by Romilly West
He moved closer to her, regarding her with a tender expression that warmed her heart. “Don't be afraid,” he said gently. “There's no time in life for fear. It's so short and goes so quickly. Never, ever be afraid to live your life. That's what life is for, after all. Living. Really living, like you mean it.”
She smiled at him. “I guess so.”
Beside the sofa was an end table, and on the table sat a music box. It looked exactly like the one whose music she'd been listening to before she'd fallen asleep. “Beautiful Dreamer.” She couldn't pull her gaze away from the music box. Funny to see it here, in this house. It seemed to grow larger until it eclipsed everything in her vision, and she stared at it, wide-eyed, then fell back on her bottom with a thump. When she recovered herself enough to look around again, David was gone. The McIntosh's lovely old house with its elaborate, old-fashioned décor was also gone.
Kendra found herself sitting on the floor of the bedroom in her apartment, staring down at the music box, which she'd dropped in her lap. Oh, David's tender expression as he had encouraged her to cast fear aside and go for her dreams. How she had wanted more of that, every additional moment she could get! She hadn't wanted to wake up so soon. Strange, though, she didn't feel as if she'd been asleep. Despite the late hour, she didn't even feel sleepy anymore.
She put the music box on the floor in front of the big plastic storage container, then went into the living room, where her laptop computer sat on her work desk. After bringing up a search engine, she typed the search terms “David Rockwell,” “doctor,” and “St. Sebastian, Missouri.” Just a hunch, nothing more. She supposed she was being silly.
Not so fast.
Incredulity and delight rose in Kendra as she scanned the search results and clicked on a few of the links to read more. There had really been a David Rockwell in St. Sebastian, Missouri, a doctor who had studied medicine in St. Louis and who had practiced in St. Sebastian in the 1880s, 1890s, and the early 1900s. In the 1900s, a young protégée had taken over for David in St. Sebastian, and he had then moved to Boston where he joined the faculty of Harvard Medical School and had gone on to spearhead major advances in medical practice and human well-being, such as the blood typing system and the discovery of the importance of vitamins in nutrition.
David had been a real, living, breathing human being. Somehow, some way, she'd gone back in time to meet him and talk to him, both now and as a child. The common thread was the music box. She had cranked the handle of the box, and somehow, listening to its music had thrust her into the past. The honest-to-goodness past.
All she knew right now was that she had to see him again.
###
She went back into the bedroom and picked up the music box. Time for more “Beautiful Dreamer.” This time, she knew she wasn't dreaming. She was making this choice with full, conscious will. She wanted to know David better. Spend more time with him. He drew her to him more than anyone she had ever met, and she couldn't ignore the pull. Maybe his era was where she truly belonged. Goodness knew, she had never really felt at home in the modern world. Taking hold of the handle, she smiled and started to turn it, but on the first rotation, just as the music started playing, the handle broke off.
Kendra stared down at the handle she held, incredulous, unbelieving.
Her eyes welled with tears. She wouldn't be going back. It wasn't as if she could easily lay her hands on a replacement handle for a late 1800s-era music box. And even if she could somehow manage to find one, fixing it would be tricky. And supposing she could fix it or find someone who could, there still was no guarantee that a mechanical solution would give the box back its magic.
No, she almost certainly wouldn't be seeing David again. It hurt, because she'd felt so powerfully drawn to him. Not only to him, but also to his time. In her heart, she knew she wouldn't complain at all—or very little—if the music box had somehow pulled her to David's time and she hadn't been able to come back here to the modern world at all, if she had been required to live her entire life in David's time, maybe even by David's side.
She sighed. Then she took a deep, resigned breath.
Enough dreaming, even while awake.
Traveling back to David's time to escape her problems in her time would have been too easy, she supposed. Escape was seldom a satisfactory answer to life's difficulties. She needed to learn to solve her problems here, develop her confidence, and learn how to sit squarely in life's saddle and face the road ahead instead of looking into the past, wanting some other situation, some other time, some other era.
She packed the music box away, tucking the old newspaper around it, and put the dog-eared cardboard box that contained it and Grandma's jewelry into the closet. The box of blessings, like her mind, would always hold its mementos of David Rockwell and his time. It could keep its treasures and protect them well. But now, it was time for Kendra to move forward, to create the life she wanted, to take the inspiration she'd received from David and run with it in the direction of an authentic life in which she would, as David had said, live truly, like she meant it.
“Beautiful Dreamer” had been her song, as it had been David's. Both of them were dreamers, and the song, played by the music box, had brought them together, however inexplicably and mysteriously, to meet, learn from each other, and grow.
But it was time for Kendra to move on. Time to stop dreaming, and time to start doing.
###
Guitar Traveler
Lucy thought it was ridiculous, how much more freedom men had than women. Exactly why did people say she couldn't ride on a Mississippi riverboat and play guitar and sing like Uncle Jeb? He'd done it for twenty years, and every time he visited the family, he was filled to the brim with stories of excitement, adventure, and fun. From how he talked, people on the riverboat loved his music. He made a good living, too. It was what Lucy McCoy wanted to do to earn her keep, not become a schoolteacher or get married and have a house full of children to run a farm. Playing guitar on a Mississippi Riverboat had been her dream for as long as she could remember, but Ma and Pa said it was impossible, that she must be realistic, that carousing around on a riverboat with no-account gamblers and other unsavory sorts was unthinkable and improper for a young lady like her.
It wasn't fair. If she were a man, they wouldn't say such silly things.
Ma and Pa had never encouraged her, goodness knew, but Uncle Jeb had often told her—out of earshot of her folks, of course—that she was so good at playing the guitar and singing that she could write her own ticket. Write her own ticket to where, she'd never quite figured out, but she appreciated Uncle Jeb's faith in her, his belief that she could do whatever she wanted regardless of whether or not she was a woman.
Maybe she should run away.
The thought scared her, but maybe it truly was the only way out of the corset that life was trying to squeeze her in.
A couple of years ago, her friend Mary had run away and had headed out West to Colorado territory because she had gotten tired of her parents pushing her to marry the boy next door. Lucy had been the only person who knew what Mary had been planning. She had been excited for her friend but kind of nervous, too, because the way Mary had told it, she wanted to go to a town so new and wild that it didn't even have a telegraph office. Mary had said she was sick and tired of living in a place where everyone knew everyone else's business. Lucy had received just one letter from Mary the whole two years she'd been gone. The last Mary had written, she'd told Lucy she was working in a saloon and having, as she put it, a grand old time. Lucy had wondered about working in a saloon herself, since she knew they hired people who could sing and make music. But no, riding up and down a river sounded a lot more pleasant than spending each and every evening in some dusty old saloon.
Lucy felt sad at the thought of leaving Ma and Pa and Willie and Eddie, her two little brothers, but she'd become bored to the point she thought she must be sleepwalking even when she was awake. Ma kept pressing her to pay more attention to
Jonathan, a young man with whom Lucy had grown up. Jonathan thought the sun rose and set on Lucy, but to Lucy, he held no romance or allure at all. Jonathan was nice, sure, but he was dull as dirt. He even wanted to be a preacher. She couldn't settle down at eighteen with someone like Jonathan. If she did, she'd surely die of boredom before she made it to twenty years old. So she simply had to work up her nerve and run away. Start a new life.
Maybe tomorrow.
For now, she'd play her guitar. She loved this late time of night, so peaceful, with plenty of space to be herself. She'd pick out tunes on her guitar oh-so-softly, and the music would help her work up her courage for tomorrow morning, bright and early. By the warm light of the oil lamp she kept on her desk, Lucy sat on the edge of her patchwork-quilted bed and settled her guitar in her lap. If she ran away to St. Louis, this guitar would have to come along with her. Uncle Jeb had given her the guitar when she was eight years old. No matter where she went or what she did with her music, she couldn't imagine not playing this very guitar.
Softly, gently, she plucked out the song “Buffalo Gals” and sung the lyrics in a near-whisper so she wouldn't wake up Willie or Eddie, because if she did, they were sure to run to Ma and Pa and tattle on her, saying, “Lucy's singing in her room again.” She didn't want to get the whole house in an uproar. As she softly sang the lyrics about the buffalo gals dancing to the light of the moon, she glanced toward her window, and through it, she spied the moon, full tonight as though giving her a special sign, a beacon to light her way, a promise of light on her unknown path.
As she gazed at the moon through her window, she started feeling swimmy-headed, as though she were going to faint. Absurd. She'd never fainted in her life. She wasn't a fainting kind of girl. When she was younger, she'd been able to keep up with any of the boys in town, running and climbing trees better than they could. She kept playing through the strange feeling, her music a strong thread, just as it had always been an unbreakable thread in her life, no matter what else was happening. Everything but the moon and her music had blurred, had become uncertain. All she could hear was her music; all she could see was the moon. Perhaps she was more tired than she'd thought and shouldn't have stayed up so late. The morning stagecoach left at eight o'clock, which meant she'd have to get up at sunrise. She'd be short on sleep, but she'd had no idea she was this fatigued.
She closed her eyes, and when she opened them, the moon looked much closer. She felt like she was zooming nearer and nearer to the moon. Pretty soon, all she saw was a bright, moon-colored glow, not even the moon itself, only its color and its shine. Then the light of the moon separated out into the colors of the rainbow: blue, yellow, green, red, purple, pink, orange. Each orb looked like a separate moon, each one a different color, each much brighter than the moon. She'd never seen anything like these lights before in her life. But now, they were pretty much all she could see.
Gradually, though, her sight returned to normal. She found herself in an enormous building, with a sea of people thronged in front of her. She was playing the strangest guitar she'd ever seen in her life. It made an ear-splitting, incredibly loud sound, squealing and squawking like a crazed rooster. Somehow, she was playing the guitar for all these people who were out in front of her, looking at her, throwing their hands in the air and making strange signs with their fingers. Other people were with her, a fellow with a strange guitar similar to the one she held, another young woman with something that resembled a piano but was much smaller, and a young man beating on a group of different sized drums that surrounded him.
What music! If it could indeed be called music.
Exactly what had she stumbled into? And how could she get out of here?
Lucy tried to move, but it was as if someone or something else controlled her body. No, not her body at all. Somehow, she'd become taller. Her hair was cropped short, and her head felt lighter without her waist-length hair that she usually kept coiled up in a braid. Most importantly, her fingers—or the fingers that came with this body—knew exactly what they were doing in playing this strange guitar. Then, without knowing how it was happening, she started singing, but her voice sounded completely different, raspy, loud and powerful. It sounded incredibly bizarre to Lucy, really kind of unpleasant, but the people listening were enjoying it and even dancing around in a most disconcerting and suggestive way.
A thought came to Lucy. Electric guitar.
Lucy had no idea what electric meant. As she tried to focus in where the thought had come from, she started picking up other thoughts: hell of an encore, one more song, and the crowd tonight is absolutely amazeballs.
What kind of word was amazeballs?
This was someone else's body, and it was as if she were taking a ride in someone else's mind.
Then came an impression of a name. Janie Parks. It was a young woman named Janie Parks who was gyrating around up here in front of that mass of people, playing the strange, squealing guitar under the infinitely odd, glowing, colored lights. Though she didn't know how she'd done it, she had picked up Janie Parks from the same mind that had produced amazeballs.
Rock concert, came another thought. Well, she didn't see any rocks, and she couldn't imagine what rocks had to do with music, but this was unlike any concert she'd ever experienced or heard of. Not that she'd been to real concerts in her small hometown in 1870, other than little shindigs people put on for church. But she'd heard about real concerts from people who'd been to them in St. Louis and Kansas City.
2015, came another thought.
The year, perhaps?
No. Impossible.
But the mind to which she was attached said yes.
Fear and excitement in equal measure nearly swept Lucy's thought processes away. Could she be getting a glimpse into the far future, one-hundred thirty-five years from now? She understood very little of what she saw or heard, but one thing she knew: this Janie Parks, whoever she was, totally captivated her audience with her guitar playing and singing, and while the music sounded incredibly odd and disharmonious to Lucy's ears, she couldn't deny that she loved the sense of power and confidence coursing through Janie, brimming with pride in her strength, skills, and the full force of her personality and appeal. Lucy had never been taught that women could be this forceful, though she, herself, had a strong personality and had always been chastised for it.
If this was a glimpse of 2015, she was getting a peek at a future where maybe, just maybe, women were no longer discouraged from being strong, capable, and driven.
###
The hot lights made her sweat, but Janie couldn't care less. Sweating was part of performing, and Janie lived to perform. She poured out her songs as profusely as she poured out her sweat. The stage lights were hotter than hell, but it was okay, since when she performed, she felt hot as hell, too, and much more than just in the sense of temperature.
Her guitar licks were hotter than fire, too, and right now, she launched into a smokin' one. Then the rest of the band—together, they were known as Psychedelic Now—joined in, and holy hell, did they ever thump. They thumped the ceiling right off the stadium. What a rush.
Always, always, what a rush. Music—and the touring life—was what Janie lived for.
As she and the band played the chorus of “Seize the Moon,” Janie's head started feeling fuzzy. Yeah, she was pushing pretty hard. Psychedelic Now was on tour, and this was their fourth consecutive night playing to a huge audience, and she hadn't slept much any of those nights, since after a big performance, she was too wired to rest. The tired, fuzzy feeling came on her sometimes while she performed, but it didn't slow her down. Nothing slowed her down. She'd play this last song, the final encore, then she and the band would do a meet and greet with their fans. It would be a long time until Janie could rest on the tour bus, but that was all right. She wouldn't think of living any other way.
The fuzzy-headed feeling got worse, and Janie found herself thinking some very weird things, such as I'm downright hornswaggled by those strang
e lights, which look like stars in the sky or the moon in the sky, only they're much brighter and of different colors. And why should a guitar sound like a demented rooster? Janie bit back the urge to laugh. A demented rooster? Good grief, she must be more pooped then she had thought. It was as though someone else entirely were in her head, thinking these crazy-assed thoughts. And hell, Janie didn't do drugs, and she didn't drink too much, either, so that couldn't be why she was wigging out like this.
More tired than she'd thought. Yeah, that had to be it.
Buffalo Gals, won't you come out tonight.
What?
Janie played another lead guitar lick to reprise the chorus one more time before the final bad-ass chord of the song. The chorus had nothing to do with buffaloes. Where had that tune and that odd lyric come from, anyway? She'd never seen a buffalo in her life.
Come out tonight, come out tonight.
Hell. This was nuts.
Buffalo Gals, won't you come out tonight.
Something about that tune and that lyric sounded familiar. An old song, she supposed, but why the hell was it running through her head right now?
She and Psychedelic Now launched into the chorus of “Seize the Moon” for the last time, giving it everything they had. Sweat flew off Janie's forehead as she jammed to the music while playing, and while cranking out the power chords, she stared into the colored lights above.
Strange lights. Why should such strange lights be found inside a building?