“What do you mean? What happened?” Matt asked.
Nobel scoffed. “What do you think? Things started to change all over the place. Buildings and people from other times and places. As you can see, Sweden is no longer Sweden, and I have heard reports that other places have suffered similarly. And Emil . . .” Nobel’s face darkened. Matt saw him put his hands into fists. “Well, let’s just say bringing Emil back was not a gift. It was almost worse than having him dead. He was different. I’m sorry to say he returned a little more like me, unhappy and stubborn. He was not the brother I knew. It was as though he knew he wasn’t supposed to be there. When he understood what I had done, what was happening with the world and the role I had in it, he was angry with me. He said I’d tampered with things that should not have been tampered with. I tried to make him understand, but he refused to hear me, refused to have anything to do with me or my business. He left, fled to Paris. I never saw or spoke to him again. I sent him letters, but he never responded, and then a year later I learned that he had died of cholera. His wife as well. This time I did not ask Captain Vincent for his help.”
Nobel grew silent and seemed to retreat into a dark space in his mind.
After a few awkward moments of silence, Marta spoke, still focused on her knitting. Nobel gave a ghost of a smile.
“What did she say?” Jia asked.
“She says I am forgetting the happy ending when she was brought to me.”
“Wait,” Matt said. “Pike—or Marta—was born after Emil was brought back?”
Nobel nodded. “Yes. I did not know of her existence until after he died. The second time.”
Matt and Jia shared a look. He was sure she was thinking the same thing as him. If Captain Vincent had never brought back Emil, changed the past, Marta would never have been born, and if Matt, by some miracle, was able to fix the lock and bring back the people Captain Vincent had erased, what would happen to her? Would she cease to exist? Would she continue living?
Marta looked at Matt with her ghostly eyes, like she knew just what he was thinking. She didn’t stop her knitting.
“She is a strange little thing,” Nobel said. “I’ve always thought she had an otherworldliness to her, like a sprite or an elf. She’s always disappearing and reappearing, as though she’s slipping between realms. I sometimes think she, too, does not belong here, and that she knows it.”
Matt remembered he’d had that same feeling about Pike when he’d first met her. He’d always thought she was a bit spooky, partly because of how pale she was and partly because she never talked, but now, thinking about her origins, Matt wondered if there was something else about her that made her different. Her existence was brought about by a change in the space-time continuum. That had to make you different.
And then there was her seeming obsession with tying knots, knitting and weaving. He used to think that was just some kind of compulsion, a tic she couldn’t help, but now he wondered if there was more to it than that.
“Marta,” Jia asked. “How did you come on board the Vermillion? Who brought you there?”
Marta spoke, and Nobel translated. “She says you brought her there,” Nobel said, nodding to Matt, “that you transported her there from the jungle city.”
“Me?” Matt said and at the same time Jia said, “What jungle city?”
“She says a place with three circles, the place where you were born, where everything begins and ends.”
Matt felt chills run down him. She had to be speaking of Ciudad Perdida, the Lost City of Colombia. That was the place he’d been found and adopted, though he couldn’t remember who had adopted him. Captain Vincent? And Captain Bonnaire? It seemed right but also wrong.
“You were there?” Matt asked. “What happened?”
Marta shrugged and spoke.
“She says she doesn’t remember,” Nobel translated. “It’s all a blur to her now. Maybe Captain Vincent altered her memories too.”
“Did Captain Vincent understand why you were on board the Vermillion?” Jia asked.
“She says no. He suspected her presence at first. He threatened to discard her, but after she unlocked your safe and brought him the box with the letter, he trusted her fully.”
“Why did you do that?” Matt asked.
“Because you told her to.”
Matt’s mind was racing to put together all the pieces, what his future self was thinking, what his goal was. Who was he? He looked down at the frayed and fading bits of time tapestry.
“Do you know who they belong to?” Nobel asked.
Matt shook his head. “I can’t remember. I only know that they were important to me, but even that feeling is starting to fade.” He couldn’t remember who they were, couldn’t remember their names or picture what they looked like, but he felt the pain of the loss as though he’d lost both his arms. He felt the phantom twitches of their presence. But he knew time was running out. If he didn’t find them soon, he feared they’d be gone forever. He would forget.
Forget. Was there a sadder word in any language? If there was, he couldn’t remember it.
“You truly don’t know what you
