The Paths Between Worlds

by Paul Antony Jones

  “You don’t look as though you’re shocked or surprised,” I said when I was done. There was perhaps even a hint of understanding in Evelyn’s eyes.

  “Time might separate us, but society’s problems rarely seem to change,” she said. “We’re more alike than you would imagine. I knew several people who were frequent users of illicit drugs, and more than a few who were addicted to Horse. We’re all just human, after all.”

  “Horse? What’s horse?” I said, a little confused, and thinking she might be referring to a gambling addiction.

  “Heroin,” Evelyn whispered as though the long arm of the law might have an interplanetary reach. She flushed red and gave that same innocent giggle she had earlier. “Racehorse trainers used to dose their horses with heroin to give them a little extra pep, if you know what I mean. So… Horse.” She smiled, and I laughed along with her.

  “Oh, my! Wherever did the time go?” said Evelyn. She stood up. “I’m supposed to be preparing the evening meal,” she went on. “Do you feel up to lending a helping hand?”

  “Sure,” I said. Sitting around fretting wasn’t going to help Chou, so the idea of having something to distract me was enticing.

  Evelyn turned to Albert and said, “I need to show Meredith something down at the river, would you be a gentleman and watch over your friend Chou for a little while?”

  Albert, ever eager to be of assistance, nodded.

  “And if you need him, Edward’s right over there at the cabin.” Evelyn reached out and touched Albert’s cheek tenderly. “You’re a good boy.”

  Albert blushed a deep crimson, walked over to where Chou lay and sat next to her, clasping one of her hands in his own.

  “Come on,” Evelyn said, setting off toward the river. “I need to check the traps.”

  “Traps?” I asked as I followed her.

  “You’ll see,” Evelyn said.

  At its widest, the river stretched two-hundred feet from one side to the other. It moved languidly, like liquid diamond; slow enough that lily-pads grew in clumps below its banks, along with tall bulrushes and wispy reeds, and lined with poplars, oaks, and willows that dipped their weeping branches into the water like fingers trailed behind a boat.

  I followed Evelyn along a rough path she must have been responsible for beating, pushing through curtains of bamboo, past trees and bushes heavy with red and black and orange berries until we reached a natural bay, formed at the elbow of the river where it curved to the left, altering its route through softer soil.

  “Here we are,” said Evelyn. She placed a hand on my shoulder for balance, kicked off her shoes, rolled her pants legs above her knees, and waded out into the water of the bay, moving toward three tall bamboo canes rising up from the water about twenty feet from the earthy riverbank I stood on. The water was shallow enough that, by the time Evelyn made it to the first bamboo cane, the water was still only just above her knees. She reached down, and after a moment or two of feeling around, pulled out a cone-shaped object about four feet long, made from bamboo lashed together to form a cage.

  “Fish trap,” Evelyn called over to me, grinning from ear to ear while holding the trap above her head so I could see the four large Salmon thrashing within.

  She waded back to where I waited for her on the shore, before returning to the other markers to bring back two more traps full of fish.

  “Jorge showed us how to make these,” Evelyn said, anticipating my question, as I helped her haul the last fish trap out of the water. A wide mouth at one end of the wickerwork trap gradually narrowed to a much narrower hole. It allowed fish to swim in and become trapped in the back section of the cage. The salmon thrashed dementedly as the water spilled from the basket. With a sharp tug, Evelyn dislodged the inner part of the trap from the main basket, laid it at her feet then reached in and pulled out a fish. Dropping to her knees, she placed the salmon on the grass, held it in place and reached for a thick piece of wood from where she had evidently stored it between the roots of a tree. “And we use this,” she said, brandishing the piece of wood like a club, “to kill them.” She smacked the salmon on the head with the club. The fish, understandably, stopped moving.

  Shocked, I gave out a little gasp at the sudden act of brutality.

  Evelyn seemed not to notice. She started to hum a catchy upbeat tune to herself as she worked, singing a chorus about ‘Rum and Coca-Cola’ and ‘working for the Yankee dollar’ while she proceeded to kill the remaining fish one after the other.

  “Now we have to prep them,” she said. She pulled a knife from inside the waistband of her pants and set about expertly gutting the fish, tossing the innards out into the river.

  “You, uh, look like you’ve done this before,” I said, trying not to allow the revulsion I felt show in my words.

  Evelyn glanced up from her butchering, regarding me with raised eyebrows. “Nothing I haven’t done on a regular basis for dinner for my family.”

  “I buy my fish frozen from the supermarket,” I said.

  “Supermarket?”

  “Really, really big stores that sell, well, everything.”

  “Oh, like a Safeways? I’ve heard about them out in California. Sounds… easy,” Evelyn said as she finished gutting the last fish. There was no judgment in her voice.

  “It is… or I suppose, it was.”

  Evelyn picked up the fish and walked back down to the river’s edge. I followed. “This next part’s a bit, well, messy,” she said.

  I wondered what could be messier than pulling the entrails out of a fish.

  “Here hold these.” She dumped the gutted salmon into my outstretched hands where they slipped around like they were still alive. As I fought not to drop them, Evelyn began pulling large handfuls of mud from the river bank until she formed a large mound on the grass between us. “Let’s try that big one first,” she said, plucking one of the fish from my hands. She immediately began to cover the salmon in the mud, plastering it on until it was an inch deep all over and resembled one of the bricks I had seen Edward pull from the fire earlier. She did the same for two more, then said, “Now you give it a try.” She took the remaining fish from me, and I proceeded to try to duplicate the procedure.

  “Ahhh,” I said as the fish slipped through my hands and onto the grass with a splat. “It’s a lot harder than you make it look.” Getting the right consistency of the mud so it would stick to the fish scales and not my hands was easier said than done.

  “Just add a little water to the mix,” Evelyn said, guiding me.

  I did as she instructed, molding the more pliant mud around the fish.

  “There. Perfect,” she announced when I finally had a finished product that somewhat resembled hers.

  Perhaps it was my earlier candidness that made Evelyn feel at ease, or maybe it was just that she needed to say what she had to say aloud to someone, I don’t know, but as I worked on the next fish, Evelyn took a deep breath, looked me straight in the eye and said “I prefer women to men. That’s how I ended up here.” She sounded almost apologetic. Her eyes dropped to the ground, and she flushed red. “There I said it.” Her eyes rose back to my face, obviously expecting to see judgment in them.

  “You mean you prefer women in the romantic sense, right?” I said, cautiously.

  Evelyn bit her bottom lip and nodded.

  I smiled warmly, and said, “Well good for you.” I raised my right hand and waited for her to return my high-five. An awkward three seconds followed of her staring, confused, at my muddy hand before I finally dropped it and gave her a light tap on the knee instead. “But that doesn’t really explain how you ended up here.” Now I put both hands up in the classic gesture of surrender. “And I completely understand if it’s just too personal and you don’t want to talk about it.”

  “You mean how did my preference for women lead to me standing on the bank of a river teaching a woman from the future how to gut fish?” Evelyn said, with only a hint of irony. “No, it’s okay, I need to get this off my chest
because it’s all a bit of a jumble in my head right now.”

  She placed the fish she had been working on down next to the others we had already prepped, and continued, “I met the love of my life in 1943. We were at war, and I’d joined the Women’s Army Corp to do my bit for the effort, as we all did back then. I was stationed in Jefferson City, Missouri, of all places. Her name was Caroline, and she is… was… perfect.”

  A sad smile haunted Evelyn’s lips, and a tear began to roll down her right cheek, but she exorcized them both with one muddy hand, leaving a streak of dirt behind.

  “Those two years were the best time of my life, but when the war came to an end, I knew there was no way we could carry our love affair into the real world. I was tormented by confusion and self-loathing, and, may God forgive me, I left Caroline without even saying goodbye. I moved to New York, got a job and met a man, married him, had my sweet baby Malcolm by him. Everything seemed… bearable, and for a while, I convinced myself I’d put all of that other foolishness behind me. Then a year after Malcolm was born, I received a letter from Caroline: she had tracked me down and wanted to talk. I met with her, of course. How could I not? But it was with the intention of telling her that there was no chance for us, none at all. I had a husband, a child, a life. But, oh, when I saw her sitting at that cafe table, I knew that none of that mattered. I loved her; that was what mattered. For the next eight months, we would meet at her apartment every chance we could, planning how we would spend the rest of our lives. And maybe it would have all worked out if my husband hadn’t cottoned to what was going on. How he found out, I can only guess, but when I got home one night, my bags were packed and waiting for me on the porch, and no amount of pleading or crying was going to change his mind. I don’t know how it is where you’re from, but women don’t fare so well in divorces in my time. I lost my child, my home, my job. And, my God, the shame that was heaped upon me.”

  “I can’t even begin to imagine,” I said quietly.

  Evelyn smiled sadly, and continued, “Caroline begged me to come away with her; we would move somewhere quiet and live as spinsters, the only acceptable way for society to cast a blind eye to two women living together. But I was inconsolable; I knew everything was my fault and nothing Caroline could say or do was going to make a difference. So I threw myself into the Potomac. It was just as the river pulled me under that I heard a voice offer to save me, to take me someplace where having to worry about who I loved would play no part in my life.” Evelyn paused for a second and looked around us. “This wasn’t quite what I thought they had in mind for me.” She laughed with a heavy dose of melancholy laced through it.

  At some point during Evelyn’s story, I had taken both of her hands in mine. I squeezed them now and smiled a matching sad smile. We picked up the fish-bricks and began to retrace our steps slowly back along the river bank in the direction of the garrison.

  “You can imagine my surprise when I found myself swimming in what I thought was another river that first minute after we arrived,” Evelyn said. “I suppose it would have been the ultimate cosmic joke to have drowned in the process of being saved.”

  I nodded and said, “Well, here we both are then: two suicides given a second chance. If God or the universe or whatever is willing to forgive us for that, then I don’t think either are going to be too interested in judging us for who we choose to love.”

  When we reached the campfire, we began carefully burying the fish-bricks under the glowing cinders.

  “Where I come from…” I paused, realizing I would have to change the tense of my memories from this point on. “In the when I come from, most people don’t have a problem with two women being in love. In fact, they live together openly and can even get married if they want to.”

  “Married? Really?” Evelyn seemed incredulous.

  “Really. People can change, Evelyn. Civilization is like a river, it changes people whether they want to or not. It just takes time, that’s all.”

  Evelyn took a moment to consider my words, her head tilted to the right, the ghost of a smile returning to her face. “Well, if you’re right,” she said quietly, “maybe there’s hope for us after all.”

  Eleven

  For one heart-stopping moment, I thought Chou was dead. Then her chest rose and fell, and I exhaled a silent sigh of relief along with her. The afternoon was making way for evening agonizingly slowly. With several hours left until the aurora, I could only hope that Chou was able to hold on until then. I knew this woman from the future was astoundingly strong, but I didn’t know if that would be enough to save her from the poison coursing through her body.

  Albert had fallen asleep next to Chou, his hand still entwined with hers. I woke him, whispering for him to follow me over to the fire where Evelyn watched over the evening meal.

  Long shadows were edging their way across the garrison, and I wondered what time the rest of the camp would quit for the day. As if they'd heard my thoughts, I saw Edward and the rest of his people begin to make their way over to the campfire.

  Edward, sweat-stained and dirty, smiled as he approached us. “I see you’ve had a productive afternoon,” he said, eying the fish-bricks baking in the fire’s embers.

  “Food feeds friendship,” Evelyn said, beaming.

  “You guys have been pretty busy too,” I said. In the time since we had arrived, Edward and his two helpers had all but completed thatching the cabin’s roof.

  Edward looked back over his shoulder at the cabin. “Tomorrow, God willing, we’ll have it finished. It’ll be nice to have a proper roof over our heads again, and somewhere secure to store our food and supplies.” We spoke for a minute longer, then Edward said, “Well, I could talk your ear off all night, but I think there are a few others here who would like to meet you. Are you ready?”

  “You bet,” I replied.

  Edward got to his feet and called out loudly, “If you’d all gather around, please.” He beckoned everyone over to us, and once the last person had arrived, he continued. “I’d like to introduce you to our latest arrivals: Meredith and Albert.” I smiled and gave a little wave, Albert leaned into me, suddenly shy. Edward continued, “Their friend Weston was injured earlier today, but she’s under Dr. Bull’s care now. We’re sure she’ll make a speedy recovery.”

  I was glad Edward was confident of Chou’s recovery because I certainly wasn’t.

  A murmur of greetings and nods came from the gathered group. Albert and I smiled back. I did a quick headcount. Not including Chou, Albert, and me, there were thirteen other residents of the garrison, or as Edward liked to call them Garrisonites. The people looking back at me were mostly Caucasian, but there were two heavily muscled men and a strikingly pretty young woman who I guessed were either from South America or perhaps somewhere in the Mediterranean. The two men both wore heavy-looking shirts and thickly-woven pants, stained with sweat and dirt, the sleeves of their shirts rolled up past their elbows, exposing thick, strong forearms. It was obvious these men were used to manual labor, their strength gained from daily hard work, rather than from hours spent at a gym. The young woman, her long black hair pulled up into a tight bun on the top of her head, wore a beautiful dress; a white bodice with intricate embroidery of flowers and beading, the skirt red with black embroidered flowers and beads. She regarded me through half-closed eyes as she stepped closer to the fire, smiling a little nervously.

  The rest wore what looked to me to be a mixture of twentieth-century clothing: three of the women wore skirts and blouses and a mixture of jackets or sweaters tied around their waist. The men wore pants and shirts you could’ve picked up in just about any store in my time. Two also had jackets folded over their arms. Everyone was dirty and smeared with sweat; their skin covered with splashes of dirt and mud. They all had scrapes and cuts and grazes of some kind on their arms and faces. And they all looked tired. And collected together, their body odor was… well, let’s just say it was pungent.

  A woman appeared from inside the cabin
and walked over to me, wiping her hands on a dirty cloth. She thrust out a hand and said in a clipped English accent, “Hello, I’m Jacquetta Hawkes. Very pleased to meet you.” She was dressed in light-brown riding jodhpurs tucked into calf-high black boots and a cotton blouse, the sleeves rolled up to show off her tanned arms. The blouse had been white at some point, but it was now stained tea-leaf brown with dirt.

  “Pleased to meet you,” I said back, and we shook hands.

  And finally, there was Peter Freuchen. He looked like he was eight-feet tall and weighed about the same as a fully-grown grizzly bear. He had a head of thick, black, disheveled hair. A matching fuzzy beard hid most of the lower half of his face. A pair of bright, intelligent eyes peered from beneath eyebrows that were so bushy they looked more like fur. He regarded first me, then Albert with equal interest. He strode toward us, and I half expected the ground to shake beneath his feet. Stopping in front of me, his face cracked into a smile.

  “Hay-lo,” he said in a voice that was surprisingly gentle but heavily accented by what I would later find out was his Danish origins. “My name is Peter, but everyone just calls me Freuchen. I’m very glad to make your acquaintance.” He offered his hand, and I automatically took it, my own hand swallowed up in his meaty paw. He wore a thick leather belt with a machete hanging from it. In his other hand Freuchen carried a large wooden-handled ax, and when he caught Albert’s eyes straying to it, he chuckled loudly and said, “Don’t vurry, little vun I only use this for chopping the trees. You are safe.” He gave the ax a playful swing above his head.

  Edward stood between Freuchen and Jacquetta. He clapped Freuchen loudly on the back and squeezed Jacquetta’s shoulder affectionately. “I see you’ve made your introductions already. Peter and Jacquetta are our resident translators; and thank God for them, too.”

  “I speak most European languages,” Freuchen said, matter-of-factly and with no sense of boastfulness. “I have traveled the vurld many times over, so it has come in quite useful.” He smiled modestly.