A Captive in Time

by Sarah Dreher

  Too late, she realized the thorns oozed a cloudy yellowish substance. Her hands were covered with it. It seeped into her open wounds. Acid. She felt it burn through the skin, the layers of muscle and tendon and nerve, down to and through the bones themselves.

  She screamed.

  “It’s just a dream, Stoner,” a gentle voice said. “You’ll be all right.”

  Strong arms lifted her and pressed a cup of water to her dry, cracked lips. Strong hands cradled her head against a large, soft bosom.

  She tried to open her eyes. They were stuck. “Aunt Hermione?”

  “Don’t try to talk,” Aunt Hermione said. “You need your strength.”

  Her aunt smelled of clove and nutmeg. “Did you quit smoking?” she murmured.

  “Shhh.”

  A soft, cool cloth touched her face, wiping the stickiness from her eyes. It felt fresh and clean.

  She drifted back to sleep.

  Someone pursued her through an unknown city. The streets were dark. Lighted windows glowed flatly, self-contained rectangles of white that cast no radiance to the sidewalks below.

  She tried to appear casual. To get to safety before the shadowy figure behind her knew she was aware of his presence.

  The trouble was, she didn’t know where safety was.

  City. Should be a police station. Should be people hanging out on steps and fire escapes, drinking cheap wine. Going through trash barrels. Homeless people everywhere.

  Everywhere but here.

  The footsteps behind her were sharp and steady.

  She noticed she had begun to pick up her pace, and slowed herself deliberately.

  She passed an alley and stole a quick peek. Nobody.

  Come on, come on. You have to be here.

  She knew they’d help her. At least hide her.

  The footsteps sounded nearer. Rhythmic tap of hard leather on cement. Moving faster.

  She tried to lengthen her stride without increasing her speed.

  The footsteps came on faster.

  She started to run.

  Don’t look back. Keep moving.

  The footsteps were closer, just behind her.

  She stopped. Got ready to fight. Turned.

  No one was there.

  Bewildered, she peered into the darkness. Nothing. Silence.

  She looked around.

  Looked up.

  The thing fell on her from the sky.

  Gwen touched her face with satin hands. Smoothed her hair. Stoner groped for her.

  Gwen held her.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  He could feel the rumble through his sleep, like an earthquake coming, or a boulder rolling down a mountain the way they did back in Tennessee. But he wasn’t in Tennessee, he reminded himself. He was in Kansas Territory, right on the verge of Colorado, and that was a terrible place to be. Bad enough to live in. Ghastly for dying.

  The ground trembled, beating like a giant heart. Cullum opened his eyes.

  Everything around him was white. Brilliant white light that stabbed his eyes.

  They were having some kind of earthquake, that was certain. But it looked as if day had come.

  He couldn’t hear Toby breathing.

  Anxiety sent his blood racing. He got up, pressed his face against the horse’s side.

  It was there, beneath the pounding from above he could just make out the thump-THUMP of the horse’s heart.

  Cullum tugged at the bridle. “C’mon, old boy. I think we better get ourselves out of here.”

  The pounding went on and on. Come to think on it, that didn’t sound like any earthquake he’d ever heard of.

  He tugged again. Toby raised his head, looked at him, lay back down.

  The horse was weak, needed food. He had to find food for him.

  But where? Even if they could get out of here, and weren’t mowed down by that monster pounding out there, every bit of grass for a hundred miles would be covered with snow.

  Damn that thing, huffing away up there. What the hell was ...?

  His mind cleared in an instant.

  It was a locomotive.

  He scrambled around to Toby’s head. Jerked roughly on the reins. “Git up, you old bag of bones, you doggoned useless creature.” He was laughing and crying at the same time. “We’re gonna make it.”

  Toby seemed to understand. His head shot up. He rolled over, tucked his feet under his chest, and with one mighty push launched himself upward.

  His head broke through the snow above. Cullum, still clutching the reins, flew clear of the snow cave.

  The sky was clear and blue. The air was frigid. Sunlight blinded him. He closed his eyes for a second against the light, then opened them slowly, carefully.

  There was the locomotive, stalled in a snowdrift, but still chugging and snorting. And the passenger cars, folks leaning out the windows, wiping clear spots through the frost to stare at him.

  The engineer came running toward him, shovel in hand. The fireman and brakeman glanced up and went back to clearing the tracks.

  “Jesus Christ, man,” the engineer yelled. “You scared us all half to death. Where the hell did you come from?”

  Cullum didn’t reply. He was already wading through the snow, To be at his side, headed toward the next-to-last car. The one where the horses stood in warm, hay-lined stalls and buried their noses in buckets of oats.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  There was day, and night, and day again.

  Someone changed her nightgown and wiped her face. Someone helped her to the bathroom.

  No, not the bathroom. It wasn’t a toilet. It felt like...a potty?

  Had she only dreamed growing up?

  She thought hard, tried to understand. She counted to a hundred. She couldn’t be a child. If she were a child, she wouldn’t be able to count to a hundred.

  A bedpan. She was in a hospital.

  But the air was icy, too cold for a hospital.

  They took her back to her bed. It was warm. Warm and hard, and made a funny crackling sound as she lay back down.

  Terrible facilities for a hospital. It must be the Medicaid cuts. Someone should report it.

  She drifted off to sleep again.

  Water was rushing past her head. A river of water. Pouring. Falling in cascades on rock and hard-packed ground.

  Stoner opened her eyes. The light was gray. Just above her head, so close she could touch them if she had the strength, were the rough plank boards of the roof of Blue Mary’s cottage.

  It was raining. Raining as if the heavens had split. As if someone threw buckets of water at the house. As if someone had turned a fire hose on the roof.

  Maybe the house was burning.

  She tried to get up, but she was too weak.

  She lay back in sleep.

  Voices.

  She listened. The rain had stopped. People were talking, somewhere below her. She couldn’t make out their words. But she recognized the voices. Blue Mary and...

  She couldn’t believe it, but there was no mistaking that velvet tone and southern lilt.

  Gwen.

  Gwen here? Now?

  Then she remembered...how long ago? Days? Weeks? Gwen touching her. Holding her.

  She felt a great, aching yearning. “Gwen,” she said. Her voice was little more than a whisper. “Gwen.”

  They couldn’t hear her. Their voices went on.

  She gathered all her strength. “Gwen.”

  The rhythm of their conversation didn’t break.

  “Please. I need you.” Tears gathered in her eyes, blurring her vision.

  The voices fell silent. They were listening.

  She couldn’t stop crying, couldn’t talk through her tears.

  She heard the creak of the ladder. She was coming. Gwen was coming.

  Gwen came close to her. Touched her face, felt her forehead. Gwen’s hands, soft and strong, took Stoner’s hand.

  Oh, God, she loved those hands.

  She opened her eyes.

&
nbsp; Billy smiled down at her. “How ya’ doin’?”

  “Billy?”

  “You surely did scare us.”

  Stoner frowned, confused. “Billy?”

  The boy gave an embarrassed little laugh. “I thought I was sick, but oh, boy. You were really in a bad way.”

  She shook her head. It looked like Billy. But it didn’t talk like Billy. “Who are you?” she asked at last.

  “Well,” Billy said, “that’s something Mary says we have to talk about. Soon as you’re up to it.”

  “She’s conscious,” Blue Mary called from the bottom of the ladder. “She’s up to it.”

  “I wish someone would explain something,” Stoner said irritably. The sensation of Gwen was fading into memory, leaving her empty and alone.

  Billy ran his fingers across Stoner’s knuckles. Exactly the way Gwen would. She closed her eyes.

  The boy’s hand tightened on hers. “You faint again?”

  “No, I haven’t fainted.” She withdrew her hand from his. “Please don’t do that.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  There was no need to be hard on him. “It reminds me of someone I miss very much, that’s all.”

  “Gwen?”

  She looked at him. “How do you know about Gwen?”

  He shrugged. “You talked a lot about someone named Gwen. When you were in the fever.”

  “Are you going to tell her?” Blue Mary called. “Or am I?”

  “Okay, okay,” Billy said. He hesitated, fingering the edge of the quilt. “Look, I didn’t mean any harm, but I’ve been lying to you.”

  Her heart skipped a beat. “You have?”

  “See, I couldn’t let you know, because...well, it’s kind of complicated.”

  “You can tell her the complicated part later,” Blue Mary prompted. “Say what you have to say and have done with it.”

  “Jeez,” Billy said, “she certainly can be rough at times.”

  “Runs in the family.” She looked at him expectantly.

  “Well, what I got to tell you is...well, I’m not fifteen years old.” He sat in silence.

  “That’s it?”

  “Mostly.”

  “But everything else you told me, about killing your father and not being able to read and write, and wanting to be a teacher? That was all true?”

  “Pretty much.”

  Blue Mary shook the ladder. “Darn you, Billy. Don’t make me come up there.”

  “And-I’m-not-a-boy. There.”

  Stoner stared. “You’re not a boy.”

  Billy blushed deeply. “That’s right. I’m a girl. Okay?”

  A girl? “Okay.”

  “I’m twenty-five, not fifteen. Okay?”

  She felt the grin spread over her face. “Okay.”

  “But you can’t tell anyone. They’ll send me back if they find out.”

  “Back where?”

  “Tennessee.”

  “I thought you said you were from Illinois.”

  “Well, for cryin’ out loud,” Billy said loudly. “Tennessee, Illinois, they’re both back east.” She shook her head. “Do you have to be so precise?”

  Stoner touched the woman’s hand. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  Billy pulled her legs up and wrapped her arms around them and rested her head on her knees. Without the hat to distract her, she could see how delicate Billy’s features were. Especially her eyes. Her eyes were dark blue shading to lavender, the color of a twilight sky reflected in a mountain lake. Her hair was light brown, with strands of red and blonde. It was chopped off shoulder-length, the way the few men she had seen in Tabor wore theirs. “See, if they find me, and they think I’m a boy, maybe they’ll just shoot me dead. But if they find out I’m a girl...”

  “Woman,” Stoner corrected.

  Billy looked at her. “What’s the difference?”

  “Where I come from, we call females your age ‘women’. It’s a sign of respect.”

  “Kinda weird,” Billy said. “But interesting.”

  “If they find out you’re a woman, what will they do?”

  “Put me in an insane asylum. See, girls...women don’t go around killing men unless they’re insane.”

  Stoner stared at her. “Do you really believe that?”

  “Of course I don’t,” Billy said huffily. “I think you’re insane if you don’t kill them. Their skin’s too rough, and they smell bad.”

  “I see.”

  “But they’d call me crazy, anyway.” She glared at Stoner in a way that Stoner found absolutely charming. “And I’d rather be dead than in an insane asylum.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Stoner said. “Though it does seem to me you’d meet some pretty interesting women.”

  Billy snorted. “Think I want to be treated like that? Have you seen what they do to you in those places?”

  “Actually, no. I’m not from… around here.”

  “Yeah,” Billy said. “Mary says you’re from the future or something.”

  Stoner nodded. “That seems to be the general consensus.”

  Billy leaned close to her and dropped her voice. “Listen, does Mary ever strike you as kind of strange?”

  Her hair touched Stoner’s face. It was soft and silky and cool. Without thinking, she reached up and ran her hand through it. So much like Gwen’s hair.

  Billy smiled at her.

  Stoner pulled her hand away quickly. “Yes,” she stammered. “A little strange, but I guess you get used to it… her.”

  “I hear you up there,” Blue Mary shouted from below. “Watch what you say.”

  Billy turned and looked down the ladder. “I said you’re strange,” she called to Mary.

  ”And lucky for you I am,” Blue Mary said. “Now, don’t wear her out.”

  Billy looked at Stoner with a sweet worried look. “How are you feeling?”

  “Just tired,” Stoner said. “I’ll be all right.”

  “When you get well, maybe I could take you out for a drive.” She blushed. “You know, show you the scenery. It’s real pretty down by the river.”

  “That would be nice,” Stoner said. “I didn’t get a chance to appreciate it last time.”

  Billy laughed. She had a warm, easy laugh. Stoner tried to push herself up on one elbow. Her strength gave out and she fell back. “How long have I been like this?”

  “Four or five days. We were getting a little nervous. Well, I was. I thought you might be done for.”

  She remembered snatches of dreams. Remembered someone changing her nightgown. Remembered…” Was it you that... I mean, did you… you know.” She fingered the nightgown. “This.”

  “I helped.”

  Oh, shit.

  Stoner groaned.

  “What’s the matter,” Billy asked.

  “I’m a little self-conscious about...about strangers seeing me undressed.”

  “I don’t know why,” Billy said. “You have a beautiful body.”

  Stoner pulled the quilt over her face.

  “Besides,” Billy went on, a laugh in her voice, “I’d hardly consider us strangers, would you?”

  “I don’t know. Would you?”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “Remember what?”

  Billy tugged the quilt from her head and peeked at her. “Guess I’ll have to tell you sometime. When you’re up to it.”

  She couldn’t bear it. “Mary!!”

  Blue Mary’s face appeared at the top of the ladder. “Now, you stop tormenting that child,” she said to Billy. “She needs her strength.”

  “What’s she talking about?” Stoner begged.

  “She gave you a bath,” Blue Mary said. She shook her head. “I really don’t know what all the fuss is about.”

  “You gave me a bath?!”

  “Yeah,” Billy said, and grinned. “I did everything for you that needed doing.”

  Stoner ducked back under the covers.

  “Hey,” Billy said.

&nb
sp; “Let me die.”

  She tugged at the covers. “Come on, Stoner.”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t mean any harm.”

  “No!”

  “I told you not to tell her,” Blue Mary said. “I told you she’d be embarrassed. Now leave her alone and help me with dinner.”

  Stoner kept her eyes closed until she was certain they’d gone. She saw me naked. She gave me a bath.

  Oh, don’t be silly. There’s nothing wrong with that. Lots of people have seen me naked.

  Yeah? Name five.

  Gwen, and Aunt Hermione, and…

  and?

  ...my parents.

  They don’t count.

  And my first lover, and my lover before Gwen…

  So what’s the big deal?

  She’s a stranger and she saw me naked.

  From the room below she could hear Blue Mary’s voice. “Honest to Goddess, Billy. You’re as silly as an adolescent in love.”

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  The next day she was able to come downstairs, even though it took all her strength. Her knees and arms felt like wet Kleenex.

  Billy watched her, grinning as if Stoner’s recovery were her own personal achievement.

  “God,” Stoner said as she dropped onto the hard seat at the table. “I can’t believe how weak I am.”

  “You’ve had a bad time of it,” Blue Mary said. “No defenses against our brand of influenza, I suppose.”

  She glanced out the window. The plains beyond were snowless, gray. The sky hung like a thin slate-y curtain over the landscape.

  Billy brought her a mug of coffee and sat down opposite and watched eagerly as she drank.

  After a while it began to make her uncomfortable. “You don’t seem as if you were sick at all,” she said.

  Billy shrugged. “I get down low, but come back fast.”

  Blue Mary brought her a plate of fried bacon and beans. The odor awakened a ravenous hunger. “Now, you can eat as much of this as you like, but try to go slow. Your stomach’s probably sensitive.”

  She felt herself turn crimson. “I didn’t throw up, did I? Along with everything else?”