Passenger

by Alexandra Bracken

  What are you doing? Etta asked herself. She gripped its slight weight, pressing her fingers against the etchings on the metal handle.

  I’m protecting myself.

  So she didn’t know exactly how to use it—what was there to know, besides pointing the sharp end away from her? Etta focused on it, its shape, the way it warmed to her hand, with the intensity she channeled into attacking a piece of music. Only then did her breathing finally even out.

  Sophia appeared next, stumbling down the last few steps, holding her stomach. A pair of leather shoes, water squelching out of them with each step, announced Nicholas’s arrival. A pair like that would be ruined by salt water, Etta knew. She wouldn’t allow herself to feel guilty about it.

  “You must stay out of the forecastle,” he said, seeing that Sophia’s gaze had landed on the canvas curtains on the other end of the ship. “Unless it’s to use the heads—the, ah, lavatory. It’s the crew’s space. You’re welcome to take air whenever you wish, but only after we’ve finished refitting the ship, and only with an escort. And under no circumstances should you enter the hold where the other crew is being kept.”

  “We—” Sophia struggled with the word, pausing to collect herself. When she opened her eyes again, they burned in the darkness. “We won’t have anything to do with you beyond what’s required.”

  “I’d imagine not,” said Nicholas crisply as he turned. “I will make your excuses at meals.”

  “You must love this,” Sophia snapped. “How quickly the worm has come to try to inch its way back in. If I had known it’d be you, I’d never have agreed to this!”

  They know one another, Etta realized. She looked between their faces—the obvious hatred on Sophia’s, the careful impassivity on Nicholas’s—and wondered how it was even possible.

  “If you need something from the surgery or the galley,” Nicholas continued, as if she hadn’t spoken, “please let one of the boys know. They’ll fetch it for you.”

  “Not playing the servant today, are you?” Sophia taunted.

  At the rear of the ship where they stood were three doors. Nicholas opened the first one on the right, and Etta recognized the cramped space as the one she’d burst out of. Rather than let the two girls walk in, he glanced around, as if checking to make sure no one was in earshot. They were alone, save for the young sailor on his knees, carefully scrubbing the deck with a stone.

  “It’s my understanding,” he said, his voice low, “that you knew a ship would be intercepting yours. Is that correct?”

  Etta gaped at him. No, they hadn’t known that. An hour ago—wait, how long had it been since they were in the museum?

  “Grandfather is clearly losing his mind in his advanced years,” Sophia said, “to have trusted you.”

  “Perhaps it was desperation that forced him to appoint you,” Nicholas said. “I have been tasked with bringing you to New York, and as far as I am concerned, that is the beginning and end of our business.” He glanced over their shoulders, toward the forecastle. “To avoid unnecessary questions, the other men should see this as nothing more than a regular prize we’ve captured. Do you take my meaning?”

  New York? Etta thought. The two words teased out a tiny bit of hope from the tangled mess of the day.

  “What would happen if the truth did slip out, I wonder?” Sophia asked, all sweetness. “What would the crew think of you, risking their lives for a reward they’ll never see?”

  Something about those words fractured the control over his temper that he’d clearly been wrestling to maintain. Nicholas’s arm lashed out, his palm slapping against the wood beside her head. He had loomed over Sophia at his full height, but now he stooped to stare her directly in the eye. “Disparage me all you like, Miss Ironwood, spit out every vile curse you can think of at me—but if you threaten my livelihood again, know that there will be consequences.”

  Ironwood?

  Sophia didn’t so much as flinch. She brushed the threat away with a smirk, sickly green face and all. Nicholas shifted back, eyes flickering with a fire that seemed to burn to his core. In the silence that followed, with only the rhythm of the creaking bones of the great ship to mark time, Etta realized what she’d just witnessed, what the girl had found: a weapon to slice open old wounds.

  If this was Sophia weak from seasickness, then she was mildly terrified of what the girl would be like at full steam.

  Torn between letting the conversation continue, perhaps with more useful information, and watching them spar, Etta dug the dull edge of the knife against her thigh again, and breathed in the cold, briny air.

  “We understand,” Etta said finally. “Thank you.”

  It had the effect she’d hoped for, drawing Nicholas’s attention back toward her.

  He gave a curt nod. “I will have dinner sent to your cabins. Rest well, Miss Spencer.”

  Etta nodded, keeping her eyes on the toes that peeked out from beneath her dress. Nicholas moved toward the steps, and the air and smoke around them shifted, the skin at the back of her neck prickling with awareness as his eyes combed over her one last time.

  When the sound of his feet on the stairs disappeared, Etta whirled to face the girl beside her. “What the hell is going on?”

  Sophia sagged against the wall, the back of her hand pressed against her lips. At Etta’s words, her face drew up. “Don’t breathe another word until I say so, otherwise I will not be responsible for my actions.”

  Etta pushed the cabin door open again, and stepped inside with her fingers around the warm metal of the knife.

  “Tell me who you are,” she demanded. There was a small porthole window in the wall, but the light that filtered in was minimal. Sophia bent on unsteady legs to lift a metal lantern onto a small desk.

  Etta shifted, trying to get some distance from the smell of vomit and Sophia’s cold, assessing gaze. She wanted her back to the door—if this took an ugly turn, she could get herself out and lock Sophia in.

  The girl sat heavily on the edge of the built-in bunk, drawing a bucket over to herself with her foot. “Damned ship, damned traitor, damned task—”

  “Tell me!” Etta said. “How did we get here—and where is here? And who are those people?”

  “I shouldn’t tell you anything after that truly breathtaking display of stu—” Sophia heaved slightly. “Stupidity.”

  “You pushed me,” Etta said, letting her words rage on. “You did something to me—you brought me here!”

  “Of course I pushed you.” Sophia sniffed. “You were as slow as a cow. We would have been there for ages, you crying all over yourself like a fool. I did us both a favor.”

  “Did you—” She could barely force the words out. “Did you shoot Alice? Was she trying to stop you from bringing me here?”

  Etta’s mind was frantically trying to connect why Alice would have been there, not in the auditorium, not with her mother in her office upstairs. She hadn’t checked to see if she was carrying her purse—in any other circumstances she might have believed that someone hiding in the museum had tried to mug her. But it was too much of a coincidence. It was too simple of an explanation.

  “Alice?” Sophia repeated, confused. “You mean the old bag? I have no idea who shot her—there were other Ironwood travelers there keeping an eye on our progress. And if it wasn’t one of them, well, I wasn’t going to stand around and let whoever it was get us, too.”

  Etta stared at her, a thousand thoughts spilling into questions. Sophia laughed at her stunned silence, and the last, frayed grip Etta had on her composure finally snapped.

  She drew the knife up, her chest heaving, body trembling as she pressed it against the other girl’s neck. Instinct overrode logic, compassion, patience. The ugliness that poured through her veins was unfamiliar and frightening.

  What are you doing?

  Sophia stared up at her, dark eyes widening just a fraction. Then she clucked her tongue impatiently and leaned forward into the blade, until a droplet of blood welled up a
t the tip.

  Before Etta could stumble back, Sophia wrapped her hand around hers, pulling it back a fraction of a centimeter from her throat. Her skin would have been the envy of the moonlight, it was so pale and smooth. Her dark eyes burned with a wild kind of approval. Like Etta had passed an unspoken test.

  Etta could feel Sophia’s pulse flutter, light and warm, as the girl drew their hands toward her own throat again, skimming the exposed flesh.

  “Here,” she said, “right here. They’ll bleed out like a stuck pig before they can squeal, and you’ll be able to get away. Remember that.”

  Etta nodded, her throat too tight to speak as Sophia pried the knife out of her fingers and threw it hard enough for the tip to embed itself in the wall and stay there, shivering.

  “They won’t expect it from you,” she continued, “and, fool that I am, I didn’t either. Good for you. I like a fighter. But it won’t do you much good against me.”

  “Says the girl who can’t stop throwing up.” Etta barely recognized herself in her anger, and she knew herself even less in her helplessness. It left her feeling the way she’d felt while drowning, watching the surface of the water grow darker by the second.

  Sophia rose, picked up the silver pitcher from the desk, and poured it into a small porcelain basin, then splashed water on her face, her neck, her hands. When she finished, she gave it a look of ire. “I hate this century. It’s so…rustic, don’t you think?”

  “What century?” Etta heard herself whisper.

  “You really haven’t done this before, have you? You truly had no idea. Remarkable.” Sophia glanced up, lips twisting. “Guess.”

  She didn’t want to say it out loud, but it was the only way to know. “Eighteenth?” she guessed, thinking of the costumes. “You brought me back to the eighteenth century?”

  Desperation raised the pitch of her voice. Tell me, tell me, just tell me—

  “No one brought you anywhere,” said Sophia. “You traveled.”

  TRAVELED. ETTA ROLLED THE WORD around in her mind like clay, letting it take shape, smoothing it out, trying it again in different form. Traveled.

  To travel was to imply some kind of choice; to cross a distance willingly, for a reason. Etta had followed that noise, the screams, because she’d wanted to prove to herself that she wasn’t crazy, that there was a source, a reason for it. And it had led her…

  To the stairwell.

  The wall of shivering air.

  Except, no…that wasn’t the whole truth of it, not really. It had led her to Sophia, and Sophia had brought her to the stairwell, because…

  “You were sent to bring me here,” Etta said, putting that much together. “You pretended to be a violinist…you got yourself involved with the concert.”

  Sophia gave a little flick of her wrist. “Hand me that damp cloth over there, will you?”

  Etta picked it out of the basin and threw it at her face, relishing the slap it made as it struck skin.

  Sophia pushed herself up, her dress spilling out over the side of the narrow bunk. “Well you’re in a mood, aren’t you?”

  Etta fought the urge to scream. “Can’t imagine why.”

  The hammering and calls from above poured into the gap of silence.

  After a while, Sophia spoke. “As amusing as it would be to watch, I can’t let you flounder. If you slip and reveal yourself to the others, it’ll be my neck waiting for the guillotine, not yours.”

  As she dragged a flimsy wooden chair over from the door, Etta asked, “What do you mean, exactly—if I slip?”

  Sophia settled back. She was small enough to stretch her body out in the bunk without bending her knees. She folded the damp towel, draping it over her eyes and forehead. “It’s exactly as I said. If you tell the men on this ship—or anyone else, for that matter—that you can travel through time, you damn us both by association.” She lifted the cloth, her eyes narrowing. “Do you honestly mean to tell me that you know nothing about this? That your parents kept it from you?”

  Etta looked down at her hands, studying the red, bruised skin on her knuckles. The questions hung between them like a strand of diamonds, blinding.

  She looked up, an idea blazing through her disbelief. “If I answer a question, you have to answer one of mine.”

  Sophia rolled her eyes. “If you insist on playing games…”

  “I don’t know my father,” Etta said. “I never have. He was someone my mom met only once, according to her. A fling. Now you tell me—why is that important?”

  “I didn’t specify your father.” Sophia raised both brows. “The ability can be inherited from either parent.”

  Then…

  Mom. Oh, God—Etta had to brace herself against the desk to keep upright, her full weight sagging against it as her legs turned to dust under her. Mom.

  …you can’t just pluck her off this path, not without consequences.

  She’s not ready for this. She doesn’t have the right training, and there’s no guarantee it’ll go the right way for her—!

  They hadn’t been talking about the debut.

  Confusion preyed on her thoughts, even as guilt locked her in its jaws. She’d said those things to Alice, those horrible things, because she thought her instructor was trying to hold her back.

  She was trying to protect me. Her mom had wanted her to travel, to do this—and Alice hadn’t. Was she one of them, too—a traveler? Rose had clearly let her in on their secret, even as she left Etta well out of it. How could they have known all of this, and never once mentioned it? Why would they put her in this position?

  …you clearly don’t know Etta if you’re underestimating her like this. She can handle it.

  Handle what?

  Etta forced her jaw to set, to turn on Sophia with renewed suspicion. If her mother had wanted this to happen, she would have just told her to go with Sophia. The deafening feedback, Alice’s death—none of that would have needed to happen.

  It’s her time.

  A thought bloomed above the chaos in her mind. Rose and Alice clearly knew she would travel one day, and maybe they had always debated with each other about trying to stop it somehow, to protect her from this. That could be why they hadn’t told her about what she could do—they were arguing about finally cluing her in.

  Not soon enough, Etta thought, fighting to keep her breathing even. Not nearly soon enough.

  Suddenly, she was terrified for her mom. Because if one of the time travelers—one of the Ironwoods watching them—had killed Alice without any hesitation in order to get to Etta, and Etta specifically, then who was to say they hadn’t done the same to her mother if she, too, had tried to stop them?

  Why had they come for her? Why did they want her?

  “You are clever enough to figure it out, then,” Sophia said. “The ability is inherited from one or both parents—usually one now, since our numbers have dwindled, and we’ve been forced to marry outside of our kind. There’s a slimmer and slimmer chance of being born with it, but you clearly got it from your mother. Rose Linden.”

  Linden. Not Spencer. But why would she take a different last name—had she invented it on a whim, or did it really belong to Etta’s father? How did he fit into this, if at all?

  “Rather famous in our circles, I must say. She disappeared one day and caused quite the kerfuffle.”

  Sophia seemed to enjoy watching Etta’s world unravel around her. It made Etta’s hackles rise that this girl was lording the information over her, clearly hoping that she would beg for it.

  She wouldn’t. “Aren’t you going to ask me another question?”

  One corner of Sophia’s mouth tilted up as Etta set her shoulders back.

  “Do you know the name Cyrus Ironwood?” Sophia asked finally. “Does that mean anything to you?”

  “That was two questions,” Etta pointed out. “And, no to both. How do we travel and how does it work?”

  Sophia groaned. “Christ! We spend years learning this—and now I have to g
ive you a summary?”

  “Yes,” Etta said firmly.

  “It’s…a relationship of sorts, a special one that certain people have had with the timeline for thousands of years. There’s no machine, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s more…natural than that. Grandfather doesn’t like the word, but it’s closer to what you think of as magic. Our ancestors had a unique ability to take advantage of tears in the fabric of time, pass through holes to emerge in a different era.”

  What was the most unbelievable part of that explanation? That the timeline could be “torn,” or that she’d used the word magic with a straight face?

  “They’re like the natural crevices—fissures—you find around the world. The passages have always existed, and our families have always been able to find and use them. It’s all rather simple, but do try to keep up.” Sophia shifted, trying to get more comfortable. “A passage in medieval Paris could lead to one in, say, Egypt in the time of pharaohs. You step in as you would to any tunnel, passing back and forth between the entrances.”

  Etta nodded, trying to rub some feeling back into her freezing limbs, startled from her next question by a rogue thought. Sophia had said our ancestors. At first, Etta had taken it to mean Sophia’s and her grandfather’s, the Ironwoods—but were some of those faceless ancestors hers? The Lindens?

  The thought filled the dark, dusty corner of her heart she’d closed off as a kid with a scorching, almost unbearable kind of hope. She’d never let herself want more people than the ones she already had; it felt too ungrateful for the amount of love her mom and Alice brought into her world. But…a family. One with roots, and dozens and dozens of branches by the sound of it—one of which she’d fallen from.

  “There’s another gown for you in the trunk in the other cabin,” Sophia said, waving her hand. “God knows if you’ll fit into that any better than what I squeezed you into.”

  The insult was shoved aside by the chill of sudden realization.

  “Where are my things?” Etta asked. Her clothes—her mom’s earrings—

  “I burned your ugly dress when we came through,” Sophia said. “It was ruined, anyway. The earrings you were wearing are in a pouch in there…somewhere.”