He trails off, and the realization hits me. The way it all connects, like one long line of factors in the cruelest of equations.
“There’s no way, unless I go back,” I say stiffly. “Suddenly a boy who died stays alive. That would have to show up on their monitoring. A boy named Noam.”
Win lowers his eyes. “We could distract from it by making another shift first,” he says. “Try to hide it as a ripple like we did with the train ticket. But . . . they’ll be searching for that name. Investigating any shifts associated with it. Especially in the time periods they’ve traced us to before. It’d be hard for them to miss.”
The acknowledgment seems so final. Almost inevitable. Of course I can change every past there is except the one that matters most.
“What would they do, after they noticed?” I have to ask. “They’d look into his background, his family, his friends,” Win says. “They’d find records of you.”
“And Kurra would recognize me.”
“Maybe not. If you shifted everything, so you weren’t ever here with me . . . I think it’d depend on whether she was inside or outside the time field when you did it. But she’ll have sent up reports. The Enforcers will still know Noam was significant. And they’ll have a description of the girl I was Traveling with.”
“They’d kill us, wouldn’t they?” I murmur. “They’d kill Noam, to set things back the way they were before, and then they’d kill me, because they wouldn’t know I’m never going to meet you after all. I can save him, and they’ll just murder him all over again.” A choked laugh jerks out of me. I cover my mouth. It’s like they’ve already killed him. The instant Kurra snapped my purse from my shoulder, she killed any chance I had of saving Noam.
He was already dead. And maybe it was wrong of me to want to make a shift for no one’s benefit but his, mine, and my family’s. Maybe I was selfish not to have cared what other consequences there might be. It doesn’t matter now. This risk is too great, weighing the lives of all the people connected to him who are still alive against a boy who’s been gone for years. There’s no choice here.
I sink down onto the floor, leaning my back against the window. The sun beams over my hair. The skin around the edges of my frozen core is starting to tingle. I stare blankly at the wall. So that’s it. Despite everything I managed to accomplish, I couldn’t save the two people I most wanted to.
“If there was a way . . .” Win says.
“I know,” I say, before he can go on. I honestly believe he’d do whatever he could to help me, if it were possible. “But there isn’t. I guess you might as well take me back to my time.” Back to find out what else might have shifted, after the other history I just meddled with. I might not even be there. We might arrive only for me to blink out of reality the second my life aligns with its proper present.
I hug my knees. Well, I’m going to have to find out eventually. “You could even tell Thlo you realized Jule was right and you shouldn’t have brought me with you, that you took me back before you went for the third part,” I go on when Win doesn’t speak. “Maybe she’ll be less upset then? You can show off how much of their work you managed to do for them, without me there to distract things.”
“You wouldn’t be a distraction,” Win says. “You’re an equal part of this. More than equal. I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere without you.”
“No one else needs to see it that way.”
“You really think I’d take credit for everything you did?”
I shrug. Why shouldn’t he? Earning his companions’ respect is a lot more important to him than to me.
Win crouches down and rests his hand over mine. Solid and warm, and with a sense of sureness that abruptly reminds me of Jeanant. I look up at him. His face wavers through the tears that have collected in my eyes. But I can still see his expression, so serious it hurts to hold his gaze. He swallows audibly.
“Skylar,” he says, weighting every word with raw sincerity, “the way I treated you, in the beginning—The way I talked to you—What I did, without considering how you’d feel—I didn’t have half as much respect for you as I should have. It was wrong of me. I could make a lot of excuses, but that’s not the point. The point is I was stupid, and I’m sorry. So sorry. You’ve been . . . you’ve been spectacular.”
After all this time, I’d stopped hoping for a real apology. I’d assumed we’d put it to rest without that.
Win’s mouth twists, painfully, and I realize I haven’t responded: he thinks it wasn’t enough, that I’m still angry. And any part of me that might have been melts.
“Okay,” I say. “Just don’t let it happen again.”
A little smile creeps across my lips, the best I can manage right now. There are things to smile for, in spite of everything.
Win catches the smile, and returns it, twice as wide. As I hold his deep blue gaze, something in my chest flutters. Something that feels more real than the skipped heartbeats he gave me when we first met, when I wasn’t used to the alien thereness of him. When I didn’t really know him.
“I think you should meet them, Thlo and the others,” he says. “They already know you exist. And . . . you were the one who talked to Jeanant. Thlo will probably have questions.”
The flutter fades as my mind trips back to his conversation with Jule about “standard protocol.”
“How angry is she going to be?” I ask.
Win hesitates. “Honestly,” he says, “I’m not completely sure how she would have reacted if she’d found out what was happening in the middle of things. But we’re done now. If I try to hide you away, that’ll make Thlo think there’s something to be suspicious of—and she’ll know your name and what time period I’d have met you in, and Jule would recognize your face. If she wanted to find you, she could. If we just go to her, she’ll see she doesn’t need to worry. That after everything, you can be trusted. And the safest thing for all of us will be for you to go back to your life as if nothing ever changed, so the Enforcers never realize who you were.”
Part of me balks. But what he’s saying makes sense. And Jeanant trusted this woman, believed in her. He wouldn’t have, if she were cruel enough to see eliminating me as a reasonable solution, would he?
“Also,” Win says, a little sheepishly, “there is a practical concern. I’m not completely sure the cloth has enough power left for two more trips.”
What else is new? If I weren’t so shell-shocked, I’d roll my eyes. “Well, when you put it that way, it sounds like a great idea.”
Win laughs and helps me to my feet.
• • •
When the time cloth lands in the place Win says was arranged for the rebels to meet up—“Isis has it set so only people with the right code can Travel in,” he assures me. “That’ll slow the Enforcers down”—I’m expecting something like the inside of the safe house. Instead, the room is oddly normal looking by Earth standards. It has the feel of a posh modern office space: about the size of the first floor of my house, with a cluster of boxy sofas and armchairs at one end and a long table surrounded by matching ebony chairs at the other. The pale hardwood we step out onto is slick with polish. The only windows are angled skylights built into the high ceiling, casting splotches of sunlight across the floor.
I sink onto the arm of one of the sofas, resting my ankle, as Win folds his cloth. Nervous anticipation tickles under my skin. The numbness has faded enough that I can feel my chest rising and falling again, the tiny hitch in the back of my throat. Even after everything I’ve seen, I don’t feel quite ready for this.
“You’d better leave the Traveler shirt here,” Win says. “Can’t bring any of our tech back with you.”
“How many people will be showing up?” I ask as I pull it off over my T-shirt. I drop it onto the sofa.
“Five,” Win says. “Assuming everyone’s all right. Thlo, Jule, Isis, Pavel, and Mako.”
He edges closer to me at the swish of fabric behind us. As we turn, two figures emerge from a time cloth that’s
shimmered into sight in the middle of the room.
One of them is Jule. He glowers at Win for a moment before sprawling across one of the chairs. “Well, this should be interesting. I hope you’ve got a good story worked out, Darwin.”
Win’s back has gone rigid, but he ignores the other boy. He tips his head to the curvaceous woman who stepped out beside Jule. “Hey, Ice.”
Her smile cracks a dimple in her dusky cheek as she tugs a bonnet off her crimson-streaked hair, which is coiled into a frizzy bun. Part of blending in, I guess . . . Were they still searching France?
“Win,” she replies, returning his nod. Her hazel eyes flick over me and seem to judge me as no threat. I wonder how much of the story Jule told her.
With a rustle, the flaps of two more time cloths split open nearby, one right after the other. A lanky woman with caramel hair and skin, who looks to be in her late thirties, and a similarly aged, slightly pudgy man with a grim expression emerge from the first. Mako and Pavel, I presume. Because the woman who strides out from the cloth beside them can’t be anyone but Thlo.
Despite her short stature, every part of her, from the briskness of her steps to the firmness of her square jaw, emanates strength. Like all the Kemyates I’ve met, she doesn’t neatly match any Earth ethnicity: at one angle her face looks Chinese, at another South American. Her smooth black hair is slicked away from her face in short waves flecked with gray. Only that and a few fine lines around her eyes and the corners of her mouth give away that she’s much older than her companions. Her eyes themselves, a brown so deep they’re almost black, settle on me immediately.
“This is Skylar,” Win says before anyone else can speak. He steps between them and me as he covers a cough. In that moment, under the weight of those five stares, I’m inexpressibly grateful for his attempt at protection. “I don’t know what Jule said, but she—”
“Win,” Thlo interrupts. She doesn’t even look at him; her gaze is still fixed on me. Her tone is so measured in its gentleness it makes me shiver. “She can’t be here. She isn’t part of this conversation. Isis, Pavel.” She adds a command in Kemyate.
The woman Win called “Ice” and the older man move toward me. I draw back against the sofa. Win throws out his arm to block them. “No,” he says. “She deserves to be here. We wouldn’t have any of the weapon if it weren’t for her. We wouldn’t know what Jeanant wanted. She’s talked to him.”
Those last four words are the ones that break Thlo’s careful composure. A flicker of surprise darts across her face, and is gone.
Win didn’t mention that part to Jule.
“Wait,” she says, just as calmly as before. Pavel and Isis halt in their tracks.
“It’s true,” I force out before she can change her mind. “I’ve talked to Jeanant. And there was something he wanted me to tell you.” It seems like a cheap way in, but I’m having trouble focusing under Thlo’s gaze, so frankly assessing I want to crawl away inside my skin.
Win has yanked open his satchel. He takes out the smaller tech plate embedded in its rectangle of plastic and offers it to Thlo.
“It was in the Louvre, hidden in a painting, during the July Revolution,” he says.
Thlo studies it, and hands it to Isis. “Guidance system,” Isis reports, her eyes widening as she takes it in.
“What else?” Thlo says.
He hands her the second tech plate, which Isis identifies as a processor. And then the box. Thlo opens it carefully, a few last bits of forest dirt sprinkling on the floor. She draws out a makeshift book of bound pages with a shiny texture, the surface of the ones I can see etched with figures and mechanical diagrams.
“The schematics,” Isis murmurs, her eyebrows lifting even higher. Her hands tremble as she flips through it. She makes a breathless explanation in her own language.
“The fourth—we weren’t able to retrieve,” Win says. “The Enforcers caught Jeanant before he could place it.”
“I saw it,” I put in. “If it helps, to figure out what you’re missing.”
But Thlo seems to have paused over Win’s last sentence. “They—I think you’d better start from the beginning.”
So Win describes how he discovered my abilities—glossing over the way his impatience caught the Enforcers’ notice—and our Travels together, up to our final escape from Kurra. Jule snorts once, at the mention of the trip to the Coliseum, but after that it seems to take all his concentration just to avoid looking impressed. No one else makes a sound.
In the face of their awe, Win’s posture straightens, his voice becoming more and more confident, even though he has to stop a couple of times to sneeze. He leaves spaces for me to fill in the parts of the story only I know, which I do as succinctly as possible. I stumble a little when it comes to the final bit, summarizing my argument with Jeanant. And then his death.
“He didn’t want to take any chance the Enforcers would be able to interrogate him,” I explain haltingly. “Protecting all of you—he told me that was the most important thing. It must have been more important to him than losing that last part.”
“What was it, the one they took?” Isis asks.
“It was a sort of tube, about this big.” I gesture.
Isis glances to Thlo, pointing to something in the book of blueprints. “I bet that was the beam’s fuel. He wouldn’t have needed much, but he was using . . .” She says a word I don’t understand. “It’ll be difficult, but we can probably find a way to get more.”
Thlo nods, still silent. She takes each of the weapon parts again in turn, reading the messages etched on their casings. At the third, her eyes soften.
“‘We all started in one place,’” she murmurs. “‘Some stayed, and some struck out for new ground. Those who follow after always want to take what those before them have built.’”
“‘Visit the crocodile’s day by the spiderweb’?” Mako reads from beside her, when Thlo halts.
“Algeria, 2157 BC by the Earth calendar,” Thlo elaborates. “It’s the first place we Traveled to as colleagues.”
We all started in one place. I can hear Jeanant’s voice in the words. He wasn’t just talking about the last location—he was talking about Kemya and Earth.
Thlo sets the box aside. She steps closer to me, taking my chin in her hand. I have to resist the urge to flinch away. For several seconds, she just holds my gaze, as if she can read my intentions there. I can’t help blinking, but I manage not to look away.
“I won’t tell anyone about Kemya, or what you’ve been doing here,” I say when she drops her hand. “I know that would be just as dangerous for me as anyone else. All I care about is knowing the shifts will stop.”
She doesn’t comment on that. The corners of her mouth tighten, and she says, “Jeanant had another message for me?” There’s something hopeful in the question. Jeanant was her mentor. From the way he talked about her, the messages he wrote, they were close friends too, if not more. And then he disappeared from her life seventeen years ago, without even telling her where he was going. All I have for her is some vague impersonal advice that’s still about his mission. Suddenly I feel twice as awkward.
“Yes,” I say. “He said—he wanted me to tell you—to be careful, when you rebuild the weapon. To make sure you have the right moment before you try to destroy the generator. He thought . . . he moved too quickly, and that was why the Enforcers caught on.”
She seems to be waiting after my voice falters. “I’m sorry,” I add. “That was everything.”
Her face hardens. For a second, I think she’s going to hit me. Then she says, “Ah,” with a soft release of breath, and the moment passes.
“He was the best of us,” she says. “You’re lucky to have met him.” And I can hear it in her voice, as plainly as if she’s said it out loud: she loved him. All at once, I’m ashamed of how scared of her I’ve been.
I knew him for less than an hour, when you add it up. She was with him for years. My regrets are nothing compared to her grief.
>
“I know,” I say.
She turns her head away as if she’s tired of looking at me. “Thank you,” she says, “for assisting Win and passing on Jeanant’s last message. We won’t keep you from your life any longer.” Then, to the others: “We should head out before the Enforcers have time to break this code as well. Isis, you’ll contact Britta?”
Isis hurries to a corner of the room, pulling a small device out of her sleeve. Win clears his throat. “If it’s all right, I’d like to be the one who takes Skylar home. I’ll just need to use one of the other cloths.”
“Yes,” Thlo says, all business now. “Of course, but be quick about it.” She catches my eyes once more. “I do mean that thank-you. And we appreciate your discretion.” She hands him the cloth she was using and swivels to face the others without another word. They gather around her. Then it’s just Win and me again.
32.
There’s an instant, as we whirl away from the polished office space, where I squeeze my eyes shut and try to prepare for a present I don’t recognize, that I might not even be a part of. As if I’d notice blinking out of existence if it happened.
I’m still there when we come to earth in a sheltered driveway a couple blocks from my house. I can’t quite feel relieved yet. I keep my eyes on the sidewalk as we hurry down the street in silence, not wanting to see the way things might have changed, how much more wrong it might feel than those few twinges the last time I came back.
I remember my parents and Noam, Angela and Lisa, Daniel and Jaeda. My impressions of them all feel normal, right. But would I even know if their roles in my life have been rewritten since before I was born?
The spare house key is in its usual hiding place. I step inside onto the burgundy mat beside the narrow plastic shoe rack. My purple jacket with the melted mark on the sleeve from my first encounter with Kurra hangs where I left it. The savory smell of last night’s stew lingers faintly in the air, mingling with the cedar scent of the hall cabinet. Through the kitchen I can see the amber leaves of the maple in the backyard.