Timeless

Published by Amanda Paris at Smashwords

Copyright 2010 by Amanda Paris

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal
enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to
other people. If you would like to share this book with another
person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If
you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not
purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com
and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work
of this author. This book is available in print under the pen name
Emma Eliot or Amanda Paris at most online retailers.

This book is a work of fiction. Any
similarity to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Cover
Image: “The Horsehead Nebula,” photo courtesy of European Southern
Observatory Accessed 9 December 2010 and reproduced and licensed
from
Creative
Commons
Attribution
3.0 Unported

CONTENTS

Prologue

Emily

Chapter One: "The Dream"

Chapter Two: "Plunging In"

Chapter Three: "The Quest"

Chapter Four: "Darkness Falls"

Emmeline

Chapter Five: "Dream Kingdom"

Chapter Six: "Reckoning"

Emily

Chapter Seven:"Discovery"

Chapter Eight:"Torn"

Chapter Nine: "Limbo"

Chapter Ten: "Flight"

Chapter Eleven: "Touching Eternity"

Chapter Twelve: "Voyagers"

Chapter Thirteen: "The New World"

Chapter Fourteen: "Encounters"

Chapter Fifteen:"The Ring"

Chapter Sixteen: "Following"

Chapter Seventeen: "Déjà Vu"

Chapter Eighteen: "Being and Unbeing"

"Epilogue"

Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future,

And time future contained in time past.

If all time is eternally present

All time is unredeemable.

What might have been is an abstraction

Remaining a perpetual possibility

Only in a world of speculation.

What might have been and what has been

Point to one end, which is always
present.

T. S. Eliot, “Burnt Norton”

Prologue

Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal
upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as
the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most
vehement flame.

Song of Solomon, King James Version

The icy waters engulfed me, pulling my long
skirts down to the depths below. The chill reached inside my lungs,
stripping the air slowly as I fought the first rush, the great
flooding torrent that overwhelmed me.

I could see her shadow above the water, a
thousand glittering lights fading as I drifted farther below. Her
horrid brilliance dimmed as I lost consciousness, and a weight
pressed down upon my chest, now lit from within by an inescapable
fire that tore the last breath from my lungs, shredded by a
thousand frigid knives.

I saw his face, my last conscious memory a
kaleidoscope of our lived past, fused together in a radiant burst
of careless passion that had led us to this awful moment.

Death loomed. As I felt its icy grip envelop
me, a curious peace ensued, despite the knowledge that, either way,
I would die. I struggled the first minute—anyone would—it was a
natural, human reaction. But then I stopped fighting it. To break
the surface, to draw breath, would be to choose another death, a
more hideous, violent end. I had my choice—fire or ice. And I would
not give her the satisfaction of fire. He would come back to fight
for me, would try to save me, and I could not let her kill him
too…

EMILY

…And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

T. S. Eliot, “Little Gidding”

Chapter One

"The Dream"

And where you are is where you are not.

T. S. Eliot, “East Coker”

I tried reasoning, pleading desperately for
them to relent. I felt the tears spring forth, though I refused to
shed them in front of her. Why couldn’t I make them understand? Why
couldn’t they comprehend my terror?

“Emily, I’m afraid to tell you, if you don’t
pass your swim test, you can’t graduate,” Mrs. Anderson, the
guidance counselor, said. She looked compassionately into my eyes
and slowly nodded her gray head in my direction to emphasize her
point.

I groaned inwardly. I’d tried everything to
get out of it, but there was no hope that I could see. I’d have to
learn to swim. It was a well-known rule that everyone had to pass
to graduate. Fifteen years ago, someone left a sizeable amount of
money to the school after a beloved son, a senior about to
graduate, had died in a boating accident. The one stipulation made
was that every student must learn to swim.

I’d made the effort to several times, but I
had an unnatural fear of drowning since I was a small child. To my
knowledge, this aversion was completely unfounded—I’d had no
traumas to attribute to it. And yet, anytime my head was under
water, I panicked.

It was perhaps one of the great ironies in my
life that my boyfriend Ben was captain of the swim team at
school.

He waited for me patiently while I collected
my things and mumbled my thanks to Mrs. Anderson. Much good that
appointment had done me, I thought. I was no closer to getting out
of it than I had been before.

“What am I going to do?” I complained to him
once we were in the hall, out of Mrs. Anderson’s hearing.

Ben smiled at me, taking my book bag as we
walked together.

“Well, you have two options. Either you can
stay in high school forever—you know how much you love cafeteria
food…” I punched his arm lightly at this.

"Or…you could do what everyone else does and
finally learn to swim,” he finished.

It was true. Ben and I had grown up together
in the small town of DeLand, Florida, not too far away from Daytona
Beach. It was almost unthinkable that I wouldn’t know how to swim.
Most of the kids in town had long progressed from their
doggy-paddling days to windsurfing and jet skis. Water surrounded
us everywhere we turned. There was the St. Johns River that ran
through the county and several beaches, including Daytona, less
than an hour away.

Ben had tried teaching me, starting with the
first summer after I’d moved to town as a kid, but to no avail.

We entered the parking lot, and Ben put his
arm around me to offer some reassurance. I definitely needed
it.

“Well, Em, where to now?” he asked.

“Wait, I thought you had practice for the
swim meet tomorrow?”

“Coach gave us the afternoon off. He said we
could use some rest before the big day.”

By now, we’d reached his red pick-up in the
school parking lot, where our friends, Zack and Annie, waited for
us. Zack had longish brown hair, and like most of the students at
our high school, very tan skin. Annie, with her dark hair and wide
brown eyes, was a little on the paler side, like me. But even she
tanned during the summer.

“About time. We thought you guys got lost
behind the bleachers,” Zack snickered.

Annie rolled her eyes at him. Like Ben and
me, Zack and Annie had been together since our childhood days. We
did almost everything with them.

“Don’t start, Zack,” I warned, smiling
nonetheless.

“So what did Mrs. Anderson say?” Annie
asked.

Annie’s large dark eyes showed real concern,
and I knew I could always count on her. She’d been my best friend
since I’d moved to Florida over ten years ago.

“Looks like I have less than two years to
learn to swim or I won’t be going to college after all,” I said,
not feeling as lighthearted as I sounded.

“Really? Wow, they’re really serious about
that swim rule. We could practice, you know, at the Y,” Annie
offered. She knew I was mortally terrified of drowning and wouldn’t
even approach the deep end.

“Thanks, Annie, but I think it’s going to be
harder than a few tries at the Y,” I said, still glad to have her
support.

I did appreciate everyone’s concern. Annie
thought it was really my intense fear of wearing a bathing suit in
public. On that point, she wasn’t entirely wrong. Being the palest
person in a school where everyone else consistently worked on their
tans was not my idea of fun. But my fear went much deeper than
that, I knew.

Ben could read me better than anyone else,
and he quickly changed the subject, suggesting that we all go
downtown to find something to eat. But I wasn’t feeling all that
hungry, and I’d already promised Aunt Jo, my seventy-year-old aunt,
guardian, and only living relative, that I’d help her paint several
rooms in our house when I got home.

Ben and I made plans with Zack and Annie to
meet up later in the evening for a movie, and then Ben and I
climbed into his pick-up.

Once we were inside, I knew he’d bring up the
swim test again.

“You know, Em, you’re going to have to learn
sometime,” he began, more serious now.

“No, I don’t. I’ll change schools,” I
retorted. I knew I sounded like a child, but I didn’t care.

Ben rolled his eyes, shifted gears, and
looked over at me.

“You’re really beautiful when you’re
stubborn, you know that?” he said, reaching over to kiss me when we
came to the stop sign in front of Aunt Jo’s house.

Ben had a deeply Southern accent, the kind
that draws out in soft, stroking waves. His family had moved to
Florida from Georgia when he turned two, and while he’d lost some
of the slow dripping heaviness characteristic of a true Southern
voice, he’d lost none of the charm. His impeccable manners—he
always held doors and said “m’am” and “sir” –blond, wavy hair,
clear blue eyes, and six-foot-two athletic frame compelled every
girl to follow him with their eyes. With my unruly red mane,
freckles, and sunburn-prone skin, I knew I was the luckiest girl in
school, especially since I wasn’t exactly the prettiest one.

I could feel the flush creep up my neck.

“Hey, watch where you’re going,” I cautioned,
not wanting Aunt Jo to see us.

“I always do,” he replied as he pulled into
the drive.

Aunt Jo’s small, two-story brick house was
within walking distance to downtown, and I loved growing up in this
turn-of-the century home with a large front yard and swing. I’d
spent hours of my childhood here playing with Ben, Zack, and Annie,
and I had happy memories of planting roses with my mother, who’d
died a year ago of cancer.

Aunt Jo must have heard us drive up because
she came out to the front porch. A still-attractive woman with
glossy white hair, Aunt Jo braided it into two long, thick plaits,
which she wound around as a swirling bun, a coronet atop her
graceful head. She had startling light blue eyes and few wrinkles
beyond a couple of well-earned laugh lines.

The Duchess, Aunt Jo’s long-suffering black
cat, followed her, perching on the top step to watch the activity
below. As always, she commanded our attention, and Ben and I paid
our dues on our way up the stairs, stroking her back as we passed.
The Duchess reigned over the house, and she had to approve all
guests. Fortunately, she had long accepted Ben as a member of the
family and began to rub her fur against his legs, circling the
inside of them as he walked.

“Hi, Miss Jo,” Ben said, greeting her with a
hug. “Emily told me you needed some help painting.”

One of the qualities I loved most about Ben
was his generous spirit. He was always ready to help, no matter how
long it took or how boring the task.

“Hello, Ben,” Aunt Jo said, smiling and
picking up the Duchess. Her hand automatically began stroking the
Duchess’s head as we walked into the house. She only let Aunt Jo
carry her around. The rest of us hadn’t yet earned the right.

No one actually knew how old the Duchess was.
Even Aunt Jo couldn’t remember, though she’d often remarked that
the Duchess had come from a long line of proud felines. She’d been
living at the house for as long as I had, and I often wondered if
she really did have nine lives.

“We’re tackling the dining room today,” Aunt
Jo continued, glad, I was sure, for an extra hand.

Aunt Jo and I had been painting each of the
downstairs rooms for the last several weeks. Ben had helped us last
week with the living room and kitchen.

“You kids go inside to get something to eat
first, and then we’ll get started,” she said, giving me a wink. I
knew she wanted to leave us alone before we became too busy and
dirty with painting. Aunt Jo was a little shameless and totally
romantic.