She searched his face. “You think you might have actually gone back in time?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “The crossover passages and Other lands have already shown us that time slips. Theoretically, time is also supposed to slow down the faster one travels. Time isn’t a completely uniform phenomenon, and we know the universe must self-correct so that paradoxes cannot happen. Maybe we’re experiencing a slippage so far out of sync, I’m experiencing it as a trip back to the past.”
Paradoxes cannot happen. The universe self-corrects. It flexes, like a breathing entity, absorbing and adjusting to anomalies. It had an automatic built-in defense mechanism. It was generally believed that no one could topple history, not even the gods. If the universe could not accommodate an event, it could not happen. Rivers of events would shift only so much to accommodate change.
“You seem remarkably calm about it all,” she said. She wasn’t calm. Maybe she hadn’t been calm since he had showed up on her doorstep. You should be careful who you invite into your home . . .
He gave her a small smile. “I’m just being clinical right now.”
“You’re good at it.” He really was an excellent investigator. She sat back in her seat and looked up at the ceiling. “And at the moment, I’m not.”
He said gently, “I know it’s scary. Thank the gods all I’ve done so far is stop to talk to a child one afternoon, and prevent someone from beating you much worse than he already had. If I had done more, the repercussions could be much worse.”
He didn’t realize the profound effect he had on her.
She closed her eyes. She thought of all the many times she had looked up at the sky, hoping against hope to see the impossible happen again, and see the strange winged lion-god fly back into her life. All of the nights she had looked at the stars, wishing upon wish to see him one more time. Whether those times had happened in history or they had happened all in her mind, they had in fact happened.
And they hadn’t before he had come to the island and met her child-self. If she and Rune were actually changing the past, something else had occurred, something other than what she now remembered, something similar enough that the flow of time had flexed to accommodate the difference.
Had she once looked at the stars in some original past, and wished for something else so passionately? It was almost impossible to imagine wishing for anything as much as she had wished to see him, one more time.
She murmured, “The knife.”
There was a pause. He said, “Yes, the knife. I told Akil to bury it in a distinctive place, somewhere that I knew would survive the test of time.”
“So aside from consulting with Dr. Telemar, we need to find out if the knife is where Akil was supposed to put it.”
“Yes,” Rune said. Something was in his voice. She couldn’t identify it. She brought her head up to look at him. He was studying her, his brows contracted. He said, “Suspend dis-belief for a moment. Forget about asking why or how. What happened after I left? I made Akil swear to look after you.”
“He did,” she assured him. Or at least she thought he did. Then she did as Rune asked, and pushed all the consideration of that aside. “He gave me a new name and adopted me, just as you told him to. He gave me the best of everything he had, including the finest education, just like he promised you he would. I think he even grew to love me in his own way. At least he cherished me, if for no other reason than his god had.”
If they were really changing the past, none of that would have happened without Rune’s intervention. One way or another, it seemed she could not escape her early life being shaped by the Wyr. Something else would have occurred, something similar enough that the universe accepted the altered timeline as true. Perhaps what Rune had really given her was a kinder, gentler beginning, at least as much as he was able. Now that her panic had receded she found that she could be grateful for that.
“He gave you a new name? What did he name you?”
She whispered, “What do you think? None of us understood you at the time, none of us. We only knew that a god had touched our lives, found something of favor in me, and pronounced his decree. None of us really comprehended the things that you said.”
Rune frowned at her. He looked so puzzled, that despite all the uncertainty she faced, she had to smile. “You called me ‘darling,’ ” she said. “Remember? And we thought a god had called me something sacred.”
“Carling,” he breathed.