Paid In Full (Unabridged)

Water drips off of overhead pipes onto a nearby furnace vent, sending puffs of steam out the window overlooking an alley full of honking horns, with the smell of food being hustled between by-passers. Drip. Hiss. Drip. Hiss. Thud. Buzzzz. A door slams and electric lights flicker on. Kyla hears Bridger, a friend of her fathers, open the shop downstairs. Voices speaking of his new wares quickly ensue. Luckily, Bridger had the sense to move shop and leave their hometown before it was too late.

Kyla quickly and quietly rolled out of her bottom bunk, so as to not wake her baby brother. Evan needs his sleep. He seems to be doing worse these days. Their room is small with just enough space for a bunk bed, one dresser, and a window; but it is shelter nonetheless. Many kids don’t have luxuries such as beds or dressers, let alone a bedroom. Kyla throws on a tattered army green smock and jeans from the day before, slipping bare feet into her sneakers as she rushes downstairs without a glance in the mirror at her long, dark, unwashed hair.

Instantly her senses are overwhelmed with the hustle and bustle of Bridger’s shop: Trinkets, Odds, and Ends. Bridger chose this name after he moved to Nightingale. Nightingale was left alone when Overseers stormed the greater Pacific Region, but their hometown Ostara did not fare as well. Ostara was Discontinued by the Overseers and there is not much left of the city, aside from a couple Stragglers and Misfits. Kyla and Evan would have been Misfits, had Bridger not taken them in. The kids’ parents were killed by Overseers during the Uprising, so Kyla and Evan fled on foot to Trinkets. That was one year ago. And one long year it has been.

Kyla began her morning tasks: rotate plants in the windowsill, remove brown and yellow leaves from indoor plants, wipe down solar panels outside, make sure batteries are charging, check hydroponic lines for leaks and make sure the pump is turning, and clear the gutters of debris for their rain-catch. They can’t afford to lose either the solar, or hydro system, as that is what keeps the plants alive and the lights on. Bridger had installed the systems immediately upon moving. He used almost all his savings to assure his shop would stay open once the Grid went down, and word was that the next crash wouldn't be long now.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” chimed a customer.

Kyla turned with what she thought was a bright, cheery, smile. Apparently she looked a bit more frantic, as the woman stumbled over saying something about maybe looking “over there”, as she awkwardly walked the other way.

Today was the third time this week that Kyla slept past sunrise and wasn’t downstairs to help Bridger open. She was exhausted. Between running Trinkets during the day, and waiting tables at the Bear Paw, a bar just down the road, she barely made it home in time to say good night to Evan. Then she spent the rest of each night making sure he had his lunch and things ready for school the next day. But Kyla was lucky. She was very lucky that she had not one but two jobs, and that her baby brother had someone to watch after him. Bridger’s wife Amie was a strict woman but Kyla couldn’t imagine where they would be without her. Even if Kyla had to work two jobs to pay for their room and Evan’s care.

In just a couple steps Kyla had quickly made it across the shop to hide in their storage room. It was filled with colorful repurposed glass jars for preserved food, various types of bulbs and roots hanging from the ceiling, an apothecary table, work bench, and random bits and bobs which Amie acquired during her bazaar trips. Before the first crash, of course. The first crash happened when Evan was barely one year old, and Kyla had just had her 14th birthday. There was talk that Overseers caused it so they could quash the Creator’s Rebellion, but you really only hear that from Stragglers. Now, 7 years later, the Overseers have full control, the Grid is only accessible in select locations, and many, many people are living day to day waiting for Overseers to provide them with food, shelter, and medical care; that was the deal. And so they wait. If Kyla learned one lesson from the crash, it's that not much else matters other than clean water, clean air, and food. If you have these you have your life.

Using the storage room sink, Kyla splashed cold water on her face, trying to wash away what felt like years of exhaustion. Standing there, hands clasping the rim of the sink, face dripping cold water down her chin, she wondered to herself: When will it end? The constant struggle, hardship, fighting for her and her brother's lives. Evan’s illness. The drought. The fires, and floods, and storms. The ceaselessly tight grip of the Overseers. This is what they were fighting for. They were fighting for the Creators. Those who sought to create a new life, and to bring new magic into the world. Drip. Drip. Drip.

With a quick wipe of her sleeves, a firm sigh and shoulder shrug, Kyla turned abruptly on her heel to walk out of the storage room when thud. “Ow! What in the…?!”. She looked down and saw a chest she was positive she had never seen before. Is Amie making trades again? No...surely she hasn’t traded since before we got here. Kneeling down to examine the mystery chest, Kyla was awestruck at it’s ornate beauty. Scrolling calligraphy etched around its edges, and corners encased in gold. It was made of real wood, too, and Kyla had rarely seen real wood as the Collective had to transition to 3D printed materials after the first wave of natural disasters had taken their toll. That was nearly 100 years ago.

Anticipation gripped Kyla as she opened the chest. Amazingly, it opened effortlessly and without a sound. Almost as if it had opened itself. It even smelled like real wood. Like the earth. But at the bottom of this chest was only one thing; a little black notebook. Kyla gently picked it up, almost afraid that her breath alone would cause the binding to fail and pages fall out. But this notebook was solid. It was sturdy, and offered a strange sense of support that Kyla hadn’t felt in a long time. It’s cover was flexible but firm, and jet black. Is this leather? Is this what leather feels like? Oh my, and the pages! They’re thick and you can see fibers in them. I thought paper made of plants was a myth… Kyla continued to feel the notebook and take in its exotic scent when she found a pen tucked inside the front cover. It had a weird sharp metal tip and its handle was filled with some sort of black liquid. So I guess old-earth script was an important class to take; you win, mom.

Kyla was just about to put pen to paper when Amie came storming into the storage room.

“Kyla Charlotte-May what in heaven’s name are you doing back here, sulking in the storage room?!”.

Although she was small of stature and generally soft-spoken, Amie never ceased to scare the living daylight out of Kyla. Startled, Kyla jumped and the notebook and pen dropped to the floor. Time began to flow normally again as she scrambled to pick up her new found items.

“What have you found there? Never mind that, save your doodling and daydreaming for after work, huh? Mrs. Nolan knocked over the fruit display and that stray got into our catnip butters again. Bridger’s having quite the tissy over your bein’ late and runnin’ off to hide! ”.

Amie was gone just as quick as she had arrived. Kyla tucked the notebook and pen into the front pocket of her smock and went about her day with newfound excitement.

The day seemed to stretch longer than any day she could remember, her anticipation for the workday to end had reached new levels. Thank the Sun it was her night off from the bar.

Bridger patted their last customer on his shoulder as he saw him to the door. And with that he closed and locked the door, turned down the display lights, and threw his smock on the counter.

“Another day, another byte, right KC-May?”

But Kyla barely heard him, she had already plopped onto one of the chairs by the coffee and tea counter and was pulling out her journal and pen.

“Kyla,”

Bridger’s tone hit her differently this time. It was somber and serious, something she hadn’t heard from Bridger since her and Evan came to him last year.

She instantly dropped her pen and looked up at him, his eyes dark with worry.

“What is it, B?”

“It’s your brother. Amie says he’s gotten worse.” Bridger gently sat down next to her, leaning forward, elbows on knees with tension in his weathered face. “When did you see him last?”

Kyla got still and quiet, all excitement vanishing as the severity of her brother’s illness weighed heavily on her. “...It was only two days ago…” she said in a small voice. “I spent the morning with him on my last day off from the shop. He seemed quieter, like he wanted to listen but not speak.” I should have known...

Silent tears filling her eyes she realized life was not a fairytale filled with mysterious chests and magic books. Their life was and is in danger, and Evan might not have much of his life left. Her innocent baby brother was a victim of past generations’ selfishness and greed. For a long time it was unheard of to get cancer, until children began falling ill from toxins which had become part of the human genome.

She sank. She sank like an anchor plummeting endlessly into an abyss that she knew she could not swim back from. Was she supposed to sit idly and watch as he withered away, organs failing, crying out in pain? No. I will fight for him with every breath I have.

“We have talked, Amie and I, and we agree that you should spend some time with him. It might lift his spirits to see his big sister some more.”

“But what about our faire? And the bills?”

“Nothing is more important than being with those you love, we will always find a way.”

With that Bridger patted Kyla on the back, stood up, and walked up the staircase leading to their apartment upstairs.

Kyla sat there for a moment, trying to come back from her despair, mulling over ideas in her mind of how she can come up with $20,000 to pay for Evan’s treatment. The City of Sun could heal him, as it had healed thousands of other children, but it came at a price.

It doesn’t matter how much, the fact is I have to do this. I have to save him. She thought this matter of factly to herself, as if it was an easy everyday thing to do. She pondered her thoughts for a moment before pulling the journal and pen back out. Opening the journal and pausing with pen in hand, deep black ink dripped from her pen onto the first crisp page. Almost in a trance, Kyla watched as blackness slowly sunk into white. And then disappeared.

What? Did I do something wrong? Kyla thought as she looked over the pen and pages.

But then it happened. Script began to appear on its own, long curved lines flowed elegantly across the page.

There are two Rules:

All matter in the universe must remain balanced, everything you create will have an equal but opposite reaction. one in, one out.

To be a Creator you must pay the price of Time.

Kyla stared at the book, awestruck. Maybe magic books, and hope, do still exist.

She re-read the lines over, and over, trying to make sense of them. Kyla had never thought about creating anything before; she lived in a world where doing so had strict limits and harsh punishments for overstepping one’s allotted creative freedom.

Okay, well here we go…Let’s start with something simple.

Kyla began to write:

Hot chamomile tea with honey

“Nothing is more important than being with those you love, we will always find a way.”

In the blink of an eye Bridger was back with her, then walked to the staircase just as he had done earlier in the evening. Kyla was so surprised she didn’t even try to stop him.

And there was her tea. Chamomile with honey, right there in front of her on the counter.

“...You must pay the price of Time.”. In that moment it all made sense to her.

Oh the possibilities were endless! The first thought that occurred to her was to go back two days to when she spent the morning with Evan. She sat on the couch for what would have been all night, slowly rewinding time and living the last two days in reverse. By the time she got to the right day the counter had many cups of tea, scones, flowers, stones, and other trinkets of her liking.

Exhausted, Kyla finally closed the book and walked upstairs, leaving her trinkets, the shop, customers, and the life she knew, behind.

Kyla opened her and Evan’s bedroom door slowly, just in case he was sleeping.

He was laying in bed staring up at the underside of the top bunk. Evan turned to see who it was and when he saw Kyla his face lit up.

Kyla went quickly to his bedside, ushering him to stay still and let her come to him. As happy as he was to see her, it was to her dismay that going back in time did not reverse his illness. Evan was, in fact, getting worse.

She hugged him tight, holding him to her as though her love alone would save him.

Fighting tears, Kyla put on a bright face and suggested maybe they just hangout and talk. So they did. She layed in bed with him, still holding on tight, and asked him about everything she could think of. They talked until they both fell soundly asleep.

Kyla woke in the evening and slipped downstairs to make Evan some dinner and to talk with Bridger. This was a past timeline, afterall.

She found him by the roots-bin and motioned for him to come to her.

“What can I do for ya, KC-May?”.

“I’m worried about Evan, I think he’s getting sicker. Would it be alright if I take some time to be with him? I need to find a way to get him that treatment, I worry he’s running out of time.”.

“Do what you need to do, your father wouldn’t have had it any other way and I won’t either.”.

With a nod and a thank you Kyla went back upstairs to bring Evan his dinner. They played a game before he went back to bed and Kyla receded to her barstool downstairs to do more thinking on how to get $20,000.

It was less thinking how to get it, but more what will the ramifications be.

But she had to try. Through her practice with the little black book she gained an ethereal understanding of the ebbs and flows of time and energy. she had jumped between enough timelines since finding her treasure to understand just how much time each detail required.

$20,000

There it was, plain as day on a blank stark white page. The ink seeped into the page becoming one with the book. Kyla didn’t realize she was holding her breath, and every muscle in her body, as she waited for the money to materialize in front of her.

But nothing happened.

No. No, no, no, no!

Kyla was frantic. This was her only hope of saving Evan. Without the money he couldn’t get the treatment. He would die.

He was going to die. And she was out of time.

Kyla had gone hysteric at this point, the lack of sleep and stress reaching max capacity. She tore the shop apart. Each box ripped open. Every piece of fruit thrown to the floor, each plant tipped upside down. It was chaos. She didn’t need the journal to make time stop; her broken heart held her there, hostage to her failure.

She sat, a crumpled mess on the shop floor. Dirt and debris strewn across the room. She hadn’t slept in days, and hadn’t bathed for longer. Kyla felt true hopelessness wrap its icy fingers around a lump in her chest. So she cried; she cried for her dead baby brother. And her parents. And her home. Kyla let every ounce of emotion pour out of her as she mourned what the world had become.

All she wanted was to hold him for as long as she could. She would hold him tight as his illness raked through him and took his life. He wouldn’t be alone.

So up the stairs she went.

Kyla slipped through their bedroom door, once again, and stood for a moment staring at Evan. He was skin and bone, his eye sunken with dark circles and his breath was rattling in his chest.

Oh, what have they done to you, my poor baby boy.

Kyla wasn’t sure if she slept that night but upon waking she found that Evan was gone, his innocent soul had been released from this cruel place once and for all.

The day went by in a numb blur and Kyla couldn’t have cared less about anything. Bridger and Amie. Trinkets. The war. It was all nothingness to her.

In the evening she pulled out the journal one last time, to say her bitter goodbyes.

This is goodbye. I’m sending you back to where you came. There is no room in the world for magic books. All the power in the universe is at my fingertips, yet all I want is what cannot be had.

Good bye.

Kyla walked from the counter back to the storage room and knelt down to open the mysterious chest she found but days ago. Placing the journal and pen ever so carefully back into the chest, she silently closed it, walked out of the room, and went to bed without a glance at what once held so much hope for her. Her bedroom seemed gigantic and empty. She climbed into Evan’s bed and held onto his pillow, drifting into a fitful sleep.

Kyla opened her eyes to an empty bedroom to start another day. Upon walking through the doorway she found herself not where she expected to be, which was the hall. Instead she was walking into the shop storage room.

All she could see was the chest. Her heart was pounding. What could this mean? Running, she threw herself to her knees on the ground and flung open the lid as if she couldn’t do it fast enough.

This time there were two items: a note, and a bag filled with beautiful, life saving coins. Kyla didn’t even have to count, she knew how much was there. She looked up at the open door she just walked through. On the other side was her baby brother. Alive, and sleeping soundly.

She was shaking, tears running down her cheeks. She held the note in front of her and read:

There is nothing more important than being with the ones we love.

You have paid the price.