Over the Hedge: Time Warp, Part Twenty-One

Time Warp, Part Twenty-One

6/10/2021

25 January 2007

“How was your trip?” Alice asked, as we stood next to the baggage claim in Pittsburgh. The machine kicked on and a couple bags started to emerge from wherever they are before they get here.

“It was very good. Got to see some friends, had some time to relax, got some work done.”

“Yeah, I know you were looking for answers about something. Did you get them?” I thought for a second.

“Not as much as I was hoping. But I got some, yeah.” My suitcase came around, and we grabbed it and made our way to the car. Alice was filling me in on things I’d missed—it wasn’t much, really—for the first bit of the drive, but she changed tone once we were settled onto the highway.

“What happened?” she asked.

“In Chicago?” She nodded.

“You seem like you have a lot to say, but you aren’t saying it. And your eye is different.” I adjusted in my seat and thought about how to answer her.

“I saw the future,” I said, finally. “Some of it, anyway.”

“Was it bad?”

“Nothing that I saw was bad. It was just a lot. I saw the four of us, you and me and Matteson and Rick, at a cabin. That looked nice.”

“Oh, that’s a good idea! My family has a cabin, over in the mountains. I should talk to them about letting us use it, you know, when it warms up some.”

“Yeah, that would be nice. I saw bits and pieces of things, I didn’t really manage to stay in one place long enough to get any real information. I was eventually pulled aside by The Two and told there were things I couldn’t see yet.”

“Who are The Two?”

“Oh, uh…they’re like, well they aren’t in charge of the metaphysical realm, necessarily, but they kind of embody it?”

“Oh, the King and Queen?” I stared at her.

“Where’d you get those names?” She shrugged.

“That’s what Matteson calls them. Said only the Queen ever talks to him.”

“Do you know where he got those names?”

“From the way he described it, it sounded like he just came up with it. When he first met them. I’m surprised he hasn’t told you this.”

“I guess we haven’t really talked about it.” I looked out the window, thinking, for a couple minutes. “Wait, he started calling them King and Queen, unprompted?”

“Yeah. He said they didn’t give him anything to call them, so he just called them that, and they were okay with it.”

“Matteson named them?”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.”

“No, but, I was told they were given the titles King and Queen by the one who named them. And you’re telling me Matteson gave them those titles. That means Matteson named them, and it means Matteson, for some reason, had the right to name them.”

“That sounds pretty important.”

“It is important. There’s no way Matteson should have the power to name them, nothing that I can think of would give him that kind of authority.”

“You think he has authority?”

“No. But, it almost seems like he’d have to, doesn’t it?” We rode in silence for a while. I tried to piece these things together, but nothing was clicking. There was some piece I was missing, I knew it. But if that was the case, I probably wouldn’t know what that piece was until I was much older. The mother at the not-Crossroads, she seemed like she had only just figured it out. Was it really going to take me twenty years to get the missing piece? Or was there more than one missing piece?

“Well,” Alice finally said, “this all assumes he named them, and didn’t just stumble on a name they already had that he just didn’t know about, right?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess.”

“Did you see me in the future?” She smiled, clearly trying to change the subject.

“I did. And you were wearing a wedding band.” She gasped.

“Really? When was this? Who did I marry?” I shrugged.

“I didn’t find out what the date was. And you weren’t standing next to a husband, or wife for that matter, so I don’t know. I couldn’t exactly ask you.”

“Husband,” she said, with finality. “It would be a husband. Nothing against it, but that’s not for me.” I chuckled as I leaned back into my seat.

“Time is not stone, Alice. None of us really know the future until we get there.”