The Chronicle of the Worthy Son

A River in the Sky

"Did I sleep through my opportunity to ask questions?"

They turned from the lane and back onto the road in the deep rose evening. The farmer had fed them a second meal of porridge and packed them more apples and some sort of stale grain cake before wishing them well on their way. He'd also given Able a worn-out sack when he saw how he'd been transporting his belongings.

Chessie nodded amiably. "We're far enough from Adeptsby now that we're less likely to stumble into someone we don't want to. So, as long as you're not shouting, ask away."

Of course, now Able had to wonder how to ask without sounding as ridiculous as: "Do you truly have the ability to predict the future?" There really was no other way, was there?

"Don't we all?" A smile tugged at one corner of her thin face.

"What..." Able sighed heavily. He had been expecting a riddle but wasn't in the mood for one.

"People predict the future all the time. When the sun will rise, where the water will flow, where they themselves will be the next day or within a week or a month. We think nothing of it until our present is not as we predicted. And because of that, for some reason, we cling to the idea that the future is uncertain."

"Fine," Able conceded, "I'll amend my question to can you predict a future everyone else would consider uncertain?"

"Maybe. I can also predict the past, but no one finds that impressive."

"You can't predict the past."

"See? It's even built into our words. Yet the past is so elusive that you're carting around messages from your past self for the present self you predicted would exist—protecting them like your life depended on it. That's because you know that when you lose evidence, the past becomes as uncertain as the future, isn't it?"

...was that so? Able's body walked on into the darkening night, while his consciousness fell outside of time. It was instead in his uncle's study, or rather, it was trying to be. Trying to pull together the shelves and the books and the dust floating through the rays of light from some sort of faith that the room was always like this, had always been like this. Trying to remember specific pages his hands had turned or conversations he'd had.

His hands should have been smaller when holding some of these books, but he could not make them so. Uncle Noble should have looked younger as well, his voice clearer, but he couldn't make that happen either. He couldn't be certain that the room was even still there, in Blueport where he'd left it, or that Blueport was a place he could even return to—ah, now this was future thinking, future anxiety. Wasn't it?

With a shaky breath, he dropped the thought experiment, pulled his awareness back to the present. The moon was larger and later than the night before, but Chessie had once again led them into the forest where its light had little power.

"Here's the difference." Able looked at her silhouette, which might or might not have been imagined. "We use our past experiences to predict our futures."

"Or drive them." She nodded, or he thought she did. "So I think you know what question you were trying to ask now."

"How can you accurately predict a future when you shouldn't have the experience or evidence needed to do so?"

"Yes."

"...er, yes, that's the question, but what is the answer?"

"No. Yes, that is my question too."

Able stopped in his tracks. "That you're asking me?"

"No, that I ask myself, although not too hard or often, I suppose." She had also stalled in walking but didn't seem to want to stop. "How I know things I shouldn't. Where these things come from. I just call it Eagle and get on with it, because whatever causes time might just be beyond my ability to understand."