“It’s a great treasure you’ve been given, you know, this gift of Time, and the ability to step in and out of it at will.”
“It is.” Meridion set the mug back on the tray and picked up a pastry from the plate on it. “But it’s a little frustrating, being able to see events in the Past and the Future, but having no ability to affect them. I have the strange feeling that I should be able to make some sort of an impact, but alas, when I step into the Past I am only an observer, and on rare occasions a commentator—I had to work very hard just to make you hear me when I asked you to play that song.” He chuckled. “It’s most likely for the best that I’m just an image and not really there. If I could affect Time I’d probably make a botch of it.”
Rhapsody took a sip from the steaming mug, then looked at her son seriously. “I think anyone would. It seems to me that being able to see into the Past or the Future, which is a family trait in your case, causes nothing but trouble. The visions I have had gave me horrific nightmares, and as for your great-grandmother and her sisters—their lore certainly cost them their sanity, especially Manwyn; the power of seeing the Future must be the most dangerous.” Her eyes narrowed slightly as she saw something come over her son’s face. “Meridion, what are you thinking?”
He shrugged and lifted the mug to his lips again.
“Do you have any idea where Manwyn gets her information about the Future?”
Meridion laughed. “Well, she gets some of it from me. I stop by for tea and a good gossip with her every now and then. She is my great-great-aunt, after all, and no one else visits her without seeking something from her. I’m more than an image to her; I actually have some physical presence when I’m with Manwyn. Sometimes she lets me use Merithyn’s sextant to look into the Future. She’s a lot of fun, once you get to know her, in a crazy sort of way.”
“Really?” His mother untangled a nest of curls in his hair. “That’s odd. You’re a Namer, Meridion. If she gets her prophecies from you, then why is she so mysterious about them? And so seldom right when she relates them to the world?”
His smile faded, and he looked away to see a lark gliding past one of the tower windows, the sun on its wings. “Well, she is somewhat deaf, after all.”
“Is that the extent of it?”
Meridion exhaled slowly, still watching the bird until it banked away to even greater heights. “Who said she was wrong?”
“Isn’t she, on occasion?”
He shook his head, not looking at her. “No. She’s mad, and crafty, and hard of hearing, but never wrong.” Finally he turned and met her gaze. “Do you remember what Jo told you in the place of the Rowans about not being able to understand about the Afterlife until you are in it?”
Rhapsody put down her mug. “Yes.”
“It’s true of knowledge of the Future as well. Manwyn may see it, but that doesn’t mean she understands it.” Any more than you do, he thought with a touch of melancholy.
“But you do?”
He leaned toward the window, hoping to see the bird again. “Most of the time.”
“Hmmm.” Rhapsody followed his gaze out the window, the autumn sunlight spilling into the tower room. When she looked back again she was smiling.
“Have you ever determined where this ability of yours came from? I understand why the three Seers have their gifts; their father was born in the birthplace of Time’s beginning, their mother at its end, both of them of ancient races. Why you, then, Meridion?”
He took a bite of the pastry. “Good cookies,” he said. Her question hung heavy in the air, unanswered.
After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, Meridion began to fidget. Finally he sighed. “Like the Seers, it certainly helps for me to have parents from opposite sides of the Prime Meridian, but who both spent time in each world.” And to have had one’s soul conceived in one, and carried throughout Time, ungestated, to be born in the other, he thought.
He averted his eyes, avoiding her clear green gaze. He had never really found a good way to explain to her that it was the presence of his unborn soul inside her, the bridge across Time, the bond between his mother and father conceived that night in the green meadow, that had given her visions into the Future throughout her life, visions that had ceased upon his birth, mostly because he was not entirely certain himself of how it had all come about. He had often looked in his journeys for the answer to his greatest question, how his father had been plucked for an instant from Time and sent back to the moment where his parents had joined their souls, making the beginnings of him in the process, but he had never found it.
Rhapsody looked fondly at him in return. “The Prime Meridian isn’t where your name comes from, just in case you’re wondering. You were named for your father and Merithyn.”
“I know; I heard the speeches at my naming ceremony when I was a newborn. You named me, after all. You do have a habit of inadvertently bestowing powers with the names you give.” Meridion slid off the marble chair. “Can I go and play now?”
“Of course.” Rhapsody regarded her son indulgently. “My, you’re getting so big. You’ll be as tall as me soon.”
“In three years, three months, and seventeen days,” answered Meridion, stuffing the remains of the cookie in his mouth. “Bye, Mama.” He kissed her cheek as she bent to embrace him, the strange vertical slits of his blue eyes sparkling warmly. Then he ran out the door, down the stairs, and into the clear autumn air.