A brisk walk down the mall corridor led them to another place. This time, Amaretto eyed her aunt suspiciously as they entered. Inside, there was an old man sitting behind the counter who simply smiled when he saw them. He had on horn-rimmed glasses and his hair was a stark white. His back was a little stooped and on top of that, he wore the ugliest cardigan sweater that Amaretto had ever seen in her life.
“Well Katherine, is this the girl that you were talking about to me so adamantly? She seems rather nice.” The old man adjusted his glasses and then smiled as he motioned them into the back of the store where a curtain hung. As he walked through the back, Katherine smiled and then motioned for Amaretto to follow.
“Don't worry. He doesn't bite. He really is harmless.” She then vanished behind the curtain and Amaretto had no choice but to follow her strange aunt behind the curtain. As she followed behind the curtain, she felt as if she was transported to a whole other place. There was a whooshing sound near her and then her stomach jumped. She stumbled past the curtain and found herself in a rather large room. In front of her, a small round table had been set for the equivalent of tea time and her aunt was being seated by a young man with strong dark hair and piercing eyes and a rather sensuous smile. Behind the table, a single lever and above them, infinite darkness seemed to seep around them. Next to the table, a small wooden construct that looked to have a rounded plug at the top for something small to fit inside.
As soon as Katherine was finished being seated, the young man continued to smile and pulled a chair from the table, and motioned for Amaretto to sit. She frowned at the man when he did so.
“Oh come now girl,” said her aunt. “I told you that he doesn't bite. That would hardly be cordial for him to do. To be honest, it is down right rude.” Amaretto looked at her aunt and then back at the man and then back again to her aunt's exasperated expression. As she turned back to look at the man, she realized that he was wearing the hideous cardigan sweater that the old man had been wearing.
“This is that old man that was siting outside? That's impossible!”
The man shook his head and then frowned. “In the worlds of time and space, nothing is impossible Amaretto. I do hope that I am allowed to call your that and that there is no problem with me doing so.”
Amaretto gawked at the man. Her mouth had initially dropped open when he spoke, but then it closed and formed into a frown. “What are we doing here then Aunt Katherine?”
Her aunt was busy pouring tea into a simple bone china teacup with a beautiful print of blue flowers on the side. She finished pouring the tea before she chose to answer that question. She spoke as she poured a little milk into her tea. “He is a Time Regulator. He is here to explain the basics of your Hourglass for you. Lucky Lucky me, I did not have to deal with your usage of the glass except for that initial time when you were eight.” She placed a lump of sugar into her tea and then as if upon second though added another one. She then pulled out her palm pilot and poked around at it.
“The appointment was made for today initially as you were not supposed to receive the glass until you were eighteen years, three days, twelve hours, forty minutes and six seconds old.” She smiled and then placed the palm pilot on the table and sipped at her tea. She instantly made a face and then reached into her purse for a flask which she promptly took a swig from and then poured the rest of the contents into her tea. Amaretto slowly took a few steps forward, still clearly weary of the man who was standing there and holding the chair out for her. She sat down and then the man proceeded to pour tea for her as well. He offered her the milk and she kindly shook her head and then he pushed the sugar bowl in front of her before he sat down himself.
Pouring another cup of tea, he proceeded to put a single lump of sugar into his tea and then popped a second one in his mouth. His eyes twinkled and he gave an impish grin as he ate it.
“Amaretto, you will have to listen carefully to everything that he says alright?” Katherine sipped her tea and then settled to relax.
The man sipped his tea and then spoke in a rather charmingly deep voice that did not seem to fit with his boyish looks. “My name is Alexander Anthony Taylor Ryan Tempus. Everyone calls me Tempus for short, or even “Keeper” at times. You can call me as you like.” He smiled rather disarmingly and Amaretto actually blushed.
“Now you might have some questions for me about the Dimensional shifter so ask away. That is what this meeting is for.”
“Who the hell are you would be a better place to start,” mumbled Amaretto. Katherine was sipping her tea when she spewed at what she heard. The man smiled and then spoke with a frank tone of voice.
“I told you, I am a Keeper, a Time Keeper to be frankly honest. I allow for people who have Hourglasses to be able to travel to their destinations. Think of me as an all encompassing travel agent. It's kinda nice to be honest.”
“A travel agent?” Amaretto ignored her aunt while she tried to clean up the table with a napkin where she had all but practically spewed her tea.
“Yes. I am the one who makes sure that your Glass works at all times. If it didn't you might never know where you might end up. I also recharge it for you when that is needed from time to time and help with the general maintenance of it.”
Amaretto looked puzzled for a moment. “So you are like a mechanic of sorts?”
Tempus smiled. “That analogy works better than the Travel agent, it's true, but I do more of both jobs to be honest. I also make a wicked peach cobbler.” A this he grinned rather largely. Amaretto felt a twitch in her left eye and then almost cracked a smile. Instead, Tempus continued to talk.
“I will insist though that if you want to have some you tell me so I can make you some. I have many clients from across the ages and they all seem to love it. It was the previous Keeper's recipe.”
“So there have been Keepers other than you?”
Tempus blinked in a blank stare and then smiled. “Yes and no.”
Amaretto felt the twitch in her left eye and rubbed at it in an effort to make it go way. “That answer is hardly worth mentioning. It was like shaking a magic eight ball and getting the 'Reply hazy, try again' answer.”
Tempus grinned and said, “Yes, well, what I mean to say is that outside of this temporal space, I could look like anyone, but within here, I should always look like myself until I choose to go on with my life. You see, all the Keepers are in a state of time stasis so that they do not age until they are done with their time. All the people on the outside are usually the people who have been previous guardians.”
“So the old man outside was originally a Keeper until he got bored?”
“Yup. It's his cobbler recipe. He was instituted somewhere around the early 1900's. He was also from a different plane of existence as well.”
“Plane of existence? What does this mean here? Aunt Katherine mentioned it as well when I was younger and it still makes no sense.”
Katherine chose this moment to interject. “You actually remember that? Oh dear, I thought you forgot.”
Amaretto replied rather snappishly. “It's rather hard to forget that you lost three hours at once point in your life due to a time traveling Hourglass.”
“It is not a time traveling hourglass.” Tempus placed his teacup down and spoke with a firm voice. Amaretto turned, a little shocked that the playful man he was before had turned all serious. He folded his hands on the table top and then looked at Amaretto.
“Listen carefully. Every time you make a decision a world is created in the conscious span of the universe. Thus it creates a filtered multiverse of many different worlds and many different things. Time is a three dimensional thing, so far as spanning into a fourth dimensional paradoxical state.”
Amaretto blinked at him as if he was talking in gibberish.
Tempus paused and then laughed nervously. “Whoopsie. I meant to talk more normally. Let's try that again in a lot simpler terms: You can cross dimensions of time and space to visit other worlds, and even pass through time on rare occasions.”
“I can cross dimensions and time?” Amaretto seemed truly impressed at the idea. However, before Tempus could respond, a loud sound suddenly chimed through the whole of the room. Tempus immediately stood up and then began rushing about, trying to remove all of the china and tea, and then just rolled his eyes as the siren grew louder.
“Bloody Hell,” he muttered. As soon as he said that, a thousand bells like a cathedral sounded and he made a grab for the lever that had been on the other side of the table. As he pulled the lever, the bells all stopped and a soft chime could be heard. Suddenly, a bright flash of light lit up the area. Amaretto could see more and more spotlights flashing on. The lights seemed to go on forever at first and then suddenly, they stopped. Amaretto looked up and she was shocked at what she saw.
The room in which they were standing, turned out to be massively taller than what Amaretto had initially thought. Large clockwork gears, dials, bezels, springs and all other manner of clock pieces were attached to the small pedestal that sat in the center of the room just behind the small table. The makings of what appeared to be a fifty foot clock ticked silently behind them all. A little ways up, there was a platform where Tempus was quickly making a bee line. He ran up a set of stairs on the side and looked back at Amaretto. :Kindly close your mouth, we do have a fly here, I don't want you to trap it by accident.” Amaretto quickly slammed her mouth shut.
On the other side of the table, Katherine was on her palm pilot, furiously typing things into it. At the same time, she pulled an ear piece out of her purse and then dialed a number on her cell phone. As Amaretto watched, Katherine talked and talked and talked, and her words were swift and guttural. Tempus was busy pushing buttons and Katherine was talking what sounded like German on the phone. Amaretto stayed where she was and then looked at Tempus who started to talk as he pushed buttons and pulled levers and checked gages.
“I am terribly sorry that this was cut short, but I am going to have to make sure that certain things work out properly.” He pulled another lever and then checked something with several needles that seemed to be spinning. “I wish that we could have had a nice conversation about all the things that you need to do, but I am afraid that, as it usually does, time has gotten away from us. I wish that you had your Hourglass with you at the moment, but we are going to have to do this a whole different way.” He pulled another lever and suddenly a keyboard and monitor popped out. Tempus then pointed to her aunt and said, “You should get her before she reams those other faeries a new one.”
Amaretto ran to her aunt's side as Tempus began to type furiously across the keyboard. There was a whistle call and then the whole of the “clock” boomed across the entire room, the chime echoing. Katherine paused in her speaking of Gaelic, and looked at Tempus.
“Is it time yet?”
Tempus nodded his head. Katherine nodded her head and spoke into the phone again and then clicked the phone off. “I guess then that Amaretto and I are ready.”
Amaretto blinked and looked at her aunt. “Ready? Who said anything about being ready? I still don't know what is even going on!” Amaretto looked panicked for a moment and then looked back at Tempus. He had unfolded a chair from somewhere on the platform and had sat down and was now furiously typing away on his small keyboard. Several more monitors had popped up and he was typing at a furious pace.
“This is what is going to happen. I am going to have to send you off back to your own home so that you can pick up your Hourglass. From there, I am going to program it so that when you tilt it you will be taken straight to Monde Creux. There you will see la sorcière du temps et de l'espace. She will help you move on from there to where you need to go.” He tapped in a few more things and then tossed a small pocket watch to Amaretto.
“That will initiate the time change between here and your house, allowing you to be able to step through to the other side. No portals here I'm afraid. I've input your destination inside of Monde Creux. You both should be fine.” With that, he nodded and then puled a lever. Amaretto frowned and then tried to say something, holding out the pocket watch. The watch clicked open and the inside started spinning furiously.
As Amaretto stared at it, she heard Tempus call out to her. He was standing there and smiling at her from the platform in front of the clock. “Make sure you take a water bottle. And always remember that the answer is not 42, it's actually three.”
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