by Megan Crewe
We stand still for a minute, waiting and listening, but all I hear is his rasping breath and the leaves hissing in the rising wind. Win motions me back toward the river. We slink along until we can make out the road again.
Back the way we came, the workers are still bent over their poles. The boy is puttering along the grassy strip between the jungle and the road, scanning the jungle’s depths, scowling in a way that looks both sulky and determined. I’ve seen a similar expression on Benjamin’s face when he’s tackling a new math concept he hasn’t quite wrapped his head around.
I guess the adults felt finishing their preparations was more important than following up on some kid’s story about two strangers in the woods. And now he’s searching for more proof. Trying to be a hero. Even though I don’t want him to succeed, I feel a twinge of sympathy.
“Nothing yet?” Win says.
“Nothing seems off.”
We continue through the jungle, staying close enough to the fringes to keep an eye on the road and the riverbank beyond. Another squad of soldiers marches past, followed by a line of donkeys pulling carts laden with piles of those bamboo poles. My ankle starts to ache in dull protest. There are a lot of things pointing at the thickly clouded sky: trees, rooftops, the distant hills. But everything looks perfectly normal.
Just like in Paris. The only thing my special sensitivity found us in Paris was the sign that the Enforcers had arrived. It didn’t help us follow Jeanant’s clues at all. I bite my lip.
We come to a stop about thirty feet from the first buildings around the town.
“Well, I don’t think we should try to go right into town,” Win says after an awkward silence. “In this atmosphere, they won’t be welcoming to foreigners. It’d be almost inevitable that we shift something noticeable. But I suppose—”
He’s interrupted by a patter on the leaves above us. Rain sprinkles down on our heads. I step closer to the nearest tree, wiping the moisture from my face. Win grins. He spreads his arms and lifts his chin as if welcoming the weather. It occurs to me that space stations wouldn’t have rain. This might be the first time he’s ever felt it.
The patter picks up, from a rattling to a drumbeat. Before I have time to call out to Win, we’re in the midst of an all-out deluge. The rain rips past the leaves and thunders over us. Chuckling, Win rushes to my side. He pulls the time cloth into its tent shape around us, and the rain fades into a heavy warbling against the fabric sides.
I swipe at my dripping hair. My shirt’s dripping too—my dress, my boots—everything’s soaked. The fringe of my scarf is sending a steady trickle over my face. I peel it off my hair and sling it over my shoulders, shivering. I haven’t been this soaked since Lisa dared Bree and I to run a mile during the first big thunderstorm the summer after freshman year, and at least then we had a house to duck back into and towels to wrap ourselves in.
The world outside has gone watery, as if we’re standing under an umbrella in the middle of a waterfall. Win brings up the data panel on the wall. “We could jump forward to this afternoon, or tomorrow morning. See if we can pick up the trail then. Jeanant might not have gotten here yet.” He’s still smiling.
“We still won’t know where to look,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest. I picture Jeanant as I saw him in the gallery, and try to imagine him here. Where would he go—what would he use?
I have no idea. And even if I find him again, what are the chances he’ll think I’m worth talking to now? I must look like a drowned rat. A drowned, battered, muddy rat. At least I don’t remotely resemble any Enforcer I’ve seen. Though I wouldn’t mind having one of those peacoats right now.
A sputter of laughter escapes me at the thought. Win turns.
“What?”
“Oh, nothing,” I say. “Other than I could use a towel and a change of clothes, and the Enforcers could be five feet away right now and we’d have no idea, and are we even sure this definitely is the right place? Maybe Jeanant’s first message was delivered too late, and we’re supposed to be in a completely different century.”
“Hey,” Win says, touching my shoulder. “We’re on the right track. I’m sure of it. The numbers, the line about the dragons, it all fits together. We’ve managed to stay ahead of the Enforcers so far. I’ve kept you safe, haven’t I?”
I nod.
“So you don’t have to worry.”
I want to believe him. He holds my gaze, his deep blue eyes completely earnest, and my shivers ease. “Okay,” I say.
He pauses, his eyes not leaving mine. His smile comes back, softer now. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
His hand rises to brush a few stray strands of damp hair from my cheek. At the contact of his skin against mine, my awareness narrows, away from the frightening world outside to the small space between us inside the walls of the tent. The tingling realness of his fingertips. They linger, his thumb grazing the line of my cheekbone.
I open my mouth, meaning to argue or just to break the sudden charge in the air between us, but his fingers trace down my jaw to the side of my neck, sending a totally different sort of shiver through me, and I can’t even breathe. I sway into his touch instinctively, just as he leans in and kisses me.
17.
I’ve only been kissed by two other boys: Evan, during one of those silly party games in junior high, which was just awkward, and my boyfriend in tenth grade, who was always on the slobbery and grope-y side, which is part of the reason he was only my boyfriend for two months.
Win’s kiss is both more practiced and more polite. A question, not a demand. But the touch of his mouth against mine sends a sizzle of electricity through my nerves, so real and there it knocks all the sense from my head. My fingers have curled into his shirt and my lips are parting before my mind has quite registered what’s happening. Win must take that as an answer, because he eases closer, deepening the kiss. His presence radiates around me, soft skin and warm breath and—
He pulls back in what feels like the middle of things, with a shaky inhalation. Not far back, because I’m still clutching his shirt. His hand falls to rest on my wrist, and I let go, blinking at him, my mouth still partly open. I snap it shut as my momentary daze starts to clear. That was—I don’t even—My thoughts are still scrambled, and he’s watching me again, with a studied intentness. An intentness that makes my body tense, though I can’t explain why.
“Well,” I say, fumbling for words. “What was that about?”
“I, ah . . .” He drops his gaze briefly before giving me a sheepish smile. “Sorry. I was wondering what it would be like.”
At first I’m too muddled to get it. Why exactly is he apologizing? And what what would be like? I don’t believe for a second that’s the first time he’s kissed someone.
Then his thumb, so strangely solid, skims the back of my wrist, and it clicks. He’s looking at me like he did when he was getting me to tell him about my sense of the shifts. Like when I found the change in the history book. Full of awe and scientific curiosity.
He’s never even talked to an Earthling before. Of course he’s never kissed one.
I flinch, yanking my hand away. Would I even have kissed him back if I hadn’t been overwhelmed by the alien realness of him? It was a stupid automatic reaction, and I gave in to it like a kid in the throes of a desperate crush. I’m not sure how much I even like him. Anger surges up, more than I knew I had in me.
“I’m not here for you to experiment on,” I bite out.
Win’s expression freezes guiltily for an instant before he starts to protest, and that tells me all I need to know.
“What? I—”
“I’m not. Your. Experiment,” I say, jabbing at the air between us so he has to step back. The anger makes me feel a lot stronger than the uncertainties that were suffocating me a few minutes ago. “I’m a person, with thoughts and feelings that matter just as much as yours do, even if your people have time fields and galaxy-crossing spaceships and all sorts of technology
I can’t even imagine. I am trying to help you, and you still think it’s fine to treat me like I’m a toy, the same way all of you have been playing around with everyone on Earth for so long. And I. Am. Sick of it.”
“I didn’t mean . . .” Win begins, and doesn’t seem to know how to finish. He looks a little sick himself. Good.
“That’s the problem,” I say. “You didn’t mean it. You just wanted to see ‘what it would be like.’ Well, congratulations, now you know.”
He reaches out as if to grasp my arm, as if he can pull forgiveness out of me, and all the times he’s grabbed me before, tugged me down streets and through buildings—through the jungle we’re in right now—flash through my mind. My stomach turns. I’ve known all along that I’m just a tool to him. But some part of me believed he was starting to respect me at least a little, to see me as more than a wrongness detector and a wide-eyed simpleton he could show off to.
I dodge him, angling toward the front of the tent. “Don’t touch me,” I say. “Don’t ever touch me again.” He’s still too close. I can’t stand being stuck in this cramped space with him, not after what just happened.
I push aside the flaps and duck out. The rain has lightened to a drizzle, dappling my cheeks and my uncovered hair. I reach for my scarf instinctively, and my eyes catch on something pale moving through the deeper jungle.
The figure stalking through the brush is far enough away that she disappears here and there between the trunks and ferns. She’s wearing a loose, dark brown costume that covers her from her feet to the top of her head, and her face appears to have the same tan coloring as the locals. It’s only her hand that gives her away. A flicker of ice-pale fingers as she holds up something in her palm to consult it.
The woman from the cafe—the Enforcer. My heart stutters.
Then Win comes bursting out of the time cloth, snapping it down against his arm. “Skylar, it’s not—” he says, and the woman’s head whips up. She lunges forward, her hand dipping to the weapon at her hip, and I spin toward Win.
“The Enforcers,” I blurt out with a frantic gesture.
Win flings the cloth out before my words have died in the air, his hand darting to the data panel as the translucent walls form around us. A glint slices through the air. The tent shudders and crackles. But it still moves. We whirl up toward the sky.
The cloth jars to a stop beside a lone stilted house near the side of the road. The river shimmers in the distance, past the sprawl of a rice paddy. The sky has turned clear. My arms ache from hugging my chest, but I can’t quite bear to let go.
“Is this where we want to be?” I ask.
“It’s the next morning,” Win says without glancing up from the display. “Let me find a better spot.”
With a lurch and a blink, we’ve leapt back into the jungle. Win looks around to make sure we’re alone, and then nods curtly at the flaps. “We should get some distance from here. It’s possible they found us because that kid seeing us shifted something. But for them to keep following us so closely . . . Maybe they really have figured out how to decode Isis’s scrambling to trace our jumps.”
Oh. Oh crap.
I hug myself more tightly as we hurry around a thicket of bamboo and through a cluster of massive waxy-leaved plants. The wet skirt of my dress sticks to my legs, hampering my steps over the uneven ground. And the two jumps, though short, have messed with my sense of balance. My foot slips on a lump of moss, and I almost trip. Win’s hand shoots out. He jerks it back, just shy of my elbow, as I catch myself.
Don’t ever touch me again.
I don’t want to think about that moment right now. I don’t want to talk about it. I just want to make sure I don’t get shot by that freaky woman or her colleagues. So I pretend I didn’t notice his slip, and he doesn’t mention it. We walk on as if nothing has changed.
The jungle around me looms, pressing in. I reach into my purse and grip my bracelet. Three times three is nine. Three times nine is twenty-seven. Clusters of five feathery leaves around yellow berries on the bush we’re passing. Two scrapes on the bark of that tree.
Win’s face is turned ahead, but I can feel him scrutinizing me from the corner of his eye. “I’m fine,” I say.
I’m not going to die here. We’re going to stay one step ahead of the Enforcers, and then I’ll be home, safe and well, before anyone even knows I’m gone.
A chorus of shouts carries through the trees up ahead. We pick up our pace, pushing to the edge of the jungle. There, on the road along the river, lines of men are jogging by, some in armor, many in simple shirts and pants. They’re scooping up poles from the heaps we saw being made yesterday and hurrying on toward the town, where the bows of a row of slender ships curve out from the water.
“It’s starting,” Win says.
“You don’t think we’re supposed to be right out on the river where the battle is, do you?” I ask. How could Jeanant hide something there? But the rebellion is beginning and they’re all leaving, and I don’t see any hint to guide us.
“I doubt it,” Win says. “But when most of them are off in the boats, it’ll be safer for us to investigate the town.”
Which would be great, if we’d gotten any idea what we’re looking for. “What exactly did the message from the Louvre say again?”
He takes the slab of plastic out of his satchel. “‘Repeat the years for my first message to reach you two hundred and sixty-eight times since zero, to the place where a little dragon scares off the big dragon. The sign will point at the sky.’”
As he says the last words, one more group of soldiers strides past, hefting the remaining poles. Their carved tips bob toward the sky. My breath catches.
“The poles!” I say. “They’re the key to winning the battle, right? And you said they put them in the river, pointing up?”
“But . . .” Win edges forward, watching the men march down the road. The sand is marked with the lines of the poles, but none remain. The first few boats are casting off from the shore. “He wouldn’t put something we’re meant to find in the river. There’d be too much risk of losing it.”
I turn Jeanant’s words over in my head. Imagine him saying them in his smooth, careful voice. “Maybe we’re too late,” I say. “He said the sign will point at the sky—that could mean it won’t be pointing yet, but it will in the future. We were supposed to find it before they went off with the poles.”
Win’s eyes light up. “That makes sense. All we need to do is jump back an hour or two!”
He ducks behind a broad trunk, unfurling the time cloth. I move as close to him as I can while leaving a little space between us. The ground hiccups beneath me, my stomach flips, and we’re there, in the paler light of the just-risen sun.
Several heaps of poles lie at intervals along the road. We creep closer. “Does anything look odd about any of the poles to you?” Win asks. “It’ll be difficult for us to examine every one without being noticed.”
I squint at the heap, but they all look the same. “Let’s check the others. There has to be something.” Or maybe I’m wrong, and the clue has nothing to do with the poles after all.
We examine the next pile, and the next, each bringing us closer to the town. I scan the jungle, but there’s no sign that the pale woman’s followed us. Yet. I miss the soothing coil of the alarm band around my ankle.
A faint tramping sound reaches my ears. Another squad of soldiers has come into view on the road toward town, maybe a quarter mile away.
“Quick, before they get here,” Win says. He hurries over to study a heap of poles laid on the edge of a patch of marsh. A flicker of color catches my eye. I glance back at the soldiers, judge them at least a few minutes distant, and dart across the road.
It’s just a thin scrap of cloth. A scrap dyed three colors—red, purple, and yellow—caught in a crack near the point of a pole at the bottom of the pile, as if it ripped off someone’s clothes.
“What?” Win says.
“It’s nothing,” I say
, but I can’t quite pull my gaze away. There’s something about it . . . I narrow my eyes, staring at the scrap as hard as I can, and it prickles over me. A twinge of that alien thereness, as if the fabric is slightly more real than the pole it’s caught on.
“That one!” I correct myself, pointing. The soldiers are close enough now that I can hear a question voiced from one to another. I grasp the end of the pole. It only slides out a few inches at my heave. The footsteps behind us speed up to a run.
Damn. As I yank the pole again, Win dives in beside me, grabbing it just below my hands. A few of the other poles clatter over each other, but we wrench ours most of the way out. With one last jerk, it’s free.
“Let’s go!” Win says. We race across the road, clutching the pole between us.
A thin shout pierces the air. A boy, the one who saw us yesterday I think, is perched in one of the trees by the edge of the jungle. He points to us, calling out, as we crash into the underbrush. All we can do is keep running. Win tugs the pole from my hands, levering it under his arm so we don’t have to balance it between us. My ankle starts to throb, but I just push myself faster.
I check behind us once, as we veer around a rotting log, and catch a glimpse of a conical hat in the streaks of sunlight that penetrate the foliage overhead. But only one. When I look again, a minute or two later, there’s no sign anyone’s chased us this far into the jungle. Either we’ve lost them, or they decided it wasn’t worth pursuing us for one pole out of hundreds.
Win’s pulled the loose collar of his shirt up over his mouth—to muffle the rattle of his increasingly ragged breaths, I realize. In spite of it, I can hear the click in his throat. Finally, when my own lungs are starting to ache, he stops. He leans against a boulder, the pole braced against the ground, rasping as he recovers from the run.
Now that I can take a closer look at it, I notice a ring of shallow scratches around the middle of the pole. I lean in. The shapes look like those alien characters. “Here,” I say. Win pulls the pole to him.
