The Time Collection

She hadn’t expected the crossing to be so choppy, but then, no one had returned from it in her lifetime, so there was no reason to expect anything at all. She only knew that it was time. Now that she was nine years old, she was firmly in middle age, and she could feel time moving swiftly. Too swiftly. By the time she was 12 she wouldn’t have the strength for this journey, and if she didn’t succeed, the next generation would lose more years.

Shannyn leaned on the ship’s railing at the bow, searching ahead for the blue glow that would signal their arrival at the Pool. She was fine-boned and small for her age – the shortest of her friends. Her silky hair blew across her face, obscuring her vision. She wondered again what it had been like for her ancestors, when life was long and they had the luxury of 90 years before passing to dust. They had wasted time like it was an endless stretch of sand on the beach. That was before their hours washed out to sea, never to return.

Their careless living had caused the Great Decline. When life expectancy dwindled from 90 to 80 and then 60, they became alarmed and called together the Council. Three were elected to make the crossing to the Pool to consult with the Blue Oracle. When they returned, no one believed the Prophecy. The populace rebelled, spending idle hours even faster, thinking only of themselves. They neglected their children’s education, allowing knowledge gained over a thousand years to slip away. Generations later, with marriage at 11 and first childbirth at 12, there was barely time to pass on the old ways before death at 15. Now they hoarded their minutes, understanding their value, but powerless to stop the acceleration of their days.

As descendants of one of the Original Three, Shannyn and Sharlotte had been carefully trained in the Prophecy and the Quest. Their days were packed with physical and mental training. They memorized principles, customs, and critical skills of living, carefully passed down from the Blue Oracle, just as other descendants had. But in her short lifetime, the other families had failed. They had boarded the ship, were waved off from the dock, just as she had been, but they never returned.

Shannyn turned away from the railing, carefully holding the lifelines to make her way to the stern. There she found Sharlotte, her fierce, strong, younger sister, checking the sails as they glided across the sea. Strangers never guessed they were related when they saw Sharlotte’s short, dark hair and muscular frame. She was seven years old, but she had absorbed all the knowledge and skill that could be acquired from birth until now. She had been a miracle baby, born at the end of their parents’ lives, and Shannyn and the rest of the community had picked up responsibility for her training. Sharlotte was fearless. Shannyn believed she was their secret weapon. No other family had sent two siblings to make the dive. They would do it together, even though there had been a near riot at the decision to equip both for the quest.

Sharlotte gripped the wheel with small, skilled hands, and frowned. “It’s too turbulent. I’ve never seen the sea this restless. It doesn’t bode well.”

Shannyn looked ahead and saw it then – the blue glow of the Pool. In the middle of the sea, the strange light was the only marker. Latitude and longitude had been carefully passed through the generations so they could return to find the Blue Oracle. The light pulsed, more alive and glowing with each beat.

“It’s really here,” Shannyn said. “I think I never really believed until this moment.”

Sharlotte turned the ship two degrees starboard to head for the light. “I believed.”

They turned head into the wind and dropped their sails, gliding slowly sideways into the unnaturally calm waters of the Pool. It felt like entering a peaceful bubble. Once inside, the boat floated in one spot, perfectly still.

They went below to pull on their wet suits. The slick, black skins were made of eel, specially softened and fitted to shield their skin against the cold water. The frames of the masks were adorned with black pearls, sunrise shells, and luminescent opals. New dive masks were created for each quest and blessed by the high priests. But no piece of equipment was as special, or as important, as the breathing apparatus. The ancient civilization had perfected the light, flexible membrane that carried compressed air and the system that recycled the air. The knowledge of how to build the apparatus had long been lost, and Shannyn and Sharlotte were carrying the only two remaining membranes.

With the equipment piled neatly on deck, they sat to wait. The instructions had been ingrained, chanted from the moment they could form sounds. Arrive at the Pool with the blue light alive, wait for the word, and prepare to dive.

Shannyn and Sharlotte sat on the deck, cross-legged and holding hands, and together said the next words aloud.

“The Oracle will share the end of the rhyme; the true heart will live and restore all time.”

Shannyn could feel the tension in her sister’s hand. “I don’t like waiting,” Sharlotte said. “Time is slipping by.”

“This is not time wasted,” Shannyn said. “We are here, together. We are able, together. We will draw strength from each other.”

Sharlotte released her hold on Shannyn’s hands and reached to wrap her chubby arms around her sister’s graceful neck. “I love you,” she whispered. “You are sister-mother-friend to me. You are my whole world.”

Shannyn hugged her close and whispered back, “We will succeed.”

From a lifetime of tracking minutes and carefully handling time, they knew they had been waiting precisely 57 minutes when the waters stirred and the Blue Oracle rose to the surface. Her robes were shining white, but her skin was deep, deep blue. The light softened when it pulsed around her. Shannyn and Sharlotte ran to the ship’s railing and leaned forward. Shannyn spoke first.

“Tell me quick and tell me true, where do I go and what do I do?”

The Blue Oracle spread her arms and the light shone brighter.

“All that you know and all you may be, will send time’s collection back cross the sea. Dive, my little ones, dive.”

They jumped into action, pulling on the ornate masks and strapping the airily light membranes to each other’s back. After a final check of the ship, they each picked up a line looped with weighted stones and moved to the edge of the transom. Together, they jumped.

As they descended, Shannyn could see what created the calm Pool over their heads. They were dropping through a large vertical tunnel made of coral and shell. The walls had a blue cast, but she could tell the coral was multi-colored and varied. Coral and shell entwined in a tightly knit pattern, with contrasting surfaces of smooth, pearly shell and rough, textured spines. She could see small, brilliant particles that looked like diamonds streaming in through holes in the wall. The diamonds were flowing down, surrounding them with sparkly points of light.

It wasn’t until they reached the bottom that Shannyn understood what the diamonds were. There, lodged in the sea floor, were giant crystal urns filled with thousands of the diamond-like particles. Dazzling. Brilliant blue light emanated from the floor and refracted through the particles, lighting up the cavern-like base of the tunnel. The Collection of Time. The particles were wasted moments of lives that had been swept out to sea and pulled inexorably toward the tunnel to be trapped in the transparent urns. Shannyn thought of the written scroll of the report from the Original Three. The old language had confused her, with words of light and time and life and reversing the flow.

She noticed a piece of black eel skin pressed against the inside wall of an urn. And there was a fragment of a diving mask, adorned with black and white pearls. Now that she could see the urns, she understood the First Rule that said “Contaminate not the sacred vessel.” The earlier quests had been trapped here for all time.

She felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to see Sharlotte pointing to the urns. Puzzled, Shannyn shrugged. Sharlotte pointed again, insistently, and then traced a pattern – a very familiar pattern. Shannyn looked at the arrangement of the urns on the cavern floor and finally recognized the design of a giant clock face. Urns were placed at the 12 positions of the hours, with one in the center. Beams of light shone from the center urn, pulsing in rhythm as they moved from urn to urn. The beams were moving swiftly.

Once they understood the clock pattern, they could see the mechanism under the center urn, powered by the combined energy of the blue light and the sparkling time particles. The idea hit them both at the same time. They could physically rotate the urn, moving the beams backwards. Shannyn knew it wasn’t a permanent solution, but maybe it could buy them time.

Sharlotte was already swimming toward the center urn, and, horrified, Shannyn watched as Sharlotte’s small, child’s body entered the circle of the clock face, struggling against the pull of the time particle flow. She was strong, but so was the current. She had almost made it through to the center when the dive membrane on her back caught the edge of the particle flow and ripped. Expelled air propelled her across the floor into the side of another urn. “Nnnooooooo,” Shannyn screamed inside her mask.

Shannyn swam into the circle, barely missing the same particle stream. Her sister was unconscious when she reached her. She could feel air escaping from multiple flex tubes that should have been sealed into the breathing membrane. Fighting against the flow and dodging the streams, she pulled Sharlotte out of the circle. Frantically, she pulled off Sharlotte’s damaged unit. Without hesitating, she unstrapped her own breathing apparatus. There was no way they could share. The ancient technology was designed to maintain an unbroken circuit of air. She wasn’t even certain that making the transfer would work, but she had to try.

After strapping her membrane into place on her sister’s back, she snapped the critical air conduit to Sharlotte’s mask. Inside the frame of pearls and opals encircling the mask, she could see her sister’s eyelids flutter.  As Shannyn clung to the coral wall, she thought only of her wishes for her sister and hopes for her fruitful life.

She quickly released Sharlotte’s dive weights and activated the return propulsion to lift her sister up through the tunnel. As she pushed her out of reach of the particle streams, she felt certain that Sharlotte would fully revive at the surface. The ascent would be too long and slow for Shannyn to make it without oxygen.

As her brain became foggy, she felt the blue light swirl around her and she thought this must be death. She expected to be caught by a stream and pulled into an urn, one more quest ended in entrapment. Instead, she was being pulled up and out of the circle, higher in the tunnel, up toward the Pool above.

She broke through the surface, gasping for air, and saw fountains of time particles erupting from the water, dancing in a dazzling display of blue and white lights. The Blue Oracle was once again standing on the water, only this time holding Sharlotte in her arms.

“All that you know and all you may be, will send time’s collection back cross the sea.”

“I don’t understand,” Shannyn gasped, treading water. “We failed our quest.”

“The solution was never the physical manipulation of time,” said the Blue Oracle. “Life and time must be handled gently. It was your sacrifice that changed the flow. You gave yourself to save your sister, without thought or plan. You acted from your heart and from all that you are.”

The Blue Oracle reached down to pull Shannyn from the water and unite the sisters. She spoke the ancient words, the ones the sisters had memorized from the beginning. “The true heart will live and restore all time.”

And from that day, the Prophecy was told that love is more important than time.

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