The Clocks

Paolo threw himself down on his bed. His mind was, to use a ridiculously overused term, "whirling." He'd always thought that it was a silly way to describe things but now found that it fit perfectly. He sighed. One more thing about his world that he'd been absolutely sure of had been proven wrong. He felt a bit of trepidation as he wondered how many other things that he thought were fixed and "true" would also be proven wrong before all this was over.

It was something that he really didn't want to think about, but he realized that he needed to force himself out of that train of thought. Fortunately there had been more than a few times in the past where he'd been wrong and had to deal with "what ifs" and "if onlys," so he knew that thinking of something pleasant would distract him.

Before he realized it, he'd fallen asleep. He'd been so stressed for the past 24 hours, and was sleeping so deeply, that he never noticed his mother peeping in at lunchtime and then carefully closing the door. When he awoke, around 5 p.m. he was still thinking about how to distract himself with pleasant thoughts.

However the first pleasant thing he thought of didn't relax him at all. It increased his tension. That was because, much to his chagrin, he immediately thought of Sara. It really wasn't fair, and he wanted to complain about it, but there was no one to complain to but himself. In the past, on any number of occasions, they'd been separated for weeks at a time when one or the other of their families were traveling on business or vacation, and not once had he missed her.

Now, even though he'd seen her two nights before, he felt an inner ache that was almost excruciating when he thought of being apart from her. Argh! This wasn't going to work at all. He rolled out of bed and began to pace back and forth. After once again getting exactly nowhere, he exclaimed, "Somebody do something!"

"Well finally! It took you long enough to ask! You really ought to know that I can't help if you don't ask. Then again, I never spoke to you before so how could you know? No matter, now you do, so here we go....

Before Paolo could even begin to respond, there was a flash of bluish light. When his vision cleared, he beheld two people in front of him. One was Sara. She had a bewildered and frightened look on her face, and, as soon as she saw him, ran over and buried her face in his chest.

Absently he noticed that Sara was taking deep breaths, as if she were trying not to faint, and that she had her arms wrapped around him. He suspected that it was to hold herself up rather than being due to affection.

Most of his attention was focused on the other "person" in the room. He used the term advisedly, or "provisionally" if you will. She was quite petite, likely somewhere under a meter and a half tall. Of itself, that wasn't such a difficult thing to deal with. He'd seen a number of women who were almost of a like size before, but what he hadn't seen was a small human woman who glowed. He looked more closely just to be sure. Yes, there was a soft blue light surrounding her. Her clothes, while of a decidedly odd cut, were obviously of the finest materials, and she wore jewelry that looked to be beyond expensive.

"Ah, excuse me milady, would you be so kind as to explain what happened? Please?"

Paolo noticed that his own knees were a bit wobbly at that point, so he eased himself and Sara down on the bench behind him. As he had with his mother's fan, he studiously avoided thinking about that fact that he didn't have a bench in his room.

Sara seemed to have mostly recovered by then, as she unwrapped herself from Paolo and let go of him, except to lace the fingers of her right hand in his left. She turned to the woman and nodded her agreement to what Paolo had said.

The lady waved her hand in acquiescence. "Of course I will. You need but ask. Then again, I already said that, didn't I?"

Sara and Paolo nodded. Anyone watching would have found it sweet, as their heads moved in perfect synchrony.

"Very well. First of all, you asked for me to do something, so when you did I responded. Secondly, to be completely honest, even if you hadn't, I'd have finagled some way of getting one of you to ask for help within the next few days anyway. There are things that you need to know that even your parents are unaware of." She smiled then did nothing but look at them. Shortly she began tapping her foot, and her expression hardened somewhat.

Sara nudged Paolo in the ribs which broke him out of his reverie. Somehow looking at this personage worked a lot like the wine had the other day, and it interfered with his thoughts. His mind flashed through a number of possibilities ending up with him blurting out, "Are you God?"

He was answered by peal after peal of high-pitched, tinkling laughter. Eventually the woman fell to the floor, wrapped her arms around herself, and rolled back and forth, laughing all the while. As this was going on, Paolo felt Sara stiffening beside him, and her posture steadily became more upright and rigid.

When the woman finally stopped laughing and climbed back to her feet, Sara spoke indignantly, "There was nothing at all funny about Paolo's question. You purloined me from my room, without asking first I might add, and moved me four hundred meters in the blink of an eye. No mage that I've heard of or read about can do that. That being the case, his question deserved an honest answer, not laughter. Are you God?"

The lady took two deep breaths before answering, "Oh, excuse me. I suppose that you're right Sara. It wasn't the sort of thing you see every day, was it?"

She smiled winsomely. "No child, I'm not God. While it's technically true that I'm not a human, I'm a fallible being like yourselves." A fleeting, bitter expression crossed her face, then she shook herself and added, "The difference is only that I can do some things that humans can't, at least not yet."

She laced her fingers behind her back, tilted her head, and looked at the ceiling, "Maybe I'd better start at the beginning. Perhaps not my beginning, that story would be overly long, so let's make it your beginning. Or more specifically the beginning of your city."

She made a fist of her left hand and tapped it into the open palm of her right. "Yes. That should do, so I'll get right to it. Is that agreeable?" Seeing them nodding puppy-like again, she almost began laughing once more, but she reminded herself that she should be above such things, and...barely...didn't.

"Now Sara, you remember what I told you about these 'Engineers' and their project involving your city while we were on the way here?"

Sara looked bewildered. "What do you mean? Moving from my room to Paolo's took less than a second, I'm sure of that. How could you...?"

Suddenly her mind was filled with the memory of this personage spending nearly an hour with her explaining the Engineers and their plans. But how? Then it came to her. She looked at the clock over Paolo's mantle, then jumped to her feet and pointed an accusatory finger at the lady.

"You, Lady Blue, you're like them, aren't you? You manipulated time somehow. It's only been about three minutes since you kidnapped me, but I know we spent nearly an hour together while you were explaining all this. Who are you, and where exactly were we?"

The lady's expression this time was both irritated and angry. "For someone who scored higher on her exams than anyone else in the entire country, you can be awfully dense. Choose your words more carefully in the future lest you destroy yourself with their consequences!

"First of all, kidnapping requires taking someone against their will and, usually, also holding them in unwanted confinement. I don't recall that at any time during our conversation you said that you were there against your will. I also don't see me preventing you from leaving this room.

"You can you know. You can stand up and leave, but you'll never know or even remember that there was something that you might have learned if you stayed. Do you want to leave, right now? If so, be my guest." She bowed slightly and gestured graciously with both hands toward the door.

For almost a minute Sara stood there with no particular look on her face at all. Then she let herself fall bonelessly back on the bench. She was still pointing at the lady though. "You are a VERY devious person. I'd say that I don't like tricky people, but that would be foolish. I'm a tricky person myself. For that matter, almost everyone I admire or love is."

She shook her finger. "But that doesn't mean that I'm not still somewhat wroth with you Lady Blue."

The lady began snickering again, and Paolo noticed that she seemed to be struggling with herself to keep from laughing. He also noticed that, unlike moments before, Sara had a big grin plastered on her face.

All he could think of doing was throwing his arms in the air and shouting "WOMEN! I don't understand them at all." Fortunately he managed to control himself better than the lady was doing. He knew that if he said something without thinking it through, again, they would put aside their argument and start all over, but this time with him as their target.

"Good boy. There's hope for you yet. Consider it part of the lessons your mother mentioned earlier. You've got to get control of your tendency to blurt out the first thing you think of when you're startled. She was right about it getting you dead if you make a mistake. Now that I think of it, she was also right about Sara calling up your spirit and nagging you."

Paolo stared dumbfounded at the lady. She winked at him then turned her attention back to Sara. "Now young lady, I have an important question for you. Why in the world do you call me 'Lady Blue'?"

Sara straightened up like a schoolgirl being called upon by a strict teacher. "Well, first of all, you're obviously a Lady. I don't think that we need to go into the reasons why I came to that conclusion, correct?"

Seeing the lady nod, Sara went on with, "Secondly you're glowing blue. So, since you've not been polite enough to offer your name, you're now 'Lady Blue'."

It was about time to give this lady some of her own back, so she added under her breath, "Even though you acted more like a four year old than a Lady when you were laughing and rolling around on the floor like that." Sara sat there with her arms crossed, her right eyebrow raised, and a self-satisfied grin on her face.

The lady let her chin drop and astonishment exuded from her. Nobody had talked to her like that in, well, at least 1,500 years. She threw her arms in the air and spun around the room, not always remembering to keep her feet on the floor. How wonderfully refreshing. She was going to enjoy working with this pair quite a bit. She stopped about a meter in the air and directed a speculative look at Paolo.

Seeing the direction of Lady Blue's gaze, Sara did likewise. Somehow they momentarily shared the same thought. He needed some polishing, but he was the most promising male of his age in The City, so it was going to be worth the effort. Then the two ladies looked at each other and began to giggle.

As before, Paolo had no idea what they were up to, but he was wise enough to realize that if he asked, he would probably get an answer that he might not want to hear. Now that the mood had settled into one more amicable than at the beginning, as she had intended, the lady began her instruction.

"I believe that Miranda's idea of starting with reading about The Founding of The City was an excellent one, as far as it went, but it's probably not going to work all that well with the two of you together. First of all, if you have to sit close enough that both of you can read the book at the same time, you're going to be distracting each other far too much, and I want you to pay attention to the information and not each other. You can do something about that later, after you finish."

Seeing their blushes she concealed a smile and forged ahead, "Also, you read at different speeds, which means that one of you would always be waiting for the other to catch up. So.... Hmmm. I know, this is what we'll do. Rather than read the story, I'll let you experience it. Since I was there, I can let you see what I saw, or at least enough to give you a fairly good understanding of what was involved."

Sara and Paolo turned and stared at each other. See what Lady Blue saw? What did that mean, and how was it possible? As they continued their wordless conversation, the lady watched closely. Very good. They were communicating with what they thought were only their facial gestures and almost as well as twins could. This boded well for the future.

She cleared her throat to regain their attention. "Explanations would be meaningless, like trying to describe 'blue' to someone who was born blind. If you experience it, then explanations won't be necessary, right?"

They nodded dubiously, and the lady smiled inwardly. She'd stunned them enough that their natural inquisitiveness was still mostly asleep. She didn't want to have to explain what was going to happen to them and how...yet. While she had watched most of what had happened at the time of The Founding, there was no way that she could have known the thoughts of all those involved. There were far too many people present. Besides, she didn't like prying into what people were thinking. It was different if it were necessary, but at the time it hadn't been.

What she required was the memories of those who had been there when it happened in order to show Paolo and Sara what the principals had been thinking. Fortunately those were available.

"Very well. Let's begin."