Steph Swainston - No Present Like Time

Color poured into the sky. From monochrome it became pale, then bright blue. The automobile’s highly polished gold chassis reflected it. The Time Fly in the watch whined with effort. It was now a young imago, its wings crumpled and damp, as it had been when someone imprisoned it. Its six thin legs scraped against the watch’s shiny inside surface.

Suddenly the Insect bridge vanished. Fresh paper, it disappeared in jerky stages from the foot of the arch to its zenith. Waves hit the harbor wall and climbed its sea-level gauge, higher and higher. The steel ships disappeared instantly; instead the ocean spat out white boats that bobbed at anchor. The rings in the dock wall were glossy; Vista Marchan’s towers were complete and spotless, glass walls reflecting the sun. The buzzing in the watch stopped abruptly, and everything was clear and still. It was a beautiful day. Men and women in orange tabards and yellow helmets went about their business at the docks, blissfully unaware of the annihilation that will happen when the Insects’ bridge crashes through.

Tarragon showed me the watch; it was empty. She said, “In a factory in Vista, the Time Fly’s just been hatched.”

An almighty wave reared from the middle of the ocean and cascaded into harbor, diminishing every second, until it lapped at the wall as a gentle ripple. A vast green-and-blue-striped snake’s head and upper body erupted from the ocean, spattering us with spray and blotting out the sun. Its head was four times bigger than a caravel, the solid muscle trunk of its monstrous body as thick as one of the towers behind me.

The glossy snake lowered its flat, pointed head onto the promenade. The harbor workers seemed annoyed but were too polite to say anything. Tarragon and I climbed out of her car. “God-who-left-us,” I gasped.

“No, it’s just a snake.”

“Shit…How many are there?”

“Sh!” Tarragon chided. “Their population numbers less than a thousand.”

The sea krait’s bulk stretched into the distance. It meandered in colossal hundred-meter curves like the Moren River. A ship steered away from its side, panicking and belching smoke. Around half a kilometer from shore, the krait dipped underwater and the same distance farther away a striped conical island trailed back and forth in the frothing sea-the flattened tip of its tail.

We stood in front of the snake’s slightly domed yellow eye. Its vertical slit pupil was the height and width of my body. Its head was covered in bright scales the size of a table top. Black skin showed between them, looking like stitching around the square scales on its closed lips. A deeply forked black tongue darted out of the tip of its snout and flickered around us. It didn’t touch me but I sensed the motion of the air a centimeter away from my face and I felt its moistness. The snake darted its tongue back into the hole in its top lip, which was big enough for me to have crawled through.

Tarragon said, “Jant, may I introduce you to the king of the sea kraits?” She addressed the beast: “Your Heinouss, this is a messenger from the Emperor of the Fourlands who could soon be your Emperor too, if you agree to his terms…Jant, talk to him; he can hear you with his tongue.”

The snake turned its enormous head on one side like a keeling carrack, and rubbed its closed mouth on the promenade. With the grating of a thousand millstones, it scraped great grooves into the cement and uprooted the iron mooring posts on either side. Its eye moved back and forth, appraising me.

I declared, “Tarragon will show you the direction to the Fourlands’ ocean. You and your people can live there if you promise me three things. First, destroy the ship called Pavonine afloat in the center of the harbor, that Tarragon will show you. Second, after that don’t damage any other vessels or harm any people. Live in the depths and stay away from the shoreline, so you’ll be less likely to cause accidents. Third, our world is threatened by the Insects too; that makes us allies and in the future I might call on you for help again, via Tarragon.”

All the time, the krait’s pennant-tongue flicked in and out of its long colubrine smile, picking up vibrations in the air. It was tasting my words. It twisted its head looking for Tarragon and slithered dangerously close to crushing her car before she ran around in front of its eye. It hissed, and I felt its hot, fishy, miasmic breath blow from the arched hole in its lip.

“What is it saying?” I asked.

Tarragon said, “He wants to know if your sea is of sufficient size. I don’t think the Fourlands’ ocean is roomy enough to hold every one of the sea kraits. I will tell him that there’s only space to allow a few of them through. That way at least some will escape the disaster and their species will survive.”

The snake’s glistening body writhed along its whole visible length. Tarragon gave me an encouraging look. “The King accepts. He is convinced of your honesty; he says he can taste it.”

“How do I know whether to trust a sea snake?”

Tarragon laughed. “You have a Shark’s word that you can.”

The meanders of the krait’s kilometer-long body drew tighter and closer together as it pulled its head back and smoothly submerged under the water. I stared at it, openmouthed.

“You will see him once more,” said the Shark. “Goodbye, Jant. I have to act as their guide and we have rather a long way to swim in this delicious water. Still, we’ve plenty of time.” Her red dress turned gray, and stippled to continuous sharkskin all over her body. She walked to the very edge of the massive wall, hooked her bare toes over and raised her shagreen hands above her head.

“Don’t leave me here!” I cried. I was not only in a completely unknown, alien world, but somewhere in its past.

She turned a shark’s cold eye on me. “Have you not been practicing? You should be able to will your way back by now! I advised you to study and I expected you to learn. Well, this is an excellent opportunity to try.” She leaned forward, gave a little jump, and fell through the air in a perfect dive. She splashed into the crystal-clear water and did not rise again.

I might have to stay here forever, I thought in panic. I might have to live here. Berating myself, I examined the stinking abandoned car but it was already beginning to rot. I kicked it. The dock workers had left when we were talking to the King krait, and I was alone. I sat down and for about an hour, though I had no way of measuring time, I tried to copy the feeling of my return Shifts. I imagined the pull-a plausible path to the Fourlands-growing stronger, solidifying. I grasped it, and dragged myself through.

I lay somewhere that smelled of feathers. Darkness surrounded me. I felt nothing. My body was paralyzed; I couldn’t move. “Because you’re dead,” a heavy voice pronounced in my ear. I screamed with no sound. This is the wrong world; I’ve no body to return to. I struggled and thrashed and forced myself awake.

I came to lying on the worn carpet in Ata’s cabin, by the linenfold paneled walls and brocade bench on which Rayne sat in front of the stern windows. “Well done,” she enthused. “You saved us!” The windows behind her were completely black. “Shame i’ killed you, though.” She smiled and her mouth widened on both sides. She smiled and smiled and smiled. I’m still not home. I’m still not awake!

I squeezed my eyes shut and fought desperately. I then saw a lowering landscape with ruined bridges, fortresses, windmills all benighted backlit with raging fire, vast buildings with stone stairways running in every direction. I did not set down there. Someone’s fingers were on my face, probing like worms in my mouth; they forced my jaw open and rammed down my throat. I simultaneously woke up and vomited helplessly.