Earth & Sky

by Megan Crewe

  “I’ll get changed and wash quickly, and then I’ll go see Lisa,” I say to Win. “Wait downstairs?”

  His nod seems hesitant, but he goes without a word. I dig through my closet, trying to decide what to put on. Something that’s not too weird for me to be wearing here, but not too weird if I Travel on with Win either . . . That possibility is feeling more distant with every second I spend breathing the familiar ocean scent of Mom’s fabric softener.

  In the end I pull out a slightly rumpled peasant skirt Angela encouraged me to buy but that’s never felt quite like my style, and a plain T-shirt. Jeanant’s cloak can disguise my upper half if I leave this time period again. I peel the cloak off and find the fabric’s so thin that if I fold it tightly, I can squeeze it into my purse. I carry the rest of the clothes into the bathroom, so I can clean up before I get dressed.

  The face that stares back at me in the mirror is wan and mottled with dirt. A reed tip is tangled in my hair. The memory blinks back: Noam sprawled on the marsh ground, his hair limp against the matted grass. The blood. His jacket, turning so red . . .

  I press my palms against my forehead. Not going to think about it. Not going to think about the slimy texture of the reed—like the ones I pushed past as I slogged through the marsh—as I untangle it. Not going to feel all that over again. I’m going to make it right as soon as I can, and then that death won’t matter.

  Funny how it seems like some huge tragedy has happened, when nothing’s actually changed. What I saw has been reality all along. I just didn’t know.

  Somehow, that’s the thought that breaks me. I drop down onto the tiled floor, balling my scarf against my face in an attempt to smother my tears. They hitch out of me in little gasps.

  It’s been twelve years. In this time, right now, my present, Noam’s been dead and tossed away like a piece of litter for twelve whole years. Not wandering in a crowd somewhere. Not living a distant but happy life. Not living at all.

  And I was there, and I couldn’t stop it.

  But I will. I will. I repeat that to myself, and the sobs slow. I have to pull myself together and find out the information Win needs, and then I’ll have my chance.

  I sway back to my feet and peel off my clothes, splashing water on my face and into my armpits. No time for a shower. I’m pretty sure Lisa had history today. If I can catch her and the others at Pie Of Your Dreams, I can ask her and check her textbook if I need to and this will all be done.

  Hair combed and fresh clothes on, I grab a piece of paper and a pen off my desk to shove into my purse, in case I need to note a bunch of details. Then I hurry downstairs. Win’s sitting on the leather couch, running his fingers back and forth over the arm, his mouth bent into a crooked smile.

  No leather on his space station either? It must be strange, getting such pleasure out of all these things I take for granted. The thought sends a tickle almost like affection through me. When he looks up, I’m hit by a clashing of memories: the guilt on his face after the experimental kiss, the gentleness of his hand steadying me after Noam . . .

  I have other things to focus on right now. “Okay,” I say. “Let’s solve this riddle.”

  We walk in silence toward Michlin Street, sticking to less-trafficked side streets. Win’s gaze never stops roving around us, but there’s no sign of the Enforcers so far. When we turn onto the main strip in the midst of the afternoon shoppers, the brightly painted sign of the pie shop standing out a block and a half away across the street, I stop.

  “You can’t be, like, hanging around,” I say, feeling suddenly awkward. “Lisa and Evan saw you at school yesterday. I don’t want to have to make up a story about that too.”

  Win shrugs. “Not a problem.” He glances longingly at the cafe where we first talked, but I guess stopping by there when the Enforcers have already pegged it once is too big a risk. Instead he gestures to the furniture shop we just passed. “I’ll browse around in there until you’re done.”

  “Okay,” I say, but my legs balk again when I make to leave. I can’t help asking, “You will wait? You won’t leave without talking to me?”

  He touches the center of his chest and says that short phrase in his own tongue he used when swearing he’d take me home if I’d asked him to, back when he first invited me on this journey. “I promise I’ll be here.”

  He kept that first promise. I offer a small smile, and turn.

  “Skylar,” he says before I can go, his voice low. He pauses until I look at him. “I—I had a teacher once, one of the veteran Travelers, who oversaw the last segment of our studies. Just about every lesson, he’d go into this little lecture about how we couldn’t expect Earthlings to live up to Kemyate standards, that the shifting had made them defective, they just didn’t have the same kind of thought or emotion . . . But I don’t think he must have spent much time down here. Or maybe he never really paid attention.”

  He’s still holding my gaze, like it’s important to him that I understand. I don’t know how to respond, but the words sink into me like a balm. If this is the closest he can bring himself to apologizing, I’ll take it.

  “Thanks,” I say. He gives me a nod and I head to meet my friends.

  I weave along the busy sidewalk, surrounded by shops and cafes I’ve walked past or been in dozens of times. The “Help Wanted” sign is still there in the window of the vegetarian restaurant. The chain coffee shop is blaring another pop tune. The yoga studio across the street—

  The sign flickers before my eyes, as if an afterimage is laid over it. A logo with two stylized figures instead of one. A shiver of wrongness passes through me, but when I blink, both the shiver and the afterimage fade away.

  That was . . . odd.

  I amble on, across the street and past Vintage Fleas. My gaze catches on the window display. I stumble, then stop. There . . . there used to be—I can almost see it—an old phonograph with a mahogany box—in that spot, right there—

  No. It’s a ’70s-style lamp with a fringed shade. Hasn’t that always been there? I rub my eyes, and the lamp remains, but so does the sense that I glimpsed something else.

  “Sky!” a voice calls. I look up to see Lisa beckoning me from the doorway of Pie Of Your Dreams. “Hey!”

  “Hey, Lisa.” I hurry over, trying to push my uneasiness away. Inside, Bree and Evan are sitting a table right at the front of the shop.

  “I saw you from the window,” Lisa says, gesturing as she drops back into her seat next to the glass. I sink into the extra chair.

  “I thought you had a lab report to do,” Bree says.

  Right. The excuse I gave. I put on my best embarrassed face. “I realized after I got home it’s due the class after next. Didn’t want to miss out on pie if I didn’t have to!”

  “You want the rest of my pecan?” she asks, nudging her plate with its half-finished slice toward me. “They cut the pieces so big—I think my stomach’ll explode if I eat any more.”

  “It’s good for you—puts meat on your bones,” Lisa says with a wink, motioning between Bree’s thin frame and her own much curvier body. Bree rolls her eyes, but she’s grinning.

  “Thanks,” I say, scooping up a bite. My own stomach’s grumbling again at the smell of sugary pecans.

  “We were discussing winter break plans,” Lisa informs me as I gulp down a few sticky-sweet mouthfuls. “I think we can convince our parents that a road trip down to Miami Beach would be good for our souls. Evan just wants to do another ski trip.”

  “You know what they’re going to think of if we bring up Miami,” Evan protests. “Partying, drinking, drugs. It just takes one paranoid parent to shut the whole thing down. And then they’ll be suspicious no matter what else we suggest. If you start too big you screw it all up.”

  “What I want to know is: is there something you’ve been getting up to that we don’t know about, Evan?” Bree asks, arching her eyebrows. “Because my mom would trust me not to do anything too stupid.”

  Evan grumbles about some parents b
eing more open-minded than others, Lisa shoulders him playfully, Bree shakes her head with a smile and a rustle of her frizzy curls, and I . . . just sit there. I should be able to jump into the conversation, spin off the joke, offer my own opinion. But somehow even right there with them, I feel slightly out of sync. As if they’re a few beats ahead of me and I can’t catch up. My last forkful of pie has turned gluey in my mouth.

  I swallow it down, forcing a grin so I at least look like I’m participating. It must be that question nagging in the back of my head, for a mission none of my friends have the slightest clue about. If I can just get the answer, take the pressure off, maybe I’ll be able to relax.

  Just before blood is spilled where the trees were laid low . . . The ones who came first, losing their lives to those who came later, because of greed on one side of them and inaction on the other.

  “Lisa,” I say quickly when there’s a break in the banter. “In US history—you’ve been covering the battles with the Native Americans?”

  Bree gives me an odd look. “Yeah,” Lisa says. “Why?”

  “I, um, this is going to sound a little weird, but I figured it might have come up,” I say. “Was there an incident where some Native Americans had a problem with two different groups of settlers at the same time? Pressure from both sides? Maybe something to do with trees being cut down?”

  Lisa giggles. “Okay, that does sound weird. Where did that come from?”

  I motion vaguely. “I was reading this book—it referenced it, but without any details—I was just wondering what it was talking about.”

  “And I’m sure Lisa was paying sooo much attention in class,” Bree says teasingly. But Lisa’s expression has gone thoughtful.

  “I think there was a thing about the Native Americans being between two sides,” she says. “We watched this documentary a couple weeks ago—and then we had a big discussion about the different alliances. The British were supposed to be helping the Native Americans against the American soldiers taking their land. But then there was this battle where the Native Americans came to ask for protection at some British fort, and the British said no way.”

  Greed and inaction . . . “That sounds like it,” I say, my heart leaping.

  “I don’t remember anything about trees being cut down, though,” she says with a shrug.

  “It might not have been cut down, I guess. Just that they’d fallen.”

  “Oh, that. . . Maybe the name of the battle was something about fallen trees? Because there was a storm that knocked a bunch down where they were fighting or something.”

  “You remember where it was?” I ask. “The battle?”

  She laughs. “We didn’t talk about it that much.”

  Bree is still watching me, her eyebrows slightly raised. “You could probably look it up now if you need to know more, right?”

  “Yeah,” I say, pulling myself back. That should give us enough detail for Win to find the right battle in his time-cloth computer.

  “And now back to more important topics,” Lisa says, leaning toward Evan. “How can we make this beach trip happen?”

  As they talk about sun and sand, my mind slips to an imagined battlefield: trees laid low by a storm, Native soldiers fighting Americans, the British watching at a distance . . .

  Guns firing. Blood spilling. Bodies crumpling.

  If anything, I feel even more detached from the others now. Here I am, hanging out with my friends as if nothing’s wrong in the world—as if Jeanant isn’t racing through the past trying to save our planet, as if some new shift couldn’t rewrite all our lives at any instant. My skin tightens.

  “What about you, Skylar?” Bree says, breaking through my thoughts. “What do you think? We’re going to have to work together on this.”

  “Yeah,” I manage. “Ah, maybe if we picked a different beach that’s not right by Miami?”

  “But still close enough that we could drive over there to party a little,” Bree says, and jabs her finger in the air. “Genius!”

  What does Miami matter when the atoms around us are disintegrating? Bree’s comment pulls up an echo of Jeanant’s words from the recording: Working together . . . we can become something so incredible that we’ll set all our lives on a completely different course. I was a part of that, of fixing myself, fixing this whole world.

  But like Win said, I’ve contributed lots already. Why can’t I count that as enough risks taken, and just enjoy the fact that I got home safe?

  Lisa lets out a low whistle, looking out the front window. “Whoa. I’ve never seen anyone bleach their hair that light and still make it look natural.”

  I follow her gaze, and my back goes rigid. It’s Kurra. With her white-blond hair mostly covered by her hood, stalking down the sidewalk past the pie shop. She probably would have seen me if she’d glanced in the window—I’m only five feet back from the glass. But she’s focused on a metallic square in her slim hand.

  “Maybe it is natural,” Evan’s saying. “She could be an albino.”

  Kurra glances up briefly, looking down the street, and picks her pace up to a jog. Toward the store where I left Win. In a second, she’s passed out of view.

  “Don’t albinos have pink eyes?” Lisa says. “Hers looked gray.”

  My lungs constrict. Win has no way of knowing she’s coming for him without his alarm band. And any second one of her colleagues could come by and notice me. Me here with Bree and Lisa and Evan, who are oblivious to the danger—easy collateral damage.

  I’ve jeopardized everyone around me, and everything I’ve been trying to help Win accomplish, for a little comfort I couldn’t even enjoy.

  “I think that’s mice with the pink eyes,” Bree says, and I push back my chair.

  “Sorry, guys,” I say. “I’ve—ah—I just remembered, there was something I promised my mom I’d take care of before she got home—”

  They’re staring at me, but that no longer matters. I wave my hand with a tight smile, and rush outside.

  24.

  I hesitate when I reach the sidewalk, drawing back toward the shop’s doorway. Kurra’s partway down the next block now, almost at the furniture store where Win said he’d wait. She pauses amid the flow of pedestrians, and then strides on past it. I assumed she was tracking him somehow, but maybe he found a way to throw her off.

  Or maybe he’s gone?

  My chest clenches tighter. The moment Kurra disappears around the next corner, I sprint down the street. I burst into the furniture shop, breathless. A young couple is meandering amid the coffee tables. Two employees with name tags are murmuring near the counter, the older one scowling as though he’s rebuking the younger. Win’s nowhere to be seen.

  Did he leave the second I walked out? Maybe he decided, with my meltdowns and demands, it was more trouble than it was worth to keep me around.

  Even as the fear jolts through me, I’m already discounting it. I remember the way he said his promise, the way he held my gaze. Whatever else I might criticize him for, he hasn’t ever gone back on his word.

  So where is he?

  The older employee saunters away, leaving the younger to do a circuit of the store. I hurry over to him.

  “Excuse me,” I say. “Did you see a guy in here, black hair, brown clothes, carrying a—”

  The young man’s mouth twists. “Are you with him? When you see him, tell him fire exits are for emergencies only. And he’s lucky that chair he knocked over didn’t break.”

  My gaze darts to a small sign at the back of the store, over the outline of a doorway. He ran out the back. Like in the coffee shop the other day. He must have been watching from the front windows, and seen Kurra or one of her colleagues coming.

  “Thanks!” I say, and dart out. I circle the block and duck down the alley past the backs of the stores.

  Win isn’t there either, but I didn’t expect him to be. He said something, when the Enforcers chased us before, about getting “out of range.” If Kurra’s tracking him, I’d guess he
r tech works something like the alarm band. It didn’t direct her to me, so it must be picking up his . . . alienness. She probably needs to be close to pick him up. In which case he’d have tried to get some distance.

  I edge down the alley toward the back of the furniture store. He wouldn’t have gone anywhere the Enforcers might already know about, like the coffee shop or the hotel. And he wouldn’t have risked leading them back to my house. But I can’t just hang around here hoping he’s able to double back—one of the Enforcers could show up anytime.

  A splotch of color catches my eye on the pavement outside the door: a small splatter of blue liquid. A shade of blue I recognize from Win’s drinking bottle. I stop, and test it with the toe of my boot. It streaks at my touch. Fresh.

  I hustle farther down the alley. Another tiny splash has hit the edge of the laundromat by the street. He’s left me a trail. So he went to the right, from here.

  I poke my head out to check for Enforcers, and then jog down the street. I’m starting to think I made a mistake, that it was a coincidence, when I spot a third speckling of blue on the sidewalk, in a line like he was running to cross the street when he spilled it. On the opposite curb, a little more. I jog on.

  Farther down, a streak of blue dapples the front step of a hulking brick building. I take in the boarded lower windows, the battered “For Sale” sign, the empty socket where the doorknob should have been. It looks abandoned. He went in there—to hide? The building is several stories high, so maybe he thought he could get enough distance from the street to avoid the Enforcers’ tracking that way.

  Any doubt vanishes when a face appears in a fifth-floor window. Win raises his hand to me with a tense smile, and waves me up. A grin breaks across my face as I nod. He’s fine.

  I hurry across the street and nudge open the knobless door. It gives a soft creak, and then there’s a whisper behind me, so faint I might have missed it if I weren’t already on edge. I glance back.

  The air is shimmering on the sidewalk just outside the door. I flinch, and scramble behind a dusty reception desk just as Kurra emerges from a time cloth outside.