Another Faust by Daniel Nayeri Page B

stutter.” She leaned toward him. “Choose an object to focus on. You need some small movement that you can track
constantly.
”
    “But it’s impossible to know what time I want to return to beforehand. Once I know I’ve messed up, that moment’s already passed.”
    “Yes,” said Madame Vileroy with a satisfied grin. “That’s why you have to track something
all
the time. You can’t suddenly remember that you need it after you mess up. By then it’s too late.”
    “That’s really hard,” said Valentin.
    “It’s a tricky business, Valentin. That’s why it’s called
lying.
You have to remember a lot of details to pull it off.”
    “But is it really lying? I mean, the things I change technically never happen, right? I go back in time and change them.”
    “Well, in a way. You see, Valentin, there is no such thing as time. It’s just a road, a path that people travel on. But most people can’t go back and forth on this path. Most of the world is on a train, traveling forward all the time, speeding toward death, with a set schedule and someone else in charge. You, my dear, are the only one who gets to be on foot. You can go back and forth and experience things again and again. Sometimes you can do things to reroute the train. But people still feel how it should have been. They somehow sense the lie. That’s why you have to be careful, or else they’ll know, and hate you for it.”
    “I’ve been using this old watch,” Valentin said as he ran his finger over the worn timepiece. “It’s always lagging, and the rhythm keeps changing. I try to memorize the missed beats.”
    “That’s a start,” said Madame Vileroy.
    Valentin inched toward her. “Wanna practice together?”
    “No,” said the beautiful governess, and walked away.
    Valentin looked down at the watch perched in the palm of his hand. Even with all that power, the smallest rebuff weakened him, made him feel like a little kid. He hated that feeling the most — that he was disposable, unloved, nothing special. Nothing special to
her.
Slowly he closed his hand around the fitful old watch. It snapped in his hand and stopped beating. He heaved a long sigh and walked back to the empty breakfast table. He sat down in a chair soaked with juice, surveyed the food covering the floor, the crushed gears in his hand. He closed his eyes and brought it all back — to the way it should have been, to a moment when he was having fun.
    “Yes, it is!”
    “No, it’s not!”
    Suddenly, and again, the entire kitchen table lifted into the air — and even the milk from the pitcher followed the same arc as last time, Valentin noted — turned on its side, and crashed to the floor. Then Christian said, “Stop fighting.”
    And this time, in the pause right after, Valentin leaned back and said, “Who else thinks that Vileroy’s kinda hot?”
    “Shut up,” said the other three, almost in unison.

    Christian went to his room. On the way, he walked past Madame Vileroy, leaning against the wall. He didn’t stop. “You are a good boy, Christian,” she said as he passed.
    But Christian didn’t want anything to do with her right now. He ran to his room. When he opened the door, he saw that she’d changed things. “I have a present for you. You deserve a present.” He couldn’t feel her breath on his neck, but she was close enough that he should have. At the center of the room was an isolation tank. He had been lying down in that coffin for years now, staring up as the lid closed over him, letting the blood-thick water lap around his sides. The darkness would pour into every inch of space. The glittering liquid, teeming with tiny crystals, would press itself into the pores of his skin, knifing through the holes and into his bloodstream — little stones squeezing through every vein and capillary. His breath would quicken, every muscle contract, relax, and contract again. But then he would come out rejuvenated, stronger than an ox, supercharged like a