A Sword in Time

by Cidney Swanson

  “It’s been like this for three days,” said DaVinci. “Yesterday, Yoshi tried using a leaf blower to see if he could clear it away.”

  “Of course he did,” said Halley, a single gruff laugh escaping her throat. “I swear, someone should do a reality show on your family.”

  Halley had said this often, and normally DaVinci played along, offering three or four other strange things her family had said or tried or done, but today she didn’t have it in her. Besides, how would she even know what her family had said or done lately?

  “Do you want to go inside or stay out here?” Halley asked quietly. “It’s fine by me if we stay outside. I got a little queasy on the curves, with the fog shrouding everything.” Halley placed her hands on her hips and looked over to the house, shaking her head. “I can’t believe how long it’s been.”

  DaVinci frowned. How long had it been? She didn’t know what Halley had been doing in this time line any more than she knew what she’d been doing. She hugged her arms around her torso as if she could keep it together, keep herself together, if she just squeezed tightly enough.

  “Oh,” said Halley. “I got you these. You know, to cheer you up.” Halley handed her a packet of gummy bears.

  “Um . . . thanks,” said DaVinci, puzzled by the gift. Why did everyone in her life think she suddenly liked gummy bears?

  “You know,” said Halley, “someday you have to tell us what it is with you and gummy bears.”

  DaVinci had to tell Halley? Yeah. She would get right on that. As soon as she figured it out for herself. Just one more thing that was wrong with this time line.

  The two of them walked over to the boulder, looming large and dark in the shifting mists.

  “So?” Halley asked softly. “How are you doing?”

  DaVinci didn’t answer at first. She sat and picked gravel out of the treads of her shoe, like the solution to her problems was hiding in there.

  “We don’t have to talk about it,” said Halley. “Not if you don’t want to.”

  But she did want to.

  She released her shoe.

  “It’s like my life is this pair of jeans that doesn’t fit,” she said. “Like, clearance-item jeans, so you can’t return them,” she added glumly.

  “Huh,” grunted Halley. “Well, there’s a picture.”

  “I shouldn’t have done it,” DaVinci said, twisting a coil of hair that had slid over her eyes. Eyes that were filling with tears for the four hundredth time today. “You’re supposed to say I shouldn’t have gone back and messed with time.”

  Halley gave a sad half smile. “I might have done the same thing in your shoes.”

  “I couldn’t just stand there and do nothing,” said DaVinci. She swiped her eyes with her sleeves. She was so darned sick of tears. “I watched a Caterpillar tear the whole thing down,” she said, glancing back to the house. “I thought I had to witness it to . . . I don’t know . . . gather my courage or something. But it was so awful.” She shook her head. What else could she have done?

  Halley hooked an arm around DaVinci’s shoulder. “You saved your home. It’s here. It’s okay.”

  “My house is fine, but—” DaVinci groaned in exasperation. “Nothing else is. My life is a joke. I ruined everything, and I don’t even have a clue how I did it.”

  “Oh, DaVinci.” Halley’s eyes were large and sympathetic. “Not everything. You’ve got me and Jillian and your whole family—” Halley broke off, a sad smile forming.

  DaVinci understood. To Halley, her life seemed perfect. Parents who loved her. Two of them, no less. And all those siblings—DaVinci knew Halley would commit highway robbery for even one sibling. She had an entire freaking family who loved her, and in Halley’s view, that ought to have been enough.

  How could she begin to explain this . . . this aloneness? How lost she felt, and how cut off. A terrible thought struck her. Maybe in this time line, she and Halley had been drifting for years. Maybe they weren’t close anymore. How long had it been since they’d hung out?

  She squeezed her eyes shut. How would she bear it if she wasn’t close to Halley anymore? Or Jillian? Did she even know these alternate-time-line versions of her closest friends? DaVinci’s lungs compressed, and for a moment it felt as if all the air in the world had vanished.

  But then Halley passed her a fresh tissue.

  Squeezed her shoulder, tightly.

  Murmured that things were going to be okay.

  DaVinci realized she was being an idiot. Of course she and Halley were still close. Halley had left work the first chance she got, hadn’t she? No matter what DaVinci had done to the time line, Halley was here for her, like always.

  Her lungs began to work like lungs again, and then the words began to flow—a flash flood of words, like Cold Springs Creek swelling and exploding after heavy rains.

  “I know you’re right. I know I should be grateful for all of it—my family, my friends, this house I love so much, but the thing is, I don’t even feel like I’m me anymore, and that makes everything feel . . . wrong, like it’s not really my family or my house or my life. I don’t recognize myself. I don’t recognize this . . . this . . . anything! I’m not an art student at UCSB anymore—no, it’s worse: I’m not even in college, any college, and I somehow became this person who thought that working forty hours a week at a fish restaurant was a good idea. Like it didn’t even occur to me to, maybe . . . I don’t know . . . take a watercolor class at the community college? How could I suddenly not care about improving my art?”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” said Halley, frowning. “So, if I understand correctly, in the version of . . . of history as you know it, you were in college?”

  “Of course I was,” snapped DaVinci. How could Halley even ask the question?

  “Okay, okay. Sorry.” Halley held her hands up apologetically.

  “I got into UCSB with a big fat scholarship,” DaVinci continued. “I was placed in the honors program with a studio and everything. I won the Virginia R. Parrish Scholarship. Seven thousand a year for four years.”

  “You won the Parrish?” Halley looked confused. Or doubtful.

  DaVinci felt a flare of anger at the questioning look in her friend’s eyes. “You don’t think I could win the Parrish?”

  Halley fidgeted with some necklace DaVinci didn’t recognize and shrugged apologetically. “You told me you’d never in a million years have won the Parrish . . .”

  “I said that? In your world, I said those words?”

  Halley nodded.

  All at once, DaVinci felt herself deflating, a blow-up beach ball kicked one time too many. How had she become someone who didn’t believe in herself? She sank back against the boulder, its surface cold and rough and unforgiving.

  Everything was wrong.

  Wrong, wrong, wrong.

  She took a slow breath and watched the fog swirling overhead in six shades of white: lead-paint white, albuminous white, paste white, ash, argent, ivory. She released her breath. She needed to hear it. She had to know the truth. This version of the truth.

  “In your world—time line—whatever,” DaVinci said softly, “did I . . . did I at least try to get into UCSB to study art? In their . . . regular program?”

  Halley spoke in a murmur. “You don’t remember any of it? No—that was a stupid thing to say.” She frowned.

  “I can’t trust anything I know,” DaVinci said hollowly. “My brother isn’t supposed to be engaged, or is he? I’m working forty-hour weeks in a restaurant—or I was until I quit. How did I even find time to paint or weave or throw a pot in the last two years?”

  Halley’s frown deepened. “You don’t do any of those things anymore. You quit. You got into UCSB, but not into the art program you wanted. And then you dropped out midterm freshman year and just . . . stopped making art.”

  DaVinci felt her throat tightening. That couldn’t be right. In what possible world could she have stopped making art?

  The answer was right in front of her: i
n this world. In this time line.

  “I don’t understand,” she whispered. “All I did was pay a plumber to fix a leak.”

  “Khan’s second law of . . . something,” murmured Halley. “Unintended consequences.” She worried the chain of her necklace again. And then DaVinci noticed she wasn’t wearing her wedding ring.

  “Oh my God,” whispered DaVinci. Edmund hadn’t come with Halley. Were they not together anymore? She tried to remember if Halley had said a single thing about Edmund, but she couldn’t recall.

  She blurted out, “Are you and Edmund still married in this version of time?”

  A frown flickered over Halley’s face. “Yes, of course we’re married. You were there. There was roast peacock and Edmund’s younger self and—”

  “Then why aren’t you wearing your wedding ring?”

  Halley stared at her left hand. “I take it off when I do fine hand-sewing, so the prongs don’t catch on the fabric and ruin all my work. I must have forgotten to put it back on.”

  “Oh,” sighed DaVinci. “Thank goodness.” She fought back the tiny part of her that would have been ready to comfort Halley for her loss, to say encouraging things about independence and freedom—to have someone else in her life who was, well, doing life solo. She swallowed her selfish thoughts, tasting bitterness as they departed.

  “And Jillian?” asked DaVinci. “Is she still with Everett?”

  Halley rolled her eyes. “Surgically attached.”

  “At least I didn’t ruin anyone else’s life,” she said.

  “Just yours, it sounds like,” Halley replied softly. Her eyes were fixed on the drifting mist. DaVinci recognized her friend’s problem-solving face. “There must have been something,” said Halley. “Something you did that affected more than just the plumbing.”

  “But how am I going to figure out what it was, when I can’t trust anything I remember since 2016?”

  A horrible idea presented itself. According to Halley, she no longer painted in this time line. Would that mean her muscles would have “forgotten” how? Did her body contain the changes made within this time line? Skills involved complex muscle memory. Did her muscles have those original memories or not? Stop it, she told herself. They had to. She was being stupid.

  Halley interrupted her thoughts. “Maybe Jillian will have some ideas.”

  “Oh, trust me,” said DaVinci, pushing aside her fears about her muscles, “I have a long list of questions for her and Everett when they get here.”

  Halley frowned. “Jillian and Everett are coming here? Why?”

  “For my show next Saturday—” DaVinci stopped herself midsentence. She felt her mouth forming the shape of Oh, but no sound came out. It was the rug getting yanked out from under her feet again. Just one more fresh betrayal. Another thing that wasn’t real anymore. Angry tears burned behind her eyes.

  She balled her hands into fists. “Let me guess. I don’t have a show on Saturday anymore, do I?”

  Halley spoke softly. “Did you . . . used to have a show?”

  Swallowing her worthless tears, DaVinci nodded. “In my world, Jillian was coming out for it. And you—well, you took the movie set job in Santa Ynez instead of the New Mexico job because you would be able to come home for my show easier.”

  “I took the New Mexico job,” Halley said apologetically. Then she added, “It paid better.”

  Of course. Of course. If she didn’t have a show, of course Halley would have taken the higher-paying job.

  “So, yeah. I guess Jillian’s not coming,” said DaVinci. “She has no reason to in this version of reality.”

  “DaVinci . . .” Halley hesitated, twisting her necklace again. “This isn’t a ‘version’ of reality. Not to me. Or to anyone else, either.”

  DaVinci collapsed her head into her hands, elbows resting on her knees. Nothing made sense. And Halley was just sitting there accepting it, like it was possible for either of them to believe in a world where DaVinci no longer painted or wove tapestries or threw pots.

  “I’m sorry,” said Halley, “but you’re going to have to get used to this reality. My reality. Everyone’s reality.”

  “How?” DaVinci asked bitterly. “How am I supposed to get used to a reality where I’m not me?”

  Halley shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  DaVinci rose. Paced seven steps forward to where she knew the hill dropped away, even though she could barely see it. Heavy fog filled the canyon and the air above it, a sea of shifting mists.

  Halley couldn’t help her. Halley couldn’t even grasp how wrong everything was, how impossible it was for DaVinci to just “get used to this reality.” She was in this alone, just like always. Every freaking person in her life had someone they could count on, except for her. Even the twins, who didn’t have boyfriends, still had each other. And what did she have? She had a freaking house, and that was it, because she had somehow managed to trade everything that mattered in her life for this stupid, ugly, sunburn-pink house.

  “I’m on my own.” She hadn’t meant to say the words out loud, but they were out now, no taking them back. She hugged her arms around her chest.

  “How can you say that?” asked Halley, rising to join her. “I’m right here.”

  “But I’m the one who has to figure out what went wrong and fix it,” she said quietly.

  “DaVinci, listen. I mean . . .” Halley faltered. “Are you sure that’s wise?”

  DaVinci didn’t respond at first. The dank cold seemed to be seeping inside her. “Maybe I don’t care what’s wise,” she said curtly.

  “DaVinci.” Halley uttered her name like a verdict.

  After that, they were both quiet until Halley broke the silence. “You said you didn’t remember Yoshi getting engaged, right?”

  DaVinci nodded. She stared into the fog, squinting, trying to find something she could focus on within the shifting whites.

  “What if you go back and fix things and something else goes wrong? You’ve already proven that the actions you take can affect other people.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with Yoshi getting engaged,” DaVinci said tersely.

  “Fine. But what if it had gone the other way? What if Yoshi had broken up with Ana because of what you did? How would that feel?”

  How would it feel? Halley’s words pierced her, stoking a cold fire that ignited, and then, just as swiftly, died back to a thin wisp of smoke, to nothing at all. Suddenly freezing, DaVinci sank to the ground and hugged her knees to her chest, her head falling forward onto her knees.

  She wanted to say she didn’t care. She wanted to say it didn’t matter, not compared to what she was going through. She wanted to say these things, but she couldn’t. A tear of frustration splashed the dirt between her legs.

  After that, neither of them spoke for a long time. DaVinci waited for Halley to rise. Waited for the sound of her friend walking back to her car. Starting the ignition. Driving away. But Halley just kept on sitting beside her. Kept on not leaving her. Eventually DaVinci raised her head. The air had begun to warm, and the fog had thinned to the point that DaVinci could see a ghostly outline of the tallest sycamore in the canyon. The one where Kahlo had broken her arm trying to get close to a bird’s nest. At least, in DaVinci’s memory, Kahlo had broken her arm. But who knew if it had happened in this time line? The nest was still there, looking abandoned, unkempt, twigs dangling from its near side.

  She felt like that, abandoned, with her twigs dangling.

  “I don’t know how to keep living like this,” she said, breaking the long silence.

  Halley turned. “You don’t know how to live here in this time line? Or here in Montecito?”

  “Both, I guess.” The feeling was cold and unassailable—the feeling that this wasn’t her life. That even if it was her life, she didn’t belong inside it. DaVinci dropped her chin until it rested on her knees. She noticed paint spots on her shoes, mocking her from another life—a life where she’d been working on a commissioned mur
al.

  “I don’t know what to do,” she whispered.

  Halley scooted closer and DaVinci leaned her head against Halley’s shoulder. “I just don’t know what I should do,” she repeated.

  “Wanna hear what I think?” Halley asked gently.

  DaVinci nodded.

  “I think there are too many things here reminding you of . . . of who you might have been. If things had been different.”

  If things had been different.

  “Come on,” said Halley. “We’re calling Jillian. Her catering job ended yesterday, and she’s got one of those foldout couches in her apartment in Florida. I don’t know what the answer is to your problems, but I’m pretty sure you could use a change of scenery.”

  DaVinci nodded. It was easier than arguing. And really? She didn’t know anymore what she needed. She only knew that she hurt.

  Halley got on the phone, and in less than an hour, the trip was arranged.

  “Jillian got you a ticket in first class,” Halley said.

  DaVinci managed a half-hearted smile. “Some things never change.”

  Halley gave her a quick hug. “Come on. Let’s get you packed.”

  DaVinci rose. She had no classes, no job, no life. Her show had been nixed out of existence. She might as well go. It wasn’t like she had anything better to do.

  One Month Earlier

  June

  22

  • LITTLEWOOD •

  Florida, June

  It was a busy afternoon for Arthur Littlewood, who had scheduled another trip to the Ancient Library of Alexandria. Quintus was proving very useful on these trips, speaking Greek like, well, the native son of the first century BC that he was.

  Littlewood examined his calculations for the upcoming journey, during which he hoped to recover certain lost writings of Aristotle. These were quick jobs: in and out in less than six minutes. Accurate insertion of his travelers was critical.

  Happily, his calculations checked out. Everything was ready ahead of schedule. It would be two hours until Everett and Quintus showed up to travel to ancient Alexandria. Littlewood was not traveling this time. There had been an . . . incident on another trip, and everyone had agreed it was better if Littlewood made no further journeys.