Summerhill (33 page)

Besides, Katherine was in trouble, and he was the only one who could help her, which meant that past-Summerhill couldn’t be allowed to rot away inside the World of the Pale Gray Sky for a dismal eternity. That poor, lonely dog needed to be set free so that he could grow, like a flower, weathering sun and storm, joy and hardship, and mature into the individual he was here and now.

That left figuring out a way to go back into the past, and into another reality, and Summerhill had just the idea. He took one last look at the nebulae and star clusters surrounding him and reminded himself that he wouldn’t be where he was now if he hadn’t already succeeded in doing what he was about to attempt.

That didn’t make the prospect any stranger, but it gave him hope, along with the courage to try, and those were the things he needed more anything. The key pieces of the puzzle did all add up: the knowledge of the future, the perfect shade of glowing blue, and the ability to be someplace without actually being there.

“Royeyri,”
he thought as loud and as clearly as he could.
“Royeyri, are you out there? I need your help.”

Thirty-Three

Misalignment

Passing stars had their light shift towards blue before the myriad galaxies stopped spinning. Summerhill stopped floating as well, his mind taken into the link with the Syorii.

“Royeyri, is that you?”

The inside of Summerhill’s head vibrated with a curious hum.
“This is Royeyri, yes,”
said a familiar voice.
“But who is this, lah? Curious dog
,
floating alone in space. Very unusual.”

“Royeyri, it’s me, Summerhill. I was wondering if I could get your help with something.”

The humming took on an even more peculiar tone.
“Summerhill? Royeyri doesn’t know a Summerhill. Knows summer, knows hills, but no Summerhill and no dogs in space.”

Summerhill had been hoping that his desperate thoughts would reach Royeyri through time and space. Apparently, however, he’d reached across time in a direction he hadn’t expected.
“Wait, Royeyri. Hold on. When are you?”

“Royeyri is now! When else would Royeyri be?”

“I—Okay, maybe that was a dumb question. So you’re saying we haven’t met yet?”

The Syorii laughed, the disembodied sound made more sinister given that Summerhill couldn’t see him.
“Royeyri seems to have met Summerhill a few moments ago. Greetings, strange dog in space!”

Summerhill wanted to shake his head or roll his eyes, but could do neither.
“Yes, hi. Look, this is going to sound strange, but—”

“Already sounds strange, lah. But strange is fine! Royeyri likes strange.”

“Right, no, I get that. Anyway, I need you to trust me on something. See, I already know you.”

Royeyri’s phantom chuckling rang in Summerhill’s ears again.
“Oh, clever dog, naughty dog! Bending time and making friends in addition to floating through space. Summerhill is like Royeyri, in a way.”

“Um, sure, thanks. Anyhow, I’m going to, er, think at you, and try to prove that you and I have a history of working together and helping each other out.”

“Oh, Summerhill has already been thinking that, Royeyri sees,”
the Syorii replied, adding his distinctive cluck to the end of his words despite not needing to use a beak to communicate telepathically.
“So many marvelous adventures in store for Summerhill and Royeyri together!”

In the back of his mind, Summerhill started to wonder how much this conversation was affecting his and Royeyri’s personal timelines.
“Er, maybe you shouldn’t look too closely at those,”
he said, just to make sure.
“But okay, the point is that we trust each other at this point in, um—look, where I am, you’d probably offer to help me.”

Now the blue distortion over Summerhill’s senses wavered with what had to be a giggle.
“Royeyri is listening. Floating space dog seems to have fun ideas, lah.”

Fun ideas. Well, whatever got Royeyri to go along with his plan.
“I need you to take me someplace. To another place and another time. Can you do that?”

“Take you someplace? A non-Syorii someone to a different someplace at a different sometime?”
Royeyri’s mental chuckle felt so real that he might have been floating right next to Summerhill in that moment.
“My, such a ridiculous idea! So ridiculous that Royeyri can’t help but love it!”

“Too ridiculous to work?”

More clucking echoed inside Summerhill’s head.
“Royeyri isn’t sure, but that hasn’t kept Royeyri from doing ridiculous things before, lah.”

“All right. So long as you don’t think it’s too dangerous.”

“Oh, never said it wasn’t too dangerous, lah! Now, while Royeyri figures out how to do this, sit tight. Or float tight. Whatever Summerhill does.”

“Wait! Royeyri, I haven’t even said where or when we’re going yet. It’s a place called the World of—”

“Royeyri sees where Summerhill wants to go, yes, yes. Summerhill space dog thinks in distinct words too much when he doesn’t have to. Inefficient.”

Summerhill would have let out a sigh of exasperation if he weren’t caught in the temporal slowdown of the mental link.
“All right, I’m sorry. I just want to make sure I do this right, because if I don’t get back to where this all started I’ll never get to where it ends.”

The blue tinge began to fade as time started to speed back up.
“Wait! Royeyri, before we do this, I—”

“Yes?”
Time crept to a halt once more as Royeyri brought the mental connection back.
“One last question, lah?”

“You said before—in my before—that you met me in the World of the Pale Gray Sky, not floating all alone in space. Did I change that? Or was this always—”

“Perhaps this. Perhaps something different.”
Royeyri’s voice clucked a few more times.
“Lies and trickery. No real way to be sure with Royeyri.”

Zero

(Re)visiting

The whiteness of the Beginning, which had once been blinding and unpleasant, was now merely confusing, because it was not at all what Summerhill expected to see. It took his eyes a few moments to adjust, and when they did, he was finally able to see the subtle corners and the shades of off-white and palest gray.

Shoön looked up from what she was doing, which could have been any number of things, near as Summerhill could tell. Much as had been the case the last time Summerhill had met her, she changed shape each time he blinked. As before, she was always the same young woman, but she was a young woman who always looked different.

“Summerhill,” she said, a sly smile spreading across her mouth (which turned into a canine muzzle, at least briefly, partway through). “Three times in one lifetime. That’s more than anyone should be here.”

“For what it’s worth, I wasn’t planning on coming here,” Summerhill replied. “How
did
I get here? Where’s Royeyri?”

For only a moment, Shoön looked disturbingly like Katherine. She stuck a fingertip in her mouth, held it up in the air, and hummed. “Looks like you tried to play with time in a way you weren’t quite supposed to. Something about wanting to get back to where things all started, was it?”

Dipping his head and folding his ears back, Summerhill offered his obeisance. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think anything like this would happen. And I’m sorry if my being here is against the rules,” he said. Then, his ears sprang back up as he got an idea. “But wait, if I was trying to get back where it all started, then maybe you’re the one who helps me do that!”

Shoön’s appearance had ceased shifting; now she was a canine creature superficially similar to Summerhill, with features that were both more slender and more human-like. “My job is to send people along on their way. I’m not really sure what else you expect me to be able to do.”

“But that’s exactly it,” Summerhill said. “I want to go back to my beginning. To make sure everything starts the way it should.”

Shoön looked deep into his eyes. “You mean start over?” she asked.

“Kind of. I know more about what happens between now and then, and I think if I go back I can help myself get on track, and make sure I don’t make mistakes or—”

“Summerhill,” Shoön interrupted, “let me tell you a little bit about how time works.”

“I understand that this is the beginning. Of everything and everyone.”

Shoön rolled her eyes, half-playfully, half-impatient. “Let me do the talking here. Trust me, I know way more about this than you do.”

Summerhill flattened his ears again and tucked his tail between his legs. “Sorry, Shoön.”

“It’s okay,” she said, patting him on the shoulder. “Sit. Make yourself comfortable.” As he sat, so did she, almost but not quite leaning against him. Even her presence alone was reassuring. “Now, hopefully this explanation will sort things out for you.”

“All right. But really, if you just need to tell me, ‘It’s against the rules for me to start you over,’ I’ll understand.”

One of Shoön’s fingertips was suddenly at Summerhill’s lips. “Shush. You’re here because you want help with something, and so I’m going to give you what you need instead of what you want.”

With a quiet sigh, Summerhill rested his head against Shoön’s shoulder, and she put her arm around him. “I’m listening,” he muttered.

“Time,” Shoön began, “is like a stream.” Her fingers brushed along one of the dog’s ears. “People are like leaves that float across the surface of that stream.”

She straightened Summerhill up and used her hands to make gestures as she spoke. “My job is to set those leaves down atop the stream, and let them get carried away by the current. And those are inexorably pulled down the stream once they leave my hands.”

Summerhill squared his shoulders and listened intently. “Now, a lot of times,” Shoön continued, “these leaves will clump up for a long time, and sometimes they’ll split apart, and maybe they’ll come back together and maybe they won’t.” Summerhill could see it all with perfect clarity in his mind, as if the words themselves were somehow turning into mental images. “Sometimes, a leaf will get caught in a little eddy, and it might swirl around and stop flowing downstream, but it’s always only temporary. After a time, the leaf keeps moving, and eventually, all leaves wash up on shore, some sooner than others.”

“And then your sister wanders the shores and collects them,” Summerhill said.

Shoön smiled. “That’s exactly right. The basic rules are pretty simple.”

“It makes a lot of sense,” Summerhill agreed. “Especially the part about equating me to a leaf floating along the surface of the water.”

A sweet grin spread across Shoön’s face. “Ah, but Summerhill, you’re not one of the leaves.” She scratched him under the chin as he whuffed in confusion, then tapped him on the nose.

“I’m not?”

Shoön shook her head. “No. You’re one of the little silver fish that swims under the surface.” She wiggled her fingers as she moved her hand back and forth. “You can slip downstream and you can head back upstream and sometimes you can leap out of the water entirely for brief periods of time.”

Summerhill opened his mouth to speak, but didn’t know what to say. Something in Shoön’s words conferred unto him the profoundest sense of relief, but it was such a subtle thing that he couldn’t identify why that was.