What the Moon Saw

by D. L. Koontz

  This morning, Libby found Andrew at that same quiet corner table, his black hair mussed and dark semi-circles below his eyes. Beneath a sports coat with patches on the elbows, he wore faded chinos and a wrinkled white shirt. She’d never seen him looking so beleaguered and unkempt. Her pride conjured a vision of him pacing in his townhouse, waiting for her call, plagued with worry.

  He stood as she approached the table. The effort annoyed her. Whereas before, she’d found the chivalric gesture charming, it now served as a reminder that he was from another time, and that before long, she might be describing herself in like manner.

  He leaned in to kiss her cheek, but she tilted it away and dropped into a chair opposite him facing the window. Outside, the sun shot beams of a lazy, muted yellow, and pedestrians went about their business. And why wouldn’t they? They would still be here tomorrow and the day after that, and...

  Andrew had already purchased a mug of coffee for her. She slid it from the seat beside him to the seat she’d chosen.

  His eyes revealed his hurt.

  “Libby, I’m just the messenger,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I love you. I want to save you.”

  She exhaled a deep sound and looked around, an effort to collect her thoughts. The café was busier than usual. A young couple chatted over coffee and pastries, their child played with a digital gadget beneath a neighboring table. A businessman flipped the pages of a thick document, and a frizzy-haired lady wearing a BORN TO BINGO T-shirt kept her nose in her book.

  “Seigneur-terraces,” she mumbled. French for coffee shop dwellers who sit at tables a long time but spend little money. She had explained the term to Andrew a few weeks earlier.

  Andrew ignored her. “Did you hear what I said?”

  Libby looked back at him. “I know you’re trying to help. It’s just hard to accept that I’m stamped with an expiration date.” Plopping an elbow on the table, she lowered her forehead into her palm, needing the support. “This whole thing is so...unreal,” she said, and it came out in a whisper.

  “I’m sorry.” His voice caught on the words, and she saw tears in his eyes. In that instant, somehow, his words touched her heart. He was struggling with this, too. Again feelings of familiarity with this man settled over her, just as they had when they’d met.

  On their first date, he’d walked her home and at the door lifted her hand to kiss it. No man had ever done that before, and she hadn’t realized how it would affect her. The simple act struck her as one of the most romantic displays of affection and respect a man could offer a woman. How did he know she would love such an endearment before she knew it herself?

  At another time, he’d sent a bouquet of calla lilies, not roses. How could he have sensed that such an odd choice in flowers would be her favorite? And there were dozens of other moments as well. He practically intuited that rubbing her temples would take her headaches away, that she found foot massages the height of decadence, that her favorite color was blue, her preferred poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Always, she was left wondering if these moments confirmed the actuality of soul mates, or if the familiarity represented nothing more than a fortuitous quirk of fate that they had met.

  What’s more, he was right again. In this moment. He was only the messenger. His knowledge didn’t mean he was to blame for any of this. Quite the opposite actually, he was tortured by the development, too.

  Libby looked at her coffee. Fragrant steam rose from the center and she wrapped her hands around the warmth of its vessel, grasping it like a lifeline. “I had the tumor confirmed.”

  The edges of his lips dropped and he closed his eyes as he took a fortifying breath. “At least now you know.” She heard sadness in his deep, velvety voice. Sadness, soul-deep. “Now we need to get another opinion as soon as possible.”

  She shook her head. “It would be a waste of time. There’s so little of it left.”

  “But Libby—”

  “No.”

  At her firm tone, he raised a brow. “Libby, this is crazy. You ought to—”

  “No,” she repeated, her voice stern, final.

  It would also be a pointless loss of precious time to discuss how he’d captured forthcoming events in some digital netherworld. What did it matter now? She’d already established there was nothing she could do to change the course she was on. Assessing options would be fruitless because they both were aware she had only two: try the mineral water or die.

  A sound came, a low moan, and realizing it came from her, Libby flattened her hand over her mouth. “So, what do I do now?” She choked on the words as tears surfaced. “I’m so afraid.”

  “I know, babe.” He moved to the chair beside her, scooting it closer, and rubbed gentle circles between her shoulder blades. She whimpered and he pulled her into a full embrace. They sat there for several heartbeats, sharing fear and sorrow without words.

  When they pulled apart, he looked away and she watched him wipe an eye with the back of his hand. He hurt too, yet he was fighting to be strong.

  For her.

  She bit her lip, almost undone by his concern. If she traveled through time, could they find one another? Or, would this be goodbye?

  “First...” He cleared his throat and started again. “First, I want you to know I’ve researched your condition ad naseum. There is no cure yet, and there isn’t one into the future as far as I can tell.” He gripped her hand. “I don’t want to lose you, but I love you enough to let you go. I have to believe the water can heal you. But, it may mean altering your situation.”

  “By traveling to the future.”

  His eyebrows flicked up and down, a rapid movement that she’d come to recognize as his body’s way of reacting to information he didn’t welcome. “Hopefully.”

  “You do understand that what you say sounds like nonsense.”

  He nodded. “I know. But trust me, it’s not. And, isn’t it worth a try?”

  “But how?” Libby shook her head. “How can water cure? Or transport anyone to a different state? A different time, for pity’s sake.”

  He straightened his posture as though energized by some hope he heard in her voice, which, frankly, she hadn’t intended. “It’s called balneology. Using natural mineral spring water and geothermal water to cure diseases.”

  She repeated the word: “Balneology.”

  Andrew nodded. “It’s been traced back almost 5,000 years. To the Bronze Age. Practiced here in the States until about the 1940s, before the pharmaceutical companies took a foothold and made chemicals and pills for instant relief of every ailment imaginable.”

  “Great, so this miracle water has proven less effective than drugs.” She hadn’t meant sarcasm to enter her voice, but it did.

  Nonplussed, he ignored her comment. “Balneology is highly regarded again. It’s used in Europe and Japan for treatment of diseases. Part of a holistic approach to health and well-being.”

  He paused as if to punctuate the importance of his words. They had once talked about the logic of approaching health in holistic ways. She preferred essential oils to pills, natural herbs over synthetic vitamins. Probably some deep-seated allegiance to her botanist mother or physician aunt Isabel.

  He continued. “Back in the eighteenth and nineteenth, even early twentieth centuries, before modern medicines vied for attention, it was easier to appreciate mineral springs. To see them as the power spots in nature they are. They facilitate healing. Some say the water can even help us become more sensitive to our natural rhythms and what’s right for each of us.”

  He sounded rote, like a brochure. She rubbed her palms up her forehead and down the sides of her face. “But how? It’s just water.”

  “Water, yes. But natural spring water is pure. Composed of negative ions and trace minerals like sulfur, magnesium, lithium. The body absorbs healing minerals into the bloodstream. The result is medicinal to your organs. It stimulates the immune system. Produces endorphins.”

  He rattled on about filtration springs verses pr
imary springs, and fractures and faults down in the earth filled with rich minerals, and glaciers and limestone deposits, but Libby’s mind shifted away from the science behind it to the more pressing concern of what she needed to do.

  She was running out of time.

  “So, I go to Massachusetts, climb into mineral water, and violá.” She splayed her hands. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Pennsylvania.”

  “What?”

  “Bedford, Pennsylvania. Not, Bedford, Massachusetts.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries you would have. It was a popular location for over a hundred years. All sorts of dignitaries and famous people frequented the springs and stayed at the nearby hotel. Several presidents. Millionaires and billionaires as well as the poor. ’Course, the hotel’s a five-star resort now.” His gaze intensified and bored into her. “In answer to the rest of your question, no you won’t drive there alone. I’ll go along. And, yes, it is as simple as immersing yourself...fully...in the water.”

  Hope surged. “Then you’ll go with me? Into the water I mean? We’ll go through this together?”

  His eyebrows flicked again. “No, unfortunately each person must do this alone. For full immersion.” He stared at his mug, as though struggling with a thought. “Besides, I can’t chance it yet. I’m still learning... it seems the water takes you to where you need to be the first time. But it fights efforts to try again.”

  He raked a hand over his head. “I won’t lie to you. It’s painful. Your body undergoes drastic transformations as it seeks a different equilibrium and works to heal itself. When I came through my first experience, it was agonizing. Disorienting. That was years ago. After that, I tried to return several times. I wanted to get back to the year after I died.”

  She stared at him, incredulous. Why would he want to go back that badly?

  Andrew continued. “I think if you experience your death, there’s no reviving you. But, you can skip over your death. So I concentrated on that. Instead, I went forward again, then back only a few years each time. Every attempt was more painful than the others, although each time was easier to restore my memory. It was like the water was determined to keep me in contemporary times. My last attempt almost...well...I’ve decided to wait until I learn more about the process. But I promise I will find you.”

  “So I’m an experiment?” Libby blazed, instantly regretting her outburst.

  Astonishment crossed his face. He grabbed her hand and said softly, “No. I love you. I have helped others, too. People I felt were deserving, or still had much to offer.”

  “And they all disappeared? You believe they went to another time?”

  He took a deep breath and exhaled, waiting for three people to pass by to another table. The interruption reminded Libby of her surroundings. Street honking trickled in through the open door at the front of the café. Pedestrians entered, laughing, their lightheartedness grating on her nerves. Even the coffee burners emitted chuckling sounds. The world pressed on, taunting her.

  “No,” Andrew continued. “One exited the water, healed. I gave him a ride home. He died three years ago in a car accident in Amsterdam. Another walked from the water in the same year he went in, but died a month later.” He took a deep breath. “One died in the water. I don’t know why. I’m not sure what went wrong. But there always is that possibility.”

  She bristled. “Only one was healed and continued on in the same timeframe?” Her mouth felt dry, so she took a sip of coffee, closing her eyes and swallowing the rich brew. “The ones that journeyed...to where...when did they go?”

  “To 1798, 1848...it’s varied. Others, to the future. I’m not sure of all the dates.”

  “Why don’t you know?” Libby huffed a short syllable of frustration at her own question. “What am I saying? The better question is how could you know?”

  His lips pulled in a wistful smile as though appreciating her attempt to understand. “Near the mineral springs, there’s a hidden cave. Tucked in a hollow in the woods. I ask each person to carve their initials and the year into its walls. No one can steal that. But if they go forward in time, obviously I can’t see that because it’s not recorded yet in my time.”

  Carvings instead of letters. For the first time it hit her: “I can’t take anything with me.” No medicines, money, credit cards, bank accounts, mementos, clothes, photographs, passport, ID.

  He looked down. “Just your body. Perhaps some sort of a cotton or linen shift, if it’s vintage, and you go to a time after it was made.”

  Libby took another sip of coffee, needing fortitude. “At the restaurant, you were adamant we not change history. Yet, your presence confirms you’ve done that. And you want to plunk me from one time to another? That’s changing history.”

  “It’s infinitesimal. Besides, I am not doing it. The water is. Maybe it is a part of nature...of a natural history we don’t understand—”

  “But we’re bound by the laws of nature—”

  “Perceived laws of nature. Ever heard of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle? Yes, well, it was introduced in 1927 by a German physicist. He determined there is an obscureness in nature, a significant limit to what we can know about the behavior of quantum particles and the smallest scales of nature. The best we can hope for is to calculate probabilities for where things are and how they will behave.”

  “So?”

  “Don’t you see? It destroys Newton’s clockwork universe in which everything follows clear-cut laws on how to act, and where prediction is easy if you know the starting conditions.” He swatted a hand in frustration. “Then again, maybe it involves the space-time vortex around Earth...or perhaps the chaos theory.”

  “Chaos?”

  “You know, that straight linearity is not realistic because events are unpredictable. Perhaps time is not linear, but instead it’s like a large body of water with everything already in it. Everything happening at the same time. No past or future. It’s all in how we order it in our minds—”

  “Andrew, this isn’t helping.”

  He took a calming breath. “You’re right. It doesn’t matter. What’s important is that I would do anything to save you. I am not changing any laws of nature. I am simply using what nature provides. For us.”

  He looked so forlorn that she would question him, doubt him. She placed a hand across her mouth to stop another whimper. This man’s love was so strong and so real he was going beyond regular human understanding to save her.

  She reached over and gripped his hand. “I do trust you. I’m just so afraid.”

  He squeezed her hand back, and with his other hand tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “I know. Fear of the unknown. It’s human. And, we’re both too young to appreciate the transience of life.” He twisted his lips. “But, when you became an agent, you accepted the possibility of the unknown. Of going to another country one day and never returning. Different cultures, different food, different languages. You’ve been taught to be flexible, adaptable. What is so different about this?”

  “In those situations there’s always hope for return. This is so conclusive.” She went still. She needed to concentrate on facts, not feelings. Her scientific mother, her mechanic father, her physician aunt—they’d all taught her to deal in the concrete, the evidence before her. The fact was, she had no choice. The sooner she made peace with that truth, the better off she would be. “There’s so little time to prepare.”

  “You don’t need much time. Think about it. You’re the perfect candidate. You have many skills. Like languages. You won’t need them anyway because you will still be in this country. And, probably just a couple years into the future.”

  She made a chuckling noise, but it sounded fake. “I’ll speak the language, that’s my only qualification? Even the English language was different through history. And will be in the future. I’ll stand out no matter where I end up.”

  “You can deliver a commendable accent.
You could pass yourself as having spent time overseas. No one will know. When you say something unfamiliar, people will assume it’s due to having spent time in a foreign country. Which is true. You should stick as close to the truth as possible anyway. It is easier to remember.”

  It was true that she could instinctively match her speech and accent to the person she was with. It had always been normal for her.

  “What if I’m taken to a future that’s awful? After nuclear war or something horrendous? Or, back to Civil War times?” She gasped. “Or Revolutionary? Or, before the country was even settled?”

  He swiped his hand in the air. “The water is medicinal, not harmful.” He touched her cheek. “I think it knows the cravings of the heart as much as the needs of the body. Maybe even better than we do.”

  She drew in a calming breath. “So it healed you. But, your knee...that happened after you traveled through time?”

  His gaze dropped to the table. “That’s correct. Look, Libby, you have no family here to miss you. No pets either. You’re more prepared than most.”

  For a moment, her mind froze on his comment about no family to miss her. He was right. She had purposely streamlined her life and kept it simple since her days with Aunt Isabel. Oh my, how she missed that woman. Her voice. Her touch. Even her smell. Libby caught herself rubbing her scar again. It was because of Aunt Isabel she had moved on from that. She hadn’t even told Colette the story behind the scar.