Wayfarer

by Alexandra Bracken

  Standing on the bow of his newly commissioned ship, the wind fair and the ocean tame, as he gave the order to change course.

  Moving through a great house, chasing a small child across the soft Oriental rugs, beneath the portraits of ancestors and descendants yet to come, sunlight spilling in through the tall windows that overlooked the green lands below.

  His mother, taking his arm as he led her away from the fields, from the plantation, from the illness that had killed her.

  And Etta…

  Etta in the silk dress he had seen her wear to dinner on the Ardent, the one that had suited her so well, guiding him forward to a passage, her smile dazzling—

  All of this. He heard the sweet whisper of words as clearly as if someone were sitting beside him. I can give you all of this.

  Nicholas did not want to pull back from these dreams. He wanted to live each moment through to its conclusion, to see what other sweet wonders might be offered to him. But the light, the mist hanging over his mind, it all pulled back.

  It left him in the darkness again, with a choice.

  A man made his own future. He chipped it from whatever hardships insinuated themselves into his life; he carved out the happy, glad moments to capture his gratitude for them. It came from the simple magic of merely living. Of surviving. Seeking.

  Not this. Not this.

  Using his wounded hand, he pinned the astrolabe to the ground and raised his dagger, driving it down hard against the metal surface. If he could just crack it—if he had just enough strength left in him to wedge it apart—

  The astrolabe heated beneath his hand, scalding to the touch. Nicholas let out a cry, but held it fast, blinking as it began to glow. He drove the dagger down again, piercing its center; the hotter it became, the more malleable it was, until at last the bulk of the blade broke through its case and black blood burbled up from inside, spilling against his hand, searing it with a pain that whipped him down to the seat of his soul.

  He fell back, his jaw working out a scream as the light around him flooded his senses, drowning out the image of Etta racing toward him, her mouth open, calling something to him, trying to tell him something. But the light swept over her, and she vanished, dissolving in front of his eyes.

  No, he thought, trying to rise again. No!

  The sound of thunder and fury bore down on him, drowning out her name. There was a tug at his back, a weight that wrapped around his core, and he felt himself lifted, pulled and tossed, the pressure crushing against his skin. The whole of the world tilted around him as time caught him in its torrential stream.

  And, in an instant, Nicholas felt himself vanish.

  SOMEHOW ETTA KNEW EXACTLY WHERE SHE WAS, even before she had the courage to open her eyes and see for herself.

  This isn’t happening…this can’t be happening….

  The stone stairs were cold against her skin, smelling of nothing more than the museum’s old air-conditioning system and the lemon-scented cleaning product the custodians used to wash the stairs down.

  Get up, she ordered herself. You have to get up.

  Did she?

  Etta forced her eyes open. Forced the breath to come into her lungs, and then out again. With arms like wet clay she pushed herself up, biting her lip to keep back her grunt of pain as the aches and bruises made themselves known again. The fluorescent light was nearly blinding, after living with sunlight and candles for so long. She shielded her eyes as best she could, lifting her arms, curling her legs toward her as she slid over the last few inches to rest her back against the closest wall.

  She was still wearing the white robe. If it hadn’t been stained so thoroughly with gore and dirt and soot, Etta might have believed the whole thing to be some sort of desperate dream. That she’d tumbled down the stairs on the night of her performance and knocked herself out. But she wore the evidence of her struggle on every inch of her skin; the bruising and dried blood decorated her like war paint.

  Alone, she thought. Trapped.

  For once in his miserable life, it seemed Cyrus Ironwood had told the truth.

  But the last thought lingered as a question. Slowly, she unknotted the hooded robe and used the relatively clean inner side to try to wipe her face and arms. Her clothes were from the last century, but this was New York, where there was always something or someone more interesting to look at.

  She tried to swallow the taste of smoke and blood in her mouth, and forced her eyes up to take in the familiar empty stairwell.

  This was the passage that had taken everything from her. The same passage that had opened up a link to the past and carried her over land, across oceans, through time. She had arrived at the place she had departed from, back in her native time. This is home.

  What was left of it.

  Etta rose to her feet slowly, struggling for balance. Memories swirled there, all floating colors and sparks; not of the life she had lived, but of the destruction, the devastation of what New York had become in the altered timeline.

  Anger climbed in her as her feet took to the steps, blinding her with its intensity. So much so that she had to lean heavily against the rail to keep from falling back.

  Nicholas had done it. He had done this to her, to them, to everyone. Her mother was bleeding to death somewhere that wasn’t here—that, Etta was sure of. Her father was alone in his own time, wondering what had become of the two of them. Julian would be left to his own devices. Sophia and Li Min, separated. The remaining Thorns, blown apart and scattered to the winds. For a moment, just one, she thought she might actually hate him.

  Why had this been worth it? Why had he done this to them?

  She drew in one breath, then another, trying to control the shaking that wracked her entire body. She smoothed her hair back, wiping the drying tears from her face. As she reached the top, voices drifted to her from beyond the door. The muffled wailing of a child. The endless stream of footsteps squeaking against the floor. But there, inside the stairwell, was nothing. There was devastating quiet.

  Etta’s breath hitched in her throat as she turned, looking down the stairs again. She hugged the folded robe to her chest. There was no shimmering wall of air to call her back. No thundering drums to announce her arrival. There was no passage at all.

  There was only Etta, alone.

  AS IT TURNED OUT, THE INSIDE OF THE MET WAS THE SAME, with enough small exceptions that Etta felt as though she were moving through a kind of shadowland version of her city. Exhibits had been moved; the style of clothing she saw around her seemed sharper, shorter, brighter; even the cell phones people carried to snap photos of the artwork were unfamiliar, razor-thin and sliding open like the old mirror compact Alice had carried to check her lipstick. Etta kept her head down and moved steadily past the school groups and couples meandering through the halls, through the blessedly familiar Egyptian wing, down the grand staircase, and out into whatever waited for her beyond the doors.

  It was disorienting, the way the skin of the city had changed, even if the bones had not. Etta recognized the older buildings—the old-houses-turned-museums—lining Fifth Avenue, but when she jogged around to the part of the museum that backed up to Central Park, she faced an almost unfamiliar crowded skyline on all sides. Historic landmarks like the Dakota were gone, replaced by ever-reaching skyscrapers that literally blotted out the sunlight and cast impossibly long shadows across the park. The trees had changed color and were burnished with all of their golden autumn glory. Strollers wove through the park’s paths. Men in suits passed men out for a jog in the crisp weather. Women sharing coffee and conversation on nearby benches glanced at others making business calls as they power-walked by. It was a variation on a theme Etta had known and loved, and now she would need to study it to understand the underlying notes that had changed.

  She wondered if the city had always been this loud, this clean, this frenetic.

  Henry had said the timeline tried to account for inconsistencies and restore as many traveler events as it coul
d. Maybe Etta’s life here was what it had been, at least mostly, even if the trappings had changed? She had lost everything and everyone else…maybe she could at least have the scraps of her old life?

  She felt the pressure of eyes and turned to find a young girl staring up at her, sucking on her thumb as she held her mother’s hand, waiting for the light to turn. Etta tried to smile, but she’d noticed others giving her a wide, silent berth, and could only imagine her smell and how out of place she looked, despite having lived the whole of her life on these streets, moving through the veins of the city.

  When the little girl and her mother crossed Fifth Avenue, heading home, or to a shop, to some real, concrete destination, the wave of longing and uncertainty and desperation finally broke over her, and Etta began to cry.

  You’re overwhelmed, but it’s all right, she told herself. You are all right. Give yourself a minute. Give yourself time.

  But there was nowhere for her to go.

  There was no one.

  Unless…

  Etta turned, crossing the street just as the signal began to flash. Her jog turning into a full-on sprint through this new, slightly changed version of the Upper East Side. She dodged sleek city cabs in their familiar shade of yellow, delivery bikes, and the parade of evening dog walkers.

  The sun was setting at her back as she turned onto Alice’s street, and she felt her heart jump at the sight of her brownstone, looking almost exactly as she remembered it, the pots of flowers still alive on her stoop. The front windows were dark, but she tried knocking anyway; she stepped back, and then knocked again, practically bouncing in anticipation.

  When there was still no answer, when she was sure her heart would beat its way out of her chest, Etta dug down in the base of the pot of pansies, dumping the dirt out onto the stoop, well aware that Martha, Alice’s snoop of a neighbor, was watching her through the window. Her hand had just closed around the spare key hidden at the bottom when Martha’s front door opened.

  “Etta, is that you?”

  She straightened slowly, hoping she’d managed to clean the better part of the blood from her skin. “Yes. It’s me.”

  The old woman, already in her paisley silk robe, pressed a hand to her chest. “My goodness, we were so worried about you and your mother when we didn’t see you at the service. It’s been months, doll; how have you been? Alice was so excited for you to come back to the city for a visit. And goodness, you look as if you’ve crawled out of the ground—”

  Service.

  Months.

  Etta had to swallow the bile down, forcing a smile that was more of a grimace. “I’ve been…traveling.”

  Martha seemed to accept this, at least. “That house has been sitting empty for an age! If you’d like a referral to an agent to sell—”

  Etta’s hands were trembling so hard, she could barely fit the key into the lock. It was a difficult door no matter the timeline, apparently. She had to shoulder it open.

  “Careful, there!”

  She stumbled inside, her chest heaving, and slammed the door shut on the woman. Gasping, Etta dropped to her knees, bracing her hands against them until she had the courage to look up. The whole apartment smelled as she remembered it: the cinnamon-apple potpourri Alice favored, and Oskar’s pipe smoke, which had lingered long after he’d passed away. Etta leaned forward, pressing her face to the old blue floral rug covering the hardwood, and let it muffle her scream of frustration.

  She’s dead.

  She’s still dead.

  And her home was as buried as she was—every piece of furniture, every piece of art, every surface was covered with white sheets. Etta breathed in through her nose as she stood, leaving a trail of dirt across the pristine floor in the living room. The floorboards squeaked as she approached the couch and placed a knee on it, pulling the fabric away from the painting hanging there. The city sang its medley of horns and trucks and rattling garbage containers outside, and all the while Etta stared at the impressionist field of red poppies, raising a hand to touch the paint, to brush the dust from its frame.

  She moved from room to room, uncovering pieces of Alice’s life. Photos of herself smiling naively, unscarred in and out, with her mother; neat stacks of bills; an unfinished novel on the bedside table. Her violin, the one she’d gifted to Etta years ago in the old timeline, rested in its case on the bench at the foot of the bed. Etta sat beside it, flipping open its latches, and for a long while did nothing but stare at it. Brush the glossy surface, breathe in the wood and rosin with her filthy fingers.

  “I’ll be seeing you….” The words emerged broken, battered. In all the old familiar places.

  But there was one painting she had never seen before, resting just outside the floor of Alice’s closet, as if she’d gone to hang it up and forgotten about it. Having grown up in the halls of the Met, Etta recognized the Renaissance style of the piece, from the pose of the young woman to the warm, vibrant tone of its colors.

  It was so unlike the other pieces in the apartment that it drew Etta forward for closer inspection. The ivory dress with its square cut was detailed with gold thread, but otherwise simple in style. The subject’s golden hair was plaited down her back, crowned by a circlet of lush red roses. In one hand, she held a map; in the other, a key.

  The eyes staring back at her were her mother’s.

  Her fingers touched delicate brushstrokes, and the roses blurred in her vision like an open wound. This was Rose Linden’s natural time. Alice had indicated it to her the only way she could, by keeping this relic of the past. Sensing, or knowing, that Rose would never get around to telling her daughter herself.

  Etta couldn’t push the chill out from beneath her skin, any more than she could stop the shaking that overtook her as the vicious reality set in. She did not think she could ever forgive her mother, not fully, for taking Alice’s life, no matter the reason. But she pitied Rose deeply; she felt an unwanted empathy trying to imagine making that decision with the trauma of her past, and the promise of more death to come, ringing her neck like a noose. She understood now that Rose was as much the hero as she was the victim of her own story, blooming in blood.

  Etta wanted to speak to her, to understand, to finally clear the air between them, even if it was only one last conversation.

  And now it would never happen. At least five hundred years and a single deadly cut had stolen their last chance. If her mother had survived…somehow survived, there was no way of finding her.

  Etta sat on the carpet for hours, considering her mother, considering the life they’d had together. The sun tracked around Alice’s bedroom like the arm of a clock. Alone.

  Finally, thirst won out. Etta rose, carrying the portrait back across the apartment with her to its new place in the living room. In the kitchen, she went straight for the refrigerator. She’d already noticed that the water was running when she’d stopped to wash her hands and face, and the electricity, too; but she was surprised, somehow, to find that the food stocked inside the fridge had already been cleared out, leaving only a few water bottles.

  Who had done that for her? Who had cleaned this place and covered everything inside of it?

  Her answer came in the form of a letter, resting on the kitchen table beside two heavy letter-size envelopes. One was labeled with her name, the other with Rose’s.

  Dear Spencer Family:

  My name is Frederick Russell and I have been appointed by my firm to handle Mrs. Hanski’s estate. I was recently asked by Mrs. Hanski to serve as the executor of her will. As you may already know, the bulk of it has been left to your family in a trust, but I have been unable to reach you by means of phone or Netgram to confirm this.

  Netgram? Whatever passed for e-mail in this timeline, most likely.

  I’m leaving these envelopes here per Mrs. Hanski’s request, and against my better judgment, as I believe they may contain personal material both sensitive and valuable. Funds to maintain the utilities and upkeep of this home, as well as its taxes,
will be paid out of the trust until you specify otherwise. Please notify me the moment you arrive, so that I may explain these next steps to you.

  “Still taking care of us,” Etta murmured, folding up the letter and the man’s contact information. She reached for the envelope bearing her name, and dumped the contents out onto the table, finally taking a seat.

  Inside, as the lawyer had expected, were personal documents—a birth certificate, a passport, a Social Security card, and vaccination records. Real, copies, or forgeries, Etta wasn’t sure. She turned her attention to the letter itself, hoping for some clue. It was dated July 3.

  Dearest Etta,

  I don’t know where to begin. It has been only minutes since I last saw you. Both you, and to a lesser extent, your mother, have been appearing and disappearing almost at random throughout the years. There have been moments where we are sitting together at a meal, and I’ll rise to refill my glass of water, only to return and find you both gone. I cannot tell what has become of the timeline, only that it must be very bad. Your great-grandfather tried to explain the idea of “imprinting” to me once—how the timeline adjusts around the travelers’ actions, and when it can’t, it leaves impressions of them behind to maintain consistency. I wish I had paid better attention. The great gears of time are shifting, and I am powerless to do anything other than watch.

  I remember our encounter in London as if it were yesterday. I remember the look on your face when you saw me—when you spoke of what our life would be together. I believe I have lived it in pieces. Not the whole, perhaps, but I am grateful to have been your instructor, and your friend. I am grateful I saw you become that young lady with my own two eyes. But I am afraid for you now. I’ve seen the world shift around me in tremendous waves—destroyed one moment, healed the next. I know it must be tied to your search, and I know my own end, the one I saw so plainly in your face, must be near. And so I have taken precautions for you, should you return to an unfamiliar city. These documents should suffice in establishing a life here again, should you choose to.