“I like that color on you, Petra,” he remarked. His color vision was as acute as mine, maybe more so. “You need to choose green more often.”
Looking down, I was pleased with the seamstress’s choice, since I’d given her carte blanche. She thought the color would bring out the green flecks in my hazel eyes. And she was right.
“The gowns will be ready, Miss Keaton, in time for your departure,” the seamstress remarked as she stepped back to gaze at her creation with thinly disguised satisfaction. Her voice was tiny, as was her body. But she was obviously a work horse by nature. True, she had one young girl who was an apprentice; the shop stayed busy with a good reputation in the upper crust districts. With a flourish, she produced a hat from a lovely hat box, which was covered in a tastefully understated floral pattern–and I confess I have a weakness for hat boxes–and displayed the creation of a milliner who partnered with her to produce hats to match gowns.
“At your request, she made a hat that is, well, neutral in color, and should be acceptable with most of your clothes.” The seamstress’s lips pressed together. “Although I might have preferred more diversity in the choices.”
I’d asked for a hat in oyster white that would cover less square footage than the current styles. It had the large, boxy crown that was typical of the day with a short, sassy brim. The designer had wrapped some lace netting in a slightly darker shade of ivory held in place by narrow ribbons—matching the various colors of gowns I’d be wearing—that were woven together. With that one, plus the larger bucket that I’d arrived in as well as the smaller one I’d purchased for traveling comfort, I should be set. After all, I was only looking at a five day span. And in any case, what did I care if the other passengers found me to be out of style and lacking in taste?
We four symbionts had found various ways to keep ourselves busy while waiting, and it was now edging into the last week of March. We only had a few days remaining before we would waylay Tristan and Meko at the train station and begin our finesse of J.P. Morgan. It would work or not, but Tristan had seemed extremely confident, based upon his relationship with the old man.
On that particular day, we’d split up. Peter and Elani wanted to travel to Regent’s Park, a place I would avoid since I had past relationships who tended to frequent that area of London. True, I had no idea which members of Harrow’s household might still be alive, but it was better safe than sorry. Unfortunately, Kipp and I would stand out too prominently, no matter where we went. The only thing we knew for certain was that Harrow and his nephew, Daniel, were still living in London if recorded history was accurate.
“You know you want to go,” Kipp said, shoving his head under my hand as we left the shop and threaded a path along the busy sidewalk. People naturally veered when they saw Kipp ahead, despite his sterling behavior.
“I don’t know, Kipp. Part of me does and the other part is afraid.” I sighed and nodded as a well dressed man tipped his bowler hat. Canvassing his thoughts, I acknowledged he found me attractive and preened inwardly, just a bit, as I smoothed out a nonexistent wrinkle in my jacket. I’m not exceptionally vain, but like any symbiont, I have my moments.
“Let’s do it, Petra. We don’t have to tell Peter or Elani or, for that matter, anyone else. This will be a good judge of whether time and distance has softened some of your feelings or not. You could be relieved and able to let go of some of these thoughts that have plagued you.” Kipp shoved his shoulder against my thigh, giving me a physical nudge for extra emphasis.
A large wagon rumbled past, pulled by a short team of large draft horses. Looking up, I admired their effortless labor, their cropped tails busy slapping their rumps. The man on the box was smoking a long, curved pipe and the aroma of burning tobacco filled the street. The smell of the horses and old dung that had collected against the curb while awaiting a sweeper took me back over my own four hundred year existence to marvel at the trajectory of humanity over a relatively short time. Although the comforts of contemporary life were many, a part of me missed the sound of wagon wheels striking the ground, along with the creak of harness leather and the weary voice of the driver coaxing his team to get a day’s work done.
“Okay,” I replied simply. Maybe Kipp was right, and I would benefit to see if my attempt to go home again would fail.
Since there was no need to tarry, I hailed a four wheeler driver who eagerly spied a potential fare in me from a block away. The driver hopped down from his box to give me an assist; I knew he did this not from altruism but in the hopes of a greater tip. I would oblige him, much to his delight. As the gently rocking carriage began to pick its way through the congested streets towards Whitechapel, I noticed familiar landmarks from my previous trip. Odd, that was now some twenty four years in the past, but many things seemed fixed in time, unchanged. While some store fronts and buildings seemed shiny and new, others looked old and used. I began to have misgivings, the farther east we traveled.
“It will be okay, Petra,” Kipp said, hopping from his perch on the opposite bench to squeeze in next to me. “This may be hard, but you need to face it.”
I sighed in response and let my eyelids drift shut. The tiny breeze from the moving carriage caressed my face; although the weather was cool, it seemed overheated in the small confines of the carriage. The deeper we pushed into the more densely populated areas of London, the greater the general sense of energy and chaos, however controlled, grew. Street vendors abounded, and I recalled, smiling, when during my previous trip I had asked my kind driver, John Parks, to stop and buy a vendor’s entire supply of pots and pans. Kipp laughed softly in the back of my mind.
“That was a good day,” he agreed, nudging his head up under the crook of my arm. “I wonder what happened to that street vendor and his poor family.” Kipp had a gentle nature, a degree of thoughtfulness that was beyond the ordinary.
Scratching the back of his neck, I said, “I think your mama did a good job.”
He glanced up at me, his ears swiveling for a moment, before he uttered my often remarked statement, “Ditto.”
We finally arrived at Whitechapel Road, and I called out to the driver to slow and stop his carriage a half a block from the building that housed William Harrow’s dream of a school for orphaned and wayward lads. The carriage was parked in such a way that I had a good view of the front. I instructed the driver I needed to wait for a while, and that I would pay him well for any missed fares. He seemed content to sit and doze, comfortably, on his box. The horse was happy, too, and after bobbing his head a little, settled down to wait.
“He has built on and made improvements since we were here,” Kipp noted. He tilted his head, which hung out of the carriage’s window. A young man walked by, his small terrier on a leash. The dog took note of Kipp and started to bark before his voice trembled off into a whimper as he managed to get himself tangled in his master’s legs. Dogs, with the exception of the Black Shuck wannabe, were typically wary of the lupines or, at the minimum, pretended a false aloofness that fooled no one.
Over the next hour, people arrived and left from the school, but there was no sight of Harrow or anyone else I might recognize from my 1888 time shift. I’d even hoped to see McNish, Harrow’s friend and former war comrade. Of course, he’d married, and there was no telling if he was even in London anymore. As the day stretched on, I became sleepy and felt my head nod, from time to time, only to jerk up with a start every time a heavily loaded lorry would rumble past or the laughter from a child would ring out.
“Petra, wake up,” Kipp’s urgent voice knocked on the back of my mind, rousing me from some bizarre dream where I was being chased by Black Shuck across a patch of sticky mud that kept sucking at my feet, trying to pull me underground. In the way of dreams, I realized that underground led to a nether world where red eyed demons dwelt. It was terrifying, and I knew I needed to awaken and leave that bad place.
Blinking my eyes, I sat up, my hand massaging my neck which was stretched at an unnatural angle whil
e I dozed. As my eyes focused, I stared at the front door of the school and felt my heart push up into my throat as it became difficult to swallow. On the front steps stood my William Harrow! On his timeline, twenty four years had passed since he’d told me goodbye and watched me leave, wondering if I’d come back to him. Yes, he finally recognized the odd reality that I was a time traveler, but his mind would only allow for some type of means of mechanized travel such as conceived by the agile mind of H.G. Wells. The concept of my being of a different species would have stretched the boundaries of imagination and tolerance too far, I feared. Kipp pushed even closer to me, his head crowding in the window as he sought to get a better view.
“He looks good; maybe his hair has some gray, but other than that, he looks the same,” Kipp remarked. “And that has to be Daniel next to him, all grown up now.”
Yes, the handsome, dark haired man standing to the left of Harrow had to be his nephew. I recalled the night Harrow and I jointly put Daniel to bed, when he was a young and fearful lad, and as Harrow’s eyes met mine, I realized the depth of his growing love for me. I took a deep breath, my trembling fingers becoming lost in Kipp’s fur.
As Harrow and Daniel began to walk along the sidewalk, I noticed, fondly, Harrow’s slight limp, a relic from his days serving England in the Afghanistan war. He kept his horrors private and didn’t share those days, but of course, I knew his thoughts and understood his pain. I suppose one can think of my ability to read his mind as either an unfair advantage or a gift. I chose to think of it as the latter.
“We better move,” Kipp said, nudging me out of my stupor. Harrow and Daniel were coming close.
With a soft call to the driver, I asked him to move on; he prodded the horse, and the carriage lurched forward. As we passed Harrow, I pushed back in the carriage as far as I could, turning my head away from the window. From the corner of my eye, I saw his head go up with interest at the passing vehicle. Harrow thought for a minute that he’d seen Kipp but then internally chided himself, knowing it was impossible for a dog to have lived that long. As his thoughts turned towards his memories of me, I was startled when Kipp threw up a mental block so that I could not access Harrow’s mind.
“You don’t need to go there,” Kipp said firmly. “It was enough to see him and register how you feel at this point in time.” He put his head in my lap and waited.
It took me a while to answer. “I feel just as I did the day I left him. It took all my control to not jump out of the carriage and run to him. I would leave everything and everyone, except for you, behind and stay here to live with a human, until the end of his days.” I didn’t realize, until Kipp’s fur became wet, that I was crying as I blurted out my feelings.
I was glad that it took some time to make our way back to The Dovecote since I needed to compose myself and let my puffy, red eyes recover to an extent. The traffic on the streets was thick, and the carriage was forced to stop several times to accommodate overcrowded trams as well as horse drawn drays and the occasional gas propelled passenger car. I made certain my driver was happy with the abundant tip I gave him for wasting much of his day and losing other potential fares.
“How did you two spend your day?” Peter asked. He and Elani were in their room, which was similar to ours except for the festive wallpaper and a worn stuffed chair covered in a faded toile pattern. We’d joined them so Peter could show off some of his new wardrobe. He’d also purchased a couple of trunks to carry our stuff and opened mine to show me all the compartments as well as the cloth lining. He carefully chose a cheerful coral shade for the lining of mine, thinking I’d like it. I did and it was thoughtful of him, which I acknowledged as his cheeks flushed.
“We just messed around,” Kipp replied, answering before I could. We’d jointly decided to keep our side excursion private.
“Are you okay, Petra?” Elani asked. Her pretty face tilted up towards me with concern. “You seem weary.”
“I think I am just a little tired. Kipp and I walked too much today,” I lied, blocking my other thoughts of distress from her, even though I knew she was too well civilized to pry beneath the surface.
“You know, I wish now that we’d spent another couple of days in Blythburgh,” Kipp said. He stretched on his back in a patch of sunlight that cast a dappled pattern on the large rug occupying the majority of the floor; he craned his head to stare at me, his jowls hanging loosely from the angle of the position. It was not his best look, but I didn’t have the heart to tell him so. “I’m not certain the Black Shuck legend is all local folklore and would have liked to determine for myself if such a creature exists.”
“There was no way to continue that experiment, since the locals decided to have some fun at our expense,” Peter remarked. “I have to admit, when you and Elani showed up with that big dog, I almost had a heart attack.”
If there was one thing I liked about Peter, it was his honesty. Many would not confess to having been duped to such a great degree and still find it humorous. But, it had been a great gag, all things considered. And Mrs. Higgins was understandably proud of her instrumental role and would no doubt repeat the story over and over for many years, how she played a magnificent joke on the naive Americans.
The boy who had been seeing to our needs arrived, bringing dinner. The savory smell of steak filled the room, and I thought Kipp was going to yank the piece of meat out of the boy’s hand. I was pleased to see some peas and carrots nestled up to tiny roasted potatoes on my plate; I’d not eaten since the previous evening and was hungry. Although the day had started bright, with a cheerful sun hanging lazily overhead, the sky had become congested with dark, water filled clouds that rushed in, crowding the far horizon. A distant rumble of thunder caused a porcelain plate resting on a table top to tremble and rattle against the wood surface. As we ate, I decided to outline our plan of action.
“We have been going pretty fast and furious for several weeks now. Since we’re about to move into high gear once we get on board the Titanic, I think we need to go into hibernation mode for a few days. We are supposed to meet Tristan and Meko on April 8th, and today is April 5th. So, let’s jointly agree to chill out until that time.” I could have just done that for myself, but as the elder knew it fell to me to rein in the youngsters who knew no boundaries to their energy and capabilities.
My species has a very slow metabolism that helps us survive times of starvation as well as other stressors. We also can put ourselves into a voluntary state of hibernation where we sleep for long periods, require no food and lapse in and out of somnolence. It is a good way to regenerate, especially following a time shift, since the very act of time travel wreaks havoc on our bodies as well as our minds. I was mildly surprised when Peter agreed with my plan and excused himself to speak to the desk manager to ask we not be disturbed.
As the rain began to fall, Kipp and I retired to our room. Moving to the window, I pulled the heavy brocade drapes closed and began to remove my traveling skirt and blouse. Hanging them carefully, I inspected the fabric and saw no sign of obvious soiling and figured they could air out for a couple of days. That left me in my chemise which was comfortable for sleeping. Unwinding my hair from the braid that had been secured to the crown of my head with a thousand hair pins, I ran a brush through the dark mass, enjoying the feel of the bristles as they scraped against my scalp. Kipp watched with a critical eye, his head tilted to one side.
“I’m sorry I suggested you see Harrow. I pushed you too much.” His face wore a contrite expression.
“It’s okay, Kipp. I did need to see him, I think. And after we hibernate, I’ll feel strong again.” I turned towards him, putting the brush down on the vanity dresser. “We’ve had a lot of traveling and the stress on us–me–has built.” I smiled wanly. “Actually, I was glad to see him. It was exciting and made me happy as well as despairing, all at once.” I climbed into bed, pulling the covers up to my chin, enjoying the snug, safe feeling that must have originated in childhood as my mother tucked me in fo
r the night. Kipp hopped up, circled and lay next to me, his heavy warmth like a security blanket. “Love is often like that, you know.”
He rested his jaw on my breast bone and sighed deeply. I recall he fell asleep before I did, his breathing deep and even. As I lay in the dark room, the sound of rain outside helped me to finally drift off to the land of nod. It would be a long time before I awoke again.
Chapter 17
The chaos in Paddington Station was predictable. Early trains were arriving from the countryside depositing people coming to the city for reasons of business or pleasure; men in conservative business attire were just as busy departing to parts unknown. We hadn’t bothered to get specifics about Tristan Taylor’s arrival, only that he should disembark at approximately 8:30 in the morning. We were telepaths, and he and Meko would conveniently ping on our symbiont radar, so there was no question that we could find them.
“Beg pardon,” Peter murmured to a very large man who rudely and unnecessarily almost elbowed him out of the way. Elani growled involuntarily, deep in the back of her throat. The large man, hearing the sound, turned with a startled expression on his face. Seeing Elani’s fixed gaze, he tipped his hat, which seemed undersized in consideration of his massive head, in manner of an excuse and hurried away. Kipp couldn’t help himself and giggled over the exchange.
“You go, girl,” he said to a beaming Elani, who wagged her tail, pleased, as always, to gain a nugget of approval from Kipp.
“Kipp, you simply have to let go of the current slang,” I playfully chided him, while gently tugging on his left ear.
“But it just gets to the point so nicely,” he whined.
Vendors were hawking their goods, hoping to snag easy sales of food and other traveling paraphernalia. A teenage girl caught my eye and smiled beguilingly. Just because I couldn’t resist her compelling glance, I walked over to see what she had for sale or trade. Kipp trailed after me, his head swiveling as he noted the latest train to arrive, as the station continued to fill with noise and steam.
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