Sand Glass Read Online Free PDF Page B

blinked,
and blinked and stared. She didn’t move at all. Something burned
inside me. A flame licking its way over paper and destroying the
words printed on it. Yet like a magician, I unfolded them from my
palm again unharmed. This was the ultimate strangeness. To feel my
own mind fracture and break in to two alternate versions of myself.
I thought it was the symbol that had given me control and power
over this from within.
    ‘Just look
now.’ said Marcia from somewhere behind me.
    I looked. And
the whole world began to splinter and fracture into as many
different versions as there were grains of sand on a beach. I could
see them… I was them; every possible me. Did I just see this? Or
could the two women see it too?
    I tried to
close my eyes but this just made it worse. The earth colours would
help me find balance in this place, but now it didn’t seem to be
working.
    ‘Davey!’ I was
not one voice but many. Janey. Many copies of her, or perhaps my
many experiences of her.
    I ended up on
my knees. The riot of colours around me swirled faster and faster.
I could see it now. It was pouring backwards, away from the moment
I was in to before I had arrived, yet here I was. Janey and Marcia
talking for a long time; darkness, Marcia arriving the previous
night. The girls’ night in sat on the carpet with Martinis drowning
too many olives and the TV on in the background.
     
    I found myself
still kneeling on the carpet. I was sweating and trembling
violently. Marcia knelt beside me. ‘I’m sorry for doing that,’ she
said, ‘but trust me, it was better than going through it
twice.’
    ‘What just
happened?’ I felt sick and lightheaded. Someone handed Marcia a
glass of water, she gave it to me. Sitting on the carpet I knew a
peculiar thing, it really was possible to be alone with yourself. I
wasn’t sure if I liked the company or not.
    ‘It is where
the truth of experiments I have just authorised become a reality
that is only resisted by you two.' said Janey's voice, 'Everyone
else…. All of them. They went crazy.’ She came and sat on the floor
with us, ‘All of the experiments, and we never thought we could be
the carriers of this wave.’
    ‘Are you really
Janey?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I know your
brother.’ I said still trembling and chilled.
    'Yes. Tell me
what happened. That strand of one possible world.'
    I drank again
before replying. Marcia put her arms round my shoulders in a
reassuring way.
    ‘I watched him
die....' I squeezed my eyes shut and then opened then again, 'and
in all my life I never want to see that happen to any of us. And
especially not you.’ I looked at her fully then. She was all there;
the brightest gleam of intelligence, the humour, the sadness, the
thoughtfulness, every bit of it. And her hair rolled like a glossy
tide over her right shoulder and touched my knees as she leaned in,
lips parted and breathed in this knowledge.
    ‘Thank you.’
she said. She stood then and came round beside me just by my left
elbow.
    ‘Come now.’ She
helped my confused body to untangle to a standing position. We all
went into a little conservatory.
    In the cool
morning light in a cane padded chair I knew what I had so lately
denied. I would go back.
    Marcia went out
for a moment, while Janey spoke to me, ‘Here. In this place, I have
taken the temporary name of “Harriet Edison”. Marcia has told me
everything after what happened last night. So I will spare you the
show and tell. She had “got in there first” as it is said, and I
hope you don’t mind if I don’t actually kiss you just yet. Because
I’m still in a really strange place with Jared being alive in some
fashion in one of the alternative places….’ She stopped talking and
seemed to zone out for a moment; then shaking herself she
continued: ‘I found the equation to prove that the alternate space
and time are really viable… but this… it is too well attached…’ she
trailed off. I looked at her fully again. The tattoo was