Time Castaways #2

by Liesl Shurtliff

  “He said he would!”

  “He’s only teasing you.”

  Annie took a few deep shuddering breaths. “I want to go home,” she said.

  “Home?” said Belamie. “You mean to Ohio?”

  Annie nodded. “Your son said I should go home, and you said you’d take me back whenever I wanted.”

  “I did,” said Belamie. “But, Annie, if I take you back to Ohio, you may never see us again. Are you prepared for that? Your life was not easy before you became a time pirate, you remember?”

  “I remember,” said Annie. “But I can take care of myself now. And Mama. I want to go home.”

  Belamie did not know all the circumstances of Annie’s family, but she’d heard enough to know it was not an ideal situation. Her mother was a widow with too many children to feed and had sent two of them away to work for other families in order to relieve some of her burden. If Annie was asking to go back to her mother, she knew she must be truly afraid. The boy must have convinced her she was in danger.

  “I’ll take you home, Annie, but I want to be sure it is truly what you want. Will you sleep on it tonight?”

  She nodded and used the sleeve of her dress to wipe the snot and tears from her face. “But only if you promise to take me home in the morning. If I come in the morning and say I want to go home, you’ll take me?”

  Belamie put her hand over her heart. “On my honor as a time pirate, you have my word.”

  Annie smiled, still trembling from head to foot. “Can I keep my rifle?”

  Belamie put her hands on Annie’s face. She wiped away the tears still spilling down her cheeks. “Of course you can,” she said. “What would I do with it? You know I’m a terrible shot.”

  Annie laughed a little. “You sure are.” She walked toward the door to leave, but Belamie stopped her.

  “Oh, Annie, I forgot to ask. The boy . . . I’m just curious if he told you his name?”

  Annie nodded, her eyes red and puffy. “He said his name was Mateo.”

  Belamie went stock-still. Her heart flared in her chest.

  “Somethin’ wrong?” Annie asked.

  Belamie forced a smile on her face. “No. Everything’s fine. Thank you, Annie. You may go.”

  After Annie left, Belamie locked the door and went to her bed. She knelt and pulled out a wooden box, intricately carved. This box was one of the few things in Belamie’s possession she had not stolen. It had been a gift from none other than Elizabeth, the queen of England. Coincidentally, Elizabeth was another of her friends who did not care for Vincent. She had warned Belamie on more than one occasion to guard herself, to not share all her secrets with him. Belamie thought Elizabeth was being paranoid, but some part of Belamie must have believed her, for she had always kept one thing from Vincent.

  Belamie reached inside the lining of her boot and retrieved a small golden key. She unlocked the box and opened the lid. Nestled in red velvet lay a small glass bottle with a cork. She uncorked it, reached in a finger, and pulled out a rolled-up piece of paper. The paper was thin and white with light blue lines drawn evenly across it, and an almost nonsensical scribbling of words, numbers, and sketches covering every inch.

  This was the only communication she’d ever received from Marius Quine since he’d given her the Obsidian Compass. Though the ink was faded and the paper yellowing at the edges, the paper looked like it was from the future, and of course she had always assumed Marius Quine was from the future, though she didn’t know for certain.

  The writing had made little sense to her at first, partly because the bottom right portion of the paper had been ripped away, cutting off some key words and phrases, but the rest mostly looked like a jumble of meaningless words, dates, and numbers. But she’d found it at such a pivotal moment in her life, she had to believe it wasn’t coincidence, that it had meaning. And now she had one more piece of the puzzle. She brushed a finger over a name printed toward the bottom of the page.

  MATEO

  The rest of the words were missing, torn from the page.

  Belamie pulled the hat out from her waistband and studied it more closely. It was a baseball cap, one that came from the future, in New York. She only knew this because the symbol on the hat matched the symbol on the shirt she was currently wearing. She’d gotten it from the future, almost the furthest she’d ever traveled.

  In her early days of time-traveling, Belamie had been reluctant to travel into the future. It felt too unstable, less knowable than the past, and the further into the future you traveled the more everything changed—the fashions, the food, the buildings, and the inventions. The contraptions in the future were especially mind-boggling. She remembered the first time she saw an automobile. She thought she’d gone mad. And then the first time she’d used a telephone, and electricity, and saw an airplane fly over her head, a great, roaring metal bird that had nearly made her choke on her own tongue. Once the Vermillion had even turned into an airplane. That was an adventure. She was certain if she didn’t crash and die, she would die of fright. Luckily, she’d had the presence of mind to turn the dials of the compass before either happened. After that she vowed she would never travel to the future again.

  Eventually, though, Belamie grew to really enjoy traveling into the future, and despite some drastic and sometimes perplexing changes, in some ways it was nothing new. Just like any time in the past there were wars and violence in the future. People fought for the same reasons—land, religion, money, and power. There were storms and earthquakes and hurricanes and volcanoes and tsunamis that swept away entire cities, killing thousands, and people responded in similar ways as they had in the past. Some people were kind and generous. Others were not. Some people kept hope. Others did not. It was all things she’d seen before, and yet the future also revealed some incredible things Belamie had never seen, groundbreaking discoveries that eradicated diseases, and inventions that changed the world sometimes for the better (indoor flushable toilets!) and sometimes for the worse (Spam. Ugh.).

  She traveled decade by decade. She engrossed herself in every era’s theater, literature, art, and fashions. She took in the future like a novel, turning the pages with a feverish and insatiable need to know what happens next, until quite suddenly and without warning, the future stopped.

  She was traveling into the twenty-first century. She was less than two decades in and thought to jump ahead another decade or two. It was always fun to see. It was a very interesting time all over the world. She didn’t know what it was, but when Belamie tried to go forward, the Vermillion was suddenly flung back to Nowhere in No Time. She thought maybe she had made a mistake with the dials, so she tried again, but again was thrown back, like she’d been put in a giant slingshot.

  She tried again and again, traveling in shorter intervals, testing different locations, making bigger leaps in time. She’d hit blank spots before, pockets of time and locations where she couldn’t travel, but this was different. She tried to travel to AD 2050, 2080, 3000, 3500, 4000. . . . It was like a great wall had been built in the twenty-first century. The year 2019, to be exact, and not just in one city or region, but everywhere in the world.

  Belamie wondered what could have happened then that would prevent her from time-traveling beyond that point. Did the world end? Maybe there’d been a great war. She’d read about bombs in the future that could annihilate entire countries. Maybe everyone just bombed each other until there was nothing left. There had certainly been enough threats. Or maybe the earth was hit by a great meteor and everyone died, just like the dinosaurs.

  But if she were really being honest, she didn’t believe it had anything to do with bombs or meteors. She had a gut feeling that something else happened then, something to do with the compass. Perhaps it had something to do with the Aeternum, or Marius Quine. Or maybe it had to do with the boy, Mateo, her son (she could barely think it). It could have something to do with this ugly shirt and the hat with matching symbols. Maybe this was a clue, a sign. They were connected s
omehow.

  Belamie went to a small desk covered in books and papers, opened a drawer and pulled out the big leather-bound book where she kept the record of all her missions, the dates and locations and details of the events. She’d learned early on the importance of keeping a good record, so they didn’t accidentally return to the same time and place and cross paths with themselves. It was easy to get mixed up. It also helped if you needed to recall a past mission.

  She flipped through a few pages and found the dates she was looking for.

  New York, AD August 3, 1997, Supplies

  New York, AD August 24, 1996, Broadway Musical

  New York, AD January 15, 1998, Supplies

  On one of these trips, when Belamie had been testing the limits of the compass, she’d made a stop in New York, late twentieth century. The date didn’t seem important or significant to her then. Belamie liked New York at almost any time. She found it exciting with all the crowds and noise and lights and movement, contrasted by the peace and tranquility of Central Park. She also loved the hordes of shops and products and supplies. The ease and comforts of twentieth-century living were also incredibly tempting to her.

  If I had to stay in one place, she thought, it would be here. She never said that to Vince. He did not care much for the future world, particularly America, and especially New York City. He said it had no class or charm, that Americans were crass and rude, just a bunch of discards from around the world, all the people no one else wanted. Belamie suspected the real reason Vince didn’t care for it was how difficult it was to steal in the future world. There were cameras everywhere, and alarm systems, and locks and codes, and guards with guns.

  This never bothered Belamie. She was plenty rich. Money was no object. Here, in the future world, she could spend her spoils. And spend she did. Belamie simply adored shopping in New York. She loved all the displays of beautiful clothes, ready-made. She loved that women could wear pants without anyone batting an eye, wear their hair long and loose, or even cut it short if they wanted, and maneuvered through society with much more ease and autonomy than women in other times and places in the world.

  After she’d made the year of several eager salesladies and her arms were heavy, laden with bags, she stopped at a convenience store to grab a few supplies, some snacks and candy for the crew, and a few magazines. (She couldn’t stay away from the British royal drama. Some things never changed.) The man at the cash register wasn’t paying any attention, and there were very few people in the store, so she just tossed things in her shopping bag as she went down the aisles. (Small stuff was easier to steal in the future world than in almost any other era.)

  As she moved toward the front of the store, she stopped at a shelf stacked full of romance novels, ones with scandalous covers she was shocked were allowed to be shown in public. She leafed through a few, reading the back descriptions.

  That’s when she felt someone watching her. She looked around and saw a man staring at her. He was tall and handsome in a grungy, studious kind of way. He wore glasses, and his dark hair was a little wild and unkempt. He was wearing some hideous shirt, white with thin blue stripes and blue and red letters and numbers that said Mets 18. He smiled at her, clearly amused. She looked around, trying to see if there was someone behind her that he was looking at, but there wasn’t anyone else in the store except the cashier. Maybe the man had seen her stealing, or maybe he was interested in what she was currently holding. She looked at the book she’d picked up. The Mistress of Lord Haversham by Sadie Brookes. Lord Haversham was not wearing a shirt, hideous or otherwise.

  Belamie looked back at the man, smiled, then boldly tossed the book into one of her shopping bags. The man’s smile only broadened. She could have sworn he was laughing, like she’d just performed a magic trick.

  I’ll show you a trick, Belamie thought.

  She reached for the compass, turned the dials, and, just to be cheeky, she winked and blew the man a kiss, right before she disappeared.

  Belamie forgot about the man, until a few months later she traveled back to New York, but a year earlier than the last time she’d come. This time she took the entire crew. She wanted them all to see Les Misérables. She’d read the novel by Victor Hugo, in its original French, and she was curious to see how the literary masterpiece would translate into a Broadway musical in English. Just as they were walking into the theater, she saw the man again. He was wearing more regular clothing this time, no ugly striped shirt, but she was certain it was the same man she’d seen in the convenience store a few months back. He was scanning the theater crowds, squinting through his glasses. She knew he was looking for her. And then it hit her. This man, whoever he was, somehow knew who she was, or at least knew that she could time travel. Belamie wondered, How many times had this man seen her? What did he want? Was he a friend or enemy? She was curious, but her sense of self-preservation was stronger. She gathered the crew and they left the theater without seeing the show, but just before she got in the Vermillion (a white limo) she stopped. There was a rack full of shirts and hats and bags for sale on the sidewalk. One of them was the ugly shirt, just like the one the man had been wearing before. It said Mets on the front. Belamie picked up the shirt.

  “That’s fifteen dollars,” said the guy selling the shirts. “Two for twenty-five.”

  She stared at it for a moment, and when she looked up the mysterious man was there. Belamie backed up a step, put her hand on the door of the Vermillion.

  “Ma’am, you gonna pay for that?”

  Belamie didn’t even think. She jumped into the Vermillion.

  “Wait!” she heard the man call.

  “Hey!” The seller pounded on the window. “I’ll call the police! I got your license plate number!”

  “Drive!” Belamie shouted.

  Tui was at the wheel. She pulled into traffic while Belamie wrestled with the compass. Her hands were shaking.

  “What’s wrong?” Annie asked, craning her neck. “Who was that man?”

  “No one,” said Belamie.

  “What is that thing?” Vincent asked, nodding to the shirt in her hand.

  “A shirt,” she said.

  “It’s hideous,” said Vincent. “Did you get it for Annie?”

  “I’m not wearing that!” said Annie.

  Belamie turned the final dial. As the Vermillion began to stretch and twist, she glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the man chasing after her. Waving for her to stop. The mirror twisted and folded in on itself, and then the Vermillion disappeared.

  The morning after the incident with the boy, Mateo, Annie appeared at Belamie’s cabin door. She wore her ragged, oversized coat, her rifle slung over her shoulder, with her little knapsack tied to it. She was ready to go home. Belamie again asked if she was certain this was what she wanted. Annie said it was, and Belamie did not feel she could hold the girl against her will. That was not the way of the Vermillion. A time pirate joined and remained on her crew by choice, never against his or her will. She’d only had one other crew member ask to leave. That, too, had been oddly connected to Vince.

  Belamie took Annie back to Ohio AD 1870, roughly one year after she’d picked her up. She took Annie back in the spring at least, when the snow had melted, and green things were pushing out of the ground. A little more welcoming than the cold winter in which they’d found her.

  “She was never up to the task of being a time pirate,” said Vincent as they watched Annie walk away from the Vermillion, now a train.

  “And what is the task of being a time pirate, Vincent?” Tui asked.

  “Take over the world, of course. The girl might have deadly aim, but she’s shortsighted. Now she’s stuck in that hovel, and she’ll never amount to anything.”

  “Never underestimate what a girl in a hovel can do,” said Neeti, and everyone laughed. They had found Neeti living in complete squalor in a small village in southern India. At the time, Vince had advised Belamie against bringing her on board. He had sneered at her ragge
d state, her seeming lack of skill or manners. He could be a bit of a snob about such things sometimes, what he called breeding. But Belamie disagreed. She had seen something in Neeti that reminded her of her own unfortunate background, and she wanted to give her a chance. She was glad she had. Neeti had become a valuable member of the crew and a good friend. Later, Vince had praised Belamie for bringing Neeti on board. He said it was a smart move to find someone in a completely desperate situation and rescue them. “People are like dogs that way,” he had said coldly. “Rescue them and they’ll be your loyal servant for life.”

  This remark troubled Belamie for a few reasons. For one thing, she had not “rescued” any of her crew with the idea of making them feel obligated or loyal to her. She’d simply sensed something in each of them that might add value to her crew. Yes, their circumstances had moved her to compassion, but it had more to do with her own past than anything else.

  But that was only a minor bother to her. What really struck a nerve was the fact that Vince was the only member of her crew whom she had not rescued in any way. In fact, he had rescued her. Early on in her time travels, she’d appeared in the middle of a naval battle. She’d almost been blown up by a ship’s cannon, and then Vincent swooped in and rescued her, and the rest, as they say, is history. It had been wild and very romantic, she thought. Definitely something that would happen in a romance novel. But she wondered, if Vince’s words were true, were her feelings toward him rightly earned? Or was she a dog?

  Belamie kept her gaze on Annie as she grew smaller and smaller, just a little speck on the wide, flat plains of Ohio.

  Annie’s words again echoed inside her head.

  “Mateo.”

  “He’s your son!”

  “Vincent gets the compass.”

  Belamie had this strange feeling all of a sudden, like she could feel the world rotating beneath her feet, and the stars realigning themselves in the heavens.

  Belamie clutched at her chest. She suddenly felt cold and empty, like there was a hole in her heart that was growing larger every day, and if she didn’t find what it needed to be filled, the void would consume her.