The Forbidden Lock Read online

  “That’s the memory material, is it?” Brocco asked.

  “Her time tapestry,” the captain said. “It’s her past, present, and future, all woven together.”

  The captain brushed his fingers along the watery material. The woman shuddered, as though the captain had stroked a cold finger along her spine. The captain lifted his sword and with a swift movement slashed the blade through the tapestry in several places. Both Wiley and Brocco winced at this, but the woman did not move. The captain rearranged all the pieces, pressing the fabric together, creating seams that were jagged and puckered, like scarred flesh.

  The captain stepped back to observe his handiwork. The images seemed to be in a chaotic dance as they reorganized themselves, but they eventually settled.

  “There now,” he said. “Marie Antoinette’s head has been saved.”

  Brocco clapped his hands. “Oh, that’s nice, isn’t it? Very kind of you to save her head like that.”

  “Yeah, but what about her husband’s head?” Wiley asked. “You gonna save his head too?”

  The captain turned to the short man hiding behind Marie Antoinette. The captain cocked his head, considering. “No, I think I’d like to try something different with him.” He pulled out his time tapestry from his stomach (both Brocco and Wiley made disgusted faces) and then the captain took his sword and slashed through it in all directions, shredding it so the strings and fabric went all over the place.

  He stood back to observe his handiwork. The pieces of the material hovered in the air for a moment, but soon they started to move and find their way back to one another, and the pieces wove themselves back together just as they had been before. The captain frowned. Santiago felt his disappointment.

  “How about some guns, Your Majesty?” Brocco asked. “Sometimes a gun can do what a sword can’t, eh?” He reached beneath his red tuxedo jacket and pulled out two pistols. The captain took one, cocked it, and shot at an image of the man’s head in the fabric. Brocco and Wiley both ducked down as the bullet hit its mark. The tapestry absorbed the bullet like water. It rippled outward, distorting and scattering the images. The captain studied the effects, watching the people move and interact like characters in a play. He shot it again, experimenting with different angles or shooting it after slicing with a sword. “It’s not quite the desired effect,” the captain said, “but perhaps a move in the right direction.”

  “I don’t get it,” Wiley said. “Why don’t you just travel back in time and shoot him in real life? That is what you are trying to accomplish, isn’t it? To kill that Hudson man so you can steal his wife?”

  Santiago twitched as a dozen different thoughts and emotions rushed through him at once. Triumph and loss. Desire and repulsion. Joy and rage. So many feelings clawed at each other. Too much, too much. Humans felt too many things at once. It made Santiago want to chew on his own tail.

  “I could kill him,” the captain said. “But that doesn’t solve everything. I want him gone. Erased. I want him to never have existed. Only then can everything truly be set right.”

  “So why do you gotta deal with all this time tapestry stuff?” Wiley asked. “Why not just go back in time and kill his mother or his grandmother, make it so he’s never born at all?”

  “It’s not that simple,” the captain said, and he pulled more of the short man’s time tapestry out of his stomach. “A person’s life is hundreds of thousands of little threads, all woven together, and those threads are also woven into others’ time tapestries, all of them connected, even if just by one little thread. I can go back in time and kill someone, but it doesn’t erase their existence, and it doesn’t necessarily erase the existence of their unborn children. They’ll just be born to someone else, see, and their time tapestry might still play out in a very similar way as before, which is unhelpful to my mission. No, in order to truly erase Matthew Hudson, I need to destroy all the threads in all the time tapestries he’s ever touched. It all needs to unravel completely, and the more connected they are to others, the harder it is to make it all come apart, see? So I can’t just go back and kill Matthew Hudson. I need something more powerful than swords or guns.”

  “Well, the guns worked better than swords, didn’t they?” Brocco said. “Maybe we should try some stronger stuff?” He opened his jacket to reveal an array of objects attached to the insides. It all looked like a jumble of balls and bundles of sticks to Santiago, but it seemed to unnerve Wiley. He backed up from Brocco a step or two.

  “Ain’t it a bit dangerous to be walkin’ around with all that stuff on your person?”

  Brocco shrugged. “You never know when it might come in handy. Better on me than at me, yeah?”

  “Indeed,” the captain said. “Go ahead, Brocco. Give it a go.” He motioned to the fabric of the short man.

  Brocco rubbed his hands together with childlike giddiness. “How about a grenade, eh? One of my favorites.” He took out an egg-shaped object from his pocket. He pulled a pin and tossed it at the time tapestry. The tapestry absorbed the grenade, much like the bullet, and a moment later there was a muted explosion that reverberated throughout the ballroom. Santiago felt his bones rattle and his fur stand on end.

  The tapestry swirled with a smoky substance. A sizable chunk of the fabric looked to be destroyed, but then the particles started to come together, weaving and knitting itself back together. They reorganized themselves in a haphazard fashion so that when it was complete the picture was blurry and jumbled, but nothing had been erased completely.

  “Hmm,” the captain said. “Not quite. What else do you have?”

  Brocco reached inside his pockets and pulled out what looked like nothing more than a bundle of sticks. “Firecrackers! We can put on a show with these!”

  And it was a show, but that was about it. The tapestry erupted in sparks and emitted some loud bangs, but it otherwise did very little to alter anything.

  Santiago could feel the captain was getting bored, losing patience. Brocco seemed to sense this too and take it as a sign of danger. Perhaps the captain would see it as a failure if Brocco did not get something to work, and he was less forgiving of failure now. Immortality had the odd effect of making you less patient, rather than more, despite having all the time in the world.

  “Wait!” Brocco said. “I got one more, saved the best for last.” He pulled out what looked to Santiago like a large candlestick. “Dynamite! We used this on a fair few bank robberies back in the day. Always worked wonders. Never fails! I once derailed a whole train with this stuff.” Brocco wrapped the time tapestry around the stick of dynamite, then struck a match and lit the wick. It sparked and flared, traveling fast toward the tapestry. When it reached the end, the fabric absorbed the dynamite. And then nothing.

  “Maybe it went out,” Wiley said.

  “Or it coulda been a dud,” Brocco said. “No, wait!”

  The tapestry suddenly flared with a bright light. It began to smoke, a thin vapor that swirled around the fabric like ghostly ribbons. It smelled to Santiago faintly sweet but rancid. The fabric began to burn and unravel. There was a flash and a small boom, a shower of sparks. The man came unfrozen for just a moment. He gasped for air. He started to flicker in and out like a sputtering candle. Finally he faded completely, leaving behind only a portion of his time tapestry.

  “Where’d he go?” Wiley said, looking around as though he had simply hidden somewhere.

  The captain bent down and picked up the fallen fabric, which instantly began to dim so there was no luminescence, only a dull glow, and the images within it faded to shadow. He turned the tapestry over in his hands, then inspected the cake-woman’s tapestry. The images were again jumping around, reorganizing themselves.

  “Did it work? Did it?” Brocco asked excitedly.

  “Close,” the captain said. “Very close indeed.”

  Brocco bounced on his feet and clapped his hands. “Shall we try it again? I can get more dynamite! Loads more. It’s not hard to get. The boys and I used to u
se this stuff all the time back in the day.”

  “Maybe,” the captain said, still inspecting the time tapestries. Santiago could feel the wheels turning and clicking in his brain, piecing things together. “We will need to run more experiments, certainly, but I think I should like to meet the person who invented this dynamite. Do you know who that is?”

  Brocco opened his mouth and then shut it when he realized he didn’t know the answer.

  “Alfred Nobel,” Wiley said, pulling out his pipe. “I’ve read some about him. Famous Swedish chemist, though I think his first passion was literature. Poetry. He wrote some fine poetry from what I recall.”

  “I do not care about his poetry,” the captain said disdainfully. “Just tell me where and when I can find this Nobel.”

  “He’s alive now, I believe,” Wiley said, “though toward the end of his life. He lived in a fair few places around the world throughout his life and traveled a great deal besides. You could find him in any number of places.”

  The captain considered. Again, Santiago could feel the wheels turning in his mind, even if he didn’t know precisely what he was thinking. He was cooking up a plan. “All right, then. I want to see this Nobel, but the timing is important. Wiley, I’ll need you to do a bit of research on Mr. Nobel’s life, see what moments would be best to insert ourselves in. A tragedy would be best. Something he would wish to be different. You know what I mean.”

  Wiley nodded. “I believe he has a brother who dies rather young. A tragic accident, very sorrowful.”

  Santiago felt the captain’s neck twitch at the word brother.

  “Better make sure Mr. Nobel actually mourned for his brother before we use that.”

  And Santiago felt that familiar sting of hate run through him from his whiskers to his tail. The captain certainly didn’t mourn his own brother, and his death was no accident.

  Wiley shivered a little, seeming to understand the captain’s thinly veiled meaning. “I’ll look it up in my library,” he said.

  “And I’ll prepare our disguises!” Brocco said.

  The captain nodded and dismissed them, and then the captain and Santiago were left alone in the midst of the frozen party.

  “We’re getting close, my friend,” the captain said. “I can feel it. Soon the Hudsons will be gone and everything will be as it always should have been. Nothing will stand in the way of our happiness.”

  Santiago squeaked.

  The captain shook his head. “How many times must I tell you, Santiago, Mateo is on our side.”

  Santiago squeaked again. How certain?

  “Positive,” he said. “I know it doesn’t seem like it to you, but I know better. Don’t worry. You’ll see. It will all come out right in the end. And the beginning. And the middle!” He tipped his head back and laughed. Santiago didn’t laugh. It was not one of the things he’d learned to do since coming to meet the captain, and truly he didn’t see what was so amusing. He couldn’t help but think the captain had gone a little bit mad ever since his most recent triumph.

  “Come, Santiago, let’s enjoy the party a little before we go, shall we?” the captain said. With a few motions he unfroze time and the party was revived. The band started playing again, and the dancing continued.

  Marie Antoinette seemed a little confused. She looked around for her husband, until the captain slipped into his place, and they danced together as if her husband had never been there at all.

  Santiago went back to the feast and watched the spectacle as he ate and ate but was never filled.

  More, more, more.

  2

  New Compass Tricks

  June 5, 2019

  Hudson River Valley, New York

  Matt shot up from sleep, gasping for breath, sweaty and shaking. He looked around, saw the heaps of boxes and furniture, smelled the musty scent of old books and rusty tools, the silhouettes of sleeping bodies all around him. He was at Gaga’s house, on her vineyard in upstate New York. Safe. He was safe. His family was safe. It was only a nightmare. But it had felt so real. So real he’d even felt the ground shaking beneath him. He could still feel it, he thought, or was that just his imagination?

  The shaking stopped. Just his imagination, then.

  Matt checked on his family, still asleep around him. They were all sleeping in Gaga’s basement. The window wells provided very little light, and it was still dark outside anyway, but there was a night-light plugged into the wall. It cast a weak glow over the room so Matt could see everyone well enough. Corey was sprawled on top of his cot, arms and legs dangling off the sides, a bit of drool hanging from his open mouth. Ruby slept tucked neatly inside her sleeping bag with her hands placed under her cheek like a princess. A warrior princess, that is, as Matt noticed the sword handle sticking out from beneath her pillow. Jia slept on one end of the ratty plaid couch, her black hair cascading over the side. Pike was on the other end, curled up like a kitten, hands clutching her knotted rope. His parents were sleeping behind the couch. He could see the outline of his mom and hear his dad’s heaving-breathing-almost-snoring.

  They’d been sleeping like this for the last four nights in a row, cots and sleeping bags crammed together. Gaga thought it was adorable, a “giant family slumber party” she called it. She didn’t know that it wasn’t for fun so much as a survival instinct, though Matt wasn’t sure that sleeping all in one room was any kind of protection against Captain Vincent now.

  The nightmares only added to his anxiety. It was the same nightmare he used to have as a child. Almost every night it was the same. He and his family are having a picnic, or sometimes they were playing a game of baseball, or just walking down the street together. In the nightmare he’d just had they were picking grapes together in the vineyard. Whatever the setting, they are always all together, his mom, his dad, Corey, Ruby, and him, and they are happy. Then the sky darkens. Suddenly a strong wind rushes through. Something is coming. His mother tells them all to run. And they do. They all run. Except Matt. He can’t seem to run. He’s treading mud. And then his family starts to disappear. One by one they fade into nothing, or get sucked into the sky, or fall into some bottomless chasm. And then Matt wakes up, heart racing, drenched in sweat.

  It’s not that the dream felt particularly real. He knew it was a dream. It’s just that it felt so possible now, like a warning, a premonition.

  Matt reached for his compass tucked beneath his T-shirt. The Obsidian Compass, the time-traveling device that he himself had invented. Just a few turns of the dials and within seconds he could be not only on another continent but also in a different century. In the past few months alone, Matt had traveled all over the world, thousands of years into the past, and even once into his future. At first it had all seemed a grand adventure, but in reality the compass had caused a great deal of trouble, even destroyed lives, and who knew how many more lives it would destroy? Matt was starting to wonder if he’d made a mistake in building it at all. He’d had good intentions, but many a disaster can start with good intentions, he was learning.

  But if he hadn’t built the compass, he wouldn’t even be here, nor would his mother, and therefore his father or Corey or Ruby or Jia and Pike. Or perhaps they would have all existed, but in very separate lives, not together. Either way, he didn’t like to imagine his world without them, and they were all together because of the Obsidian Compass that he built. In that way, he reasoned, many good things can come from disaster. But would they be able to stay together? This was the unspoken question that hung over all their heads like a dark cloud, ready to burst at any moment.

  Matt circled his fingers in rhythm over his compass, his mind going in loops and spirals. He’d gone over it again and again. Thirty-six hours ago, Matt and his family had stood on the shores of Asilah, Morocco, in the year 1772. He’d gone there with such hope, such confidence, to fix everything. But everything had gone wrong.

  Matt lifted his hands to his face. He could barely see in the weak dawn light, but still the rootlike scars on
his right hand were starkly visible. Thirty-six hours ago he’d seen identical scarring on the same hand of Marius Quine. That’s when he knew without a doubt that he and Quine were the same person, just at different points in their timeline. When their hands had connected, they had erupted with such force and heat and power, Matt felt he would explode. He did, in fact. Both of them. But miraculously they didn’t die, and when he was put back together, Matt was holding a black stone in the center of his palm. The Aeternum. The object that granted its possessor immortality and the power to manipulate time and events however they wished. As it happened, Matt had been in possession of the Aeternum all along and never knew it. It had been the stone in his bracelet that he’d worn since the age of six. Granted, it had been inactive until that moment he and Quine had grasped hands, but still, it had been in his possession.

  No longer. Captain Vincent had the Aeternum now. Matt had watched as Captain Vincent had been altered, immortalized with unfathomable power to manipulate time, past, present, and future. Matt was honestly surprised they were still here at all, even now. There had been several discussions in the past two days (or arguments) about what they should do, whether they should stay or flee or try to do something to defeat Vincent before it was too late, but no one could agree on anything, mostly because they didn’t know exactly what had happened three days ago in Asilah.

  Everyone had been pestering Matt for answers and information about what had happened with Quine and Captain Vincent. He told them everything. Mostly. He told them how when he and Quine joined hands there had been some powerful reaction, and the Aeternum was fully activated, and then Captain Vincent took it and then they’d all been flung back in the universe. The activation of the Aeternum somehow reset things, and all their travels were set in reverse until the Hudsons landed back precisely where and when they’d all started in Gaga’s vineyard.

  There was only one detail Matt withheld from his family—the part where he had discovered that he and Quine were actually the same person.