Page 76 of The Devouring Time

When I first arrived in this room, before she introduced herself, she said we come from different times. But this has to be a bout of madness; she can’t be real. None of this is real.

I answer anyway. “Nineteen twenty-six.”

Colors strobe along her trunk. “Anno domini? Or do you use a different calendar system?”

“Anno domini.”

Her trunk flashes a bright blue, and her mental voice fills with excitement. “You’re the farthest in the future here—or that’s been here, as far as we know.”

“What does that mean? When are you from?”

“Fourteen fifty-three. I live in Florence. I’m a painter there. When I have the time.” She turns away from me. “I…I have a son. He’s so little.”

Dream or not, her grief tugs at my heart. Or whatever this body has. “I’m sorry. You must miss him. How long have you been here?”

“Nine months.” She looks back at me. “None of us know how long we’ll be here. Or if we’ll end up trapped like Khephnes.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The Swarm take our bodies and give us theirs. We don’t know why or what they’re doing with ours. Then at some point, they switch us back. Or that’s what we assume, given what happened to Khephnes.”

“Who?”

“Sorry.” She extends her trunk toward a figure gazing out the window at the jungle beyond. “He’s from Egypt, a long time before Alexander the Great walked its sands. Our calendars don’t match up, so I can’t say when exactly, and he doesn’t like to talk about it. He was taken as we were, but at some point the Swarm came and told him that his body had been killed, along with the Swarm member inside of it. He’s trapped here for the rest of his life.”

Horror rushes over me, just as intense as anything I experienced on the battlefield. To be stuck in this horrid body for however long its lifespan is…

“This isn’t real,” I say aloud. I long to close my eyes, but of course I can’t. “I’m dreaming, or hallucinating, but it. Isn’t. Real.”

“I thought that as well, at first.” Her mental voice is wry. “But let me assure you, it’s very real. I’m trying to⁠—”

“No!” I scrabble onto the bed with its mattress of moss. “I’m going to just…just lie here until I wake up. It can’t go on forever.”

The blue fades from Bianca’s trunk. “All right. Come talk to me when you’re ready.”

She scuttles away. I clutch the moss and will myself to wake up.

But I don’t. Eventually, somehow, I fall asleep, even though my eyes remain open. And when I wake, I’m still here in a monstrous form, surrounded by others trapped in the same terrible bodies.

I lose track of time, though the sun rises and sets outside more than once. At night, glowing orbs shed a cold blue light over everything. A few of the Swarm enter twice a day, leaving behind a feast of fruits I don’t recognize, alongside strange meats. All of it is raw.

“If you don’t eat for a few days, they’ll take you away and force you,” one of my fellow captives tells me. He introduces himself as Titus something-or-other, but I don’t pay attention. “You have to keep this body in good shape if you want to go home again.”

I do as he says, on the logic that I don’t want this nightmare to get even worse. Then I retreat back to my couch.

Eventually, though, I get bored.

As the room and its occupants grow more familiar, my horror toward them naturally fades. I begin to notice other details. Some occupy themselves by scratching words into the walls, in whatever their native language is. By the look of the walls, captives have been doing this for quite a while. The bodies of my fellow prisoners become more distinct as I notice differences between them, particularly in the patterns of color on their exoskeletons.

Bianca spends most of her time talking to others, going from group to group, or scouring the writings on the walls. Titus practices moving his body in ways that strike me as war-like: stabbing the moss with his pointed legs, ripping at it with his trunk, going down on his front legs to lash his lobster-like tail at the air. And Khephnes stares out the window, apart from everyone else.

This isn’t a dream. The realization creeps in, slow and inexorable as a leak in a dam. And if this is actually happening, I need to learn more.

50

I decide to start with Khephnes. Four years ago, I devoured the newspaper articles about King Tut’s tomb like everyone else. Though I suppose he might not want to talk about his homeland, his home time, since he’s apparently trapped here.

I scuttle over to him, deliberately not thinking about the foreign motions of my limbs. Every time I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the water, it horrifies me anew. If I end up stuck like this forever, like Khephnes…