by Wendy Nikel
“Tell me. Please. Why is that man after you?”
I hesitate. I’m not going to lie, but I have to say something. “I don’t know him personally, but he’s part of a dangerous organization—”
“From your time?”
“Yes, one that I’ve had some trouble with before.” No need to mention that I worked for the scumbags. “They’re not people to take lightly. You must promise me that if you see him again, you’ll get out. Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, just run.”
“What do they want with you?”
When had I taken her hands? I’m lost for a moment in their warmth, their texture, the smoothness of each curved nail. It’s strange that I can have such a strong desire—such a need—to protect this woman whom I’ve only known a few weeks, who was born a century before my time, but I do.
“What do they want?” Juliette repeats, pulling me from my mind’s wild ramblings.
“I promise someday I’ll tell you—”
Juliette raises her eyebrows, and I bite my tongue. What am I doing, making promises to her? I don’t even know how long I’ll be able to stay here. I never asked Dr. Wells how I’d know when Juliette is truly safe. Even if I get rid of this guy, how can I ensure TUB won’t send another agent after her? And another? And another?
“We need to get back to Mrs. Rosebloom’s,” I say. I have to talk to Dr. Wells, to tell this version of the man everything, including where to find the journal page with the instructions he needs, which I’d tucked away in my suitcase beneath my bed in the boarding house. I can’t do this on my own, not anymore. I’d thought that bringing Juliette to Chicago would be safer, but if TUB’s followed us here, I’ve obviously underestimated them. Again.
“But what about these?” Juliette holds up the flyers. “If we don’t hand them out today, we’ll just have to come back tomorrow.”
“Right. Here’s what we’ll do.” I gather a handful of the ads. “We’ll find someone else to distribute them for us. There’s got to be some young boys running around here, eager to make a few dollars.”
“A few dollars?” Juliette’s eyes widen. “How much do you intend to pay them?”
How much is a dollar worth in 1893? I must have grossly misestimated to illicit that sort of response, but I don’t have time to deal with mathematical conversions, at least not right now.
“Or a quarter or two,” I say hurriedly. “Do you think that would be enough?”
“Plenty. Look, what about them?” She gestures toward the bowling alley, where a trio of boys about Dodge’s age are playing around with the pins and heckling one another.
Dodge. Another reason to end this thing sooner rather than later.
“Stay here,” I say. Leaving Juliette in the shadows, I pull my hat low over my eyes and casually approach the boys. Fortunately, these 19th century kids aren’t all too different from Dodge and his friends in the 22st century, and it doesn’t take much to convince them to set aside their horseplay for an hour or so to find the nearest magic show—“or the Brothers Houdini, if you can find it”—and hand out flyers to the audience. In exchange, I offer them each two shiny quarters, which ought to be more than enough compensation.
They rush out of the German village, clutching their money in one hand and the flyers in the other. Hopefully they won’t just chuck the flyers into the nearest waste bin as soon as they’re out of sight. Even so, we’d still have Dr. Wells’s newspaper advertisements. In fact, maybe we could send Dr. Wells back to the fair in the following days, and Juliette and I can pick up where he left off with the newspapers. Somehow, that seems safer.
I turn back to the castle, expecting to see her slim figure in the shadows of the entrance, but the archway is empty. My gut flips and I glance around. Did she see the TUB agent and slip inside, deeper into the castle’s protection? The man’s nowhere to be seen, but then again, neither is Juliette.
“Juliette?” I call out. Fairgoers bustle around me, but none with her familiar bright smile, none with her shining eyes. My vision adjusts to the darkness of the castle, but her face doesn’t greet me. She’s gone.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
They must have snuck up behind her. They must have gagged her somehow, or I would’ve heard her scream. The thought of the TUB agent’s hands on her makes me boil with a hot fury. But where did they take her? It can’t be far, or surely someone would have noticed Juliette struggling.
I rush onto the street and look around at the Javanese Settlement to the east… the Turkish Village directly across the way… and then I turn to the west, where Ferris’s giant wheel looms over me.
I take off running to the Ferris wheel before I even have a chance to sort through why. Somehow it seems like an obvious place: somewhere crowded, confined, where Juliette wouldn’t be able to escape.
At the platform, six cars are being loaded at once, and a uniformed guard is opening the door of the nearest one to allow passengers aboard. Each is the size of a railroad boxcar and looks like a suspended screened-in-porch. I crane my neck to see above the crowd. At the head of the line, among the first to climb into the car, is the TUB agent. And tucked against his side, with one arm gripped in his, is Juliette. Something metal flashes from inside his coat. A gun? A knife? I try to shout, but my voice is lost in the crowd.
Each car holds about sixty people, and I frantically try to estimate the size of the line, try to push ahead so that I’m on the same car. I don’t know what the agent has in mind, but to have any chance at all of stopping it, I have to be in that car.
“Excuse me. Pardon me. I need to catch up with my party.” I shove past the other fairgoers, who shoot me irritated looks. Never mind them. I don’t have time for pleasantries. From out of nowhere, a guard steps forward.
“No more room,” he says, moving to close the door. “You’ll have to take the next car.”
“No, no, no.” I peer out over the crowd. I want to tell the guard about the weapon, but Juliette and the agent are on the other end of the car; if I say anything now, it’ll cause a panic. There’s no way I’ll get to them before he harms her. Thinking fast, I force a smile. “You don’t understand. I have to be on this car.”
“Is that so? And why’s that?”
“Ahh… my girl, you see. She’s on this car.”
The guard raises an eyebrow. “Why isn’t she with you, if she’s your girl?”
“Well, she’s not mine yet,” I admit. “But I’ve never met a girl like her, and she’s in this car, and you wouldn’t deny me a chance to tell her how important she is to me, would you?”
I’m laying it on thick, but something about my desperate plea must resonate with the guard, because he sighs and slides the door open just far enough for me to squeeze in. “Go on in. You’ve got two times around.”
“Thank you so much, sir.” I shove a handful of coins at him and step into the car.
The car lurches to a start, creaking and groaning every bit as loudly as I’d expected. The passengers press their faces against the windows, gazing out in awe as we ascend. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the lower light, and even then, I don’t see Juliette.
I work my way across the car, saying, “Excuse me,” and “Pardon me,” to each person I squeeze past. I’m halfway across the car’s twenty-six feet before I spot the back of Juliette’s head. The TUB agent is still standing beside her, holding her firmly to his side. From this close, I can see the outline of his pistol clearly, its barrel pressed into Juliette’s ribs. The two of them are standing against the far door, and the TUB agent is muttering something to Juliette. I don’t know what he’s waiting for—why he hasn’t shot her already. I just have to get to her before he does.
The passengers press in on me on all sides, and I feel oppressed by the closeness of the car, the presence of all these strangers who have nothing on their mind but enjoying the view of the Midway Palisades. They didn’t ask to be locked in here, 250 feet above the city, with a madman, a time traveler, and a woman on w
hose fate his future is hinged. But how can I rescue Juliette without putting more people in harm’s way?
As we crest the top of the wheel, a rattling noise makes my stomach drop. Anyone else in the car might think it’s merely one of the many rumblings of the giant wheel’s spokes, but I can see the TUB agent tugging at the handle of the door.
In the next second, the man has Juliette pressed against it, with the lock disengaged and only his hand holding it closed behind her. She glares at him and spits in his face, and, like her, I throw caution to the wind. I rush forward.
She sees me and her eyes light with a glimmer of hope, just as the TUB agent releases the door and elbows her out.
I push other passengers aside. Beside me, someone screams at the sight of the door flying open. No one else sees the TUB agent reach into his pocket and press the button on a shining black device. No one else sees as he disappears. All eyes are on Juliette as she tumbles backward, arms pinwheeling like the spokes of the Ferris wheel, and then falling, screaming, toward the ground below.
Somehow, I grab her hand, and for a moment, I think I might be able to save her. Our fingers entwine, but instead of slowing her momentum, it only yanks me forward, out the open doorway. My fingers grip the doorframe for a second… two seconds… just long enough for me to look below, to where Juliette clings to me and her desperate eyes plead.
“Don’t let go.” Her voice sounds small, yet firm, as though she might, by the mere force of her will, keep us from falling.
I won’t.
The wheel lurches, and as my fingers slip from the metal frame, I don’t care anymore about the past or future. I don’t care about the repercussions. I know what I have to do.
The brilliant blue Chicago sky falls past. Lake Michigan hovers somewhere beyond, and in the half an instant it takes for me to marvel that it’s still the same shoreline I’d last seen from a 747, I reach inside my jacket.
I pull Juliette close, clinging to her like a lifeline, and press the small, thumb-sized button on my Wormhole Device.
The world bursts into light.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: June 22, 2016
We land in a jumble of arms, legs, and skirts on Dr. Wells’s sofa. I leap to my feet, tripping over Juliette’s skirt and tumbling onto the floor, knocking over a pile of dossiers and sending papers scattering to the floor.
Juliette jerks upright. “Am I dead?”
“No.” I hold up the Wormhole Device. “You’re in the year 2016.”
“2016?” With a deep, steadying breath, Juliette looks around the office, her eyes falling on each unfamiliar item: the telephone on Dr. Wells’s desk, which I’d always thought looked like it belonged in a museum; the desktop computer with its swirling screen saver dancing across the screen; even little things like the mechanical pencils and the coffeemaker on the side table. I see them now through Juliette’s eyes, and realize, for the first time, how fascinating these mundane things truly are, how all these things I’d taken for granted are really miracles of technology, part of a bright, glimmering future.
If she’s amazed by this, what would she think of the 22nd century? Now that we’re here, now that I’ve thrown caution to the wind and broken all the rules anyway, I want, more than anything, to find out. But first, I need to find out how much Dr. Wells already knew when he sent me on this mission.
“Are you all right?” I help Juliette to her feet.
“I’m incredible!” She laughs. “I’m in the future! This is amazing. Are we still in Chicago?”
“No, my dear, you’re in New York City.” The voice that answers from the doorway is Dr. Wells’s, sounding tired and somewhat resigned as he enters the room.
“And you must be—” Juliette turns to face him and stops short. “Dr. Wells? But how?” She looks back and forth between the two of us and bursts out laughing again. “You’re a time traveler, too! I should have known!”
“Dr. Wells was looking for that journal you found,” I explain before he can stop me. “He’s the one who created the time travel device that I used to go back to 1893. The one who sent me there in the first place, to protect you from TUB.”
“To protect me?” Juliette asks. “But why would they be after me? I thought they were looking for you.”
“I didn’t want to tell you, though I see now I should have. It might have made a difference back at the fair.”
“The only reason I went so quietly was because I thought I was helping lead that monster away from you,” she says. “But why me?”
“One of your descendants,” I begin, “gets tangled up in their web a hundred years from now, and when they can’t trace her, they go after you instead, trying to destroy her family line so she’ll never be born.”
“But when I met you…?” Juliette starts, looking to Dr. Wells.
“I didn’t know then,” Dr. Wells says. “I was only just beginning to delve into the depths of time travel when I first met you. 1893 was the first place in the past I’d ever traveled, and it was certainly an experience I will never forget.”
“You found the journal page in my suitcase?” I ask.
“Oh, yes,” Dr. Wells says, sounding none too pleased. “I suppose now I might finally get an opportunity to find out what exactly happened to you that day when you disappeared.”
“Disappeared?” Juliette looks to me, as though I might have some explanation, but I don’t.
“Yes. You left Mrs. Rosebloom’s boarding house that morning and never returned. We searched for weeks but never found a trace of you.”
“But the Ferris Wheel,” I say. “We fell hundreds of feet. Surely someone saw that.”
“Yes, a bunch of boys whom you’d sent to hand out flyers. They believed it was all part of a magic trick and told everyone as much.”
“Oh!” Juliette’s hand flies to her face. “What about Mr. Velés?”
“Yes, well.” Dr. Wells wipes his glasses on the hem of his shirt. “Fortunately, your little stunt stirred up plenty of interest. Mrs. Rosebloom and I held the auditions ourselves, and the Amazing Velés continued his show for the next two decades, or so I’ve heard.”
“Thank goodness,” Juliette says. “I never… that is, it wasn’t our intention to leave.”
“Oh?” Dr. Wells looks pointedly at our entwined hands. “Mrs. Rosebloom was convinced that the two of you eloped.”
Juliette blushes, but neither of us let go of one another, even as I explain how the TUB agent tracked us to the fair and tried to make it look like she accidentally tumbled from the wheel.
“You see,” Juliette says, “Chandler saved my life, by bringing me here.”
“And what’s more,” I say, “TUB doesn’t know there was another time traveler there, so they’ll have no reason to search for her in other timelines.”
“Do you mean…?” Juliette asks. “I could stay here?”
“Oh, no.” Dr. Wells shakes his head and paces behind his desk. “No, no. This won’t do. Not at all. Not here. That’ll never do.”
“No, it certainly won’t.” I turn to Juliette and take her other hand. “Juliette, I love you, and I want to spend my life with you. Please, come with me. Come with me into the future, and I’ll take care of you and make sure it’s all you’ve ever dreamed of.”
Tears sparkle in Juliette’s eyes, and she nods, her brilliant smile beaming up at me. “The future?”
“Yes. Well, that’s another thing. I don’t actually live here anymore. I live a hundred years further into the future, but in a way, that’s better, right? TUB would never think to look for you there. And we have gyms there where you can take acrobatics classes seven days a week if you like. And there’s so many more books to read than what’s available in your time.”
“Please, Dr. Wells,” Juliette says, smiling at the old man, all the while clutching my hand. “It’s the perfect solution. We were meant to be together, to do this together. I just know it.”
“You know my Rules…”
“And you said at
the beginning of this that we may have to break some of them,” I say. “So please, just send us back to 2113. I’ll take care of Juliette from there. I promise.”
The old man sighs. “Come on, then. Let’s get you two lovebirds over to the DeLorean Box before any of my employees starts poking around, trying to see what’s going on. If they knew what I’m allowing, how many Rules I’m breaking… I’d never hear the end of it.”
“How much did you know?” I ask Dr. Wells as we wait for Juliette to emerge from the back room. He happened to have another suit of synthetic fibers which, though not precisely like the one I brought with me from 2113, will do until we can purchase Juliette some appropriate clothing of her own.
“I think you know the answer to that,” he says, frowning at the dials on the DeLorean Box.
“You remembered that I was there,” I guess, “that you’d met me when you traveled to 1893 all those years ago. And you would have remembered how I’d felt about her and that we disappeared together. You knew we’d end up together one way or another.”
Dr. Wells nods. “Yes, well, I tried to let things play out with as little interference as possible, but you had told me, all those years ago, that I had been the one to send you there, so when I began to suspect that TUB was targeting her, I knew it was time to do what had to be done.”
“How do I look?” Juliette asks as she appears in the doorway.
I can’t help but smile at how strange the outfit looks on her. I’m so used to seeing her in long skirts and frilled blouses; even the risqué magician’s assistant costume that she wore for the Amazing Velés’s shows seemed more suitable for her than the shimmering white jumpsuit that’s at least four sizes too big.
“Amazing.”
A thrill goes through me as I hold open the door of the DeLorean box for her. What will she think of the world I live in? What will Dodge think of her? Maybe it’s naïve of me, but it doesn’t matter. I’m filled with an inexplicable sense of confidence that somehow, this is right, that it was meant to be all along.
