Leonid remembered how he’d felt arriving in the time hollow, when he’d seen it as just another prison. It seemed even more like a prison now—one with a dwindling supply of air.
“But . . . Jonah had an Elucidator in that basement in 1918,” Leonid protested. “Katherine had an Elucidator when she came back to the basement and screamed, ‘If you want to live, grab on to me!’”
“I wish those had been our Elucidators to keep!” Katherine said. “But they weren’t. I’m pretty sure Jonah has at least one more trip to the past he’ll have to take—and JB had better let me go with him. But after that, I probably won’t get to travel through time ever again.”
She sounded both wistful and terrified, all at once.
“I’ll be okay with never traveling to the past again,” Anastasia said with a shiver.
“Me too,” Maria agreed.
Will I? Leonid wondered.
* * *
JB was coming back to retrieve them all. In their hospital room in the distant future, Jonah and Gavin/Alexei had healed enough that no one in the twenty-first century would be able to tell that they’d been shot. They were being sent home—to their twenty-first-century homes—and so was everyone in the time hollow.
“You have to remember to call Anastasia and Alexei only Daniella and Gavin from now on,” Katherine reminded the others as they stood waiting for JB to arrive. “Please don’t anybody do anything that makes JB reconsider, and decide we need to wait here longer.”
“I thought we were just waiting here for Jonah and, uh, Gavin to heal,” Leonid said. “I thought we were just . . . killing time.”
“Don’t you think JB wanted us to heal, too?” Katherine asked. “From all the horrible things we saw?”
Was that possible? Even though they’d been in a time hollow where people couldn’t heal?
Leonid had seen even more horrors while he was in the time hollow. He’d watched his uncle being shot; he’d watched the execution of his own ghost-self. He’d watched entirely too many battles in the cataclysmic events he now knew to call World War I and the Russian Revolution; he’d watched every last moment because he’d been curious about men and boys he’d once known who had gone off to fight.
Died in battle. Maimed in battle. Returned home a shell of himself. Shot trying to desert . . .
No one he’d known had fared well.
And then there was what happened to Clothilde.
Had everyone been so miserable just because 1918 was a terrible time, and Russia then was a terrible place?
Wasn’t there anything Leonid could do?
JB appeared in the middle of the room.
“Finally!” Katherine exclaimed.
“I see life in a time hollow has once again failed to teach you patience,” JB said, teasing her.
“So what’s the plan?” Chip asked.
“You, Katherine, and Daniella will land back in the exact spot on the sidewalk where you were right before you left the twenty-first century,” JB said. “Leonid and Maria will land a few steps away. Luckily, we’re certain that none of your neighbors will be looking out their windows right at that moment.”
“It was kind of getting dark then, anyhow,” Katherine added. “Even if the neighbors see Leonid and Maria arrive, they’ll probably just think their eyes are playing tricks on them.”
“Let’s hope so,” JB said. “There is a fifty-one-percent chance that one of your neighbors will look outside moments after that and see a group of teenagers congregating on the sidewalk and think it’s a gang. A Mrs. Greer?”
Katherine made a disgusted face.
“In case that does happen,” JB continued, “we’re going to try to avoid having her become so agitated that she calls the police. So as soon as Maria and Leonid land, they’ll roll over into the bushes, and wait there until Angela shows up in her car. Daniella, you and Gavin will wait with them. Chip, as soon as you can walk without stumbling, you head straight to your house. Katherine, you and Jonah will go home as quickly as you can too. Please don’t any of you do anything to make your parents suspicious.”
JB acted like this was a military maneuver or something—an event that had to be precisely planned, where a miscalculation of mere seconds could doom them to failure and death.
Maybe the situation was that dire. Maybe time travel was always like that.
Leonid felt his innards twist in knots.
I have to try, he told himself. I have to. . . .
“Ready?” JB asked.
Everyone else nodded. It took Leonid a moment to follow along, to get his head to bob up and down like it was supposed to.
Just as Leonid hoped, JB reached into his pocket and pulled out the pocketwatch-like device that Leonid thought had to be an Elucidator. JB tapped some controlled pattern on the front of it. The motion reminded Leonid of someone opening a combination lock.
“Send all these kids back to—” JB began.
Leonid launched himself toward JB. He slammed into the man and yanked the Elucidator from JB’s grasp.
“Send me back to July 17, 1918, with Clothilde!” Leonid screamed.
* * *
Leonid was not used to traveling through time alone. Every other trip he’d made to a new time period, he’d been in a cluster with the grand duchesses and Katherine and Chip, if not the tsarevitch and Jonah or JB as well.
Traveling through time all by himself was terrifying.
“God?” he whispered. “Are you at least with me?”
Somehow that made him feel a little better. Maybe he should have prayed more before he tackled JB?
God would want me to rescue Clothilde, he told himself stubbornly.
How else could Leonid have possibly managed to yank the Elucidator from JB’s hands? How could he have done that on his own, without divine intervention?
I just need a little more intervention . . . , Leonid thought. Like making sure I land safely without half of St. Petersburg seeing me appear out of nowhere . . .
It would be late when he arrived—as he understood it, he would likely arrive a split second after he’d been yanked out of time from the basement massacre halfway across Russia.
How much could it mess up time for him to appear to have traveled more than a thousand miles in that split second?
Clothilde will be the only one who sees me, Leonid told himself.
The empty darkness around him was terrifying; the sensation of falling through time made his stomach churn and his head spin.
Then lights appeared in the distance.
Almost there, Leonid told himself. Almost . . .
Everything speeded up, and Leonid felt as though he was being torn limb from limb, torn down into nothingness.
But then he landed, and it appeared that his body was still whole and complete. Miraculously, he was still alive.
For a moment he could only lie still, doing nothing but existing.
It is not enough simply to exist, Leonid reminded himself. I am not in a time hollow anymore. Time can run out on me. JB will surely see where I went and try to catch me. . . .
Cautiously, he forced himself to sit up. The darkness around him was as thick and heavy as evil itself. Clothilde could be right beside him and he wouldn’t even know it.
“Do you have any way to give me a small light that nobody else would notice?” he whispered to the thing in his hand he’d stolen from JB. The Elucidator.
A small, dull glow appeared around his hand. It seemed to come from a spoon Leonid found himself clutching. Leonid remembered hearing that Elucidators could take on the appearance of different objects in different times.
It turns into a spoon at a time when people are starving? Leonid wondered. Is it mocking me or sympathizing?
There was no way to tell, but he began moving his hand and the spoon in ever-widening circ
les. He could see a rough wooden floor. He could see the edge of a tattered blanket.
He could see dark hair.
“Clothilde?” he whispered. “Clothilde, wake up.”
She was either deep in sleep or very nearly dead. Leonid had to repeat her name three more times before she stirred.
“Masha,” she murmured. “Name is . . . Masha. Too dangerous . . . to be Clothilde anymore.”
“I know,” Leonid said impatiently. “That’s why I’m here. I came for you, Clothilde. I’m taking you somewhere safe.”
It was too complicated to tell her that that safe place would be in the future. He would use the strategy of his own rescue: grab first, explain later.
He reached for her hand, and prepared to tell the Elucidator where they needed to go.
“Take us—” he hissed.
But before he could finish his command, Clothilde yanked her hand away.
“You are only a dream, tormenting me with what might have been,” she murmured. “Go away. It’s too late.”
“I’m real!” Leonid insisted, reaching for her hand again. “I came back for you! I love you!”
Clothilde hid her hands under the blanket.
“You love . . . who I used to be,” she said. “That’s over. Everything and everyone I ever loved is gone. I’m going to die now too.”
“I’m here!” Leonid said. “You don’t have to die!”
Clothilde blinked in the dim glow of the light from the spoon, and for a moment it seemed that she might push herself up and reach for Leonid’s hand.
Instead, she used what seemed to be her only remaining strength to slowly shake her head, barely getting it to move side to side.
“It’s . . . too hard to care anymore,” she whispered. “Too hard to get my hopes up ever again, too hard to try anything new . . . I want to die. It’s all I long for now.”
Leonid thought maybe he was reading her lips more than actually hearing her words, because she seemed incapable of speaking aloud. Or maybe she’d given up on speaking aloud.
Her eyelids sagged. It seemed they would never open again.
She doesn’t want to open them again, Leonid thought.
Maybe he could make her look at him again. Maybe he could force her to live. To try, anyway.
But would that be even crueler than letting her die in peace?
I’m like Katherine, Leonid thought.
Katherine was always assuming that other people were just like her and would want the same things she wanted.
Leonid had made the same kind of mistake with Clothilde. Leonid wanted to live. Clothilde wanted to die.
How had Leonid not seen that?
“Good . . . bye,” Clothilde breathed.
Leonid heard the tramp of footsteps outside Clothilde’s room, possibly even outside Clothilde’s house.
Soldiers? Leonid thought. Bolsheviks going door to door, looking for their enemies?
What if Leonid had lost his one chance at survival by going back for someone who didn’t even want to live?
The door of Clothilde’s room creaked open. Frantically, Leonid glanced around for somewhere to hide. But away from the glow of his Elucidator/spoon, there was nothing but darkness.
And then there was a gleam of light in the doorway. A gleam of light that showed him two familiar faces: the Grand Duchesses Maria and Anastasia.
* * *
“We came back for you, Leonid!” Anastasia whispered.
Maybe he should think of her as Daniella instead, but it seemed wrong in 1918.
“Why?” Leonid asked. “I’m nobody. I’m supposed to live out the next ten years, and then die. All for nothing.”
“But you changed your fate!” Maria whispered, as she and Anastasia slipped into the room and shut the door behind them. “You went into the basement that night—this very night, actually—because you wanted to rescue us. You were so brave!”
“Brave?” Leonid snorted. Having failed to save Clothilde, he could hide his shame no more. “I was never brave, only foolish. And . . . maybe selfish, too.”
“Selfish?” Anastasia whispered, sounding shocked.
Leonid had to confess now.
“I was thinking so many things when I got up from my bed and went down into that basement with the rest of you,” Leonid said. “With one step, I’d think, I need to warn the family that some of the guards want to kill them—they need to be ready! I need to help them, even if it means I die myself! With the next step, I’d think, No, it’s just that the family is being taken somewhere safe, far away from the fighting. I have to go with them! I can’t be left behind! So—what if I was just trying to save my own life? What if I was only being selfish?”
He remembered lying in his makeshift bed listening to the boom of artillery shelling growing ever closer. Some of the explosions sent enough light into the room that he could see the bag of toy soldiers Alexei had given him that afternoon.
I could use that as an excuse to go over there, he’d thought. To see what’s really going on. To see if anyone can survive this awful night. . . .
Now Leonid was back in the same awful night, just in a different awful place. In the darkness, he couldn’t even see the expressions on the grand duchesses’ faces. Probably that was a mercy. Probably they both looked disappointed in him. Maybe even disgusted.
Then Maria spoke.
“Leonid, it’s not selfish to want to live,” she said gently. “In that place, in that time, in that life you had . . . it’s not surprising you were confused. And failing at something doesn’t mean you weren’t brave.”
“And either way, you were casting your fate with us,” Anastasia added. “You were so loyal and true. Even the guards saw that. I’m sure that’s part of the reason they wanted to let you live, and took you across the street when they were planning to kill the rest of us.”
Was that the proper way to look at what Leonid had done and what had happened?
“It was brave of you, too, to try to save Clothilde,” Anastasia whispered. “Even if she didn’t want that choice.”
Leonid held the glowing spoon/Elucidator a little closer to Clothilde. In the dim light, she was beautiful again. But Leonid didn’t let himself move any nearer, to see if she was still breathing or not.
“JB said he knew you would come back here, if he gave you any opportunity,” Anastasia told him. “He said he needed to let you try, or you could never let go of the past.”
“She almost started to reach for my hand,” Leonid said. “Maybe if I’d come a little earlier, when she was stronger . . .”
“But you couldn’t have,” Maria said. “You were shut out until this moment. The limitations of time aren’t your fault. Any more than it’s our fault we couldn’t save the rest of our family.”
“It only took us an eternity in the time hollow to figure that out,” Anastasia said.
Leonid thought he heard the tramp of feet outside again.
“But you endangered yourselves again by coming to get me,” he said. “You! The grand duchesses!”
“That’s because you’re our family too,” Maria said. “Those of us with royal blood, we didn’t have any choice when we were imprisoned in the house in Ekaterinburg. But don’t you think you could have gone up to the guards any time you wanted and said, I’ve had enough of the Romanovs. I want to be a Bolshevik now. Let me side with you!”
“I never once thought of doing that,” Leonid protested.
“And don’t you think that was brave?” Anastasia said.
“Just because you didn’t accomplish anything of historical significance between 1918 and the 1920s, that doesn’t mean your whole life was a waste,” Maria said.
“And don’t you feel like you still can do more with your life?” Anastasia asked. “Isn’t that why you jumped when we were down in the basem
ent and we heard Katherine scream, ‘If you want to live, grab on to me!’? Why you chose to go on living?”
Leonid let himself remember that moment in the basement. The entire time he’d been in the time hollow, he’d avoided thinking about it, because that had been the most terrifying moment of his life. The smoke, the guns, the screams, the confusion . . . He could remember it all only in pieces, because evidently that was how his brain worked when it was thoroughly soaked in fear.
Katherine’s words, “If you want to live . . .” had come at him like a rope thrown at a drowning man, like a ladder leading out of a burning building. It was, finally, a choice, presented at a moment when he thought he had no choices left.
Of course he’d wanted to live. Of course.
“Do you still want to live now?” Anastasia asked. “Or do you want to stay here?”
“I want to live,” Leonid said. “I want to live.”
Just as the door began to open again, just as he saw the tip of a bayonet scratching the wood, he threw himself at the two grand duchesses.
“Take us to the future!” he hissed. “Take us where we belong now!”
Nothing happened. Nothing changed. Leonid and the grand duchesses stayed in the darkness of Clothilde’s hovel and 1918.
But the door kept swinging open.
* * *
“Remember, the chances for getting in or out of 1918 are spotty,” Maria whispered into Leonid’s ear. “I’ve got everything timed on the Elucidator JB gave us, but our next chance is almost two minutes away. In the meantime . . .”
In the meantime, the door to Clothilde’s hovel was opening even wider. Leonid hunched down with the grand duchesses, hiding his glowing spoon behind his back. Had he moved his hand quickly enough?
In the doorway he could see men in belted tunics—were those uniforms? Were the men soldiers? Police?
“The enemies of the revolution in this house do not even dare to greet us,” the man in the lead roared.
Men spilled into the room, holding lanterns and bayonets and handguns.
“Show your faces!” the leader called. “Admit your crimes!”
Leonid, Maria, and Anastasia stayed silent. As if they were all thinking together, they slid back toward the wall, away from the lantern light and the guns. Leonid tried to reach for Clothilde, to pull her out of sight too, but it was too late.