by Laurence Yep
With one voice, the crowd oohed and aahed. Winnie’s up-turned face was full of astonishment too.
Then, as the pipes and locomotive stopped spraying steam and the mist dissipated, the spotlights were turned off. In the darkness, we heard the drone of a biplane engine drawing closer like a giant bumblebee.
“Look over there.” I nodded toward thin bright trails rising through the dark sky, made by sparking flares attached to the tips of the airplane’s canvas wings. The engine changed pitch as the plane nosed down and then up again in a flaming circle. Then the pilot repeated the process in a series of loops that looked like a ribbon of fire twirling through the night. It was as close as any normal could come to flying like a fire-breathing dragon.
Winnie stood up to see better, laughing in delight.
“It’s a young stunt pilot named Art Smith,” I told her, “doing tricks in his biplane.”
“Wow!” she shouted as the crowd cheered stunt after stunt till he disappeared into the darkness. “That was great.”
I felt like a magician who had pulled her last rabbit out of her hat. And yet, there was still one last and best reveal for Winnie: Caleb.
It was time to find him now…and I knew exactly where to look.
CHAPTER SIX
When you travel to the past, make sure you get a roundtrip ticket.
MISS DRAKE
Now that the light show was over, some people had begun to leave the Exposition. There weren’t many, though—perhaps because it was a Saturday night, and they knew they could sleep late tomorrow.
I used the Tower of Jewels as a landmark to guide us to the right spot and kept Winnie moving when she was inclined to dawdle. We didn’t stop until we reached one of the kiosks dotting the ground. It was a cylindrical building about twelve feet in diameter, and from the ground to the finial decorating the domed roof, it was about twenty feet high. Windows with curving tops had been cut all around its sides.
The Zone was the place to go to select a memento, but this one was a pack rat’s nest of souvenir spoons, dishes, paperweights, postcards, buttons with landmarks, jars of candy and licorice, as well as toy racing cars and airplanes on the window counters and on the shelves inside. In fact, the owner reminded me of a rat the way he looked around nervously as if he expected a cat to jump on him at any moment.
If this island of commerce seemed out of place on the broad avenue of artfully placed trees, fountains, and statues holding glittering jewels, the customers didn’t seem to care. They wanted a little something that would remind them years later of a wonderful afternoon. After a few centuries of travel, of course, I’d learned to fight that impulse. If I hadn’t, I would be living on a mountain of knickknacks by now.
Instead, I tried to fix the sights and sounds of each day in my memory. When I had first met Winnie, she had expected me to have a hoard of gold, but what I treasured was a hoard of memories.
Even the feeding frenzy at the kiosk would become another one. The kiosk drew everyone—from the well-dressed families to one scruffy-looking sailor I spotted heading for its wares. Used to walking on a swaying ship’s deck, his gait was a dead giveaway that he was an old salt.
Winnie craned her neck as she examined the crowd. “Is Great-Granddad here?”
I glanced at my wristwatch. It was a half hour to the theft of the Heart of Kubera. My past self had arrived here with Caleb just before the thief struck, though I wasn’t sure about the precise minute.
“Not yet,” I said, “but you’ll be able to see him soon.”
“You said I’d be able to meet him.” Bored, she waved her arm through a statue’s pedestal. “But how can I if he won’t be able to see me?”
“I meant you’d meet him in the general sense,” I said. “At the time, I didn’t know what kind of enchantment we’d use.”
“In the meantime, I might as well check on what’s here,” Winnie said, and stepped right into the crowd. I heard the giggling as she moved through people to the kiosk itself.
It was on the tip of my tongue to call and retrieve her, but I reasoned Lady Louhi’s spell would prevent her from interacting with anyone from the past—apart from the tickling, and that simply made a happy experience a tad happier.
A man in heavy work shoes stood by the counter with a little girl of eight in a clean but patched dress. She stood on tiptoe to point at something hanging in the rear of the stall. “I want the monkey puppet.”
The man’s face fell when he saw the price. “I’m afraid not.”
Winnie’s head appeared from the man’s side, and the man squirmed and chuckled. She was becoming a little too comfortable popping in and out of people. “Ooh, the puppet’s neat. I hope Great-Granddad bought it.”
I stared up at the glass dome of the Palace of Horticulture, glowing green from within and thought a moment. “I don’t remember him buying it tonight, but he bought a lot of little things throughout the year. It would have been easy for me to forget.”
“Well, did you see him put one in his time capsule?” Winnie asked.
“No, he did that by himself,” I said. “He was reaching that age when he needed some privacy.”
“I bet a nosy dragon like you didn’t like that,” she said with a grin, and then disappeared into the crowd.
No, I hadn’t, but it was a stage that all my pets go through. With a little luck and a lot of coaching from me, they emerged at the end of the stage once again as acceptable company.
While Winnie browsed, I kept one eye on the stall and one eye on the avenue. Idly, I watched the sailor take his hand from his coat pocket and sift through a basket of wooden whistles on the counter. A little hand-lettered sign said:
THIS BASKET ONLY
One whistle for 10¢
Two for 15¢
“See anything you like?” asked Mr. Ratty, the stall keeper.
The sailor looked at the outside of the kiosk, where buttons with landmarks hung on a long cardboard strip. He took one with the Tower of Jewels. “I’ll get this one.”
He offered a coin on his palm. Instead of picking it up with his fingers, Mr. Ratty’s hand covered the sailor’s. When the sailor lifted his hand away, his fingers were curled around something that he quickly hid in his coat pocket. What had Mr. Ratty passed to the sailor? A roll of money?
While Mr. Ratty and the sailor were taking care of business, the little girl had noticed the basket and begun to sift through it.
Mr. Ratty made shooing motions with his hand. “You don’t want those, little girl. Some of them are defective.”
As he stretched to take the entire basket, a lady grabbed his wrist. “Hey, mister, you got any spoons with the Palace of Fine Arts?”
She was a woman of medium height, but the coils of her gray hair lay flat on her head like a woven rag rug.
Mr. Ratty flashed his teeth. “I’ll be with you in a minute, ma’am.”
“I’m late to meet my husband,” the woman said, keeping her grip on him.
“Uh, well, let me see,” Mr. Ratty said, distracted.
At that moment, I saw a tall, blond woman in her thirties, head held up high on a long, swan-like neck despite the weight of a waterfall of curls under her smart, little straw hat. The 1915 version of me strode along confidently—like other “New Women” of that era as we marched for the right to vote and equal education and opportunities with the men.
The eleven-year-old boy did more than keep up with my long stride. Black hair flying, gray eyes sparkling, he was a bundle of vitality—sometimes he ran alongside me, sometimes behind and sometimes in front. Dear, dear Caleb. He had enough energy to power all of San Francisco and a smile to light up the state.
In three years, that would change when his parents died in the Spanish flu epidemic, like so many others around the world. After that tragic event, he rarely smiled or laughed, and he threw all his immense energy first into his studies and then into his work, charities, and family. As an adult, he had tried his best to make this imperfect world a b
etter one.
It was this boy, though, that I had come to see once again and add new details to my hoard of memories. And it was this boy I wanted Winnie to know.
The 1915 me would have kept walking along the avenue. Caleb, though, suddenly veered toward the stall. “Let’s see what they’ve got, Miss Drake.”
When I heard him call my name, I almost answered him and felt a pang when I realized he was talking to the 1915 version of me trudging after him. “Your mother’s going to blame me for keeping you out late.”
Caleb grinned at the 1915 me. “I’ll get around her. I always do.” He spoke with the confidence of a child who knew he was loved and treasured.
I almost reached to try to touch his cheek, but at that moment, Winnie appeared from a giggling woman. “So that’s Great-Granddad?”
“Yes,” I said wistfully, not taking my eyes off him. We were about to witness Caleb in one of his finer moments—one I had brought Winnie all the way through time and space to see.
In her typically irreverent way, Winnie examined him from all sides as he inspected the souvenirs. “You sure? I don’t see the family resemblance.”
I waved a hand vaguely. “It’s the ears.”
Winnie pressed a hand against her right ear, flattening it against her head. “Mine don’t stick out that much.”
With my finger, I sketched the curve of their ears in the air. “No, but they’re shaped the same. Now hush and pay attention.”
Just then, the girl took a five-inch-long whistle from the basket. Painted on its side was a little red hen. “I want this, Papa.”
Her father dug in his pockets and then sighed heavily. It was clear the whistles were also too expensive. “You don’t want those, honey. The man says it could be broken.”
The little girl blew a shrill note on the whistle. “See? It’s all right.”
The man’s face sagged into a sad, hopeless expression.
Caleb was at his most impetuous when he was being kind. He didn’t see why he couldn’t love and indulge others just as his parents loved and indulged him.
“Let me buy it for you,” Caleb offered.
The girl shrank against her father’s leg. “We don’t take charity from strangers,” her father said with great dignity.
Caleb bent over, so he was eye level with the little girl. “My name’s Caleb. What’s yours?”
She spoke barely above a whisper. “Lily.”
Caleb straightened. “You see? I’m not a stranger now. Let’s play a song together.” He reached blindly into the basket and picked the first whistle that came to hand.
It was paler than the others, either a different wood or possibly some other material. Could it be ivory? Not at that price, I thought. The whistle was a little longer than Lily’s, about six inches in length. A line of holes was neatly carved on the top, and as Caleb spun around, I could see a well-crafted and graceful etching of a leaping mongoose on the side.
Setting it to his lips, he blew a series of notes, his fingers dancing over the air holes. Beaming, Lily answered him with a few off-key notes of her own.
“Huh, so that’s Great-Granddad.” Winnie nodded approvingly. “Nice guy.”
“He is.” I corrected myself quickly, “I mean, was.”
Good-bye, dear Caleb. I tried to keep savoring this moment and not think about the great sorrows that waited for him.
“You look sad,” Winnie observed.
“It’s one of the side effects of time travel.” I put my hand on her shoulder. Every pet grows up to be someone unique, but it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if Winnie became a little like her great-grandfather. “I’ll tell you what he did, and you can judge just how nice he…uh…was.”
“And that woman’s you?” When I nodded, Winnie observed, “You were a lot prettier then.”
Apparently, the Spriggs Academy was teaching Winnie everything but tact. “I was in my Lucrezia Borgia phase at the time, and now I am not. So shush.”
Lily’s father stroked her hair as his daughter looked up at him hopefully. Then he nodded to Caleb. “Thank you.”
Even though he was in the middle of waiting on the Spoon Woman, Mr. Ratty turned when he heard Caleb and Lily’s attempts at music. “That whistle’s not for sale, sonny.”
Caleb set a dime and a nickel on the counter, paying for both whistles. “But it was in the basket.”
“That one in your hand’s already spoken for.” Mr. Ratty thrust his palm toward the boy. “Give it to me.”
As a New Woman, the 1915 me wasn’t going to tolerate male arrogance—either to her or her pet. “Then the whistle should not have been in the basket for someone to find it.”
“It was a mistake, Miss,” Mr. Ratty protested.
“Then you must live with the consequences of your error,” the 1915 me informed him, “as we all must.” Nodding to Lily and Lily’s father, she took Caleb’s hand. “Come, Caleb.”
“No, wait! You can’t!” Knocking paperweights off the counter, Mr. Ratty began to climb through a window to follow them, but the Spoon Woman shoved him inside the kiosk.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she demanded. “You’re still waiting on me.”
“I’ll be with you in a moment,” Mr. Ratty said. He pushed her away and pulled himself through the window.
His feet had no sooner dropped on the ground outside his stall, when Lily’s father blocked his way. “You leave the boy be.”
“But he’s got my whistle.” Mr. Ratty tried to slide around Lily’s father, but Lily herself kicked his shin.
“It’s his whistle now,” she said.
When Mr. Ratty yelped in pain, I glimpsed what looked like a tan streak of lightning darting in and out through the forest of people’s legs. I would have sworn it was a mouse, and yet no mouse could move that fast.
Right then, Winnie wriggled her shoulders. “Hey, stop tickling me.”
“Don’t exaggerate,” I told her. But when I looked at her, I saw that my hand had dropped down below her still moving shoulders and into her body.
Something was very wrong! While I was still out of phase and protected, Winnie was not. She was truly in 1915 and visible to all!
I cursed myself for a fool. I had been so busy paying attention to a past pet that I had failed the most basic duty: to protect my present one.
“We have to go,” I said urgently, but of course, she could no longer hear me. And when I pulled at her arm, she couldn’t feel me.
As I desperately tried to think of a way to get her away from here, a woman cried in an accented voice that rang along the avenue. “T’ief! Purse snatcher!”
At the same moment, the Spoon Woman whipped around. She looked down at the empty space at her feet and then at her large black bag on the ground by Winnie. Her arm whipped up, and she aimed her finger at Winnie like the barrel of a pistol.
“What’re you doing with my purse?” she demanded angrily.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Time travelers shouldn’t change the past any more than leopards should change their spots.
Winnie
“You can see me?” I gasped in amazement.
“Of course, I can.” The Spoon Woman pointed at the ugly old bag by my feet, “and I can see my purse too!”
What I saw was my ring on my gloveless hand. It was flashing red…red…red….I didn’t like the look of that. But I already felt I was in danger.
Had my charm stopped working? I put a hand up to my badge but it was gone. I looked down to see where I had dropped it.
“Police!” the Spoon Woman hollered, and lunged at me before I could find anything.
I got a second shock when I felt her hand grab the collar of my jacket. I was not only visible, but I was touchable too.
“Help!” I looked around frantically for Miss Drake. Though she was probably right by me, she was still invisible and in ghost mode.
“Police!” When the Spoon Woman yelled again, people began to stop and stare.
“I did
n’t take your purse,” I insisted, tapping my toe against the bag. “I don’t know how it got here.”
“Says you,” the Spoon Woman snarled. “You’re caught, and you’re caught good. It’s jail for you, girlie.” And she gave me a shake.
“Hey, don’t hurt her,” Great-Granddad Caleb said. It was funny calling this boy Great-Granddad. “You got your purse, so why don’t you let her go?”
The Spoon Woman used her free hand to shove him. “Get lost, kiddo.”
Great-Granddad staggered a few yards and then fell down, but he got up and started toward me again. “I said to leave her alone!”
When I saw the Spoon Woman ball her free hand into a fist and pull her arm back for a wicked punch, I tried to warn him, “No, stop.”
When he kept right on coming to my rescue, I was sorry I’d gotten water on his portrait now, and who cared if his ears stuck out? I didn’t want him getting hurt for my sake. I had to do something to distract the Spoon Woman.
So I bit her…hard.
Her coat sleeve tasted of nasty strong soap, so I guess we both got our punishments.
“Yow!” she howled, but she kept her grip on me.
Great-Grandpa had a determined look on his face as he reached for her wrist to yank it away from me.
“No,” I tried to say through a mouthful of wool.
“Release—” he began to say when he suddenly vanished.
The Spoon Woman turned her head this way and that. “What? Where’d the brat go?”
When I saw people in the crowd stagger to the side and look around puzzled, I figured that Great-Granddad’s Miss Drake had cast an invisibility spell on herself and him so she could carry him away from the fight.