Chapter 8: Selenehelion
Emily Dickinson, from "Sic transit gloria mundi":
Peter, put up the sunshine,
Patti, arrange the stars;
Tell Luna, tea is waiting,
And call your brother Mars!
Snow had fallen earlier that night, but now the sky was clearing up. The moon and stars glowed through gaps in the clouds, which caught the moonlight in sheets of white.
Olivia looked out over Reiden Lake. The view was obscured by a puff of visible breath every time she exhaled. She was wearing a coat, but was already cold.
Astrid was right: this was a terrible idea. Way too dangerous.
But Peter was alone in a world that wasn't his home, and she couldn't let him wait any longer.
Walter walked up next to her. "Are you ready?"
"How long would it take hypothermia to set in on a night like this?" Olivia wondered.
"Minutes."
She had been hoping for one of his absurdly specific answers, but upon reflection she doubted that would be any more reassuring.
"You know," Walter said slowly, "if you don't want to do this, I won't make you. We can go back now." It obviously hurt him even to suggest it. He wanted his son back.
"I'm going to do it," she answered.
He nodded.
She looked back at the lake. "Tell Astrid I'm sorry. I've left letters for Broyles and Rachel on my kitchen table. Can you make sure they get them? And if this doesn't work, I want you to know...I'm sorry I failed."
They walked to the end of the dock. The lake was frozen over at the shoreline, but here it was still ice-free.
"Let's do it."
Walter gave her a hug. They clutched each other tightly. Then he jabbed a hypodermic needle containing a Cortexiphan and adrenaline cocktail into her neck.
Olivia inhaled sharply. Her pulse began to race. She took a stumbling step closer to the edge.
Water, they had deduced, made it easier to travel between universes. Since it was so close to the density of the human body, when someone traveled from one dimension to another while submerged, water rushed back to take the place of the mass lost by one universe. On Olivia's test runs, when she went from their dimension to the other side, if she wasn't submerged in water on both sides she was yanked back within a minute by the vacuum left behind.
Reiden Lake, Walter had calculated, would be the easiest place to go from one universe to another, as the previous events on that site had weakened the boundaries between dimensions.
Olivia clung to the silver dollar in her pocket, concentrating on it, on Peter. As her consciousness began to blur she searched for him, searched for the spark of soul as familiar to her as her own.
The dock ran out beneath her feet, and she plunged into the ice-cold water.
The shock of the cold to her drug-enhanced senses caused an instant reaction. Reality shattered before her. Her hands and mind scrambled for warmth, locked on the the glimmer of hope. She felt universes pass through her, the usual pain lost in the cold.
They slowed to a stop. She began swimming up. Up.
Her head broke through the surface of the water into the even harsher cold of the air. She opened her eyes.
There, standing on the dock in the moonlight on the dock, was Peter.