by Megan Crewe
“Are you sure they’ll stop?” I ask. “They won’t just build a new generator?”
“Jeanant thought it’d be too big a blow,” Win says. “Thlo agrees. They’ll lose all the history we’ve had access to before now—if you open a new field, you can only travel back to the point when that one started. And it’ll shake everyone up. More people would want a change if it was obvious we had to make a decision.”
I hope for both of us that he’s right.
“I guess we’d better get a move on then,” I say with forced cheer. “Here’s my wardrobe.”
The row of shirts and pants and scattered dresses in the closet is sorted across the spectrum of colors. Win flicks through them. He tugs out a white ankle-length sundress and a blue button-down blouse I haven’t worn since my stint doing mailroom duty at Dad’s office a couple summers ago.
“I think these would be the most suitable,” he says. “We’ll probably need to get them dirty so they don’t look so new, though.”
His gaze drops to my hands as he passes me the hangers. “And the locals might think your nail color’s odd. Can you remove it quickly?”
With every second, the “trip” I’m about to take feels more real. I’m actually doing this. I clench my hand when it starts to tremble. “Five minutes?” I say, and he nods.
I sit down on the edge of the bed, grabbing the polish remover from the drawer of my bedside table. It jostles the Christmas photo of Noam and me. My gaze catches on it. Another past. Another time we could travel to, if Win agreed.
Maybe, when we’re done . . . Maybe there’d be a chance?
The idea hovers in the back of my head as I get to work on my nails. Win examines the books lining my shelves, the photos on the wall. He rattles his knuckles against the wooden top of my desk as if appreciating the sound it makes. Then he pokes my laptop’s touchpad, chuckling when the screen flickers on.
“Not quite up to your technical standards?” I say, thinking of his fantastic cloth computer.
“It’s still impressive how much people have managed to accomplish here, in spite of everything,” he says. “And how quickly too. So much changes in just a few years.”
As I’m rubbing the polish off my last two fingers, he wanders over and peeks into the drawer. He picks up one of the bottles of nail polish, and then the second and the third.
“They’re all the same color,” he comments.
“It’s the only one I use.”
“Then why do you need three? Ah!” he continues before I can answer. “You said three is a meaningful number for you. You multiply by it.”
“Yeah.” I hesitate. I’m still not used to talking about this, about the rituals I’ve fallen into to get by. “I know it’s strange. It just . . . feels best if I have three bottles. If one spills, and one breaks, I’ve still got another one. Third time’s a charm and all that.”
I push the drawer shut and pick up the dress. “So I guess I should change into this.”
“Of course,” Win says, not taking the hint. I raise my eyebrows at him.
“I need you to leave the room.”
“Oh. Yes.” His gaze skims my body and then jerks back to my face, his own flushing. I might mind the look, but it’s nice to know he’s humanlike enough to be embarrassed. “I have a few things to take care of at the hotel anyway.”
As soon as he’s stepped out, I pull on the dress and the shirt. My fingers fumble with the buttons. The outfit looks ridiculous with my running shoes, so I unearth my black lace-up winter boots, which might do a better job blending in with nineteenth-century Paris fashion. As long as no one stares too hard at my feet. I drag in a breath.
A knock on the door makes me jump. “Almost done?” Win asks.
He’s already been to his hotel room, done whatever he needed to, and made it back. That’s how little time I’ll be gone for. Away and home again before Mom and Dad even leave work.
“You can come in,” I say. I stop for a second in front of the mirror. My hair’s gone all flyaway from the wind outside. I press it down.
“You’ll want to wear something on your head, I think,” Win says. He’s changed too, out of his corduroy jacket and jeans into a loose shirt and slacks made of a canvaslike material, in a dun color that’s just a shade lighter than his skin. Traveler clothes, he said. A little odd, but—no. Looking at them again, I can see they’re totally modern. That seems like a strange choice for our destination, but I’m not going to argue.
“I don’t have any hats that would fit in,” I say.
“A shawl?”
“I have scarves.”
“Good enough.”
I hurry downstairs and grab the wider of my two scarves, a thin beige one, from the basket by the coatrack. By the time I’ve dashed back up, Win has unfurled the cloth into its tent form in the middle of my bedroom. My heart starts to thud.
“Ready?” he asks briskly.
No.
“Wait.” I snatch my jeans off the floor, pulling out my bracelet and, instinctively, my phone. No pockets on this dress. I pluck the small chocolate-brown leather purse Angela gave me last Christmas out of my closet and sling it over my shoulder, stuffing my phone and bracelet inside. The cool surface of the beads sends a whisper of confidence through me. I square my shoulders. “Ready.” Win ushers me into the cloth. The flaps slip shut, and the room outside fades into grayish outlines. The display swims into view. Win’s hand skips over the figures.
“We’ll go to the morning of the first day, and continue from there,” he says. “The violence started later.”
“Sounds good,” I say. My voice comes out hoarse.
“It’s probably better if you keep your eyes closed,” Win says. “And, ah, you can hold on to me if you need to.”
I inhale into the bottom of my lungs, and curl my fingers around the side of his shirt. The space is so close I can hear when he swallows.
“Here we go.”
The time cloth heaves back and forth a few times before shooting upward. I squeeze my eyes shut, my teeth clenched so tightly my jaw aches. The shrieking of the air sounds more muted this time, but my stomach still churns as we whirl and plummet. When we jerk to a halt, I stumble into Win. A metallic taste is seeping through my mouth. I’ve bitten my tongue.
Win rests his hand lightly on my back. I open my eyes.
Shadows waver around a lit opening ahead of us, where I can make out a blur of movement through the cloth’s wall. Shouts rattle through the fabric.
“We’re in an alley,” Win says, his voice low and even by my ear. “We’ll want to step out quickly so no one notices us appearing out of nowhere.”
“What are we going to do next?” I ask.
“Jeanant will have left some indication to direct us to the weapon,” he says. “A small shift, or maybe a message of some sort. We’ll have to look around. Stay close to me, and tell me as soon as you get one of those feelings—or if the alarm goes off. And try not to disrupt what’s going on. We don’t want to make any new shifts ourselves.”
Or the Enforcers could track us down. I glance at my ankle, taking comfort in the stillness of the alarm band. “Got it.”
Win reaches for the flaps, and I brace myself.
11.
We step forward together onto the alley’s uneven cobblestones, into dry still air that holds a whiff of baking bread over an underlying tang of mildew and excrement. My nose wrinkles reflexively. Above the soot-mottled stone buildings that rise up on either side of us, the sky is brilliant blue, the sunlight painting sharp lines amid the shadows. Beyond the alley, men and women are strolling along the sidewalks in trim jackets and light pants, long-sleeved blouses and full skirts, despite the warmth of the morning. White bonnets shade the women’s faces. I pull my scarf higher over my head, and breathe through my mouth as a more pungent gust of sewage smell wafts over us.
Hooves clip-clop against stone as a gentleman on horseback trots by. The pedestrians murmur to each other. Louder voices carr
y from beyond my view, rising and falling in words that sound vaguely reminiscent of my Spanish class. French is a related language—maybe I’ll even be able to understand a little. I picked up Spanish and German quickly. Grammar’s like a more convoluted form of math, nearly as dependable as numbers.
Win’s whipped the cloth back into its folded shape with a few snaps of his fingers. When I glance at him, I’m struck by how well his clothing fits in: the brown shirt and pants are less fancy than what I see out there, but even though they looked completely normal back in my bedroom, here they somehow seem—oh. Traveler clothes. More weird alien tech, I guess, that lets him blend in anywhere.
He stuffs the cloth into his satchel and then cups my elbow, guiding me forward as if I’m a hesitant child. Which isn’t far from how I feel. At least no one’s shooting yet.
As we reach the edge of the street, the city engulfs me, thunderously real. The road before us ends at a low wall, beyond which I can make out the foamy waters of a wide river. Towering buildings of gray and beige blocks form a craggy line above the opposite bank. Beyond them rise the gabled roof and gray steeples of what is either a palace or an immense church. Notre Dame? Angela would know. Angela would kill to see this.
The shouts around us echo in my ears, mingling with the heavy breeze rising off the river. A woman’s skirts rustle as she saunters by. The sun is baking my clothes and skin.
I’m here. I’m really here. I’m standing in the middle of nineteenth-century Paris—living, breathing history.
A wave of dizziness sweeps over me. I snap my attention back to the street, sucking in the dusty air and scanning the faces around us. Lips narrow and full, skin pale or flushed, wisps and curls of hair blond and brown and black—all strangers. Many of them openly staring at us, their expressions grim as they speak to each other in hushed voices.
Because we don’t belong here.
My gut knots and a cold sweat breaks over my skin. I ball my hands into fists. I’m not going to wimp out already. I can do this. Win does it all the time, and it’s not even his planet.
Several heads jerk around at a movement nearby. I follow their wary gazes to a cluster of men in blue-and-red uniforms, rifles at their shoulders, marching across a bridge that straddles the river on hulking stone supports. Soldiers.
Win isn’t looking at them. “Let’s see what this is all about,” he says, tugging my elbow in the opposite direction. The city looms around me as I follow. Sights and sounds hit me from every direction: hostile gazes, hissed remarks, the sun slicing into my eyes. My vision blurs. I reach into my purse to grasp my bracelet.
Three times three is nine. Three times nine is twenty-seven.
My heartbeat evens out enough that I can focus again. Scattered men waving sheaves of paper are standing by the river wall, by the door of a bakery, by a hat shop window. Some are formally dressed, like the gentlemen ambling by, while others look more peasanty in loose white shirts and gray or tan slacks. They’re hollering to each passerby, pushing the papers toward them. I guess Win thinks this might have something to do with Jeanant?
The guy closest to Win and me, barely more than a boy, catches my eye and scurries over. He holds out the creased pages from the top of his pile. It’s a newspaper, with a bold headline ending in an exclamation point.
The boy says something, pointing to the article. A few strings of syllables sound familiar, but he’s talking too quickly for me to pick out a single word. Another shudder of discomfort ripples through me.
Then Win jumps in. He answers the boy briefly, taking the paper, and seems to ask a few questions in mildly accented French. As I gape at him, I remember the book in Chinese he was carrying, the British lilt to his English, the job he’s trained for. If you’re going to be jumping through time all over Earth, I guess learning a few languages would be expected.
Win’s grinning when he turns back to me. He says a few words in French before he catches himself and switches back to English, lowering his voice.
“In the last message Jeanant left for Thlo, explaining what he planned to do with his weapon if the Enforcers caught on to him before he could use it, he gave her two more details to help us follow his trail,” he says. “Something about painting over a secret, and that we should ‘watch the papers.’ Apparently a law’s just been passed here restricting the printing of newspapers. Dozens of the workers are protesting it today. They’ve been writing about all the problems with the current government, pressing people to action.”
“That’s one way to start a revolution. You think this is what Jeanant meant by ‘papers’?”
“What else could it be? Come on! We should get as many different ones as we can. He must have left some sort of clue in one of them.”
He strides down the street, accepting the newspapermen’s offerings with a bob of his head. I can’t speak to them at all, so I scrutinize our surroundings. I’m supposed to be helping, watching for wrongness, for clues of another sort. But everything feels alien and out of reach. A whisper of uneasiness keeps coursing through me, like the one that dogged me for hours after the reversed explosion.
Nothing in the city or the people around me is wrong. Just me. They were living their lives long before anyone conceived of my existence. I don’t fit here. I’m not even an intruder, just a speck of dust amid the towering buildings.
A dull buzzing fills my head. As I dash after Win, nausea surges up. I stumble, groping for my bracelet. My hand doesn’t find the beads in time.
I double over, gagging. My throat burns, but nothing comes out. I swallow and shiver, wincing at the acid filling my mouth.
“Skylar?”
I manage to straighten up. Win’s hovering in front of me, shielding me from the street.
“Are you all right? What’s going on?”
There’s a note of impatience under his concern. “What do you think’s going on?” I say. “I’m not used to this, remember?”
“Of course I know that, but I didn’t expect—Are you going to be all right?”
“Just let me . . .” I step back, pulling my gaze to the buildings overhead. My fingers close around the beads. Five more shops before the next cross street. A looping script spelling out the name of the restaurant beside us. A slight figure ducking past the green curtains over a third-story window. Three times . . . Three times . . . Three times . . .
Even if I’m not much more than a piece of dust here, all I have to do is float along and play by the rules of this time, this place. Isn’t that what I’ve spent the last decade of my life doing: blending in? This is just a more intense version. I’ve managed to fool my classmates, my friends, my parents; I can handle this.
The queasiness slowly subsides. Win shifts from foot to foot, his gaze fixed on my face. His expression makes me think of a little boy worried he’s broken a favorite toy. I guess I still don’t look so good.
I still don’t feel so good, but I’m okay enough to keep going.
“All right,” I say. “I’m over it. What next?”
Win purses his lips. “Start looking at these,” he instructs, passing his collection of newspapers over to me. “You don’t have to understand them, just see if anything feels odd.”
I study the headlines and the old-fashioned type beneath them as we wander on down the street. A few words with Spanish counterparts catch my eyes—mal and mentir and colère—and here and there one with an English equivalent, but otherwise the articles are a mess of letters to me. I skim each line, flipping pages, while Win accepts more papers. Having something small and concrete to focus on helps me tune out the wide, unwelcoming world around us. When a fresh wave of dizziness threatens, I already have the bracelet in my hand. I spin the beads, and the feeling draws back. There, I’m getting the hang of this.
I glance behind us after finishing my scan of the third newspaper, and tense. A couple of soldiers are striding our way. One is badgering the newspaper-holders they pass, but the other is eyeing Win. I tap Win’s arm.
“Merci!” he says to the latest newspaperman, and tilts his head toward me.
“We’ve caught someone’s attention,” I whisper. Win looks over.
“Nothing from the alarm?”
I shake my head.
“Locals, then,” he says, “but we’re better off not risking a confrontation.”
Setting his hand on the small of my back, he ushers me forward and around a corner. We scramble down the narrow street, ducking behind a small domed church. Win pauses and peeks around it. After a few moments, he nods.
“They haven’t followed us,” he says. “I’d imagine the soldiers here have more important things to worry about.”
Not yet, it seems like. The increasingly narrow streets we continue down are quiet: every voice dampened, every movement restrained. Few people are outside at all, off the main strip. I glimpse faces here and there through greasy windowpanes. I’d pictured passionate shouts and cannon fire, figures stampeding through the streets. That must come later. It’s building up to that, behind all those closed doors.
Or maybe that’s just one more way I’m wrong.
A window creaks open overhead. I glance up in time to give a yelp of warning. A handful of rubbish rains down on us. Mainly on Win: carrot ends smacking his forehead and shoulder, a twist of wire tangling in his hair. Sharp laughter follows as he swipes them away. Two boys lean out of the fourth-floor apartment, one of them making a remark I can’t understand. From the way Win’s face hardens, I suspect it wasn’t complimentary. He walks on, turning back to his newspaper, just as a third boy joins the others, holding what looks distinctly like a chamber pot.
“Win!” I dodge out of the way, pulling him with me, just as the reeking contents of the pot splatter the cobblestones. I grit my teeth against the urge to gag.
The boys jeer as we hustle around the next corner. I don’t know why they decided to target us, but I will not let it get to me. I will focus on being grateful that I managed to avoid being splashed with bodily waste.
