by Megan Crewe
“Well, you said it isn’t likely they could be tracing our jumps, right?” I say. “We’ll just need to be even more careful about shifts than we were in Paris.”
“We’ll have to manage,” Win agrees. “Can you stand up?”
I grasp a low branch and haul myself upright. My ankle twinges, but not too badly. Why do I feel so weak? I swallow. My mouth tastes like dust.
The last time I had a drink was a thousand years from now.
“We should have brought canteens,” I say as Win edges back to me, a weak attempt at a joke.
“What?” Win says. “Oh. I do have— Come on, you can drink while we’re walking.”
He reaches into his satchel as we pick our way back to the trail, and hands me a narrow bottle of blue-tinted liquid. By the time I figure out how to open its oddly pointed cap, my hands are shaking. I bring the bottle to my lips. The liquid is cool and faintly sweet. As it slides down my throat, my thoughts sharpen. The residual dizziness fades away.
“Traveling takes a lot out of you,” Win says. “You should probably eat something too. Here.”
He trades me a plastic packet for the bottle. I’m expecting some sort of exotic alien snack, but it’s just standard Earth trail mix: peanuts and almonds and dried fruit. I guess to Win, this is an exotic snack. I pop a few handfuls in my mouth. When I look around, the thereness of the jungle only feels half as imposing.
The ground starts to even out as we shuffle on. The sun glints here and there through the gray haze of the clouds, but the air’s so damp my clothes are chilly against my skin. The hem of my dress snags on thorns and twigs, dirt stains mingling with the ink.
As I stuff the half-finished bag of trail mix into my purse, Win holds out his hand to bring us to a halt. “Pull your scarf up over your face,” he says. “We’re already going to stand out more than I’d like. I think we’ll be safest if we stay out of the locals’ way completely.”
I’m fine with that. I pull the folds of my scarf over my nose, my breath making the air beneath the fabric even more humid.
The trail peters out into the dense vegetation. We creep on to the jungle’s edge.
“Jeanant should have left another hint, like he did with the newspapers in Paris,” Win says. “ ‘The sign will point at the sky,’ the message said. As soon as you see anything that feels odd . . .”
As if I need a reminder of my function here.
A smattering of trees dots the grassy ground ahead of us, leading to a well-trampled road. On the other side, the grass gives way to alternating stretches of marsh and rocky yellow beach, slanting down toward dark greenish water. The river is so wide it looks more like a lake, though its surface ripples with the current. A wash of misty air drifts off of it.
On a nearby span of beach, several dozen men are gathered, hunched over long poles of bamboo. Conical straw hats shade their faces as they slice at the ends of the poles with carving knives, cutting them into points. They all move with the same sort of steady, efficient rhythm as the soldiers who passed us before, not a word exchanged between them. A heap of already-carved poles lies by the side of the road.
“That’s how they’ll beat the Chinese,” Win murmurs to me eagerly. “They fix those poles in the river, just beneath the surface, and lure the enemy ships onto them. Brilliant strategy. It lets them kill or capture most of their opponents, including the prince leading them, while losing few of their own soldiers. I saw satellite footage once, but . . . it’s different being right here.”
The way he’s staring at the workers, talking about them as if this battle is being put on for his entertainment, makes my skin tighten. When he looks at me, raising his eyebrows as if to share the excitement, I have to glance away.
“When’s the Chinese army coming?”
“They arrive tomorrow. These will be the last preparations. And then everyone here will be free to rule themselves for the first time in hundreds of years.”
Despite my discomfort, those words strike a chord in me. If these people can defeat a larger power with good tactics and some well-placed pieces of wood, it’s not so insane to think Win and I—and Jeanant—can beat the Enforcers, is it?
A scraping sound at our right draws my attention. A figure slides into view amid the vegetation: a boy, no more than nine or ten years old I’d guess, scrambling down from a branch he must have been perched on. His straw hat dangles against his back. He peers around him with wide eyes, and his gaze finds me. His mouth drops open.
Win mutters a curse as the kid darts toward the beach. “Let’s get going,” he says. “Before anyone comes investigating.” He pulls me back into the thicker tangle of the jungle. The boy’s chattering voice filters through the trees. We push on as quickly as we can, wading around clumps of fern. I keep glancing back, but no one seems to be following us. That doesn’t mean the boy seeing us didn’t shift something, though.
“With all your special Traveler tech, no one thought of inventing something that’d make the locals see you as someone like them?” I ask.
Win stops, panting. “Someone did, actually,” he says. “There are devices that project over the face . . . but we only managed to get our hands on a few of those. The others have them. I wasn’t supposed to be going anywhere it’d be that hard to blend in.”
I guess in my present day, he could have pretended to be a tourist just about anywhere and no one would have blinked.
We stand still for a minute, waiting and listening, but all I hear is his rasping breath and the leaves hissing in the rising wind. Win motions me back toward the river. We slink along until we can make out the road again.
Back the way we came, the workers are still bent over their poles. The boy is puttering along the grassy strip between the jungle and the road, scanning the jungle’s depths, scowling in a way that looks both sulky and determined. I’ve seen a similar expression on Benjamin’s face when he’s tackling a new math concept he hasn’t quite wrapped his head around.
I guess the adults felt finishing their preparations was more important than following up on some kid’s story about two strangers in the woods. And now he’s searching for more proof. Trying to be a hero. Even though I don’t want him to succeed, I feel a twinge of sympathy.
“Nothing yet?” Win says.
“Nothing seems off.”
We continue through the jungle, staying close enough to the fringes to keep an eye on the road and the riverbank beyond. Another squad of soldiers marches past, followed by a line of donkeys pulling carts laden with piles of those bamboo poles. My ankle starts to ache in dull protest. There are a lot of things pointing at the thickly clouded sky: trees, rooftops, the distant hills. But everything looks perfectly normal.
Just like in Paris. The only thing my special sensitivity found us in Paris was the sign that the Enforcers had arrived. It didn’t help us follow Jeanant’s clues at all. I bite my lip.
We come to a stop about thirty feet from the first buildings around the town.
“Well, I don’t think we should try to go right into town,” Win says after an awkward silence. “In this atmosphere, they won’t be welcoming to foreigners. It’d be almost inevitable that we shift something noticeable. But I suppose—”
He’s interrupted by a patter on the leaves above us. Rain sprinkles down on our heads. I step closer to the nearest tree, wiping the moisture from my face. Win grins. He spreads his arms and lifts his chin as if welcoming the weather. It occurs to me that space stations wouldn’t have rain. This might be the first time he’s ever felt it.
The patter picks up, from a rattling to a drumbeat. Before I have time to call out to Win, we’re in the midst of an all-out deluge. The rain rips past the leaves and thunders over us. Chuckling, Win rushes to my side. He pulls the time cloth into its tent shape around us, and the rain fades into a heavy warbling against the fabric sides.
I swipe at my dripping hair. My shi
rt’s dripping too—my dress, my boots—everything’s soaked. The fringe of my scarf is sending a steady trickle over my face. I peel it off my hair and sling it over my shoulders, shivering. I haven’t been this soaked since Lisa dared Bree and I to run a mile during the first big thunderstorm the summer after freshman year, and at least then we had a house to duck back into and towels to wrap ourselves in.
The world outside has gone watery, as if we’re standing under an umbrella in the middle of a waterfall. Win brings up the data panel on the wall. “We could jump forward to this afternoon, or tomorrow morning. See if we can pick up the trail then. Jeanant might not have gotten here yet.” He’s still smiling.
“We still won’t know where to look,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest. I picture Jeanant as I saw him in the gallery, and try to imagine him here. Where would he go—what would he use?
I have no idea. And even if I find him again, what are the chances he’ll think I’m worth talking to now? I must look like a drowned rat. A drowned, battered, muddy rat. At least I don’t remotely resemble any Enforcer I’ve seen. Though I wouldn’t mind having one of those peacoats right now.
A sputter of laughter escapes me at the thought. Win turns.
“What?”
“Oh, nothing,” I say. “Other than I could use a towel and a change of clothes, and the Enforcers could be five feet away right now and we’d have no idea, and are we even sure this definitely is the right place? Maybe Jeanant’s first message was delivered too late, and we’re supposed to be in a completely different century.”
“Hey,” Win says, touching my shoulder. “We’re on the right track. I’m sure of it. The numbers, the line about the dragons, it all fits together. We’ve managed to stay ahead of the Enforcers so far. I’ve kept you safe, haven’t I?”
I nod.
“So you don’t have to worry.”
I want to believe him. He holds my gaze, his deep blue eyes completely earnest, and my shivers ease. “Okay,” I say.
He pauses, his eyes not leaving mine. His smile comes back, softer now. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
His hand rises to brush a few stray strands of damp hair from my cheek. At the contact of his skin against mine, my awareness narrows, away from the frightening world outside to the small space between us inside the walls of the tent. The tingling realness of his fingertips. They linger, his thumb grazing the line of my cheekbone.
I open my mouth, meaning to argue or just to break the sudden charge in the air between us, but his fingers trace down my jaw to the side of my neck, sending a totally different sort of shiver through me, and I can’t even breathe. I sway into his touch instinctively, just as he leans in and kisses me.
17.
I’ve only been kissed by two other boys: Evan, during one of those silly party games in junior high, which was just awkward, and my boyfriend in tenth grade, who was always on the slobbery and grope-y side, which is part of the reason he was only my boyfriend for two months.
Win’s kiss is both more practiced and more polite. A question, not a demand. But the touch of his mouth against mine sends a sizzle of electricity through my nerves, so real and there it knocks all the sense from my head. My fingers have curled into his shirt and my lips are parting before my mind has quite registered what’s happening. Win must take that as an answer, because he eases closer, deepening the kiss. His presence radiates around me, soft skin and warm breath and—
He pulls back in what feels like the middle of things, with a shaky inhalation. Not far back, because I’m still clutching his shirt. His hand falls to rest on my wrist, and I let go, blinking at him, my mouth still partly open. I snap it shut as my momentary daze starts to clear. That was— I don’t even— My thoughts are still scrambled, and he’s watching me again, with a studied intentness. An intentness that makes my body tense, though I can’t explain why.
“Well,” I say, fumbling for words. “What was that about?”
“I, ah . . .” He drops his gaze briefly before giving me a sheepish smile. “Sorry. I was wondering what it would be like.”
At first I’m too muddled to get it. Why exactly is he apologizing? And what what would be like? I don’t believe for a second that’s the first time he’s kissed someone.
Then his thumb, so strangely solid, skims the back of my wrist, and it clicks. He’s looking at me like he did when he was getting me to tell him about my sense of the shifts. Like when I found the change in the history book. Full of awe and scientific curiosity.
He’s never even talked to an Earthling before. Of course he’s never kissed one.
I flinch, yanking my hand away. Would I even have kissed him back if I hadn’t been overwhelmed by the alien realness of him? It was a stupid automatic reaction, and I gave in to it like a kid in the throes of a desperate crush. I’m not sure how much I even like him. Anger surges up, more than I knew I had in me.
“I’m not here for you to experiment on,” I bite out.
Win’s expression freezes guiltily for an instant before he starts to protest, and that tells me all I need to know.
“What? I—”
“I’m not. Your. Experiment,” I say, jabbing at the air between us so he has to step back. The anger makes me feel a lot stronger than the uncertainties that were suffocating me a few minutes ago. “I’m a person, with thoughts and feelings that matter just as much as yours do, even if your people have time fields and galaxy-crossing spaceships and all sorts of technology I can’t even imagine. I am trying to help you, and you still think it’s fine to treat me like I’m a toy, the same way all of you have been playing around with everyone on Earth for so long. And I. Am. Sick of it.”
“I didn’t mean . . .” Win begins, and doesn’t seem to know how to finish. He looks a little sick himself. Good.
“That’s the problem,” I say. “You didn’t mean it. You just wanted to see ‘what it would be like.’ Well, congratulations, now you know.”
He reaches out as if to grasp my arm, as if he can pull forgiveness out of me, and all the times he’s grabbed me before, tugged me down streets and through buildings—through the jungle we’re in right now—flash through my mind. My stomach turns. I’ve known all along that I’m just a tool to him. But some part of me believed he was starting to respect me at least a little, to see me as more than a wrongness detector and a wide-eyed simpleton he could show off to.
I dodge him, angling toward the front of the tent. “Don’t touch me,” I say. “Don’t ever touch me again.” He’s still too close. I can’t stand being stuck in this cramped space with him, not after what just happened.
I push aside the flaps and duck out. The rain has lightened to a drizzle, dappling my cheeks and my uncovered hair. I reach for my scarf instinctively, and my eyes catch on something pale moving through the deeper jungle.
The figure stalking through the brush is far enough away that she disappears here and there between the trunks and ferns. She’s wearing a loose, dark brown costume that covers her from her feet to the top of her head, and her face appears to have the same tan coloring as the locals. It’s only her hand that gives her away. A flicker of ice-pale fingers as she holds up something in her palm to consult it.
The woman from the cafe—the Enforcer. My heart stutters.
Then Win comes bursting out of the time cloth, snapping it down against his arm. “Skylar, it’s not—” he says, and the woman’s head whips up. She lunges forward, her hand dipping to the weapon at her hip, and I spin toward Win.
“The Enforcers,” I blurt out with a frantic gesture.
Win flings the cloth out before my words have died in the air, his hand darting to the data panel as the translucent walls form around us. A glint slices through the air. The tent shudders and crackles. But it still moves. We whirl up toward the sky.
The cloth jars to a stop beside a lone stilted house n
ear the side of the road. The river shimmers in the distance, past the sprawl of a rice paddy. The sky has turned clear. My arms ache from hugging my chest, but I can’t quite bear to let go.
“Is this where we want to be?” I ask.
“It’s the next morning,” Win says without glancing up from the display. “Let me find a better spot.”
With a lurch and a blink, we’ve leapt back into the jungle. Win looks around to make sure we’re alone, and then nods curtly at the flaps. “We should get some distance from here. It’s possible they found us because that kid seeing us shifted something. But for them to keep following us so closely . . . Maybe they really have figured out how to decode Isis’s scrambling to trace our jumps.”
Oh. Oh crap.
I hug myself more tightly as we hurry around a thicket of bamboo and through a cluster of massive waxy-leaved plants. The wet skirt of my dress sticks to my legs, hampering my steps over the uneven ground. And the two jumps, though short, have messed with my sense of balance. My foot slips on a lump of moss, and I almost trip. Win’s hand shoots out. He jerks it back, just shy of my elbow, as I catch myself.
Don’t ever touch me again.
I don’t want to think about that moment right now. I don’t want to talk about it. I just want to make sure I don’t get shot by that freaky woman or her colleagues. So I pretend I didn’t notice his slip, and he doesn’t mention it. We walk on as if nothing has changed.
The jungle around me looms, pressing in. I reach into my purse and grip my bracelet. Three times three is nine. Three times nine is twenty-seven. Clusters of five feathery leaves around yellow berries on the bush we’re passing. Two scrapes on the bark of that tree.
Win’s face is turned ahead, but I can feel him scrutinizing me from the corner of his eye. “I’m fine,” I say.
I’m not going to die here. We’re going to stay one step ahead of the Enforcers, and then I’ll be home, safe and well, before anyone even knows I’m gone.
A chorus of shouts carries through the trees up ahead. We pick up our pace, pushing to the edge of the jungle. There, on the road along the river, lines of men are jogging by, some in armor, many in simple shirts and pants. They’re scooping up poles from the heaps we saw being made yesterday and hurrying on toward the town, where the bows of a row of slender ships curve out from the water.