Timekeeper
Page 16
“Rumors floated back and forth, but no one knew the truth about Irving’s disappearance—not until the Windsors’ Halloween Ball of 1910. That was the night when you were seen dancing with Philip Walker, by the very Timekeeper who had become friends with Irving all those years ago, the girl who helped prepare him for the 1990s. She spotted your resemblance to Irving right away, but more importantly, she recognized the key. The fact that most of the guests couldn’t see you further proved that you were his daughter—a time traveler.”
Michele stared at Ida, stunned. The night of the Ball, she’d been so certain that only Clara and Philip had seen her. The knowledge that she had been watched the whole time, her actions reported on, left her speechless.
“A little digging was all it took to confirm what we had suspected: That you are not a natural child, but a child born across times. By remaining in the 1990s for so long and conceiving a child, your father broke two of our greatest laws,” Ida said frankly. “And that’s not the worst of it. One week after the Halloween Ball, Millicent August was found dead—her key stolen. Her great-niece, who was supposed to inherit Millicent’s place in the Society, never got the chance.”
Michele covered her mouth with her hands, sickened by the story. “Who would do something so evil?”
Ida looked her straight in the eye. “Rebecca. Her fingerprints were recorded when she first entered the Aura back in 1888, and those same prints were found on Millicent’s clothes the night of the murder. Two different witnesses saw a figure matching Rebecca’s description enter and exit Millicent’s house that fatal evening. There is no doubt: Rebecca killed Millicent. And now she can travel through time, she can Age Shift and thereby exist beyond her death—all because she has Millicent’s key.”
Michele gripped the sides of her chair, her stomach churning. “And now she’s after me. She’s been haunting me, trying to hurt me—and I can’t understand why.”
“It’s because you represent everything that, in Rebecca’s mind, was taken from her,” Ida explained. “She feels that your power, your key, all should have been hers instead, and would have been had she not gotten caught in her scheme. Moreover, you represent her heartbreak. The idea that Irving found love with someone else in her own family, and actually went on to have a child—it drove her mad. For some people, especially the entitled, disappointment can be the most dangerous of emotions.” Ida took a deep breath. “Rebecca found out about you the same way we all did, at the Windsors’ Halloween Ball. The one honest gift she ever had was the Gift of Sight, and she saw you too.”
“She was there?” Michele fought back the bile rising in her throat. “Why—why can’t someone just rip the key off her neck? She’s powerless without it.”
“It’s not that simple,” Ida said grimly. “She knows to stay away from the Society, so we have to find her—and that’s nearly impossible when she is no longer a living human being, but an Age Shifting spirit who can disappear at will. Death coupled with the power of Millicent’s key has made Rebecca nearly invincible.”
Michele’s head was spinning. “Wait … what do you mean, she’s an Age Shifting spirit?”
“Age Shifting is the ability to travel through time in the body of your older or younger self. So let’s say a Timekeeper the same age as Rebecca, a woman of thirty-nine in 1910, has a mission taking her to your time, 2010. But for the purposes of the mission, she needs to appear seventeen in your era. The thirty-nine-year-old would first travel back in time to when she was seventeen, in 1888, and must come face to face with her younger self. One person cannot physically exist in two different bodies in the same Time and place. So when the older Timekeeper grabs hold of her seventeen-year-old self, the two merge into one body. Now she is physically seventeen, but still nearly forty in mind and maturity. This ability is one of the great temptations of time travel,” Ida revealed. “The power to be young without having to relearn the lessons of youth. Larger than that, however, is the idea that through Age Shifting time travel, a Timekeeper who technically died in the twentieth century could appear in your twenty-first century as a young adult. This is what we mean by Rebecca existing beyond her death.”
“And can she stay that way indefinitely?” Michele asked, aghast. “How am I ever supposed to get rid of her if that’s the case?”
“No one can Age Shift forever,” Ida clarified. “It takes a tremendous toll on the body. We are particularly able to control it in the Society through our law that forbids Timekeepers from staying in another time past the Seven Days. Before reaching Visibility, Age Shifting can only last for hours at a time—then you are returned to the body you came from, the body of your true age. However, those who break the law and stay in another Time past the Seven Days can maintain their Age Shifting identity for much longer. Though again, it can never be permanent.”
Michele swallowed hard, her throat suddenly dry.
“Tomorrow will mark the seventh day that she’s been in my time. So tomorrow she will be strong enough to—to kill me … right?”
“She’s staying the full seven days?” Ida’s face turned ashen. “Yes. Before time travelers reach Visibility, they are inhibited from affecting life. They cannot kill, nor can they conceive. But after the Seven Days have been attained … I’m afraid there’s nothing you can do but fight. Because of the laws your father broke, the two of you are not legitimate members of the Society, so I’m afraid we cannot offer you protection. But what you can do is use your key to outsmart her, by concealing yourself in different Times.”
“But I don’t want to live in hiding,” Michele said in frustration. “I want to end this, not continue to be at Rebecca’s mercy. Please … isn’t there anything I can do?”
Ida hesitated.
“Millicent had a theory,” she began. “She had the idea that Age Shifting Timekeepers could only cease to exist if they were killed in multiple Timelines besides their own. Of course, this was never proven, and I imagine it would be incredibly difficult to accomplish. But Millicent believed in her theory with conviction.” Ida looked at her carefully. “I don’t know that I would advise attempting it under any circumstances, but certainly not alone.”
The clock sounded and Ida stood up, signaling the end of their meeting.
“Wait!” Michele called out. “There’s one more thing I need to know. What’s so bad about being born to parents from two different times? Why is it against the law? What’s going to happen to me?”
Ida hesitated before answering. “It’s against nature, against the rules of Time, for a child to live and grow up in one century when one of her parents is from another. Let me ask, have you ever found yourself time traveling against your will? Have you been pushed back to the present when you hoped to remain in the past, or vice versa?”
“Yes,” Michele admitted. “It’s happened a number of times.”
“That is your body’s gravity, trying to pull you back into the past where half of you belongs. We’ve seen this with a few other time-crossed children. Gradually, usually beginning around adulthood, they become split between their father’s and mother’s time periods, involuntarily pulled from one era to another.” Ida looked at her sadly. “That means that you might be having the best day of your life here in the twenty-first century, only to be propelled back one hundred years before, for who knows how long. It’s enough to drive you mad—and it makes having a normal life an impossible task.”
Michele shook her head frantically. “No. No, that won’t happen to me! I can’t be a prisoner of Time like that. There’s got to be an exception. I’ve got to be the exception. I can’t get stuck in the past, not now that I’ve found—” She broke off midsentence, not ready to talk about Philip just yet.
“Millicent used to say there is a way around every hurdle,” Ida shared. “In this case … you’ll have to be the one to discover it.”
“What is it about 1904?” Michele asked. “The times that I’ve recently gone into the past involuntarily, it’s been to 1904.”
The color drained from Michele’s face.
“What if—what if I can travel without a key?” she asked, grasping for straws. “What then?”
Ida’s movements stilled, and she looked at Michele in astonishment. “That I would very much like to see.”
Who do I belong to,
Who belongs to me in this life?
There exist no love songs,
Tender is the key of my strife.
I’ll fill the world with my creations,
Live the soul of imagination.
Who do I belong to,
Who belongs to me?
When I look inside me, who will I meet?
Leave the past and present behind me,
Let the future steer and guide me.
Who do I belong to?
The one who left the key.
Now it’s time for me
To be who he thought I could be.
—IRVING HENRY
FEBRUARY 5, 1991
13
THE DIARY OF IRVING HENRY
February 5, 1888
“I am ready,” I whisper to the key in my hand. “Take me to New York City, in the year 1991.”
I cry out, currents of shock coursing through me as invisible strings pull my body above the floor. I rise like a phantom over Room 1991, higher and higher, until I am nearing the colossal ceiling of the Aura Hotel. And then my body begins to spin faster than I’ve ever imagined possible, so fast that I find myself clawing at the air in a desperate attempt to slow down. I feel violently ill, like my heart might give out on me at any moment. It isn’t human to move at such a speed!
Shooting through the roof of the Aura, I yell in terror as I find myself soaring into the open air, the sand and beaches of San Diego so far below that they look like tiny dots of color.
I’m flying! Adrenaline mixes with dread as I realize there is no one to catch my fall. Suddenly, the scene around me swiftly begins changing. Instead of a beach down at ground level, I see what looks like an island—an island containing the grid of a city. And then I spot something vaguely familiar, shining a light and beckoning me from below. A small copper structure standing on a pedestal—a statue that, as my body begins involuntarily hurtling downward, reveals itself to be the shape of a woman. She wears a spiked crown and proudly waves a torch into the air. It is the new gift from France.
Lady Liberty.
My face stretches into a smile as my fear leaves me. The Statue of Liberty is welcoming me back—back to New York, but into the future—and I whoop, waving my arms like a bird as I soar closer and closer to the ground.
“So I’m all, ‘Talk to the hand, and don’t even think about calling me after pulling that shadiness!’ I went postal on him.”
“You tell him, chica!”
“Jake, stop pushing your sister or I’m taking your Game Boy for the rest of the trip.”
“No fair, Mom, she started it!”
“All right, stop, collaborate and listen/Ice is back with my brand-new invention—”
“Dude, turn down the Walkman.”
I kneel on the floor of Grand Central Terminal, my head in my hands as I fight the motion sickness threatening to overcome me. I’m too weak to open my eyes, but I hear a cacophony of voices and foreign sounds all around me—the voices of the 1990s. I made it!
When I finally look up, I hastily lean back against the wall to keep from falling over in shock.
Spending the past few days at the Aura Hotel, studying and learning all about the 1990s, could never have fully prepared me for actually being here, among the real, living, breathing humans of the future.
The ladies hurry toward the train platforms dressed in what looks like men’s clothing: high-waisted, pale blue jeans, wide-leg black trousers, and baggy black knickers over black stockings. Some wear oversized denim shirts, while others have on high-collared sweaters that Celeste called “turtlenecks.” Their heavy winter coats are missing all the flounces and frills of my day, while their hair, too, couldn’t be more different from what I’m accustomed to. I see ladies with poufy, wavy hair worn down to their backs; others with shorter, straighter locks that fringe across their foreheads; and half a dozen actually sport a man’s cropped haircut!
The young men are dressed similarly to my costume, though where my T-shirt and jeans look stiffly brand-new, their clothing appears lived-in and comfortable. Some of the boys my age even flaunt long, greasy hair and visible tears in their jeans, as if they’re trying to look bedraggled. However, I spot a few middle-aged men who look more like my Victorian peers, buttoned up in wool coats over sweater-vests, long-sleeved shirts and gray trousers. The more casual gentlemen wear jeans with plaid shirts and suspenders.
The children running and playing throughout the station mark one of the most significant changes between my time and the 1990s. While Victorian children always dress formally for travel and are expected to follow their parents with utter deference, these rambunctious youngsters look like they are the ones controlling the parents, and their clothing seems more suited for playing outside than taking a trip on the train. Boys and girls alike wear jeans and farmer-like overalls with colorful jackets and sneakers.
I blink rapidly as I watch the scene in front of me. I’m so astonished by the people, it takes me several minutes before I discover that I am viewing a completely new Grand Central. The L-shaped depot has been replaced by a breathtaking building with floor-to-ceiling windows, marble staircases that lead to restaurants on indoor balconies, and a domed ceiling studded with stars.
I gingerly step forward into the rush of traffic and smile as the crowds throng around me, no one noticing my presence—yet I am truly among them! It’s incredible, and suddenly I find myself picking up my pace, running to the nearest door. I have to see New York.
The sounds, smells, and sights of a new city seem to swallow me whole as I push through the doors and out onto Forty-Second Street. I gaze in openmouthed amazement at this foreign New York. It seems to have grown vertically over the past hundred years, as towering buildings stretch into the sky and loom over the sidewalks. Gone are all the horse-drawn carriages, landaus, and broughams trotting down the cobblestone streets, replaced instead with horseless automobiles and yellow cabs that zoom over paved roads. No Elevated Railroad chugs overhead, but a strange sound whirs from above. I cover my head in shock, as I look up to find flying machines circling the sky.
It’s hard to imagine that the world really can change so much in one century. Will anything of New York’s past still exist in the hundred years to come?
I pass Lexington Avenue in a trance, my eyes drinking in all of the new sights while my mind struggles to believe that what I am seeing is real. I watch as these future New Yorkers follow signs leading underground, to something called a “subway.” I pass the same shop on three different blocks, each looking slightly unique yet sharing the same name: “Deli.”
A delicious, buttery smell wafts toward me as I cross the street in front of a sidewalk vendor. “Get yer soft pretzels and hot dogs!” he yells. Beside him is another vendor, this one selling a vast array of magazines and newspapers. I glance at the front-page headline of the New York Times, which is dated February 5, 1991. GULF WAR! the headline screams. Ground Troops to Enter Kuwait, and I turn away, realizing with sadness that this new future holds no more promise of peace than my own post–Civil War era.
As I reach Fifth Avenue at Forty-Second Street, I gasp at the sight before me. The Croton Reservoir, one of my favorite places in the city, is gone. In its place is a mammoth structure covering the entire two blocks from Fortieth to Forty-Second Streets.
Its façade reminds me of the Windsor Mansion, and I feel my heartbeat quicken as I wonder if I might be looking upon the Windsor home of the future. But when I look more closely, I see that the lettering on the building’s exterior reads: NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY. It’s the biggest, grandest library I’ve ever seen.
Continuing up Fifth Avenue, goose bumps rise up my arms as my Christmas Eve vision is realized. The extravagant mansions and proud brownstones of the 1880s have vanished, replaced with tall buildings that house shop after shop. A massive new public plaza called Rockefeller Center decorates Midtown, and as I make my way farther up Fifth, I find that nearly every block comes equipped with its own luxury hotel, their awnings declaring such commanding names as the St. Regis and the Peninsula.
I turn onto Central Park South, and tears spring to my eyes. There it is, just ahead—the great park where some of my happiest childhood memories took place. At last, I’ve found a surviving friend in this unfamiliar city. And finally, there are the horses! I smile at the line of mares standing in front of an elegant hotel called the Plaza. If I squint hard enough, I can ignore the cars, the buildings, and all of the modern people. Keeping my eyes focused on Central Park and the horses, it looks like I could be in my own time.
A familiar marble structure, sparkling in the sunlight behind the Plaza, catches my eye. My throat suddenly turns dry. I don’t want to go near it, and yet I can’t stop myself. I’m running, racing across Fifty-Ninth Street, until I find myself staring at the W carved into the wrought-iron gates.
Of all the homes that have disappeared with time, the Old New York relics missing in this new world, the Windsor Mansion still stands. The white marble palace looks like a grand dame in contrast to the newer, subtler buildings that surround it.