“Hopefully there is enough left after he has his fill,” Ruth said, spooning it onto a plate. “Go on and take it up to him. You two need to make apologies anyhow. He thought I was you a moment ago. He feels very sorrowful for whatever it was he did. So, go on and make it right.”
I took the plate and walked slowly to the room. What would I say? I wasn’t sorry for hitting him, he deserved it. Such words weren’t right to be spoken to a lady. But I did have a temper, and I did try to stab him earlier. I suppose I was sorry for that.
Knocking on the door I said, “Can I come inside? I have your dinner.”
He must have been sore with me because he did not answer. Leaning my head against the door, I listened and tried to hear his breathing, thinking him asleep.
He was complicated and mysterious to me. My heart beat just thinking about what he was going to say to me once I saw his face.
“Adam, are you asleep?”
What if he was? Would I go inside and find him curled up like a peaceful babe, quiet and looking young and innocent. Maybe I would see a side of him that I would like.
I pushed the door open and found the bed empty. He was gone and suddenly I had lost my hunger. Instead I felt not anger, but sadness. How strange to feel sad that a man I didn’t even know was now gone.
“Where did you go, Adam? And how on earth did you walk out of here?” I whispered.
He had been in such pain, and walking would have been impossible. But he had done it. Maybe he didn’t get far and I could catch him. I took off toward the back of the cabin, leaving the plate of food behind. But as I reached the outside, I realized I was only surrounded by trees and wilderness and Adam had mysteriously disappeared as fast as he had appeared.
***
Adam 2019
I was back in my apartment, surrounded by the noises of New York City and the lights of the buildings that shone outside. Back to normalcy, but yet, missing the wilds of Georgia. My body was upright but I wasn’t where I last remembered being, sitting at my breakfast nook. Instead I was on my couch with my knee aching and still wrapped in what Rose had put on it, and I still wore Arthur’s clothes. I was sure that I was in my apartment but my body felt like it was still somewhere else.
Something was really screwed up about this whole situation. I knew now that it wasn’t a dream, because of my clothing and the bandages that I wore on my knee. Speaking of that, it hurt so bad now that I felt nauseous. In my hands I held a book that I recognized as the one I had found in the box from my mom.
“What the hell?”
Then it hit me, when in doubt, call Angela. My mom’s words speaking to me inside my head giving me the answers I needed in a time where I felt like I was going crazy.
As I crawled along the floor to the box that sat on the counter I wondered where exactly everyone went. Did they live in another world? I had read so many novels that the possibility of this wasn’t so out of reach. We’ve all seen science fiction and how it worked.
Now that I reached the counter, I tousled with the idea of actually standing up on my bad knee. I would have to nut up and just do it. Fight through the pain!
“Stop being a little bitch Adam!” I grabbed the chair and pulled myself up. “Agh!”
Once I got up, I was good as long as I stayed still. I grabbed my mom’s note and my cell and dialed the number.
Two rings in she answered. “Hello?”
“Is this Angela?” I asked as sweat began to bloom along my face.
A pause.
“Yeah, who the hell is this?”
I couldn’t help but laugh at her toughness. She was just like my mom; strong willed and no bullshit.
“You have five seconds and I am hanging up, asshole!”
Composing myself I said, “This is Annalisa’s son, Adam. She sent me a box full of books. And well, how do I put this? Something happened. Something crazy. Maybe I’m fucking crazy--”
“Adam, let me stop you right there. Are you alone?”
She sounded composed and level headed, again, much like my mom. I tried to imagine what she looked like, but my memory was foggy. She had red hair and green eyes, and that’s all I remembered from the last time I saw her. Mom talked about her all the time but never around my dad.
It was almost like she wasn’t supposed to do so. How could a man make his wife do such a thing? And why did my mom ever listen to him?
“Yeah. And I’m hurt pretty bad.”
“Say no more on the phone. You never know who’s listening. Shoot me your address and I’ll be there within the hour. And Adam?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t touch anything else in that box.”
Fourteen
Rose 1765
We finished our meal hours ago. Arthur wasn’t speaking to me and I thought perhaps he told his mother, because she seemed cross. I packed my things, readying them for the morning. Now with them asleep I watched the fire burn the wood I hauled in as a thank you for allowing me to eat with them.
I wondered what life married to Arthur would be like. We’d not doubt move into this house and Ruth would know everything that went on in our marriage. She’d teach me her ways of cooking, and I’d raise pigs.
Could I really marry him?
He had a gentle nature about him, but there was so much missing between us; years that he had to catch up. Years of knowledge that I had, and that he lacked. Most young men were courting at sixteen, and Arthur was coming close to that time. Another year and Ruth would be looking for a wife for her young son. But would he want to marry me when I was twenty-one? Would I even still be without a husband?
Most likely.
Adam.
He was disrupting my thoughts as I tried to think of my future. He wouldn’t be in it, that was for certain. He left and was undoubtedly on his way back to New York.
I would give anything to be free of this mountain for just a small time. I thought the opposite previously but something made me curious about it now. If a man like Adam had come from there, I wondered what else a city like that held. Perhaps it was just the kind of place that I could learn about more from Ruth. Certainly, she would know. She has lived in New York and Pennsylvania. She had many stories to share, and I wanted to hear them.
“You belong here, Daughter.”
I could hear my father’s voice telling me there was no place but Raven’s Ridge for me. He went over it and over it as he convinced me to move from town. Desperate to please him, I packed my things without argument. If Father said it was our home, I guessed I could make myself love it. And it had worked. I did love it. The way the wind blew through the trees and the sun shone on the water. The way it would glisten like pearls.
It was home. But meeting Adam had sparked something inside of me. A curiosity long lost.
Would I ever meet a man who could make my heart pound like it did when in his presence? I clutched tightly onto the blanket that wrapped around my body. Desperate for the touch of a man like Adam, I struggled to sleep. I fought the urge to run out and scream his name. He had gotten under my skin and I was foolish. Stupid of me to think of a man in such a way. All I could think was; would I ever see him again?
***
Adam 2019
All I remembered was the way she said my name and the way she slapped my face. She was like fire.
Beautiful, reckless fire. Wild and burning with rage but so beautiful to watch. Her face, the color of her skin, and her blue eyes. She was a wild wonder and I wish I could have told her how sorry I was for hurting her feelings.
“Are you paying attention at all?” Angela barked. She had arrived within the hour, like she promised, and was an angry hornet since she got here. Not exactly what I had remembered as a kid but she was helping me and I couldn’t argue.
“To be hones
t, no. My mind is… scattered.”
I ran my fingers through my messy hair and grunted. “Sorry. I know you want me to focus, but I just—I can’t.”
She squinted her eyes at me as if looking for an answer for something. Before I knew it, she was up on her feet and walking over toward me holding an ice pack. When she got here, she put herself into motion getting me in my bed and examining my knee.
“What did you do inside that book?”
Inside the book?
“I didn’t hurt the pages if that’s what you mean. I only read it.”
Instantly I regretted calling her as she looked at me like I was stupid. Her short red hair had grown out since the last time I had seen her, and she gained a few grays. Her face looked kind but angry at the same time.
“Tell me, kid. Start at the beginning.”
Kid, really? Well, I suppose that she wouldn’t let up unless I told her how everything happened. At the risk of sounding completely crazy, I told her. From the beginning.
“It felt like I was falling down a black hole,” I began. “Then I saw this girl’s face. I went from being in this apartment to wholly surrounded by trees. Thousands of them. Turns out that somehow, I was in Georgia. Wait, not just Georgia, but the Colony of Georgia. And—”
“Adam,” she interrupted calmly. “Do you know what you did? What you could have changed? I need to know if you talked to anybody, kid. I don’t need specifics about what it was like for you. Spare me the dramatics, please.”
The audacity of this woman! She wanted answers, but so did I. I refused to feel stupid in my own apartment.
“What the hell happened to me?”
“Adam, I am trying to help you. Just answer the questions.”
She was much calmer now. Maybe she saw anger and fear in my eyes, because I had seen it in hers.
“There was this woman. She had a spear in her hands and she tried to stab me. I was seriously scared for my life. The girl had some fierce anger in her.” I paused. “And then she became something different. She helped me back to this lady’s house, because I fell on my bad knee.” I motioned to the swollen body part and she handed me the ice pack. “She became, I don’t know, caring I guess.”
“It’s probably the time period. What was she wearing? Maybe I can guess where you were exactly.”
“It was 1765, I know the time. I asked Mrs. Winthorp, the lady who’s house we were in. But I don’t know how this is all possible.”
Angela relaxed and sat down across from me. Her demeanor changed from anti-social book Nazi to caring concerned friend of my mom’s.
“Adam, there is so much I need to tell you. But please be open-minded. We can’t do this if you continue to be so upset and acting like this is about you. Once you relax, we can go over it all.”
I nodded. I was upset. I was also angry and confused. This happened to me because my mom sent me a box. Something that should have been simple, but held some sort of curse.
“Fine, I’ll relax. Just tell me what the hell happened to me, please.”
She grabbed the box from the counter dug through it for a minute and then pulled out a photo.
“This was your mom and I when we first started working for The Librarians. We were young and thought we were smart,” she said with a laugh. The photo did indeed show two young women. “The Librarians are a secret society of only women, who can travel back in time using these books.” She held up the book I used. “There job is to maintain history, not screw with it like you did. There are many different Librarians all over the world who work together to make sure that history is recorded precisely as it happened. Harold Lockhart, our founder and the scientist who wrote the code in which allows them to time travel, always jokes that the worst storytellers are historians.”
Her laugh filled the room, snapping me out of the daze I was currently in.
“How you were able to travel back, being a man, is beyond me. Only women are able to do it.”
“Wait one second, you’re telling me that I did travel back in time, without a time machine? And that people do this all the time.”
Angela’s facade broke as she smiled at me and winked. “You got it babe. The only man who’s been able to do it was Harold himself. And that was a long time ago. He’s only had women until now.”
“Why can’t men do it?”
Angela shrugged. “Well, it’s said that the women who travel, all Bailey’s by the way, are gifted with magic of old. Meaning only they have the ability to travel. Until now not one man has been born with the gift. And the only women Dr. Lockhart trusted were the Bailey women.”
I shook my head. So many questions left unanswered. Wasn’t that always what it was like when life threw complications in your way?
“So he travelled, did that mean he had this magic?”
“I suppose he did. But one thing he had for sure was the precise formula to make it happen. When he wrote it, it was inside a book. That was the only paper he had near him. After he wrote it out, he was transported to the place in time that the book depicted. When he came face-to-face with Abraham Lincoln, he knew he had a gift in his hands.” She leaned back and laughed to herself. “It’s kinda funny. He had meant to time travel, not record history. But after talking with Abe he learned historians had him all wrong. You know, they screw stuff up all the time. They record what they want to not what actually happens. So, he got back home, told his assistant, a Bailey woman, and together they devised a plan.”
“A plan to record history correctly.” It was all coming together but the only thing that didn’t was why I stumbled into the past.
She snapped her fingers. “Just like that. Freaking magic!”
“Well that guys an idiot,” I said, causing Angela’s face to turn a brilliant shade of red. “If I had that formula I sure as hell wouldn’t be using it to fix history.”
“Oh yeah. Well aren’t you a genius? You go back in time once and think you would do it different.”
She was so condescending it made me wonder how Mom could be friends with her. My mother wasn’t known for being snarky or rude, but Angela was all of the things Mom wasn’t.
“Yeah, so meeting Lincoln would be great and all, but I’d meet great writers. Poe, Hemingway, and you know, see them in the act of writing their masterpieces.”
“What do you think the Librarians do actually, Adam?” she asked. “You think them these lazy women who just sit idly by and watch the past?”
“I didn’t say that. I just said it was a waste is all.”
“You going back to meet this girl was the waste. She isn’t just some wild girl living in Georgia. She becomes someone someday. So the next time you think time travel is a waste, just hold your words in. Because I’ve seen your mom travel back and meet the greats. And she suffered from it. She would still be here if your dad let her keep travelling.”
I took the pillow next to me and threw it at her in anger. If I could have gotten up from my bed then and thrown her out, I would have.
“How dare you! She died of cancer. My dad’s an asshole but he didn’t cause her death.”
Shock and dismay crossed her face. She held up her hands and placed the book at my feet.
“Kid, you got it all wrong. Your dad is a monster. And if anyone caused her death it was him not the cancer. You don’t want to hear this now. I can see that. But when you do, you call me.”
Grabbing her bag and slinging it over her shoulder carefully, she left the room. But before she left the apartment she said, “Adam, don’t do anything reckless while I’m gone.”
Fifteen
Rose 1765
I left when the sun hit the window. Its light woke me from a deep sleep. Dreaming of running in the woods searching for Adam, I hadn’t wanted to wake. I had almost found him when the bright sun hit my eyes.
Leaving without saying goodbye wasn’t polite or ladylike. Staying and seeing their disappointment in the morning was something I wanted to avoid. Instead I snuck out quietly and got away as soon as I could.
Arthur would someday marry a girl who would enjoy waking up to his face in the morning. A woman who lived to serve him and their children. It was what women did. Just not this woman.
Mother often told me this would be a hindrance someday, but I refused to listen. She meant well, but she was raised by her tribe, she didn’t know any better. I couldn’t blame her ignorance on her. I was wiser to the times and the ways of the world. Somewhere out there, women were going to have a say on whom they married.
I would not let a man tell me what to do. I would not wake up, dress and live to serve a man or children. Nor would I live in the Cherokee tribe and work like my mother had. She lived to serve her mother and the tribe. I was raised differently and this was not my belief.
I saw this world for what it really was; hard, beautiful, and frightful.
And I would not live my life in a cabin and let my years catch up to me without seeing that beauty, feeling the fear, and suffering its hardships. I was a woman who would choose her own fate. Not have it chosen for her. I would help others in a time of despair instead of sitting back and watching them be hurt or frightened.
Adam may have left without me finding out just what life in New York was like but that did not stop me from finding out the truth.
He taught me something at least. He showed me that there was life beyond these mountains.
Before I knew I was home. Walking and thinking and not taking a break to eat had helped me arrive sooner than I anticipated. I kept my mind busy planning what I was to do if Mother and Father didn’t come home.
The Bibliophile (The Librarian Chronicles Book 3) Page 5