Chapter 49 - Hate Me, Not Her
I came back the next day without hesitation. Part of me forgot about the memory inside Tarne’s mind, but when I entered the library, it all came rolling back with an impact. I could not leave now that Lila saw me. She sat on the third to lowest stair alone.
“Hey,” I said. She did not look up from her dejected pose. I half expected her to ash a stress copy right then and there. “How’s Tarne?”
“Is she even Tarne anymore?” Lila murmured almost inaudible. If there had been any other sound around us right now, I would not have been able to discern the words. “Will she ever be the same person?” Lila’s eyes watered while looking up at me.
“Of course she will be,” I consoled blindly.
“I don’t know, Jack,” she said. “Akier seems to have a very strong reason to latch onto her. He can’t face what he did to his own daughter, so now pretends that Tarne is Gemmy. How do you even tear apart that delusion? Wouldn’t that just make him a billion times madder if we make him face the truth? Just try to imagine what kind of stuff he’d do to the Infinity Void then.”
“Tarne isn’t him,” I said. “Someone DEFEATED him. His life was over. He was plucked out, and his chaos was digested until he was only a void leech. It’s MY fault that he found Tarne, found the shell of a person I wanted to occupy. I just wish there was a way to reverse time here to before his void amalgams found him and gave him back his memories. Without remembering what he WAS, he would just be Tarne again.”
“What if we did reverse time?” Lila asked, latching onto a hypothetical figment. “We are in the raw material of existence, inside a bubble you expanded at risk of your own fracturing reality. Would you be able to go back to the seed of thought?” I hesitated before responding. Would it mean I would no longer be able to occupy this body? Would I no longer be able to live as a woman in my own mind? Could my time remain frozen while the time of others changed back? Was time shifting even possible in this untethered space? I knew only one being who could answer those questions.
“Fyntn,” I said at the same time as Lila. We smiled, then I reached out a hand to pull her up from the stars so that we could track down the Goni.
“He said he’d be watching over us,” I said. “So he has to be around somewhere, maybe beyond the schism of this place.” Lila wasted no time by bringing a megaphone into existence to shout into the library.
“FYNTN! GET OUT HERE!” She called out, blaring extremely loud. The sound brought Kara out from Tarne’s room, as well as Akier still mind-numbed by the Queen of White Thorn magic. I put my hand on the megaphone before she shouted again, and met her eyes.
“Not now, Jack,” she said. “You always leave when there is something WE NEED TO DO!”
“Don’t do anything without me,” I said. “Please?” Lila threw the megaphone into the air, then punched a projected fist at it to pulverize it in a rage.
“Please?” I repeated once the explosion died down.
“FINE!”
“What’s going on?” Kara asked. A cut in the air opened beside her to produce Fyntn. “Hey.”
“Hey,” he said. “Someone called for me, right?”
Lila looked to me exasperated, but I just grimaced while jumping backwards and into liquid form that sank past the rough wooden floor to exit.
break
I came back the next day, having forgotten entirely about the really bad idea Lila and I came up that involved Fyntn. Turning time back, whether it was possible, would mean I would no longer have a mental escape to feel like myself. I could do it again, expand the reality core like giving birth into a bubble within the untethered space where I could be, but the effort it took felt overwhelming. It was something done amidst a battle, an action of desperation, born from a moment of pleasure, as most great and terrible things were.
I entered the library to find Fyntn by himself standing on top of the desk. One of his hands was cutting small portals into existence of various swirling colors, while the other was sealing them by gliding the smooth parts of his claws on the open circles, or maybe they were spheres. It was hard to tell.
“Hey,” I said. He glanced over with his gem-cut pupils in molten gold, and closed up the remaining few portals. “Practicing?”
“Dealing with some loose ends,” he said. I waited for him to elaborate, but he did not. We stood there in silence for a moment, motionless.
“So, where’s Lila and Kara?” I asked. Fyntn motioned upstairs. “Did they tell you the idea?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you think it’s possible?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you think we should do it?”
“Probably.”
“Would it be possible to get back to a time without Akier being realized?” I asked, wondering if Fyntn would catch on my hesitation. “Because— I guess I like the way it is right now.” Fyntn met my eyes without an expression. He rarely showed any. I took his demeanor as positive most often, since he was helping me, but maybe he hated me and had a perfect way of hiding it.
“I don’t hate you,” Fyntn said. “You should know I’m still keeping track of your story. That means all aspects of you, thoughts, even the song you’re playing on your headphones right now, are open to me. When a Goni is tracking a story, there is a constant reel inside their heads. All parts of the story, the life of that one being, are in that, so you’ll see me space out sometimes with information literally reeling through my head.”
“I see,” I said. “So when I was trying to find you earlier, and you didn’t show up, what was going on there?”
“I’m not always going to be at your beck and call, Jack,” he said. “This is rare. I’d say even unprecedented. Normally, Goni are invisible, unknown to the people they keep track of. I knew it was going to be trouble the second you sought help in the darkness of your mind. When Finnelgamin appeared, I wanted to step in and disconnect you from him, but then you started healing yourself by writing his story. Then you stole Rebecca from the ivy and I knew that would come back as my fault, so I didn’t tell anyone.
“You didn’t let Rebecca fix you, though she could have. That part explored your mind deeper, nailing down what the parts meant to you, and what she meant to you. When I took her away, by her own choice, you were already at a better place mentally than when you finished Finnelgamin’s part. I hoped that would end there, that you’d live your life and forget about the box in the darkness of virgin existence. I couldn’t do anything about it, even though I created it with Rebecca’s help. She left it there, leaving a part of herself still connected to the laptop.
“Then you just had to find that girl,” Fyntn said, plopping himself down on the edge of the desk. “That monster of an existence that another Goni failed to reset. We take our jobs seriously, but it is a JOB. Some Goni do it better than others. Of course there are some who betray the order of things, and thus chaos still exists, but the Rahin are there for that very reason. The only reason they have evolved to such an extent from the fish is because of the food resources given.”
“The ‘ivy’?” I asked.
“The I. V.,” Fyntn said, motioning his hands to create letters in the air. “It’s your name for it.”
“What’s yours?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Fyntn said. “I’ll just use yours. I don’t want to screw something up by explaining too much of that stuff. Go to work.” I did not question his reasoning, only put a hand to my chest, and pushed myself out of the untethered space.
break
I came back the next day, wondering if Fyntn was aware of my mental state of late. It was not something I would bring up to Lila and Kara. They had their own troubles, caused by me. It would be the height of narcissism to expect them to care about my deteriorating thoughts.
My thinking had been cooked by hot weather, and lack of sound sleep. There was only so much rest you could get blasting a fan over yourself when you output a bunch of heat that magnified with the bed producing sweat. Comfort was in short supply, and exhaustion was the only way to drift off. The whole thing baked the mind to the point of thinking that I was ALREADY in the ivy, strangely going through my life all over again instead of having freedom to choose a life to spectate.
I shook that thought away to enter the library. The main room was empty as I walked through the front door.
“Hey,” Kara said from above, leaning on the railing of the second floor.
“Hey,” I replied. “How’s Tarne?”
“Still the subdued monster I’ve been chasing through the Infinity Void for most of my life,” Kara replied. “I have this dilemma of wanting to kill him right then and there, and the fact that HE’S MY DAUGHTER NOW!”
I said nothing in response. It WAS my fault, though I did not make the void amalgams that brought back his memories. He had a backup plan even past his life ending and being digested by the Rahin. It was crazy to think he had been to untethered space before, or how he got here to create the amalgams in the first place. Did that mean he somehow infiltrated the Rahin? That was a crazy thought. But if he did, would they even have authority to preside over the ivy?
“Yeah…” I said. “I’m sorry about that. It was partially his own genius planning to leave amalgams of void leeches in the untethered space. Most baddies don’t ever consider that they might one day lose. He considered it, and planned accordingly, to revive himself, much like Voldemort.”
“Like who?” Kara asked.
“This bad guy in a book series I once read,” I replied. “He bound himself to seven different objects, each of which could be used to bring him back from the dead. They never did talk about how death operates in that reality, but I guess it’s not like in the ivy, right?” Kara said nothing.
“Do I have to ask?” Kara asked. “What’s the ‘ivy’?”
“Ivy, or I. V.,” I said. “Fyntn’s name for the Infinity Void.”
“Oh, so now you LIKE his names,” Kara said, “But when he told you this place was the virgin existence, you didn’t want to use that.”
“Some names are better, some are… not,” I said. “It’s a balance.”
“Ok, Mr. Balance,” Kara said, jumping the barrier to land beside me. “When can we go back in and erase the bastard from inside my baby girl?” I grimaced.
“I don’t think we CAN,” I said. “Did Lila tell you about what we saw inside?”
“Only how Akier was found as a baby,” she said. “Everyone has a sob story, you know. His mother died protecting him. Try not having parents and being afraid of every kind offer to help because they just want to sell you or use you for something.” I looked at her in silence.
“I’m fine,” Kara said, but I saw tears of past memories well in her eyes. Those early memories stayed with you no matter how long ago they happened.
“Well, there was something else,” I said. “We saw how Akier is attached to Tarne. It seems he had a daughter at some point in time. There was no mother in the picture, but the scene we saw had him delighting in some heavy weaponry. Gemmy, his daughter, walked in on him when he was playing around with a particular weapon, and he reacted much like a hunted man. He killed his own daughter, and no matter how he tried to hide that the memory away, that’s the connection he made to Tarne. He sees her as his daughter.”
“It’s MY daughter!” Kara exclaimed. “If that bastard thinks he gets a second chance after doing something like that he’s dreaming! I’m going to erase him personally. I’ll take his digested void leech and latch it onto an insect, then go to the world where that insect gets born, and kill it again!”
“Damn, Kara,” I said. “But that option isn’t even on the table anymore. What I talked to Fyntn about was turning time back to before Tarne even had the thoughts of Akier. I do need you to understand though, even if that works, he’s still going to be in there, just hidden away, almost forgotten.” Kara punched the door.
“WHY?” She asked, then hit the door again. By the third time she punched the door, her hand was bloody. I fixed her injury right away. “STOP! LET ME FEEL THIS!” I put my hands up, as she hit the door repeatedly to make her hand bleed again. When she lined up a headbutt, I put a pillow in front of her, shifting her to the couch.
“It’s my fault, Kara,” I said. “Hate me for it. I wanted to be born again, as Tarne, so it happened again. I messed with the way things were in a moment of weakness. So hate me, but love Tarne.”
“I DO LOVE HER!” Kara shouted. “THAT’S WHY THIS HURTS SO MUCH!”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll fix this. I promise.” My happiness did not matter if it hurt someone I cared about, someone who had been with me from the very start of this. I was ready to sacrifice this lighter environment, this desired form, and the freedom to do whatever I wanted in the confines of this tumor. I did not want to see Kara sad again. I could handle her being angry, annoyed, or relaxed, but I caused her enough pain. With a motion, I put a drowsiness cloud that showered her with sleepy vibes for an hour before leaving the library. The next time I would come back, it would be time to reset back to the old me, no more feline beast atop a golden red throne in a fancy royal room.
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