Earth & Sky

by Megan Crewe

  What’s Darryl doing now, in this present? How has he managed to live with himself all this time? And those guys, Babyface and his friend: have they felt even a speck of guilt?

  Shapes and colors flash past the window. I see Noam’s pale, determined face, the swing of an arm, the water rippling around a bloodstained jacket. After a few minutes, I pull down the shade, but the beige blankness gives me no comfort. I start picturing that shimmering cone—the carrier, Win called it—appearing beside the train tracks, the Enforcers spilling out. I wouldn’t even know . . .

  I push the shade back up. There’s nothing but scattered industrial buildings and stretches of yellowed grass passing by outside. Win said we didn’t have to worry. But my pulse keeps jumping.

  Even though nothing feels wrong, I dig out my bracelet, careful to avoid unraveling the hemp string further where it snapped. The remaining beads rotate under my fingers, and the threes roll out through my head. The pattern holds me in place, here in the small cabin with the whir of the train’s wheels against the tracks and the plasticky smell of recycled air, but it doesn’t calm me. My nerves are still twitching, my muscles tight.

  I can’t do it anymore: just get through it, wait for the worst of the emotions to pass. No matter how many times I turn the beads, no matter how many cycles of three I multiply, Noam will still be dead.

  Win said we could talk when we were somewhere safer, when we’d had time to think. I don’t know where we’re going to find a safer spot, and I’ve done enough thinking.

  “Win?” I say.

  He raises his head. I ready myself. I have to lay it all out as clearly as possible, not giving him any room to argue.

  “I know we can’t just take Noam the way I thought,” I say. “But we don’t have to. All we have to do is make some little tweak to stop him from ending up in the marshlands in the first place. I couldn’t seem to talk to him properly about the future, but . . . maybe if I write him a letter without too many details, give it to him when he’s leaving school—I could tell him when Darryl calls him, it’ll be a prank, he should ignore him and just stay at the house. And if he goes anyway, can’t we just, like, grab him for half an hour until the guys have gone off with Darryl and there’s no way for them to take Noam too? We don’t even have to get anyone else involved—the police, my parents—it’d just be Noam’s life we’re changing.”

  Win’s mouth twists. “You’re talking about reversing someone’s death. Of course that’s going to impact other people.”

  “Well, after,” I say. “But—you reversed the deaths of my whole class the other day, just to distract the Enforcers. Jeanant’s been making all kinds of minor changes to distract them too, right? It’s not like they’re going to know this one is significant. And even if they check it out, we won’t stick around for them to catch us.”

  “I didn’t mean that,” Win says. “I meant you. If your brother doesn’t disappear, your past will be completely different.”

  “What?” I say. “That’s a problem? I’ll get to grow up with the brother I was supposed to have. He’ll get to finish high school and college and meet a girl he wants to marry and do all the other things he should have gotten to do. My parents won’t have to spend all that time wondering what they did to drive him away. I won’t be so torn up with guilt that I . . .”

  I falter. I forgot that part of the equation. What made me seek out the answer to Noam’s disappearance to begin with. To know what happened, to know he was okay, so I could get my head on straight.

  “If he doesn’t disappear, I won’t get obsessed with paying attention to details,” I say. “I won’t notice the shifts.” My mind trips backward down the long line of freak-outs and awkward moments and excuses that have been an unshakeable part of my existence until now. What would my life have been like, rewritten without that? What would it be with Noam in it?

  Win’s voice brings me back. “If you don’t notice the shifts, I won’t notice you. We’ll never talk.”

  Oh. Of course. “I won’t be able to help you follow Jeanant’s messages,” I say. “I wouldn’t even be here right now.” This room, this window, this seat, the rocking of the train’s motion, all erased from my life, even though it feels so real right now. The idea makes me dizzy.

  Who will I be, without the twelve years of guilt and compulsions?

  But trading the certainty of what I have for Noam, for my parents, for a normal life—it’s not even a question.

  “So what?” I say. “Maybe you won’t get to run off to Paris and start collecting parts of the weapon, but Thlo and the rest of your group should figure it out eventually, shouldn’t they? You don’t need me, I just . . . hurried things along.”

  “We don’t know that,” Win says. “If things happened differently, the Enforcers might catch the others, or me, before we make it that far. And even if it would have worked out if I never met you, I did, Skylar, and now you and me and Jeanant and the parts he left for us to find, the parts we’ve already collected, they’re all tangled up together. You’ve been interacting with people from all different eras, with Travelers from different presents. If we yank you out of the timeline it might not snap back into place perfectly. Things could just slip out of existence.”

  I stare at him. “Is that something that actually happens? Or are you just making that up because you don’t want to do it?”

  “It’s happened,” Win says flatly. “Not very often, but—you’ve heard of cases where planes or boats just disappear and are never found? Even people? Sometimes that’s some mistake in our calculations, too many overlapping shifts in the same area at once. No one has any idea how many objects too insignificant to draw notice might have vanished due to some small margin of error. You erase and rewrite parts of the world enough times, and bits and pieces end up getting written out.”

  I remember the metaphor he used before: a recording of a recording of a recording. The video getting grainier, the sound more fuzzy, with every copy. Until some details, some words, you can’t make out at all anymore. I pull my legs onto the seat, hugging them through the clammy fabric of my dress.

  “You really think the messages, or the parts of the weapon, could just . . . stop existing? Or . . .”

  Even people, he said. Me? Win? Jeanant?

  “I don’t know,” Win says. “But what we’ve been doing, it’s so uncontrolled compared to any official shift. And taking you out of it would be just about the biggest shift anyone’s ever made. I have no idea what could happen.”

  He looks down at his hands. “I understand why you want to save your brother. I’m sorry. I wish we could, but I can’t agree to do it when it would mean risking everything.”

  The reason I’m here at all. Jeanant’s plan to destroy the time field generator. Possibly the only chance we have to free Earth from Kemya’s control—the only chance that’s come in thousands of years. I know, I know, you can’t remove one figure in an equation without making the whole sequence void.

  I won’t care, if I go back and protect Noam and my life is written over. I won’t have any more of a clue than anyone else that the world around me is being shifted and experimented with on a daily basis. I could shrug off Jeanant’s sacrifices and Win’s and the fate of every other person on this planet, so my family and I can live in happy ignorance.

  I feel awful just thinking about it. And yet some part of me still finds the possibility appealing.

  “It’s not fair,” I say, knowing how childish that sounds. “Why is it so easy to end some kid’s life, but saving someone, we can’t do that?”

  “I’m sorry,” Win says again.

  I press my face against my knees, squeezing my eyes shut. Fresh tears start to well behind my eyelids. I was right there, I saw Noam, I talked to him. How can helping him be so out of reach?

  “There isn’t any way?” I ask without raising my head. “There’s no Traveler loophole you haven’t mentioned?”

  I don’t expect him to answer. Win’s silent for what
feels like a long time, as the tracks rattle beneath us and the conductor announces the next stop approaching. Then he says, “Maybe there’s something.”

  I jerk upright. “What?”

  “I don’t know exactly how we would work it,” he says slowly. “But once something is outside the time field, shifts can’t affect it. As soon as we have the parts of the weapon off the planet, back on our ship, it doesn’t matter what happens here on Earth, we’ll still have them. So then, in theory, you could go back and help your brother survive without us losing anything.”

  “So we’d just have to get the last two pieces, and then we could do it?”

  “I can’t promise you it’ll work,” Win says. “The logistics could be complicated, and . . . Thlo would have to agree. But I’d try.”

  Try. That doesn’t feel like quite enough—to keep going, leaving Noam farther and farther behind, without a definite plan to go back for him. I should be overjoyed that there might be a way after all, but the hope that bubbled up inside me starts to deflate. Maybe I’m just too tired for talk of logistics and complications. I rub my eyes.

  “I want you to know,” Win says, and pauses. He fixes me with that deep blue gaze, his face so weary I wonder if he slept at all. It occurs to me that no matter what he’s done, no matter how he’s treated me, an awful lot of what we’ve been through has been new and unsettling to him too. That it’s not just me who’s struggling with uncertainty.

  “You don’t have to be here helping with Jeanant and the weapon if you don’t want to,” he goes on. “You’ve done so much already. What I said before—that I’d bring you home, if you wanted me to—that still stands. If this is getting to be too much, I’ll take you back, and you can have that time to think through what you want to do, while I go get the last two parts. And then I’ll come get you, and we can sort out this thing with your brother, if it’s possible.”

  Home. The thought sends a pang of longing through me. To curl up on my familiar bed, surrounded by my familiar things.

  Will it still be familiar? I’d almost forgotten the fear that clutched me after the boy died by the caves. My past didn’t seem to have changed that much, but all I really know is that my brother and I still went to my grandparents’ house after school that day, and he still disappeared. What about my parents? My friends? What if I shifted something while we were following Noam?

  “If you just tell me where Jeanant said we needed to go,” Win is saying, “I can finish the rest myself.”

  “He said . . .” I pause, trying to remember his exact words. It was less than a day ago I spoke to Jeanant in the cave, but it feels like weeks. “We’re supposed to go somewhere close to my region of the States—‘just before blood is spilled where the trees were laid low.’”

  Win frowns. “‘Where the trees were laid low?’ That’s it?”

  “He seemed to think it was all we’d need to know. But, there was a message on the weapon part he left in the cave too.”

  I watch Win as he digs in his satchel for the second slab of alien plastic. This mission has become mine as much as his. But—he’s right, I’ve already helped more than either of us expected. I’ve gotten him one step away from the end. There might not even be anything else I can do, where he’s going next. Maybe I’ll just get in the way, and it’ll be better for both of us if I go home now.

  Of course, he could also decide his loophole is too risky and not come back for me at all. Not only would I not be able to save Noam, I’d never know whether Win even succeeded. Whether the shifts are going to end.

  “‘Remember when we talked about the ones who came first, losing their lives to those who came later, because of greed on one side of them and inaction on the other,’” Win says, reading from the slab. “‘Revisit the irony and the tragedy. Start by following the path of anger.’” He turns it over, searching for more writing. “I don’t know what that means. ‘The irony and the tragedy.’ I’ve heard Thlo use that expression before. I guess she’d know what he’s referring to.”

  “Jeanant thought I was working with Thlo,” I say. “Because that’s what you told me to tell him.”

  “Well, if it’s supposed to be close to where you live, that narrows it down,” Win says. “You must know some of the local history—does any of this, the trees, the greed and inaction, ah, ring a bell?”

  “Maybe . . .” I try to think back to my US history course, but the names and dates have blurred. “The thing about ‘those who came first and later,’ it could mean the Native Americans and the European settlers. But I’m not sure what he means about the different sides.”

  Win digs out the time cloth. “I can try to look it up. I don’t know how easy it’ll be to find with information that vague, though.”

  As he unfolds the cloth, I have the sense of time slipping away from me. As soon as he finds it, I’m going to have to make a decision about where to go.

  The answer Win needs was probably in my history textbook somewhere—but I don’t have that anymore. Although . . .

  “Wait,” I say, and Win looks up. “My friend, Lisa, she’s taking US history this year because she had scheduling conflicts before. They cover the stuff about the Native Americans right at the start. If we went back, to my present, I could ask her about it.” Lisa’s not the most academic one in our group, but even if she doesn’t remember . . . “And I can look at her textbook to see if anything feels wrong. That worked with France.”

  A trip home will buy me more time to decide. It’ll be easier once I know what’s waiting for me there.

  “That did,” Win says. He hesitates. “And then you’ll want to stay there, in your time?”

  “I don’t know,” I admit. “I’m still figuring that out.”

  “Well, let’s go,” Win says more brightly. “It sounds like that’s more likely to work than me sifting through thousands of years of history for mentions of trees.”

  23.

  The cloth pings again when Win pulls it into its tent form in the cramped space of the train cabin. The light behind the panel flickers its warning. I pause. “Are you sure it’s okay—making an extra jump when the power’s low?”

  Win’s already flicking through the data. “It’s not that far and barely any time. We’ll want to be careful where we land, though.”

  I shudder at the thought of the Enforcers tracing us to my friends. “Right.” I glance down at myself, at the ink- and mud-stained dress still clinging damply to my legs. God knows what my face and hair look like. “I should probably go home and clean up.”

  Win nods. “I’ll set us down close to my hotel and we’ll walk from there. If the Enforcers have determined I was staying there, they’ll assume that’s where we were going and look there first.”

  “Smart,” I say, but I’m not sure he even hears the compliment. The cloth lifts off at that moment with a squeal of wind. My breath catches, my gut flips, and I open my eyes to a wrenchingly familiar street. A few blocks from the Garden Inn, less than ten minutes from the house I’ve spent most of my life in, if we hurry.

  I duck out, almost afraid to look around me in the clear afternoon light. But nothing my gaze slides over feels wrong. The brick houses, the tiny lawns, the sapling trees with their sprigs of autumn foliage—they all look exactly as I remember. A coil of tension I hadn’t even registered inside me starts to loosen.

  “How long is it since we left here?” I ask Win as we head down the street, taking the first corner so we’ll be out of view if the Enforcers catch up. “I mean, in present time?”

  “About ten minutes,” Win says.

  Still at least an hour before I’d have to worry about my parents getting home, then. I walk even faster. We’ve taken another turn, onto my street with just a couple blocks left to cover, when a digitized melody emanates from my side.

  Win’s head jerks around as I fumble to open my purse. “My phone,” I say, tugging it out. The call display tells me it’s Angela.

  “Hey,” I say, bringing the phone t
o my ear. It’s a struggle to sound normal. “What’s up?”

  “Not much,” Angela says in her usual cheerful tone. It feels like years since I last heard her voice. “I’m still at school, working away. Do you remember where you and Bree stashed the painted lightbulbs? I’ve looked all over the art room. Maybe I’m going blind.”

  Painted lightbulbs . . . Right. ‘This’ afternoon, at lunchtime. And centuries and centuries ago. Where did we put them? I press the heel of my hand against my temple. I should be able to remember details like this—I would, if there weren’t so many other crazy memories crowding in between then and now.

  “I think—” A red plastic tub, slid onto a shelf. “Check the cabinet in the corner by the pottery wheel.”

  There’s a shuffling sound as Angela makes her way over, and the creak of a door opening. “Aha!” she says. “I figured I could count on you. Thanks! I promise not to badger you about dance stuff ever again.”

  “It’s okay,” I say. And then, remembering the main reason I’m here, “Lisa’s not there with you, is she?”

  “No,” Angela says. “Weren’t she and Evan and Bree heading over to Pie Of Your Dreams? I figured you were with them.”

  “Oh,” I say, my cheeks warming. By Angela’s time, that was only half an hour ago. I must sound like a basket case. “Yeah, I had an errand to run, I guess I got so distracted I forgot she mentioned it. Well, I should let you get back to decorating. It’s going to be great, Ang.”

  “You know it,” she says. “See you tomorrow!”

  Tomorrow. I roll the word around in my head as I drop the phone back into my purse. It feels like a foreign concept now.

  We come to a stop in front of my house. An ache spreads through my chest. I left my keys in my school bag in my bedroom, but the spare is where it should be, under the false bottom of the mailbox. I push open the door.

  The hall looks the same, and the stairs, and my room with the comforter slightly rumpled where I sat to wipe off my nail polish, my jeans slung over the side of my laundry basket. I let out a breath like a laugh.