Arrows of Time - Kim Falconer [37]
‘And how well do you speak it?’ he interrupted.
Rosette looked into his ocean-blue eyes. At that moment, they seemed like the only drop of colour in the world. ‘I guess I’m pretty fluent now.’
‘And how many tunes do you know on the penny whistle?’
She knew it was more than she could count on both hands.
‘That’s how long we’ve been looping,’ he said.
She couldn’t dispute it. They must have been here, going round and round, for a very long time. Rosette covered her face with her hands.
‘A year of this or more?’ she whispered. ‘That could be decades in my world.’
Or minutes, Maudi. We don’t know. Her familiar got up and strode back into the cave. I’m going to find a rat.
Hungry after all?
No, but if it’s been a year, I ought to be.
Yeah, me too.
She’d tried to get a message through the portal to Kreshkali. She’d even thought of taking them all back to Gaela, but they never got that far. They couldn’t cross the threshold before the tremors started. Within seconds she would find herself charging through the swamp towards the oak tree, Drayco and Shane at her side, or some other version of that now familiar scenario. She sighed. ‘It feels impossible.’
Shane leaned his head towards her. ‘I don’t know that word. What’s it mean?’
‘It means something can’t be done.’ She smiled and gave him another nudge. ‘I’m not supposed to know the word either.’ She paused. ‘Shane, what if it’s always like this?’
‘Pardon?’
‘What if this is how life is, a continuous repetition of events, only we don’t realise it?’
‘You mean, what if we aren’t trapped but simply aware?’
She nodded. ‘What if…’
‘Stop! I don’t want to think about it!’
She shook her head, the ends of her long black hair lifting in the breeze.
Maudi? I’ve found something.
‘What is it, my lovely?’
In the cave. Come look.
Rosette got up, Shane at her heels. She led the way back into the cave, following the sound of her familiar’s thoughts. At first she worried about them getting separated if he wandered off, but not any more. It didn’t seem to matter what she did, or said, or where she went. It didn’t make any difference if she was crushed under the falling rocks, sucked into the mire of the swamp or stranded up the gnarly old oak tree. Whatever choice she or Drayco made, they continued to experience a replay of variations of the shaker, meeting Shane, and their bafflement. Shane was right. Judging by how far both their musical playing had advanced and their grasp of each other’s native tongue, it had definitely been going on for quite some time, though it felt like less than a day to her. She smiled suddenly.
This is relativity! I really get it now.
Stop pondering, Maudi, and come. I’ve found something new.
On my way.
Rosette never knew how long they had between intervals, before the sequence would start to replay again. She wearied at times with the thought of it, although her familiar remained light-hearted. The time loop didn’t seem to be affecting him at all, and she took that as a good sign. If it wasn’t damaging their health, if it was only a puzzle for the mind, she could figure it out.
‘What’s the big discovery, Dray?’ she asked aloud as she approached her familiar.
He sat by the edge of a pool nestled deep in the recesses of the cave. Sunlight fell onto the top of his head, streaming down from a fissure in the vault above. The temple cat turned gold in the light, like a statue above the shimmering surface of the water. He licked his chops.
‘You found a big pool? That’s something new, I suppose. Good work, though I don’t imagine us having time to swim.’ She sniffed her armpit. ‘Why don’t I smell worse than this, if it’s really been a year?’
A year, or more, Maudi. But water’s not the big deal. I found cave fish!
‘Cave fish?’
Many of them. Come look.
‘You brought me back into this hole, another earthquake about to crush us, to look at a bunch of fish?’
I believe it’s called a ‘school’, Maudi.
‘What’s he got?’ Shane asked as he reached the edge of the pool. His face brightened as he studied the surface. ‘Cave