“After a few years here, I realized that I would probably never return home. So I resigned myself to making a life here. It wasn’t easy, you know. Not at all. But Fred and I got married. Or, rather, we married ourselves.
“When the local Indians got wind of our presence, I persuaded them that I was a healer. I know quite a bit about eighteenth-century herbal medicine, what works and what doesn’t. And of course, I have a little bit of modern medical know-how.
“So the Indians have protected us, and Mr. MacKenzie befriended us. He’s a bit of an outsider himself. When slaves started to arrive here a couple of years ago, they also heard about us and started consulting with me, so they protect us, too. Everyone pays me with food. A bit of chicken or corn makes a nice supplement to what Fred is able to hunt and fish. But now more and more settlers are coming from Savannah, now that slavery is legal in Georgia. I’m afraid we’ll have to move on. Slaveowners are very much afraid of people like us, people who live free in the woods. They consider us troublemakers.”
Hannah struggled to take in what she was hearing. Her brain felt as though it were in a fog. “I don’t understand,” she moaned, “If you’re the Professor, why do you look so old?”
“Oh, because I am old,” the professor said patiently. “I’m much older than I was when you knew me. I’m eighty-four years old, Hannah. You last saw me when I was in my fifties.” Suddenly, her eyes grew wide. “Hannah, the ‘me’ that you know, is she here? Is she with you? Have you seen her?”
Hannah struggled to think through the brain fog. There was something about what the Professor had said that didn’t make sense. She tried to concentrate. And then it came to her.
“Don’t you know if she’s here?” she asked the Professor. “You’re saying you’re the same person, yes? So wouldn’t you remember if you had been here before?”
The old woman smiled. “Yes and no,” she said. “Yes, I am the same person, but no, I don’t recall having been here before. I don’t claim to understand this, so I’m not sure I can explain . . . .
“Look, each of us is faced with a series of possibilities every single day. And you will recall that things don’t always happen as we expect. It is a peculiar life we lead, traveling in time. Nothing is inevitable for us. At least, I don’t think it is. Except perhaps,” and here she gave a wry chuckle, “that the child is always father to the man, as the saying goes.”
Hannah was completely confused. But one thing she did know. “You aren’t with us,” she said. “You kind of disappeared. And there was this skeleton in Snipesville . . . . Alex and Brandon dug it up, and it was wearing a ring . . . . It’s the same ring that Jane’s wearing now.”
“How very odd,” said the Professor, frowning. “I have no recollection of that happening. I wonder why?”
Hannah continued. “But when we came back from 1851, you returned with us to the twenty-first century. Was that the last time you remember seeing us?”
The Professor crinkled her brow. “So you discovered the skeleton after you returned from 1851?”
Hannah nodded.
“I suppose I must have come with you again after that,” said the Professor. But then she grew thoughtful. “Hmm . . . oh, I see. Yes . . .” she said to herself. But she did not explain.
Hannah groaned. She was hopelessly befuddled by the conversation, but she no longer cared. “I’m too sick to talk now,” she whispered. “My head hurts so bad, and I think I’m gonna puke again.”
When Hannah next awoke, she found herself lying on a bed. She was in a place she recognized, a palatial wood-panelled room in Chatsfield Hall in Hertfordshire, England, in the mid-nineteenth century. Trying to sit up, she found she couldn’t move a muscle. How had she got here?
She tried to call her brother’s name, but to her horror, she couldn’t move her lips. She fought the panic rising in her, and took a couple of deep breaths. At least she could still breathe. She looked up at the wood paneling, and hesitantly tried to move the fingers of her left hand. When they responded, she reached up and touched the wall, running her fingers down the smooth surface. It was real. This was no dream. She studied the furniture and drapes, which certainly looked solid. But slowly, a patch of fog began to appear in the middle of the room, and she vaguely wondered what it could be. The fog began to take shape. It was her father.
“Where have you been?” he demanded.
Hannah tried to answer, but she couldn’t.
“I’ve been looking for you everywhere!” he yelled. His voice sounded wet, that was the only word for it. Perhaps, Hannah thought vaguely, that was because he was made of fog.
Now another foggy figure started to shimmer into shape next to him, this time a woman, and her voice joined that of Hannah’s father. “Hannah Day, I have had quite enough of your nonsense. For once, would you do as you are told?”
It was Mrs. Devenish from 1940 . . . . Didn’t she know how strange this was? Didn’t it bother her that she was in 1851?
“I’ve been looking for you everywhere!” her father shouted, again and again, while Mrs. Devenish said, over and over, “For once, would you do as you are told?”
Are you ghosts? Hannah thought desperately, as she tried to speak. What are you?
Now there was a third apparition. Hannah couldn’t recognize it, and she struggled to hear what it was saying over the voices of her father and Mrs. Devenish.
And then, with a chill, she heard a familiar voice. It said, “I just can’t deal with you anymore. I have to go.”
It was her mother. Hannah tried to put her hands over her ears, tried to scream, but she could no longer move at all. The voices grew louder. She whimpered in fear.
Then Hannah felt a woman’s hand gently lifting her head into her lap and stroking her hair, while murmuring to her in a soothing voice that gradually drowned out the voices. She felt the fear vanishing, and at the same time, the smooth wooden paneling and grand furniture of Chatsworth Hall vanished, and she was looking at the rough log walls and homemade chairs of an eighteenth-century cabin. At first, Hannah thought that it was Mrs. Devenish who had come to her rescue. But when she looked up, she saw the face of the Professor.
That evening, Brandon and Alex delivered the medicine. They were shocked to find Hannah writhing on the bed, bathed in sweat, and muttering incoherently. The witch was mopping Hannah’s forehead with a damp rag.
Brandon handed over the small packet to the witch.
“Will this stuff really help?” Alex asked anxiously.
She tore open the top, and examined the contents. “Yes, this should help.
The poor girl is delirious, although that’s normal, I’m afraid. Here, help me make a decoction. Could you fetch me that dipper over there?”
Alex grabbed the gourd dipper and handed it to the old woman, who dipped it carefully into the steaming cauldron of water bubbling over the fire.
Carefully she took a small clay pot and set it on the ground, where she filled it half full of hot water. She tipped a little of the powdered bark into the jar. Finally, picking up a small bundle of twigs tied with wiregrass and pinestraw, she whisked the mixture together. “Oh, this stuff never blends well,” she sighed, giving the water one last stir. “And I had best let it cool a little before I give any to Hannah. Thank you for bringing it, boys. You had better go home now.”
As Alex and Brandon stepped outside, she took up the jar of medicine she had made, then lowered herself down onto the stool next to Hannah, who was moaning softly.
Lifting her patient’s head, she held the cup to her lips. “Come on, Hannah, drink this. It will help what ails you.”
Hannah sipped at the drink, and made an anguished face. “It’s disgusting,” she croaked. “It’s bitter! I can’t drink it, I’ll puke.”
“You must, dear,” said the witch soothingly. “It is the only thing that will work.” “It’s poison,” Hannah groaned. “You’re trying to kill me.”
“No, I’m not,” the witch said firmly. “Don’t be
stupid. Of course I’m not trying to kill you. This is medicine. Now drink.”
Hannah pinched her nose and drank it down, ending with a grimace and a shudder. Then she smacked her lips together a couple of times, turned over, and fell asleep.
When Hannah awoke once more, the orange light from the window told her it was evening. The pain in her head had vanished, and so had her fever. She still felt very weak, but no longer did she think she was dying. The old woman was stirring something on the stove, but she glanced over at Hannah and saw that she was conscious.
“Feeling better?” she asked cheerfully.
“Yes,” Hannah croaked. “Thanks.”
The witch nodded, satisfied.
Hannah lay back on her pillow, feeling exhausted but happy. She would live.She wasn’t going to die today.
And she had questions. Quietly, she asked, “So why don’t you call yourself Kate Harrower anymore?”
“I don’t know your meaning,” the witch said. “What nonsense is this?”
So, Hannah thought, her fevered brain had tricked her into hallucinating that the witch was really the Professor. She had imagined their conversation. Just then, Jane rushed up to her.
“’ow do you fare, ’annah?” she said excitedly. “You look much better. I’ve been out ’unting with Fred. ’Ee caught a deer, and we’re outside butchering it. ’Ee’s cutting strips of meat off the carcass and drying them on the fire. ’Ee says it tastes good, and it does smell very fine, but I don’t . . .”
Hannah held up a hand to silence her. “Not now, Jane. I gotta sleep. I do feel better, but I’ve had a rough day.”
Hannah looked past Jane, and saw the witch watching her keenly.
“Yes, I know you ’ave,” Jane said impatiently, “And I am well pleased to see you come to your senses. But I must tell you something. Brandon told me that Mr. Osborn will come to fetch me on Friday night. ’Ee’s taking me with ’im, ’annah. ’Ee’s taking me to England! And just to be safe, so we don’t stir up suspicion, I’m to leave something behind. I want you to ’ave it. But keep it well ’idden, just in case Mr. Gordon comes a-calling, yes?”
She held up the ring.
Hannah took it with trembling fingers, and then, with all her remaining strength, hurled it across the room.
“Why won’t it leave me alone?” she cried, to Jane’s amazement.
The old woman murmured, almost to herself, “Sir Isaac Newton said that every object in the universe attracts every other object. But I don’t know that he understood how particular the attraction could be.”
With that, she put down her stirring stick, bent down, and plucked the ring from the dirt floor. Then she slipped it onto her own finger.
Chapter 13:GOING QUIETLY
"How do you feel now, Hannah?” the witch asked quietly, as she wove pine straw, her wrinkled old fingers working nimbly on a half-finished small basket. Hannah had been napping again. She awoke to the sounds of Sukey’s gentle snores from the loft.
“Better,” said Hannah weakly. “Kinda tired, but not sick.”
The witch nodded, satisfied. “Good, I am glad to hear of it.”
“I had some really weird dreams while I was sick,” Hannah said. “More like hallucinations, I guess. I know I wasn’t asleep, and even now it seems so real, what I saw, much more than dreams.”
“That is usual with ague,” the old woman said, tugging on a thin brown sliver of pine straw. “What kinds of dreams had you?”
Hannah laughed self-consciously. “I thought I was in a mansion in England, and the walls were made of wood panels. And my mom showed up, which was very weird, because she’s dead. But the most bizarre thing was that you told me you were really this woman I know, the Professor.”
Without looking up from her work, the witch said, “Oh, but that did happen. I am the Professor.”
Hannah gasped. “It is you. Why did you act like it never happened? I thought I was going crazy.”
The Professor smiled. “I didn’t want to say anything in front of Jane. It would have confused her. But we’re alone now.”
Hannah wanted to get mad, but she was too tired, and it was just too hard to be angry at a sweet-looking old lady who had just cured her of malaria.
“Have some more to drink,” said the Professor, lifting Hannah’s head from the pillow, and holding a cup of water to her lips. Hannah sipped from it.
When she was done, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Then she asked the question to which she most dreaded the answer. “Are we stuck in the past too, just like you? Me and the boys?”
“No, I don’t think so,” said the Professor thoughtfully. “And no matter what, I will look after you, I promise.”
For the first time, Hannah didn’t feel like saying something sarcastic. The Professor was a victim of the time travel, perhaps as much as she was. Hannah now understood.
“Thanks,” she said quietly, and then she began to cry.
The Professor handed her a clean rag, and gently patted Hannah’s arm as she wept.
“I do understand, my dear,” she said soothingly. “More than you can possibly imagine. You have been through so much in such a short life, and I think you have done very well. I am very proud of you.”
“I wish my mom had said that,” Hannah said suddenly, sniffing. “But she never did. It was like she didn’t get me at all. And then . . .What happened, happened. She left us. And then she died. I tried to be good, I really did . . . .” She dissolved into tears again.
“I know,” the Professor said emphatically. “I know you did. But there was nothing you could do, Hannah, because it wasn’t about you. Really, it wasn’t. She was so busy worrying about your ‘issues,’ but her problems were so much greater than yours. And I must tell you that you are so much stronger than she was.”
“But how can you know that?” Hannah asked in puzzlement. “I mean, that’s the kind of thing my Grandma tells me to make me feel better, but she was my mom’s mom. You never even met my mom.”
“Oh, yes I did,” the Professor said. “I can’t say how, but I did. She was angry at the world, Hannah, not at you. You were just a convenient target for all her frustration. You are not her, and you won’t be her, either, not if you play your cards right. Listen to my advice, Hannah. I have found that one of the great compensations of old age is that it can indeed give wisdom. And what your grandma and I are saying is wise. Listen to us old ladies. You have always been tougher and braver than your mother was. And this may surprise you, you are also a kinder person than she was. Your kindness has been deeply buried within you, but it is there. Don’t be afraid to love people, Hannah. You are loved, even by people who are under no obligation to love you, people like Verity and Mrs. D., and even Mrs. Gordon. She was very fond of you, although she never really showed it.”
Hannah didn’t know what to say. But the old woman was looking at her intently, and with love of her own. Hannah had never felt so loved as she did at this moment, and she wanted so much to hug the old woman, but she was too weak, and so she contented herself with smiling back.
Suddenly, she had another moment of revelation. “You know me in my future, too, don’t you?” she asked. “How does my life turn out?”
“How very astute of you to guess that,” said the old woman wryly. “We do come to know each other very well indeed. And unless the future changes, which I warn you it can, you will have a wonderful life. But more than that, I cannot say.”
Hannah thought about begging her for information, but something determined in the Professor’s face steered her away from the subject.
“I like you more now you’re old,” Hannah said brightly.
The Professor chuckled at her tactlessness. “I suppose that is a compliment of sorts. I imagine I have mellowed somewhat. But I am sorry to say that the best part of my old age is behind me. I find it harder than once I did to remember things. My body aches, and I think I have cancer, and there is nothing in my bag of tricks or the apothecary’s
shop that will fix that. I no longer hold out hope that I will return to my own time, but Fred will take care of me while he still lives. I have had a great life, and I really can’t feel sorry for myself.”
Hannah looked around the room, seeing only Sukey, who was napping in a corner. “Hey, where’s Jane got to?” she said.
The Professor laid down her basket, and took Hannah’s hand. “I am sorry, dear. I should have told you straightaway. Brandon came to collect her while you were asleep. He has taken her to hide in Mr. Osborn’s house, because they are leaving tonight. She told me to say farewell to you. She is your friend, and she is as fond of you as you are of her.”
Hannah’s mouth turned down, and the Professor patted her hand.
A knock at the door startled them both. But the face that appeared in the doorway in the fading evening light was friendly and familiar. It was Mr. MacKenzie. For once, he looked very serious.
“Good day to you, Annie,” he said. “I have come for Sukey.”
Hearing Mr. MacKenzie’s voice, Sukey came downstairs, her hair disheveled from her nap.
“Come, lass, we must be gone from here,” said Mr. MacKenzie, extending a hand to her. He turned to the Professor. “Annie, you and Fred must leave this place. I have known Robert Gordon for many a year, and that man is dangerous, I tell you. Lord knows, I am risking my life to help Sukey. I will hide her at my house until I can decide what must be done next.”
Look Ahead, Look Back (The Snipesville Chronicles Book 3) Page 29
