At least, until now.
I tuck the stained handkerchief into my pocket as the mirrored elevator doors open. The high-ceilinged corridor on the other side is awashin artificial light. Chill’s head tips back, wonder parting his lips as he takes in the domed sapphire ceiling swirling with iridescent stars. He pauses at every sculpture, every mosaic. Chill’s worked decades for the chance to walk these polished marble halls, eager to be Culled for a promotion. The walls of his room are still plastered in the same posters he hung up in the late 1980s when we first got here, glossy romanticized landscapes of the most coveted winter regions—the Canadian Rockies, the skyline of Toronto, the northern lights over Fairbanks, Alaska—places he’ll never see. As long as I’ve known him, he’s been moved by some intrinsic desire to be the best at something. To be respected by his peers. And then I turn my damn transmitter off to be alone with a girl and manage to screw up everything.
Lyon gently nudges me along, just like he did thirty years ago on the day I first arrived here. The gallery to the Control Room is warm, just as I remember it, but it still manages to make me shudder. The same portraits line the walls. Father Time, wielding a scythe, dragging his child into the air by an ankle. Then Time, clipping Cupid’s wings. I drop my gaze and stare at the floor until we’ve passed the worst of them—a Baroque of the Titan Cronos, similar only in name (and probably temperament), tearing into his own child’s heart with his teeth.
There are no portraits of Chronos’s late wife, Ananke. No sculptures of his daughter, Gaia. It’s as if Chronos only shows off the mythology that suits him. Here, Time rules everything.
The only exception is the fresco that trails over the arched ceiling high above our heads. The painted story of our history spans the entire length of the gallery. Chronos and the Staff of Time loom above us as we walk, Ananke’s slitted diamond eyes following our procession to theControl Room. As the legend goes, in the beginning, there were Chronos and Ananke—Time and Inevitability. Their arms encircled and controlled Chaos, an empty expanse containing only matter and energy, and from it Gaia was born. Her image materializes at the end of the corridor, with silver hair and glittering eyes, carrying air, water, wind, and fire from the blackness. And from those four elements, she made us, the Seasons.
Chronos likes to tell us our magic comes from a place of chaos. That, just like our mother, we’re dangerous and unpredictable. He’s convinced we’ll find balance only under his thumb... or, more accurately, his scythe. Given Gaia’s silence on the matter, I’m guessing she doesn’t have a problem either way.
An arbor of ancient figs frames the end of the gallery. A fountain gurgles on the other side, the water trickling down a rough stone wall, through a winding runnel of river rock embedded in the marble floor. Chill tiptoes over it, his head tipped toward the conjured smells of holly berries and evergreens wafting through the vents.
Our reflections move like ghosts past Gaia’s menageries, past bees, flies, and birds in ornate cages and fancy terrariums, their artificial habitats enclosed behind thick walls of glass. A crow tips its head, tracking us from its perch. Chill’s too enchanted by the gleaming quartz winking at him from the walls and the elaborate bronze torchères to notice.
I walked this corridor once before with that same wide-eyed wonder, just as naive and eager. Entranced by the magic, high on Gaia’s attention, drunk on my power to control wind, to make snow, to escape my own death... Until the Control Room doors closed behind me, and I realized how powerless I was.
I fight the urge to pull Chill back by his collar as he approaches the Control Room, unable to shake the feeling that I’m marching headlong into something I can never come back from.
Professor Lyon whispers to the waiting attendant. She holds her tablet against her high-necked blouse and presses a finger to her lips, warning us to remain silent before escorting us through the arched ironwood doors and directing us to wait at the back of the room.
Gaia’s office is laid out exactly as I remember it, disturbingly reminiscent of a courtroom, with high-beamed ceilings and mahogany pews. The walls behind the smooth plaster and polished wood paneling are the same sandstone and clay of the catacombs below us, and under the tangled smells of the handful of Seasons already seated in the wooden benches, I can almost smell the fetor of death seeping up through the cold stone floor.
The only sounds in the room are soft whispers from a handful of girls seated in the front row and the clack of computer keys from a line of workstations behind Gaia’s desk. Chronos’s Control Room stands out starkly against the rich woods and antique bronze torchères of Gaia’s chamber, as if he built it in the narrow space behind her head to remind her just how easy it is to look over her shoulder. Flickering light emanates from a wall of sleek flat-screen TVs behind her. News tickers roll over them in a dozen languages, below satellite images and weather maps. Digital clocks mark the time zones around the world to the millisecond, and our rankings scroll like the arrivals and departures boards in an airport terminal on the final screen. Below them, a dozen Guards sit before a row of computers, monitoring feeds from all ends of the globe and every corner of the Observatory, their hard drives and fans creating a white-noise hum.
“What’s happening?” Chill whispers. “What are we doing here?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you think they’re doing here?” he asks, jerking his chin toward the girls in the front pew. I draw a shallow breath. One Spring, one Summer, and their Handlers, judging by the smell of them. The pairs sit slightly apart, exchanging harsh whispers with each other.
“I don’t know.”
Gaia leans against her desk, her back to the screens, watching a tar-gray smaze thrash inside a decorative glass orb at the center of it. It reminds me of the fighting fish I’ve seen lined up in tiny bowls in pet store windows, their heads beating against the glass, fighting to get out. Fighting to get to each other.
I try not to stare at it. Or at her. Gaia’s platinum hair falls in iridescent waves over her shoulders. The same shimmering color as her eyes, it doesn’t give a clue to her age, a number none of us know and wouldn’t have the balls to ask.
I start at the rap of Chronos’s staff against the floor. The pointed heel of its slender handle stabs at the stone and its crystal eye seems to watch us from its mounting at the top. The curved blade of the scythe swings with his purposeful strides. Every whisper quiets as he slices down the aisle with two of his Guards. Noelle Eastman is one of them. Her eyes flick to mine and my stomach drops as she assumes a sentry’s position beside him. He dismisses the Guards seated at the computers in the Control Room. I glance over my shoulder as they file out, searching for Professor Lyon. But when the doors close, the room is empty of everyone but me and Chill and the girls in the front pew.
Chronos flicks dust from the lapel of his suit. His silver beard is perfectly trimmed, his wavy hair impeccably styled over one coldblue eye. A simple black patch covers what is rumored to be an empty socket—the eye supposedly clawed out by Ananke, the patch not entirely concealing the scars she left behind.
Chronos summons the girls in the front pew to the dais. His scythe catches the light, the crystal eye above it casting rainbows over the floor. The girls go rigid as the colors turn to images. Chronos’s frown deepens as he studies them. “Your choices of late have been questionable,” he tells Gaia, pulling her attention from the orb on her desk. “Chaos has no place here. Nor do willful children. Am I understood?”
She nods tightly, her jaw clenched as he takes the remote control from her desk and switches off the screens behind her. All but one.
Prerecorded footage of a storm plays in a muted loop. The cyclone is a monster, uprooting trees and ripping off roofs, washing away cars and submerging towns along the coast of northern Australia. A death toll of more than one hundred thirty-seven people... I turn away, the images hard to watch.
“I’ll have an answer for this,” Chronos demands.
When the silence drags on too long, he catches the Spring around her neck by his scythe, pulling her gently toward him. “Well?”
She swallows hard, careful not to make any sudden movements. “The sea... it was too warm. I didn’t know—”
Chronos casts her away from him with a careless jerk. “You are a Season. It is your job to know.”
“I’m new!” The Spring touches the paper-thin cut along her neck, surprised when her fingers come away red. She gestures roughly to the Summer beside her. “Kai’s strong! She’s been here longer.”
The Summer remains silent. She stands at attention, pale and shaking with stasis tremors, her hair damp with sweat where it brushes hercollar. She’s from the southern hemisphere, probably just waking up, so fresh out of the chamber, I’m surprised she hasn’t puked on Chronos’s shoes. He surveys her high chin and her fierce stance.
