"I understand this," he said, though his tone suggested he wasn't sure where I was going.
"Where I come from..." I struggled, searching for words he would understand. "I haven't been born yet."
Silence. Then, cautiously, "What do you mean?"
"You know how your grandfather came before your father, and your father came before you?"
"Yes."
"And your child will come after you and grow, and have their child. And their child will have a child, and so on. I come after you. Far, far after you. So far after that if you counted every blade of grass in the valley below us, and then counted them again, and again, and again... that many seasons after you."
I felt his body go rigid beneath me. "That's... I don't..."
"I know it sounds impossible." I pressed on, desperate to make him understand. "But it's true. Where I'm from, you and Rivik and everyone in your pack have been dead for so long that even the memory of your memory is forgotten. The mountains have changed shape. The rivers run different paths. Everything is different."
"How?" His voice was strained, struggling to grasp the concept. "How can you be here if you haven't been born yet?"
"Magic. Very powerful magic." I took a shaky breath. "And we came back, came to this time, because something happened here. Something that broke the world, and it stays broken. It gets worse and worse with each generation, each season, until in my time..." My voice cracked. "In my time, the earth is dying."
He was silent for a long moment, and I could feel him trying to wrap his mind around it. "Dying how?"
"There are earthquakes that shake the ground for days. Floods that swallow entire cities. Mountains that explode with fire and rock." I felt him tense beneath me. "And the magic... the magic is dying. Shifters can barely have children anymore. One birth for every ten matings, maybe less. The packs are dying out."
"The same is happening here," Daska said quietly. "For many seasons now. Fewer and fewer children. That's why Karik wanted you and Megan. Why he's been stealing females from other packs. The birth rate is so low that unmated females are..." He paused, struggling with the words. "Precious. Fought over."
I nodded against his chest. "It's the same through all times from here until my time. Maybe beyond. We think... we know something went wrong. Here. In this time. Something that broke the magic and keeps breaking it, getting worse and worse with each generation."
He was quiet for a long moment, processing. When he spoke, his voice was careful, measured. "You came back to fix it."
"Yes." Relief flooded through me that he was following, that he wasn't dismissing it as madness. "The thing Nathan has been trying to fix, the thing that broke when we arrived, it's called a scanner. It was telling us where to go. Where to find the place where the magic is... draining away. Where it's being broken."
"And you have to go there."
"Yes."
Another silence. I could practically hear him thinking, turning it over in his mind, testing the edges of this impossible truth.
"How?" he finally asked. "How do you fix this?"
"Magic. Very powerful magic, more than any one person could hold." I swallowed hard, coming to the part I'd been dreading. "Dev and I... and my friend Stephen, before he died... we carrymagic that isn't ours. Magic borrowed from many, many people. Enough to try and fix whatever is broken."
"Stephen," Daska repeated softly. "The one who died at the river."
"Yes. He was carrying a third of the magic. When he died, it... I took his share too. We need to find the source of the drain and stop it. If we don't..." I couldn't finish the sentence.
"If you don't, the magic keeps dying. The earth keeps breaking. The shifters keep fading away."
"Yes."
He was quiet again, but this time the silence felt different. Heavier. I felt something shift in the bond between us, a growing distance that made my chest ache.
"So you have to go," he said finally. His voice was flat, emotionless. "No matter what. You have to leave."
"Daska—"
"How long?" He cut me off. "How long to wherever you need to go?"
"I don't know. Many moon cycles. We don’t know where it is, and then we have to actually figure out how to…"
