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10

I spent months, just studying under Trakatak alone. That’s not even counting the rest of my training.

At least, it seems that way. When I try to think back on it.

It had to have been months of his weird, burning questions — some of them were so outré that I felt as though they literally burned my brain — along with his peculiar exercises of what seemed like a combination of yoga and guided meditation.

Trakatak contorted my body and mind in ways that I’m pretty sure neither was supposed to work.

And yet…

And yet, I never slept during my training. Not with Trakatak, nor with the four other instructors who followed him.

Or her.

Truth be told, I never did learn if Trakatak had a gender, and if so, what it was.

English can be difficult, in that way. The words of English aren’t gendered the way they are in some other languages, and yet we have only three pronouns in the third-person singular: he/him, she/her, and it.

It, well, it does apply to the unknown — I’ve probably used “it” myself when referring to Trakatak now and again — but that word tends to have an … inanimate connotation to it.

As though the pronoun is supposed to be reserved for objects and not used for people.

Musilancia, the serpentine instructor who was last in my training schedule, taught me languages. Dozens of languages. Scores of them. So very many that I don’t think I could begin to list them.

And yet, I understand them all, and can speak and write them with perfect fluency.

I suspect that magic was as involved with that as it was with the rest of my training.

And languages were critical for me, so that I could begin to understand the psychologies and politics of the beings I’d interact with.

Still, Musilancia once used a pronoun to refer to Trakatak that I always thought suited best.

Hris.

Hris is a word in Hrissasstii, the serpentine language most commonly used by nagas, and by about three or four other types of serpent people that frequent the Pacific Northwest.

Hris means, in English, “that person, whose gender is unknown to me, indeterminate, or in transition.”

Hris sees a lot of use among serpent peoples who change their gender whenever they want to.

Anyway, I think from now on, when I need a pronoun for Trakatak, and certain others, I’ll just use hris.

The point is, I never slept during my training. I never ate either. And yet, though I sometimes grew tired, I never felt sleepy. And I never even for a moment felt hungry or thirsty.

I never even had to go to the bathroom.

For the life of me, I wasn’t sure time was even passing.

The whole of my training was like a vivid dream. As though I’d had years’ worth of experiences within the span of only a few hours. If that.

Snatches of my training come back to me from time to time, but for the most part, I don’t really remember the details.

For example, right this second I can remember the exact moment that Oongata, the lime green orangutan-like instructor who followed Trakatak, taught me to temporarily activate an inactive portal.

I’d been standing in front of an iron door, set into Kelly green, slightly glowing crystal. The door had no handle or visible lock. Not even hinges. It just looked like a rectangular sheet of iron, set into the crystal.

It even smelled of iron, just on the edge of beginning to rust. Stark contrast with the pine scent of the crystal rock garden around me.

Oongata had just gone over the procedure for maybe the sixtieth time. Eternal patience in his emerald eyes. His smooth fingers gentle as they corrected my gesture in a way that finally made everything click for me.

I said the word again. Alethia. But this time I hit the intonation just right and swirled my fingers with perfect timing.

A shiver lit up my body, like a momentary pulse of static electricity. Every hair on my body stood up.

A flare of white light emanated from my fingertips…

The iron door vanished. Became a swirling series of green lights, contained within the shape of the door.

I hurried through. Felt an echo of that static electricity as I entered.

The portal led only to the iron door’s twin on other side of the crystal boulder. Somehow, Oongata was already there, giving me one of his rare smiles and saying…

It’s no good.

Oongata told me something then, but I can’t remember it now.

The training was all like that. Vivid and real as I experienced it, but then fading like wisps of dream when the alarm clock clatters and the daytime world reasserts itself.

And yet, my instructors had kept me so continually busy with one lesson after the other, that I never even noticed how the previous lesson seemed to fade from my mind the moment it finished.

As though the entirety of my training took place during some untouchable now. Some single eternal, yet changeable moment. All without my even noticing.

I didn’t understand any of that until Oongata had me open a portal I’d never seen before, even though it sat like a trapdoor right in the middle of his Kelly green rock garden.

I dropped down through the portal…

…and found myself once more in the vast crystal chamber.

The scent of violets. The gently glowing white floor. The ridiculously large round table, with all its roller chairs and other seating arrangements.

The crystal lounge and meeting areas scattered around the wide bottom level of the chamber.

The prismatic pattern of the walls, with the colors of each level arranged in the opposite direction of the floor below it, all the way up to the vast curving walls of the crystal dome, ending in that black circle exactly above the table.

And, of course, the iron doors set into the center of each color. Doors that I knew now had no handles, and needed no handles.

Vasco stood in front of me. Smiling a knowing smile. His long gray hair wild, fitting his animalistic musk. His jeans faded and worn, but holding together. His dull white tee shirt under the red-and-black plaid flannel overshirt.

Duffel bag slung over one shoulder.

Magellan, hopping and barking next to him.

Excited to see me?

“How long was I gone?” I asked, frowning.

“You tell me,” Vasco said.

Magellan stopped hopping and barking. Sat and tilted his head as he faced me, as though this were a more important question than it sounded.

My first thought was to say I had no way of knowing. Wasn’t as though there were any clocks down here. Calendars either, for that matter.

But I knew I had to at least try to figure out the answer.

I tried to run my mind back over the course of my training, to get some sense of time, but my thoughts couldn’t grasp any. As though the mere concept of time simply slipped through my mental fingers.

I opened my mouth to say exactly that, but Vasco lifted an eyebrow.

That was all he did. Raised one eyebrow. And his eyebrows were as wild and gray as the hair on his head (if shorter). Still, I felt as though he was telling me not to fall back on the old kind of answers.

That I actually did know the answer. If I let myself know it.

And just like that, lessons sprang back through me.

No. Not lessons. Not exactly. The effects of the lessons. The teachings I’d incorporated deep inside myself without even knowing I was doing it.

In that instant I realized I could feel the flow of time through the great crystal chamber. And it felt … fluid. As though in ways, time itself ebbed and flowed here. Passing through one color, swirling around through the center of the chamber, then passing back through a different color.

But that was just the surface level. And I needed a more basic sense of time and myself.

The answer lay in my body’s age.

I knew how old I was. I mean, I’d seen my birth certificate. I knew that, at least, legally, my parents hadn’t just been making up stories when they told me I’d been born in the early days of January, twenty-four years ago.

By reaching inside myself now, I could feel the way time had passed through my body. Like counting the rings of some vast tree.

Twenty-four years, four months, eighteen days, thirteen hours, seven minutes, twenty-six seconds, counting only since my initial exposure to air.

“It’s the same day,” I said, wonder all through my voice. “But that’s—”

“What did Oongata teach you about time through the portals?”

I started to complain that I didn’t remember. Except that, just like that, I did.

“Time flows through the many worlds, but not always at the same rates.”

I frowned, as more of the lime green orangutan’s words came back to me…

Shock hit me like the cold waters of the Willamette. Was that really only a few hours ago?

“And some places,” I continued, “time pools so deep that it seems not to pass at all. Even a decade in such a place—”

“Is like no more than a second here.” Vasco clapped me on the shoulder. “So. How long have you been gone?”

“Ages,” I said, shaking my head as the implications worked their way through me. “But not at all.”

Magellan barked approv…

Wait.

Magellan didn’t just bark approval. I realized now that where before I could pick up a vague sense of what he meant in his barks, now I could really understand him.

Huh. I really did speak Doggerel.

“Perfect!” Magellan barked. “That was the perfect answer. You should get a treat.”

“Very good,” Vasco said, and clapped me on the shoulder again. “That’ll take some getting used to, but we’ve all been through it. I’d’ve warned you, but the warning wouldn’t have made sense.”

“He deserves a treat,” Magellan said.

“Hush, you,” Vasco said, and tossed Magellan a treat instead.

“Wait,” I said, one hand raised as a stop sign. “You dropped a portal on me.”

“Yes?” Vasco asked, mischief in his eyes.

“I can’t remember everything from my training, but I’m pretty sure no one taught me how to do that.”

“What,” Vasco said, chuckling. “You thought you’d learn everything your first day?”

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