

Listen to me! Take it! Why won’t you listen to me?” He was deaf to her pleas.

In anger, she slammed the scrap of paper with her hastily written note on top of the page he was

looking at, but it fluttered to the floor and drifted under the table.

“No!” Pima yanked on her hair and slammed her fist into the ground. “Why isn’t this working? This has to work! Dad! Dad, please!” Tears, salty with sorrow and hot with anger, flowed freely down her

face. She scrambled to pick up the note and ended up laying on her back, unable to find the will to sit back

up. “Please, Dad. Please. Please listen to me. Stop. Listen to me.”

The Tower was playing tricks with her mind. The light in the room dimmed. Every noise was

amplified inside her head until it was like she was surrounded by a raging tornado. The door at the end of

the room that led to nothing grew closer and closer as the room shrank. Or she was moving toward it. She

didn’t care anymore.

The door opened, and her father’s expressionless face stared down at her in pity. “Come,” the

guardian said, and in its voice, she heard a door slam and a cat screech and a baby cry. It held out its hand

to her again, but she made no move to take it.

“Why?” she moaned.

“You don’t belong here.”

“Why?”

“You had to see---”

“Why?”

“It’s over, Pima. You don’t belong here.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No!”

“Yes!”

With a crack like the final toll of a clock, the Tower pronounced its judgment, and the vision

broke. The floor buckled, the room was turned upside down, and Pima found herself sliding toward the

door. It swallowed her up and spit her back out, shaken but on her feet.

She was standing in the hallway outside the threshold to this maze of time that she had entered.

But it wasn't the same hallway. It couldn't be. Everything was flipped, and the wall was an insubstantial

thing, a shimmering barrier between her and her father, who was approaching his side of the wall with the

ominous lock from the other side.

“Dad? Dad! Stop! What are you doing? Dad, don’t!”

She ran toward the wall. Her key was still stuck in the lock. She tried to turn it, throwing her full

weight at it and screaming in frustration. But it was no use. Was it even meant to be used from this side?

There must be another door. Another lock. Something. She scratched at the wall, desperately trying to

peel back the layers of metal to find the secrets that it kept buried.

On the other side of the shimmering, transparent wall, Jaru, oblivious to his daughter’s presence,

halted before the keyhole and took a deep breath. He shook his hands out as if dispelling nerves and

glanced over his shoulder at the group of shadowy figures who watched him from the top of the stairs.

One of them gave a thumbs up, and Jaru turned back and produced an identical version of Pima’s key

from his coat pocket.

He slid the key into the lock and turned it. There was a click. And then a horrible scream.