“You mean Loki?” said Josiah. “That was Bragi’s fault. He chose Loki over me.”
Freddy said, “Chose?”
“They all have to choose which of us will be dominant during their lifetimes,” Josiah explained. “Don’t pester me about why. It’s just the way things work. Some choose Qi; some choose me. We live with whatever the decision is. It all balances out in the end.”
“But Bragi was fighting Loki in the hall,” said Freddy.
Josiah shrugged. “Choosing one of us is a complex proposition.”
She had a feeling this whole situation was a complex proposition, and then some. “What if they refuse to choose?”
“We have our ways of persuading them,” said Josiah. “You may see some of those once we get back.”
It took only about a second for this to sink in. “You don’t think I—”
“No idea,” said Josiah. “Could be you. Could be Mel or Roland. We know it’s one of you, but you’re not making it easy for us.”
She stared at him, forgetting to work the key. He looked pointedly at her wrists, and she started again, more slowly.
“Here’s the thing,” said Josiah. “What happens is that after Three dies, there are ten to twenty years where we don’t know when or where the next Three is going to turn up. He—or she—won’t necessarily be born right away, though usually within a decade of the last Three’s death. Eventually, we get a sort of … trace. It’s hard to describe. We can follow it to more or less where Three is, but unless Three happens to be a hermit on a mountaintop, we can’t know exactly who it is. It’s now been sixteen years since the last Three died. We know this new Three lives in your house and is between ten and fifteen. We haven’t got any further than that.”
Freddy had so many questions that she couldn’t decide which one should come first. She had to settle for, “Why not?”
“I’d love to be able to answer that,” said Josiah. “It’s profoundly irritating. There tend to be clues. This time … nothing.”
“What clues?” said Freddy.
“Three’s … kind of creative.” Josiah’s voice was suddenly cautious again. Freddy thought he might be choosing what he said carefully, though she couldn’t see why he should.
“Like Bragi,” said Freddy.
“Right,” said Josiah. “And Ling here tells stories.”
Remembering something Josiah had said about Bragi, Freddy said, “Is she going to be famous, too?”
“Nope,” said Josiah. “Some of the Threes are. It’s unavoidable, considering. But most of them aren’t.”
Freddy said, “I think you’re wrong about us. We’re more sort of science-y.”
“I know, and it’s driving me crazy,” said Josiah. “I noticed your mum was an English prof, and I went … ah-ha! But you’re good at math, and Mel does science for fun, and Roland draws swords, but not well or as if he means it. Why does he do that, anyway?”
She almost told him about the role-playing games. Afterwards, she was pretty sure she intended to do so up until the instant she actually spoke. But what she said, to her own surprise, was, “He’s bored. It’s just doodling.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Josiah.
And now she was wondering if it was true.
Josiah had never really seen Roland and Mel gaming. Oh, he had walked through their living room during a session once, but she thought he had mostly been noticing the screaming and fighting and flying coffee tables. He may have assumed everyone was playing a board game. The kind of gaming Mel and Roland took part in wasn’t really like a board game, though. It was more like Roland made up adventures for the others to follow. He was always the GM, the game master. Mel had told Freddy once that Roland liked inventing his own campaigns from scratch. He acted out the non-player characters, the NPCs, himself. Mel had her own character, a sort of mystical priest with particular skills and attributes. And Mel made things into mysteries. They’re both creative, thought Freddy, glad Josiah wasn’t looking at her, as she wasn’t sure she was keeping her face blank enough. They just don’t seem like it on the surface. As for me …
She thought of how easy she had always found English class. She thought of that pile of books on the chair in the kitchen and the way she would have known who Loki and Heimdallr were even if she had never seen a single film with Thor in it. She thought of how many bookshelves she had in her room.
“Yeah,” said Freddy, “I don’t think it’s any of us.”
She wasn’t sure why she wasn’t telling him the truth. From what he was saying, Three just had to make one choice that didn’t make a huge difference in the long run. There was no reason not to help Josiah discover which of them it was. But … there’s something else here. Something he’s not saying. I can’t see what it is yet, but it’s there. She knew she was cautious and boring. Well, then, she would be cautious and boring, and she wouldn’t rush into things, and maybe she would be able to find out exactly what was at stake before she flung Mel or Roland or even herself into some situation she didn’t understand.
“Anyway,” said Freddy, “none of this explains the time travel.”
“Oh, that,” said Josiah. “That’s just sympathetic resonance.”
The key didn’t seem to be having much of an effect. Freddy took a firmer grip on it and continued to saw at the rope. “Symp…?”
“You should pay more attention in band,” said Josiah. “Say you have a stringed instrument, and you pluck one of the strings, and then one of the other strings makes a noise, responding to the vibrations of the first string.”
“Okay,” said Freddy, “sure.”
“It’s because the two strings have something in common, harmonically speaking,” said Josiah. “When one vibrates, the other vibrates, too. It’s why a soprano could theoretically make a glass break from across the room by singing a particular high note.”
“I think that’s an urban myth,” said Freddy.
“Physics doesn’t care what you think,” said Josiah. “At any rate, it works with Three. The Threes are all different people, but in a way, they’re the same person, too. They … vibrate to the same frequency. And so sometimes, one Three will have a thought that is exactly the same as the thought another Three once had … or will have.”
Freddy blinked. “Across time and space?”