change the ending.” The professor’s sigh is deep and unsettled. “Some say Chronos took Ananke’s eye as a token, a reminder of his love for her. Others say he took it in recompense.”
“What do you think?”
“I think love owes us nothing,” he says quietly. He rubs at a small wrinkle on his hand. I wonder if he regrets his choice to give up his immortality and his magic. And for what? The professor and Gaia never got their happy ending.
The professor clears his throat and turns to an old blackboard on the opposite wall. I pivot in my seat, watching him over the back of his armchair as he draws the head of the staff with a single arrow feeding into its eye. “History is linear,” he says, tapping the arrow with his chalk, “a series of unchangeable events. The past illuminates the crystal as a singular beam of light, but the crystal itself—our present,” he explains, drawing a polygon at its center, “is a prism containing many facets. The choices we make in the present are informed by our past, and affect the way the light bends—our future.” The professor draws several arrows exiting the other side of the eye. “The crystal projects every possible outcome based upon every decision we could make now, giving Chronos the power not only of hindsight, but of foresight as well. As long as he knows your location—the hour, minute, and second where you exist between degrees of longitude and latitude—he can see your pivotal memories, as well as every possible future that lies ahead of you. But he is blind to the present.”
“Why?” I ask, puzzled. “Wouldn’t the present be the easiest thing to see?”
Lyon sets down the chalk and claps the dust from his hands. “Because inevitability is inextricably tied to our choices, and you are the only person who knows your own heart as you make them.”
“So basically, Chronos is saying every choice I’ll make will lead me down a shitty road?”
Lyon laughs, his eyes crinkling at the edges. “That’s one way to put it, I suppose. Jean de La Fontaine once said, ‘A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.’ And perhaps that’s true. But remember this, Mr. Sommers.” He pauses in front of me, his face sobering. “Those who’ve seen a glimmer of your past may try to anticipate your choices, but unless they know your heart, they will always choose the future that suits their own ends.”
“So Chronos could be wrong?”
Lyon eases into his chair. “Chronos’s eye is only as clear as our own memories, and only as reliable as our willingness to look deeply enough into our own hearts. It is only our lack of vision that limits our choices.”
“So there is another possible outcome?”
“Only inasmuch as you choose it,” he says.
I think about the story of the lion and the girl. About the crappy way it ended. I wonder why things couldn’t have ended differently for Lyon and Gaia. If there’s any way it could end differently for me and Fleur.
“Follow your heart, Jack. Wherever it takes you, it will not steer you wrong.” He gathers his mug and his briefcase. “If you’ll excuse me, it seems I’m late for a meeting.”
“Professor, wait. Your book.” I hold out the dog-eared copy of Aesop’s Fables, but Lyon doesn’t take it.
“If you’ve finished reading, it can be returned.” He scoops up a heavy, leather-bound volume from his desk and drops it in my arms as he heads for the door. “Would you mind returning this one to the library cart as well? There’s a certain Spring who’ll be very disappointed if it’s not on the shelf when she wakes.”
And with a wink, he’s gone.
The book of poetry is heavy in my lap. Curious, I open the cover. There’s a circulation card in the pocket in the back, and I spot Fleur’s name immediately. It’s listed over and over again, every September. She’s checked out this same book of poems for years.
I thumb through the pages. A sprig of lilies, crushed and brittle, falls from a poem called “The Good-Morrow” by John Donne.
And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true