Ricochet Through Time (Echo Trilogy Book 3)

by Lindsey Fairleigh

  His hair wasn’t quite as long as it had been in the nineteenth century—or would be—but it still reached past his chin and swayed gracefully when he moved. He wore clothing that gave little indication to the time period—leather trousers, a loose-fitting white linen shirt, and a structured leather coat that appeared almost armor-like, despite hanging open.

  I lowered myself back down to the ground to put some distance between my skin and that sharp blade. “You cannot possibly know how glad I am to see you,” I told him in the original tongue, wagering it was our only common language in this time.

  He tilted his head to the side and stared down at me. The point of his blade didn’t move closer to me, but he didn’t pull it away, either. “Have we met before?” he asked, also speaking in the original tongue.

  I studied his shadowed features for a moment, then settled on a more cautious route than full disclosure. “Perhaps we have met, and you have forgotten me.”

  His gaze traced the lines and contours of my face, then continued onward down the length of my body until he reached my bare feet. “Not likely.” His focus returned to my face. “Had we met previously, I would most certainly remember a woman such as yourself.”

  A blush crept up my neck and heated my cheeks. I shook my head. “Not if I made you forget,” I said, testing the waters. How much could I tell this Heru without scaring him off? I couldn’t rely on using photos from my phone as proof this time—the battery had died weeks ago, even though I’d rarely turned it on.

  Heru’s eyebrows rose. “You claim to have such power over the memories of others?”

  “Perhaps.” I looked from him to the point of his sword and back.

  “And might this power be connected to your ability to appear out of thin air?”

  My eyes widened. I hadn’t realized he’d seen my arrival. “Yes, the two are connected.”

  “Curious.” Finally, Heru withdrew his sword and sheathed it in the scabbard hanging at his hip, though his attention never left my face. “I will take you to my home, and you will explain how such things are possible.” He offered me his hand, and I reached out, letting him pull me up to my feet. His skin burned against my frozen fingers, and I found myself reluctant to release his hand.

  Heru released mine and touched the backs of his fingers to my arm, then to the side of my neck. “You are nearly frozen. How can that be?”

  “I—before I appeared here, I was somewhere quite cold.”

  He glanced up at the clear, sunny sky, then looked at me, slowly shaking his head. “I find myself quite eager to hear your tale, mistress Nejerette. You are quite the intriguing one.”

  “So … you believe me?”

  “I cannot explain how you came to be here, and I am not willing to discard that which I have witnessed with my own two eyes simply because your sudden appearance defies all logical explanation.” Heru turned and started across the field. “Come.”

  I stared after him for a moment, then followed, jogging to catch up. The earth was soft beneath my bare feet, a stray twig or stone poking me only a few times.

  “You seem to have lost your shoes, mistress,” Heru said when I fell into step beside him.

  “Lex,” I said. “My name is Lex.”

  He frowned thoughtfully. “A curious name for a curious woman.”

  “It is short for ‘Alexandra.’”

  “And your shoes?”

  “Oh. I, um, sort of left them behind.” In my frantic mind, I’d been thinking ahead to the eventuality that the twins’ power didn’t kick in before I hit the churning sea, and on the off chance that I survived the fall, I thought my boots would only drag me down. “It is complicated,” I added.

  “I have no doubt. I am Heru.”

  “I know who you are,” I admitted. “Can you tell me where we are? And when?”

  He laughed, the sound low and deep. “As I said, I find myself quite eager to hear your tale. But to answer your questions, the year is 1481.” He stopped and turned around, motioning for me to do the same. “And we are on the hills just south of the river Arno.”

  I turned around. “Oh,” I breathed, dumbstruck as I took in the sight of fifteenth-century Florence spread out below. Smoke billowed up from chimneys on thousands of clay-tiled roofs within the sprawling walled city, and a string of gracefully arched bridges spanned the curving river, reminding me so much of the At bridges in the Oasis. “This is incredible.”

  “Is it?”

  I nodded, tongue paralyzed.

  “How fascinating.” Heru placed his hand against the curve of my lower back, and electricity zinged up my spine. “Let us away, mis—Lex. My home is not far, and I think sitting by the hearth would serve you well.”

  “Yes, of course.” I turned back around and didn’t balk when Heru offered me his arm. I hooked my hand in the crook, grateful for the added support. Honestly, I wasn’t sure I had the strength to keep going without it. I felt dead on my feet, and from the sidelong glances Heru kept throwing my way, I looked it, too.

  Some fifteen minutes later, we approached a large, three-story Tuscan farmhouse constructed of gray stone. It was surrounded by all sorts of cultivated, growing things—an orchard curving around one side, a vineyard stretching out down a rolling slope beyond the fruit trees, and a lush vegetable garden surrounding a circular stone fountain. An older man and woman, both gray-haired with skin as tan as leather, moved among the rows, crouching down as they tended their garden. It was a beautiful scene, though I imagined theirs had to be a hard way of life. Hard, but fulfilling.

  I fully expected to pass this little bit of rural heaven right on by and head for Heru’s no doubt grand estate. Which is why I kept walking down the dirt road when Heru veered off to the right. His pull on my arm redirected me, and I found myself drawn along a wide pathway lined by verdant olive trees that led straight to the stone farmhouse.

  “This is your home?” I asked, unable to hide the hint of skepticism from my voice.

  “At present.” Heru eyed me. “Are you disappointed?”

  “No, I just—” I smiled. “This is incredible … just not what I expected.”

  Heru grunted a laugh. “I admit, I have a reputation for having a taste for luxury, and it’s true that I rarely deny myself anything, but every few decades, I find myself losing interest in even the most extravagant of pleasures.”

  “Ennui,” I said in English.

  “Ennui,” Heru repeated. “I do not know this word. To what language does it belong?”

  “English,” I said. “Though not precisely the English you would be familiar with. It refers to a sense of deep dissatisfaction and weariness, which seems an appropriate thing to feel when one’s life spans as much time as yours has.”

  “Ennui,” Heru repeated, then nodded. “When the ennui becomes unbearable, I find myself yearning for this life—the chance to work with my hands until they become callused and to live off food that I coaxed from the earth with water and attention … to feel a sense of purpose and accomplishment …”

  “It brings you back to the Oasis,” I guessed, recalling the way he’d worked with his family there, sunrise to sunset, keeping their home running and their land productive. “To how your life used to be.”

  Heru stopped just before the pathway opened up to the garden and turned to me, a hand gripping either of my arms. “How could you possibly know that?”

  Because I was there, I didn’t say. It seemed like the wrong way to start my rather complicated story, assuming I even chose to share it with him. Again. “It will make sense once you know who I am and how I came to be here,” I said. But suddenly, the idea of explaining everything—explaining us—to him all over again seemed so far beyond my current capability that I started to tear up.

  Heru’s eyes searched mine, golden and penetrating. “Perhaps, but as eager as I am to hear your tale, it will have to wait.” His gaze slid lower. “You have yet to heal,” he said, and I realized he was staring at the cut below my collarbone. The
one caused by his sword. I’d forgotten all about it.

  “Yes, well …” I looked away, staring without seeing at the older man weeding on the far side of the garden. Explaining the reason I wasn’t healing like a normal Nejerette would be just as complicated as everything else he wanted to know.

  “You are wearier than I realized.”

  Heru guided me past the garden and onto a patio paved with uneven, time-worn stones. He led me through the broad, arched doorway set in the center of the wall and into a high-ceilinged room with exposed beams, whitewashed walls, and terra-cotta floor tiles. There was a large stone fireplace set in the interior wall, the broad wooden mantel stretching across the top matching the rough beams overhead. A pair of padded wooden armchairs were arranged near the fireplace, a small, squat table between them holding a ceramic pitcher and a pair of matching goblets. A carved wooden bench that looked like it doubled as a chest set against the far wall appeared to be the only other seating in the sparsely furnished room.

  Heru paused, his gaze lingering on the armchairs before the dormant fireplace, then shook his head almost imperceptibly and turned instead toward the steep, narrow stairway leading up to the second floor. Gently, he pushed me ahead of him.

  I started up the stairs, feet dragging. The worn stone steps were neither standard height nor as even as I was used to, and I missed a step twice, the second time tripping on my skirt when I tried to catch myself. Heru reacted with inhuman speed, his arm snaking around my waist to keep me from falling forward onto the higher steps. His body pressed against me from behind, his hand splayed over my belly.

  I held my breath, waiting for the inevitable. Because there was no way he couldn’t feel the slight but noticeable bulge in my abdomen now that his hand was actually on it.

  “Forgive me, mistress, but can it be possible—”

  “Yes,” I said, tensing. “I am with child.”

  He was quiet for a few seconds. “Indeed, you are.” He righted me quickly but kept a firm hold on the side of my waist and on my elbow. “Then it is even more pressing that you rest.”

  We reached the hallway at the top of the stairs without further incident and passed by mirroring doorways on the left and right. A second doorway on the right revealed another, narrower staircase.

  Heru stopped before the opening. “Apologies, but the other rooms are occupied by my daughter and her family, and I feel most comfortable housing you in my own personal quarters. I could carry you up, if you prefer it …”

  “No, no, I can make it.”

  It was slow going, but I made it up those damn stairs. And when I crested the top, my knee gave out.

  Heru caught me before I hit the floor and picked me up easily with an arm under my knees and one behind my shoulders. “Almost there,” he whispered.

  He laid me in a bed—his bed, I realized in the sluggish recesses of my mind—and while I fought that final losing battle with exhaustion, I thought I felt his fingertips trailing over my forehead and across my cheekbone, brushing hair from my face.

  Whether or not it was a trick of my tired mind, his gentle touch was one hell of a nice send-off into the land of dreams.

  ***

  “And that is when you found me,” I said, rubbing the tender skin around the cut under my collarbone absentmindedly. Speaking in the original tongue had come to be our go-to method of communication. The language was constant, as unchanging as the people who spoke it. “As I said, it is a long, complicated story.”

  I hadn’t told him everything—far from it, in fact. He knew I was from the future, that I was Alexander’s granddaughter, and that I was pregnant. And he knew that I was running from Set. He also knew I needed sanctuary, and that I’d sought him out as the one most likely to be able to keep me safe—on my grandfather’s recommendation, I’d claimed. He didn’t know about us, or that the twins were his, let alone that they were fated to restore balance to the universe, thus saving us all from the unrelenting chaos Apep yearned for so desperately, and he didn’t know anything about Apep or Re.

  I supposed he saw me as something new, possibly something precious—hope for our kind, that we might one day be a viable species able to reproduce without relying on interbreeding with humans. Perhaps I would tell him about us in time, once I knew it wouldn’t lead him to throwing me out or running away from fear of bonding with me. I couldn’t risk either, and I still didn’t have a solid feel for this Heru.

  He set a large ceramic mug filled with steaming mulled wine before me on the kitchen’s heavy-duty farm table—mulled wine I’d demanded he bring to a simmer to burn off most of the alcohol. “I do not like that,” he said.

  I leaned over the mug and inhaled deeply; the smell was an intoxicating blend of sweet and spicy. I blew on the steaming liquid, impatient to try it. Heru’s elderly daughter, Francesca, named for her mother’s mother, or so she’d told me shortly after I’d risen the afternoon following my arrival, touted the miraculous healing properties of her mulled wine. To hear her tell it, it was a bona fide cure-all. Considering that she had to be nearing her eighties and was still an active gardener, showed no signs of arthritis, and appeared to have all of her original teeth, I was forced to give her thinking some merit.

  “You do not like what, Heru?” I leaned back in my wooden chair, resigned to wait for the wine to cool. “That you nearly ran me through?”

  He stared at me with those too-familiar golden eyes, then turned away to tend the hearth fire. He fed it several logs before giving the leg of pork on the spit a good basting and a turn. “You still have not healed, even after resting.”

  I shook my head, my hands curling around the mug of mulled wine to absorb its warmth. “I explained to you why …”

  “You should be in bed, resting until your children are born.”

  Tired of waiting, I took a tentative sip of the mulled wine, then whimpered and spit it back out. Still too hot. I touched my fingertips to my tongue, hoping I hadn’t burned it too badly. “It is hardly like I have a say in the matter. As soon as Set shows up, I will have to leave, just as I came …” I snapped my fingers. “Poof.”

  Heru eased onto the bench that ran along the side of the table and took my hand in his. “While you are here, mistress, in this time and place, you do have a say.” He raised one hand but hesitated, his fingertips hovering millimeters from the side of my face. Though he didn’t know about our bond, he still felt its pull, and he’d have to be blind and deaf not to sense my own attraction to him.

  His fingertips grazed down my cheek, and my eyelids fluttered closed. “It will take Set at least a month to journey here from London, possibly longer. You will have time to rest.” Heru’s thumb brushed across my lips, and I inhaled a shivering breath. “You will let me take care of you. After all, that is why you came here in search of me, is it not?”

  My eyes snapped open, and I sat up straighter. His hand fell away. “I will do what is best for my children,” I said. “Nothing more, and nothing less.”

  Heru’s nostrils flared and his lips quirked, hinting at amusement. “You are quite spirited; I shall grant you that much.”

  Eyes narrowed, I pulled my mug closer and leaned forward, once again basking in the mulled wine’s spicy scent.

  “Have you anything else to wear?”

  I lifted the cup to my lips and took a sip, pleased to find the liquid didn’t burn this time. Much. I took another sip, then shook my head. “I have money, though—gold.” I patted the hidden pocket in my skirts, eyes widening when I found it empty. “No …”

  The purse had been my lifeline, my backup plan in case Aset, Nik, and Heru were nowhere to be found. “It’s gone!” I pushed back my chair and started to stand. “I must have dropped it when I jumped from—”

  “Calm yourself.” Heru’s fingers closed around my wrist, preventing me from standing all the way. “I removed your purse when you were sleeping.”

  “You have it,” I said, eyes unblinking.

  “As I just said.�
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  I sank back into the chair. “Well, you could have said something earlier.”

  His eyebrows rose, and he leaned away from me. “I left it on the table beside the bed. It was there when you woke.”

  “Oh, well …” Avoiding his gaze, I brought the mug of mulled wine up to my lips once more. “I was a bit distracted by the food.” An array of fruits and cheeses and cured meats had been set out on a small table beyond the foot of Heru’s bed while I slept, and when I awakened, I’d demolished most of it.

  Heru laughed. “I was pleased you enjoyed the spread. Franci takes pride in her cheeses.”

  “She should.” I tilted my mug his way. “And in her mulled wine. It is delicious.”

  Heru took a sip from his own mug and wrinkled his nose. “I prefer it a bit more potent.”

  “Then heat yourself another batch.” I snagged his cup by the handle and dragged it across the corner of the table to sit beside mine. “I claim this mug as my own.”

  Heru’s lips quirked. “Quite spirited, indeed.”

  17

  Peace & Love

  My time in fifteenth-century Tuscany was idyllic. Days were spent exploring the rolling hills surrounding the farmhouse or helping in the garden when Heru deemed a task not overly strenuous. And during the evenings, Heru and I would sit around a long table under the covered patio behind the house, sharing stories and laughing over food and drink with Francesca, her husband Giovanni, their eldest son and daughter-in-law, and their three adolescent children. None questioned my presence—I was simply a visiting Nejerette. An “old friend” of Heru’s.

  This place, this life … it was paradise. Except for one thing: Heru didn’t know who I was, not really. He came to care about me on his own, which made his affection all the sweeter for having nothing to do with our bond. I enjoyed where we were, how we were, and I’d fully intended to maintain the status quo. I truly had. But things got out of hand, words were exchanged, and one thing led to another …