Chapter 357: Paper Doll Chains
"Nedra is your mother?" Maggie repeated slowly.
How was that possible? Nedra had created this island. She had been here just as long as the rest of them. If she had been pregnant, they all would have heard about it. And a pregnancy here was a terrifying thing... what would the vampire do to the offspring of an alylko?
She studied Sage more closely now, and it struck her—the resemblance. Not many people had black hair and green eyes. She should have realized it right away, but who would have thought...
"I have never met her," Sage added, pulling his palm away from the glass as Maggie walked back up to him.
"You have never met your mother?" she asked as she approached, sitting cross legged on the floor in front of the wall that separated them. Sage sat to do the same, shaking his head as he did.
"That must be hard. So she must not know that you are here," she said.
"No," he said softly.
"Hmmm," Maggie hummed. This pup must have been through a lot. "Who raised you? How did you end up at the Hallowell pack?" She asked gently, trying not to push for information that he may not be comfortable giving.
"My sister raised me," he told her. "We were strays, and the pack took us in."
"You have a sister as well? Oh my," she gasped. Nedra had managed to have not one but two children? One alone was surprising.
"Her name is Selah. She has met our mother. She comes back here to visit sometimes," he explained.
"Is she alyko, too?" Maggie asked curiously. She guessed that the sister was not—Nedra must have insisted on keeping Sage away because he would be in danger of being discovered here, whereas a lycan pup would be easier to hide.
Sage remained quiet for a moment, considering how to answer. He was telling Maggie a lot of things that he never discussed with anyone, but she was someone he could trust. He knew that to be true. He had heard the stories about Maggie and the other alyko who were taken from the Hallowell’s, and Maggie was said to have been very close friends with the Alpha and Luna before they were killed.
"Selah is... both," he told her, eyes watching for her reaction.
Maggie tilted her head. He must mean that she was like Graeme and Greta who had minor abilities that they could use.
"She sounds very special," Maggie replied.
"Yes," he agreed.
They both stared at each other in silence, sitting across from each other with just the pane of glass separating them.
"There is a secret about this place that the lycans here don’t know," Maggie finally whispered, wishing to repay his secrets with one of her own. "Not even the vampire knows. Do you want to know what it is?"
Sage nodded quietly.
"Time is odd here. Everyone knows that—and it seems that those who are here don’t age, but the trees and the plants grow as if they have been here for ages. Can you think of what the difference might be?" she asked, watching as he turned toward the atrium and looked at the ancient tree that was there with the crow still perched upon it.
Sage ran the riddle over in his mind, trying to think of what could cause it. Time was behaving strangely, contradicting itself in this place. How could that be explained?
"It is quite puzzling, isn’t it? I will give you a hint, and this is something that your mother shared with us as well. How old do you suppose cranky pants Dolores is over there?" she asked, gesturing with a tilt of her chin toward the room on the other side of him.
He turned toward the room where the woman was still lying in her bed out of view. "Maybe... fifties?" he guessed, thinking that she looked to be around Sylvia’s age back in Hallowell pack. Sylvia was Sam’s mom, so that was probably about how old she was.
"And how old do I appear to be?" she asked next.
His eyes studied her face and her long dark hair without any gray. "I don’t know miss Maggie," he said softly.
"Just guess. There is no wrong answer," she smiled.
There truly was no wrong answer. Who could say how old she was? Not even she knew how to answer the question. She didn’t know how much time had gone by outside of this realm, only that she felt to have been here for a very long time.
"Thirties?" he asked.
"Do you know that when Dolores and I were first put into containment here under the lotus, we were about the same age?" she asked. "Can you believe that?"
Sage’s eyes grew large at this information. How was that possible? Dolores wasn’t a tree—and yet she had aged?
"You see, we often think of time in our minds like a line or a string of events that happen one after the other. One thing happens and then another thing happens, and so on and so forth. Past, present, future. What if instead time was like transparent layers on a canvas? Something happens, and that is one layer. Something else happens, and that is another layer... adding to a kind of completeness where the past never ceases to be but is always right there with you," she explained, watching as his face contorted while he considered the metaphor.
That was an interesting idea, but he couldn’t understand how what she was saying explained the plants and Dolores versus the others who did not age.
"Have you ever seen someone layer paper, folding it over and over on top of itself, and then they cut a shape out—maybe a heart or the shape of a person—and when they unfold the paper it is a string of hearts all connected in a line or a chain of people all holding hands?" she asked.
Sage nodded. "Paper doll chains," he answered. He knew exactly what she was talking about. He had done it himself.
"Time may be something like that—folded together in one instance and yet able to be pulled apart in another. Does that make sense?"
"But how does that explain Dolores?"
