Earth & Sky (The Earth & Sky Trilogy) (8 page)

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” he says. His gaze dips to the book, and his expression turns serious. “Is that it? You found something?”

He’s standing right in my personal space, so close and
real
my lungs clench and I have to take a step back. “How did—have you been following me the whole time?”

“You said you would go to a library after your classes finished,” he says. “I waited outside to see which one, but I didn’t want to distract you. So you do have something?”

I guess he’s not completely up on regular human etiquette, like how following girls around without telling them you’re there is pretty creepy.

“I think so,” I say, suddenly hesitant. I want to hear him exclaim that I’ve done it; that I’ve provided the missing piece that will ensure Earth’s safety. But what if I haven’t? What if it’s just one more meaningless impulse? “I don’t know if it’s what you were looking for, but something’s off.”

A couple of guys bump past us coming out the door. Win motions for me to follow him. As I descend the steps, the alarm band shivers against my ankle. I stiffen.

“It’s gone off,” I say. “The alarm—”

“Just now?”

“Yes.”

“Back, then.” He grabs my wrist like he did in the coffee shop yesterday, tugging me through the library doors. A few steps over the threshold, the band’s humming cuts out.

“It’s stopped,” I say, and he nods, not looking particularly reassured.

“We might be okay,” he says, “but let’s keep moving. Let me know if it goes off again. Does this place have another exit?”

“I think there’s one on that side.” I point.

We circle the checkout desk and duck around the stairs, and then push past a smaller door that leads onto a lawn dotted with stone checkers tables. We keep walking, on down the sidewalk. The alarm band stays still.

“Good?” Win asks. I nod. “What did you find?”

I’d almost forgotten. I pull the book from where I’ve been cradling it under my arm and open it to the right page. Win veers around a corner, and I hurry along beside him. “This,” I say, tapping the sentence. “
Three Glorious Days.
The number feels wrong.”

Win snatches the book from my hands, coming to a halt to stare at it. “The Three Glorious Days. Beginning July 27, 1830 AD. Paris. It’s such a small detail—and not even part of the main revolutionary period—that must be why it’s taking the others so long.” He pauses, glances around, and starts walking again. “But that’s all right. I can check it out myself.”

“Can’t you tell your friends so they can help?”

“Communication through time is difficult,” he says. “And all our supplies we had to collect unofficially—inconspicuously. As I told you before, our equipment is limited. Isis set us up with devices that can signal between us, but the best those can do is drag everyone away from what they’re doing to meet up and talk properly. For all I know, Thlo’s already figured this part out and is way ahead, and I’d just be delaying them. I’m not calling them in until I have something concrete.”

I glance at the book. “And I guess— You said there are ‘official’ Travelers making changes all the time too. We can’t know that Jeanant’s the one who did this.”

“It’s extremely likely it was him,” Win says. “The regular Travelers shouldn’t be shifting things that far back. There were a couple of mistakes, early on, where one little change altered centuries of history in ways no one intended, and there’s no easy way to just set things back. So the scientists restrict the experiments to try to minimize the breadth of the impact. Nobody authorized would be making changes nearly two hundred years ago.”

“But maybe I’m noticing something that was shifted way back then,” I point out.

He shakes his head. “
You
should only be able to notice shifts that were made by Travelers working within your lifetime. Changes to things you already experienced once, that were then rewritten. A shift some Traveler made hundreds of years ago, it was already in place before you were born. You’d never know the difference with those. But Jeanant, he came here during your present, he’s making changes now. This is almost definitely him.”

The thought of thousands of years of shifts I haven’t noticed, on top of the little ones I have, overwhelms me. It’s a few seconds before I realize Win’s still looking at me. Studying me, with a frank appreciation that makes my cheeks warm. He closes the book and hands it back to me, his grin returning. “You’re amazing.”

His fingers graze mine with that overwhelming
there
ness, his eyes bright as he beams at me. My heart skips a beat.

Then he stops in his tracks, peering at the nearby houses as he swings his satchel around. The satchel that holds his time cloth.

Right. Because he’s not some normal guy I met at school; he’s an alien. An alien who’s probably only pleased with me because I’ve been useful to him.

Anything that was enjoyable about that moment is swallowed up by my embarrassment.

Win doesn’t seem to have noticed. He drums the top of the satchel, and then draws in a breath. His gaze slides back to meet mine.

“Skylar,” he says. “I want you to come with me.”

10.

I
’m still a little off-balance, or I’d probably realize what Win means right away. “With you—to the hotel?” I say, and he laughs.

“To
France
,” he says.

To France. To Paris, July 27, 1830.

I flash back to my first trip through time: the lurching, dizzying fall, the barrage of light and sound, sand and blood. My fingers drop to my pocket, pressing the bracelet’s beads against my hip.

“I have to find the trail Jeanant left for us,” Win is saying. “If we get there quickly enough, maybe you’ll be able to sense what else he’s done.”

I’m already shaking my head. “I don’t know if I can do that again.”

“Of course you can,” Win says. “It’s really not so bad after the first time.”

“But—there’s going to be a revolution going on.” Not just spears and arrows, but guns. Bullets flying. Bayonets stabbing.

“We won’t jump right into the middle of it,” Win says. “I’m not careless. We’ll start at the beginning, before the fighting gets going, and keep away from the most dangerous areas. The cloth has all the information I’ll need for that.”

And what if Jeanant’s trail leads us right into those dangerous areas?

“You don’t really need me now, do you?” I point out. “You know where to go, you have his clues or whatever. You’re trained for all this time-traveling stuff. I’ll have no idea what I’m doing.”

Win lets out a huff of a breath. “I know,” he says. “But I’ll be there to make sure you’re okay. And I might still need you. If the others have spent the last few weeks searching and not even gotten this far—as far as you got me in just an afternoon—the rest of his trail might not be any easier to follow. I won’t know until I get there. If we get there, and the clues are obvious, I can bring you right back.”

He pauses, and points to the sky. “
They
wouldn’t think any Earthling could do half as much against them as you’ve already done. They think they have everyone here completely under their control. But you’ve proven them wrong. Doesn’t it feel good to . . . to know this time you’re changing things for yourself instead of letting them shove you around?”

Remembering what he said this morning about getting
them
to take him seriously, I wonder how much he’s talking for himself as well as me. But the thought of slipping away from those watchful eyes up there, of staging a goldfish rebellion, does give me a little thrill.

If it’s really that easy for him to take me there and back . . . I guess from his perspective, it is. Step into the cloth, one second here, one second gone without a trace.

Like Noam.

My breath catches in my throat. If I go with Win, whisk away through time, it’ll be just like Noam. Tonight would be that night all over again. Like Win just said, his companions have been searching for Jeanant’s weapon for weeks. How long would it take us, even if my sensitivity helps? While my parents worry, and then panic, and maybe even start to mourn . . .

It’ll kill them.

“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “I can’t. I can’t just take off and leave everyone wondering what’s happened to me.”

“They won’t even know you’ve left,” Win says, sounding amused now. “It’s time traveling. No matter how long we’re gone for, I can bring you back just a few seconds after we left when we’re done.”

Of course. I rub my temples. I’m in the habit of thinking time means something. For Win’s people, it’s nothing at all.

“It’s not just for me, and for you,” Win says. “It’s for your whole
world
. As soon as we find that weapon, as soon as we can destroy the generator, every Earthling will be able to make their own decisions without anyone up there messing with their lives. And . . . Look, even if it turns out I need your help in France, if you decide you’ve had enough, I’ll bring you back right away anyway. I swear it.” He touches the center of his chest, and speaks a few choppy syllables in that slightly slurred alien tongue before switching to what I assume is a translation. “By my heart, by Kemya.”

He could say anything right now. It’s not as if I could make him bring me back home once we’re across oceans and centuries; I can’t operate the time cloth myself.

But he’s right. Everyone I care about is at risk every second his scientists keep poking at us. What Win’s asking, it’s not just about an end to the
wrong
feelings and having a normal future for myself, it’s making sure my parents and Angela and, hell, the very fabric of the planet still
have
a future. Isn’t this what I’ve wanted my whole life—the answer to what was
wrong
, and a way to make it stop?

All that is being handed to me, and I’m too busy cowering at the thought of a past I’ve never seen to take it.

Locked in the same old patterns,
Jeanant’s voice echoes in my head. That’s not what I want. The word pops out before I let myself change my mind.

“Okay.”

“Wonderful,” Win says with a smile, as if he knew I’d come around eventually, which somehow reassures me and gives me an uncomfortable twinge at the same time. He motions me down a shaded driveway between two houses. After checking that no one’s in view, he pulls out the cloth.

A fresh anxiety washes over me. “We’re going
now
?” I glance down at my bright purple jacket, my jeans. “Like this?” I suspect my outfit was not a common look in early modern France.

“No,” Win agrees. “I have my Traveler clothes, but you’ll need something else to blend in. Can we visit your house uninterrupted?”

“My parents will still be at work.”

“Good. What’s your address?” He shakes open the cloth, his smile widening. “We can be there in an instant.”

The cloth gives a little jerk after Win enters the coordinates, but otherwise doesn’t move. He frowns and taps the panel harder. I’m remembering what he said about it being an “older model” when there’s a jolt. My stomach flips over. Then we’re standing in my front hall.

“It’s a lot easier when you’re not going very far,” Win says. So I guess I’m not just getting used to time travel really fast.

He studies the inside of the house as I lead him upstairs, eyeing the hardwood floor and the framed prints on the wall with what looks like equal fascination. He stops in the hall by the oil of a forest landscape Dad bought from a local painter, his hand hovering over it, tracing the sweep of the river.

“That scene’s from a state park about an hour from here,” I tell him. “We used to hike there when I was younger. It’s even prettier in the fall.”

“Right, the reds and yellows would be striking. My dad would love to be able to see it—for real, not just on a recording. He always says the colors and textures aren’t the same when you can’t . . .” His sudden enthusiasm trails off. “He thinks too much about that sort of thing.” He pulls himself away, peering over the banister, and then takes in the row of doors ahead of us. “You’ve always lived here?”

“Since I was two,” I say.

“It’s so big.”

This is just a midsize three bedroom. What would he make of the huge country homes in the suburbs, like the one Bree’s aunt owns?

“Houses on your planet aren’t much like this?” I venture.

“No. We only have so much room to work with.” He shrugs. “We use it as efficiently as possible, though. And when the scientists start focusing more on there than here, it’ll get better.”

The question that tickled at me this morning rises up again. “Why do your scientists care so much about experimenting on Earth anyway? Especially if there are things that need fixing back on . . . on Kemya.”

“A lot of reasons,” Win says, stepping into my bedroom when I open the door. “But the biggest one is selfishness. It’s going to take years, probably decades, before Kemya could be anything like what you have here. The scientists, the Travelers, they get at least moments of enjoying a place that has open spaces, and fresh air, and . . . everything.” The sweep of his arm takes in the painted forest, the house.

Coffee
, I think.
Sun.

“They don’t want to give up that freedom for the time it would take to make a world like this back home,” he goes on. “Someone else can do it—the next generation. But they’ve been saying that for dozens of generations. They convince everyone that it’s for the best, for our safety, ‘for the good of all Kemya,’ when they probably haven’t learned anything useful in
centuries
—”

He cuts himself off before his voice can keep rising. I don’t see what playing with Earth’s history could have to do with anyone else’s safety, but the fear that spikes through me overshadows that curiosity.

“Are you sure they’ll stop?” I ask. “They won’t just build a new generator?”

“Jeanant thought it’d be too big a blow,” Win says. “Thlo agrees. They’ll lose all the history we’ve had access to before now—if you open a new field, you can only travel back to the point when
that
one started. And it’ll shake everyone up. More people would want a change if it was obvious we had to make a decision.”

I hope for both of us that he’s right.

“I guess we’d better get a move on then,” I say with forced cheer. “Here’s my wardrobe.”

The row of shirts and pants and scattered dresses in the closet is sorted across the spectrum of colors. Win flicks through them. He tugs out a white ankle-length sundress and a blue button-down blouse I haven’t worn since my stint doing mailroom duty at Dad’s office a couple summers ago.

“I think these would be the most suitable,” he says. “We’ll probably need to get them dirty so they don’t look so new, though.”

His gaze drops to my hands as he passes me the hangers. “And the locals might think your nail color’s odd. Can you remove it quickly?”

With every second, the “trip” I’m about to take feels more real. I’m actually doing this. I clench my hand when it starts to tremble. “Five minutes?” I say, and he nods.

I sit down on the edge of the bed, grabbing the polish remover from the drawer of my bedside table. It jostles the Christmas photo of Noam and me. My gaze catches on it. Another past. Another time we could travel to, if Win agreed.

Maybe, when we’re done . . . Maybe there’d be a chance?

The idea hovers in the back of my head as I get to work on my nails. Win examines the books lining my shelves, the photos on the wall. He rattles his knuckles against the wooden top of my desk as if appreciating the sound it makes. Then he pokes my laptop’s touchpad, chuckling when the screen flickers on.

“Not quite up to your technical standards?” I say, thinking of his fantastic cloth computer.

“It’s still impressive how much people have managed to accomplish here, in spite of everything,” he says. “And how quickly too. So much changes in just a few years.”

As I’m rubbing the polish off my last two fingers, he wanders over and peeks into the drawer. He picks up one of the bottles of nail polish, and then the second and the third.

“They’re all the same color,” he comments.

“It’s the only one I use.”

“Then why do you need three? Ah!” he continues before I can answer. “You said three is a meaningful number for you. You multiply by it.”

“Yeah.” I hesitate. I’m still not used to talking about this, about the rituals I’ve fallen into to get by. “I know it’s strange. It just . . . feels best if I have three bottles. If one spills, and one breaks, I’ve still got another one. Third time’s a charm and all that.”

I push the drawer shut and pick up the dress. “So I guess I should change into this.”

“Of course,” Win says, not taking the hint. I raise my eyebrows at him.

“I need you to leave the room.”

“Oh. Yes.” His gaze skims my body and then jerks back to my face, his own flushing. I might mind the look, but it’s nice to know he’s humanlike enough to be embarrassed. “I have a few things to take care of at the hotel anyway.”

As soon as he’s stepped out, I pull on the dress and the shirt. My fingers fumble with the buttons. The outfit looks ridiculous with my running shoes, so I unearth my black lace-up winter boots, which might do a better job blending in with nineteenth-century Paris fashion. As long as no one stares too hard at my feet. I drag in a breath.

A knock on the door makes me jump. “Almost done?” Win asks.

He’s already been to his hotel room, done whatever he needed to, and made it back. That’s how little time I’ll be gone for. Away and home again before Mom and Dad even leave work.

“You can come in,” I say. I stop for a second in front of the mirror. My hair’s gone all flyaway from the wind outside. I press it down.

“You’ll want to wear something on your head, I think,” Win says. He’s changed too, out of his corduroy jacket and jeans into a loose shirt and slacks made of a canvaslike material, in a dun color that’s just a shade lighter than his skin. Traveler clothes, he said. A little odd, but—no. Looking at them again, I can see they’re totally modern. That seems like a strange choice for our destination, but I’m not going to argue.

“I don’t have any hats that would fit in,” I say.

“A shawl?”

“I have scarves.”

“Good enough.”