A Kiss in Time

by Alex Flinn

  “Good! I’ll enjoy the quiet.”

  “I shall…I shall go home!”

  “Good! Go! That’s exactly what I want!”

  She stops walking for a second, and I think she’ll turn around, that I’ll actually be rid of her. I keep walking. Maybe I should throw her jewelry box on the ground. If I don’t, she’ll probably accuse me of stealing it.

  But a moment later, I hear her footsteps, running to catch up.

  “Forget something?” I say.

  “I cannot go home. You know I cannot.”

  “Why not? They’ll get over it. You’re their little princess.”

  “They will not ‘get over it’! All is ruined! I must go with you—distasteful though the prospect may be.” She starts walking.

  I’m distasteful. I like that. I’m not the one who begged her to go with me. “I could just ditch you, you know? I don’t have to take you with me.”

  She gasps. “A gentleman would.”

  “A gentleman of your time, maybe. They sound like saps. In my time, we don’t think girls are fragile flowers. We think they should be responsible if they mess up—just like guys.”

  “All right, then. You will take me with you because, if you do not, I shall scream. I shall run to the nearest house and cry to the people there—my subjects—and they will come out with pitchforks and torches. They will hold you until my father comes.”

  She has a good point, I guess—even though she makes it like a brat. I look around, and I can see houses full of people—extremely well-rested people who will probably rush to defend their princess, since they don’t know what she’s really like.

  And, the fact is, I shouldn’t have kissed her. I know it’s wrong to take advantage of girls who are passed out. If I hadn’t done it, I wouldn’t be in this mess. So, okay, I’ll take her across the border. That’s it, though. After that, she’s on her own.

  So I say, “Okay. Come on. But take back the jewelry box. I don’t want anyone to think I stole it if they catch us together. And go faster.”

  She starts to protest but then says, “Oh, all right.”

  We keep walking. I wonder how far we are from the border or whatever that giant hedge is.

  I’m about to ask Talia when she says, “Why did you kiss me?”

  “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t know I’d wake you.”

  “That is not what I meant. I meant why did you kiss me? I was supposed to be awakened by my true love’s kiss, and then we were supposed to marry.”

  “I got that.”

  “So if you did not love me, why did you kiss me? Someone else might have, if you hadn’t.”

  I hear her implication, someone better. I shrug.

  “What does that mean?”

  I forgot she can see in the dark. “I don’t know. I just wanted to. In my time, we sometimes just kiss for fun.”

  She doesn’t answer for a minute. Then we both say, “I like our way better.”

  She reaches toward me to touch my forehead. Her hand is cool and soft. “Does it hurt very badly, where you hit the tree?”

  I pull away. I don’t want her touching me, even though it feels good. “Ouch.”

  I want to ask Talia why she kissed me back, if it was so horrible, but I’m not speaking to her. Besides, maybe someone will hear. Someone with a big dog. Or a dragon or something. So we trudge along, and the only sound I can hear is my feet hitting the dirt and the dirt hitting my feet, over and over with no light in sight.

  After about a thousand more footsteps, we reach the hedge.

  Chapter 6:

  Talia

  I am trapped in a bramble bush and have been for the past hour! I am bruised. I am scratched. I am bleeding. I can see nothing on any side. I hear nothing but my thoughts.

  And Jack is no closer to falling in love with me than before. If anything, it is worse. When I tried to touch his forehead—his forehead!—he pulled away. He must think me a very silly young girl.

  I am a very silly young girl.

  Father loathes me. Mother is disappointed. My suitors-to-be are dead.

  And now I am stuck in a thicket with a boy from a country of which I have never heard, who is wearing a costume suspiciously resembling brightly colored undergarments.

  And I have reason to believe that everyone else where we are going will be dressed thus.

  A thorn nearly jabs me in the eye.

  “Ouch!”

  “I told you it was prickly. You have to go in the direction the branches grow.” Jack has been pushing ahead of me, doing a poor job of parting the branches so I can make my way through. The oaf obviously has no idea how a princess should be treated.

  “This isn’t even as big as it was when we first came through it. It seems to have shrunk.”

  “Yes. That was part of Flavia’s spell. She said that after the spell was broken, the kingdom would become visible to the world again. I daresay the hedge is shrinking.”

  Jack does not answer this. I do not think he believes in fairies. Or spells. Or, certainly, that he is my destiny. Still, he has taken me with him. I should be patient, lest he leave me in the middle of all this. And he is to be my true love, no matter what he thinks.

  “I apologize for complaining,” I say. “It—this hedge—is not what I am used to.”

  “I think you should go back.”

  I note that he does not say that we should go back, only me. He wishes to be rid of me, like everyone else.

  “You know,” he continues, “it’s not going to be easy out there. It would be better if you went home.”

  I sigh. “It will be difficult anywhere, but I prefer to go somewhere where no one knows me. I want to go somewhere princesses do not exist.”

  “Yeah, sure you do,” he says.

  “It is true.” At least, I think it is, although it will be hard to be a commoner. They have to do a great deal of work, and sometimes they smell bad. “I want to go someplace where everyone is not angry with me, then.”

  He laughs. “I get that. People are always mad at me, too. They have this weird idea that I’m a slacker.” And then, suddenly, he stops pushing. “Hey!”

  “What?”

  Jack moves aside and draws my hand toward him. “We made it.”

  I emerge from the brush. I can see his face because, even though it is still nighttime, there are lights in the distance, lights almost like daylight but twinkling like stars.

  It is as he said. It is wondrous!

  We have walked at least a mile since pushing through the hedge. Rather than bringing my jewels, I might have been better off stealing a sturdy pair of boots. But I dare not complain. Finally, we reach the edge of the wilderness, and Jack says, “We should find someplace to hide you until morning.”

  “Hide? Why?”

  “This may come as a shock to you, but in the twenty-first century, girls don’t dress like that. It’ll freak people out.”

  I examine Jack’s attire and shudder to imagine what ladies must wear in his time. Brightly colored corsets, perhaps?

  “I cannot wait here,” I say. “What if they see me?”

  “If you hear someone coming, you could hide.”

  With no other argument, I voice my greatest—my real—fear. “How do I know that you will not abandon me here?”

  He shrugs. “You don’t. I was thinking about it, actually.”

  “You were?” There is nothing I can do if he leaves. Nothing. Now that we have escaped, I cannot make him stay.

  “Yeah, but I’m not going to. If I’d wanted, I could have left you in the bushes. Or back there, when you were walking so slowly because of your shoes. But I didn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  He shrugs. “Don’t know. I feel sort of sorry for you, I guess. Besides, this is the most adventure I’ve had since I got to Europe.”

  “Truly?” Despite myself, I thrill at this flattery. I have spent little time in the company of boys. But what if it is merely a trick to get rid of me? He is being nice now, b
ut I still remember that he called me a brat.

  “I won’t leave. I feel sort of…responsible.” He thinks of something and reaches into his pocket. “Here. Take this.”

  A present! I take the object from him.

  “It’s a telephone,” Jack says. “You can talk to people on it.”

  I recognize it from before. “But it did not work.”

  “It will now. Watch.” He takes it from me once again and presses several numbers. He waits.

  “Travis,” he says. “Her Royal Highness wishes to speak to you.” A pause. “What? Tell them I’m puking my brains out. I had some bad crème brûlée last night…. I just told you, I’m with Talia…we ran away after she got me out of the dungeon…dungeon…. It’s not like you did very much to help me when I was trapped in a dungeon…. Soon. Okay. Just…here. Talk to her. I’m showing her how to use the phone.” He hands me the object…the telephone.

  “Hey, Talia.”

  I shriek and drop it. It bounces once, then falls to the ground. Jack grabs it.

  “What’s the matter?” Jack says.

  “Your telephone! Your friend Travis is inside it.”

  Jack shakes his head. “Geez.”

  “Is it…witchcraft? I expected him to sound far away, but he is inside it!”

  Jack speaks into the telephone. “You still there, Trav? She’s freaking out.” He looks at me. “He’s not in the phone.”

  “He is.”

  “Nah.” Into the phone, he says, “Tell her where you are, Trav.” He hands it to me.

  “I’m back at the hotel, trying to sleep for once. I gave your guys the slip last night. They couldn’t get through the hedge with that horse-drawn carriage. And then, when I tried to tell the police to come back and get Jack, they didn’t believe me about Euphrasia.”

  “They knew nothing about Euphrasia,” I say. I look at Jack, and he shrugs, then takes the phone from me.

  “Cover for me, Trav, huh? I’m leaving her with the phone. Don’t let anyone call me. Okay?” A pause. “A few hours…. Hey, can you call it once, so I can show her how it works?”

  He hands it back to me.

  An instant later, the phone begins to jump about in my hand, and another man’s voice—not Travis’s—begins to shout from it. He sounds so angry.

  “Do it to me! Do it to me!”

  I cannot help it. The phone leaps from my hand, and I begin to scream. “Who is that? What is he saying?”

  Jack catches it. He speaks into it. “Trav, you there? Yeah, she’s a little freaked around technology. Call back in a sec and I’ll put it on vibrate…yeah, I know.”

  I have the distinct impression these young men are making jokes at my expense.

  “You need to lighten up,” Jack says.

  “Lighten? Nothing is heavy.”

  “It’s an expression. It means chill…don’t take everything so seriously.” Jack does something to the phone, then hands it back to me. “Okay. It’s gonna move around. When it does, don’t throw it. Just open it up, say hello, and don’t throw it. Okay?”

  I nod.

  “What are you not going to do?”

  “Throw it.” I smile. He thinks me a simpleton. Perhaps I am.

  The blessed thing commences vibrating and, once again, I am seized with the urge to toss it aloft. I restrain myself. “What now?”

  “Open it.”

  I do.

  “Now hold it to your ear and say ‘yo.’”

  I hold it to my ear. “Yo?”

  “’Sup, Talia? Will you tell Jack he owes me big-time?”

  This I repeat to Jack, although I have no idea what it means. He shrugs and checks his watch. “We should go. Say good-bye to Travis.”

  “Good-bye.”

  “Now, close it up.”

  Jack finds me a place in some trees. He buries my jewels under some leaves, in case of robbers. It must be very dangerous in Jack’s time, if a young princess cannot go out safely in her gown and jewels. He leaves the telephone. “Don’t answer if anyone else calls.”

  “How shall I know?”

  Jack begins to explain some new, difficult concept that, apparently, even a buffoon like Travis has mastered in Jack’s time. My eyes glaze over, as they do when Lady Brooke reads to me from the Reverend Phelps’s Sermons for Young Ladies. Jack must see it, for he says, “Forget it. No one’s going to call, anyway.”

  And then he leaves.

  With no book or other form of entertainment, I while the time away by listening to the calls of birds. When I was little, Father taught me to pick out the tune of a sparrow, the morning song of a lark. I miss Father and Mother. Still, as I watch the sun journey higher up on the horizon, I appreciate that, for only the second time in my entire life, I am alone, blessedly alone, with no one to tell me what to do or what to wear, no one to have to be polite to. Nothing.

  But I do not wish to be alone, not entirely. Now that I am finally alone, it feels…lonely.

  Soon, the lark’s song ceases. Hyperion continues his journey across the sky, and I become aware of other sounds, not merely birds, but a cacophony of something like metal clanking together. It is like nothing I have ever heard in Euphrasia. Suddenly, I realize I am afraid to know what it is.

  Never have I been afraid before. I miss home. I even miss Lady Brooke.

  I could return.

  The castle is waking, noticing that I am not there. Soon, they will send out search parties. There will be panic, accusations made, rewards offered for the safe return of their much-beloved princess. It is like something in a book.

  And if I creep back through the bushes and am found, scraped and battered after many hours’ absence, Father may be too relieved to be angry. All will be forgiven.

  And I shall spend the remainder of my days under the constant supervision reserved for little children and the feeble-minded.

  No. I can never go back, only forward. I must go to Florida, to my destiny.

  I stare at the horizon once again, and my vision blurs. I have been up all night, rescuing Jack, fighting the brambles. Perhaps it would not be a terrible idea to close my eyes a spell….

  I am awakened by vibrations. At first, I jump, believing someone has found me. Then I remember. The telephone. Do not throw it. I pick it up, open it. I see a word. Amber. Amber? What is Amber? A jewel? I press the button.

  “Hello?”

  “Who is this?” a female voice demands.

  It is surely not Jack. What am I to do?

  “Hello?” the voice repeats.

  I recover myself. “Yes?”

  “Who is this?”

  “Talia,” I say, leaving out the princess part.

  “Where’s Jack?”

  “I do not know, exactly. He went to purchase clothing for me, you see, and—”

  “He went to buy you clothes?”

  “Yes.”

  “What time is it there?”

  Has this angry young lady called Jack’s telephone strictly to ascertain the time? “Have you no clock?”

  “Listen.” The voice is extremely loud, and I am forced to hold the telephone away from my ear. “I don’t know who you are, or why you have Jack’s phone, but he is my boyfriend, and—”

  Boyfriend? What is a boyfriend? Perhaps it is something like a beau. “Is he engaged to you, then?” I hope not.

  “What? No. Of course not.”

  “Oh, what a relief. He is my true love, and you do not sound very nice.”

  “What? Listen, you…”

  And then, strangely enough, she calls me a female dog.

  She continues talking. She is vile and coarse. And then I realize that Jack told me not to speak with anyone else, and here I am, speaking.

  “I beg your pardon, what did you say your name was?”

  “I didn’t. It’s Amber.”

  “Amber, I cannot go on being insulted by you. Jack may be trying to call.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “We have run away together. I
must go.”

  I close the phone as Jack taught me.

  A moment later, it begins to vibrate again. This time, however, I see the name Amber and know not to answer it. I am quite proud of myself for having learned this.

  It is close to noon now. I cannot go back to sleep, and the sun is blazing. Why do we wear so many clothes?

  Jack has not called.

  Perhaps he has abandoned me to be eaten by wolves or whatever is making that noise.

  Perhaps I should leave.

  Perhaps I should go into the city and find a bus—whatever that may be—and sell my jewels myself and live on my own.

  Perhaps I—

  “Hey.”

  It is him.

  “Oh, thank goodness! I thought you had left me to die!”

  “I wouldn’t do that.” He hands me a small sack of some sort, made of a smooth blue material. It has writing on it which I do not understand. GAP.

  “What is this?”

  “Your clothes.”

  “They fit in there?”

  It is more horrible than I imagined.

  Jack laughs. “Girls don’t wear ball gowns anymore, Princess—not even to balls.”

  I open the sack. The horror continues. Men’s trousers, a green piece of fabric, and two objects which might be some sort of tools. How am I to make Jack fall in love with me when I shall be dressed in such ugly clothing?

  “I will be disguised as a man, then?” I ask, holding up the trousers. Jack glances at my bosom and shakes his head.

  “They’re women’s clothes. Try them on. You’ll look hot.”

  “With so little fabric, I shall more likely be cold.” But I hate to hurt his feelings, so I say, “Very well. Where is my dressing room?”

  He gestures toward the trees. “I’ll turn around.”

  “See that you do.”

  It is very difficult to dress without a lady’s maid. There are so many buttons to unbutton, stays to unlace, and of course I cannot ask Jack for assistance. When I am finally done, I am quite winded. I put on the little shirt (at least it is green), then the trousers. Finally, I add the tools, which are apparently meant as shoes.

  I stand a moment, allowing the breeze to touch my naked arms. I would be quite comfortable, were I not worried that Jack has dressed me up as a hedge whore.