by Lou Cadle
“Maybe. That would be lucky.”
“Can we go beyond our time?” Rex asked. “Into the future?”
“I don’t know.”
“Wow. If I could learn from you how to jump, I could go forward in time and see what had been invented in the future.”
“I just want to get back to our time,” Claire said. “And my family.”
Hannah watched Laina. She wondered how she had stayed motivated to keep trying. Out of loyalty to the group? After five or ten or fifteen years, would you still have loyalty? Or even remember people by name? Maybe so. Hannah forgot names from the past only because new experiences supplanted old memories. They had been the last nine modern people that Laina had known.
Again, the profound sacrifice struck her. She wasn’t sure if she could have done it. Even with Laina’s brains and theories about the timegate and curiosity about it, she didn’t have that level of commitment in her. She was afraid she would have gotten close to the 21st century and quit.
The others were talking excitedly among themselves, making plans, asking questions, talking over one another.
Laina seemed overwhelmed by the noise. Hannah smiled at her and Laina noticed the look. Probably an animal awareness she’d had to develop to survive, knowing when there were eyes on her. When Laina glanced at her, Hannah said, “Thank you.”
Laina lifted an eyebrow, a dismissive gesture, like saying, “It’s what I do.”
By the time the others were back, Laina must have been regretting saying anything at all. She took the noise, and the questions, and the attention through supper, and then she said, “I will return tomorrow,” and she left abruptly.
Ted chased her before Hannah or anyone else could stop him, but when Laina ignored whatever it was he was saying to her, he gave up, walking back to the cabin with drooping shoulders.
When Hannah and Bob were alone for a moment, he said, “I wanted to tell her to stop, to sleep here.”
“I know.”
“I can’t shut off my protective urges. But it’s stupid. I know she could protect me far better than I could her.”
“You have that entirely right.”
“You worried about her?”
“I am. I can’t get over that she did all that gating to experiment. If she did it for us, then it’s a debt I can never repay, isn’t it? I wouldn’t know how to begin.”
“She did it to satisfy her scientific curiosity too, if that helps.”
“I thought of that, and no, it doesn’t help.” She laughed, at herself. “I don’t know.” The thought of Laina’s long sacrifice was still too overwhelming to grasp for more than a few seconds at a time.
“Can she get us back? That’s the question.”
“I really don’t know that. We’ll follow her, and hope. It’s all I can see to do.”
“I wouldn’t mind showing up at a cardiologist’s office in six weeks.”
Hannah’s mind was wrenched away from Laina. “You in pain? Feeling worse?”
“No. But when I’m alone with my thoughts, sometimes I wonder what damage I’ve done myself. And if it can repair itself, or if it needs to be repaired by someone with the know-how and tools.”
“Since she can’t guarantee us closer than hundreds of years, it sounds like, there are a lot of places we could show up—times, I mean—when there are people but no more knowledge or tech than we have now.”
“Really. All I need is someone deciding I need leeches or to be bled.”
“Or lobotomized for claiming we’ve traveled through time.”
“Yeah. Not something to talk about in casual company, is it?”
“You’re anxious to be home, I’m sure,” she said.
“You’re not.”
“Yes, for the medicine. For family, obviously not. For friends? I could make new friends wherever we land. I’ve made new friends here.”
He reached out and squeezed her arm. “And lifelong ones, I hope you know. If we get all the way back, if there’s anything I can do for you, just ask.”
Hannah smiled. “Ditto.” But she wondered. Even this experience, bonding though it was, how long might it last? It was like university or—she guessed—a stint in the service. You assumed those bosom buddies would be in your life forever, but they weren’t. You grew busy. Friendships waned. She shook off the line of thought. “Not something to worry about yet. We have two weeks here, and food to catch and a roof to finish. The timegate to return to. Nari and Zach and you have to heal up some.”
“True enough. I’m feeling okay, though.”
“But I’ll remind Claire we need plenty of time to get back to the gate.”
“Even at my slow pace, we’re only two days away, I think.”
“We should allot three, I think, if Claire agrees. Stick with the river. Gather nuts in that woods the last night. Depends on when the gate arrives, which I guess Laina will know down to the hour.”
“I wish I knew how she did it.”
“You have time. You can quiz her later. Or Rex can.”
“If we lose her again, we’re sunk.”
“True enough.”
“Getting dark,” he said. “And a little foggy again.”
“We have to be more careful next time we walk through fog,” she said. “We were lucky yesterday.”
“Or smart.”
“Mostly Laina helped.”
“You think her taking out the alpha dog will keep them away?”
“I hope. She seems to think so, and I have to defer to her greater knowledge of the world.”
“She has been here for a year,” he said in wonder, shaking his head.
“Plus the other times she was almost here, jumping back and forth.”
“I wonder if you can be in the same place twice,” Bob said. “Meet yourself coming or going.”
“That’d be weird, if it’s possible.”
“I’m not sure I’d want to meet me.”
Hannah sheepishly admitted, “I’m afraid I’d constantly bicker with me.”
He laughed. “Maybe so.” But then he sobered. “Or maybe there’s a law of physics that prohibits it.”
“I thought there were laws of physics that prohibited time travel,” she said. “And yet here we are.”
Claire walked up. “Time for bed. What are you guys talking about?”
“Time travel,” said Hannah. “Probably what’s on all our minds.”
“We need to focus on the here and now. I don’t want people going down to the river tomorrow and not paying attention.”
“You’re right,” Hannah said.
But by the time they had a group ready to go to the river the next morning, Laina had appeared again, quiet as a ghost. She had several water skins, full, and two small animals, gutted and ready to cook.
“Is that one of the rodents like the one I killed?” Jodi said. “That was so good.”
“Both are good,” Laina said, hefting her kills. “And I have garlic. And white roots, something like parsnips. Maybe a stew for lunch?”
“How did you catch them?” Jodi said.
“I have traps. All up and down the river banks.”
Claire said, “We never saw one.”
“I learned to hide them well,” Laina said.
Claire said, “You have a lot to teach us.”
Chapter 27
For the next week, that is what Laina did—teach. She taught them how to identify the white roots, the soap plant, how to make soap from fire ashes and herbs and animal fat, how to purify the animal fat, how to drill a hole in a bird bone to make a needle, how to hide a trap so well even the eagle-eyed Dixie couldn’t pick it out from a yard away, and much more.
But every day, she reached her limit of human interaction quickly, and after delivering water and food in the morning, and staying just long enough to explain some other new skill, she disappeared until late afternoon, when she showed up at the river, finding the group that was fishing, and coming back with them to share the eve
ning meal.
But she slept alone. Where, she didn’t say.
Her presence had never been disruptive before. She had been one of the group, quiet, but just another person. This was no longer true. Now she was disruptive without meaning to be. Part of it was her almost ghostly comings and goings. Part of it was how she was no longer the girl that she had been.
And part of it, Hannah could see, was sexual tension. All of the young men noticed her, their attraction obvious. Bob may have suffered from it too, but if so, he kept his thoughts well hidden. Dixie was clearly jealous, sour-tempered when Laina was in camp, and even Jodi and Zach’s relationship began to fray. Hannah watched Jodi watching Zach watch Laina, and she thought Zach might do well to remember that Jodi was quick with that club.
Laina was tall, leanly muscled, moved like a cat, and she had an unselfconscious way of holding herself that contrasted starkly to every other female here. Indeed, it was a contrast to nearly every other female Hannah had ever known. Whatever subtle training girls received to act like girls, with some subtle note of deference in their posture, had been stripped away from Laina in sixteen years of solitude. Her scars and her aloofness only seemed to add to her allure. Hannah would have bet good money that she had no idea the guys were reacting to her.
Hannah had no idea what to do about it and suspected there was nothing she could do but watch it play out however it would. It wasn’t her job to intervene anyway. It was Claire’s, thankfully.
Over supper one night, with a week left until the jump, Ted said to Laina, “Are you ever going to show us where you live? I’d like to see it.”
Laina leaned farther over her bowl of fish stew. Her hair slipped forward and veiled her face.
Dixie said, “Sounds like a no, Ted.” She put down her bowl. “What I want to know is why you didn’t find us sooner. Like in the first few days.”
Laina kept on eating her soup, but Hannah thought her shoulders were hunching with tension.
Dixie said, “You’re the expert, so you know when it’s coming, right?”
Laina didn’t look up. “I always check, every few weeks.”
“Why not earlier?”
Laina didn’t answer that one.
Bob cleared his throat. “You forget, Dixie, that she has been here a while. Maybe it’s tiring—emotionally tiring, I mean—to check every month and find nothing. Maybe if it had been me, I might have put it off for a few weeks too. If you don’t know for sure, then you can delay the disappointment. I can’t imagine, Laina, how lonely you must have felt, how afraid you were that you’d live out your life alone.”
Laina upended her bowl and drank the rest of her soup. She left the fire and went to gather her weapons and water skins.
“Don’t go,” said Nari.
Laina raised a hand in farewell and walked away from the camp. In a few minutes, she broke into an easy trot and was soon out of sight.
“Way to go, Dixie,” Ted said. “You chased her off.”
“Why didn’t she answer? What is she hiding?”
“Why do you think she’s hiding anything?” Ted said. “You can be such a bitch.”
Claire said, “Hey! None of that. Ted, don’t use that word. And either apologize to Dixie or walk away.”
Dixie stood and said, “No, I’ll walk away.”
Claire watched her stomp off into the cabin. “Apologize before bedtime, Ted.”
“I don’t feel like it. Why’d she start digging at Laina?”
Claire sighed. “Maybe try to think that through for yourself.”
“I was just talking!” Ted’s face grew red.
“Talk nicer,” Claire said. “Or bite your tongue.”
“All I wanted was to see Laina’s camp. We don’t even know if she found a cave, or built a tree house, or what.”
Jodi snorted.
Instantly, Claire pointed a finger at her. It said as clearly as words: no more.
Hannah said, “Laina sure has taught us a lot. I’m grateful.”
Nari said, “Me too. She helped me figure out how to make the pants so they don’t hurt to wear them. And it sounds like I’ll need them.”
“Ice age world,” Zach said. “I wish I’d brought a jacket.”
Nari said, “We’re making hide capes now. And Laina said she has more hides that she’ll bring for blankets. So I think we’ll be okay.”
Claire was obviously relieved to have the moment of tension past. “I want to take as much dry grass as we can carry too. Even bundled up, it won’t be heavy, so everybody can strap a bundle to their backs. It’ll serve as bedding, insulation.”
“And to start fires,” Hannah said.
Claire said, “If it’s cold next jump, I’m sure a fire will be the first thing we want.” She frowned. “I’d give anything for pencil and paper, or a cell phone with charge, so we could make a list.”
“We’ll remember everything,” Bob said. “And I’m sure Laina won’t let us forget.”
Nari said, “She must jump with a huge load. If she has hides, and traps, and spears, and other gear.”
Bob said, “Yes, it’d take a lot to keep one person alive, but probably only twice that much gear to keep us all alive. I’m glad she found a way to survive.”
Jodi said, “Even if she’s so different?”
Bob said, “Even so.”
Laina didn’t come the next morning. Hannah was worried, but there wasn’t much she could do about it.
Nari was working on sewing rawhide to the oreodont hides, so that they could be tied on as capes or used at night as blankets. Hannah was sitting with her but working on braiding cordage, as she had done what she could for Nari’s project. Mostly, she was just sitting with Nari for company.
“Are you worried?” Nari said.
“About Laina? Only a little. I figure, she survived alone for sixteen years. What are the chances that today is the day her luck runs out?”
“One in three hundred sixty-five times sixteen, as Laina would tell you, which is the minimum number of days she has been alone.”
“Yeah, but she’d have done the multiplying in her head before you got that sentence out.”
“I miss her. I miss old Laina. Is that stupid to say?”
“No, it’s not. But I like the new Laina too. She’s pretty awesome, isn’t she?”
“She knows a lot,” Nari said. “But she herself is unknowable.”
“Wow. That was downright poetic. And true.”
“I always got ‘A’s on my English papers,” said Nari with a grin.
“I’m sure all of you got ‘A’s on everything.”
They fell to talking about school for a time, and then Nari steered the conversation around to the timegate. “What are our chances of making it home, do you think?”
Hannah hesitated.
“I won’t tell anyone else, whatever you say.”
“I was as worried about telling you as anyone else,” Hannah said. “I think she can get us in the vicinity. And for Bob, and Zach, and you, if she can get us to a time with antibiotics, or sulfa drugs and aspirin and mercurochrome, or if there’s laudanum and ether, I’d be grateful.”
“Bookstores with books on herbs would be better than nothing.”
“They would. Or people who spoke English so I could ask for the village wise woman and get the herb knowledge straight from her.”
“It’d be weird for the others to meet their great-grandparents, though.”
“I guess you and I wouldn’t have that problem. Mine would be alive if we arrived in their time, but nowhere near here.”
“Laina is like me. Her ancestors would be, what? A thousand miles away. Mine are across an ocean. Not that you should try to meet your grandparents anyway, even if it’s an option.”
“Why not?”
“You know, time paradoxes. Out of science-fiction. You meet your great-grandfather and buy him a coffee, but that was supposed to be the day he met your great-grandmother at the post office, and now you never
get born so maybe you disappear right then, mid-conversation.”
“You’re safe from that, no matter when we land.”
“I’d like to see my family again.”
“I know,” Hannah said, feeling bad for the sadness she heard in Nari’s voice.
“You must want to as well.”
Hannah nodded, which was easier than explaining the truth. No matter if they landed in 1500, 1900, 2010, or the year 5000, she was on her own. If there was a family in her future, it was one she’d have to build herself. It made her the only one here who didn’t have a personal stake in the accuracy of Laina’s time jumping. Her interest was mostly in getting them all to a safe place with doctors who were better than quacks.
Laina didn’t show up all that day, and Claire—without singling out anyone—made a general announcement at supper. “We need to lay off Laina. Don’t press her for more than she wants to give. Don’t interrogate her. Respect her privacy.”
Dixie started to say something, but Claire held a hand up and stopped her before she could utter a syllable.
“We need her, remember. Without her, we have no chance of going home.”
Chapter 28
Laina did show up the next morning. Hannah, Claire, Rex, and Zach had gone to the river to get water and try their hand at fishing.
Laina must have walked up silently behind her. Hannah was certain somehow that she had been watching them for ten minutes before Zach caught sight of her and said her name.
She was carrying three dead animals, one of them as big as Hannah’s leg. They’d eat well today.
“Hey, we don’t need to fish.”
“We do need to fish,” Claire said. “Every day, we need to smoke fish and put it away to have after the jump.”
“Game is rarer there,” Laina said. “But bigger. And the ice keeps it from spoiling, so one good hunt will last us a month.”
For the new Laina, it was equivalent to a major speech.
Claire said, “I want to apologize if you felt cornered the other evening. I’ve asked everyone to back off and treat you better.”
Laina said, “I have a net.”
Hannah wasn’t sure what that non-sequitur was about.