Sneaks

by B Button

  I told my mom everything. I told her about my friends and Mac and how I’d fallen in love like my grandmother had done. I told her about horses, and plucking feathers from ducks, and the market, and thick feather mattresses. She’d heard some of it before; when I’d told her about my first trip. But what she hadn’t heard before was my story about Mac and how I felt for him; how it was different than what I’d felt for Ian, how it was deeper and how it almost hurt sometimes.

  She walked and listened and I thought I saw her try not to cry, but it was dark in the tunnel so I couldn’t be sure.

  I finished the story just as we reached the end of the line.

  “We’re here. You ready to go in?” Mr. Bellini said.

  We all said that we were, but I grabbed my mom’s arm before we went in.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. You were sick and I didn’t want to freak you out too much. I decided not to go back, and I didn’t want to make that decision hurt more than it did.”

  She pulled me into a tight hug. “You’re fine, Kally. I’m glad I know now.” It seemed like she wanted to say more, but the four of us were crowded together at the end of the dark tunnel.

  Mr. Bellini knocked on the door in a short, long, short, short pattern. Only a second later, the door swung open, revealing something I’d never seen before.

  The room was huge; it was so large I couldn’t see the other end of it, but that could have been because the only light was candlelight.

  “They don’t have any electricity,” Mr. Bellini said, “or the Govment would surely find them. They use candles, but we have to be extra careful. These are books, pieces of paper in bindings – everything could go up in flames in an instant. Step carefully.”

  The woman who greeted us was just a figure in a cloak. You could tell there was a female under the cape and scarf covering her head, but she kept her face hidden.

  “This is Madame,” Mr. Bellini said. “She has to keep her identity a secret, but she will talk if we have questions.”

  There were two candles lit; Madame held one and one was perched on a stand next to some large tables covered in large pieces of paper. Other than that, there were rows and rows of books. The entire room smelled of wax and old paper.

  Despite what Mr. Bellini thought, I’d heard of libraries, but they’d mostly disappeared during my grandmother’s time. She’d lived through the technological revolution so she’d seen everything moved to computer storage devises. All paper books had been destroyed. All except these apparently. Once the Govment became so involved in our phone and computer communications, the technological age died – except at school where we had a few computers with all the information the Govment thought we needed.

  I wished for time to look around and read, but it wouldn’t happen.

  “Come with me, Kally. Let me show you all what Madame and I have found.” Mr. Bellini signaled us to follow him to the table beside the candle stand. “It was Madame, really, she knows how to do the research.”

  Steering wide of the candle, we gathered around the crowded table. On the top of the papers was a large book that was opened approximately to the middle.

  “Here, look, here.” Mr. Bellini pointed. I stood next to him as Mom and Berna looked over our shoulders. “This is called a family tree.”

  “I can’t read the words,” I said.

  “It’s very old and people used to write in such fancy lettering that it is difficult, but here, let Madame read it. She knows.”

  Madame sat her candle on the stand with the other one and moved next to me.

  “This name says,” she pointed to the top name, “Ivar Lennox.”

  I gasped. “Show me.”

  I looked closely at the name next to Madame’s finger. I could make out the letters and they did say Ivar Lennox.

  “And this,” Madame pointed to the next name, “says Jesmen Obers Lennox. They were married and had a son named Kirk and a daughter named Isla.”

  “Oh. Oh. Tell me more,” I said.

  She went to almost the bottom of the long list of names that were written on block-type branches.

  “Here, it says Morris Bright married Abigail and had a daughter named Kally. That’s you, I believe.”

  “I don’t understand. Who did this?” Mom asked.

  “We have people who volunteer to keep records. It’s done in secret and we’re not totally accurate, but we do our best,” Madame said.

  “My father was . . . related to Ivar Lennox?” I said, astounded at the simplicity of it.

  “Your father is a descendent of Ivar Lennox,” Berna said. “How lovely to know why you traveled to where you traveled. You went there because they are your family. I think it’s great, Kally.”

  “Hang on,” I said as I ran my finger back up to the top of the tree. “Should it say who married Isla, his daughter?” I stood on my tiptoes to better see.

  “That’s our biggest mystery, dear,” Mr. Bellini said. “It did say that Isla was married and it showed a husband’s name, but since yesterday that name has disappeared.”

  My mind worked through the tree. “It disappeared? My great-something grandfather’s name is gone?” I gulped. Was Mac my ancestor? It seemed so wrong. But whatever the name was, if it disappeared, then how did I ever even come to exist?

  “Yes, dear, but I memorized the name.” Mr. Bellini blinked in the candlelight. “I know what you might be thinking, but Isla’s husband’s name wasn’t Mac, or MacCauley. It was Porter, Porter McBride.”

  I was relieved at that news, but the fact that Porter’s name had disappeared was still bothersome.

  “If Isla’s husband didn’t exist, then how does Kally?” Mom asked. She’d been thinking like me.

  “I don’t know,” Madame said. “That’s why it’s a mystery.”

  “Berna, do you know?” I said.

  “I don’t,” she said.

  “That’s it then, you all have to go,” Madame said. “I’m sorry, but I’m worried about being caught.”

  I didn’t want to go. I wanted to look at the family tree, I wanted to look at the books. The thought occurred to me that this was fake or something someone made up, but why would anyone do such a thing?

  “Is this real?” I asked.

  “I think so,” Mr. Bellini said. “Madame is the best. That’s why I came to her.”

  “You have to go now,” Madame said.

  “Can I come back at another time?” I asked.

  Madame hesitated as her eyes peered through the opening in her scarves at Mr. Bellini. “I don’t know. I will communicate through Mr. Bellini.”

  “Thank you.”

  We hurried back through the tunnel and into Mr. Bellini’s house. There wasn’t a moment to catch our breaths. The secret tunnel and library were so precious that Mr. Bellini didn’t want to cause extra attention to his house by having the three of us stay for an amount of time longer than a brief social visit. We went out the front door and made our way back to our house. Once inside our own closed doors, Mom demanded that Berna stay for dinner so we could talk about the library and what else she would tell us about time travel. I wasn’t prepared for what she said, but at least it answered some questions.

  “I was old,” Berna said. “I’m young here and even younger in other places and times, but there I was old. I knew you were a time traveler - a time sneak, we call them - but I was so old that I forgot exactly what I was supposed to do. I’d been told, many years before, that if another sneak came to me, I was to send the to the Lennox castle. The baby was such a surprise. I still don’t know if I’d ever been instructed what to do if you brought a baby. I thought it best to let you be on your way and the only way I knew to do that was to take the baby from you. Of course when Duncan’s men came, that plan failed, and then everything else failed. If I’d just let you keep the baby, maybe you would have gone to the Lennoxes in the first place and everything wouldn’t have gotten so crazy.”

  “I was supposed to find my ancestors,
that’s it?”

  “We’ll never know.” Berna shrugged. “I didn’t handle things well, so whatever was supposed to be changed – maybe you were supposed to fall in love with Mac. Kally, I have something else to tell you and you won’t like it.”

  “I’m used to bad news. What?”

  “I was the one who attacked you the first time. I thought I’d messed up my instructions. I thought the only way was to send you home. I didn’t think you’d ever sneak again, and when you did, I was even older and more confused. When you left me at my cabin the second time, my mind eventually put things together. Then I traveled here, so I thought I was supposed to get to know your mom. When she got sick, I thought I’d done it all wrong again. That’s why I had Mac take me to you.”

  “You?” I said. “I should have figured that out.”

  “Not really. It’s confusing.”

  “So someone knows about this, someone manipulates the travel and the travelers?” Mom asked.

  “I’m sorry but I don’t really know. I met another traveler a long time ago. She told me what I was supposed to do, like I told you what you were supposed to do. Perhaps you’ll receive further instruction if you sneak more. I sneak all the time, not just my birthday. I never travel to family. Everyone is different.”

  “Oh, she’ll travel. She’s going back on her next birthday.”

  “Mom!”

  “She might not be able to travel,” Berna said. “You need to be prepared for that.”

  My heart sunk even though I’d already come to the conclusion that I couldn’t leave my mom again. I was never going to see Mac again, and I’d been trying to accept that reality.

  “She’ll be able to travel. It’s what she was meant to do. I think my mother knew – I think she did what she could to prepare her. I don’t think my mother was a . . . a sneak, but I’m almost certain she thought Kally would be doing . . . well, something.”

  “Really?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’m not leaving you again, Mom, ever.”

  “We’ll talk about it later.” Mom waved away my protest. “Berna, what else can you tell Kally to help her?”

  “I can tell her what I was supposed to tell her the first time I saw her. Kally, you must not tell anyone you are a time sneak.”

  “Too late.”

  “I know, and I’m sorry.”

  “Did she ruin it by telling people?”

  “We’ll see.”

  “You don’t know why you travel where you travel to?” I asked Berna.

  “No, not at all. I’ve been traveling for a long time, though, longer than you would think. When you’re a traveler who goes to more than one place, it’s almost like you become immortal.”

  “Almost?” I said.

  “I’ve been alive a long time. I think I will die someday, but I don’t know. I’ve told you too much as it is, I can’t tell you more.”

  “Try,” I said. “You kind of owe me.”

  “Kally, I travel to many different places and many different times. I’ve ‘died’ a few times – lived to be old enough that when I disappeared, people surely thought I had died.”

  “You have the same necklace,” Mom said as she pointed at Berna’s throat. “Is that what makes you travel?”

  “You can’t sneak without it.”

  “Where did they come from?”

  “I don’t know,” Berna said. “Maybe someday I will, but I’m not counting on it.” We talked in circles mostly, me and Mom repeating questions, Berna repeating answers. But we also talked about things other than time travel; like the rules of 2185 society and how almost every place and time that Berna had traveled to had rules, some were easy to live with, others weren’t.

  It seemed that after that night, after the time in the secret library, everything changed again.

  Berna started working in the library with Madame and her other researchers. I was given the privilege of visiting on certain days at certain times. I read books that made my travel through time seem boring and unimportant. I couldn’t read fast enough. I learned about teenagers and love from other times. I read books that predicted what life would be like in my time. Some were worse than reality, some were better, but none of them were exactly right.

  Every time I entered and left the library, I looked at the family tree. Even on the day before my eighteenth birthday, the spot on the family tree that was supposed to show Isla’s husband was blank.

  *****

  “You will leave the necklace on, Kally. That is an order,” Mom said as we were once again revisiting our argument. Dinner was long over, but we were in the kitchen.

  “I can’t leave you.”

  “Yes, you can. And if you do, I want you to stay. Kally, I want you to have a life you can never have here. I’m not sure 18th century Scotland is the greatest choice of times, but it’s all we’ve got, and I’m sure it’s better than here.”

  I wanted to go back to Scotland. I wanted to be with Mac. But the thought of leaving my mother alone was more than I could bear. I would never leave her on purpose again.

  “I can’t.”

  “You’ll be leaving me tomorrow anyway, Kally. I want you to go to happiness, not . . . not horribleness.”

  I was supposed to get married on my eighteenth birthday. I was to choose from a list of widowers and divorced men. I hadn’t even looked at the list. I was going to refuse the marriage, even if it meant I’d struggle to make money the rest of my life. I couldn’t marry someone I didn’t love, that much I knew. I’d rather starve and have nothing than do that.

  “I’m refusing the marriage, too” I said.

  Mom sighed. “I understand, but if you don’t get to travel you’d be better off to get married and then get divorced later. The Govment treats divorced women a little better than always single women.”

  “Not much better,” I said.

  “No, but a little.”

  “I’m not marrying someone from that . . . that list,” I said. “It’s not going to happen.”

  “I know, because you’re going back to Scotland.” We were talking in circles.

  “Mom! We don’t even know if I can travel.”

  “We can hope.”

  “I’m not leaving you,” I said again.

  Mom sighed again and got up. She went to the shelf next to the stove and pulled a small box out of the cabinet. Without saying a word, she sat back down at the table, opened the box and pulled out the contents.

  “Help me put this on,” she said.

  My mouth hung open. “It’s . . . it’s a necklace!”

  “Yes, just like yours.”

  “Where? What? How?”

  “It’s Berna’s. She gave it to me.”

  “What?”

  “She’s done traveling. Somehow she got permission to give it to me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do I, but she gave it to me nonetheless. She told me to put it on before my birthday.”

  “That’s three months away,” I said. “And from what she said, there’s no steering where you’re going to go. You could end up anywhere at any time.”

  Mom shook her head. “Berna couldn’t tell me much, but she said that she thinks I’ll be able to travel to you – that family thing again. Here, help me put it on.”

  I didn’t know what to think. Was this the solution? Could Mom and I both go back to the same time? She could come with me?

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” I said as I got up and fastened the necklace.

  “I’ve thought about it a long time, Kally. I’m positive this is what I want to do. It’s worth a try, don’t you think?”

  “Traveling through time is more serious than ‘worth a try.’”

  “I have nothing here. No matter what, come tomorrow even if you don’t get married, I’m on my own. Granny would want me to do it, I know.”

  “You’re right, she would.”

  “So it’s settled.”

 
“Why would Berna stop traveling now?”

  “The library,” Mom said. “She’s devoting herself to it.”

  “Really?”

  “She’s tired, Kally. She’s been traveling a long time. She’s been married a number of times. She’s raised children. Now, she wants to travel by reading. She says there are more worlds and times and places in the books in the library than if she traveled for thousands more years.”

  “But, this time – 2186 – isn’t the best of all times. I’d think she’d want to go someplace else before she stopped.”

  “I’m going to tell you something that she told me but I don’t think she was supposed to.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “It gets better. Here, now, I mean. She’s traveled to a place not far in the future from this time and she said that things happen to make it a better place.”

  “Like what?”

  “She wouldn’t say.”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  “Me either, but is that reason enough for you not to go back to Scotland?”

  “The only reason I won’t go is because I don’t want to leave you.”

  “That’s fixed.” She touched the pendant at the bottom of her throat. “I’ll be there three months after you.”

  “We can’t be sure.”

  “Kally, we can’t be sure of anything, but we have to try. We have to.”

  There were so many things we didn’t know, so many questions, and no answers. But we both knew that what we were doing was worth a try. Before we went to bed, it was settled; we’d both go - wherever we were supposed to go.

  I didn’t sleep. Mom didn’t sleep. I stayed with her in her in her bed. We didn’t talk much while we didn’t sleep. There was nothing left to say except ‘good-bye’ and neither of us wanted to say that.

  Eighteen

  We got up together the next morning. If things proceeded as they had before, I would leave at around 8:00. We got ready for the day – I put on jeans, a t-shirt and a brand new pair of sneakers and went to the kitchen.

  It wasn’t fancy. There was nothing announcing that it was going to happen. It just happened.

  “I love you, Kally,” Mom said.