I had to confess to Grace. I had to tell her about meeting Jack.
“Are you all right, dear?”
“Yeah,” I said as I forced myself to calm down. “It’s a lot to take in. I have entered a time myself. Entering yours was, like I said, an accident. My time that I entered was 1892. I met Mr. Ridgewell’s son, Jack.”
“Oh, what a delightful boy he is. Tell me, does he grow up handsome?”
I wanted to tell her he was the hottest guy I’ve probably ever met, but realized that wasn’t very proper. So I just said yes.
“You asked how we are able to travel, and I can’t really explain the formula. That’s up to the men who have written it, mostly scientists who have been assigned to our society to help us travel. It’s all very boring stuff really,” she said with a wave of her hand. “Harold Lockhart, he’s been assigned to us Baileys for many years as his family was before him. He has the gift to travel back and forth to assist our ancestors.”
I realized then that she was speaking of the group of women from the photograph: Jenny, Alice, and Laura. And I was right about Harold. He was, in fact, the one who helped them. While I liked being right, I wasn’t going to be able to relish in it. I had questions, and I didn’t know how much time I had left with her.
“Lockhart is a true talent. Like us, he is dedicated to preserving the histories and stories. He and I walked through the Salem Witch Trials together. Truly awful that was.”
I shivered at the thought of being stuck there. I’d no doubt be captured as a witch and hanged on my first day all because of my choice of clothes. I didn’t think they’d appreciate my many pairs of yoga pants.
“I know this is a bit much, Emme, but it’s our duty to do this. Historians and researchers rely on us to learn. If we do not travel through the books and record what we learned, then think of what would be lost.”
It’s was a huge duty to do this and it wasn’t lost on me, but I wasn’t sure I wanted it. I could barely handle meeting Jack, let alone meeting more people. The magic and everything was amazing, but I didn’t know how far I wanted to be involved in this.
“I get that it’s huge. I really do, but Gram left me her library. I was a college student, and I gave that up to take care of it. I can’t do this forever, and I can’t afford it either.”
“Emme, you don’t have to do this forever. And as long as you keep the library up and running, your money should keep coming. You’ll never go broke.” She laughed like the thought of a Bailey being poor was funny. Thinking about it now, I wasn’t ever sure how Gram was able to raise me and the library too when I was a kid. I remember thinking that life as an adult meant endless money because Gram never ran out.
We never needed for food, clothes, or anything. Even when some of my friends’ dads struggled to make ends meet, we never did.
If I needed new clothes, we got them. The time that I got my first car, it just appeared on my birthday. I never wondered how she did it, but now I knew the answers. “We take care of one another, Emme. All over the East Coast, the ones who are better off take care of the ones who aren’t. And it seems like my daughter was the latter?”
I nodded and comprehended that she had referred to her own daughter in the past tense, like she knew she was no longer around. She understood that her daughter was dead, and I was all that was left.
“This isn’t something you have to do for the rest of your life. You can stop and teach your own child when she’s of age.”
The thought of having a child made me almost violently ill. I never thought I’d be the type of woman who was a mom. Losing my mother made me an awful and selfish person.
“Who is your protector?”
“My what, now?”
She giggled again. “You know the one who pulls you from the book after you travel. The person who is assigned to you to keep you safe.”
The look on my face must have been a huge indication that I was totally clueless and had no protector because she stood fast, knocking over her chair. She looked terrified for me, and it scared the living hell out of me. I stood too, like that would somehow make this easier to explain.
“You don’t have a protector?”
“Umm…no. I don’t. What the hell is that?”
Her hands started shaking and she looked around us, terrifying me even more.
“Is a zombie going to jump out at us or something? What the hell are you doing?”
“Oh Emme, you could be stuck here. I’m so sorry this was never explained properly to you. You should have read the guide before you ever traveled.”
Stuck here!
What freaking guide was she even talking about? I couldn’t be stuck here. I had a life to get back to. I hated this time period.
No air conditioning. No ice-cubes. No cars. No cell phones. And to make matter’s worse, Jack was only a boy still. He wasn’t a man who I could end up falling in love with.
If he was, maybe I could swallow this news a little better. I’d stay with the book boyfriend and never leave. How awful would that be? But being as though he was probably twelve, I couldn’t handle that.
“No! This can’t happen. I have to get home. You have to help me,” I begged her. My eyes filled with tears and I grabbed her hands. “What is the guide and where can I find it?”
She shrugged her shoulders and shook her head. How could I think that she’d know where it was in my time period? She could at least give me a hint of what it looked like, right?
Help me out here, lady!
“The set of books we all travel through have an instructional manual with them; it’s a traveler’s guide. When you travel, you must read that first. After you’ve traveled through your book, there are instructions on how to keep going or how to explain these steps to your children. Your protector, or guide, should be back in your year waiting for your safe return. She or he will have the guide book just in case things go wrong.”
Great! Just great! Not only do I not have a guide, I don’t have anyone back home watching over me to make sure I come back in one piece.
How on earth did I do this before and not stay stuck?
“Wait one minute!” I exclaimed. “I have traveled before. How could I have done that without a protector?”
Grace shook her head at me again with a bewildered look on her face. I wanted to slap her for getting my family into this mess. How dare she be this stupid book-magic wielder that only travels through time? Why couldn’t she be a witch who conjures shit up? My family heritage was seriously lame, and I wanted to strangle my own great-grandmother.
“I traveled twice before this and each time I came out of it fine. That can’t be coincidence, Grace. Throw me a bone here, lady. You have to know something,” I pleaded.
“You had someone back there, in your time, watching over you, and you just didn’t know it,” said a voice behind me.
I swung around to see a handsome man with a black hair and the lamest mustache I’d ever seen. Somehow, though, it fit his face and made him look dashing.
Harold Lockhart.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean what I say,” he said.
Smart ass.
I sat back down and racked my brain. The first time I traveled, I woke up to Rose shaking me. But she wasn’t there the second time. Actually, no one was.
No! That’s a lie. Someone was there, she was just upstairs.
“Can your protector change?”
“Sure. They just have to care for you,” Harold replied. “They don’t have to literally pull you out. All it takes is the force of a thought or concern.”
The thought or concern for me.
“Tarryn,” I mumbled aloud. “The first time it was my best friend, Rose. But the second time it was my roommate, Tarryn. She was upstairs.”
“Well,” Lockhart started, “she may have come to check on you and you didn’t know it. I think you know your answer. Is this Tarryn with you now?”
What was he stupid? Did he see her?
Oh…he meant with my body in my time. That answered one question; I’m not sucked into the book and I don’t disappear. I must be sitting there with my eyes wide open like Tarryn explained the other day. She must think I’m losing my mind. But all my other questions were still unanswered or confusing me still.
I nodded to Lockhart, hoping that Tarryn was indeed with me.
“I hope she checks on you because we’re leaving soon.”
Well, shit.
“When?”
Lockhart shrugged and said, “I’m not sure the time exactly. I just know it’s soon. Our protector is keeping track of time. We knew that we were only permitted two days here and those two days expire soon.”
“Emmeline, it’s important that you read the guide and follow the rules exactly,” Grace said before I recognized the pull from my time tugging at my body.
“I’m leaving,” I told them with a thankful smile.
Grace looped her arm in Lockhart’s, and they waved at me as I was sucked back into my own time.
Fourteen
Being pulled back to my time was the best thing to happen that night. I had thought that I would be stuck there forever. Thankfully, Tarryn was indeed there watching over me. The bad part was that I had to explain to her who and what I was, when I wasn’t one hundred percent sure of all of it. I had so much more to learn, and she would be learning with me, if she didn’t run away screaming first.
She stared at me like she thought that I was crazy, but after I blinked a few times and smiled at her, she seemed to relax.
“You did it again,” she said.
Here goes nothing.
“Yes, I did. And I have something to tell you. You were right about me hiding something,” I revealed. I told her everything I had learned and how I first traveled through the book before Gram died. I told her how I met Jack and how dashing he was, leaving out the fact that I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I didn’t hide how beautiful Jack’s home was or how awful Nancy was, which made her laugh enormously. “She made me take my clothes off and wear a corset!” Tarryn continued to laugh at me, which gave me hope that she wouldn’t dash at that moment.
I showed her Gram’s hidden room and the photographs of The Librarians. She didn’t say much, just nodded here and there. When I showed her the books and told her I had to find the guide, she bit her bottom lip like she was dying to tell me something important.
“What is it, Tarryn?” I asked after I had just spilled my most important secret to her.
“I found a book I think was meant for you, and I think it’s your guidebook. I didn’t mean to take it, but you weren’t being honest with me and I knew it was important.”
She pulled out a small pocket size book and handed it to me. It was in fact the guidebook. It may have been small in size, but it was thick with information. There was handwriting in it that had been from the women who traveled before me. Grace also had her own sections.
I never missed this book or knew that I needed it until it was in my hands. Once I held it, it was like I was reunited with an old friend. It was the strangest feeling I had ever experienced. I didn’t question it, I just went with it.
“Where did you find this?”
“It was in your Gram’s personal library upstairs. I wasn’t snooping, it just sorta found me. I’m glad it did. You can’t travel without your ring,” Tarryn told me. “I read this book from cover to cover. Twice.”
She laughed nervously, but I was so happy that I hugged her. She let out a little squeal, but eventually hugged back.
So my family members were using science to travel through time, and I was one of them. I was a traveler now. The truth was a bitter pill to swallow, but I would get to know my ancestry and would do them honor. They were the only family I had left.
“I’m so glad you don’t think I’m crazy.”
“I’m happy you’re not crazy, too,” she admitted. “The book explains why you are able to travel, and it’s amazing actually.”
We sat on the floor of the room and she turned the pages of the book.
“It’s all here. Your ancestors have travelled as far back as the history of Egypt and the building of the pyramids. They travel to record what really happened and to make sure that history is exactly fact and not fiction. It explains that some historians tend to tell stories that haven’t happened. Your family made sure this didn’t occur. A book can be rewritten if it needs to be.”
I pondered this and wondered how many books they’ve traveled through to ensure the truth was recovered. Just how many books were based on fact and not on the author’s way with words?
“There are Librarians all over the world; some do different things. Your family is the only one to preserve history. Some travel back into books to make sure things are carried out exactly as they should and others find missing artifacts. There are entries from all of these women in the photo and some that aren’t in the photo.”
She pointed to Jenny’s face and said, “Jenny got stuck inside a book on purpose.”
My mouth fell open in shock. Who would do that? I could imagine getting lost inside the pages, sure, but to stay there forever wasn’t for me.
“Did it say why?”
She shook her head. “Only that her protector, Beverly, was devastated that she did it. She traveled without telling her and she couldn’t get her back. She tried real hard to retrieve her, but failed.”
Maybe she fell in love with someone. Maybe, like me, she longed to be with him.
“When you travel, your physical self stays here while your spiritual self leaves. As long as you have your ring on, you are tethered with your time. If you take it off at all inside another time period, you could get stuck there,” she explained further. “When the ring is removed, your whole physical self leaves. It’s amazing, really.”
I remembered her telling me how I looked like I was sleeping with my eyes open when she found me the first time. Now I understood perfectly. I was inside the book spiritually and physically anchored here.
“Tell me more about Jack. What does he look like?”
“He’s probably the hottest guy I’ve ever met,” I admitted. I could go on and on about how debonair Jack was. I was afraid to tell Tarryn about how much he consumed my thoughts.
“So he’s the guy you spoke about at the bar, right?”
I nodded.
She sighed. “Let’s Google him!”
“Let’s not. I’d rather not find out by some website what happens to him. It’s my job to record his history, not Google’s.”
She nodded in understanding, but I could see the disappointment in her eyes.
“I’ll travel and get a photograph of him, okay? I’ll bring this,” I said as I lifted my cell phone. “I’ll snap a nice picture of him. He would probably think it was amazing.”
“Oh my God!” she exclaimed loudly. “You’re in love with him, aren’t you?”
I scoffed, “No way. I don’t even know him. And he’s dead, Tarryn.”
“Say what you want, but you have the look of love in your eyes,” she teased.
“Well, you’re gonna have the look of a black eye if you keep that up,” I warned, jokingly. “Really, I need to travel back and see him soon. I have to keep recording his history. It’s important.”
She nodded and got up and stretched.
“Just not tonight. I’m tired and I don’t feel like being your protector anymore tonight.”
The guide specifically stated that I needed to officially ask someone I trusted to take the job of my protector. I hadn’t known her for very long, but Tarryn was
a great person. She was the sort of person I would trust with my life. She’d already studied the manual without being asked, and she was good with crazy. Anyone who was okay with all of this information was my kind of girl.
“Tarryn, before we go to bed, I want to ask you something,” I began. I took a deep, nervous breath, and continued. “Would you like to be my protector? I mean, I know you are already sorta involved, but I think that I trust you. And I need to trust someone, strongly, if I’m going to do this. I can’t do it alone, you know?”
She smiled and nodded her head before crashing into me with a hug that was so very unlike her. Maybe Tarryn needed purpose in her life, and I had just given it to her.
Fifteen
I ran the streets of Bay Ridge wearing the warmest workout clothes I could find. I hadn’t run since I got here, and I yearned to feel that burn in my lungs and the familiar ache in my muscles. Running relieved a lot of stress for me, and without it, I was a ball of nerves. I rounded my first corner and prayed that I wouldn’t slip on any hidden ice. So far, so good. I always ran in California, but it was way different running here. The weather in Maine did not always make it easy. I missed my campus’s running paths, but the view of the ocean from where I was at that moment was breathtaking. Nothing compared to overlooking the wild and dark Atlantic Ocean this early in the morning.
Things were feeling semi-normal lately, and it was time to start being normal Emme. The library was up and running, and our first week went by in a flash. I was continuing to receive funding from what I guessed were other Librarians in our sect helping out. I was thankful to them, but wasn’t sure what I could give in return. What did I have to offer them? Absolutely nothing, that’s what.
I hadn’t seen Jack since I met with Grace and I was dying to do so. I had to record his history, and that wasn’t lost on me. My duty to fill the pages of the book literally called to me now that I knew my purpose, but I desperately wanted to see him for another reason.
The Librarian Page 10
