Passenger

by Alexandra Bracken

  IT SEEMED TO NICHOLAS THAT the key to passing through these time gates and landing on your feet lay squarely in the approach, and required a great deal of faith in your balance.

  A confident stride through the rippling air resulted in only the slightest push as you came through to the other side—you emerged at a brisk walk, rather than feeling as if you were being shot from a cannon. There was no way around the disorienting pressure and darkness on the journey, but if your mind knew to expect it, there were ways to prepare for the strike.

  Etta released a soft “Oofph!” as her feet struck the floor, and they were suddenly wrapped in cool, dry air. Nicholas’s grip on her hand tightened as the world fell into place around them.

  They weren’t falling off the side of a cliff. They hadn’t been shot dead on sight, run through by sword or bayonet. And they hadn’t emerged into a crocodile-filled swamp, or in the middle of a crowded market, or for that matter, in a burning building. So he supposed he should be grateful. But he was mostly exhausted.

  He had no way of knowing what time it was, only that it was clearly night; hopefully, the same night as the one they had just left in Cambodia. Distant voices prickled in his ears, the words muffled by distance or cast in a lyrical language he couldn’t decipher. It was as if the air itself had been seasoned with the richest and rarest of spices, so thick he was certain he could taste it on his tongue. The breeze carried other scents that were familiar and strange all at once—there, beneath the warm sweat of beasts of burden and smoke, were notes of a heady, floral fragrance.

  His eyes eventually adjusted to the darkness, well enough for him to make out the shapes around him. The room was large, and there appeared to be an elaborate wooden bed in the far corner, as well as some sort of desk or table, so laden with piles of objects that he couldn’t quite tell what it was.

  Etta fumbled around the room, and with a flash of white, pulled a sheet off of the chair it covered. She did the same with another sheet, uncovering a low table stacked with newspapers and books.

  “Some sort of home?” he ventured. The passage’s gate thrummed behind them. The sound wouldn’t fade entirely, but within an hour it would start to lessen.

  “An apartment,” Etta agreed, stepping closer to the bed. “Here—here, matches.” She held up a small book of them. “Do you see any candles?”

  Matches had yet to be invented in his time, but Julian had showed him how to use them during their travels—how to strike the small strips of wood against the rough strip on the jacket containing them. Clever little buggers. As Nicholas marveled again at this small luxury, singeing multiple fingertips as he located a few half-melted candles, Etta moved toward the shutters lining the far wall.

  “Don’t—” he said, catching her arm. “Not yet.”

  They didn’t need to open themselves up to being caught by someone passing on the street below.

  Etta stepped back, holding her hands in the air. “All right, all right. Should we light a fire?”

  Nicholas glanced toward the small fireplace, but shook his head. They could use the additional glow from the hearth to see, but the smoke might also draw undesirable attention. “Leave it for now. If you’re chilled, I’ll warm you.”

  Etta laughed, pushing him away playfully. What surprised him, perhaps more than his disappointment, was the way her eyes lit at his words, sparking the way the matches had.

  Stop this, he commanded himself, ripping away the nearest bed cloth to reveal a distinctly European leather chair. What did it matter that she was clearly as intrigued as he was, that she’d looked at him as though he was the last treasure to be had in the world? Why be so eager to allow her to capture his heart, when it would lead to precisely one thing: nothing?

  And yet, he was gripped by the images glittering through his mind, flashing like the sunlight on open water: the memory of her melting beneath his hands, how she’d tasted of rain and earth and sweetness—

  There were countless mirrors and portraits to be uncovered, all of which had been taken from their hooks and leaned against the wall, frames and all. English ladies from his time, powdered and pouting; French princesses whose silk gowns seemed to drip from their bodies; fierce Spanish ladies. So the owner clearly recognized beauty when he saw it—tried to collect it and hoard it. He—or she, he supposed—also seemed to love nothing so dearly as landscapes of green pastures. Nicholas made a disgusted face as he turned the next painting around to reveal…yet another scene of sheep idling in a flower-spotted field.

  Leaving the paintings for a moment, he turned to a large bench-size object covered with another cloth; upon whipping off the cloth, he found himself staring into the snarling face and exceptionally long, talon-like teeth of a tiger.

  He fell back onto the ornately woven red rug beneath them and lay on his back, stunned, as a shower of fine dust fell over him.

  “You get that out of your system?” Etta asked, stepping around his prone form. His hand lashed out, closing around her ankle like an iron. The woman was mad if she thought he’d let her take another step forward—

  “It’s dead,” she said, looking down at him with an amused smile. “As gross as it is, it’s been preserved and stuffed to be displayed. Look.”

  He inhaled sharply through his nose as she reached out a hand to stroke its head. As promised, it did not move. It did not blink. The tiger was dead.

  “What are the chances your mother killed and stuffed it herself?”

  “Pretty good, I think.” Etta held up a framed photograph of an older man in the garb of an early twentieth-century explorer, who was holding a rifle. The tiger lay dead at the toes of his boots, and beside it was a grinning, tiny, blond girl—a younger version of the woman in the other photograph he’d seen. Rose.

  And he’d wondered from whom Etta had inherited her casual disregard for danger.

  She hesitated before reaching out to run a hand along its curved spine. The coat was orange, striped handsomely with black all the way down to its clawed paws. Having missed the tiger that Etta had seen in the jungle, Nicholas allowed himself to marvel. He’d read of Europe’s menageries, seen descriptions and etchings of the exotic beasts, but to see one for himself…

  And yet, what right did a man have to take the life of such a powerful creature, to prop up his own esteem?

  “I guess this explains Mom’s connection to Cambodia. And here I was, hoping Benjamin Linden was a Buddhist. I’m going to yell at her for this,” Etta vowed, giving the thing an affectionate pat on the head. “Tigers are endangered now, you know.”

  Well…all right.

  “The older gentleman in this photo is likely your great-grandfather, given what we know about how your mother was raised,” he said, passing it back to her waiting hand. She squinted at it, rubbing a thumb over its dusty face.

  “I can see it,” she said quietly, studying Benjamin Linden’s face. “He has her eyes. Her mouth.”

  Features she had inherited herself. Etta seemed both intrigued and rattled to finally have proof of him—proof that her family existed beyond her and her mother.

  “Alice is right. They should have destroyed it,” Etta said.

  He hesitated a moment before clarifying. “The astrolabe?”

  She nodded, and the now-familiar poison of guilt and dread worked its way through his system; he would have preferred to avoid the topic altogether rather than think about his own deceit, how it would crush her to know he had to bring it to Ironwood.

  “You won’t be able to use it if you do,” he was quick to point out.

  And Ironwood will never let you or your mother escape.

  “I know you’re right, but I can’t see a way out of this without huge consequences. I still have a few more days…not that many, but a few. I just need to figure out how to avoid giving it to Ironwood, but save Mom.” Etta said, sensing his thoughts. “And then, I guess we’ll…disappear.”

  His heart clenched at the word.

  “What about the violin? Perfor
ming?”

  “What about a different future, one I never could have predicted?”

  He drew his legs up, bracing his arms over his knees. Some part of him knew the truth of what Chase had seen—he felt an equality between himself and Etta. But now and then, in moments like this one, when she casually tossed out ideas he didn’t understand and was too ashamed to ask about, he fully realized the differences between their upbringings—how much their worlds had been shaped by where and when they’d been born. She knew things beyond his imagining—what could he give to her, other than history lessons?

  He’d lied to her, of course, about not wanting to know. Nicholas did. Even if it meant living with the knowledge of all that his life lacked. A part of himself he did not recognize, one he’d learned to silence as a boy, began to demand the attention he’d always denied it.

  I want to know. I want to seek. I want to find.

  For the first time since Hall had taken him from that frigid house of terror, he felt the touch of a changing wind blowing through him, pushing him toward a different path. All of these things he desired, he could have; if not on a ship, then by seeking out the passages that could carry him where he wanted to go. And he would have her: the lady with whom he wished to travel.

  He spotted the leather notebook a short distance away, near the foot of the side table; it was embossed with the emblem of the Linden family, their tree, but the interior pages were blank, waiting to be filled with dates and memories. Waiting for a traveler to mark his trips through the passages.

  “This must be one of your family’s homes,” he told her. “Ironwood seized all property belonging to the other families, but it’s possible that, like the passages we used, he doesn’t know that this one exists.”

  Etta spun around slowly, taking in the room, breathing in its air, as if trying to become part of it.

  Nicholas looked back down at the journal in his hand.

  He could return to the Dove—but he doubted the old man would have left his small bag and belongings untouched, if he thought he could somehow use them to control Nicholas. No, he could seek out Chase and Hall one last time to tell them what his intentions were, and then…

  Go.

  He loved the rough beauty of the sea as he loved nothing else in his life, even as it punished him; even as it reminded him of his insignificance in the face of its stormy wrath. It waited, always, for men brave enough to conquer its shimmering skin; for men to use it as their tool to discover fortune, land, themselves. Surely there were places left to be discovered in his own time, islands and kingdoms of ice, routes to be charted that would close the distance between civilizations? Would that not feed the ache he felt inside him at the realization that this was the final clue—that this hunt, this small journey through fear and wonder, was nearly at its end?

  No, he thought, rubbing the back of his hand against his forehead. Who could be satisfied with seeking out the four corners of one small world, when there was the whole of time to be had? No, indeed.

  “Oh, wow…” Etta again broke into his thoughts as she knelt down beside him.

  “And what is that?” he asked.

  She reached for something leaning against the tiger’s hind legs. It was another creature, one that looked like a large rat or mouse; only, it seemed to be able to stand on its hindquarters, and wore red breeches with yellow buttons…and shoes…and gloves?

  Etta shook the dust from it, and then inexplicably hugged it to her chest. “Something that doesn’t belong here,” he guessed.

  She nodded, replacing the stuffed rodent on the floor, and moved on to the remaining sheets, tossing them to the ground while he remained sitting. Nicholas had a perfect view of the lower half of her bare legs. The women of his time kept themselves covered from the tops of their heads to their ankles, and it had taken every ounce of his will and honor not to dwell on the devastatingly smooth skin that had been revealed to him over the past two days.

  The makeshift bandage was beginning to slip down her calf, revealing the edge of the blistered bullet graze. They’d need…what had he been taught about germs and disease? To…sterilize it, with alcohol of some kind. To rewrap it in clean linen, and pray to God he hadn’t scarred her.

  When Etta turned toward him, leaning back against the desk, he wondered at the exhaustion and dismay he saw etched so deeply into her fine features.

  “Whatever is the matter?” Nicholas asked.

  Etta dismissed the question with a shrug.

  “I cannot read your mind,” he said. This was another man’s home, and until they confirmed that it belonged to the Lindens and no one else would come upon it, he wouldn’t be able to shake his discomfort.

  Etta managed a small smile at that. “Sometimes it feels like you can.”

  Their thoughts did head in the same direction often enough, but there were times when Etta remained as mysterious as the stars in the sky. Nicholas pushed himself up off the floor and crossed that short distance to her side again.

  “I don’t know why it upsets me,” she said, fiddling with the ends of the ribbon he’d tied in her hair. Nicholas caught her hand, clasping it between his own. In that moment, she looked so ruffled that he feared she might very well fly out of the window. And of course there was that heady floral scent, driving him half mad, making him think of silky night air, and the moon hanging like an opal at midnight, and—

  “Are all travelers like this?” she said, using her free hand to gesture toward the space around them. “Collectors? Tourists to different eras? Going off to have a laugh and pick up souvenirs to show off? Tokens from events”—she picked up a scrap of parchment—“I mean, someone bought themselves a ticket for passage on the Titanic, and there’s a box over there labeled ‘Pompeii’ that I’m not even going to open. Is there a point to it, other than to amuse themselves? Sophia claims they protect the timeline, but it just seems like they’re protecting their interests.”

  It did look as though the room was just a collection of trophies from a scattered life. They had nothing in common beyond the obvious—they belonged to different eras. Clocks made in strange, clean-lined styles; swords mounted to the walls; porcelain trinkets; silk robes and garments beyond his wildest fancies; brittle broadsheets and newspapers, dried to yellow crisps—all stood beside each other, as if the mixture was the most natural thing in the world. It was either a hoard of the family’s treasure, or their own personal museum.

  “Is that so wrong?” Nicholas asked. “Amusement is a privilege few are granted. It’s hardly a crime to seek it out. Even you’ve felt the awe of traveling. Do you not qualify it as a pursuit of knowledge?”

  “Right,” she said. “But I can’t help but think that that’s not what the passages were meant for. There were generations of travelers who made them, right? How did they discover how to do it, and why did they stop?”

  He released her hand, his mind already at work scraping up some sort of weak segue to a safer conversation. She was too clever by half, and Nicholas knew that she would see through his deceit too clearly when he took the astrolabe out of her hands. It was obvious to him now that Etta had no plans of giving it back to Ironwood; he had a feeling the plan she was keeping to herself was as as dangerous as it was daring—that she would try to use it to return to her time, and save her mother herself. And while he could admire her courage, and lament her recklessness, Nicholas needed her to see how foolish it was to believe she could ever escape Ironwood. As it stood, the old man would know that his leaving without permission was hewing to the spirit of their agreement—following her at any cost—so long as he returned with the astrolabe. But how could Etta be so certain of his forgiveness for this act of defiance?

  She would hate him for double-crossing her, and he could live with that. But he could not live with knowing she was in constant jeopardy. That Ironwood had stamped out her bloom and buried her. This was the only way he could save her, her mother, and his future that didn’t end with one or all of them dead.

>   Etta would see that. In time.

  Perhaps.

  “Why do you think they went?” she asked, her eyes a soft, sleepy blue.

  If the question had come from any other person, he might have dismissed it with a wave and carried on with his business; but it mattered to him that she sincerely desired his opinion, even knowing who he was. He recognized the want, as it mirrored his own.

  Want. His exhaustion had boiled him down to his basest instincts. He wanted her lips, her touch, her esteem, her mind.

  Inside her. Beside her. With her. Impossible, he reminded himself.

  Perhaps it was a blessing that he couldn’t cross paths with himself, lest he be tempted to shoot himself before making the deal with Ironwood.

  “What man can resist the temptation of riches waiting to be found?” he said, running his thumb along the carved edge of a dark wooden desk. “Or woman, for that matter?” he added, thinking of Sophia.

  “Maybe,” Etta said slowly, turning to sort through the papers on the desk.

  “You disagree?”

  “No, not really,” she said. “I’m sure that was motivation for most of them, especially the ones who came later on. But the first travelers didn’t know what they would find, did they? That takes a lot of courage, to charge into the unknown.”

  “Or blackmail and fear,” he said pointedly.

  She laughed. “I don’t think that was it…at least, I hope it wasn’t. These were people who overcame the impossible; they figured out a way to break every law of science. They opened up whole worlds within their own. Maybe they saw themselves as explorers, or scholars. Or maybe they saw it as a kind of calling to find out what lay ahead and make adjustments.” The force behind her words increased as she spoke, driving her point forward. “Maybe Alice was right—they made too many changes, and everything got out of hand.”