Ten Thousand Skies Above You
Page 74

Tension returns, a dull weight on my chest. “It’s true. In the Home Office, my parents think—you know, what’s a few universes more or less?”
“That is as effed-up as it gets. How close are they to being able to do it? They’d need a device that could move through dimensions like the Firebird, one that could affect fundamental resonance—”
He’s already theorized that far ahead. It gives me hope that we might be able to outfox the Home Office yet. “They don’t have the device, but they’re heading into tests. So not long.”
“Damn. Maybe I ought to head back home. The sooner I get there, the sooner I can tell Henry and Sophia what’s happening.”
“They need to know.” But it feels weird to say, Sure, fine, go on without me.
Theo’s been by my side this entire trip. More than that: I’ve realized how much more we can be to each other. Paul is the only one I love, but I’ve connected with Theo on an entirely new level. The friend I cared for so much before the Triadverse and the Home Office started screwing with our lives—I have that Theo back. And I’m so glad.
I can’t talk about any of that here and now. Theo wouldn’t want to hear it, not this way, not yet. So I say only, “If I don’t get home within twenty-four hours, come back and get me, okay?”
“Always,” Theo says.
The tone in his voice is supposed to sound casual. It doesn’t. Just beneath the surface lurks a kind of longing I still don’t know how to deal with—but I don’t have to. Theo hangs up without even waiting for my goodbye.
For a moment I stand there, staring down at my phone screen. I wish I could call him back; I almost wish I could say what he really wants to hear. But I shouldn’t, and I can’t.
Instead, I find the Maps app and plug in the address on my driver’s license. It’s time to go home.
My trip takes me along the side of the River Cam almost the whole way, so I’m able to enjoy the scenery and the new warmth of a spring day. Gripping the handlebars makes my right arm ache beneath the red scar, but I can deal with it. In this dimension, it seems we live in a Victorian town house not very far from the university and city center—not far over the river at all. Parked in front is an absurdly small car in brilliant apple green. At first the grand yellowstone edifice of the town house looks so much like someone else’s home that I’m reluctant to walk inside.
Then I see tangerine orange sparkle in one window: a suncatcher, dangling mid-pane just like it does at home. Reassured, I cycle up the driveway, lock my bike, and head inside.
The moment I open the door, I hear this strange jangling sound—and then a black pug runs into the hallway to greet me, all scrunchy nose and dangling tongue. Laughing, I duck down to pet him.
At last a dimension where my parents let us own a dog! I’ll have to figure out how this Marguerite and Josie managed it.
“Who is it, Ringo, buddy?” My father’s voice comes closer with every word. “Has Xiaoting come to see us—oh! What are you doing home already, sweetheart? Did the first showing sell out?”
He looks so like my dad back home, with his fusty cardigan and permanently mussed hair, that I want to melt. No more strange, crazy Dad manipulating and threatening the dimensions—just one like the Dad I know and love. “Yeah,” I say, having no idea what movie I was going to see. “I got there too late.”
“All right, then.” He gestures for me to come farther into the house, as Ringo the pug runs to his side, panting happily. “At least you’re here in time to tell Susannah goodbye.”
Sure enough, as I walk into the small but bright kitchen, I see my aunt Susannah, wearing a leopard-print wrap dress and her trademark fuchsia lipstick. My mother—looking entirely like herself—is nodding in genial incomprehension as Aunt Susannah says, “And if you’re not flying business class, I say, it’s hardly even worth it. Because in coach, you might as well be cattle, you know— Oh, Marguerite, darling? Back so soon?”
“The movie was sold out.” I stick to the excuse Dad supplied; no point in overthinking anything. Besides, I’m truly glad to see her. At home, it’s been years since we visited—but Aunt Susannah was my guardian and caretaker in the very first new dimension I visited, and after hearing about her death in the Warverse, it’s good to see her standing here, alive, well, and flamboyant as ever. “When do you leave?”
“Your dad’s driving me to the train station at quarter past. So I get to tell you goodbye twice!”
She holds out her arms. Normally I’d try to dodge this, but now I walk into her embrace and hug her tightly. Her overripe perfume has never smelled better.
Aunt Susannah laughs, surprised but pleased. “Aren’t you a dear? Henry, Sophia, you must send her to London with me this summer. We can go shopping for all the latest fashions, so you knock ’em dead at Oxford come fall.”
Oxford? I applied to the Ruskin School of Fine Art and got in? Pride and hope swells within me. If this Marguerite could get in, maybe I could too. I don’t know if they take students starting in January—but I could go to their next SoCal portfolio review and find out.
“I think a London trip could be arranged,” Dad says. “But if we’re going to make the six-forty-five train, you and I had better hoof it.”
“Right-o.” After a couple of pats on my shoulder, Aunt Susannah lets go. I’m surprised to feel a lump in my throat as she waves. “We’re off, then. See you soon, my dears.”
“Goodbye, Susannah.” My mother always has this look on her face when she’s around my dad’s sister—slightly overwhelmed, slightly confused—but in this dimension, there’s also a deep fondness.
Once Dad and Aunt Susannah go, it’s just me, Mom, and Ringo the pug. While my mother is busy putting together dinner—a Bolognese sauce by the smell of it, yum—I do some quick reconnaissance of the house. This looks like a place we’d live: books, plants. And my room is filled with oil portraits in a style very like my own back home. Josie, Mom, and Dad form a triptych on the wall, each vibrant in their own way. Yet I recognize the brushstrokes, the blended colors, the light. I could have painted any one of these myself.
Paul wasn’t just being encouraging that night we talked in his dorm room; he was telling me the truth. Have I really been selling myself short this whole time?
If I could get into Ruskin, Paul could do his postdoc either there or here at Cambridge. It doesn’t take very long to get to Oxford from Cambridge, or vice versa. We’d be able to see each other every weekend at least. It can all work out, if we only try.
So I don’t let it bother me that Paul’s portrait isn’t hanging on the wall.
What’s weirder is that my easel isn’t out. I don’t see a box of paints; when I look in the hamper, it contains exactly zero paint-stained smocks. (I’m supposed to wash them separately, but sometimes I forget, with disastrous results for the rest of the laundry.) I’m supposed to be starting at Ruskin soon. Shouldn’t I be practicing?
I head back to the living room, which is smaller than the one we have at home, but equally comfy. Plopping down on the overstuffed red sofa, I’m immediately joined by Ringo, who wants a belly rub. As I oblige him, Mom walks in from the kitchen, drying her hands on a tea towel. “There,” she says as she sits near me. “We’ll put the pasta on when your father gets back.”