The End of Time by P. W. Catanese, David Ho Read Free Book Online Page A

notebook limply in his hands. Umber stood and put his forehead against the wall. “How could I not have realized it?” he muttered. The notebook slid from his hands and thumped on the floor.
    Hap got to his feet, feeling twinges in his stomach. “Lord Umber?”
    Umber slapped his palm on the wall. “Happenstance. I told you . . . I promised you...” He rolled his eyes upward and closed them. “I said when your powers develop, and you can leap back to the world that I came from . . . I promised I’d go with you.”
    Hap nodded, even as a spidery panic twitched through his arms and legs. “And you will, won’t you? You’ll help me?”
    Umber stared at the notebook at his feet. “We know that a Meddler can transport another person. Willy Nilly carried you—he took you hundreds of miles, and seven years into the future, to where I would find you. And I’m sure a Meddler must have carried me, the same way, from my world to this world. Maybe that was Willy too, because he brought us together. That makes sense, right?”
    “Yes,” Hap said.
    “So that is not the problem; carrying someone with you.”
    Hap clutched his hands together to still them. “But there is a problem?”
    “ Time is the problem.” Umber grimaced and pinched an eyebrow. “If what Caspar learned is correct . . . nobody can pass through the same time twice. No human and no Meddler.”
    “But . . .” Hap tried to speak, but couldn’t form a question, and finally his jaw went slack.
    “Hap, to fix my world, you have to go into its past. And you can, because you’ve never been there—it’s not your past. But it’s my past. I can’t return, except after the moment I left. And then it would be too late, of course. All the catastrophes would have already happened.”
    Hap’s mind struggled with the full weight of the implications. “You mean . . . I have to do this on my own? You won’t be there to help me?”
    Umber shook his head. “You know I would if it were possible. But I don’t think it is.” He picked up the notebook. “Hap, maybe Caspar was wrong about this. His source could be wrong. We’ll keep reading, all right?”
    “All right,” Hap said, but while Umber went back to inspecting the notebook, Hap wrapped his arms around his knees and stared at nothing.
    “You know,” Umber said after a while, “I think we could both use a break, and some fresh air.” He picked up the canvas and wound it around the thorny nut. “I wish I knew what this was,” he said, and then his eyes widened and his neck stretched. “You know what? I know someone who might. Come with me, Hap!”
    Umber and Hap stepped into the ship’s central cabin. Balfour was at the dining table, slumped with his chin on his hand. “Balfour!” cried Umber. “Have you seen Sandar? Is he on the top deck?”
    Balfour looked up. There was an odd pause, and then he jabbed his thumb in the direction of the captain’s cabin.
    “Excellent,” Umber said. “Old friend, that coffee did me a world of good. Might there be another pot in my near future?”
    Balfour exhaled heavily. “Whatever you say, old friend .” He shoved his chair under the table with a clatter and vanished into the galley without another word.
    Umber watched him go with his mouth scrunched sideways. “Odd. Someone else is in a funk for a change,” he said, and he shrugged. He walked to the rear of the deck and knocked on the door to the captain’s cabin. “Enter,” Sandar called from within. Umber opened the door, waving Hap in before him.
    The captain’s cabin on the Bounder , as on any sailing vessel, was the ship’s largest and finest room. The wide, curving wall opposite the door was the stern, and it was lined with panes of glass, overlooking the sea. Sandar stood there watching the Bounder ’s frothy wake, with his arm propped on the wall and his forehead resting on his elbow. They had sailed clear of the mists of Chastor, and the waves were molten gold in the late afternoon