Bogdana led Astrid and Yukiko to an upstairs series of rooms connected by arching doorways. The light was better here, coming in through windows along the front of the house. Statues and sculptures, tapestries, vases, paintings and drawings filled the room. Another room housed taxidermied birds: crows, owls, pheasants and other winged creatures she did not recognize.
A clock chimed three times somewhere downstairs.
“Are you hungry?” Bogdana asked. “I’ll order us some refreshments for after we enjoy the rest of the gallery.
She swept out of the room.
“I’m tiring,” whispered Yukiko. “I’m using my power to shield your bell so she doesn’t take it. But I’m getting worn out.”
“We’ll leave soon. How long can you hold out?”
“Another few hours, enough time for tea and then for us to leave.”
Astrid forced herself to hurry through the rest of the gallery. All of the art was unsigned, but Bogdana, upon her return, told her which of their family had created each piece.
After they finished, Bogdana showed them into a sitting room downstairs. A hooded figure, this one slight and thin, brought in a tray of sugar-sprinkled lemon cakes, sliced white cheeses, fruit and glasses of iced tea the color of daffodils.
A bell rang in the hallway and a minute later, another servant leaned in to whisper something in Bogdana’s ear. Astrid tried to catch a glimpse of the servant’s face, but the hood was full and concealed it. The other servant, the smaller one, was off in one corner, rearranging curios on the shelves. Astrid got the distinct impression that the servant was trying to steal glances at her and Yukiko.
“Excuse me,” said Bogdana. “The court knows you have arrived and wishes to speak with you. Shall I admit them?”
Yukiko bristled and Astrid scooted to the edge of her seat, ready to rise. “No,” said Astrid. “I don’t want to speak to them. I need to go.”
“After your experience with the Seelie, I do not blame you for being wary,” said Bogdana. “I will inform them to come another time.”
“You can do that?” asked Yukiko.
“Astrid is not property, but a citizen,” said Bogdana. “And citizens have certain rights. If they want to formally summon her, she cannot refuse. But my servant told me the rank of the man at the door. This is not a formal summons. I will handle him.”
Bogdana left and the slender servant moved closer. It looked like a girl, at least from its build. Astrid put a piece of cake on a plate and lifted it to her mouth when the figure leapt forward and snatched the food and plate from her hands. The person’s face was still downcast, but maybe she could see through the fabric of her hood. The figure shook her head vehemently and pulled the tray to the far end of the coffee table. Her fair hands were scarred on the backs with crisscrossing lines and a shiny pink mark, like an old burn. The girl raised a finger and waved it back and forth, telling them “no.”
Astrid understood then what she was doing.
“It’s fine. I’m not human. I won’t get trapped here. I’m sidhe.” She couldn’t quite bring herself to say she was Unseelie, not yet.
The figure pulled her hands into her sleeves and hesitated. Something about her hands was very familiar. Astrid pulled her plate back toward herself and picked up her glass of tea. The girl jumped forward and pulled the glass from her hands. She shook her head violently.
“Is it poisoned?” Yukiko asked the girl. Then she hesitated. “Oh, wait. No. Gods, no.”
“What? Are they trying to poison us?”
“This girl. Her smell. I didn’t catch it before because it was so familiar, because of you. But you have the Door scent as well.”
“What do you mean?”
“Girl,” said Yukiko. “May we see your face?”
The girl shook her head and backed away, almost to the door. She turned to run. Quick as a shot, Yukiko was up and grabbed a mouthful of the hem of the girl’s robe. The girl let out a strangled cry of dismay and tried to pull the fabric from her teeth.
And then Astrid knew what was wrong with the hands. She went to the girl, took the edges of the hood in her hands and paused. The girl stopped struggling and held still, the tilt of her head rising so she was looking at Astrid from behind the fabric. Astrid pushed the hood back.
She was looking into a copy of her own face, but this one had scarred cheeks and a freshly bloodied lip. Her nose was slightly crooked, though her eyes, the exact color and shape as Astrid’s own, were clear and bright with both fear and a touch of defiance.
“The changeling,” said Astrid. “I mean—the human child. You didn’t die. It was you that I saw in the mirror.”
The girl did not answer.
“What have they done to you?” demanded Astrid. “They hurt you?” She grabbed the girl’s hand and examined the scars, the newer cuts. The sleeve slipped back to reveal a purple bruise on her wrist. The girl’s collar now hung loose and Astrid saw a thin silver chain around her throat, tight enough to stay above the collarbone, but not choke her. “What happened?” Astrid said. “They told me you were dead.”
The girl still did not speak.
“Tell me!” Astrid said.
The girl shook her head and opened her mouth. The space inside her lower teeth was empty. Her tongue had been cut out.
Chapter 40
Elliot’s shovel hit something.
“It’s here! I can’t believe it’s still here!” He looked up at Neil who leaned against a rock a little ways off, resting after his turn with the shovel.
“Of course it’s still there,” said Neil, heading over. “That’s where we put it, isn’t it?”
Elliot was warm from the exercise, but the cool Mediterranean breeze kept him from being uncomfortable. They stood on a windy island off the coast of Turkey; tiny, rocky and uninhabited.
“Yeah, but to think, it sat there for a thousand years,” Elliot said. “We forged it, hid it, and it’s still there.”
“You did all that. I just watched,” said Neil.
“Technically, yes. But you helped. I couldn’t have done it otherwise. Without you, I’d still be stuck wandering in the Syrian Desert.”
Elliot knelt, pulled the box out of the earth and opened it. Inside, wrapped in the remains of what had once been a cloth, was the small owl bell that they had buried over a thousand years before. It was covered in a layer of rust, but it could be cleaned easily enough.
Neil and Elliot had arrived in Syria in the year 798 AD, searching for a piece of cold iron. Wandering for weeks, they grew discouraged. The meteorite was scheduled to fall at any time, and they kept their eyes to the skies night and day while searching the ground in case the prediction had been off a little and the thing had already hit the earth. As it turned out, it had fallen before they arrived and they eventually found it, lying in a small crater. It was heavy, the size of a baseball. They took it to a renowned smith in Cairo who would make it into an owl bell, for the right price. His fee was exorbitant, but they had paid gladly.
Neil and Hazel had not been joking about money, for the Time Corps had money in banks and hiding places from Egypt to Reykjavik to Shanghai, and in the New World as well. Most of it was in gold which could be converted to currency or simply traded throughout all human civilizations in all time periods. What wasn’t in banks was left in hiding places like caves and remote rock crevices. Sometimes the Time Corps employed law firms who held on to trusts for generations, and other times they simply abandoned money they didn’t need. Each Time Corps member was supposed to memorize where safe houses were as well as where money could be found to purchase transport to them. Elliot tried his best.
After paying the smith in Cairo, they had taken the bell, put it in a protective box and buried it off the Turkish coast, on an island that they knew would remain undisturbed for centuries. El
liot had been skeptical and had wanted to keep the bell with them. They had gone to such trouble to create it. But Neil had explained that it was better to leave the bell to have a continuous existence on earth instead of taking it with them through time. It wasn’t strictly necessary, as the bell would have a continuous existence either way, although one asynchronous to the rest of the planet. But Neil had explained that with an object that was going to move between worlds, the more stability, the better. They had buried it. And now, in 1895, they dug it up.
“The ship is going to leave soon,” said Neil. Their next step was to board a steamer that would stop in Athens and then take them across the Atlantic to New Orleans.
Neil wore his black duster, black jeans and a shirt and waistcoat. The effect was at once anachronistic and effective. He blended in well enough. Elliot had wanted to wear his regular clothing, but after considering how much he would stand out, had opted for a workman’s coat, trousers and heavy boots. Of course, in Syria he had purchased native clothing so as not to be cooked alive by the brutal sun. Pangur Ban, though Irish originally, was well traveled and had given him information on Syria. Hazel, who had been born in 1846, gave him a primer on Victorian culture. She had even taught him some of the dances.
They rowed their small boat back across the water and returned it to its owner. Their ship was waiting and they started the long walk back to civilization, stopping on the way to retrieve their time machine. Elliot still thought it was strange, ridiculous even, how a device the size of a trunk could allow them to move through time, but he had done it enough to now believe it.
The device was homemade by Seamus in his disaster of a laboratory, long before the Time Corps was even an idea. But for all that, it was beautiful. It consisted of a rectangular wooden base, set on end like a pedestal upon which sat a paneled brass dome. There were dials and knobs and even a little book of dates and coordinates that slid into a compartment on the side. It was not the only one of its kind, but it had been the first.
The whole ability to travel in time and between worlds was dependent upon synchronicities, though there were exceptions. It was a critical weakness. The fabric, the walls between worlds, were thicker and thinner at points. And to tear a hole between them required things on both sides to be happening in a similar way. For example, Felicia had come through a hole into Seamus’s world because a twenty-first century bus she was on was traveling down Saint Charles Street in New Orleans at the same time as an omnibus in 1857. Seamus had accidentally created the conditions for the hole to appear, and the synchronicity triggered the rip. He had spent years trying to learn to control the holes, to find a way to get Felicia back to her world, but so far he was unsuccessful. Her world was one of the more difficult ones to break into.
Elliot’s world, however, was fairly easy. Seamus was hoping to use his time here to work more of the kinks out of his device. For Felicia’s sake, Elliot hoped he would. The other members of the Time Corps had little or no family and seemed content, or at least adjusted to the fact. Felicia had family from which she had been separated, and it pained her.
Neil hired a cart to carry them and the trunk with the machine to the docks. Neil had insisted on paying extra for a nicer cabin, telling him that steerage was not pleasant, not even as a historical study. They boarded and went to their tiny quarters to change for supper.
“Why can’t we simply use the machine to travel one week into the future and show up in New Orleans?” said Elliot. “I don’t see why we have to take weeks on this ship.”
“We only use the machine when necessary, not as a way to avoid unpleasantries. Besides, I paid extra for the nice cabin and so we can dine on the upper deck. We get better food that way. Think of it as a vacation.”
“I’m just worried about Astrid. I haven’t seen her in more than a month. I hope she’s okay.”
“When we get back, it will only be a few days after we left.”
While waiting for supper, they stood against the railing as the last light of day faded from the sky. Elliot thought about the Time Corps, how he had not officially joined and could leave at any time. Just because his colleagues told him that he had decided to join in his future didn’t mean he had to. It was still his choice. But traveling, seeing the world, not only in his own twenty-first century, but in so many centuries, was delicious and irresistible. He knew he would stay.
Supper consisted of herb-crusted beef, wilted greens and roasted potatoes. The two of them dined at their own table, though a few of the younger women cast appraising glances at them. Neil was oblivious to this, or seemed to be. After supper, they went out on deck.
“I have another question,” said Elliot.
“You usually do,” said Neil.
“You’re the one who wanted to train me.”
“Just returning the favor.”
“That’s what you said, that I trained you,” Elliot said. “Did you learn everything from Seamus and Hazel?”
“Some of it. But a lot of it was from you.”
“That means that the information passed between us forms an unstable time loop. The information has no origin. I told you in my future, you tell me now so that when I’m older, I can tell you.”
“I try not to think about that too much,” said Neil, shielding his eyes with his hand as the last rays of sunlight glittered on the dancing water.
“But you do think about it.”
“I suppose that one of us watched a lot of Doctor Who reruns as a kid.”
Perhaps, in time, Elliot would figure it out. Maybe he and Neil would be old men in the Time Corps retirement home on Mars and figure out who had learned what information and at what point in time. Nothing could really be an unstable time loop. Everything had an origin. Paradoxes could not exist.
The owl bell now had a stable origin, as a meteorite in Syria, forged in Cairo and buried for a thousand years. Now, they were taking it to New Orleans where it would be held by a shopkeeper and his son until the 1960s when it would be put up for sale. Then, Astrid and Elliot’s grandfather would buy it. Elliot knew that their grandfather had given it to Astrid as a baby and that she had kept it her entire life. So all they had to do was ensure that it arrived in their grandfather’s possession.
Pangur Ban and Huginn were taking care of the rest of the bell’s lifecycle. From what they told him, Astrid had given them information in her future. As they were not human, the cat and the raven could travel to the Seelie world without being detected. They would steal the bell that had been stolen from Astrid when she was in Seelie. Then, they would use their time travel devices to travel into the past within Seelie to leave the owl bell on a beach.
The light was fading, and a dolphin swam off the bow, rising to the surface and then dipping below only to rise again, its dorsal fin splitting the churning waves.
“You’re not kidding me that a mermaid is going to find the bell,” said Elliot.
Neil wasn’t watching the dolphin, but was looking straight down into the water below. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
“I get that, but a mermaid?”
“That’s what Astrid said. Will say. So unless she’s playing a joke …”
“She’s not. I’ve never known a more serious person. Except for you, perhaps.”
Neil turned around so he was leaning back against the railing, looking across the deck. “I find humor in some things.”
“You don’t think having talking ravens, cats and monkeys as colleagues is funny?”
“Mr. Escobar works for Hazel on her ship. He’s not Time Corps. But yes, on some level, it seems funny. But I’m so used to it that it’s no longer amusing.”
“Fair enough,” said Elliot. “I’m going to go inside. Some of those young rich girls were cute, and I think they may be in need of a dance par
tner.”
Elliot left Neil on deck and found the dancing hall where he got a glass of punch. He still didn’t fully understand the workings of the Time Corps. For the most part, they were open and friendly, though they refused to answer questions now and then.
That was another thing. Neil told him that the Time Corps members did not withhold information from each other. They did not fear time paradoxes, as they did not exist. The only information they would ever willfully withhold would be the time and place of someone’s death or other life-changing information. He supposed no one had told poor Pangur Ban that her son would die.
Seamus was the de facto head of the Time Corps, but he listened to Julius and made phone calls or visited other safe house keepers, including September Wilde in New Orleans and a woman named June in San Francisco, for advice.
The Time Corps had a research department somewhere, and Neil had told him that they both had spent time there doing research and investigative legwork. Or, rather, they would spend many years there in their future. Neil looked young, but he had crammed a lot of living into those years, judging by the stories he told.
Elliot made eye contact across the room with a girl of about eighteen who was sitting with her mother. He introduced himself, learned her name was Anne and that she was British. He asked her to dance and she accepted.
The steps were easy enough after his practice with Hazel.
“Will you be staying in New Orleans?” he asked the girl. “Or taking another ship elsewhere?”
“We’ll be staying there, my sister and I, with a maiden aunt. And you?”
“Staying there briefly, then moving on. Heading west to Los Angeles.” He didn’t mention that it would be twenty-first century Los Angeles.
“Are you a businessman?”
“Something like that. I’m traveling to New Orleans after some time in Syria, Egypt and Turkey.”
The Time Corps Chronicles (Complete Series) Page 82
