by Ford, Lizzy
“We cannot undo this,” Running Bear said. “Take care of him and your wife. I will not see you homeless. Our people know what that is, Taylor, to be taken from the home of your ancestors and sent elsewhere. If my life will prevent that and keep the peace, then I will give it freely.”
“But you don’t deserve to die.” Taylor rested his head against the bars, sorrow creeping into his mind.
“The night you fell from the sky, I was supposed to cross the river with my cousins to hunt bison. Instead, I went to the crater and found you, a child, crying and lost.”
Taylor smiled at his most treasured memory. Running Bear had gathered him up in his arms and carried him back to their village and his mother, whose shocked expression at seeing her son holding a boy that fell from the sky was Taylor’s second favorite memory.
“That night,” Running Bear continued, “Everyone in my hunting party was killed when the river flooded its banks and wiped out the wash and all who had taken shelter for the night there. You have granted me twenty-two years of life I would not have had. I wish to give our brother that chance now.”
Taylor cocked his head to the side. “I never heard that story of your cousins,” he said, his mind leaping in a new direction. “That night, you were supposed to die, and Fighting Badger would’ve taken the place as shaman instead of you?”
Running Bear nodded. “He had a strong connection to the spirits but was wild. I think he could’ve been trained.”
“Then he would …” become the man who would be my grandfather. He didn’t know how to take the news that his blood was tainted by the same madness as Fighting Badger. And who would marry the crazy Indian? Did the death of his brother in the original timeline alter Fighting Badger’s position in the tribe, his madness?
There was always danger when it came to going native in a new time, the potential for unwittingly messing with the past. He had lived a quiet life here, one without much interaction or impact with the world outside of the town. He was always careful about altering the history of a time period, even one with little to no impact on the course of major events in history. The name of this town didn’t make it into history; it was of no real importance, a quiet hamlet where he could retire and get to know his family tree without worrying about altering the past.
“I am not worried, Taylor,” Running Bear said. “You must do what you must. We must preserve the peace, and my death will do that.”
“I won’t let this happen,” Taylor told him firmly. “Speaking Wind is staying here tonight, along with the deputies I trust. You’ll be safe. I need to talk to Josie about what we can do.”
“Very well, but I believe the spirits have spoken.”
Taylor shook his head and strode away, unwilling to accept Running Bear’s offer to go quietly to his death. Troubled, he gathered his things and left with a nod to the deputies. By all rights, he should’ve stayed in town until morning in the hopes the latest autumn storm cleared up.
But he was edgy, worried about Josie and Running Bear, and didn’t fully believe the deputies he sent to look over Josie were any match for The Mongol.
Wired with urgency he wasn’t able to control, he raced home.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
It took effort and more time than usual for the images to crystalize out of the abundant whispers. The room grew cooler, and I opened my eyes once to see the sun was setting before closing them to focus once more on my task.
The elusive visions formed after some time. I clutched the material of my dress, unable to believe what I saw, unable to stop the visions or stop watching.
A burning hearth … a cool fall day. The wedding gown was in its place by the window.
John was pacing near the fire. He was angry, yelling. It was the night before the wedding just after the largest feast he’d ever given.
A woman who could’ve been my doppelganger screamed back at him.
The picture did our likeness no justice, and I stared at the woman who could’ve been my twin in astonishment. Aside from our hair – real-Josie’s was straight – there was virtually no difference.
“No wonder he didn’t know the difference,” I murmured. In one year, John had gone from robust, healthy and a little overweight to the shell of a man I mourned.
Unable to hear their words, I could at least see what happened.
Real-Josie was screaming and crying, and John’s face grew redder, his eyes flashing in a way I wasn’t able to imagine after my brief interaction with him.
By the way both gestured to the wedding dress, it was as Nell suspected: Real-Josie didn’t want to marry the man chosen for her by her father.
Josie rested a hand on her stomach, and John froze, staring at the spot with a mix of horror and fury. Real-Josie laughed and spun away from her father. He grabbed her arm and hit her once. Stunned, Josie stared at him.
Reeling from what he’d done, he took a step back.
“Walk away, John,” I whispered tightly. “Please walk away.” Tears warmed my cheeks. There was one reason I could think of that this room had been preserved from that night and recreated for the daughters that kept showing up at his door. I saw John mouth the words with child, and my heart sank. If an unwed woman going out alone was an issue in this era, an unwed woman who was pregnant had to be the ultimate gossip-worthy transgression.
Real-Josie laughed again, this time gesturing at John angrily. She grabbed the wedding dress and tore it off its stand, flinging it and the priceless heirloom jewelry that rested on it all over the room.
John picked up the bracelet that landed near his feet, his expression one of great sorrow and anger.
I didn’t have to guess who the piece had belonged to. John held such reverence and emotion for his wife and daughter alone. I saw the shift in his expression, the moment he lost control, and began crying, not wanting to witness what the man I had found a way to love had done a year before.
He grabbed Josie again. This time, he didn’t hit her once, but over and over, even after she had fallen to the ground. He beat her stomach and face, shouting, rage on his face and controlling his actions.
Nell rushed into the room and tackled him.
He threw her off and turned on her, fist raised to crush her head the way he had his daughter’s. Sobbing, Nell cowered and pointed.
John turned, and realization replaced his enraged trance. He looked over at the bloodied, battered, unrecognizable face of his daughter and dropped beside her. Horrified, he picked her up in his arms and began rocking, his lips forming her name over and over.
“Stop,” I whispered. “Stop, stop, stop!” I clutched my stomach, the images nauseating me. John’s unquestioning acceptance of me, of the three other girls who shared my room, became clear. Unable to live with what he’d done, he went mad trying to believe it didn’t happen.
Was that why the room was recreated? To dispel the memories and start over? To give him hope and bury the past?
“Miss Josie.” Nell’s hushed whisper came from the doorway.
I looked up. The lanterns in the hallway were on, framing my nanny against them.
“Miss Josie. You shouldn’t be in here.” Her voice shook.
Nell knows. She had always known. I struggled to gain control of myself. Wiping away tears, I climbed to my feet despite the desire to curl up somewhere and sob.
First Carter. Now John. My faith in those I trusted was shattering.
“I’m sorry, Nell,” I managed. “I have bad cramps.”
Nell had no way of knowing about my empathic chip.
I continued to hold my stomach as I moved into the hallway and past her. I made my way slowly towards my room.
“Miss Josie.”
“Yeah?”
“You didn’t ask whose room this was.”
I stopped, my instincts tingling. This time, the memories came from Nell.
While her master wept, she dragged the body down the hallway and out of the house, all the way around the property to the graveyard.
She buried real-Josie in the moonlight and then collapsed onto the grave, weeping for the woman she loved as a daughter.
“It doesn’t matter, Nell,” I replied, pitying my governess. Retreating to my room, I leaned against the door.
Did Carter know? Was this the latest truth he kept from me? I went to my bed and plucked the phone from its hiding spot in the folds of Taylor’s clothing. Unable to stop my tears or the pain in my breast, I sent him a message.
Did you know John killed his daughter and her nanny (now my nanny) helped him cover it up?
It was dark out and I was claustrophobic again. One Josie was buried in the cemetery and another three thrown in the well. Where would I end up?
Wiping my face, I pulled on my coat and went to the door. Carter’s message stopped me before I opened it.
Nanny? Josie, I know you’re upset right now, but I need you to answer this question now. Who is this nanny? Name? Description?
I hesitated, not wanting to fall for another of his tricks. Certain he could have nothing bad to say about John’s long time servant, I responded and tucked the phone away.
This time, it was the flow of memories that made me pause.
Nell hadn’t left. She stood outside my door, her memories jumbled, shadowy, and then clearing to form images I didn’t expect.
She opened the door to the bedroom made anew and saw Josie on the bed, smiling. The blond woman wasn’t a perfect match by any means but she was close. John would be happy with this one, happier than he was with the last one.
My breath caught. The memories skipped and broke, and another one formed, this one powerful.
Nell watched the blond woman at the well. It was dark. This Josie had disappointed John, told him the truth about who she was, and John was hurt again, the way he had bee the night his daughter died.
Moving quietly, Nell approached her from behind and gathered her strength. She pushed hard. The woman went into the well without a sound, and Nell pulled the woman’s devil’s box from her pocket to shine the light down into the well.
The blank blue eyes of the broken woman below stared up at her.
“It is done,” she whispered.
John could not be disappointed.
I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. I fumbled for the lock to my door with one hand before recalling that Nell had a key.
The memories flowed, repeating the scene and what happened next. Confused, I watched Nell push each of the time traveler Josies into the well then cover it with wood. Nell had returned to John and told him his daughter fled. She then recalled greeting the newest Josie with hope that this one would make John happy again, the way he was before he murdered his daughter. When the other Josies admitted the truths about their identities to John, Nell acted. Three times this had occurred before I arrived.
I almost told him. Horror choked me while tears streamed down my face. Had I been saved because I chickened out at the last minute?
How close had I been to my own death the entire time I was here?
“Miss Josie? Are you awake?” Nell’s voice was strangely flat. She tapped on my door.
Oh, god, what do I do?
I didn’t answer. Nell tried the door and finding it locked, walked away, the floorboards creaking beneath her steps. I released a breath.
Then heard the door to the dressing room open.
Fumbling with the lock, I whipped open the door to the hallway and sprinted. My heart slammed into my chest and filled my ears as I flew down the stairs and wrenched the front door open.
“Josie!” Nell called, much closer than I expected. The old woman was fast.
I bolted into the wind and rain towards the only safe place I could think of: the barn. Tugging the heavy wooden door open, I snatched a saddle and bridle off their pegs and went to the stall of the horse I usually rode just as Nell pounded on the front door. I ducked down inside the horse’s stall.
“Josie! I just want to take you to see your father!” she cried, the soft bump of the wooden door closing behind her.
The woman’s lost it.
Her memories were on the other Josies. She hadn’t flipped back, as if the woman who cared for me and the one who wanted to kill me were two different people with two different sets of memories.
My phone vibrated. I tensed, hoping the sound was swallowed by the rain on the rooftop. Easing away from the side of the stall, I pulled it out.
The name of the original governess assigned to Josie was Catherine, an Englishwoman. Nellie Bitters was the name of the first woman I sent back to try to find Taylor. I try to screen travelers for any physical or mental weaknesses that might make time travel less than ordeal, but there’s always a chance someone … unfit makes it and can’t handle the change.
I wanted so much to smack Carter.
Until that moment, I had never thought twice about how accommodating Nell was. John had an excuse; he was senile and so guilty, he wanted to believe he hadn’t done what he did and probably ignored anything that seemed different about me. But Nell … she’d walked me through every part of this world, answered questions that should’ve made her suspicious, and even recognized the phone.
It was more than guilt about real-Josie in her case, more than love for John that drove her into madness. It was Carter who pushed her over the edge by sending her back.
“Miss Josie?” Nell’s voice was close.
I held my breath and shoved the phone back into my pocket. Seated on the saddle, I waited to hear what she’d do.
The slide of a shotgun’s fore stock and the chambering of a round told me how serious she was. My mind raced. There was no way I was going to get the horse saddled and out of the barn before she got off a round or two. I needed to distract her long enough for me to get the hell out of here.
“Nell. Can we talk?” I ventured.
There was a pause. “You must join your father, Josie.”
Swallowing the urge to cry, I wiped tears from my face shakily. “Father … father told me something before he died. Something he wanted you to know,” I lied.
“What did he say?” Her response was fast and anxious.
“Don’t shoot. Okay?”
There was a pause, then, “Okay, Miss Josie.”
Jesus please let this work. I stood uncertainly.
Nell stood in the middle of the barn, shotgun lowered and attention riveted on me. “Can I ask you something first, Nell?”
She said nothing.
“You came from the future, didn’t you?” As I spoke, I moved slowly towards the door. Lightning lit up the gaps around the closed windows and thunder made the ground rumble.
There was a hesitation then a brisk nod.
“You were in love with John from the beginning.”
Another nod.
“Why did Carter send you back?” It was probably the least of my worries right now, but after hearing Taylor say no one understood the mastermind Doctor Who behind this adventure, I had the urge to know.
“To look over Josie. Make sure she was safe. And … to find Taylor Hansen.” The emptiness in Nell’s eyes bothered me. “John … was the best man I had ever met. I couldn’t stop him. Couldn’t save her. Couldn’t do anything to help him when it was done.”
Split personality or something. Nell’s mind had snapped in two: the time traveler sent on a mission and the guardian of a woman she helped raise whose brutal death broke an already fragile mind.
The explanation that she was supposed to take care of real-Josie made little sense to me in light of my purpose here, unless it was like my original mission: the lie Carter used to get her to agree to going back in time.
“Were you a … governess in your time?” I asked.
“Yes. He said I was going to a place where a little girl needed me.”
I didn’t want to know how wrong I had been about Carter. Taylor was right; whatever cards Carter held, they were almost impossible to guess. What kind of man abandoned innocent people in the past to end up either dead
or crazy?
“What did he say, Miss Josie?” Nell asked, inching closer. She brought the shotgun up to her shoulder. “Don’t you move.”
I had almost reached the door and stopped cold. “Why are you doing this, Nell?” I whispered, fear doing frantic cartwheels in my mind and tightening my chest.
“You made John happy. He’s gone now, and you need to be with him to keep him happy.”
“So your plan is to shoot me and tell Taylor what?”
“I won’t be here when he’s back. Both of us will be with John again.”
This keeps getting worse. I needed more time to figure out what to do. “I don’t want to be shot. I’d rather join the others at the bottom of the well.”
Nell appeared to be considering my words.
“Please,” I added.
“Very well, Miss Josie.” She strode forward and took my arm. “Open the door.”
I obeyed. A gust of wind swept by us, and I closed my eyes to the pelting rain. We plunged from the warmth and light of the barn into the cold, dark night. Nell tugged me towards the back of the barn. Her grip was tighter than I expected from someone who looked ready to collapse earlier today.
There was a smaller barn beside us. Behind the horse barn were the sheep pens and half a dozen piles of straw and hay covered with tarps. My best bet was to run once we reached the back and hide behind the tarps, to see if I could make my way around the other side of the barn and back around to grab a horse before she could follow.
We reached the back corner, and I prepared to shove her and run.
Someone was in front of the well.
We both froze, unable to make out who it was in the dark.
“Their spirits,” Nell said hoarsely. “They’ve come back for me!”
It wasn’t a spirit. That much I was able to tell, but we weren’t close enough for me to see the face.
“Talks to Spirits,” called Fighting Badger.
Oh, no. I held out hope of this ending in some way that didn’t involve Nell killing anyone else or dying herself.
