Twisted Tale of Stormy Gale by Christine Bell

we’d never tell,” I reminded him yet again.
    Bacon stared at me, his soft eyes filled with pity, his thoughtful expression making him look much older than his nineteen years. “And if Gilly was alive he wouldn’t make you keep that promise. If he knew how sad you were right now, there isn’t anything he wouldn’t do to make you feel better. Don’t you know that?”
    “I do,” I agreed. “Gilly had a weak spot for us, and he would have sacrificed anything for our happiness, even it meant revealing a secret as potentially dangerous to the world as time travel. And just because he might have been willing to risk that for my happiness, doesn’t mean I am.”
    “The thing about being a martyr, Storm, is that you end up dying alone.” He gave me a sad little smile and walked out, leaving me alone once again with my Chunky Monkey, reruns of I Love Lucy blaring in the background.

    I dreamed of Gilly again Christmas night. It seemed so real, like I could touch him. And whoever said you can’t dream in color is so dead wrong, because in my dream, Gilly’s lively blue eyes crackled with barely repressed glee, just as they had in life.
    We sat together on a pair of swings not unlike the ones he had gotten for us when we were young. We swayed forward and back, just enjoying the sun on our faces and being together. He spoke first, and the sound of his voice and that gentle, lilting brogue he’d never quite shaken was a balm to my soul.
    “What are you doing, lass?” he asked, the glee in his eyes dimming.
    I almost played dumb and said swinging, but opted to just answer the question. “Wallowing, I guess.”
    “Nah, wallowing means it’s overdone, undeserved. You have every right to be sad. You’re nursing a broken heart. The question is, why?”
    “You know why. Because it can’t happen,” I responded sharply, instantly regretting my irritable tone. “Sorry, it’s just hard.”
    “Do you love him, then?
    “I do. I think I loved him from the day I saw him bumbling down the street on those skinny legs, so oblivious to everything around him, so filled with hope. He was like a bright light. I wanted a piece of that light so bad.”
    “That’s what you and your brother are to me, lass. The two brightest spots of my life. More than my inventions or the adventures. I love you unconditionally. And if you love him, then I know he has to be a good man. You couldn’t love another kind. And I trust you to know what’s best, even if it means sharing our secret. See, if you truly love someone, you have to trust them, even if it terrifies you. Not everyone will let you down or hurt you. Haven’t I shown you that? Hasn’t your brother?”
    I woke with a start, in that heart-pounding “I feel like I’m falling” way. My face was wet and I felt robbed that I hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye.
    Knowing that Gilly would visit my dreams again and feeling like I had to take immediate action, I tamped down my disappointment and jumped out of bed, trying to stay calm, trying not to let the little ember of hope flickering within me run amok.
    I went straight to my desk and unlocked a large drawer, pulling out the Risk Index Module. Breathless with fear and anticipation, I hooked it up to the computer and began frantically typing in the data.
    Twenty endless minutes later I sat, my finger paused over the Enter key. Closing my eyes, I pressed it and waited as the RIM whirred and clicked.
    When all was quiet, I opened my eyes, cracking them first like a child playing hide-and-seek and pretending not to peek, then opening them fully to take in the results flashing on the monitor in front of me.
    Forty-nine percent.
    My breath hitched as I allowed it to sink in. There was a forty-nine percent chance that Devlin’s absence from his world would cause such a major change in history, that life as we know it could be altered. We had never even attempted anything with a risk factor of higher than ten percent before. Forty-nine