by Claudia Gray
No. It’s not possible. Paul won’t die. He can’t. I’ll see him through it, somehow. I’ll write Theo in Paris and tell him to leave the petri dishes out overnight so he can invent penicillin. I’ll stay with him every second. Paul will pull through.
When I kneel beside his cot and take his hand, Paul stirs. His head lolls to one side, like it’s too heavy for him to move. He opens his eyes, and when he recognizes me, he tries to smile. As badly wounded as he is, he wants to comfort me.
“Everything’s going to be all right,” I say. The lie is bitter in my mouth. Even if he survives, I know his legs will never be the same. Can he even remain a soldier? It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except saving him. “I’m here now. I won’t leave you.”
Paul tries to speak, but he can’t. His fingers shift around me as if he wants to hold my hand, but he’s too weak.
Surely the doctors are nearby; surely other soldiers can hear. To hell with them all. I bend my head to his hand and kiss it. “I love you, Paul. I love you so much. I’ll never, ever leave you again.”
“Marguerite—” Dad’s hand rests on my shoulder, but when I shake my head, he draws away.
Paul takes a deep breath, then closes his eyes. I can’t tell if he’s awake after that, but in case he is, I keep telling him how much I love him, and I keep holding his hand. Even if he’s mostly out of it, even if he can’t see or hear, he’ll be able to feel that touch and know I’m by his side.
I’m aware that the other soldiers and the doctors are staring at us. What I just said to Paul is something no grand duchess should ever, ever say to a common soldier. But I also know that not one of them will dare to breathe a word of this. Spreading rumors about a member of the royal family is a good way to find yourself transferred to Vladivostok.
With my free hand, I check at his throat, hoping against hope he’ll have the Firebird around his neck. I don’t care any longer what happens to me. But I could make sure that my Paul traveled onward, that he at least would survive this.
Yet I need this Paul to live too.
It doesn’t matter. The Firebird isn’t around his neck, and when I command one of the healthy soldiers to search through Paul’s trunk, they find nothing even remotely resembling it. Colonel Azarenko died in the fighting, so there is no one else to ask.
The Firebird remains lost, and even now, I am watching two men die in one body.
At nightfall, Paul stirs once more. His eyes flutter open, and my smile for him is wrecked with my tears. “Paul? I’m here, golubka. I’m here.”
“Every Marguerite,” he says, and then he dies.
For a while after that, nothing is very clear. I think that I stand up very calmly, walk outside, and make sure I am far from the infirmary before I begin to scream. The wounded soldiers need their rest. They shouldn’t hear me scream, and scream, until my throat is raw and my eyes water and I fall to my knees in the snow.
When I can scream no longer, I remain outside, alone, for several minutes. My knees and feet are almost numb from the cold; I will my mind and heart to follow suit. Let them freeze. Let them lose feeling. Then the rest of me can stagger on.
Yet every time I think I’m past the point of being able to feel any more pain, a memory comes to me: Paul in the Easter room, cradling one of the Fabergé eggs in his hands; Paul leading me through a waltz, the broad warmth of his hand against the small of my back; Paul kissing me over and over as we fell asleep tangled in each other.
Finally I manage to stumble to my feet. One of the doctors stands not far away. Probably they made him follow me, afraid I was on the verge of collapse. I ask him, “Where is Professor Caine?” My voice is hoarse, more like an old woman’s than my own.
I’m led to a tent, apparently designated for me, but Dad is inside. When I walk in, he rises to his feet. “They told me it was over. I thought you needed a few moments to yourself.”
“I did. Thank you.”
“I’m so sorry, my dear. So incredibly sorry. Markov was a good man.”
Hearing his kind words rips the wound open again, but I fight back the tears. Then I see what Dad’s been doing all these hours. There, on his camp table, lies my Firebird—apparently back in one piece.
His gaze follows mine. “I dedicated myself to it. Maybe I’ve got it. But I’m not comfortable letting you do something so dangerous without at least a test.”
“I can test it,” I say, my voice hollow. I pick up the Firebird and go through the motions to create a reminder—metal layers clicking beneath my fingertips—until the shock jolts through me. Pain, intense and electric and almost unbearable—but it’s welcome. That kind of pain is the only thing capable of numbing my heart. I’m grateful for even a few seconds’ respite from the grief.
“That looks like it hurt.” Dad tries to take the Firebird back from me, but I don’t let him.
“It’s supposed to hurt—what I just did.” I attempt to smile. “You put it together again. See, I knew you were a genius.”
Dad runs one hand through his rumpled brown hair. “Are you absolutely certain that’s what it’s supposed to do?”
He’s worried. I can’t blame him. Even I feel uneasy at the thought of taking my next trip with this thing. However, my only alternative is to wait for the weeks, or even months, it will take to either summon Theo to Moscow or travel to Paris myself.
I need to get back to Mom. I need to tell her about Conley, and soon. Theo’s Firebird will alert him I’ve moved on, so he’ll follow me. The question is where I’ll go—my Firebird is still set to follow my version of Paul, who just died in my arms. But it almost doesn’t matter where I go, as long as I wind up someplace where Theo can find me. I trust Theo to get me home.
Above all, I trust my father.
“It works,” I say, and hopefully it sounds confident. “I’m going to go now.”
Dad nods. His eyes are sad. This may be the last time his daughter ever knows him for who he truly is.
It may be the last time I ever see my father’s face.
I fling myself into his arms and close my eyes as he wraps me in his embrace. “I love you,” Dad whispers. “I have loved you every moment of every hour since you were born. Even before that.”
“I love you too, Dad. I told you that almost every day, and I still didn’t say it enough. I couldn’t have said it enough, no matter what.”
It’s too much to let him go. So I’m still in his arms as I touch the Firebird; the last thing I feel in this dimension is his kiss on my cheek. Goodbye. Goodbye.
19
WHEN I SNAP INTO MY NEW SELF, I’M SITTING IN A CHAIR already, a nice soft one. Well, that’s a nice change, I think, before I open my eyes and see—
My gallery of portraits, in my own bedroom.
I realize I’m sitting in my own corner easy chair, looking up at my painting of Josie: same blue eyes, same merry expression. The walls of my room are painted the same soft cream shade. My patterned curtains blow slightly in the breeze, because I’ve got the window open as usual. I’m even wearing my favorite dress, the red one with yellow birds and cream-colored flowers.
I’m home.
Yet when I glance over at my bed, I realize the bedspread isn’t exactly right. It’s a sari-silk coverlet Josie gave me for Christmas last year, but the colors and patterns are different. I’d been admiring it in a catalog (I’m not shy about hinting, with gifts), and I remember the description saying Each item is unique.
Now that I think of it, Josie’s portrait looks the same, but I’ve got it hanging next to my painting of my friend Angela instead of my painting of Dad. And Mom’s portrait shows her in a white cotton button-down shirt, instead of the gray T-shirt I remember choosing.
This dimension is very, very like my own—but it’s not home.
At first I feel a terrible pang of homesickness, worse for being surrounded by something that’s so like what I remember and yet not mine at all. Then it hits me: If I moved forward to another dimension, and my Firebird was
set to follow Paul—does that mean he made it out too?
It must. It has to. He’s alive. My heart swells with hope at the realization that my Paul has survived, that he’s somewhere nearby—
—and I stop short.
Lieutenant Markov of His Imperial Majesty’s Own Infantry Battalion—the Paul who saved me, the one I spent a single perfect night with—he’s dead, gone, forever.
I curl into a ball in the easy chair, arms wrapped around my legs. The man I loved is dead. Nothing changes that.
I remember his body heavy in my arms, bloody and empty, and I know I’ve lost something irreplaceable.
It doesn’t feel like my room any longer. I might be back in Russia, kneeling in the snow, screaming out my grief without caring who hears. But right now all I can do is cry brokenly.
The possibilities crash into one another; the emotions tie themselves into Gordian knots. A thousand ways for me to love and doubt and lose Paul Markov, and I feel like I’m only starting to discover them all.
Right now all I can do is focus on the fact that Paul, Theo, and I remain in serious danger—and maybe Mom and Josie, too. I must keep going. I have no other choice.
Get it together, I tell myself. I grab a Kleenex—the box is stashed on the exact same shelf—blow my nose, and try to center myself in the here and now.
As I look around my room, the ordinary has become extraordinary. After a couple of weeks in a world where electric lighting was a newfangled innovation, it’s dazzling to see my cell phone, my music dock, my tablet. Even the low-tech stuff is beautiful in its familiarity. My paint-splotched work jeans and an old T-shirt lie across my chair; the drop cloth is spread on the floor and my easel is set up. Apparently I was about to settle in for some work.
I pick up my box of paints. Just the sight of their shiny silver tubes fills me with relief to see something familiar again.
I walk out into the hallway, which is covered with chalkboard paint and physics equations, exactly like it should be. In the great room I find Mom’s plants, and the rainbow table, and all the piles of paper and books I’d expect. Some of the swirls of paint on the table look a little different, though. I lean down to study its surface—as much of it as is visible under all the paper, anyway—but one of the paperweights catches my eye. It’s this thick, round, metallic disc, lying atop a folder with the Triad Corporation logo on the front . . .
Whoa. My eyes get wide. I’ve never actually seen a Nobel Prize before, but I’m about 95 percent sure that’s what they look like.
As I heft the prize into my hands, marveling at how heavy the solid gold is, I realize that Mom and Dad must have made their breakthrough a couple of years earlier in this dimension. I look down at the Nobel Prize and think, Way to go, Mom.
What about the rest of us? What about Josie? Yes, she’s still studying oceanography at Scripps down in San Diego; she bought us some fridge magnets down there, which are indeed on our refrigerator. In fact, according to the whiteboard calendar in the kitchen, she’s coming home tonight to visit for—holy crap, for New Year’s Eve. That’s today. I sort of lost track of the date while I was in Russia, what with the violent bloody rebellion and everything.
Theo? He’s one of Mom and Dad’s graduate assistants here, too. That, or they have another hipster wannabe who left his thrift shop fedora on the coatrack. Even now, Theo’s probably materializing in this dimension, in his ratty campus apartment. I bet he’ll be here within the hour.
And Paul—
The kitchen door swings open, and I hear Mom say, “If dog cognition is truly closer to human than that of our closest primate relatives, must we then begin to consider dogs our partners in the evolutionary process?”
“Really we ought to have bought that puppy back when the girls wanted one.” Dad walks into the kitchen after her, both of them carrying overstuffed cloth shopping bags. “It would’ve given us a canine subject to observe, and besides, we could’ve named him Ringo.”
Mom and Dad. Both alive, both well, both right here in our kitchen like nothing ever happened—because here, everything is as it should be.
Mom sees me first. “Hello, sweetheart. I thought you’d be painting by now.”
“Hi,” I say. It’s completely inadequate, but I can’t think of anything else. So I bound up the two steps that lead to the kitchen and take both of my parents into my arms.
“What’s this for?” Dad laughs.
Somehow I keep my voice steady as I say, “I just—I missed you guys.”
Dad pulls back, looking wary. “Did you spill paint on something?”
“No! Everything’s fine, I swear.” I let go of them, but I can’t stop smiling stupidly. Being near them doesn’t heal the wound of Paul’s death in Russia—but it helps me feel almost complete again. “Everything is totally fine.”
Mom and Dad exchange glances. She says, “I suppose eventually a teenage hormone swing had to work in our favor.”
“About time,” Dad replies.
I push back at them, but playfully; Mom and Dad could tease me a thousand times worse than this and it wouldn’t bother me, not today. “What did you get?”
“The makings for some lasagna. And a little red wine—Josie might want a glass.” Mom starts unloading her grocery bags, but I take one of them from her.
“Why don’t you let me make dinner? You guys can sit down and relax.”
When Mom and Dad look at each other this time, they seem less amused, more worried. Mom says, “Are you feeling all right?”
Dad shakes his head. “You’re going to ask to borrow the car.”
I laugh out loud; apparently I dodge working in the kitchen as much in this dimension as I do at home. “You guys, stop. Everything’s fine. I just feel like it would be fun. That’s all.”
Although Dad clearly isn’t convinced, Mom says, “Henry, don’t fight it.” She places a package of lasagna noodles in my hands, then turns to my father, pushes him gently by the shoulders and points him toward the sofa. As he walks off, chuckling, Mom pauses at my side. Very softly, she adds, “Thank you for helping out, Marguerite. Right now, it means a lot.”
Right now? What does she mean, right now?
“Okay,” I say. That seems safe.
“I know this—it didn’t only happen to us.” Mom keeps her voice low; her fingers brush through my curls. She did that when I was little. The last few years, I’ve found it annoying, but I never will again, not after two worlds without her. “Even if the police find Paul, we may never understand why he did what he did. Your father and I would gladly drop any charges once we got some answers, but Triad never will, so—” Her voice breaks. “I hate what he’s done to us, but I can’t bear what Paul’s done to himself. He’s ruined his whole life, and for what?”
I can’t answer her. Right now I can hardly breathe.
“Forgive me. You were trying to cheer us up. I’ll let you keep trying.” Mom pats my shoulder, and goes after Dad.
All I can do is stand there in our kitchen, stupidly clutching a box of pasta, thinking, What the hell?
Even without the details, I understand what happened here. Paul betrayed Mom and Dad. Betrayed us. Again.
I’d thought I was beginning to understand Paul. Now I think I’ve never understood him, or anyone, or anything.
Half an hour later. I’m still working in the kitchen, for values of “working” that mean “numbly wandering around in shock.” Somehow I managed to get all the ingredients for the tomato sauce into the pot, but it took me five minutes to remember to turn the burner on. My brain is too stunned by Paul’s betrayal to concentrate on anything as mundane as dinner.
Should I tell my parents the truth about who I am and where I’m from? I was able to convince my father of cross-dimensional travel in a universe where nobody had even invented radio. Here, they’d believe me instantly. All I’d have to do is pull the Firebird out from under the neckline of my dress.
But I don’t need their help now the way I needed Dad’s bac
k in Russia. I want to tell them the truth because I want them to comfort me, and listen to me vent about everything I’ve been through so far. That’s not a good enough reason. They’re already devastated by what Paul did; how much worse would it be when I told them how much further the betrayal goes?
I still want to believe in Paul, and my heart still aches for the one who died in my arms, but right now—I don’t trust my instincts any longer.
The kitchen door opens again, and I turn to see who it is.
“Hey there, Meg.” Theo grins at me. “Happy New Year.”
I haven’t seen him in almost three weeks. It feels like three lifetimes.
“Theo.” I throw my arms around his neck. And he can pretend to be blasé all he wants, but he hugs me back even more tightly.
Into my ear he whispers, “Save me that kiss at midnight, huh?”
He’s joking. He’s also not joking. I blush . . . and yet I can only think of Paul lying on the cot where he died, opening his eyes to see me one last time, and saying, Every Marguerite.
I step back from Theo. “We should—uh—I told Mom and Dad I’d cook.”
Theo’s eyes widen. “It is you, right?”
Realizing what he means, I snag the chain of the Firebird with my thumb and pull it from the neck of my dress. He visibly relaxes, reassured.
From the living room, Dad calls, “Theo! You made it.”
“Like I’d miss New Year’s Eve,” he answers with a grin.
Mom chimes in. “If you’re not going to be useful in the kitchen, come here and help me work out these formulae for a thirty-dimensional sphere.”
“You know what?” Theo claps his hands together. “Sounds like a good day to learn to cook.”
Dad peers around the corner, his face barely visible above Mom’s exuberant philodendron. “Have both of you gone mad simultaneously?”
“Yeah,” Theo says, “it saves time.” That makes Dad laugh; more important, it makes him turn back to what he was doing, so Theo and I have some privacy.