A dying woman travels through time to significant points in her life, but things are not as she remembers them. Accompanied by a handsome young stranger and her childhood cat, the fate of both past and future now lies in her aged hands.

Sylvan woke, stiff and sore, on the rock step by the old cabin. Though it was full night, bright lights stabbed into her eyeballs like laser beams.

Someone knocked against her as they passed.

“Hey!” she cried out.

“Uh, sorry, lady. But that’s not a great place to sit. The others are coming soon.”

Lady? She was no longer a little girl, though she had no idea exactly where she had landed in the age range of her life. Adult. Older. Maybe her fifties?

“What others?” she charged the man.

He swept his arm across the landscape, then began to scuttle up the path. “The carnival will be starting soon. I hear the cars arriving now.”

Sylvan pulled herself to her feet, noting that pain in her ankle was completely gone, and so were the blue bruises on her elbow. But that wasn’t the only change. The scene had shifted drastically. Though the location remained the same, it was no longer the quiet countryside with its old-growth forest and abundance of summer wildflowers. Lights were strung throughout the trees, some the twinkly fairy kind, but others were big and glaring like roadway lighting. It was one of those that had caught Sylvan in the eye with its cold, green-blue beam. The transitions couldn’t have happened overnight, leading her to wonder how long she’d been asleep.

She could still hear the river flowing in the gorge below, but now its shores were lined with cabanas and swarming with people traipsing in and out. Some wore swimsuits while others were fully dressed . Yet others seemed to be wearing strange costumes. Had the man said something about a carnival?

Sylvan looked around for Brie and found her a little way off sniffing at something on the ground—a cast-off corn dog in oily paper wrapping.

Ewww! she thought angrily. Garbage? Litter? What’s happened to this place?

Glancing over her shoulder, she found her grandmother’s old cabin had deteriorated even further, the roof caved in and the shutters hanging from their hinges. The door was missing, and the light from the streetlamp revealed only desolation—curtains in tatters and debris strewn across the floor. The couch where her beloved Anna had lain was torn and chewed by rats.

For a moment, Sylvan stared in horror; then she turned and ran, vaulting up the path, away from the shocking travesty. A crowd had gathered on the flats at the top of the hill. She pushed through them, running without thought or destination. All she knew was that she had to get away, get out of there. She was fed up with strange encounters, reliving old scenarios, and being cast into impossible new ones. She couldn’t take it anymore. For the first time since she began her strange journey in time, she found herself wishing she were back in the nursing home, where despite her ailments, she had some semblance of peace.

Sylvan shoved her way through the press with Brie alongside her. The throng was becoming more dense, impeding their progress until even her shouted excuse me’s didn’t help to get them by. Finally they could no longer move at all, crushed together like sardines in a tin. A fervor was rising as people turned their attention toward the south, toward the big flatland there. Then the whomp and sizzle of arc lights broke into the night, making Brie flatten her sensitive ears and Sylvan cover hers. But the sound was nothing compared to the brilliance. One lamp stabbed up into the sky, obscuring the stars with its photon glow while two others burned down on the flatland revealing carnival rides—a carousel, a miniature rollercoaster, and a small Ferris wheel—set up and ready to go.

There came the clamor of a calliope, competing against the roar of the crowd with its raucous, whistling tunes. There was far too much light and sound assaulting Sylvan’s senses. Loud and brash, it was no longer the countryside Sylvan had loved. She had to escape—her sanity depended on it. Picking up Brie and holding her close, she elbowed her way in the opposite direction from the fête.

Moving with her head down, she only made it a little way before she ran squarely into someone.

“Sorry,” she and the man both said at the same time.

“Mom?” the man exclaimed, grabbing Sylvan by the shoulders. “Mom, what are you doing here?”

Sylvan let her gaze focus on the tall man before her.  As recognition bloomed, she studied her son: the muscular physique, a little on the thin side but healthy; the neatly trimmed hair with just a bit of curl; those piercing eyes, so like her own back in the day before cataracts.

“Zak?”

“Yeah, Mom, it’s me.” He wrapped her in a bear hug embrace, sending Brie leaping to the ground so as not the get squished between them. “I don’t know how this is happening, but I don’t care. Boy, am I glad to see you.”

After a time, he let her go, and mother and son stared questioningly at each other.

Sylvan was the one to break the silence. “It’s been a long time.”

“That’s an understatement,” Zak harrumphed, a little of the old animosity creeping into his expression. They’d had problems, Sylvan and Zak—disagreements that finally drove Zak to leave home when he was barely eighteen. That was—how many years ago? In Sylvan’s real life, it had become forever. In this iteration, the man in front of her looked to be in his early thirties. Maybe there was still time to resolve their differences before the opportunity was lost.

A pair of laughing women nudged into Sylvan, then a man in a swimsuit far too small for his rounded torso slammed into Zak. When a group of kids tried to push between them, Zak took Sylvan’s arm.

“Let’s get out of here. I know a place.”

Deftly, he guided her through the crush and up the hill toward a small cottage she’d not noticed before. Unlike the neglected cabin by the river, this place looked to be brand new.

He opened the door and led her into a single square room. As he went to shut it, Brie dashed through, sliding across the tile floor and alighting on a plush divan by a window overlooking the river.

“You have a cat?” Zak commented. “But of course you do.”

Sylvan smiled. “That’s Brie.” She was about to explain how Brie was the cat from her childhood, but that would sound ludicrous. She settled on saying, “She’s been with me a long time.”

“She seems to have picked out the best spot in the place.” He gestured to the couch. “Shall we join her?”

Once seated, he placed his hand on Sylvan’s and looked her in the eyes. She stared back, still not quite believing he was really there.

“I’m sorry,” they both said, again echoing each other’s thoughts.

Sylvan smiled. “I’ve wanted to say that for such a long time.”

Zak forced a smile of his own, but it didn’t convey the warmth of  his mother’s. “Then why didn’t you?”

She turned away. “You’d been gone for years, I didn’t know what would happen. I suppose I was afraid you wouldn’t want to see me, that we’d fight again. We’re not going to do that, are we?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Zak asserted. “I’ve learned a lot since I left home. Traveling does that.”

“Life does that,” said Sylvan. “So what have you learned?”

“First of all, that things aren’t nearly as simple as I thought they were back when I was eighteen. Nor are they as complicated. I made my own trouble. I was a victim of myself.”

Sylvan looked away, her gaze settling on the river below. Its reflected sparkle was almost mesmerizing. “I should have done better. I was the grown-up, the mom. I should have understood what you were going through. And even if I didn’t know then, I should have reached out later on. I guess I was my own victim as well.”

“Can it be that simple? Can we just stop hurting ourselves and each other and start again, here and now?”

A tear rolled down Sylvan’s cheek. “I hope so.” Before it’s too late…

Then he was crying too, throwing himself into her arms as he had done when he was little. She held him, murmuring soothing nothings as he sobbed on her shoulder.

She went to stroke his hair, but as she did, she felt something thick and sticky. Drawing a sharp breath, her eyes focused only to find blood on her fingers. She pulled away to stare at her son, but it was no longer Zak she held in her embrace. Aron had taken his place, the gash running through his curls dripping red. The old wound.

Sylvan gasped, her heart breaking with the loss of her son so soon after she had finally found him. Another illusion! Just another fever dream.

“Not a dream,” Aron said with a smile that held only love in it.

Something was happening to the cut on his head. As he took a cloth from his pocket and wiped away the blood, she could see the wound itself was changing, healing. A moment later it was completely gone as if it had never been.

Brie hopped up next to him and touched the place with her soft paw. Aron gazed at the cat, then looked up at Sylvan with elation.

“The Work,” he said slowly. “The Work is done.”

Chapter 14. PAIN AND FEAR, coming next Saturday.

Only two chapters to go!

For the complete story up until now, look here.