by Lynne Jonell
After a while, Jamie’s voice faded and Nan’s voice went on alone. Ten minutes later, Jamie’s eyes were shut for real, and the small fist gripping the plastic Highlander had relaxed. Nan and Will tiptoed out.
“Wow,” said Will. “You’re good.”
“I’ve had babysitting practice,” Nan said, walking briskly down the hall. “Mum,” she said as they passed the front desk, “Jamie’s taking a kip on his cot, and we’re going out to the garden.” Then, “No, Gormly,” she said as the dog rose alertly, “you stay with Mum.”
“Be sure to show Will the walled garden!” Cousin Elspeth called. “And the fruit trees, and don’t forget to tell him all about old Archibald Menzies—”
“Brilliant idea, Mum!” Nan called, breaking into a jog as she headed for the door. “We’ll see you at lunch!” She pushed the door shut behind them with an air of relief and shook her head. “Mum’s a bit mental about history. Fine for the tourists, annoying for me. Come on, I was going to take you to the walled garden, anyway.”
“Is this it?” They were passing a big rectangle of grass next to the castle, enclosed by a stone wall.
“No, that’s just the old kitchen garden,” said Nan. “We want to get farther away if we’re going to experiment with your Time Sight.”
They went down a path and through a little gate of curling iron that creaked when they opened it. They ran between clipped hedges and under trees that curved overhead like an arch.
“This is the garden we want.” Nan pushed open two tall gates of wrought iron, and they squeezed through. Beyond the gates, stone steps went up and up a steep hill. After what seemed like hundreds of steps, they came to the top, and Nan paused by a sundial, breathing hard. “Here.” She pulled out the Magic Eyeball book.
Will took it, hesitating. “Maybe it only works in the castle.”
“We’re still on castle grounds,” said Nan. “Try it!”
“Why don’t you try it?” Will countered.
Nan dimpled. “I did already, last night while you were sacked out,” she confessed. “And I think I got something to almost happen—the air in front of me kind of shimmered, you know?”
Will nodded. He knew.
“But it made my head go round and round. I got so dizzy I almost threw up. So I’m not doing it again, see? You are.”
It was not as easy to concentrate outside. Leaves rustled, birds sang, and when an insect landed on Will’s arm and began to bite, he swatted it instinctively and the Magic Eyeball book went flying.
Nan picked it up, frowning. “Maybe it doesn’t work outside the castle, after all.”
“No, it started to shimmer around the edges that time.” Will scratched the bite on his arm. “Didn’t you see?”
Nan hadn’t. And even when Will managed to concentrate enough to bring the whole picture of the past into focus, she still couldn’t see it, even though she went behind him to have the exact same angle of sight.
Then she brushed against his shoulder accidentally, and the picture sprang into view.
“Ha!” Nan was exultant. “I have to be touching you. That’s why Jamie could see it from the side. He was pressed against your arm.”
Will’s attention was on the picture in front of him. There were no more children playing; there was no mumble of voices and people walking in and out. All he could see were trees and bushes and sky.
“It’s not the same picture as before.” Nan leaned in closer, peering.
“We’re not in the same place as before—that’s why.” Will looked at the outline of the hills in the distance, sharp and dark against the lowering clouds. The sky was different, and the trees in the foreground were not the same, but the hills seemed to have the same shape. “We’re in the same place in the past, see? Before, we were on the ground floor of the castle. Now we’re on the hill above it. You can tell because the rocks and hills haven’t changed.”
“But it’s later in the day,” Nan said suddenly. “See? The light is different.”
Will leaned forward, his fear forgotten. It was fascinating, trying to figure out how this worked. It was like an experiment in science class.
“Turn your head more,” said Nan. “See if you can find the castle.”
He found it almost immediately. Golden in the slanting afternoon light, the castle looked like something out of a fairy tale. But it, too, looked different somehow.
“It’s smaller than the one in our time,” said Nan at once. “And the roofline isn’t the same. Look, it has battlements.”
“Those lumpy walls on top, you mean?” Will squinted to see them better, and just like that, he lost the picture. The shimmering afternoon light of the past faded to the dull colors of a cloudy day.
He set the book down and shut his eyes to rest them. It wasn’t just his eyes that were tired. His whole brain seemed pulled tight, like a rubber band stretched too far.
Nan turned the book’s pages eagerly. “Okay, so we know that Jamie could reach in and pick a flower. And we know a cobnut could roll right out of that time into this.” She waved the book in the air. “What if we could step through? We could go back in time!”
Nan’s eyes were bright, and her tumble of hair seemed wilder than ever, as if each strand were sticking straight out.
Will put a hand to his aching head. “We can’t just go into the past.”
“Why not?” Nan demanded. “How many people ever get a chance like this? We can’t just go back to the castle and ignore it. It’s like a scientific breakthrough!”
“I could ignore it,” said Will.
Nan watched him for a moment, her head tipped to one side. “Ooh, I get it. You’re a feartie-cat.”
Will scowled. He had never heard the term before, but Nan’s meaning was clear enough. “I’m not a feartie-cat, and I’m not a chicken, either. I just think things through. For instance, what if we can’t get back?”
Nan shrugged. “That’s easy. Just bring the book with you.”
“Yeah, but what about when I’m on the other side?” Will argued. “We don’t know that I can do it from there and get back here.”
“You mean, do it from then and get back to now.”
Will leaned forward. “Listen, this thing is powerful. Like electric current. And if we just play with it, we’re like kids fooling around with high-voltage wires or something. It’s dangerous.”
“Exactly! That’s why we have to keep experimenting! Once we find out how it works, we can stay safe.”
“But—” Will began.
“How about this?” Nan pushed the book into his hands. “You open up the picture with your Time Sight again, and I’ll throw my satchel into the past. Then I’ll step through and bring it back. That way we’ll know people can go back and forth, too.”
Will frowned. Something about her logic was bothering him … but it was hard to argue with Nan. She was a little like a steamroller when she got going—or maybe a tank. A Scottish tank. With a dimple.
“Oh, come on,” Nan coaxed, and the dimple showed once more. “Don’t be a feartie—or how do you say it? Don’t be a chicken. It will only take a minute.”
Will lifted the book and held it at arm’s length. “All right,” he said.
It worked just as Nan had said it would. Will opened up the time window as before; Nan tossed her satchel through. It landed with an audible thump on the turf, and nothing happened to it.
“See?” Nan said brightly. “Now me.”
“How are you going to do it?” Will asked. “I can’t throw you.”
“I don’t know—put a foot through and then step in?”
Will’s stomach was hurting. This was not a good idea.
“Keep it up,” said Nan. “Don’t lose the picture,” and she stepped through.
Will blinked carefully, keeping his focus. “How did it feel?”
Nan did not answer. She stretched her arms out and turned slowly around. “I’m in the past! I really am!”
“Better come back now,” s
aid Will.
Nan cocked her head, as if listening.
“Come back now,” Will repeated, louder.
“Are you there, Will?” Nan reached out in the wrong direction. “I can’t see you from this side.”
Will slowly put a hand through the time window. It felt as if his hand were pushing through water, or heavy air. He wiggled his fingers.
Nan’s forehead smoothed out. “Oh, there you are. Come on through, will you? I want to show you something.”
“You come back!” Will cried.
Nan’s frown returned. “If you’re talking to me, I can’t really hear you. That is, I hear something, but it’s kind of whispery, like the wind. Anyway, wait one more minute. I just want to go a little farther—”
“NO!” Will shouted, but she was already moving away through the knee-high ferns. She paused by a large gray boulder on the ridge, looked down for a long moment, and came running back. “Where are you?” she whispered, patting the air.
Will reached his hand through and grabbed her arm. “COME BACK NOW!”
Nan flinched. “You don’t have to break my eardrums!”
“You couldn’t hear me before,” said Will, not letting go. “I guess we have to be touching for the sound part to work, too.”
“Oh. Well, come on through, will you?” Nan was whispering again. “I want to show you something.”
Will tightened his grip. “No, you come here. I can’t keep holding this picture forever.”
“Oh, all right,” said Nan, stepping through.
Will let his focus go with a sigh of relief. His eyes were tired, his head was swimming, and he was breathing as if he had just run a mile.
Nan grabbed his shirt and tugged him forward. “Let’s go to the ridge and look down into the past again. I saw two men and a little boy coming on horses, down the forest track. I want to watch and see if they go to the castle.”
“Just watch?” said Will cautiously. “Not go through?” He wasn’t sure he could hold his focus so long again.
“Just watch,” Nan promised.
They brushed through the bracken, paused by the gray boulder, and looked over the ridge.
“I don’t see any track.”
Nan pointed. “It comes out of the forest and winds along there … see?”
It was the faintest suggestion of a path; it almost looked like a shadow, or a trick of the light. If it was a path, no one had walked there for a very long time.
Will held out the book, steadied it, and took a deep breath as he focused his eyes on that nebulous space just beyond its pages. The air shimmered, and the path of the past sprang into view, a vivid slash of trodden earth. A smell of horses and human sweat came wafting up the ridge.
The horses had stopped where the path widened, and one man was already on the ground, looping the reins around the knob of an oak tree. His loose shirt was sweat-stained, and his bare legs coated with dust from the trail, but the sword and knife at his side were bright and honed to a killing edge.
The other man, slighter and gray-haired but also armed, swung down from his horse and reached up to pull a little boy off the saddlebow. The older man said something, and the child nodded and said something back.
Will whispered, “How come they aren’t speaking English?”
“I don’t know. It sounds familiar, though, sort of.…” Nan leaned forward, listening. “Maybe he just told the boy to stretch his legs?”
They watched as the men dug in the saddlebags and pulled out fresh clothing. The little boy ran around in the clearing, his light hair lifting and falling in the sun like corn silk. The child glanced up at the ridge, and for a moment, his features were clear.
“He looks like Jamie!” Nan said softly.
He did. It gave Will an odd feeling, that someone so far back in time could look so much like his little brother. “He’s probably some kind of cousin, fifteen times removed,” he whispered back.
Across the path, in deeper woods, Will caught a flash as if the sun had glinted off metal. He wanted to look carefully at it, to figure out what exactly it was, but he had already noticed that he couldn’t stare too hard at any one thing if he wanted to keep the whole picture in focus.
Nan moved restlessly beside him. “I think the little boy is a higher rank than the men,” she said.
The clothes now lying on the grassy bank were indeed brighter and more intricately decorated than the ones the men wore.
“I wonder why they’re changing,” Nan said.
Will felt a hand press lightly on his back—Nan, he supposed, shifting her weight. “Maybe,” he said, “they’re going to visit the castle, and they want to make a good first impression?”
“Could be.…”
Below, the older man changed his clothes while the stronger-looking man was on guard with his sword out. Were they really so worried about defense, Will wondered, this close to a castle?
The little boy spun around on the grassy knoll, laughing. The gray-haired man stuffed his sweat-stained clothes in the saddlebag, adjusted the pin on his cloak, and took up his sword. The younger man’s shoulders relaxed. He hung his sword on the saddlebow and drew his shirt off over his head.
Then the child shouted and the old man turned. Suddenly, from the woods on the far side of the track, the underbrush exploded into a confusion of powerful legs charging forward, thick arms with muscles like ropes, and swords that flashed in the sun. In less time than it took for Will and Nan to draw a deep breath, the two men were spitted, stabbed clear through with hardly a sound but a grunt of surprise and the meaty thunk of bodies falling to the earth.
In an instant the horses were seized, the little boy was caught and thrown over a saddle, and the raiders leaped to their mounts. One of them—the shortest, but clearly the leader—lifted his thin, cruel face like a wolf scenting prey and swept the hillside with a narrow-eyed gaze. For a single heartbeat, he squinted straight at Will with a face of such twisted malice that Will felt the shock of it like a spear. In the next moment, all that could be seen was the hindquarters of the horses fast disappearing down the forest track into green shadow, and then there was nothing at all but the bodies of the dead men, blood pooling beneath them on the turf.
“No!” cried a high, childish voice—and all at once Will realized it wasn’t Nan who had touched his back. In the moment between recognition and action, before Will could make his muscles react to his brain’s signal, Jamie leaped through the time window and into the past.
Will lunged for him a half second too late. His focus shifted—the picture disappeared—and, from farther down the hill, Gormlaith barked and Cousin Elspeth’s voice called breathlessly.
“Is Jamie with you? He’s not on his cot, and I’ve searched the castle. It’s time for lunch.”
3
STEPPING THROUGH
NAN LOOKED DESPERATELY AT WILL.
Will jammed his hands in the pockets of his shorts. The cobnut, forgotten since yesterday, was still there, and he gripped it tightly as Cousin Elspeth climbed the rest of the way up the hill.
“Well?” Cousin Elspeth’s face was red from the climb, and she did not look happy. “Have you seen him or haven’t you?”
Will shifted his weight from leg to leg. How could he explain what had happened?
“We’ve seen him,” said Nan, “but—” She swallowed. “He ran off.”
“Jamie!” Cousin Elspeth called. “Jaaaaaammiiiiieeee! Time for lunch!”
A red squirrel chittered at her from the lowest bough of an oak, and Gormlaith barked again. A fitful breeze rustled in the treetops, and from over the ridge came a splash of birdsong. Will nervously took out the cobnut and began to toss it up and down in his hand.
“JAMIE! No nonsense, now!” Cousin Elspeth looked at Will and frowned. “Where did the lad run to, then?”
“He went through a sort of…” Will took a breath. “Time window. I know it’s hard to believe,” he said in a rush.
Cousin Elspeth clicked her tongue
against her teeth. “I don’t have time for your games now, laddie. Gormlaith, leave that squirrel alone! Heel, girl!”
“It’s not a game. I’ll show you.” Will tossed the cobnut into the woods and picked up the Magic Eyeball book with hands that were not quite steady. He fumbled as he opened it, tearing a page in his hurry, and held the book out at arm’s length. “You have to touch me to see it,” he said.
Cousin Elspeth sighed and put a hand on his shoulder. “Hurry up, then.”
But Will couldn’t get the picture. He could not even get the shimmering to start around the edges. He tried until the sweat prickled between his shoulder blades and his jaw ached from clenching. He thought once that he saw a brief flicker, but Gormlaith chose that moment to push in between Cousin Elspeth and him, and he lost it.
Cousin Elspeth took her hand away with a quick, irritated motion. “I’m sure it’s a lovely game; I used to play pretend when I was your age, too. But I have a lot to do in the castle, so you’d better hurry up and say your magic words, or go through your time portal, or whatever it is you need to do to get your brother to stop hiding and come out. Bring him down when you find him—it’s time for lunch.” She snatched Gormlaith’s leash and stomped down the hill, the bracken swishing violently where she kicked through it.
“Oh, lovely. Now she’s raging,” said Nan.
Will stared at the place where Jamie had disappeared. “How are we going to find Jamie if I can’t get the picture back?”
“Could be my mum made you nervous,” suggested Nan. “Or you were trying too hard.” She took the book from his unresisting hands and looked at the directions. “It says you should relax your eyes and not work at it. Try to relax.”
“Relax?” Will’s voice scaled up. “My little brother is hundreds of years in the past, and you want me to relax?”
“It will be all right.” Nan patted his shoulder awkwardly. “Just think of something happy. Something calm.”
Will breathed deeply and gazed into the forest. The shadows were beautiful, dark and green and mysterious, and seemed to invite him in. He took the book and told himself that this one time didn’t matter. It was the same thing he told himself when he was at bat and didn’t want to tense up, and it worked in baseball.