Page 117 of Almost Midnight

“One of the things he said while he was dying was that Dimitry Yi started the wars.” Nick frowned as he tried to recall Brick’s exact words. “He said he was a shapeshifter… which we already knew… and that he pretended to be Charles, mostly so he could lead Charles’ old followers into a new racial war on this world. Brick said the wars herestartedbecause of him. He said Yi found Charles’ people somehow, and brought them here, essentially to conquer this world.” Nick frowned as he glanced around at bewildered faces. “…Which means he’s likely been traveling around in space and time for ages. And probably recruiting and/or outright kidnapping seers wherever he could find them to join his cause.”

There was a silence after he finished.

Wynter blinked at him, her expression lost.

Tai and Malek looked paler, too.

“I don’t know why you don’t remember, honey,” Nick said next, his voice softer. “I’m sure there’s a reason. Maybe you even did it yourself, like I did. Or maybe Yi did it to you… or Archangel. I get the sense Lara has been collecting Yi’s refugees for a while.”

He cleared his throat, glancing around at the rest of them.

“Either way, it would explain how you could’ve ended up on my world,” he said with a shrug. “The portals are unpredictable… look what happened to me, and Brick, and the rest of us who might’ve gone through. We eventually ended up at the same place, but not at the same time. Brick washolding on to mewhen we went through that portal. We went through it together, but the portalstillripped us apart, and sent us to completely different time periods.”

He shrugged again.

“It’s possible Yi tried to take you, and the portal did the same… sending you to me instead, and to Jem… and then following us again, but arriving at a different time.”

There was another heavy silence as they all stared at him.

Nick cleared his throat.

He wondered just how crazy he sounded.

“It’s just a theory,” he clarified. “It’s just one possible way this all makes sense.”

He cleared his throat again.

Then, stumbling over his words, he began to tell him some of the things he remembered. About the cave in Nice, seeing a young girl who looked a lot like Wynter with Jem on the cave floor. He described falling through the portal, seeing Brick as he was torn away from him as they tumbled through space, being shocked at the arrival of Dalejem when he was still trying to determine what had happened to him.

He described his earliest memories of being on this world: silent beaches and endless stars, birds that filled the skies, the quiet without cars or planes or radios or phones or television, the endless stretches of empty land, fields of golden grain, fruit and vegetables and lush trees. He described water so clean and fresh and unspoiled it shocked Jem the first time he drank it, and oceans so teeming with fish Nick could catch them easily in his bare hands.

He tried his best to be accurate, to extract every detail of his recollections. He told them all of it, every thing he could remember: the good, the bad, the funny, the difficult.

He described the first time Dalejem got attacked by an angry mob.

He described his memories of being a nobleman in the south of France.

He described watching the world change around them: the wars, the religious purges, the Crusades, the changing technology, learning to care for animals and birds, learning to ride horses and hunt and use a bow and a sword, and even a jousting pole. He described seeing his first car on this world, and realizing how wondrous and horrible it was, to see and hear and smell one after all those years of silence and pristine air.

He described what he remembered of his marriage.

Of the early years on this world, when it was only him and Jem.

He described them living in a pretty house on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea.

He described them laughing as they tried on the local clothes, changed their names, decided on professions, and learned what to lie about to keep from being branded witches or demons or gypsies. Nick described his memories of horse auctions and riding in sailing ships to Egypt and Africa. He described Dalejem growing gardens, and the two of them taking in orphans. He described some of their funnier interactions with locals, and the tiresome need for both of them to constantly explain their odd appearance and strange eyes.

He described his efforts to build tools, and plows, and even foundries and waterwheels. He described how they’d practiced new dialects, or full-blown languages, or sometimes simply tweak their accents to disguise the last place where they’d lived. He told them about learning to say the things that would keep them safe and unnoticeable and accepted.

They’d learned to go to the right churches, proclaim the right beliefs.

Invite the right people to dinner.

Help out whenever their local village needed it.

Most of all perhaps, he described learning when it was time to let go, to move along to the next town, or six towns down from that one, or sometimes a whole new piece of coastline because they’d lost the ability to blend in with their surroundings.

He described Jem growing old.

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