Second Chances, Cheap Price

My sign—second chances, cheap price—slumped, and so did I. Other spellcasters hawked their wares—see the wonders of the world!—climb mountains in seconds!—recapture the one who got away!

Welcome to another day at the spell market: charlatans all.

My stock in trade—time travel to the moment you took the wrong fork in the road—led nowhere. After seeing their chosen time cast up on my tent, customers invariably left without changing a thing. After two centuries, I’d concluded that life consisted in making the same bad decisions over and over until we perish.

“Alric! Try some of these!” The Wizard of Woe held out a tray of false teeth, eyeballs and hair.

“How about a love charm?” The Witch of Regret opened a fistful of rabbit fur and toad toes.

“Not today.” I felt too weary to smile.

The click of four-inch-nail-heels rang out on the cobblestones.

Rowena.

My disloyal heart leapt with hope.

Then my faithful friends—rage, indignation, and numbness—settled over me like a shield.

If she’d come to time travel, I’d use everything I had to show her what a terrible choice she’d made when she left me. My fingertips buzzed.

I turned. Two centuries apart had only improved her—plague take her. Her glossy hair looked even blacker. Her emerald eyes held even more glitter. I caught hold of my sign to keep from falling.

“And to think I once imagined you held promise,” Rowena said.

“It’s good to see you, too,” I said.

“Rumor has it that your little machine actually works.” She kicked my sign with her lizardinkgo-skin boot.

“I mostly help the contrite. So what could I possibly offer you? You married an emperor, birthed ten princesses. You command the jewels I couldn’t give, the power I didn’t want, the fame I mocked.”

The sun sank behind the violet mountains, casting umber-amber rays that caught in Rowena’s eyes, turning them tawny as a lion.

An untrustworthy lion.

“Then your reputation lies,” she said in the throaty voice that had once thrilled me. “I heard you listened without judgment.”

Danger rolled off her in waves. I’d honed my instincts in this den of thieves. I knew who’d stab me, blind me, roll me. She wanted to do all these things. Yet power stirred in me in a way I hadn’t even realized I missed.

I drew her into my tent. Stars shone above us, receding into a lapis blue sky. I indicated the throne.

She chose to stalk.

“Look at you,” she said indignantly. “Faded. Dirty. Unkempt.”

“You gave up the right to take my deterioration personally.”

“You could’ve been a court magician, Alric. The counselor of kings. You have rare gifts—kindness, empathy, wisdom. Yet you hide yourself. You’re nobody. This is what you claimed you wanted. Are you happy?”

I felt a pulse of pity—for her or myself, I didn’t know.

Rage took its place, and I swung it like a sword. “You got everything you wanted, Rowena. Are you happy?”

“I’ve never been happier in my life!” She shouted.

“Me neither!” I yelled.

Stars reflected in her eyes, shooting beams in every direction. “Then take me to our last fight!”

“You’ll make the same choice. Everybody always does!” I spat.

“Of course I will! I’m only here to taunt you!”

“Good! Because the day you left was the best moment of my life! You were always complaining. Wanting me to do more, be more, buy more. This is who I am, Rowena! I am nothing!”

She sat.

I settled under my time machine’s black cloth, muttering, and eyed her through its thick lens. Magnified, her translucent skin shone. I staggered.

“Aren’t you going to counsel me first?” she asked in honeyed tones.

“We’ve already said more than enough.” With shaking hands, I jammed a rose-tinted lens in place with a click. Inhaling the power of the violet mountains, I looked with my inner eye and shot her with all that I had.

My legs buckled. I lay down and gazed up at the false stars that rotated across the false sky. Rowena crawled down beside me. Together, we looked up at the illusion I’d created.

I’d dreamt of this once, I remembered.

We watched ourselves as teenagers casting spells to delight each other. We created ocean waves to engulf us; ships to coast upon their crests; wings to wheel us into the whiteness of the sky. We made birds that sang symphonies. Our pillow talks continued night and day, with or without pillows.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh-oh-oh.” She laughed. She wept. She cried out with the passion she’d once given me.

If she asked me now to go back with her, I would. I admitted for the first time that I needed her ambition. She needed my lack of ambition. Perhaps we could have struck a balance between our differences.

Pain seeped in. Quickly, I rose, jammed in the grey lens of distortion, then flung myself down. We watched our fights, our accusations, our snarling mouths.

“I refuse to try!” Young Alric yelled.

“You’re giving up on us!” Young Rowena wept.

“Enough,” she said now.

The sky turned a deep midnight blue. Stars faded.

“You were right,” she whispered. “I cannot undo my marriage to the man who cheats. I cannot undo the births of my daughters who never visit. But even if I could, I still wouldn’t go back. I would have killed you.”

She hadn’t left me, I realized, nor I her.

Our love had been impossible.

“But I’ve changed, Alric. Have you?”

I saw that I wanted to lead people not into the past but their futures.

I felt the ice of her eyes.

I knew the power of that ice. She bent people to her will, as she’d once bent me.

“Look at me,” she said.

“Not today.”

“Look.”

“No.”

“Please.”

I looked. Our fingers touched.

Second chances.

They cost everything.