Passenger

by Alexandra Bracken

  “No, my mom talked about some kind of a bridge…at the southern gate, I think,” Etta said. She doubted it looked anything like the modern causeway that existed in her era, but it was worth finding, to avoid whatever was living in the moat.

  To fill the silence and stop thinking about the way the rain made the trees rattle like angry snakes, Etta asked, “Where did you travel with Julian?”

  “Here and there.”

  All right. Julian was still off-limits, and she wouldn’t press him, not when it was clearly still painful. But Etta was incredibly curious about that sliver of time in his life.

  “I think you were close to getting on the right trail to the astrolabe,” she told him. “I’m not sure if you were in the right year, but I’m almost positive the first clue refers to the Tiger’s Nest. And that’s where Julian died, right?”

  Nicholas ran a hand back over his short hair and nodded.

  Etta’s fingers twisted around one another. “It’s my mom’s fault, isn’t it? Everything. You traveling with him, his death…”

  “I can forgive your mother for doing what she believed to be right, even if her methods were questionable and a damned pain,” he said, “but if we trace the blame back to its roots, there’s only Ironwood at fault.”

  Always Ironwood.

  “I’m not sure where or how to begin,” he said, holding a branch out of her way. Nicholas searched for the words. “Julian and I were sent to Bhutan because the old man had found records that a monk once sighted a young blond woman in one of the meditation caves—one who never emerged from it again. We thought for certain it would be another fruitless trip. Over the years, the search took us everywhere from Mexico to India, to what I think you’d know as Alaska…?”

  Etta nodded.

  “It’s not…it’s not such an easy thing to discuss,” he said, his low voice drowned out for a moment by the cracking of thunder. “For a time, I was blind to the real role I was playing. I told myself I wasn’t there as Julian’s servant, but as a brother; a friend and protector. I think he did see me as a confidant, but…I’m afraid I’ve too much pride. The realization that I was actually there to play valet festered in me. Made me resent him. Just before he died, I told him that I didn’t want to travel any longer—I wanted out of the trap of servitude again. Ironwood had promised me status if I returned to the arms of the family—promised me wonder, adventure, all the things that sound exciting to a boy of fourteen. But I was never given freedom. I was issued orders. I did not receive the full training, or the locations of all of the passages, you see—I wonder now if Ironwood feared I’d escape through them and somehow disappear.”

  She did see. Cyrus was a masterful manipulator. He would probably have promised to lasso the moon and bring it down to Nicholas in order to get him to travel with Julian.

  “I wanted to make those choices again. Build my own life, feel like I was at its helm again—the way I only felt with the Halls, when I sailed with the captain.”

  “What did Julian say when you told him you wanted out?” she asked.

  Nicholas was silent a long while. “He told me there was a contract I’d signed, and not a single drop of shared blood would compel any of the Ironwoods to break it. He said it was my purpose, one way or another; that it was the order of things. Terribly sorry, old chap, and all of that. I don’t believe he had a black heart in him; he’d only been poisoned with these justifications like all the rest of them.”

  Etta itched to take his hand, but by the way his shoulders were bunched, she wasn’t sure he wanted to be touched.

  “I realized my mistake. I had been planning to slip away from the family once we returned to the eighteenth century, to fall back into place in my own natural timeline, and I thought I might be able to, after we returned from…” He trailed off again. “Does Sophia still believe I let him fall?”

  Etta winced, giving him his answer. “I told her that was impossible.”

  “Is it?” he said, brushing a branch out of the way, “I don’t blame her. The whole family must have known I was desperate to escape my contract of service. Exile is a rather neat, if extreme, method of accomplishing just that. I’ve…I’ve even wondered if something in me let him fall, knowing what the consequences would be.”

  She shook her head. “No. And, for what it’s worth, Sophia does recognize it was an accident.”

  “But she does blame me,” he finished. “I blame myself. And I’m the fool, because in spite of everything, he was my brother. I never saw him as anything less, or cared for him less than Chase, who is my brother in everything but blood. And it clearly wasn’t the same for him.”

  She tried to remember what Sophia had said—that Julian had insisted he and everyone else should think of Nicholas as his brother—but words must have meant very little when he clearly hadn’t demonstrated any of those feelings.

  “That doesn’t make you a fool,” Etta huffed, wiping her sopping wet hair out of her face. “You deserve to be loved and treated with respect.”

  If he heard her, Nicholas didn’t acknowledge it. He turned his face up to the rain for a moment, then continued forward in silence.

  “I should have saved him,” he said after a long while. “When I came back to find that you’d gone…it brought me back to that moment on the mountain. It…gripped me and wouldn’t let me go, even after I saw that you were all right.”

  A panic attack? she wondered. Or an echo of a terrible memory. That would explain the overreaction.

  “All that’s left in the end is the certainty that I can’t protect you from every small thing, and it’s difficult to accept,” he said. “But I am truly very sorry for the things I said.”

  “It drives me crazy to be treated like a child,” she told him. “I know that wasn’t your intention, and I know things are different in your time, but almost nothing gets my temper going faster.”

  He nodded. “I know. It was irrational.”

  Etta shrugged. “I’m no stranger to irrational thoughts, believe me. I spent the better half of my life secretly convinced I was a mistake my mom regretted bringing into the world, and that’s why she was so distant. Hardhearted and impossible to please. But I know it’s not true—when I was younger, she was…very different. And she’s given me everything I’ve ever needed.” Except, of course, for the truth about traveling. Etta looked over at him, meeting Nicholas’s gaze. “I’ve never told anyone that before. I’m not sure I’ve even let myself put that feeling into words before, even in my own head.”

  “And now that you know the truth—” he began.

  Etta, who had been navigating through pockets of sinking mud and rivulets of water, caught a flash of bright color out of the corner of her eye. Without warning, she crouched and tugged him down with her.

  Nicholas landed on his knees with a surprised grunt. Etta’s attention sharpened, focusing on a point in front of them, as she rose slightly to peer over the brush. They’d been walking along the edge of the moat, following the walls of the city the best they could, even as the jungle did such an excellent job of disguising it. But now Etta caught a flash of something new. She leaned forward, parting the tangle of leaves and limbs in front of her: ochre cloth. Movement.

  Men.

  It took her a moment to place what she was looking at. In her time, Buddhist monks wore brightly colored robes that ranged in color from saffron to a kind of burnt tangerine. These were a duller yellow, stained with splatters of mud; they clung to the men as they took shelter beneath the looming gate on the opposite end of a crumbling bridge.

  “I suppose that’s the gate with the bridge you spoke of,” he said, close to her ear.

  She nodded. It seemed to be the only one with a pathway across the moat that was still standing, but even it looked like it was slowly being pulled apart by the jungle.

  The monks seemed to be discussing what to do. One of them waved his hands toward the jungle, where they were hiding, and Etta and Nicholas flattened against the ground.r />
  “We can’t just…go, can we?” she whispered.

  He raised his brows. “Do either of us look like we might reasonably belong here? That there’s a logical explanation for our presence?”

  Okay, fair point. If time traveling was the art of blending in, she supposed it might be a little difficult to explain their appearance and clothing in the jungles of Cambodia.

  “We aren’t traveling with a guardian who can explain away our presence,” Nicholas continued, his voice low, “and if they record seeing us, and that record survives…”

  It would change history. A small ripple, maybe, but…Etta wasn’t willing to risk either of their futures.

  She couldn’t say how long they waited—long enough that, as she leaned against Nicholas, pressing a cheek against his bare shoulder, she started to nod off. It was the sound of voices that pulled her out of her exhausted haze. The warm, solid weight next to her shoulder slipped away as Nicholas sat up. He tracked their progress as the monks left the shelter of the gate and made their way out onto the bridge.

  Etta rubbed her face, listening to their quiet murmuring and their footsteps through the damp, sucking jungle. She watched them until they found some sort of path and the foliage swallowed them up. There had been ten in all. Nicholas waited a few moments to see if more were leaving the confines of the city, trailing after the first group. When he seemed sure there were not, he helped her up. Etta put some weight on her aching leg.

  “It’s all right,” she promised when he cut a sharp, worried glance toward her. She could handle it.

  “Your mother must truly be a fearsome creature,” he informed her, taking her arm to help her over a felled tree, and then keeping it in his. “A revolution, a world war, a remote jungle—I’m almost afraid of what’s next.”

  “Paris,” Etta breathed out. She could see the painting of the Luxembourg Garden so clearly, could practically smell the sweetness of the grass, the trees, the endless flowerbeds. After the rain, the jungle had taken on a stronger smell of rot. With the cover of clouds, night was creeping in early, spreading its fingers over the skies, deepening the gloom. What was her mother’s—or her family’s—connection to this place?

  “Good God. Let me guess: the French Revolution? The Reign of Terror?” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m not quite sure I’m willing to lose my head in this search.”

  Etta had no idea, but at the terrifying rate they were going, she wouldn’t be surprised if her mother threw in a guillotine as a challenge. She understood, sort of, that the point was to discourage travelers from following her trail, but…really?

  She stretched her arms, her back. If her mother had been tough enough to make it, then Etta would be, too.

  Home, she thought. Home, Mom, and…what?

  “Is that anticipation I detect on your face?” he asked, with a small, knowing smile. She warmed at the sight of it, still feeling the soft, sweet touch of those same lips against her own.

  “I don’t…mind this so much,” she admitted for the first time. What they could do—their ability—was exhilarating and absurd and terrible and wonderful, and it made her heart race. It made her feel, for the first time in a long time, a drive to step outside her bubble of strings and competition and endless practice. It made her feel capable and strong that she’d survived this far, that she was still surviving; it made her feel curious about all of these hidden eras that now, if she desired, could be spread open before her like a deck of cards, only waiting for her to pick one.

  He kissed me.

  She’d kissed him.

  And it hadn’t been an accident. It hadn’t been a moment drunk with relief; not entirely. It had felt as natural and familiar as his hold on her now. She’d known instinctively that they’d been building toward something, and she was only glad it had been the same “something” she wanted. And maybe she was a pirate after all, because she would fight like hell before ever voluntarily surrendering the treasure she’d already found.

  Glancing over at Nicholas, taking in his strong profile, one thought caught at the front of her mind, and she couldn’t shake it free. It was a neat, easy solution, and she felt herself latch on to it in desperation.

  If Cyrus would punish him for letting her get away with the astrolabe, then…maybe he should come with her to avoid it. Travel into the future, where he could have access to all of the modern marvels she took for granted; he could find work, go to school, and—

  Never see Chase or Captain Hall again. The family he’d made for himself. Never own the ship he wanted so desperately.

  It was selfish, she knew, to want him to come with her—and yes, it was mostly because she wanted to make sure he was safe, but she wasn’t ready to never see him again, to never know what became of him, to never recapture that little groan he’d made when he kissed her. Etta would never kid herself into thinking that her time was some kind of post-racial utopia, where no one would ever hassle or harm him for the color of his skin, but it wasn’t the eighteenth century. He could have a life there, one he could fully control.…

  She blew out a long breath from her nose and reached up to touch his hand on her arm, still there from helping her navigate the moss-slick stones.

  You can’t decide that for him. She could only make decisions for herself.

  Home was a clear path forward. Home was New York City, the debut, her mom, Alice, and…

  The air was cooler than it had been in the minutes leading up to the storm, and she shivered hard enough for Nicholas to fold her into his side as they made their way up the path, toward the arch of one of the dark stone gates. Etta craned her neck back, to better see the enormous face looking outward over the same jungle that had sprouted through the pockets and cracks of the stone. The pointed peaks of the tower were carved down in tooth-like layers, seeming to enclose each other like the petals of a lotus blossom.

  “Let’s rest for a moment,” Nicholas said, once they were under the cover of the gate’s arch. The rain was still misting down around them—spitting, Alice had always called it—but the trees and structures were dripping wildly from the storm. She wanted a moment to try to wring out her dress, but…she wanted to keep moving. Etta understood, in a way she never had before, that time held intrinsic value, and that they were wasting it. She understood. So why was that small, secret part of her grateful that they were slowing down, even for a few minutes? To have one small sliver of time just to be near him, feel his skin against hers, hear his thoughts. Etta wasn’t sure when the realization had come, if it had been shadowing her this whole time waiting to be acknowledged, but now it was here: the sooner they found the astrolabe, the sooner she’d be gone. And he’d told her many times that he didn’t intend to travel after this, meaning that gone would be for good.

  Stop it.

  “We should keep moving.” And stop thinking about options that weren’t options at all. Stop stalling because she wasn’t ready to let go of whatever this was.

  Mom. The more she thought her admittedly flimsy plan through, the more Etta realized she would need to do all of this in less than the seven days they had left. She would need the element of surprise to get back to the future and pluck her mom out of harm’s way—not to mention, she needed to use some of that extra time to figure out where she was being held.

  “Etta, please,” he said. “I know we’re losing time, but you need to eat, and I need to make sure that there isn’t anyone else around. I’ll locate the passage. You tend to your…the wound.”

  The pleading quality in his voice pulled a protest from her lips. But as he stepped out, his gaze swinging over the city, she reached up and caught his wrist.

  “I don’t want to split up,” she said. “Please, just…stay. I’ll rest and eat for a few minutes, and we can find it together.”

  His expression softened. “All right, Etta. All right.”

  She sat down in the mud and leaned back against one arm of the gate as Nicholas settled across the other. She finally saw what
he’d been doing when he had left her by the stream: cutting wood into bowl-like shapes. He held one out to catch the rain in its hollowed belly and passed it to her. Etta gulped it down in a single sip, then held it out again to collect more, as he did the same. Digging into the sopping wet bag, he removed his soaked shirt with a mournful look and passed her a bright little bundle—bananas.

  Etta greedily tore into the first one, breaking its soft center into pieces as Nicholas gave up on wringing out his shirt and tugged it back on. Raindrops dripped from the arch in soft patters, catching the dim light. The water collected and flowed down the paths worn by hundreds of years of footsteps. In the distance, if she squinted, she could see pale-limbed trees growing into some of the structures, devastating whole sections of walls with their roots and branches.

  It was the return of the singing birds that made her close her eyes, simply breathe in the damp air. When she opened them again, Nicholas was watching her, his knees drawn up, his expression inscrutable.

  She could feel him drifting away on the tide of his thoughts, so she swam out to meet him.

  “How about a kiss, hey?”

  Etta liked that she was still able to startle him, just a little. The blank look of concentration broke as he barked out a laugh.

  “I don’t know if that’s a wise idea. We’d never leave.”

  There it was: the bold line of his smile. Her blood heated at the sight of it, and despite her own flirting, Etta felt herself blush at the promise underlying his words. But just as quickly as the smile appeared, it slid away. He reached for her injured leg, inspecting the healing cut. Nicholas shook his head as he unwound the wet bandage. One hand grasped her ankle, the fingers stroking the curve of bone, while the other ran up the length of the muscle, skirting around the puckered red wound. Etta felt a prickle of goose bumps rise in the places he touched. A different kind of ache hollowed the pit of her stomach, and the echoing heat rose up over her chest, her neck, her face, until all of her ached with the need to touch him in return.