Chapter 53 - The Big Reveal

I came back a week later, realizing I forgot to find a way to keep her out of my mind. Instead of entering the library, I sat at my device, mind outside of the untethered space. Maybe there was a way to contact Fyntn this way. There was no way he would show up in my reality, but I have seen him around in the corner of my eye a few times, a flicker of a shape vanishing.

#Fyntn?# I thought with my eyes closed. Behind my eyelids I found something else than the imagination opening to the untethered space. There was a corridor in half light, with a distant doorway that had a rosy light to it. I flew through it and then into the corridor with rose pink light. The corridor led to a room made of pink flesh. I had no form in there, just a standard array of senses. #Fyntn?#

#Welcome to the inside of your brain,# he said. I looked around, but doubted this was my brain. #I can hear your thoughts, by the way. Kinda, like, always. Look.# I watched at the direction he pointed as a light emerged from the depths of darkness and skittered across the pink past us at an insane speed.

#That was a thought, trying to make a connection,# Fyntn thought.

#What are you doing here?#

#We can’t very well hang out in the physical world,# he thought. #So we have to hide in people’s brains sometimes. Want to take it over to the library? It’s currently empty. It’s exhausting, but seeing as it’s connected to your mind, I can see there as well.# I hesitated, throwing a few more jetting flashes of light through the corridor.

#I’d better not,# I thought. #Lila found out I’d been holding something back from her, and I didn’t come up with anything to keep her out of my mind yet. Is that even possible?# Fyntn jumped up to my side.

#Possible,# Fyntn thought. #But are you sure you want to keep stuff from her? That’s what caused you trouble before. There is a chance Lila may be able to handle knowing.#

#Handle knowing that her daughter is actually the worst person who forgot who they are? I don’t think I believe that.#

#She’s strong,# Fyntn said. #But Kara doesn’t need to know.# I felt hesitant, lighting up the corridor with light flashing by. Letting Lila know would set her apart from Tarne and Kara. It was a bad idea. I wanted them to just keep living in happiness. The only thing that would threaten their balance were the void amalgams that still floated around in the untethered space somewhere.

#I took care of the amalgams,# he thought. #And you took care of Garr. We’ve changed what would happen. Unless you bring it up, unless you tell her, this standstill continues.#

#Isn’t that a good thing?#

#Is a story good because it goes nowhere?# Fyntn asked.

#But I’d rather give them a life than a story,# I argued. Fyntn just threw his hands up and scraped one claw on another. The action opened up a small cross cut glowing with light. When I looked into it, I was thrust into a scene where I had no control over myself.

“Tarne is… Akier?” Lila asked. “You’re lying.” I waved my hand to knock myself back out of the scene.

#What was that?#

#Alternate,# Fyntn said. #One where you tell her straight out. You should see more.# I hesitated, but turned away.

#No,# I said. #I’m not telling her.#

#That’s your choice I guess,# he said, shrugged, then put three claws up to cut a circle in the air. I saw it glow, then found myself in the dark, as if the corridor never existed. I considered what he said before exiting.

break

I came back the next day, and entered the library to find Lila waiting for me on the couch. When I appeared, she looked up. I was ready for her to read my mind, but it did not feel like it. I walked up and sat beside her on the couch.

“Hey,” I said. “Been waiting long?”

“Every day, around this time,” she replied. “I—“

“Please don’t read my mind,” I cut in. “You will find only pain, and no way to solve it. And even if you don’t tell Kara about it, it will fester your relationship. I can’t have that on my conscience, Lils.” She studied my expression for a moment.

“I was about to say that I knew there was something wrong,” Lila said. “So I did my best to find out what it was. If it’s as bad as you say it is, then I should know. Shouldn’t I?” I said nothing, only looked into her eyes with a pained-pleading expression. There was nothing I could say to stop her. She was, by her very nature, curious and free. Asking her not to pry, was like asking her not to take revenge on those who wronged her.

“I was contemplating leaving this place forever,” I said. “If I didn’t come back, you’d eventually move on with Kara and Tarne. You’d live your life, maybe drift off as a story in the ivy. It would be peaceful.”

“Fucking hell, Jack,” Lila burst out, pushing me off the couch with a strong prod. She followed after to sit over my midsection as if to pin me down. We both had creationism, and if we fought, there would be nothing left. If she found out, there would be less than nothing. “What’s so important to know, but you won’t share it? I DON’T UNDERSTAND! WHY IS THIS SO BAD?!”

“Because it’s my fault,” I replied. “It’s my fault, and it got to the point of having to reset the timeline. Me and Fyntn had to go back, to save this, to preserve this happiness. I had to… abandon who I wanted to be.” Lila’s face contorted in anger. When she drew back her fist, I expected pain. Instead, the library exploded at the impact site beside my head. I looked over as the chunks of wood and the whole bottom section that contained the seed of thought flew off into the darkness.

I grabbed at it, and reeled everything back in for fear of losing this world that much faster because of Lila. She crumpled up on the floor, holding her knees to her chest. I watched as the ash shivered off her, the coping of stress. She moved after her shivering stopped, as the structure fell apart into dust.

“So you came here to destroy this place,” Lila said. “Let me help you.”

“No, don’t!” I exclaimed, as Lila prepared another punch. I caught it, exploding my right hand in a very gory display of bones deconstructing and splintering in a bloody cloud of pulverized flesh. I clenched my left hand to reel everything back into my hand, but I still felt a throb of pain in my reality because of imagining that so vividly. “Lila, stop!” My voice boomed to knock her out. She was not down long, springing back up the second her head touched the wooden floor.

“THEN TELL ME!” She burst out. I caught another of her powered punches, this time bubbling away into a burst of blood up to my elbow. I touched my left hand to the stump and extruded a new arm. “DON’T KEEP THINGS FROM ME! DON’T MAKE ME MAKE YOU TELL ME!”

“WAIT!” I shouted, as she wound back another punch. One of those could probably destroy the whole library. Nothing would work on her. I had no control over her. I had to tell her, ruin this timeline, too. I looked up to where Fyntn possibly was, and mouthed the words “I’m sorry.”

“WHAT?!” Lila shouted.

“AKIER VIL MOREDO IS TARNE!” I shouted, at possibly the worst possible time. My eyes drifted over to the garden doors where Kara stood, holding Tarne’s hand. I met Kara’s eyes as she shook her head slightly. Her eyes watered, still clutching the little hand of the child. When she fell to her knees, Tarne patted her on her head, clearly unaware of what was happening. Lila’s anger subsided, to be replaced with shock.

Lila ran over to Kara, trying to meet her eyes, but Kara was crying. She kept her eyes away from Lila until she held her head in place.

“Look at me, Kara!” Lila shouted. “It’s ok!” She hugged her, and reeled Tarne into the hug. The only person that did not need to be here was me. I said nothing, just fell backwards, and broke into dust just like the one Lila shivered off before exiting.

break

It was me again. It had to be. I came up with an idea to break the happiness and it came true. It was the power of a stray thought, in a space that made them reality. Did I have that thought before learning that Kara did not remember who Akier was? I tried to remember. Maybe this was not my fault after all. Maybe it was a byproduct of interacting with a space I did not fully understand.

I sat at the device again, having woken up abruptly at the perfect precise time of my first alarm. The second alarm rang on my way to the subway, and the late catcher alarm rang when I was at my workplace already. I took this sudden awakening as a sign that I had to have a longer discussion with Lila and Kara. I was afraid of it, of how they would treat Tarne. She was a child this time around, and it would make her two mothers keeping a distance that much more heartbreaking.

I entered the library to find Tarne by herself, sitting on the wooden floor with a book open in her lap. Her head was bowed down to read, but that was a terrible position. If it mattered, I would tell her to sit at a desk. There was nothing of gravity and effects of it on a system only creating more entropy in the world. I walked over and sat on the ground beside her, too aware that doing so in reality would hurt my lower back already at its limit from my weight.

“Hey,” I said. “What’cha reading?”

“Rebecca,” Tarne replied. I opened my mouth in surprise, then took the book away to study the pages. It was in fact the copy of Rebecca’s story that I made for Lila. By overreaction, I tossed the book up above us to ignite and turn to ash in an instant.

“That’s not really something you should be reading,” I said. “It’s got some hard to understand adult themes and—”

“I wanted to understand who Akier Vil Moredo was,” Tarne said, then looked right into my eyes. “I don’t remember being this person. I don’t know who he is, but I’m a girl. How could I be that man? Can you explain it to me, Jack?” I opened my mouth to try, but then grimaced. How did one explain a crazy evil person to a child and then tell them that they are a reincarnation of him?

“He had a daughter,” I said, from a recollection of a previous timeline. “By accident, he killed her one day. Before that, he was a crazy person, always angry. He caused a lot of problems in many places. It was especially hard to fix the problems he caused for Kara, because they could visit the same worlds. He also hurt Kara’s dad, and stole away her baby.” Tarne’s face contorted in worry. It was an expression of sadness on a child that you did not expect to ever see.

“And I’m… him…?” She asked.

“No, you’re the reincarnation of him,” I said. “It’s my fault. He would have become someone or something else if I didn’t want to be female, and if I didn’t want to kill myself.”

“No, Jack!” Tarne exploded. Her brow furrowed at the mention of my suicidal thoughts. “Don’t die! Please don’t die!” I smiled, while welling tears in my reality. I could not see the screen. I had to pause a second. Something about a saddened kid telling me not to die really hit home. I wanted to explain to her how it was exactly that she came to be, but I doubted she would understand that some people in my world are born incorrectly and suffer through life in a body they do not feel is their own.

“I promised Rebecca I wouldn’t,” I said, patting Tarne’s head. “I don’t break promises I made with friends.”

“Then promise me, too,” Tarne said. Every action brought back tears. The person I was to be, inhabited by a villain, was a friend of mine now. When she brought out the one motion I valued above all, my heart tightened. “Pinky swear.”

I hooked my pinky onto hers, feeling as if I was holding a dam of tears back behind my eyelids. She was really serious, almost humorously so. We lifted our hands, then brought them down in agreement and apart to seal the pact.

“You are Tarne,” I said. “You’ll always be a part of me, and the daughter of Lila and Kara. Because you once were someone else doesn’t mean anything. Give them some time. If they don’t see things my way in time, I will show them a different side of me.”

“Like JJ?” Tarne asked. I smiled and put a hand on my shoulder to release the inner child. He jumped out of my chest with two toy cars, one in each hand.

“A bit different than JJ,” I said.

“Wanna play with some cars?” JJ asked, and put a toy car in front of Tarne very carefully. “Sorry about you being some scary evil dude once.”

“JJ!” I said.

“What? It’s true, isn’t it?”

“True doesn’t mean you have to go around saying it,” I said, then shook my head. Tarne picked up the car, then set it down and rolled it with her fingers. Afterwards, she picked it up to inspect it.

“You like it?” JJ asked, then without waiting for a response motioned a hand to bring out his whole collection. The hotwheels cars poured out of a pocket dimension onto the wooden floor with a loud clatter. “Check it out.” JJ looked so smug, like only a kid could. I left them to go through the pile of cars while JJ was already building a track around the library.

Meanwhile, I ascended the staircase to look for Lila and Kara. They were not in either of their rooms, but I did find the staircase to the attic open. Maybe they always left it open now that it was a ballroom, but I ascended the ladder-staircase hybrid to a dark ballroom. Rather than turn on the lights, I motioned a hand to create a light cube and tossed it into the air. They sat together in the corner, asleep.

I did not know whether they feared Tarne now to the point of hiding from her, or just ended up exhausted after dancing the stress away, but I let them be for now. I faded the light and left the attic the same way I came in.

On my way down, I saw a flicker in my vision in the corner of my eye.

“Hey, Fyntn,” I said. A small portal opened in front of me, and he jumped out of it. “Well, I told them. You think we’re heading for another reset?”

“One time only, I’m afraid,” he said, flicking all ten of his claws in a motion I saw before. Nothing happened as the result. “An Nth Goni only has one of those in their lifetime. I’ve used mine, but we should be good. You removed Garr, and I took care of the void amalgams. The likelihood of… What’s wrong?” I knelt beside him in shock.

“You used something that was precious to you on me?” I asked. “I don’t know what to say.”

“It’s no big deal,” Fyntn said. “Who else would I use it on anyway?”

“Still, it’s a big deal to me,” I said. “Thank you.”

“I did it to stop Akier from resurfacing, to be honest,” he said. “Nobody knew he had those void amalgams that gave him his thoughts back. Granted, he wouldn’t have been able to latch onto a body as easily if you didn’t create another shell, but that’s what you get from a second strike, the third strike.”

“Thaaaaanks… I think,” I said. “Or maybe, sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Fyntn said. “At least it’s entertaining. Finnelgamin was entertaining, too. If you do get that story published, maybe eventually I’ll end up read by many people. It’s not common for a Goni to seek the fame of being seen. Any normal Goni would have snipped this bud before it became a seed of thought. And now, well, now we’re here.”

“Virgin existence,” I said.

“Untethered space,” Fyntn said, mirroring the reverse of the names we used for it. “Nothing to do here unless you enjoy the dark. People who end up here, either from Rahin regurgitation, or imprisonment from the Keir, can’t actually change things in the dark like you can. That’s my blunder. I tied your reality core to that stupid spawn chamber in the library during Rebecca.”

“And I’ve been thankful to you for it ever since meeting Lila,” I said. “When this is all over and taken care of, are you going to face some kind of punishment?”

“Maybe,” he said. “But if I tell them that I lost my one-shot time-wind, maybe they’ll be kinder.”

“Hold on, didn’t you use that time thing twice?” I asked.

“You acted upon me from before I caused it, so I still had it,” he explained. “Then I used it again, and anything after that was from that point.”

“So you can’t have another Goni take you back to before you used it and take it back?”

“I don’t want to take it back,” Fyntn said. “It worked out, Jack. Akier isn’t Akier anymore. It’s just Tarne. The amalgams are gone. The regurgitated being inside the shell you made isn’t Akier, even though she now knows she is. The memories have no chance of coming back without outside influence. This is the path we’re on now. Try not to screw it up. Ok?” I smiled, then held out my hand. Fyntn pulled three claws off his right hand, then held my hand. I shook it.

“Thanks again, Fyntn the Third,” I said.

“Thanks for saying my name correctly for once,” he said, shifting his gem eyes to the attic. “Give them a few days. Write some stories that you’ve been putting off. Maybe one day you’ll get popular and make me popular, too.” He jumped, put the three claws on his right three-fingered hand, and cut a plus portal in the air that glowed lightly as he vanished through it. The flaps of the portal sealed back up to the fabric of space.

I walked over to the railing open onto the library, now just one giant hotwheels track with a loud noise of speed boosters and plastic wheels on plastic orange track. Tarne was sitting at the desk with her face in a book. I sighed, then patted my shoulder to reel JJ back in with all the things he put up. Tarne looked up and put a hand up for a moment, before returning to the book. I nodded, then jumped over the railing and exited into sparkles on my way down. 

 

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