Sneaks

by B Button

  “No, Kally, never. I would never have hurt ye. I just wanted Ian to love me.”

  “He does.”

  “Aye, but he did love ye, ye canna deny it. I wouldna hurt ye, though. Never.” She stood and hurried away. I’d have to work on my relationship with her.

  I just wanted Mac to get home, but I was glad Maisie had found the courage to talk to me – glad and a little freaked out. Learning who had been following me was like adding the last piece to a puzzle. Once a puzzle is complete, aren’t you supposed to move on to the next one or start the first one over? There was something wrong, somewhere. I just didn’t know where.

  I spread out the burlap and waited. Surprising even myself, I fell asleep. The next thing I knew, someone was pulling at my sleeve.

  “Kally, wake up, lass. I’m home.” Mac’s voice brought me directly out of my sleep and straight into the air. I wrapped my arms around him and let him lift me off the ground.

  “Ah, now that’s a welcome,” he purred in my ear.

  “I really missed you.” I didn’t mention that my imagination had made me worried that he’d been eaten by dragons, or wolves or whatever other creatures roamed around 18th century Scotland.

  “I can tell.”

  He put my feet down on the ground and kissed me lightly.

  “I think you can do better than that.” I tightened my grip.

  Mac cleared his throat. “We have company.” He pointed to his left with his head. The front courtyard danced in shadows created by torches placed here and there, some stuck into the ground and some hung on the outside walls. I looked over and at first only saw a smaller, darkly shadowed figure. But the figure soon moved forward and I made out exactly who it was.

  “Berna? Berna. How are you?” I put my hand on her arm.

  She looked up at me with question and confusion but didn’t say anything.

  “I’d sent someone out to check on her some time ago, but I thought I should make sure she was well. I found her at her cabin. I dinna think she’s eaten much in some time. I fed her what little I had left and then she asked about ye. She begged me to bring her to ye,” Mac said.

  “Really? Why, Berna?”

  She peered from under a scarf that covered her head, and then she looked at Mac and back to me, shaking her head ever so slightly.

  “Oh. You don’t want to speak in front of Mac?”

  “Aye,” she said quietly

  “Uhm.”

  “Lass, ye should talk to the old woman, first. She kens about our plans and she wants to talk to ye before we get married.”

  No one else was around, making me think it was late, but I didn’t check the time as I helped her to the big front room and sat her gently on a chair. The lantern light inside was better than outside and when she took her scarf off, I could see the terrible shape she was in. There was little meat on her bones and her shriveled face was pale and pinched in disturbing folds.

  “Can you get her some food or something?” I said to Mac as I guided Berna to two facing small couches.

  “Aye, of course.”

  “I’ll be fine if ye could just get me some water and maybe some soup.” Berna’s voice didn’t sound as weak as she looked.

  “Talk to her, Kally.” Mac left the room.

  “What do you need to tell me?”

  “Ye need to go home, lass.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Tonight, this night, ye need to go home.”

  “I am home, Berna.” Tears blurred my eyes. The sense of dread was turning into something real and I didn’t want to face it.

  “Yer mother is ill, lass. She needs ye.”

  My gut bottomed out and my breathing became shallow. My mother was ill?

  “What’s wrong with her?” I asked weakly.

  Berna shrugged one shoulder. “I dinna ken for sure. But ye need to see her.”

  “Kally, what is it?” Mac ran into the room.

  I looked at him, the complete horror of the moment tugging my features in a thousand different directions.

  “Ye screamed. What is it?” Mac demanded.

  I didn’t know I’d screamed, but I wasn’t surprised.

  “Mac,” I said. My eyes were blurry and my head was beginning to hurt.

  He hurried to me. “What did ye say to her?” he asked Berna.

  Berna remained silent.

  “She said that I need to go home. Go back to my mother, that my mother is sick,” I said numbly.

  “I dinna understand. Ye need to go back to . . . yer time, yer mother?”

  “Yes, that’s what she said.” I nodded toward Berna.

  “What? How does she ken? What does she ken anyway?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Berna, tell us what ye ken. Ye ken Kally is from another time?”

  She nodded.

  “How do ye ken about her mother?”

  Berna looked at me.

  “I told him everything, Berna,” I said.

  Her eyes opened wide for a moment but then her entire body relaxed. “Aye, I suppose I ken ye would.”

  She rocked her small body for two beats and sighed heavily. “I canna tell ye much. I ken about traveling through time. I ken about the pendants,” she nodded at my throat, “and I ken yer mother is ill, but that’s all. If ye dinna go home now, ye might miss yer chance to say goodbye. It is yer choice, though.”

  “That’s not much of a choice,” I said.

  Berna shrugged.

  “If I go home now, will I come back on my next birthday?”

  “I dinna ken.”

  “Will sixteen years pass here to one of mine?”

  “I dinna ken.”

  “Berna, you seem to know very little. Surely, you don’t know anything about my mother.” I wanted to make sense of what was happening, and suddenly it felt like I was grasping at vapors.

  She stood. “Take my hand.”

  “Why do ye want her to take yer hand?” Mac asked.

  “If she takes my hand with one of hers and then touches her pendant, ye will both see that I wasna telling falsehoods. Touch her arm, lad.”

  Mac and I glanced at each other. He didn’t want me to do it, but I couldn’t resist. He touched my arm. I reached forward and held her small, withered hand in mine. Then I reached up to the pendant and touched it lightly.

  I could feel the transformation as much as I could see it. The air changed and the light, and the very space. And then suddenly, we were no longer in a torch-lit castle, but in an electrically lit room that smelled of antiseptic. It was a hospital room and my mother was in the bed with tubes attached to her and running in different directions.

  “Kally, what is this, what is happening?” Mac asked.

  “I’m not sure, but that’s my mother.” The tears started again.

  “What’s all that on her?”

  “She’s sick. She’s in a hospital and she’s hooked up to machines. Oh, Berna, what is wrong with her?”

  “I’m not sure, but I think it’s pneumonia.”

  Berna’s voice had changed. She’d changed too. She’d turned into someone from my time, someone in their forties, maybe. She was still small, but she was blonde and pretty and she didn’t speak with an accent.

  “Berna?”

  “Yes, Kally, this is how I look in your time. It’s hard to explain, but this is the age I am in 2185. Some of us travel to many different places and are many different ages. I recently met your mother.”

  “How?”

  “At the restaurant. I figured I was sent there to help her understand your travels. She and I had just been getting to know each other when she got sick. I haven’t had a chance to tell her I know you.”

  “Och,” Mac hissed through his teeth. “This is …this is not believable, Kally.”

  “I know, Mac, I know. But this is where I am from. This is my time, in a hospital. And that’s my mom.” I thought my heart might spring a fatal leak it hurt so much seeing her in the bed.

  “You
have to go back, Kally,” Berna said.

  “Of course.” There was no sense that I could reach out and touch her face or push the strand of hair off her forehead. We were there with her, but we were still distant and part of something that didn’t belong. “I love you, Mom.”

  “For now, take your fingers off the pendant, Kally,” Berna said.

  I did and the warp we’d created in time and space or whatever, unwarped. We were back in the castle and Berna was back to old and feeble.

  Mac took me in his arms and held on as I cried more. He knew, of course he knew how difficult this was going to be. How do you decide which love you are supposed to go toward? I, honestly, couldn’t see betraying either Mac or my mother.

  “Ye’ll go back, Kally. Ye’ll go back to her tonight and she’ll be better. Ye must.”

  I cried harder. Yes, he was right, I was going back. I couldn’t face any other decision.

  “I’ll wait for ye, Kally. I’ll wait forever if I have to.”

  “They . . .” I wanted to say that they wouldn’t allow him to wait, they would make him marry Isla, but that wasn’t fair.

  “I’ll decide for myself. I love ye, Kally. Just because ye’re not going to be here every day doesna mean this kind of love will go away. My love for ye is for all time.”

  “I love you, too, Mac.”

  “Come along now. Come along.” He tilted my face and smoothed back my hair. “This will be fine, lass.” And then his voice broke. He cleared his throat and blinked before looking back at my eyes. “We’ll be fine. Here, I have something for ye. I was going to give it to ye at the wedding, but now’s better.” He reached into the pouch on his kilt and pulled out a ring, a thin silver band, simple and ordinary and beautiful. He took my ring finger and slipped it on. “I love ye. Come back when ye can.”

  I looked at the ring, but I couldn’t see a thing because of the deep pool of tears blocking my eyes. “It’s so perfect. Thank you. Oh, Berna, can he come with me?”

  “No. He wasna supposed to do what I just allowed, even see yer time. He canna travel, too.”

  “Oh, Mac.” I plastered myself to him. He wrapped his arms around me and held on tightly. “I wish we were already married.”

  All we had left was hope. Hope that my mother would get better and we’d be together again one day.

  “Oh, Mac,” I said, but without wails this time.

  He pulled back and then looked at me with fierce eyes. “Ye’ll come back to me, Kally. I ken ye will.”

  I nodded.

  He bent down kissed me, bold and brave. I wanted to believe that kiss.

  “I don’t know how I can do this,” I said.

  “Ye just have to,” Mac said.

  “Can I have one more day, Berna?”

  “I dinna think it would be wise,” she said.

  “There’s so much I want to say, to tell Mac and the others.”

  “I ken yer words, thoughts and every feeling ye’ll ever have, Kally. I’ll tell them,” Mac said.

  “Oh,” I muttered. “I will miss you so much”

  “I will miss ye, too, but ye will be back.” He sounded so sure, so strong.

  “We need to go,” Berna said as she came beside us and touched my arm. “I sense that yer mother needs ye badly, Kally.”

  “We?”

  “Aye, I’m coming with ye.”

  “You are?”

  “Aye.”

  “Ye need to go, lass,” Mac said, his voice breaking again. “We ken that. I love ye. If something happened to yer mother because ye stayed here, I wouldna want to live myself. Ye must go.” He took a step backwards. That one step was as wide as a universe.

  “I love you, too.” The wailing began to form in my chest again. How was I supposed to do this? Why was something this difficult being asked of me? And now?

  “I can’t.”

  “Aye, ye can.”

  Berna grabbed my hand and then reached to my neck with her other one.

  “Hold on, lass,” she said as she pulled, and the chain came clean apart.

  *****

  He was gone. I was home.

  *****

  My mother’s illness trumped the pool of shock and grief I wanted to immerse myself in.

  She had pneumonia, a terrible case of it, plus some other infections that fought every antibiotic they gave her. Before I’d come home, she’d practically died twice. As I waited at her bedside and spoke to her mostly unconscious body, I almost lost her once. But as I continued speaking, and hoping, she slowly came back to normal.

  “Kally, is that really you?” she said one day, two weeks after I’d come back and five months after my seventeenth birthday.

  “Mom!” I rushed out of the hospital chair and to her side.

  “You’re home. How was your trip?”

  “I’m very glad to be with you.” I laughed.

  “I’m still in the hospital?” she asked.

  “Yes, Mom. Shh, get some more rest. I’m right here.”

  And with that, she fell asleep, but not into unconsciousness. And then she spent more time awake. Each day she improved, but still, by the time I took her home, she wasn’t all the way back to normal.

  We lived off Govment assistance, which was barely enough to get by, but my friends from the black market made sure we had food and clean water. And Mr. Bellini stopped by almost every other day to check on her.

  He became a friend like no other I’d had in my time. I trusted him. Every day he was there I told him a little more of my travels through time. He’d listen intently and then make sure my mom had fresh soup and some black market vitamins.

  Mom asked me numerous times to tell her about my trip, but I couldn’t bring myself to share the story. Just the thought of it hurt too much. I’d hidden the ring and the carved horse, but I took them out every night and put them under my pillow while I slept.

  Berna disappeared quickly after we returned. I was angry at her; surely she could have stuck around and given me more information. I didn’t know where to reach her.

  I knew time took care of these things. Time, I would laugh to myself. Wasn’t that what this was all about, anyway? Time that couldn’t play in the straight line that I thought it did. Time, my enemy and my longingly missed travel companion. I’d found a way to escape into my clocks, after all, or at least into the time they represented.

  Once my mom was well and I didn’t have her to focus on, I trudged through the days, doing the things I was supposed to do, all the while pulling my thoughts from Mac’s probable passing birthdays and, of course, if he’d married Isla.

  I didn’t know if or when the darkness that surrounded me so relentlessly would finally let go and just let me live my life. And, of course, my mom wondered the same thing.

  *****

  “Kally,” Mom called down into the hatch. “Come up here.”

  I pulled my concentration from the depths of the small clock I was working on. I didn’t want to go upstairs. I didn’t ever want to go anywhere but my shop.

  Mom’s voice sounded again, but she was talking to someone else. We had company? I didn’t want my room to be found so I hurried up the ladder, closed the hatch and went into the front room.

  Mr. Bellini was there, and he had someone with him.

  “Berna?” I said.

  “You know each other?” Mom said to me.

  “Sort of,” I said.

  “Yes. Abigail, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. I was going to but you got sick,” Berna said.

  “Where have you been?” I asked.

  “Waiting for your next birthday to get closer. I didn’t think it was worth tormenting you until you might be able to travel again.”

  “Why are you two here together?” I said.

  Mr. Bellini stepped forward. He was hunched but there seemed to be a spring in his step. “When you told me about your adventures and about her, I tracked her down. It was with her help that I . . . well, we found something that might be useful. I
convinced her to come with me today so we could show you.”

  “Kally, I need to know what’s going on,” Mom said sternly. I’d told Mr. Bellini, Berna knew just about everything, but I hadn’t told the story to my mom. She still didn’t know about . . . everything. Telling her would have made it real in a way that telling Mr. Bellini didn’t.

  “Abigail, can she tell you on the way?” Mr. Bellini said. “We have to be somewhere in half an hour or we lose our opportunity.”

  “Opportunity for what?” Mom said.

  “To learn some of why Kally travels to 18th century Scotland,” Berna said.

  It was too tempting to turn down, even if she was mad.

  “Let’s go,” she said, her voice still stern.

  Mr. Bellini led us back to his small house around the corner. We went in the front door and followed him to where I thought we might go out the back door. But we didn’t. Instead, next to the back door, hidden within the patterned wallpaper I’d noticed before was a hidden door.

  “I’d appreciate it if none of you tell on me. The Govment wouldn’t be happy with my secret passageway.”

  We all nodded, wide-eyed that this old man has a secret passageway. Did most people have secret rooms or passageways? Had the Govment’s strict rules driven us all to this?

  Once the door popped open, Mr. Bellini led us down a dark stairway.

  “There are ten steps; watch yourselves,” he said as we made our way.

  Once at the bottom, he flipped on a flashlight and pointed it down a long, dark tunnel.

  “This will take us around the black market and to the basement of what used to be the old library. Kally, you haven’t heard of a library, I’m sure, because no one is allowed to do much research anymore, but Berna and Abigail, you probably have.”

  I saw them both nod.

  “Good, well, Berna, you come with me. We’ll let Kally and her mom trail behind us and Kally can tell her about her last trip to Scotland.”

  Before long, we were off, walking carefully over the uneven cement floor. It was cool and damp and mostly dark in the tunnel. As we walked we could hear muffled noises from above and some to our sides, but Mr. Bellini assured us we would be fine – if we got to our destination within the next twenty minutes.