Though she pressed them, they continued to insist that they wanted to be delivered to Yelbeghen, and that they should travel with all haste. The three girls insisted on sleeping together, so Astrid and Mr. Escobar tied up three hammocks in the cargo bay, as it was the only space large enough.
“Women on a ship are bad luck,” said Mr. Escobar. “They bring trouble.”
“The captain is a woman,” said Astrid.
“She doesn’t count. She’s the captain.”
“And Yukiko and I are too.”
“Yes, but now there are just too many of you. And now there’s crying and sniveling. I suppose we’ll be rid of those three soon enough.”
The next day, they came to shore on a small Mediterranean island between Sicily and Tunisia. They left the ship near enough to the closest town to take on supplies, but far enough away to avoid detection. Yukiko, who didn’t enjoy the sea, said she was glad to get off the ship to purchase supplies. She went alone, and Hazel asked Astrid if she would take the girls off the ship for a while. Astrid agreed and the four of them walked into town with Pangur Ban trailing behind.
When they were halfway there, Astrid suddenly felt a pulling sensation inside herself. She knew exactly what it was, a psychopomp job.
“Pangur Ban,” she said, “could you look after the girls? I have to do a job.”
“Certainly,” said the cat.
Astrid made a Door, just as Graciela had taught her, arriving on the side of the road next to a demolished car. After she had sent the young dead man through her Door, she returned to the road she had left. It did not take long for her to find her charges, as they were wandering down a street, looking in shop windows. Opal clung to Isadora, while Briar trailed behind, glancing often at the sky.
“This island is so unlike our home. And the sky is a strange color,” she said to Astrid. “I’m not sure I like it. It looks so cold.”
Compared to the pale orange of the Seelie sky, Astrid supposed it did. “I know someone else from the Unseelie world who now likes the color. She’s always looking at the sky. She was a slave there, but then she got free.”
“How did this person get free?” asked Briar.
“Someone took her place,” said Astrid.
“I don’t think that will happen for us. Triplets are rare. There are none to take our place.”
“What did Yelbeghen pay for you?”
“It wasn’t a sale, not like human exchanges. Our village is small, an island, and the drake helped us. Long ago, he had a dear friend among our people. The friend is dead now, but the drake occasionally visits the island. A generation ago, our birth rates were too low, and the few babies born often died. Some were born deformed. The village was poor, and even if they had money, they would never have lived on the mainland. So they stayed and suffered.”
“They didn’t like the other Seelie?”
“On their island, they were largely free of the queen’s interference.”
“How did the drake help you?”
“He gave us his special blessing and cured the land. They offered him payment, but he said he’d claim payment another time. When my sisters and I were born, healthy and strong, he said he wanted us when we came of age. Our parents wanted to refuse, and they petitioned the royal court for assistance. The court offered none, even insisting that we be given to the drake sooner than our father wished.”
“I thought they hated the drake. I thought they feared him.”
“They do. He helped our island, but he would never have helped those aligned with the royal court. It’s the ruling class he hates, though the members of the court were the only ones who could get us into the human world to deliver us to him. The court does not want the drake upset with them. He can be ferocious. But he can also be kind.”
“It doesn’t sound like kindness if he asked for people as payment,” said Astrid.
“Still, the price was fair,” said Briar. “Many babies have been born, and they’re fat and healthy. Our crops are good, and the village has entered an age of prosperity. He has taught our people the ways of commerce and trade, so we are better than before. Our people thrive, and we must be content with that, whatever happens to us.”
“I could return you home right now if you wanted to. I’m a Door, and I think I can open a Door into Seelie fairly easily. You and your sisters could go home.”
Briar sighed. “I would like to, but it’s impossible.”
“Would the drake curse your land?”
“No, nothing like that. The blessing, once given, cannot be removed.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
Briar did not answer, but joined her sisters to look in shop windows. Astrid hung back and Pangur Ban stepped up beside her.
“Well?” said Astrid, too soft for humans, but knowing the cat would hear.
“Their ways are not your ways, nor mine,” said Pangur Ban. “And technically, they go willingly.”
“They go under duress.”
“All hard decisions are made under duress. Many such trades have happened with women agreeing to exchanges like this for the sake of others. Women have long been a form of currency.”
“I suppose you consider yourself lucky that you aren’t one of us.”
“I do, yes.”
They paused their talk until a group of people had passed.
“You’ve seen a lot in your life, haven’t you?” Astrid said.
“Sometimes I think too much. In a way, Huginn is fortunate not to remember his long, long life. I see how that girl, Briar, is afraid, though she does not say so. I also think that she fears for her life.”
Chapter 31
Hazel watched as a Door opened in her quarters, dilating open until she could see straight into it. On the other side stood Astrid holding a cardboard box in the kitchen of the Time Corps house in Los Angeles. Astrid hugged Sister good-bye then stepped through the Door which then closed.
“The Professor told me to give this to you,” said Astrid. “He can walk you through the installation over the phone.”
Hazel called him on her mobile phone and set it on speakerphone. How wonderful that a man born in 1832 and a woman born in 1846 could speak to each other across the world. The other Time Corps members were born in later centuries, and didn’t appreciate things like television, airplanes and anesthesia. Well, Felicia did, but that was only because she was a doctor who had lived in both the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries and had done unanesthesized surgery on Civil War soldiers. But the others would never see the world as she and the Professor did. Even driving in a car was wondrous in its fashion.
“Hey, Professor,” she said when he answered. “Tell me what this thing does.”
“It allows the machine to develop a dynamic time lock using a predictive algorithm that lets it fix onto times normally outside the vicinity of our origin point.”
“How far from our origin point?” The machine had first come to exist in the mid-nineteenth century, but little by little, the Professor had expanded its abilities to reach farther times.
“A few thousand years, though I’d certainly not recommend it. You won’t speak the language or know the customs.”
“Yukiko is with us. She can communicate with any human alive.”
“I know. But I want you to take care. I worry about you.”
“I know. Now tell me how to attach this thing to my ship.”
They spent the next hour going through the installation, and when they were finished, Hazel wanted to give it a try. But with everyone on shore, including Yukiko, she knew she should not. Besides, they had no idea exactly where they needed to go, and she was wise enough not to fool with time unnecessarily.
“You be careful,” said the Professor. “Oh, and Felicia sends her love.”
“Wait, Professor? Now that you’re married, what are you going to do once you find a way to get Felicia home? Her world is so hard to reach and you might not be able to come back. Will you stay with her?”
He was silent for so long that she wondered if he was going to answer or if he had been distracted by something in his laboratory.
“I’m not going to leave you. I’ll find a way to travel between the two worlds.”
“But if you had to choose?”
“I won’t. Now get that thing working, and may God watch over you.”
They hung up and Hazel closed the cabinet that contained the time machine, now upgraded with this dynamic time lock device. She glanced at Neil’s crate and said a little prayer for him, wherever he was. If the Professor left for Felicia’s home world and could not get back, she’d still have her ship and crew. Of course, she would be welcome to go with them, but in Felicia’s world, things like talking monkeys and living ships could not exist. She could leave the ship to Mr. Escobar, but hated the thought of it. Either way, she’d lose someone.
But the Professor was stubborn if he was anything, and he’d find a way. He always did.
For now, she enjoyed her solitude. With everyone on shore and the ship docked, she had some time on her hands. She had not realized what a solitary life she normally led, but with Astrid, Yukiko, Pangur Ban, Huginn and the triplets on board, the ship felt crowded. Of course, the monkey crew far outnumbered them, but they never troubled Hazel in her quarters or asked for special meals or sulked like Briar or cried like Opal. Even Neil, who often joined her on Skidbladnir, sometimes as bosun and other times as a guest, was so quiet and unobtrusive that she hardly noticed him.
She took out her violin and looked over its familiar curves and glossy reddish finish. It even smelled good, of rosin and polished wood. The instrument had been a gift from Neil when she was eleven and he was in his forties. Her first violin, the one from her father, had been destroyed by her cruel uncle and the mysterious Mr. Grey had given her a new one before he had left her century.
She tuned it and then played, slipping into the familiar state where she was unaware of the passage of time, cold or hunger, where only the sound and the sensation of the music enveloped her. She played some Irish songs that the Professor had taught her, then a few Baroque pieces, which Neil had always loved. She slipped out of her reverie at the feeling of being watched.
“Please don’t stop,” said Neil.
She almost cried out at the sight of the man leaning against the door frame, his hands in the pockets of his black duster. He was younger than she had last seen him, perhaps in his late twenties or early thirties.
“It’s you,” she breathed, then forced herself to act rationally. This was a younger version of Neil, crossing her personal timeline. She couldn’t very well run to him or tell him that his own corpse was lying in a crate against the wall.
“Of course it’s me. I was in this time and I saw from your archived logs that you were here on this date. Please, don’t let me stop you from playing. It’s half of why I came.”
It was all she could do to keep from throwing her arms around him. Tears stung her eyes as she played for him. When she was finished, she set the violin in its case.
“I wish I could play like that,” said Neil.
“I’ve offered to teach you.”
He looked down and shook his head. “It won’t be the same. How old are you now, anyway?”
That would have been a much odder question if they hadn’t known each other asynchronously for so long.
“Twenty-three.”
He seemed to brighten. “And how many months?”
She counted them up. “Five. Why? Is something going to happen to me before I turn twenty-four?”
“No, I was just curious. What are you doing and where are you headed?”
“A Greek island. A delivery. Nothing interesting.”
“I doubt that, but if you don’t want to tell me, then don’t.”
He sat down and lifted the little toy jackal off her shelf. It had long ago stopped working, but she had kept it all these years, another gift from the older version of Neil.
“Did the Professor make this for you?” he asked.
“No, I got it during Mardi Gras when I was young.”
Hazel knew he had seen it on her shelf before and perhaps wondered why she had kept it. When he was older, he would see it being sold by a New Orleans street vendor and would purchase it for her. She closed the violin case and set it aside. She was almost afraid to turn back to him, as if he’d vanish like a ghost. She found him sitting there as solid and real as ever. She bit her lip to keep from crying, both from joy at seeing him and sorrow that it was the last time.
“God, Hazel. What’s wrong?” He came to her.
She studied his face, the set of his jaw, the brown of his eyes. How many people wished that they could see their dead loved one once more? And here he was. But she had to be strong. No blubbering and weeping.
“Oh, nothing,” she said. “I just have a full ship and I needed some time alone.”
“I can go if you want.”
“No, you don’t bother me. Not like everyone else.”
“High praise indeed. Well, Elliot is waiting for me back at our hotel. We’re leaving tonight for the nineteen twenties. I don’t suppose you’d care to join us?”
“I have to complete this job.”
“You could complete it, then travel back in time and come meet us in a few hours at our hotel.”
“The island isn’t ten miles across. I couldn’t.” She wasn’t able to time travel within ten miles of herself, and Skidbladnir would be docked in her current place until morning.
“Ah, no. But we could meet you farther out.”
She thought about it. She could do just that, if she wanted to. Neil was around forty when he died, which meant she had years and years to find him, travel with him, do whatever she liked. She and Neil and Elliot could have adventures, years and years worth.
“What’s in the crate?” Neil asked, noticing the box holding his body.
“Just supplies. The cargo hold is being used as a bunk by a few people, so I had some items moved in here.”
She hated lying to him, even about a small thing, even to save him from the pain of facing his own death.
“You can’t tell me, can you?” he asked. He knew she was lying.
She shook her head.
“I should go.”
“Wait. Did you ever find out anything about the letters in your mouth?”
He glanced at the open door, rightfully cautious about anyone overhearing.
“No,” he said, and then left.
But she wondered if he too was keeping a secret.
Chapter 32
“Something has arrived,” said Malachy to Elliot one morning in the kitchen.
“Things are always arriving here, aren’t they?”
“People, yes. But things, more seldom.”
Elliot dried his hands on the dishtowel tucked into his belt and then took down a large bowl and started cracking eggs into it. The scholars would be having scrambled eggs, toast, fruit and coffee this morning. He wasn’t in the mood to do anything more elaborate.
“They were your books,” said Malachy.
He stopped. “Which books?”
“I found them among the stacks, spread out as if someone had tossed them onto the floor. I checked the records, and they had been taken by you.”
“I’ve never checked out any books,” said Elliot. “I borrow them, but I never take them out of the Library. I couldn’t if I wanted to.”
“I did not say you checked them out. I said you took them.”
And then Elliot understood, or he thought he did.
“Let me see these books.”
There were four items: a Metallurgy book, two identical fairy tale books and a black, half-empty sketch book with Astrid’s name written on the inside front cover. He had seen all but the sketch book before.
“Why did you say I took them?” he asked Malachy.
“It’s what our records showed. You owe a large fine on all but the black one.”
“A fine not to exceed one hundred years? Like it says here inside the cover?” He opened the Metallurgy book, where the label was half torn out, but partially readable.
“Yes, but it looks like you never paid the fine.”
“I haven’t taken the books either, so your records are wrong.”
But he knew they were perfectly correct, or he hoped they were. Because these were books that he would give to a younger Astrid when he was older. When she was nine, and again at eighteen, she would receive the fairy tale books as gifts. He supposed he would give both of them to her to make sure she knew how important the content was. If it weren’t for her knowledge of the stories, she would never know that salt and knots repel the sidhe. So much of what she needed to know was contained in those books. He would also give her mythology books and others, scattered through her birthdays, all as part of her education.
As for him, he would deliver the metallurgy book to a younger Elliot, who would then have a metal owl bell forged. It would help Astrid to save the world.
“The records are correct,” said Malachy. “And your fine is fair and just. You have begun to pay it.”
“I won’t live a hundred more years. Maybe eighty more, if I’m lucky.”
“Then that is all you can pay. We cannot ask for more.”
“How generous,” he said, but Malachy did not seem to understand the sarcasm. “It’s not a fair fine,” Elliot explained. “A lifetime of service for one book is too much.”
“Three books.”
The Time Corps Chronicles (Complete Series) Page 104