The Time Travelers: Volume One Read online

  His skin was real. His sunburn, tan and freckles were real. His eyebrows barely separated and she threaded a finger down his nose and back up between his brows. He seemed to feel he had been given permission by her touch to do the same, and her movements were mirrored. Whatever she did, he reflected back.

  Mirrors, she thought, caught on a sharp fragment of knowledge. What is it about mirrors that I should remember?

  “Shouldn’t you be wearing your hat?” he said abruptly. It was one of those sentences to fill space, when you don’t want to talk at all, but you don’t know what else to do.

  You are so lovable, she thought, you’re like a teddy bear dressed in sweet old-fashioned clothes. “I would never wear a hat. Maybe if I took up skiing, I’d jam some knitted thing over my ears, but that’s just a good reason not to ski. I hate flattening my hair.”

  “You never wear a hat?” He was unable to believe this.

  Their eyes met on the subject of hats, of all things. Well, she had wanted a conversation that went beyond machines and cars, and she had it.

  He was wearing a hat: a flat, beretlike cap with a little brim, the sort men wore in movies about early cars with running boards. It was gray plaid and cute. She took his hat off, taking time to run her fingers through his heavy hair, as if she, having met Strat, now owned him. She put his cap on her own head and gave him a teasing half-smile. “There. Fully hatted,” she said. “Better?”

  Then there were no facts and no time span, only sense. Touch and feel and smell and sight: these four as perfect as dreams. It is a dream, she thought. Real life isn’t this wonderful.

  So if it’s a dream, there is nothing to do but sleep it out, enjoy whatever comes, because when I awaken—

  A sound Annie had never heard in real life, only on television, filled her ears. A heavy metal striking; a thudding clippy-clop, clippy-clop.

  Annie leaped to her feet. There, beyond the bay-berry bushes and the sea grass and the dunes, were four beautiful horses, rich ruddy brown with braided manes, grandly pulling a carriage decorated like a Christmas tree, with golden scrollwork: the Stratton initials. The guard in the little gatehouse had lifted the gate, and the carriage passed onto Stratton Point without missing a beat.

  Annie filled with time.

  Filled with fear.

  No.

  There is no such thing as falling through time.

  Without her permission, the facts added themselves up. The view from the bedroom tower, from which there had been no interstate bridge across the river. The wild empty beach. This boy, with his oddly cut hair, manners, clothing. That carriage.

  No.

  They’re filming an historical movie, she informed herself. Somebody paid a trillion dollars to take down the phone poles and lay turf over the parking lots and close off the beach. Somehow on the last day of school, nobody talked about this, although obviously the entire village is cooperating to the fullest.

  The horses snorted, and stamped, the rich aroma of their sweat masking the scent of the sea. Annie forced herself to look way up the beach and over the clear meadow to the old stables. They were not old. They were new. The doors had not been taken off so that tractors and trucks could fit through. Horses lived in that stable.

  “Strat?” she whispered. The ocean roared in her ears, although there were no waves to speak of; the day was calm. It’s fear roaring in my ears, she thought. “What year is this, Strat?”

  “Miss Lockwood, it is 1895.”

  She felt as if she would fall again, and she clung to him. It was a circumstance with which he was familiar—fainting women—and he responded much more comfortably than to the bike race. The carriage moved on, while Annie remained within his arms. “This really is 1895?” said Annie.

  “It really is.”

  She had half fallen to the ground. He’d knelt to catch her, and now she was sitting on his bent knee, Strat staring at her like a man about to propose. “We have a problem,” said Annie. “I live in 1995.”

  “I’m good at guessing games,” he said. “I’ll have this in a moment. Is that a clue to your street address?”

  But Annie Lockwood had finished her own guessing game and was pretty sure of the truth. She tucked his arm tighter around herself, as if she were an infant to be comforted by wrapped blankets. Eighteen ninety-five. Not only is this boy really a Stratton, she thought, my parents aren’t even born yet—my grandparents aren’t born yet! “I’m sorry I dizzied out on you, Strat. I just caught on, that’s all. I really am in 1895. I’ve fallen backward a century. Which can’t happen. I have to figure out what has gone wrong, Strat.”

  “Sun,” said Strat with certainty. “Young ladies are never allowed out in the sun without hats, and this is why. Your constitution isn’t strong enough. Young ladies are too frail for the heat. We’ll go home and you’ll rest on Florinda’s fainting couch.”

  She saw that he did not want to accept the century change at all, and would far rather have some un-chaperoned girl who needed to rest on a fainting couch. Who was Florinda, and why did she faint so often that she needed a special couch on which to do it?

  “No, Strat, you were there. You’re the one I bumped into, aren’t you? You saw half of me when I saw half of you. It isn’t too much sun, Strat.”

  Fragments like triangular photographs, caught in the mirrors of the Mansion, flickered in Annie’s memory. She saw again the blackness shifting, smelled the apples and autumn, heard the crack of bone.

  What did I see? she thought. Did I see it in this time, or as I fell through? I remember the blackness had its own sound. But that is as impossible as changing centuries.

  Strat’s face shifted too, becoming young and upset. “I was there,” he admitted. “And you’re right, it wasn’t sun. We were indoors, you and I, and most of the drapes were pulled to keep out the sun. I don’t know why I said that. I’m sorry.”

  They touched but not as they had before: they touched to see if the other was real, if the skin was alive and the cheek was warm.

  “I’ve fallen through time. I’m from a hundred years later, Strat.” She had no watch. The sky was a late-afternoon sky. A four or five o’clock sky.

  “Was it frightening?” said Strat.

  “Yes. It was really a fall. I could feel the time rushing past my face. There were other people in there with me. Half people.” I’m not the only one changing centuries, thought Annie. Other bodies and souls flew past me. Or with me. Or through me.

  “Are you frightened now?” said Strat, discarding the scary parts and eager to move on into the adventure. “Don’t be. I’ll take care of you. You’ll stay with us. We’ll have to come up with a story, though. We can’t use time travel. It’s too bad Devonny isn’t here, she’s wonderful at fibs.”

  Stay with him? thought Annie, touching the idea the way she had touched Strat’s face. Stay in the Mansion, he means! I’d have my wish. I’d see how they live, and wear their dresses, and dance their dances! I’d have both lives. Both centuries.

  The last time she’d had that thought, she had also thought of Daddy having both women. Now the knowledge of Daddy’s affair traveled with her over the century and ruined the adventure. She shook her head. “I have to get home, Strat. How will I get home? I don’t know how I got here, never mind how to go in the other direction. I should go right now, before they worry. Mom will have left a message on the machine asking about the last half day.”

  Strat had no idea what that meant.

  “Of course, Mom isn’t home from work yet,” added Annie, “which means that so far nobody’s worried.”

  “Your mother works?” said Strat, horrified.

  “Well, she doesn’t swab prison toilets,” said Annie, laughing at him. “She works on Wall Street.”

  “Your mother?”

  “She’s a very successful account executive.”

  Annie envisioned her mother, with that distinguished wardrobe, black or gray or ivory or olive, always formal, always businesslike. That briefcase
, bulging, and that Powerbook, charged, as indeed Mom was charged every day, eager to get to New York and get to work. Annie thought her mother very beautiful, but Daddy had changed his mind on the definition of beauty.

  What if I can’t get back to her? thought Annie. She’ll need me and I won’t be there! How could the universe let me fall through like that? Why didn’t I go through the first time I fell? What made it happen the second time? How can I find the way back out? Is it a door? A wish? A magic stone?

  Strat led her up the sloping sand to the causeway as gently as if he were comforting a grieving widow. Now he was actually lifting her bike for her, quite obviously preparing to help her get on. Could any girl on earth require help to get on her bike? He was being so gentle with her she felt like a newborn kitten, or a woman who used fainting couches. How maddening.

  “My constitution,” said Annie Lockwood, “just happens to be superlative. Especially in the sun. I can whip you at beach volleyball any day of the week, fella. As for tennis, you’ll be begging for mercy. Bet I can swim farther than you too.”

  “What is volleyball?” he asked. “I do play tennis, though, and I’m perfectly willing to beg for mercy. But if you are so hale and hearty that you can whip me, then let us forget fainting couches. May I have the honor of escorting you to the village to the ice cream parlor, Miss Lockwood?”

  He was not being sarcastic. He was not being silly. He was actually hoping for the honor.

  Nobody says things like that, thought Annie. Not out loud. You’d be laughed out of school. Laughed off the team.

  “Before you change centuries again, of course,” added Strat.

  It didn’t matter what century you saw that grin in. He had a world-class grin. Annie decided to worry about changing centuries after ice cream.

  They mounted their bikes.

  He stared at how much of her leg was revealed until she adjusted the white skirt to cover her thigh. All this attention was delightful. Sean wouldn’t have noticed if she’d danced on the ceiling.

  “Let’s not race,” said Strat. “Let’s pedal slowly.”

  Let’s keep that skirt in place, translated Annie. “Okay,” she said.

  “If we run into my friends,” said Strat, as they moved down a road that was not paved, but graded and oiled, “I’ll introduce you, of course. May I know your real name? Annie must be what your family calls you.”

  I do have a real name, thought Annie. And what’s more, a perfect real name. Perhaps I was meant to fall through. Perhaps it was intended that I should visit another era, and my parents had no choice but to give me the name of another era. “Anna Sophia,” she said. It was supposed to happen. I must stop worrying about getting back. Everything will happen at the right time, just as I must have fallen through at the right time.

  She was wildly exhilarated now, unworried, ready to have a huge crush on this sweet boy.

  He claimed to love Anna Sophia as a name, but continued to call her Miss Lockwood.

  They pedaled a quarter mile.

  Miss Lockwood held her hand out to Mr. Stratton, and he took it in his, and they pedaled hand in hand, and did not worry about traffic, because there was no such thing.

  * * *

  Bridget, the little Irish maid, loved parties as much as Miss Devonny and Miss Harriett. Of course, she didn’t get to dance, but she got to look. She would help the ladies dress, and help with the ladies’ hair, and for a moment or two could actually hold the diamond brooch or the strings of pearls.

  She’d been up since before the sun, and would not be permitted rest until the party ended and the ladies were abed. She wasn’t tired. Bridget was used to work.

  She’d left her family in Ireland only three years ago, when she was thirteen years old, walking country lanes until she reached the Atlantic, and crossing that terrible ocean in the bottom of an even more terrible boat, and she had been hungry all those thirteen years but she was not hungry now.

  She’d done the right thing, coming to America. It tickled Bridget that she was taking care of a fourteen-year-old, Miss Devonny, who was not even allowed to cross a street by herself, while she, Bridget, had crossed an ocean. Bridget enjoyed life, and she certainly enjoyed the Mansion. The party tonight would be magnificent, things undreamed of in all Ireland. And although she couldn’t dance at the dance, she nevertheless had a dance partner.

  She was stepping out with the grocery delivery boy. Of course Jeb’s parents, staunch Congregationalists, were horrified that their son was in love with a Catholic. They were going to send him out West, or enlist him in the army—anything to get him out of the vile clutches of Bridget Shanrahan. So her romance with Jeb was more romantic than anything Miss Devonny or Miss Harriett would ever have—clandestine meetings, dark corners, plotting against parents, and the true and valid fear that they would never be permitted to marry.

  Bridget polished. She polished silver, she polished brass, she polished copper, she polished wood. The Mansion gleamed wherever Bridget had been, and in the beautiful wood of the piano Bridget looked at her reflection and hoped that her clutches were not vile, but also hoped they were strong enough to work.

  I have gotten what I wanted so far. The thing is not to give up. My sisters and brothers gave up, and they’re still back there, starving and hopeless.

  Tears fell onto the perfect piano and she swiftly soaked up the evidence. Weakness was very pretty in a lady like Miss Florinda. But Bridget had not had the luck to be born a lady. Weakness would destroy her. She prayed to Our Lady for help. Please let Jeb stand up to his family and love me most!

  Harriett could tell by the way Strat tossed back his head and faced the girl sitting on his knee that he was having a wonderful time. I have never sat on his knee, she thought. I have never sat on any man’s knee. No man has held my face in his hands like that.

  Her heart blistered. Her hands turned thick and heavy like rubber, while the hands of that girl on the beach were touching Strat in ways Harriett had never thought of, never mind dared.

  “Well!” said Devonny. “We have to nip this in the bud! You and I have planned the most magnificent wedding in America for you and Strat. Photographers will come from Europe. We’ll all go on the honeymoon with you. It won’t be any fun if Strat marries somebody else, Harriett.”

  “I don’t know that he’s proposing marriage to her,” said Harriett, as mildly as she knew how. Her heart was not feeling mild. She was using up all the control she possessed at this moment, and when Strat came back—with this girl?—she would have no self-control left. She would be stripped down to the heart and do something crazed and stupid.

  “He’ll have to marry her if he keeps that up,” said Devonny.

  Harriett knew slightly more about the facts of life than Devonny. Strat was not compromising the unknown girl’s future. Not yet.

  “I still say I want your honeymoon in the Wild West,” said Devonny, as if Harriett had been protesting.

  Devonny never planned her own wedding and honeymoon, only her brother’s to Harriett. It was the thing now to take your entire wedding party to Yellowstone. There was a fine new lodge, built by Union Pacific Railroad. The party would frolic for a few weeks at those geysers, and see a grizzly bear, and then go on to the Pacific Ocean. Perhaps a few weeks in that little town of San Francisco would be pleasant. They would wander in the hills and find gold.

  Strat was gold enough. If only Harriett could have Strat—if only she could become his wife! The horror of being a spinster gripped Harriett by the spine, as if not being married could paralyze her.

  When Strat came back for the party this evening, would he bring this girl? Would he introduce her? Would he say, This is Miss Somebody, with whom I have fallen in love? Would he expect Harriett to be friendly to her?

  Of course he would. He always expected the best of Harriett.

  “Strat wandered,” said Devonny, using the verb to mean unfaithful. “He’s going to do that, you know. He will be like Father. You must put up with it
, Harriett, even after you’re married.”

  They were very sheltered young ladies, but they knew the truth about fathers. Harriet’s father had had mistresses, strings of them, and her mother had not been allowed to mind. Of course, Mother had died young of tuberculosis, sparing Harriett’s father the trouble of worrying about his wife’s feelings. Harriett’s father then died, thrown from his horse in a silly pointless race. Harriett missed her father dreadfully. She knew, in a distant sort of way, that she wanted Strat to be her father as well as her husband, and she knew, less distantly, that there was something wrong with that. But if only she could be married to him, then everything would be all right, and the gaping holes where she was not loved would be filled.

  Devonny’s father was also a gaping hole of loveless-ness. He would certainly not be missed were he to meet with an accident. He was completely sinful, divorcing his wives and getting new ones. Divorce was unthinkable, except in Devonny’s family, where it was thought of quite routinely. Strat and Devonny’s mother had been placed in a town house in Brooklyn, and hadn’t been given enough money to leave.

  Harriet hoped Strat had more of his mother in him than his father. Mr. Stratton senior was a rude cruel man who drove himself through life like a splinter through a palm. But Strat was sweet and kind. On Strat, beautiful manners sat easily, and Harriet had never known him to be anything but nice.

  Be nice to me, Strat, she prayed. Let me have what I want. You.

  Her eyes forced her to look down the white line of sand to where it narrowed at the causeway.

  The girl climbed on her cycle, and Strat mounted his, and they cycled away, laughing and talking, and the girl’s hair and skirt flew out behind her like a child’s, yet romantic as a woman’s.

  Aunt Ada had worn nothing but black for decades. In the evening, her black dress was silk, dripping with jet beads, and cascading with tied fringe. Even the shawls that kept her narrow shoulders warm were black. It was a true reflection of her life. Not one ray of light existed for her. She’d been scowling for so many years that even her smiles were downward, though very little made Ada smile.