Folding the Sky

-27-

Kalindi had thought tapestries were supposed to be beautiful, mesmerizing. But all this one gave her was a growing sense of dread.

"There," Jem said. She'd removed her glasses, and was narrowing her eyes at a section of the tapestry right near the end, before the picture vanished into the unfinished threads. "Guys, what does that look like to you?"

Kalindi and Chike turned, examining it. Kalindi swallowed, making out the dark, rectangular shape of the mill, the silo towering right before its doors. In the next frame, the mill was in shambles, a mess of rubble on the ground, a plume of dust rising in the air like a final exhale.

Jem pointed to two letters woven in gold in the tapestry's corner. "V.S.," she said, and looked up at them, her eyes wide, irises rimmed in white. "It's Schmitt's. It's Vernon Schmitt's tapestry."

"He knows we're here," Chike said. "We need to get the hell out of here. Right now."

The overhead lights flicked on, momentarily blinding them all in their luminance. No one argued with Chike, and they were heading across the catwalk, back towards the place they'd last left Zuri and Aldric, when the gunshot shook the air.

Wendell.

The name rattled around within Zuri's brain for a painful moment before she realized who it must belong to. She'd seen him, Wendell, a time capsule buried in the soft earth of Liesel's memories: a boy with Liesel's hair and Vernon's watchful, birdlike eyes. Their biological son.

Zuri's eyes swept up to Sorin. The blankness of his expression was giving way to concern, dye slowly spreading through crystal clear water. She wondered how much he knew, and how much was just as much a discovery to him as it was to her and Aldric.

"Vernon," Liesel said softly, and if she noticed the pointed look Sorin was giving her, she did a very convincing job of ignoring it. "It's not going to work. If it didn't the first time, why would it work now?"

"It's not like the first time," said Vernon, his face splitting into a grin that sparkled like broken glass dashed across a marble floor. "Because this time, I have you on my side. Don't I?"

Fingers fluttered across Zuri's bloodied hands. Her eyes returned to Aldric, and though his face was nearly the color of fresh snow, his lips shuddering with every breath, the look he gave her was fierce.

His mouth moved, but all that came out was a pained gasp. He touched her hand again, and only now did Zuri realize what he was asking. Wary but too hopeful to deny him, she moved her hands away; the blood gushed from Aldric's side, turning his gray shirt black.

He grimaced, and Zuri helped his trembling hand find the wound. Aldric inhaled sharply, his eyes squeezing shut as the cold blazoned out from his fingertips. A sheen of ice rippled over his ribs, like a glass viewing case. Aldric shivered, his lips chapped and tinted a pale blue, but at least the bleeding had stopped.

Twenty minutes.

It was less than that now. Fifteen, maybe even twelve. They could do it. They had to.

"Bring Wendell back," Sorin muttered to himself, then looked up, yellow eyes aglow as he glared at Vernon. "That's what this is about? To think you'd run off over something so stupid. Death is permanent, Vernon."

"'Death is permanent,'" Vernon repeated with a scoff. "Oh, you would certainly know, wouldn't you? No wonder you've always been so comfortable around it. You like the idea of something permanent, something that can't turn its back on you."