by Lisa McMann
“Are you okay?” Riq asked her as he followed her lead, shackling Hake to the wall with the help of Gamaliel Bailey.
“I just need a minute,” she gasped.
She took less than half a minute, though, before deciding that she needed to join the fray. Slipping the Ring back into its satchel, she ran to the small closet she’d seen earlier and grabbed two spare shackle chains. She tossed one to Harriet Tubman, and together they took on several beastly Time Wardens, driving the men to the back of the room with their swinging chains. The Wardens willingly closed the shackles around their own wrists with the promise that the women would put their chains down.
“Sera!” Dak called out as he kicked a guy in the shin. “You guys look like you’re acting out a scene from that online game you play, Dungeons and More Dungeons. Chain fights, sword fights . . . wow, just look at Ms. Tubman go!”
“Hmm,” said Harriet.
On the other side of the room, an SQ agent lifted a chair to slam down on Riq’s head.
“Hey!” hollered Thomas Garrett. “Don’t be messing with my friend.” He’d heard Dak say it moments before, and he really seemed to like the sound of it. He ran up behind the guy, grabbed the chair legs, lifted his foot, and kicked the guy square in the kidneys, sending him sprawling toward the next open spot on the wall, where Sera shackled him. The Hystorian reached out a hand to help Riq up.
“Nice one, Mr. Garrett,” Riq said. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome, son. Who’s next?” He turned to look at the sprawled bodies of the defeated, most of whom were now chained to the walls.
Being sorely beaten, the remaining few SQ agents turned on their heels and fled. All was soon quiet.
From the corner, James peeked through his fingers. “Can I come out yet?”
Riq laughed and ran over to the boy, lifting him high in the air.
The Hystorians, nursing minor cuts and bruises, were beaming through their pain. Dak couldn’t stop grinning, too. “Man,” he said. “That was the best fight I’ve ever seen, and the war doesn’t even start until —”
“Eighteen-abibble,” Riq said, shushing Dak with a look.
Following their victory, Dak chattered excitedly with the Hystorians, many of whom hadn’t realized the kids were from the future until they’d seen what the Infinity Ring could do. Sera spoke quietly with a young woman named Susan, who wore a lovely brooch at her neck. But Riq stood aside with James and watched. He had a small smile on his face, but inside . . . inside, he was choking up a little. Maybe a lot.
He caught Harriet Tubman’s eye and walked over to her. “Let’s go find your niece,” he said. He put a hand on Thomas Garrett’s sleeve. “Can you show us where the cellar is?”
Together they walked through the hallways of Thomas Garrett’s home to one of several secret rooms, then climbed down a set of stairs to the cellar. Mr. Garrett held a lantern, and Harriet called out, “Kissy? We’re coming for you!”
“Aunt Minty?” cried Kissy, stepping out of the darkness, with John right behind.
“Mama!” shouted James. He leapt from Riq’s arms and ran to his mother, throwing his arms around her.
“James!” Kissy sobbed, falling to her knees as her son buried his face in her dress. After a moment she looked up at Riq, tears streaming down her face. “I don’t know how it could ever be possible to thank you,” she said.
Riq stood in the cellar’s shadows as Kissy and her aunt Minty embraced. Kissy recounted their story, telling how they were captured within sight of Federal Hill. The story made Riq shudder, knowing it could have been him. Harriet told of her capture as well. “This reunion almost didn’t happen,” Harriet Tubman said. She looked at Riq. “We owe a lot to you,” she said. She held out her hand, drawing him into their family circle.
“And I owe my life to you,” Riq said. “I feel . . . I feel as though you were family. Somehow.” He couldn’t look at them. Before today, they had been family. But now, as long as Kissy and John remained safe the rest of the way to freedom in Canada, Kessiah wouldn’t end up in the South again, which is where she’d need to be in order to have the exact child that was Riq’s great-great-great-grandfather. She might have more children, different children, but they couldn’t be the same. Their lives would be vastly different. Their stories would be foreign to Grandma Phoebe’s scrapbook.
Grandma Phoebe’s scrapbook wouldn’t even exist. And neither would she.
Riq’s bottom lip quivered. Even surrounded by so many people, he felt more alone than ever before.
Harriet watched him solemnly, and then she embraced him. “After all you’ve done for us? You’ll be the child I never had,” she said in a gruff voice. “There. Now we’re family. Got it?”
Riq laughed in spite of his sorrow. “You’re totally legit,” he said.
THOMAS GARRETT might not have had much furniture left, but his pantry was full enough to feed a small army of Hystorians. Dak was in his element again, surrounded by people who were living history. And shaping it.
Some of them he knew from history books. Others he didn’t. Maybe since they’d exposed the SQ’s plot and captured the ringleader, everyone here would now go on to be famous.
But that wasn’t really the point, Dak thought. They were all fighting to change the course of history. They would accomplish far more together than any of them could hope to accomplish alone. And now Dak and his friends were a part of that, too.
So were his parents. Somehow, wherever they were, they’d known that he would need their help today. And they’d come through. Maybe everything would turn out okay, despite the odds.
He hoped the odds against the abolitionists would be a little bit easier now, at least. The SQ was still out there, but with any luck the abolitionists would take advantage of their second chance and go on to do great things.
That was the best thing about history, after all: the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of your past.
Mistakes like burning off somebody’s eyebrows, for instance.
Riq was able to find a quiet corner of Mr. Garrett’s house, where he pulled out the SQuare. He should have been solving the puzzle to figure out where they would go next, but instead he opened the SQuare’s journal, where Dak sometimes recorded the details of their adventures. He started a new file.
For a lover of languages, Riq didn’t spend a lot of time writing. He didn’t tend to tell stories. He didn’t really feel he had interesting stories to tell.
But he had his grandma Phoebe’s stories. Riq realized that if he disappeared now — if he had uprooted his entire family tree while fixing this Break — well, that was a sacrifice he was willing to make if it meant saving everyone else. He couldn’t sacrifice his grandma’s stories, though. He wanted them to live on.
So Riq typed late into the night. He recorded every detail of his family tree as he remembered it. Every detail about his grandma. And his parents.
He hoped that even if he didn’t survive what came next, Dak and Sera would be able to keep these stories safe.
Sera looked around Thomas Garrett’s house. She was a little bit in awe of a man who so humbly refused to take credit for the huge sacrifice he’d made. He’d been forced to pay his last dollar in fines for helping fugitive slaves. He’d had to admit to his own friends and neighbors that yes, he had helped their slaves escape, and he’d said to them, “Just what are you going to do about it, kill me? Go ahead.” Even after all that, he was more dedicated than ever to his calling and quest. His home was and would always be a safe house — as long as he was alive and had the means to help, he would help. When Sera had a moment alone with him and asked him what he most wanted, his simple reply was, “Freedom for all.”
She wanted to warn him how long it would take, how many obstacles there would be. She wished she could tell him that they had magically fixed everything and tomorrow, all would be equal. But she knew that wasn’t true. Things were still messed up. Real change took time.
“Communication is re
ally important,” she told him instead. “And so is keeping the SQ far away from the Underground Railroad. If you guys all stick together, and do what you did today to fight off the SQ, you might just have something big happening here.”
Thomas Garrett smiled. “Thank you,” he said, hand over his heart.
And then Sera drew something from her sailor pants pocket and held it up to the lantern light so he could see it. It dangled and glittered, catching the reflection of the jumping flames. She took his bruised wrist and turned it, palm up, and then she set the gold chain in his hand. “This is very, very old,” she said. She showed him the tiny stamp with the year 885 engraved on it. “One of the links is broken, but it’s still worth a lot.” She closed his fingers over it. “You can sell this to keep things going for the abolitionsists, okay? You need it a lot more than I do.”
Thomas Garrett looked at his closed fist, and then he looked at Sera. He knew better than to say no to the Dungeons and More Dungeons master, and so he simply smiled and said, “Thank you.”
GAMALIEL BAILEY and most of the other abolitionists were eager to get home after their long absences. There was room enough for those who stayed behind to sleep in Thomas Garrett’s house. Sera finally got the bath she so desperately wanted, and Dak and Riq each bathed, too, at Sera’s insistence. Donning her dry Quaker garb once again, she joined the others at dawn to take the chained SQ to jail for endangering and threatening the lives of children and adults alike. Not even the Fugitive Slave Act could protect them after all they’d done.
Riq couldn’t help but notice that Ilsa was taking their defeat especially hard. He’d expected her to resist or make threats, but she remained quiet. Almost eerily so.
After they’d gotten rid of Ilsa and the rest, they all headed to the train station, where Harriet Tubman and John Bowley, who had their free papers, accompanied a very large, very fragile crate on a one-way trip to Ontario, Canada. Harriet would be back, she promised. But first she’d see to it that Kissy and her family made it safely all the way. “It’s the most amazing feeling,” Harriet said, “standing in freedom. Seeing your free fingers, your free toes, your free everything.” She embraced Riq. “Will we ever see you again?”
“I don’t think so,” Riq said.
“Well, if you’re ever in New York, come by,” she said with a shy grin, handing him a piece of paper. “That’s where I’m going to build my dream home once this is all over.”
Riq took the paper and hugged the tiny woman. “Thank you,” he said.
Dak, Sera, and Riq walked back to Thomas Garrett’s house with the man himself and with the real Mrs. Beeson, who would be making the trip back to Cambridge on the same pilot cutter on which Sera and Dak had been passengers. “Tell them all thank you for me,” Sera said. “And please give Captain Grunder his pants back.”
Dak snorted. He poked Riq. “Captain Grunder pants. Get it?”
“No.”
“That book about —”
“No.”
“The two guys and their —”
“NO.”
“All right, all right already. You guys are so serious all the time.”
Riq ignored Dak and turned to Mrs. Beeson. “There’s something that’s been bothering me since we first arrived,” he said. “There’s a shed near your house. Does it have a trap door in it?”
“Thee are a smart lad, I see,” Mrs. Beeson said. “Indeed it does. It is one of my hiding places on the farm.”
“We saw the floor move,” he said. “I wondered if someone has been hiding there.”
“I believe it. Before I was overtaken, I told a fugitive to take a lantern and go there. I’d suspected something, told him it wasn’t safe in the house. I’m glad he made it. I’ll check it upon my return. Thank thee for the information.”
“Leave it to us to run away from an actual safe house and into a trap,” Dak said.
“Oh,” Sera said. “That reminds me — I apologize for any sticky soda mess you might find in the cellar. It was our only way to escape.”
“Have no worries,” Mrs. Beeson said with a puzzled smile, surely having no idea what the girl was talking about. “Your escape was of most importance. I am blessed to have had you in my home, and sorry for the circumstances encompassing it.”
Sera held up a hand. “High five?”
Mrs. Beeson made a fist instead and held it out for the bump. “Thee are legit,” she said.
THE THREE time travelers decided to catch up with one another before going directly to their next mission. They sat in a meadow nearby, the weak December sun warming their shoulders.
“This was a tough Break in a different way than we’re used to,” Sera mused. She looked at Riq. “For you especially, I mean. Do you wish we hadn’t come here?”
Riq wrapped his fingers around a piece of long yellow grass and pulled. He chewed on one end of it. “At first I hated this place. This time period. I still do, but you know what? It was really heartening to see all the abolitionists just being so . . . so committed like that, you know?” He paused. “Not just committed to being Hystorians, I mean, but to being, well, so human. It puts . . . it helps put things into perspective.”
Dak nodded. “It makes me want to be like them with the work that we’re doing.”
“Me, too,” Sera said. “I wish we could know what kind of difference they’ll make now.”
“Didn’t you already have a glimpse of the future with old stony-faced Ilsa?” Dak asked.
“Yeah, where did you go, anyway?” Riq asked.
Sera’s face paled. She looked at the ground. “Nowhere, actually. I, um, I programmed the Infinity Ring to five seconds in the future, so we’d blip out and back in again. I just wanted to cause a distraction for you guys.”
Dak grinned. “Well, in that case, since you didn’t waste a trip earlier, maybe we can do it now?”
Sera bit her lip. “I don’t know, Dak. The Infinity Ring isn’t a toy.”
“I think we should,” Riq blurted. “Just this once, I’d like to know how things turned out.” He took a deep breath and blew it out. “If nothing else, I need to know what happened to James.”
Dak turned to Sera. “You can’t say no to that!”
Sera shrugged. “Okay. Let’s go forward a bit and see.”
“Yes!” said Dak.
“Listen, Dak,” Riq said. “I already told Sera, but I’m saying this to you, too. If anything, like, happens to me when we leave here, just . . . keep going.”
Dak frowned. “You sound like a funeral. What’s up?”
“Is it your Remnants?” Sera asked.
Riq nodded. “Yeah. But I think they’ll be over as soon as Kissy makes it to Canada. They just leave me feeling a little strange, I guess. Ignore me.”
“I always do,” Dak said, and punched Riq in the arm.
Riq turned his head slowly and raised an eyebrow. “I’ve got thirty pounds on you, little bro, and I will kick your butt if I have to. Don’t push it.”
With a sigh, Sera flopped back in the grass and pulled out the Infinity Ring just as Thomas Garrett walked up.
“I wanted to say good-bye. It was a delight to know you,” he said. “May I ask where you’ll go next? Or is that a secret?”
“Nah, we can tell you,” Dak said. “We’re going a few years into the future to see how things turned out.”
“Any specifics, Mr. Smyth? Mr. Jones?” Sera asked them, poised to enter coordinates into the Ring.
Riq perked up. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “I do have a place in mind.” He pulled the paper from his pocket and handed it to Sera. “Harriet Tubman’s house in Auburn, New York.”
Dak nodded. “That sounds awesome. Make it, like, 1875ish? The ahem ahem war-abibble should be over by then, if you get what I’m saying.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Pick a day, any day.”
Riq looked up. “How about July 4?”
Dak grinned. “That’s absolutely perfect.”
Sera started her calculations
. “Okay,” she said when she was finished. They called out a round of good-byes to Thomas Garrett, and within seconds, they were catapulting through time and space. When they opened their eyes, they were standing in a very hot kitchen where a short woman stood on a small stool in front of a stove, stirring stew in a large pot as if she were expecting guests.
RIQ’S FIRST thought was I’m still here.
He hadn’t been totally sure he would survive the warp. Sera had said once that as long as they were traveling through time, the three of them were anomalies. Being anomalies meant that changes in the time stream wouldn’t affect them, no matter how much history changed around them.
It was good to know she’d been right about that.
Then he realized they were standing smack-dab in the middle of Harriet Tubman’s kitchen. He flashed Sera a look, knowing their sudden appearance could scare the poor woman. “You couldn’t land us on the front step?” he muttered.
She glared and shoved the Infinity Ring at him. “You want to do this? Say the word, smarty-pants.”
Riq sighed. “Good point. Sorry.” He rapped on the wall lightly and cleared his throat.
Harriet Tubman, now in her mid-fifties, turned at the noise. She set down her wooden spoon with a bang and a hand went to her lips. “Oh, my stars,” she said, her voice as rough as a sailor’s. “My adopted son has come home.” She stepped down from her stool and walked to the time travelers, reaching out to take Riq’s hands in her own. “Come in and sit. We’ve been expecting you.”
“We?” asked Dak. He sounded as if he were afraid they’d stepped into another trap.
But the young man who came around the corner had a huge smile on his face. “Riq!” he exclaimed in a booming voice.
Riq hesitated a moment.