The Spindles of Spacetime
Volume 3
A Thousand Seas - I
Content warnings (may contain spoilers)
This chapter depicts emotional manipulation, people dealing with grief, trauma responses, and memory loss.
Pala trawls the dark streets of San Francisco till she finds Fen sitting on a bollard in the wharf, a few metres from where she left him. As she sprints toward him, she starts to sob, and does not stop even when he pulls her into his arms.
“Pala, Pala, it's okay. What's wrong?”
She shakes her head, lips glued together. Arms still coiled around his waist, she leaps and pulls him backward, into the realm she calls the Future World, and he barely flinches when they soar through the breach.
There is a spot in the shade on the hills of Oʻahu where the weather is gentle at this time of year. It is the closest thing to home that they have found in any other world—any other world but one.
Only there, amid the sprinkling of sunlight, does Pala stop crying. Fen asks, “What happened?”
“T-they caught me,” she stammers, hugging her legs. “They tied me up and asked me questions. And I—I said too much.”
“What did you tell them?”
“Only things Liss said I could tell them…that she's going to become a god, that she can create explosions at will…but I—but I—” She parts her empty hands. “I lost the sketchbook. All my notes. My maps.”
“Oh…oh no.”
She trembles, wrapping her arms tighter around her knees. “What if Liss finds out?”
He squeezes her shoulder and feels the tightness of her muscles. “It's okay, it's okay. I copied down some of her info too. We can go get a replacement sketchbook…fill it back up, pretend you never lost it…”
She takes his hand, some of her terror evaporating at the suggestion. “I think…that's the best thing we can do now.” She steels her face. “Let’s do it. I’ll get one of my blank ones from—from my room.” He nods.
“We're two worlds up from home. Right?”
“That sounds right.”
“What memory are you going to spend this time?” Fen already has his notebook and pencil in hand.
“Um…the spam musubi in the canteen was fifty cents each, right? How about that?”
He scribbles this down. School canteen spam musubi 50c. “Okay. I've written it down. Ready when you are.”
As they rise to stand and take each other’s hands, everything—the dappled light, the rustling leaves, the rolling sky—pulls away into the distance in a seeping of light.
When they land, Pala feels her body go numb.
They are in her bedroom. But they shouldn't be. It’s one world too early.
She has not explored the tenth world all too much—she only knows that it seems to be in the same year as their home.
But this time, like a hand slipping into a glove, the longing for her sketchbook has brought her here.
Already, her mind it clouding—it even smells the same. The rusted ceiling light, the study desk, the faint jasmine perfume from outside. But the curtains are drawn over the window, and the entire room is bare, save for the furniture, draped with pale sheets. Three cardboard boxes are tucked in a corner. Her bare mattress leans against the wall, beside its empty bedframe.
Pala turns to Fen. His eyes are wider than hers. “Which world are we in?” he asks.
“The one that is the same year as ours,” she replies tonelessly.
She creeps towards the stack of boxes, the first of which has been sealed with tape. She gently pries the flaps apart again. Inside it, her stationery is nestled: her collection of novelty pencils, some of them cracked, her animal erasers, her notebooks and exercise books.
By the time she finds her missing sketchbook, three down, underneath a dog-eared exercise book of math problems, she is shaking.
She fishes it out, inspecting its ragged edges. “How did it get here?” she breathes, flipping it open. There are the same maps as the ones she lost, down to the head-spinning details, but the pages thereafter are pristine, untouched by Liss’ words—
“Joseph! Are you in there?” The voice of her mother cuts through the door. Pala freezes. Fen grips her arm. “I told you to stop checking! She's not going to show up, when will you learn?”
“Fen,” Pala whispers, wide-eyed. He nods and grips her wrist. She squeezes her eyes shut.
They are pulled from the world again.
*
They are on the beach, facing the deep blue Pacific. She knows it is the Pacific because it is warm and smells like home, its salty gales rolling over them. But the coastline beneath her feet is pale and strange, draped in snaking tidelines.
“Fen. Where are we?” she whispers.
He pulls his notebook and pencil from inside his messenger bag. A sure sign that she is meant to know the answer. “It's the beach of Havaiki City. Twenty minutes from home. Look,” he points out at the bay with his left hand, writing with his right, “it’s the Maude Rocks.”
She pulls closer to him. “The Maude Rocks…I remember those. But not the beach.”
“I'll remember it for you,” he answers. Havaiki City east coast. Facing Maude Rocks. The list of lost things grows.
Then he turns to her again. “This is our world, right? It's meant to be. The one before Liss’. Havaiki doesn't exist anywhere else.”
Pala nods wordlessly. “Except…we never checked the world before ours.”
He stares back. “Your mother—your mother was there. How was she there, too? Are there…two copies? Of our world?”
The words send a shudder through her. She reaches to wrap an arm around Fen’s. “What does this mean?” She squeezes her eyes shut. “Liss. We need to go back. She said to make sure we were back.”
“Let's pick the next memory,” he answers. “How about something that doesn't matter? Here,” he fishes around in his pocket, pulling out a blister pack, the foil crinkling, “the name of my meds. Deferasirox…”
“Defer…what?”
“De-fera-sir-ox. Ferrum is iron. That's why it’s ‘Fe’ in the periodic table. The meds remove iron—‘de-fera.’ Then I guess, ‘Sir Ox,’ like if an ox was a knight…”
“De—fera—sir—ox.”
“Yeah.”
“Defeseresox. De…fera…”
He slips the packet away as she wraps a hand around his wrist once more. She closes her eyes, and the sky stretches thin, mixing into the sea, blue shot through with blue.
*
They land back in the warehouse on the edge of the Nomad’s temple. Crates upon crates of aroca spill their perfume into the air. Liss usually meets them here, but today, the hall is empty. The cart that normally sits on the rail is not there.
They creep through the stacks of aroca shipments, hand in hand. “What do you think she wants us to do next?” she asks.
“I don't know. But I remember her saying there's a big battle coming.”
They find a corner, a crate lid to sit on. It forms a barely hospitable seat.
Then the rail starts to rattle, and they leap. A cart rolls into the warehouse not with a load of cargo, but with Liss and Noma.
“There you are!” declares the former, leaping off the cart while Noma untangles the knot that drove their makeshift vehicle. Pala and Fen rise to their feet. Liss’ chipper tone pierces through the viscous malaise she had been harbouring till a minute before. “Did you deliver the note?”
“Yes,” Pala says, back straightening. “I put it in one of their beds.”
Liss eyes both in turn. “Whose bed?”
“M…Marcia,” she replies.
Her eyes narrow just perceptibly. “I said to give it to Orobelle.”
Terror creeps over Pala. She feels like she's walking a tightrope—one breeze from a fall. “I think Orobelle—will see it anyway. She trusts Marcia.”
Noma murmurs something, tapping on her arm.
“Fair enough,” Liss sighs, squeezing Noma’s hand. “Alright, then. It's good you have done it. I am here to brief you on your next task.”
“But not…start yet,” Noma puts in in halting English.
Liss’ eyes dart to Noma, then back to Pala. “Yes. That's right. You should be amply rested for this. You will be going to the capital of Orsand. Are you up for it?”
“I…I don't know.”
“What was that again?”
Pala shrinks back. “I…will get to it after some preparation.”
“Good, good!” Liss strolls a circle around Pala and Fen. “You’re a treasure. Now, let's go somewhere more comfortable so we can discuss the details.”
*
Liss leads the other three through a service door into an office, stuffy with the midday heat. There is already a devotee there, snoring with his head slumped against his backrest. When Liss prods his leg with the toe of her shoe, he shoots out of the seat and scrambles away with a salute.
“Go watch the door,” she says into Fen’s ear, steering him out by the shoulder. Then she shuts the door behind him and returns to the desk, kicking back into the man's chair. “Pala. Let me remind you: you are my most talented warrior. This is why I keep you so close.”
Pala clutches her sketchbook closer. “I’m honoured, Liss.”
“Well, here is what you are to do next. You will go to Lyndolm, the capital of Orsand, and you will spy on the—”
Again, Noma mutters something.
“Well, I mean for you to spy on the emperor, but Noma reckons it may be a little risky. So you will instead find the emperor’s war room. Every Orsandin military unit forming a city division or higher has one. You will take ample notes—transcribe and sketch what you see—and report your findings back. You like maps, don't you?”
The capital of Orsand. The heart of the empire. Pala is no soldier, whatever Liss says. “I…I can do that,” she stammers, hugging her sketchbook closer. “I know how to do that.”
“As you should,” Liss answers, putting up her legs on the office desk. “Now, take what time you need, but I need this done within ten days. Understood?”
“Yes.”
“Do you need anything?”
“A…disguise?”
Liss smiles. “Well, let’s make that a part of the mission, shall we? Go put together an Orsandin disguise.”
Her body is clammy. “Y…yes.”
Liss lifts her left wrist and runs her fingers over the marriage knot. “And if you take too long, I will come find you. I'll be your failsafe. Now go.”
*
Pala rejoins her friend outside the door. Once she has left, Liss turns to find Noma glowering, her back against the wall.
“What is wrong?” asks Liss, laying a hand on the desk.
“Are you serious about this? Sending her to the capital?”
“Are you going to stop holding her back?” Liss retorts. “She's more capable than you think.”
“Would you spy on the war room of Emperor Milaston himself?”
“Yes! In fact I would!”
Noma groans. “Of course you would. I don't know why I even asked.”
“I don't know why you asked, either.”
“Well, I wouldn't do it,” Noma murmurs. “If I were Pala, I would be terrified. And she is more like me than you.”
Liss is silent. She purses her lips. “That is true,” she finally answers. “She has your hesitance. But she cries more than you do. It's exhausting.”
Noma’s face crumples into a frown. “Why do you talk about her like that? One moment you say she's more capable than she thinks. And the next, you say you're tired of her crying. Which is it? Does she need to be pushed harder, or less?”
Liss slaps both hands on the tabletop. “She would be doing so much better, if not for all the crying! She needs to snap out of her woeful self-hatred!”
“Have you considered that maybe she is terrified out of her mind?” Noma growls. “That you plucked her out of her world and community and are now making her spy on a man with more blood on his hands than everyone else in the world combined?”
“She’s a Traveller! And she was doing nothing with those skills before we found her. We are doing her a favour.”
Noma’s face falls. “Liss, you've changed,” she murmurs.
“Of course I have. The person I was before couldn’t change the world.”
“The person you were before wouldn’t have forced someone into danger over and over.”
Liss feels a familiar clenching in her chest. “Don’t you think what we're doing is worth it? For our people? For this whole forsaken world?”
Noma pauses, eyes dipping to the ground. “I know it's worth anything. Freeing the world. Freeing everyone. But ‘everyone’ includes Pala.”
“And Pala will be free, too, and she will be instrumental to the freedom of a million more.”
“She won't be free. You bound her.” Noma looks meaningfully at the knot on Liss’ wrist.
“Oh, are you still sour about that?”
She grits her teeth. “Not for my sake. For hers.”
Silence falls over the room. They stare each other down. Noma is the only person she would hear such belligerent words out of without meting out retribution.
“Noma. I adore you. And I wish we could do this in a way that would please everyone. But there is no other way. I am the one in the place of leadership. I see the whole plan, the way the parts fit together. And this is what has to be done. You know I don’t fail.” Her partner’s answering stare is too bright, too piercing, too loud in her head. “Anyway…I have a small task for you, if you'll take it. Or I can see to it myself. Earlier, I noticed that Pala seems to have switched her old sketchbook for a newer one. But it looks very similar, and I worry there is a reason for that. Could you bring it to me?”
Noma draws a deep breath. “I’ll do it,” she says, almost appeasingly.
“I’m glad I have you by my side,” Liss replies. “I will be returning to the tower renovations this evening.”
“And I hope that goes well.” With a single nod, Noma turns wordlessly to the door. When she has pulled it half open, she casts a glance over her shoulder. Liss sighs, anguish welling up in her throat, but she says nothing. Noma leaves.
:::
One fitful night later, full of nightmares of a missing memory, Pala and Fen are standing at the front door of his family’s apartment. The corridor outside is thick with shadows from the slanting sun, and the door feels too tall and forbidding, except for the stream of light through the gap beneath.
The scent of sweet and sour pork wafts towards them, accompanied by strains of voices from inside: Fen’s father Taito, declaring that dinner is ready, his mother Diyana ringing a bowl with a spoon…
…then Fen, on the inside, shouts that he's on his way.
Outside the door, Pala and Fen freeze and stare at each other.
“Ah boy, you okay?”
“What do you think?” the other Fen mutters.
“You have to eat to feel better, you know. Good for your brain.”
“I know…I know.”
There is silence in the room, the clinking of cutlery. Dinners are never so quiet.
“Fen, it's okay. It's okay.”
Pala feels fingers wrap around her wrist. “I can't keep listening,” Fen croaks from beside her, face wet with tears.
*
Pala and Fen are back on that beach of their own world—or at least they think so—facing the Maude Rocks once more.
“Something weird is going on,” she murmurs. She can no longer push that twin world from her thoughts. “I can't be missing from both worlds.”
Fen, with his arms wrapped around his knees to shield himself from the ocean wind, kicks a rock out of the way. “Uh…Pala…back on the day Liss found us, you said…you murdered yourself. Did you really? Did you mean…not yourself, but…”
Though she no longer remembers speaking those words, something about the phrasing makes it flash into her mind again. The sight of a perfect copy of herself. Walking in an alley, lost, without her bag.
The image opens the floodgates. The subtle strangeness of the world that day. Both phones ringing. Bile in her mouth. There is a big hole in the middle of the scene—the horrible something that she wiped from her memory—
She shudders, sickness flooding the pit of her stomach—a terror with no anchor. She stands up abruptly, head spinning, and staggers down through the sand, the grains trickling into her sneakers. She stumbled to the waterline, pitches forward onto her hands and knees, and vomits into the next surge of waves.
She kneels there for minutes, watching the water vein through the sand, her hands sinking under the golden grains. She spits out the fetid taste, wipes her mouth with saltwater.
A shadow falls over the sand beside her. Then Fen sits down beside her, his feet bare. “What do we do?” Pala’s voice wavers. “I think I killed the other me… Was the other me a Traveller, too? Both worlds think I'm missing. But now there's—there’s only one of me.”
Fen shakes his head. “It freaks me out to even think about it, but…” He wrings his hands together. “That—that other-me is me. And he thinks you're gone.” Simply speaking those words makes tears spill out of his eyes.
Pala grasps his wrist. “I want to visit him,” she says. “He needs to know I'm still here. One version of me. You don't have to come along.”
Fen wipes his tears with the back of his hand. “Probably a good idea…seeing a clone of myself would probably creep us both out.”
She nods slowly, letting go of the Fen she's been Travelling with, the one she knows a little better. They are both him. And she needs to make sure they are both okay.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
The transits happen so quickly sometimes. Her best friend’s eyes widen, the way they always do as she leaps, and she lands in the other Fen’s bedroom.
Fen jolts out of his slumber at the sound of feet landing on his bedroom floor. His heart thuds, slowing gently as he breathes in measures of four. Then he looks up.
A person with a familiar frame trips over his bag with a yelp and topples backwards into his chair, spinning halfway around.
He stares, recognising the mess of untied black hair, her complexion, the sound of her voice.
“P—Pala?” he chokes, vision flashing in tides, pulled between hope and disbelief.
“Fen,” answers the apparition, staring right back at him.
There she is. Is he still dreaming? Pala, or a perfect likeness, is standing in his room, wearing an outfit he cannot place with any culture he knows, a sash tying her tunic shut with one lapel overlapping the other.
“Is that…really you?” he croaks.
She stares, nods. “It's me. It's me, I'm here.”
He springs towards her and engulfs her in his arms with such ferocity that her eyes widen, but then she returns the hug, and it all feels real, the roughness of the fabric, the warmth of her back. They twirl in each other’s arms, and tears spill out of his eyes as he laughs. “Pala! Pala? How are you back? I thought you—” He bows his head to sob between distraught laughter.
Only once Fen finally leans away and awkwardly dries his eyes does Pala say, “This is going to be complicated to explain, but…I can't stay for long, and you can't tell anyone I'm here.”
He nods up at her, taking in the sight of his friend who vanished at the end of summer. Here in his room. Flesh and blood. “That's okay. I won't tell. How did you get in here? Did you climb through the window?”
Pala blinks. “It's a really, really long story…” He leans in to listen. “Oh, um, I've never seen you with such messy hair before.”
To that, he chuckles. “Oh…yeah. I kinda haven't had the energy to take care of myself.”
“Was it…because of me?”
He nods, his throat suddenly tied in a knot. He remembers it all, clear as yesterday. The day she did not come to class. The police reports. The days of weeping, all blended together. The things he kept wishing he had said. The vigils in school, the new school counsellor. The counsellor’s office smelling of incense. The hole in the warmth. She has always had a penchant for getting lost.
But she is here, suddenly, and she will be gone again soon. Like a shadow across the sun.
*
For the next half hour, Pala turns Fen’s world upside down—but then again, she always does. She takes hold of his arm, and tells him to hold on tight.
Then they are soaring through what feels like a scene from a show—some formless dimension of lines and lights—till the lines begin to coalesce into shapes.
They are on the viewing deck of a skyscraper, engulfed by its sterile perfume. It’s cold—too cold for this time of year. From here, the roads and waters look like fabric.
Tourists pass soundlessly behind them, peering through binoculars, reflected in the glass. The pair sit on the carpeted floor, holding each other’s hands.
“So…I recently found out I have the ability to hop between universes, at the price of one memory each time,” Pala says. “And I think that when I thought the streets were moving, when things switched places, what I was seeing was a different universe.”
Fen stares in wonder as the clouds drift by, fogging their view. “This feels like a dream,” he replies.
She nods slowly. “Most universes are different, but right beside your universe…there is another one that's almost exactly the same. It has another Havaiki, another you, another of your father and mother. And until recently, there were two of me, too. But…one version of me jumped to the other universe—I don't know which of us jumped. I don't remember…but I don't know if I would remember—I've been losing so many memories. What I know is that I—I killed the other me. I must have seen a copy of me…and I thought it was a really bad dream, and I…”
Fen lifts a hand to halt her. His mind is spinning more with each successive revelation, and he is still scrambling to put it all together. “So…now…there's…one of you left. Between the two worlds. And that's you.”
She nods. “Fen…I'm so sorry,” she answers, voice breaking. “I don't think I will ever be your Pala again. I don't know if I ever was. I don't know, it's too much to think about—but the person who taught me about my powers, she needs me back. There's things she wants me to do.”
Again, he nods. It's all just a little bit beyond his comprehension, but with Pala, this is simply par for the course. She has always gone places he could only dream of, and he can believe it because she is the one telling him. “How is the other me doing?” he asks, then. The sky glows blue through the windows. The tourists have paid them no heed.
“He came along with me. He asked to come along, and we've been travelling together.”
His gaze sinks away. “That’s what I would have done. I'm glad he gets to stay with you.”
Pala nods, silhouetted against the glistening horizon. Then she closes her eyes, and the rippling ribbons of sunlight turn into stripes, binding two universes together.
The wind goes still. They're back in his room, the frigid air of the viewing deck slowly eased away by this homely, humid warmth, their hands still clasped in each other’s on the rough fabric of his bed.
“I have to go back soon,” Pala whispers. “Fen—the other one—will start worrying if I don't. And after that…there's so much left to do…”
Though it hurts to hear the agony so plain in her words, Fen nods back. “I get it,” he whispers. “I still haven't really made sense of it all…but this universe or the next, one version or the other—you're still Pala. You're still the friend I loved and lost and you still exist. And just knowing there's one version of me who is getting to spend time with you…I'm happy, just by extension, I guess.” He taps his fingertips together. “But I hope the other me tells you how much he loves you. Because it took me losing you to realise I should never have been so afraid to say it. ‘Cause I love you more than I know how to say, I really do.”
Her eyes widen at the frankness of the words, and with a wordless cry, she throws both arms around him. “You mean the entire world to me, too. And now that I have to be two worlds’ Pala at the same time…I promise I’ll come see you again. Sometime after this. After this is all over.”
“If you would, that would be…really nice,” he answers as they pull apart. “Travel safe. Take care of my other self. And yourself.”
He smiles up at her with foggy eyes, both letting go of each other's hands as she steps backwards into the shadows beyond the light of his little window.
Space wraps her inward, like a riptide pulling her under, and then she winks out of view. He still smells faintly of the skyscraper’s perfume, and in the place of the yawning sadness, there is a tiny candle of yearning he knows he will always keep alight.
:::
Pala’s heart wells up. Her feet land beside Fen on the estuary bank, watching the confluence of the river and the ocean—he is always so easy to find, in any world, in any time.
“Pala! How did it go? How—how was the other me?” asks Fen as she runs to meet him.
The words are jammed in her throat. Rather than try, she flings her arms around him and squeezes with all the strength in her arms.
“Pala?” He sounds a little strangled.
She releases him then and steps back, hands slipping down to hold his. “I'm feeling a lot of very confusing things,” she murmurs. “He is…just like you. He is you. Only difference is he lost me. And he was barely taking care of himself.”
“Of course he was. I don’t know what I’d do if…” His voice falters. “What did the other-me say to you?”
“That he missed me. And he loved me. And he wished he’d told me…”
“Oh…well, he’s right.” Fen’s gaze wavers, and she’s aware of his fingers fidgeting in her grip. “I guess he really is me. ‘Cause I do. Uh…love you.” His eyes dip away. “Actually, I’ve wondered about it for a long time. About the way I feel about you. Whether it’s platonic, romantic, or something else. I think love is the only word for it—that's what it's called, right? When I know I would move the world for you, and that I’d never get over it if you ever disappeared—”
She bursts out, “Me too. Me too! I love you too! And I don’t know the right words for it, either!” She grins through glistening eyes. “Oh, Fen, remember that time you tried asking me on a date and I didn’t get it, and we got stuck in a cave?”
“You remember that?” Now he looks properly embarrassed, shifting his weight from foot to foot.
“Yeah, of course. How could I forget? It's one of my favourite memories.” She beams, replaying the echoes of their voices, the rising tide, the panic. Her eyes flood with tears again. “When I realised it was meant to be like a romantic date, I was excited, but confused. I love spending time with you, it's my favourite thing in the world—and I like this.” She lifts up their linked hands. “But it’s hard for me to tell what kind of love I feel, you know? When I don’t have anything to compare it to? No one…no one’s ever come to find me before, after I ran away.”
Fen's lips curve into a tender smile. “I will always come find you. I promise. I don’t care how hard I have to look.”
Pala looks seriously at him. “But not to the point that you hurt yourself, okay? Taking care of yourself is taking care of me.”
“Yeah, of course.” Then his gaze hardens, and he meets her eyes. “I don’t want all this to continue. I don’t want Liss sending you on dangerous missions anymore. Using you as some kind of tool, some cheat code to everything she wants.”
Pala glances about for hidden listeners, drawing her arms about herself. “I want it to stop, too,” she whispers, then lifts up her wrist. “I just…don’t know what we can do about this.”
He shakes his head. “Do you remember anything from the documents you stole for her?”
Pala shakes her head. “I didn’t understand any of it.”
He nods slowly, mulling over her words. “Someone has to know more about this cord. About how to cut it off. Someone in any world…”
“Liss. Liss would know.”
“Anyone but her. Who could possibly know as much as Liss?”
They look at each other.
“Orobelle,” Pala breathes.
“Noma,” Fen says at the same time.