Stealing Infinity, page 32
Though the main event is happening inside the palace, the grounds are far from empty. So I do my best to keep my head down until I reach an area where no one has ventured, then I break into an all-out, gut-busting run.
When I pass the Girandole Grove, an area easily recognizable from the alcove of trelliswork that surrounds it, I push my legs harder, faster.
When I hear the steady drumbeat of gushing water, I know it shouldn’t be too much longer.
After skirting around a towering wall of hedges, the Fountain of Saturn pops into view, and I pause long enough to clutch at my knees, steady my breath, and ask the obvious question: Now what?
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I stare at the fountain, wondering if maybe this isn’t the best plan after all.
I mean, am I really supposed to wade through the basin to lay claim to some mysterious bauble, and then storm the palace with frizzy hair and a drenched gown in hopes of charming some boy I don’t even know into traveling into the future?
What is Arthur thinking?
What am I thinking to agree to such a thing?
From the moment I pegged the fountain as the location, I should’ve taken the time to come up with a much better strategy.
Still, it’s not like I can just trot on over to the Hall of Mirrors, find Killian, and instruct him to chill by the portal while I take a midnight dip with Saturn and friends. So I do the only thing I can do—I stand at the edge of the fountain and conduct a quick review of everything I remember from my studies.
The fountain was created by Girardon in 1677, and it features the Roman god Saturn, also known as the god of time, sitting on a bed of shells, surrounded by cupids, as he leans against a sack that he thinks contains Jupiter, the son he wished to kill, when in fact, the child has been replaced by a stone.
A quick scan reveals everything I expected to see is laid out before me exactly as the book claimed it would be, and a wave of relief washes through me. All right, then. So far so good.
I guess because over the years, so many components of this garden have been remodeled or relocated, Arthur chose to send me here now, in hopes that the treasure he seeks has not been disturbed.
Not to mention, of course, the matter of Killian—which makes for a sort of two-for-one, if you will.
As I slink toward the rim and peer past the towering spouts to the gleaming bronze sculpture that sits at the center, there’s a rapid fluttering in my chest that I instantly recognize as the relief that comes from being right—of knowing with absolute certainty that somewhere within this mythological tableau is the prize I seek. All that’s left now is to claim it.
But first, I’ll have to brave the rocketing geysers launching from the mouth of the sack, along with the other eight jets scattered around it.
After kicking off my shoes and removing my stockings and the holster strapped to my thigh, I grab my skirts in one hand, ease my legs over the edge, and step inside a pool so frigid, I fight to stifle a cry as the icy cold water slices straight through my flesh, all the way down to my bones. Still, I force myself onward, splashing toward the island, where I place my free hand on a cherub’s bare butt and use the leverage to pull myself up.
My first thought is maybe the Get is hidden among the assortment of seashells. Though it’s as good a place as any to look, after a good bit of crawling around, looking for something, anything, that appears even slightly out of place, I’m coming up zero. And between the soaked state of this dress and the freezing night temperatures causing my teeth to chatter and my toes to turn blue, it’s becoming glaringly obvious that I need to find this thing soon. Otherwise, before I can even get to annihilation, I’ll be dead of hypothermia.
A quick tap of my mask informs me a total of twenty-seven minutes have passed, and for the first time since I arrived, I wonder if maybe I celebrated too soon—maybe I’ve somehow misinterpreted the clues.
I mean, what if the Get has nothing to do with this fountain?
What if—
I force the doubt from my head and try again. Figuring I should attempt a more search-and-rescue-style approach and comb the terrain in a methodical grid, I brace myself against one of the cherubs and focus on the bits to my right. This time, when my gaze lights on a cherub with his hand grasping toward Saturn’s wing, something about that chubby little hand, combined with the tormented look on Saturn’s face, reminds me of my second day at Gray Wolf when Arthur tasked me with procuring a ruby during the fancy Venetian hologram party.
There, on the wall, hanging beside Goya’s version of Saturn making a meal of his son, was an old masterwork of Heraclitus and Democritus that ultimately led me straight to the prize.
In the painting, Heraclitus wore an agonized expression, much like the look on Saturn’s face in the sculpture before me. While Democritus, appearing far more gleeful, pointed directly at the clue I needed, just like this curly-haired cherub points to the space beneath Saturn’s wing.
A rush of air licks out of my body as it suddenly occurs to me that ever since my first day at Gray Wolf, Arthur’s been leading me down a winding trail of breadcrumbs that’s been steering me here all along—right to this bronzed swoop of feathers belonging to the god of time himself.
And much like in the construct, when, for a fleeting moment I caught a glimpse beneath the golden shell of Elodie’s locket to the shiny jewel nestled within, as I follow the tip of the cherub’s pointing finger, I’m struck by a brilliant yellow light that wasn’t there a moment ago but now shines as bright as the sun.
The sun!
In an instant, a vision blooms in my head, and I can see it as clearly now as I did way back then.
I’m back home. Back to my nine-year-old self, with my dad sitting before me, his gaze glinting with an unnamable sorrow as he holds up a piece of a once-favored toy I now recognize as a replica of the Antikythera Mechanism. “Tell me about this piece,” he says, holding the shiny golden ball before me. “Tell me everything you know about the sun.”
A kaleidoscope of butterflies takes flight in my belly, and in a wild burst of elation, I thrust my hand toward it, only to be left grasping at nothing when it vanishes into thin air.
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I fall back on my heels, wondering if the cold has somehow gone to my head.
If I’ve become as desperate as a wanderer lost in the desert who starts seeing mirages beyond every sand dune.
But it can’t be. Deep in my gut, I know I’m onto something. Because that night back at Gray Wolf, when Arthur took me to the Vault, I had a vision of the original version of the Antikythera Mechanism, I got to see how it looked before it was dismantled and lost, and I know in my bones, all the way down to my frozen blue toes, that the sun is the key to solving this mystery. And that, for whatever reason, my dad has prepared me for this moment.
Is it possible he was somehow working with Arthur?
I force the thought from my mind and focus on things I know for a fact. All the pieces are falling into place, and every one of them leads back to le soleil.
Fact: King Louis XIV was known as the Sun King.
The arrangement of this garden, from the Great Axis that starts at the chateau, then leads west past the Bassin de Latone all the way to the Bassin d’Apollon, runs in a straight line from east to west—parallel to the daily journey of the sun.
Both the Visconti Sforza deck and the modern day tarot deck depict the Sun card using the image of both a cherub and the sun.
On the Sforza deck, the one Arthur and my dad both relied on, the cherub is even holding the sun aloft in its hands.
Also, the Sun card in tarot falls in the nineteenth position.
In numerological terms, 1 + 9 = 10. And of course, reduced even further, 1 + 0 = 1.
The Wheel of Fortune card I pulled back at Arcana that began this whole journey is number ten in the Major Arcana, which reduces to one.
While the Magician, the card I associated with Arthur, is number one.
Are these links a coincidence?
Or am I overthinking, seeing connections where they don’t really exist?
Either way, I need to find out.
I clamber closer to Saturn’s wing and stare at the place where I’m sure I saw the light emanate, but all it reveals now is blank space.
I shoot a look over my shoulder, as though willing the cherub to give up the goods.
Then I return to Saturn, a dude who was so afraid of losing his power, he ate his own kids.
“C’mon,” I say, under my breath. “I know you’re hiding it. I know—” A flash of something bright and quick catches at the corner of my eye, and I thrust my hand toward it once more, gaping in astonishment as a small golden ball appears from out of nowhere.
This is it.
I know in my gut that it’s true.
This ancient sphere of gold is the missing piece to the Antikythera Mechanism that’s meant to stand in for the sun.
I curl my fingers around the smooth, shiny surface and give it a yank. When it doesn’t come away as easily as I’d hoped, I bend into a crouch, wedge my feet hard against Saturn’s butt, tighten my grip, and use the full force of my weight to heave my body back so hard, the sphere comes loose in my hand.
My first thought is one of triumph at having succeeded where others failed.
My second thought is unmitigated horror at discovering the momentum I’d created to pull the sun free is now working against me, causing my head to snap up toward the stars as the seat of my gown careens along the slippery slope of Saturn’s outstretched leg, before crashing my hip against the cherub’s shoulder where I’m catapulted into the sky, arms helplessly flailing, legs splaying over my head, spinning me backward until I’m somersaulting right over the edge.
I land with a splash.
A gush of disgusting fountain water spills into my mouth, while my feet scramble beneath me, searching for purchase, struggling to determine which way is up.
When I break, when my face splits the surface, leaving me retching and gagging and struggling to purge all the water from my lungs and replace it with air, I realize my right fist is still tight, but I’m too afraid to look inside.
You can do this. My heart thrashes wildly in my chest. You need to do this.
Slowly, I force myself to uncurl one trembling finger at a time, convinced that I lost it in the fall, only to gasp in wonder when I find the sun—an ancient artifact over two thousand years old—rolling gently across the lines of my palm.
That rush of adrenaline that kept me going until now gusts right out of me, reminding me again just how damn cold this water is. With one task down and another to go, I quickly shuffle toward the edge, climb over the rim, and have just stepped onto dry land when the sky collapses, the ground caves in, and the entire world crumbles around me.
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The world as I know it is gone.
Disappeared.
Evanesced in a poof as though it never was here.
Only to be replaced by a strange and ancient dreamscape consisting of the same garden elements, the same fountain, but according to the hazy, sepia tones through which I now view it, this is a much earlier age.
Like all the other Unravelings that came before, I’m a hostage to this drama, an audience of one, forced to watch the play unfold until the final curtain is dropped.
This time, a young boy is the star. His face is obscured by a cascade of dark ruffles that bend past his shoulders in the sort of effortless tousle the girls at my old school would literally die for. His sweater is hand-knit of lumpy brown wool with awkwardly drooping sleeves and a complicated network of scars left from multiple mendings. The pants he wears are at least one size too big, left to hang from a twig of a frame made of jutting elbows and knobs for knees. But what he lacks in bulk, he makes up for in agility and speed, and I watch in astonishment as he steals through the night, his steps quick and sure as a cheetah unleashed.
Though as purposeful as he looks, he’s not without fear. I know this by the quickening beat of his heart that is somehow, inexplicably, accessible to my ears.
There’s a sheen of sweat on his brow dripping steadily into his eye, and I can feel the salty sting of it as though it’s spilled into mine.
When a gut-wrenching wave of nausea rolls through me, I watch in amazement as I clasp a hand to my belly at the exact moment the boy does the same.
Together, we unlock our knees, take several deep breaths, and make a slow count of un, deux, trois…until the misery has passed. And I know without question, I’m no longer just an observer. Like gazing into a fun-house mirror, I’m now part of this dream.
Driven by equal measures of determination and trepidation, the boy clambers over the edge of the newly completed fountain and cuts a quick path through the water, barely registering the icy spray that bites through his worn clothes and into his skin—our skin. Then he leaps onto the island like I did, crawls past the cherub, and just before hiding the golden ball beneath Saturn’s wing—the same golden ball now gripped in my hand—he bends his head, shuts his eyes tightly, and infuses the object with the story now unfolding all around me.
Within the clammy confines of my palm, the sun begins a steady heat and thrum. The intensity of the vibration increasing so rapidly, it jumps in my hand, forcing me to struggle to hang on.
This is no ordinary Unraveling.
This is a message—a sort of energetic telegram the boy intended solely for me.
There’s a name for this sort of phenomenon—a term once used by my dad when he tried to teach me about the energy field infused within objects and how to access that power…
Psychometry.
As soon as I land on the word, it’s superseded by the boy’s message, which spews forth in a rush.
Something about another sun he’s tucked away in an ancient royal crypt… It’s a decoy… A trap… Two suns were needed because there’s so much at stake…
I scramble to match the words to the vision, but it all flows so quickly, it soon overwhelms me.
I force my eyes shut, telling myself it will help me connect, delve even deeper. But the churning revolt in my gut calls me out on the lie, and the next thing I know, the trapdoor of memory bangs open as a deluge of forgotten teachings and truths, things I’ve managed to suppress all this time, comes slamming back toward me.
My dad knew this moment would come.
He tried to teach me, prepare me, but I’d stubbornly looked away and channeled my effort into forgetting.
Falsely believing that by turning my back on him and all that he taught me, by denying his existence, I could also deny the grief his absence had made.
But now he’s here—a shimmering vision of the dad I’ve secretly missed for so many years. He looks strong. Fit. With a flop of brown hair, a quirk of a smile, a narrow pinch of nose, and eyes just like mine. The sight of him is enough to make my heart splinter into a million unmendable shards.
And yet, my heart also reminds me that he’s not really here.
This vision of him is more like a specter of memory sent to warn me that, unlike the scary movies Mason and I used to watch, covering my eyes and refusing to look won’t save me from the sort of things he needs me to know.
Needs me to see.
Look! he tells me. Open your eyes and—
My eyes snap open just in time to watch the boy slip the golden ball beneath Saturn’s wing, where it will remain in secret until I come along.
When the boy turns to leave, I catch a quick glimpse of his face.
What I see leaves my jaw unhinged, my eyes gaping wide, as a startled cry trips from my lips.
I lean into the vision, trying to peer closer and confirm the impossible, when a rough hand clamps down on my arm, jolting me out of the dream and back to the horrifying reality of a harsh voice barking into my ear, “Ou allez-vous?”
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First thing I notice is his nose isn’t broken.
It’s then that I realize that also means he has no recollection of our prior meeting.
Because my arrival was timed two hours earlier than my last visit, as far as the groundskeeper is concerned, this is the first time he’s seen me.
I shoot him an indignant look, and in a chirp of warbled French, I warn him in no uncertain terms that he cannot speak to me in that tone.
It’s only after my show of bravado that I notice my stockings and shoes are draped over his shoulder, and while his left hand holds the golden sphere he must’ve seized while I was lost in the vision, his right hand wields a dagger I soon recognize as my own. Next thing I know, he’s pressing it fast to my throat.
“You take what does not belong to you,” he says, his French so rapid, it’s a moment before I can translate. He slips the sun into a small leather pouch he wears tied at his waist, then angles the tip of my blade until it nearly pierces my flesh.
The same blade I’d foolishly left on top of my shoes in a misguided attempt to keep the holster from getting wet. A ridiculously rookie move if there ever was one.
“You have no business here,” the man whispers bitterly into my ear, as he yanks hard on my wrist and pins my body tightly to his. “And now, you will learn what happens to thieves at this court.”
He’s barely finished the threat before he starts dragging me away, and though I struggle with all my might to break free, my efforts are wasted. This man holds the unfair advantage of being five times my size and possessing three times my strength.
The soles of my bare feet scrape along the gravel, while the sopping skirts of my gown cling to legs now rendered so numb, they feel as though they belong to somebody else.
When we reach the Parterre D’eau and a crowd of gowned and masked revelers turn to stare, I can’t believe my good luck, knowing that soon, this will be over.
