Earth & Sky

by Megan Crewe

  “I think they’ve killed one of your men.”

  It’s almost true. I know what side of this battle Jeanant would have been on.

  The scout’s fingers squeeze my wrist, and then he releases me, pushing my arm away. For one wrenching moment I think it’s a dismissal. He hefts his rifle.

  “Two?”

  I nod. He turns and calls something quietly through the trees. Four more men with rifles emerge a short distance away. The scout motions them to join him with a few words of explanation in a language I don’t know. The other men stare at me. One of them purses his lips toward me and says something that doesn’t sound kind, but my scout cuts him off with a brusque retort.

  “I’ll show you,” I say, hoping that will get us moving, and start toward the slope.

  After a few lurching steps, I hear them following. They slip past me, their expressions dour, making less noise between the five of them than I do on my own. It feels like no time at all before I spot the hill with the bristling fir at its peak. My stomach flips over.

  I’m really doing this. No turning back.

  “Over there,” I whisper, indicating the slope. The scout draws his companions together for a brief discussion. Then they creep to and up the hill, rifles ready. I trail behind.

  The Native soldiers pause at the top of the slope for no more than a second. Then the scout hollers, and they charge down the hill. Rifle fire crackles. I cringe, suddenly terrified I’ll hear that awful twang.

  It doesn’t come. The soldiers’ feet pound into the glade. The Enforcers must be fleeing.

  This is my chance.

  I scramble up the slope, reaching the fir just in time to see the last of the Native soldiers racing into the forest on the other side of the glade. There’s no sign of the Enforcers. Jeanant’s body is still sprawled on the grass. Seeing him again, so limp and vacant, makes my legs lock up. I force myself onward.

  I’m halfway down to the log when another shot peals out, and the stutter of answering fire echoes through the forest. Not the twanging sizzle of the Enforcers’ blasters. Regular gunfire.

  I stop, peering across the glade. The Americans? Were they already that close? And I sent the Native soldiers straight into their ranks.

  Rifle shots rattle between the trees. I bite my lip. There’s no way I can protect them now. I can only finish my own mission.

  I skitter the rest of the way down through the dead leaves and pebbles, stumbling to a halt by the log. The patch of cleared dirt looks exactly the same as before. The Enforcers hadn’t found it yet, then. Exhaling shakily, I drop to my knees. I may only have a minute before they decide it’s safe to return.

  Soil clogs my fingernails as I claw at the dirt. My nose and mouth prickle with the earthy smell of decay. I scoop aside handful after handful. Then my fingers jar against a hard surface.

  Another sputter of gunfire reaches my ears, closer now. I grope along the hard edge of the object I’ve started to unearth. Working my thumb around its corner, I manage to wiggle it free.

  It’s another slab of that plastic-like material, but this one is dirt brown instead of clear. And bigger, about the same size as my calculus textbook, with a seam around the top that suggests it can be opened.

  Hoofbeats thunder over the ground somewhere in the forest, far too near for comfort. I heft the box under my arm. Someone shouts, another gun crackles, and a voice cries out.

  I did what I had to do, I remind myself as I stagger back up the slope. But in that moment the throbbing of my ankle is nothing compared to the guilt searing through my chest.

  The shots are echoing through the forest in quick succession now, mingled with bellows and groans and the occasional anxious whinny. I don’t know if the battle was supposed to start now anyway; I don’t know how much I’ve thrown history out of order. I just know if one of those bullets finds me before I deliver this box, there’ll be no good to balance out the harm I may have done. So I run as fast as my ankle allows, the bark of my walking stick scratching my palm.

  Any second now, even if no one shoots me, one shift, one new death, could unravel my family’s entire thread through history. Will I just disappear if that happens?

  I have to find Win first. That’s all I can worry about now.

  The sounds of the battle recede until I can hardly hear them over my pounding heart. My foot has just crunched down on a twig when it occurs to me that it’s not just Win I need to be watching for. Kurra and her band of Enforcers are still lurking here. Now that I’ve left Jeanant and his Enforcers behind, I can’t count on them being doxed.

  I slow down, scanning the forest. The faint rifle fire and shouts behind me won’t cover the sound of my passage. I set my feet around the sticks and looser pebbles, avoiding the shrubs that would scrape against my clothes.

  Where would Win have gone, to find me after he was doxed? Where would he think I’d look for him?

  The fort. That’s the only real landmark we saw together. It’s as good a possibility as any.

  My gaze catches on an ivy-draped tree that feels familiar. I pad toward it. Now that I’m not racing headlong but taking in the landscape around me, other details I must have absorbed emerge: a crumbling stump, a moss-coated boulder, a bush sprouting pale yellow flowers.

  The trail of fragmented memories leads me on a rambling path through the forest. After a couple of minutes, I spot the impression of a boot heel in a soft patch of dirt, pointing in the opposite direction. Mine, it looks like. It must be from when we were running away from Kurra—which was also away from the fort. I’m going the right way, then.

  As I limp on, the humidity presses in with the day’s rising heat. The surface of the box slides in my damp grasp. At this rate, I’ll drop it if I have to run again. I glance down at myself. With a little wiggling, I work the box over my chest between the Traveler shirt and the T-shirt underneath. I tuck the bottom of the T-shirt up around the box and the bottom of the Traveler shirt into the tight waist of my skirt. It’s uncomfortable, but it seems secure enough.

  A few minutes’ walk later, I glimpse the roof of the fort through the foliage ahead. I pause, thinking of how the British soldiers greeted us last time. Win wouldn’t have gone close enough for them to see him. Where would he wait, if he’s here? If I call out to him, Kurra’s as likely to hear me as he is.

  I hobble around the edge of the clearing, taking in every fluttering leaf, every bird’s chirp, as if one of them holds a clue. I’m just following the curve around the north end of the field when a sharp voice cuts through the air.

  Kurra. I duck down, swiveling to try to determine which direction it’s coming from. She’s speaking in Kemyate, so low or distant I probably wouldn’t be able to make out most of the words even if I understood the language.

  I see one of her companions before I see her: a sturdily built man with tan skin and chestnut hair braided at his neck. I scoot behind the base of a birch’s trunk. He turns away from me, gesturing to someone out of view.

  Kurra speaks again. I’m so used to her threats, it’s odd to hear her sound so . . . cajoling. But if her comments are directed at Win, he doesn’t respond.

  They seem to be moving away from me. Does that mean Win’s over there too? If Kurra’s tracking him again, I should follow. I creep forward from one tree to the next. Then the man I can see spins on his heel. I duck behind a maple.

  Kurra’s voice reaches me again, louder now. Footsteps crackle closer, then stop. I can only pick up a hint of the whispered conversation that follows. They walk on. I think they’re coming toward me now.

  I dare to lean an inch past the side of the tree. My pulse stutters. I can see three Enforcers now, Kurra in the middle. They’re coming toward the fort after all.

  As I watch, they veer at a slight angle. Slowly but surely, they walk past my hiding spot, leaving me behind.

  My gaze drifts up over their heads, and every muscle in my body tenses.

  Win’s standing on the wide branch of a chestnut tree, ma
ybe twenty feet away and at least the same distance above us. He’s poised against the trunk, half hidden by the leaves, his brown clothes blending into the bark, the cowl neck pulled up to cover his dark hair. I might not have noticed him at all if not for the oily splotch of the time cloth clutched in his hand.

  His head dips, following the movements of the Enforcers below. They’re between us now, heading straight for him. They must be tracking him on that screen.

  I ease myself upright and wave my arm, but Win’s focus doesn’t waver from the Enforcers. He doesn’t know I’m here. I can’t get his attention without drawing their attention too.

  Why doesn’t he jump away? He’s got the time cloth right there . . .

  But how long has he been doing that—jumping from hiding spot to hiding spot with Kurra on his tail? Maybe she shot the cloth again, and it’s malfunctioning. Maybe the power’s nearly drained again. There are all sorts of reasons he could be stuck there. Waiting for me.

  Win’s legs quaver. He braces himself, his eyes closing. Fear grips me. He’s sick, he was all but mortally wounded just a few hours ago, and now he must be even more exhausted.

  Kurra hesitates, just a few feet from his tree, frowning at her hand. Go on, I think at her. Keep moving. She turns, studying the ground. At any moment she’s going to look up.

  She murmurs something to the Enforcer with the braided hair, and one of Win’s feet slips.

  He throws out his hand to a smaller branch nearby, catching his balance, but his shoe rasps against the bark. The branch he’s grabbed creaks. Kurra’s head snaps around, her gun hand flying up to follow her gaze.

  No.

  I can’t watch this happen. Not again.

  I’m sprinting forward before that thought has even fully formed, my walking stick tossed aside. The pain radiating up my leg brings tears to my eyes, but I don’t care. Win would probably tell me to stay where I am, that it’s too dangerous to interfere, but I don’t care about that either. I am not a shadow; I’m a human being who’s spent the last two days fighting to liberate my planet, and I am not letting it end like this.

  The other Enforcers whip around to face me, and Kurra’s attention jerks away from Win. She sidesteps, her blaster swinging down, but I’m already hurtling toward her with all the strength in my body. I crash into her. The twang sings past my ear.

  One of the other Enforcers hisses a curse. Kurra rams her elbow into my side, squirming out from under me. I try to dodge her as the third Enforcer aims his weapon. I’m too slow. A streak of light sizzles into my shoulder. I stagger, numbness clawing through my chest.

  That’s it, I think blankly. As I gasp for breath, Kurra snatches my elbow and brings her blaster to my head.

  And then she’s stumbling to the side as Win shoves past her with a sweep of his time cloth. I fling myself at him, and he tugs the cloth over me. Kurra gives a cry, her pale eyes wild. She jabs out with her blaster. But this time Win’s already hit the panel.

  As the muzzle sparks, her furious face and the rest of the forest whirl away.

  31.

  The world outside the cloth comes into focus and dissolves again as Win raps his fingers against the data panel. The yellow light of the power warning flashes around us. I gulp and sputter. Though my ankle’s on fire, my legs are still holding me up. But a broad swath of flesh, from the base of my chin down across the right side of my torso and along my arm, is numb. It feels as if there’s a gaping hole in the front of my body. A gaping hole where my vital organs should be.

  “You can still breathe,” Win shouts over the shrieking of the wind. “Everything inside you is still working, even if you can’t tell. Just try not to think about it.”

  Easier said than done. I suck air into the back of my throat, but I can’t feel it moving down to my lungs. Somehow, a moment later, an exhalation rushes out. I close my eyes, trying to let it happen automatically. Listening to my pulse thumping in my ears, a confirmation that my heart’s continued beating.

  The shrieking stops and the cloth goes still. “Skylar?” Win rasps. My eyes pop open.

  We’ve landed in a dim stairwell. I make myself step out of the cloth after Win. He heads down the stairs and I follow, clutching the railing. We pass three flights and then duck out into a darkened hall. My foot brushes a sheet of plastic crumpled in the corner.

  Open doorframes line the hall. Win ducks through one of them, and I limp after. The space on the other side appears to be a vacant condo apartment: bare white walls, marble countertops in the open-concept kitchen, tall steel-edged windows looking out over a concrete balcony that doesn’t yet have a railing.

  “They’re just finishing up this place—no one’s moved in yet, and the workers will all have gone home for the day,” Win says, wheezing. He peels down his cowl and rolls it back into his shirt collar, fumbling with it as if he can’t get his hands to work quite right. He coughs a couple of times against his elbow.

  “You found Jeanant?” he asks. “Before you found me again?”

  I nod, not quite trusting myself to speak.

  He shakes his head with a rough laugh. “I can’t believe we pulled that off.”

  I guess we did. Not perfectly, not without . . . loss, but our mission’s over.

  There’s nothing left to do.

  The enormity of it overwhelms me. I hobble forward, toward the late-afternoon sun shining bright in the blue sky beyond the windows. The warmth tingles over every part of me except that numb hollow around my core. When I reach out to touch the glass, the box lodged inside my shirt pokes the still-awake skin over my stomach. One-handed, I tug at the Traveler shirt until I can pull the box out. Bits of the dirt it was buried in cling to my fingers.

  Win will bring the parts to Thlo, and hopefully these three will be enough for their group to destroy the time field. We’ll have set everyone’s lives across two planets on a completely different course.

  Incredible.

  The word resonates in my head in Jeanant’s voice. The smell of the forest lingers on the box, on my clothes, loamy and damp. Taking me back to Jeanant’s last cry, to his body sprawled in the glade.

  “That’s the third part Jeanant left,” I say. My voice is thick, and not just because I can’t feel my vocal cords.

  Win takes the box, runs his thumb along the seam, and frowns. “Just the third? But—”

  “He didn’t want to change any detail from his original plan,” I say. “He said—He said that if he shifted something by giving us the rest of the weapon all at once, he might throw something off and alter the chain of events. Make it so the Enforcers from his time caught Thlo, or she’d miss his message or . . . I tried to convince him.”

  I thought I almost had. But . . . what if he’d been right after all? Did the Enforcers catch up with him finally, force his hand, because of those small moments when his path on Earth was changed: the moments he lingered with me? Maybe in some previous past, when I died in the courthouse, Jeanant dashed away the second after he hid each part, placed his last offering uninterrupted, and lived on at least a little while longer.

  Of course, in that other past, maybe Thlo and Win and the others would never have completely deciphered Jeanant’s all too careful clues, never kept ahead of the Enforcers, never have finished his mission. I don’t know. I can’t know. There might not have been any good way for his journey to end.

  I fold my working arm across my chest. This is what mattered to Jeanant the most: this moment right now. Getting as many of the parts as he could into our hands. He would rather have died for this than lived without accomplishing it—I know that.

  Win looks at the object I’ve given him, and then at me. In that instant, he looks so tired, I’m afraid his legs won’t hold.

  “We’re not done,” he says.

  “We are,” I say, and pause when my voice breaks. “Jeanant’s—The Enforcers from his time, they caught him. He made them kill him so they couldn’t take him for interrogation. He’s dead. They found the last part, t
he one he was still carrying. We have everything we can get.”

  “Oh. Oh. You saw—Are you all right?”

  The worry in his deep blue eyes isn’t the analytical consideration or anxious impatience I’ve gotten used to, only honest concern. He isn’t freaking out that we lost the last part or demanding to know why I didn’t do better. He just wants to be sure I’m okay. Somehow that makes me feel almost okay, for the first time since that argument with Jeanant in the forest.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I mean, I wish I could have stopped it. I wish we hadn’t lost anything. But . . . it is what it is, right?”

  “Yes. It must have been hard, to even get this. I’m sorry I couldn’t have helped more.” He slides the box into his satchel. “There’s a good chance the three will be enough. Thlo and Isis will have a better idea, once they take a look. It’s time we go talk with them. I’m sure Jule has already filled Thlo in on the basics.” He grimaces. “I just wanted to work out what we’re going to say about going back for your brother first. Assuming you still want to.”

  Noam. My plan: going back to that day, finding him at school, the note . . .

  The note.

  Kurra’s voice comes back to me, the intensity in her cold eyes.

  Who is Noam? My fingers clench where the purse used to hang.

  “Win,” I say in a rush. “Kurra knew—I’d started writing my note to Noam, when we were in the safe house—It was in my purse—She asked me who he was. What if they’ve already gone back looking for him?”

  “Whoa,” Win says. “How much did she know? What did you say in the note?”

  “I don’t remember. I’d only just started. The only thing she mentioned was his name.”

  “Last name too or just first name? The year? Your name?”

  I shake my head. “Just ‘Noam,’ and I was starting to tell him about Darryl . . .”

  “Then he’s fine,” Win says firmly. “How many Noams do you think there must be across the history of this planet? They don’t have anywhere near enough to lead them to him. We didn’t shift anything while we were there, no one even saw us except for him. There’s no way they could determine . . .”