The stone stairway didn’t descend into a dungeon or a high-tech lair. It descended about twenty stairs before coming to a sudden stop at another door. This one had a brass knocker shaped like a smiling sun and was painted a cheery, suburban sage green. Leading the way, Alexander hesitated on the final step while Tatiana trailed closely behind, holding onto Mira. He gazed back at her, his demeanor a mask of great uncertainty. This wasn’t the “engine room.” This was a basement door. He cranked the simple knob and pushed with a shrug that was more tense than casual. Bright, bright, golden light flooded out, accompanied with the unmistakable, commonplace sounds of a Wednesday evening: the buzz of a dishwasher, the faint murmur of a television, the perfume of lemon cleaner and roasted chicken. They passed through, not into darkness, but into the back hallway of a perfectly regular, two-story colonial house. The carpet is beige. Family photographs on the wall. Crayons were falling out o

The green door opened to the same cozy hallway. The scents of lemon and chicken were fainter now, replaced by the serene stillness of a house settling for the night. A nightlight fashioned like a star projected a gentle glow from a wall socket. Sweater-Tatiana was waiting, her arms crossed, worry etching lines across her mouth. Her stance sagged with relief when she saw them with her daughter, then tightened once more with mistrust. “Mira! We were terrified of you! You can’t just run off like that.” “I saw the baby,” Mira remarked matter-of-factly, as if that answered everything. She yawned loudly, rubbing her eyes with little fists. Behind his wife, Khaki-Alexander emerged, his guarded demeanor hardly relaxing at the sight of his restored child. He cast a long, probing glance at the adults drenched from the river. “Where did she go?” "Just exploring," River-Alexander remarked in a cautiously even voice. He held out the artwork. “She left this.” Khaki-Alexander took it, his brow

The skin of the fruit gave apart with a crisp, pleasant crack, like shattering a little bone. The flavor that invaded her mouth was not sweet. It was intensely focused. The essence of time itself, dusty, dry, with a harsh, tannic bite like over-steeped tea, followed by a cloying, syrupy aftertaste of nostalgia and regret. She’d expected power. A surge of vitality, of recollection, of phoenix fire. What she got was time. It had a fast-acting, drug-like effect on her body. In her stomach, a scorching fire blossomed and spread outward, transforming rather than burning. She felt it in her bones first, a deep, aching shift, a settling. Her skin prickled, tightening over suddenly more defined musculature. Stress and river wind had carved delicate lines at the corners of her eyes, which smoothed out before reappearing as deeper, more enduring creases of experience. Her hair, knotted and moist, seemed to grow thicker, gaining a few strategic strands of silver at her temples. She let out a

Her comments hovered in the air, a challenge to the underlying architecture of their misery. Stop counting. Speaking with the weight of a wise person who had experienced the issue a hundred times, it seemed like a child's naive solution to an intractable situation. Alexander was the first to move. He surged forward toward his "go-bag" from a life he couldn't recall, a little, waterproof bag hidden beneath the bow seat, rather than toward Mira. He unzipped it with feverish hands and brought out a thick, wool jumper. With his disbelief and the stiffness of a father's concern at odds, he gave it to his teenage daughter. “Here. Put this on. Mira-14 accepted it without a word, slipping the large jumper on over her head. It swamped her, the sleeves dangling past her fingertips, but it promised modesty and a touch of normalcy. She hugged it around herself, as if cold. “How?” Tatiana asked, her flaming wings still stretched, their light shimmering over the lake. The heat pouring off them w

They followed the pouring, bright channel. It led them out of the tower, via a service corridor that shouldn’t have existed, a stark, concrete path that smelled of damp and industrial cleaner, entirely at odds with the penthouse’s splendor. The luminous beads lingered in the air, an otherworldly breadcrumb trail through the bowels of the metropolis. Instead of emerging onto a street, they found themselves in a large, deserted parking garage beneath what appeared to be a government building, complete with echoing space and brutalist concrete pillars. The track went to a massive, unmarked steel door marked MAINTENANCE. Alexander kicked it open. Beyond was a tunnel, old and brick-lined, with dripping pipes overhead. Tatiana's scar-map, which was still dripping its guiding fluid, was the only source of illumination as they strolled for what seemed like miles. Weary after her temporal adventure, baby Mira dozed off in Alexander's arms. With the empty aching in her back serving as a conti