by Rose Lerner
“I give you my word that I’ll still be here,” he said solemnly.
“You know, I bet you’re not the first guy to say that in this room. Or the hundredth.” Sam pulled the chain, sending them into darkness. “You probably say it better than the others did, though.”
She lay down and pulled the remaining bedding up to her chin. Without a pillow, with only one blanket, and with a dozen new ideas to work into her world, still she went almost instantly to sleep.
* * *
Sam didn’t wake up with a plan. She barely believed her memory when she did wake, except that Talathan, true to his word, was right where she’d left him. He looked asleep, but when Sam sat up and the springs creaked, he opened his eyes and made an inquiring noise deep in his throat.
“Go back to sleep,” she said. The sight and sound of him had knocked half the breath out of her, not to mention stirring things further down than her lungs. It was morning, she probably looked like death, and he was lying there only a bowtie away from being Cary Grant. Life was not fair. “I’ve got to get you clothes before you can go out. An owl in daytime would be almost as odd as the outfit you’ve got now.”
“Do I not need to accompany you?” he asked, not yet rising.
“No. I can’t promise they’ll fit great, but I couldn’t promise that anyhow.” God knew hers didn’t win any prizes. One of her blouses would still pass muster, but she’d lost two buttons off the other, and the hem of her skirt was coming down again.
“Ah,” said Talathan, and closed his eyes again.
Sam didn’t know if he actually went back to sleep. For all she knew, he was watching her as she washed and dressed. His eyes were still closed when she looked back over her shoulder, but that didn’t mean they were always shut. The idea gave her a thrill in the pit of her stomach, and she pulled her bra into place over nipples hard from more than just the chilly room.
It was a stupid idea. He was probably used to prettier girls. Titania. Marie Antoinette. Helen of Troy, maybe.
“How old are you?” she asked, when she came back with clothing.
“I couldn’t tell you truly.” Talathan had been, incongruously, sitting on her bed and leafing through Photoplay. He was wearing his weapons again. “Time runs differently between the worlds.”
“Well, what’s the earliest part of this one you remember?”
“England, in the time of its first queen. The one with red hair,” he said, glancing at Sam’s own pinned-back curls.
“I don’t guess that we’re related, even if I am bossy.” She handed the clothes over. “Here. You can maybe fit your, um, accessories in the suitcase, I think. Or—”
“The weapons are bound to me. I can send them away, though I couldn’t then retrieve them quickly.”
“I don’t think you’ll need them. A fight breaks out here, either you’re going to win anyhow or it won’t matter—I mean, I’m sure you’re good, but a sword won’t be a lot of help against a Chicago typewriter. A gun,” she corrected, when he looked blank. “And you’re not bulletproof, right?”
“I’ve not tested it,” he said, looking interested, “but no, I doubt it. It takes a great deal to truly kill us, but we do hurt, and we do bleed.”
Sam nodded, finding very little to say to that. “Better send the armory off, then. I’ll try not to start any fights while you’re around.”
Talathan touched a hand to the hilt of his sword and concentrated. The air around it shimmered, the way the air above the beach had done when he arrived, and then the sword was just gone. While Sam stood trying to pick her jaw up off the floor, he did the same with the bow and arrows.
Gawking didn’t sit well with Sam—made her feel like a tourist—but there were times when you just couldn’t help it, and you might as well throw yourself into the moment. She whistled. “Quite a trick, mac.”
“Getting them back is far less simple, yet I thank you.”
“I promise, I’ll slip you a knife if it looks like we’ll get in trouble.”
Talathan quirked a brow. “Do you carry many knives?”
“I’ll find one.” She glanced at the sunlight coming in through the window, then at her battered wristwatch. “I’d better pay so we can hit the road. I’ll wait for you downstairs, under the sign. Just stick your clothes in the suitcase, when you’ve changed, and bring the whole thing down. It shouldn’t be too heavy.”
“No, I doubt it.” He met her eyes, his shifting from hazel to green and back in the light, and smiled slowly. “I wouldn’t ask you to leave, if you’d enough time to wait. You were kind enough to let me stay.”
Until the last sentence, she was reconsidering it. “Better to pay before they start knocking on doors,” Sam said, and then grinned at him. If he was teasing, she could tease back. If he was innocent, she still might as well enjoy the moment. “Besides, you shouldn’t trust my honor. I don’t.”
* * *
Later, downstairs, there were the promised flapjacks and coffee. First they went to the post office. Sam stuffed half her take from the previous night into an envelope, wrote her name across the back and the usual address on the front, and shoved it into the mailbox.
“Do people depend on you?” Talathan asked.
In a faded blue suit, his wrists just a little too long for the cuffs, he at least was easier to talk to. His straw hat shadowed his face as well as hiding his ears. That helped, too. And it wasn’t like she had to hide anything from him, or like he was going to be around for very long.
“Mom, Pop, the twins, and my kid brother.” Sam said. “My folks wouldn’t like to say depending, but it helps.”
“Are they far away?”
“The family’s in Kansas. Mostly. Joey’s in Illinois these days. It’s healthier for a kid.” She laughed. “It’s healthier for everyone, but the rest of ’em are big enough to stick it out at home.”
As usual in a California summer, the sun was bright, and she was glad to get into the diner she’d spotted earlier. She was also glad to put the conversation on the back burner while they found seats and ordered. Talking was fine. Explaining the last five years didn’t come easy. Too much had happened. Too much was still sore.
“How come you’re here now, anyhow?” she asked, both stalling for time and curious. The diner was mostly deserted, and their booth was right at the back. “I mean, did you draw a short straw or what?”
“I was—likely am—out of favor at court,” Talathan said, with the stillness of face that on a human man would have meant the subject was touchy. Then he lightened up. “And I have some interest in this place, and what comes to pass here.”
Oh, good. A tourist. A helpful, likeable, good-looking tourist, but a tourist anyhow, and so Sam couldn’t keep an edge out of her voice when she replied.
“I can’t deny it’s been interesting. Especially in the last couple years.” She put a forkful of pancakes in her mouth, chewed without tasting more than a faint sweetness, and swallowed. “We used to have farms, east of here. The land dried up about six years back. Then it started blowing away. Big storms. Like midnight in the middle of the day. Lightning, sometimes. There aren’t any crops. There isn’t anything for the stock to eat. The dust gets in your lungs and old people, or sick people, or kids die of it sometimes. So. That’s that.”
Talathan listened, quiet and unreadable. Only when Sam had picked up her coffee did he speak. “So you left.”
“I was the oldest. Dad’s got a bum leg. I figured we all had a better chance if I took off.”
“And how do you live?”
The waitress was having a very noisy argument with the cook: sounded like personal business. Still, Sam lowered her voice. “Gambling. Cheating at gambling. Running other games when I need to.” Talathan’s eyes were impassive. He ate without seeming to judge, or even to react; he could’ve been an animated statue. “I wasn’t cheating when I won the flute,” Sam added.
“Ah.” He considered her clothing and the prices on the menu. For sure he was rem
embering the hotel room, too. “Why not?”
“Same reason I’m not switching your gold for real money. They were decent guys. So are most storekeepers. I’m no angel,” she said, echoing back his words from the night before, “but I’m no devil either. Not entirely. Everyone’s gotta live.”
Sam shrugged and looked back down at her food, then traced patterns in the syrup with a fork. She’d never put her code into words before. She’d never needed to. Having spoken it aloud, she couldn’t meet Talathan’s eyes.
His voice came as a welcome shock. “The food here is well made. The drink—grows on the drinker, I would imagine.”
“You might say.” She looked up again. “You might also try sugar. Or milk. Or both. I don’t like ’em, but plenty do.”
Even in the suit, he moved with grace and a certain heightened quality. A motion as simple as adding sugar to his coffee drew the eye to the long lines of his fingers, the quick economy with which he handled container and spoon, the way his hand curved around the cup. All were things Sam had watched every day, or done herself. None were significant. All looked like steps in a dance.
She cleared her throat. “We’re doing better. The government started paying folks to try new ways of farming, and gave the twins part-time jobs sewing. But they’re still in school—and now the bank’s calling in its loan.”
“I apologize,” Talathan said, “but while I know that this is dire, I don’t know why, or what it means.”
“It—it’s complicated.” Sam looked out the window. It was a nice small town outside. The hotel had been seedy, but that was a few blocks away. Here there were small houses and shops: the whole white-picket-fence scene. “What it comes down to is, if I don’t get five hundred by the end of the month, we lose the farm. And I still don’t know how I manage that.”
She sipped coffee mindlessly, letting her eyes relax and her gaze travel over neat yards and small houses, until a white shape in the background caught her eye: a church steeple. A switch turned in her mind.
“Although I think I might have an idea. If you wanted the coach to turn back into a pumpkin at ten thirty-five, could you manage that?”
“Lift the glamour ahead of time? Of course.”
“Good. Now I might have a plan. It’s going to take supplies, though—and a couple bus tickets.”
Part 2: The Marquis of Carabas
* * *
At the end of Reverend Richards’s service, a slim girl made her way through the crowd. A blue-and-white checked skirt and a white blouse, both made of crisp cotton, outlined her figure while staying, for the time and place, modest; she topped her neat red curls with a blue feathered hat, which matched both purse and shoes, and she wore clean white gloves. To men, she’d look appealing, while not particularly memorable, and wholesome; to everyone, she’d look quietly, tastefully prosperous.
In that, she blended in well with the crowd. A few poorer souls clustered at the back, but for the most part the reverend’s flock looked neat, clean, well fed, and, while not quite up to Sam’s new standard, fairly well dressed—as far as Talathan could determine from what he’d seen of the world. The plate going around in the middle of the service probably kept out those who needed the money for material survival. Theoretically, nobody had to give; practically, the eyes of neighbors were a force in themselves.
Nor had the reverend’s sermon discouraged such an outlook. He’d dwelt long on the supposed end of the world and the sins of the modern age; with some venom he’d mentioned the “pits of sin” where men “squandered their wages”; he’d hinted, broadly, that those without sufficient faith would be damned and that the best way to show faith was with a cash contribution. As the plate had gone around, he’d also cured a man on crutches and a blind girl, after both had confessed to lives of considerable iniquity and dramatically repented.
Talathan had volunteered for his service, in part, out of desire to see how the world would change from generation to generation. Richards seemed a sort that only shifted appearance.
He watched as Sam approached the reverend and his wife, part of a smaller, more enthusiastic group than the mass leaving the church. He couldn’t see her face, but he knew the expression that would be on it: she’d demonstrated for him while they’d worked out the plan. Her eyes would be wide, her mouth open, one hand toying with the buttons of her gloves.
“Sincere and earnest,” she’d said. “The complete rube. It’ll go with the clothes.”
The wardrobe had cost a fair amount of her remaining “take”, from what Talathan could tell, plus an hour in three different shops. Most of the rest had gone for two bus tickets, then the five-dollar bill she’d slipped onto the plate, because “people notice these things. My ma and my aunts always did.”
She had spent two nickels on a movie, After Office Hours. They’d had time to kill before the bus ride, she’d said, and popcorn was filling, and so they’d spent two hours sitting in a dark room while pictures moved on a huge screen in front of them. He’d learned much of the world as it was, both from the main attraction and from the newsreel preceding it. Not all of it lay comfortably on his mind.
The strap of Sam’s purse fell down her arm. She pulled it back up and grimaced, looking across the crowd and meeting Talathan’s eyes as she did so. That was the signal; it was time.
He passed smoothly through the crowd, perceiving gaps and sliding into them, until he brushed past Sam. As quick as one of the silath would have been, she passed him her bag, then quickly stepped forward. “Reverend, I beg your pardon for disturbing you, sir,” she said, all upraised white hands and pleading eyes.
Richards, a sturdy square man with white-blonde hair and no chin to speak of, wasn’t immune to the vision of beauty in distress, or perhaps he’d noticed the second five-dollar bill Sam was clutching in one hand. “I always have time for the faithful,” he said. “What can the Lord and I help you with?”
“Well, I know you had the collection earlier, and I gave there too, but I wanted to give you this personally,” Sam said, handing over the bill. “You see, my father’s—well—” She bit her lip and looked down. “He’s doing real poorly, and the doctors say they can’t do anything, and you healed that little girl, you know, so I was just hoping…”
She trailed off.
“Of course, child.” Richards deftly pocketed the bill. “Why don’t you tell me your father’s name, and I’ll get to work praying for him this very evening. I’ve had plenty of folks who absolutely mystified all the doctors, the way they recovered.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yes. Doctors think they know everything, but we know better, don’t we?” He winked.
Sam managed a tremulous smile. “That’s awfully nice of you, Reverend. I’ll—I’ll write down his name for you, and our address too, if that’d help.”
That was Talathan’s second cue. He let the purse strap fall into his hand, leaving the bag out and clearly visible, then turned and started running.
The key, Sam had said, was to be moving before she screamed. It looked more genuine that way.
* * *
“My purse!” Sam fluttered her hand from her waist up to her shoulder, checking for a strap that wasn’t there, and pitched her voice high and alarmed. She widened her eyes and rounded her mouth. “It was here a moment ago,” she went on, turning. Then she screamed and pointed. “Oh! Oh, someone stop that man!”
Greta Garbo could have done better, but Sam thought she put on a good show. Heads turned, anyhow. A couple of would-be heroes dashed toward the back of the church, following her gesture and then Talathan’s running figure. She bit her lip and clasped her hands, which didn’t take much effort. She was nervous, just not for the reason she wanted everyone to think.
“I must apologize most sincerely,” said Reverend Richards, patting her on the shoulder. “I never thought anyone would be so low as to steal in a house of God, but I have clearly not thought low enough of our wicked age.”
“You poor dear,” sa
id his wife, gray-brown ringlets bobbing under her hat. “But I’m sure one of those brave men will catch the scoundrel.”
Talathan reached the church door well ahead of his pursuit. “Few men are my equal for speed” hadn’t been overselling it, apparently, and he’d also done better at dodging bodies than the men chasing him, both solid fellows. One of them came back a few minutes later, Sam’s purse in one hand.
“He dropped this outside, miss. I’m afraid we didn’t catch up with him.”
“Well, thank you anyhow,” she said, taking the purse eagerly.
Inside her head, she counted: so many seconds to open the clasps, letting her fingers shake, putting a tiny nervous smile on her lips. One shocked moment of frozen expression as she—and everyone else nearby who cared to look—saw the inside, empty save for a much-folded sheet of paper, a train ticket, and a handful of loose change.
The world ticked around her. Sam waited for the first murmur, shocked and sympathetic. Then she put a hand to her mouth, almost but not quite cutting off her cry of dismay.
“You had more money, didn’t you?” the reverend asked. “Or did he take a personal item?”
“Money,” she said, feebly. “Not a whole lot, only fifty dollars, but—but—”
Try as she might, Sam had never been able to make herself cry. She settled for swallowing hard and closing her eyes. The reverend’s hand returned to her shoulder. “You’d better have a seat,” he said.
One of the helpful men brought over a chair. Sam collapsed into it, elbow on knee and hand over her eyes. Around her the murmuring grew. A few people had heard only fifty dollars and were extrapolating. She hadn’t looked at the reverend when she said it, but he might have been one of them.
“You’d better take a deep breath,” said Richards, “and tell me your troubles. Could be they’re not as bad as they seem.”
“I…” Sam said, and gulped. A count of three, and then she raised her head and spoke in one big wobbly rush. “I’m not supposed to go back home for a week, and that money was supposed to pay for a room, and I have to stay in town because Daddy’s depending on me to meet with his business partners. And I just can’t tell them, not with Daddy in his condition. And I know I should’ve gone to the hotel first thing, only I saw the sign and I just had to come here, and now I don’t know what to do!”
