The Day Before Forever (30 page)

Juana had said it was the farthest tent across from the fire pit. It was set apart from the others and therefore was easy to spot.

The inside of the tent was split into two by a simple opaque sheet that ran lengthwise. I entered the side on the left, which had the tent flap up to indicate that it was empty.

I pulled down the flap and sat alone on the dirt floor. I closed my eyes and took a breath.

Those things that Juana had said to me. She obviously knew. She knew that I was immortal. Maybe it was because she had sensed something off about me all along. She knew that I had found out that she was after the Fountain of Youth. And it made sense that she knew everything—after all, I thought she was out to kill me. I just didn't know why.

Did she want the Fountain of Youth all to herself? She had said, “You're not supposed to be here. Not like this. In this tent or in this world.” What had she meant by that? That I wasn't supposed to be here in this time period? And therefore she wanted to murder me?

My thoughts felt unbearably heavy. I held my head in my hands.

“I just can't do this,” I whispered.

“Repent, my child, and the Lord will forgive.”

I looked at the dividing cloth. I could barely see the outline of the priest sitting on the other side.

“Forgive me, Father, I feel lost,” I began.

“Tell me how you have lost your way, my child.”

I remembered the last time I had been in a confessional. It hadn't been in a tent, but it had been very much like this. The priest had the same warm, soothing tone; he was someone I felt I could talk to. I felt like I could do no wrong in a confessional.

“There is a woman who has helped me. Juana has taken me in, and for that I'm grateful. But I fear her reasons for doing so are not right.”

“And how are they not right?”

“I fear that she's exactly like me. Someone who God has turned away from.”

“The Shepherd will always lead His flock.”

I placed my palms on the cool earth. “Not if one of them is damaged irrevocably.”

“You believe you are damaged irrevocably?”

“There is an abnormality that I can't fix or change. It's an unnaturalness that wasn't supposed to happen . . .”

There was a pause. “And you think this woman has this same . . . disease?”

“I know it,” I said.

“Our Lord loves and forgives, if you attempt to set it right.”

“I know,” I said, but I didn't mean it.

This priest didn't understand. Immortality wasn't something that I could ever “set right.”

And yet here I was, trying to get water from the Fountain of Youth to subject Henley to the same fate I had been subjected to by Miss Hatfield.

It was all a twisted mess, but there was no getting out of it.

“You're right,” I told the priest. “I need to set it right.”

I left the confessional before he could say anything.

When I came out of the tent, lunch was being served. Everyone was there apart from me and the priest—the men and, of course, Juana.

“Soup,” a man grunted to me in his heavy accent. He handed me a bowl of stew much like breakfast.

“Thank you.”

Juana's eyes met mine. She looked like she wanted to talk to me, but I figured if I didn't let myself be alone with her, she couldn't say anything about immortality or try anything—like kill me.

I tried to stay in front of as many people as possible. The men were taking seats around the fire. I waited till Juana got her soup and sat down before taking the farthest seat across from her.

From there I could watch her and make sure she didn't come anywhere near me.

I looked at the men to keep my mind off Juana. They came in all shapes and sizes—some were broad and square, while others were tall and lean. There didn't seem to be any extra fat on any of them. I supposed that was what expeditions like this did to you.

The men looked back in my direction too. I was a new face, and they looked curious. Most of them, surprisingly, had kind faces—suspicious, but still gentle at the core. There was a man with the bushiest eyebrows I had ever seen. One of the men I recognized from the altercation yesterday had a pointy beard that kept dipping into his soup as he tried to drink it. I also saw José there. He glowered at me when our eyes met, but I supposed
that was normal for him—he hadn't seemed too friendly in the first place.

The priest even walked out from his tent to join us for lunch. He looked surprised when he saw me amid the men.

He had a familiar, neatly kept goatee. Maybe I recognized it because it was the way my—Cynthia's—father had kept his facial hair. Even with the facial hair, the priest looked young and surprisingly handsome. He was probably twenty-five at most—too young to be wearing that solemn black. But his age fitted with most of the men there.

This was a younger group; there were few gray hairs. I guessed they needed the younger, stronger men for hard voyages like this. It made sense.

As the men were finishing their soup, some of them brought metal flasks out. One was passed around. The men were taking swigs of whatever was in it. The flask passed me once, but on the second time around, I decided to try it.

I took a sip, and the liquid burned my throat. I coughed and simultaneously tried to swallow and get the taste out of my mouth.

The men guffawed as I sputtered.

More flasks came out. Some belonged to individuals and weren't passed around. I guessed that these were the men who were sick of the expedition and just wanted to get drunk.

The men started to clear their plates and go back into their tents for what I assumed was siesta time.

I saw a flask that had been left behind and quickly picked it up, checking that no one was about to claim it. I'd had enough of whatever that drink had been, but I could use the flask to get
water from the lake . . . once I found it. Finding the lake was another issue.

The area around the fire was almost empty. Most of the remaining men were done clearing their bowls. Only Juana, the priest, and a couple of others stayed behind. I had to move quickly. Juana looked like she wanted to talk to me.

I headed into the woods. Let the men think that I was emptying my bladder. Juana probably knew I was trying to get away from her. I had to tell Henley that I was sure I had found the killer—I mean she tried to strangle me in my sleep.

The tree that bent at the waist and fifty-four steps from that.
I mentally counted all of them, until I made it to the tree I had marked.

“Rebecca?”

Juana had followed me into the woods. Her voice didn't sound that far off. I dug frantically.

“Rebecca! I know you're here.”

My fingers hit metal, and I scooped up the clock. I was turning the hands when the trees parted.

I looked up and the scenery was already dissolving around me. Juana's face had drained of blood, and her hand was frozen in midair, as if she was about to say something.

It was too late.

She had seen me time travel.

“Henley!” I burst into our room with the clock and the metal flask in my arms.

I must have looked a sight, but Henley wasn't there to see it.

Damn it. Where was he?

I ran back through the lobby. Al at the front desk looked confused, but there was no one else around.

The pool looked full. I could see it from the back windows of the lobby. Maybe Henley was there.

I ran out, unconcerned what the tourists thought of me in my yellowed, dirt-stained antique dress.

“Henley!”

He was sitting at the edge of the pool with his feet in the water.

Henley was wearing the swim shorts we had bought him. It must have been the most modern outfit I had ever seen him wear. I would have commented on it, if I hadn't been frantic to talk to him about other more pressing issues.

“Juana's immortal,” I blurted out.

“What?” Henley managed to say once he'd gotten over the shock of suddenly seeing me there. “And lower your voice. There are people here.”

I crouched down next to him. “Juana's looking for the lake. Well, actually, it seems she knows its exact location.” I told Henley of the maps I had seen and of Juana's reaction to me finding them. I told him of the pain Juana felt in her stomach and how she had let slip that it was worsening. I also told him of what she'd said to me: “I know exactly what you are.”

“There are too many matching pieces for this all to be a coincidence,” I said.

Henley looked away from me to think for a moment. “You're right. There are too many points that align. You think she's the killer?” His eyes met mine.

“She tried to kill me.”

Henley froze. “What? You couldn't have started with that? And you're all right now?”

I told him of her trying to strangle me last night. “That has to prove it . . . But there was something off about it. As if she didn't know what she was doing . . . The whole thing felt like a manic episode of some sort. But there's no other suspect. Who else could it be? No one else is immortal. There's José, who doesn't seem to like dogs and doesn't seem to like me either, but I doubt he has any reason to want me dead. There are the rest of the men, but they barely acknowledge my existence, let alone talk to me. There's the priest—”

Looking at Henley's face, I suddenly understood why I had found his face and the way he conducted the confessional so familiar. That face. That voice.

“My God.”

“Rebecca?”

“It's the priest,” I said. “It's the priest. He was there at your father's funeral. He was there at your house. He was at Henry's court.”

“Father Gabriel?”

“He's the killer.”

We both sat, stunned into silence.

All those attempts at my life. He killed Miss Hatfield. He must have been there in her house. He was there when I first met Henley. I saw him. He was there at Richard's deathbed. My God.

My mind was whirling uncontrollably, but I struggled to vocalize my thoughts. “H-he was there. In each time period.”

“Each time someone tried to kill you,” Henley said.

I should have seen it earlier, somehow. I thought back to my conversation with him in the confessional. He hadn't even had an accent like the rest of the men or Juana. I should have noticed it. He'd done so much damage over the years.

“He murdered Miss Hatfield.”

There was silence between us. We could hear the splashing of children playing in the pool.

“Do you think he killed my father?”

The priest—Father Gabriel, if that was even his name—had been there for months as Mr. Beauford deteriorated. Mr. Beauford had developed a fascination with immortality toward the end of his life and had collected artifacts with any connection with it. Was that reason enough to kill him?

“He was there in Tudor England. He was the priest in the confessional. He performed Richard's last rites.” I tried to take a breath, but it felt like my lungs were being crushed.

“He tried to smother you there. Not to mention he tried to kill you before that, in the Heathrow airport.”

“He ransacked Miss Hatfield's house before killing her.
He
sent me the text to meet at the same location where Miss Hatfield was killed. He must have been trying to kill us both at the same time.”

Henley's body shook as he sucked in a breath.

“He was also in England with us in 2016. He was in the room. He wrapped the plastic beads around your hands.”

“Prayer beads,” Henley said softly. His face was devoid of color, and I knew I looked the same.

“He was everywhere. He's been tracking our every move,” I said.

Henley bit his lip. “He must have his own way of traveling in time. His own clock or something.”

“That means we can't run from him for long.” I forced myself to breathe. “I need to go after him.”

“Rebecca. He wants to
kill
you. You'd just make it easy for him.”

I snapped at Henley. “What choice do I have?”

“Turn me immortal first, so I can at least help you,” Henley said.

I knew he felt helpless, but would turning Henley immortal really help me? I didn't know the answer, but I did know that turning Henley immortal would at least keep him safer. Immortality meant Henley would be able to travel in time far away from the killer's grasp, as long as he had the clock. I was willing to do anything to keep him safe.

I nodded and held up the flask, which was still in my lap. “I'll go back to get the water. I know exactly where it is now that I've seen Juana's map.”

Henley's forehead was creased with worry lines. I knew he didn't want me to go back with the killer there, but we were out of options.

“It's safer now that we've identified who the killer is,” I promised.

“Be careful. Please.”

TWENTY

I RAN OUT
of the woods, around the perimeter of the camp, and straight into Juana's tent.

It was dark outside, and I made sure not to run through the center of camp, where the man who was supposed to be on watch tonight was fast asleep by the fire.

Juana woke up as soon as I entered the tent. “I was worried that you—”

“I know everything,” I said.

“What—”

I walked up to her hammock to better see her face in the dark. “I know that you're Juana Ruíz. I know you've found the Fountain of Youth. I know that you're immortal.”

Juana's face grew so pale I was worried she wasn't breathing.

“And I'm just like you,” I said. “I know you suspected it.”

“The sudden appearance,” she whispered, sitting up. “The disappearances—sometimes for hours. The curiosity about my
maps . . .”

“So you've been reading me as well as I've been reading you?”

Juana rubbed her temples. She looked like she was still trying to process everything.

“You can do that later,” I said. “Right now, grab the maps and we're going to go.”

I had already buried the clock in its hiding spot. I didn't know what would happen. I needed to keep it safe and in a place where I knew I could find it. I held the flask. I was all ready.

“Where?”

“To the lake—”

“Why are you trying to find the lake if you're already immortal?”

Her voice didn't sound accusing. She sounded genuinely curious. But I knew I couldn't tell her I was planning on taking water from the Fountain of Youth to turn another person immortal—she wouldn't approve of that.

“I want to make sure no one ever finds it again,” I said. The words almost came out on their own. “I don't know what I'll have to do to accomplish that, but first I need to find it.”

Juana clasped her hands solemnly. She seemed to believe my answer.

“Now hurry,” I said. “We should be back before daybreak, or people will notice that you're missing.”

“No, no. It's much too far from here. Maybe two hours away, if you walk very quickly. Give it a few days. We're moving camp much closer—”

“I don't have a few days.” I thought it best to be blunt with
her. “And neither do you. Do you know why you're experiencing that pain?”

Juana looked confused. “My disease? You know something about it?”

“It's not a disease, and yes, I know a lot about it. You don't have a few days.” I pulled her out of the hammock. “I'll tell you what I know on the way.”

I opened the chest, grabbed all the maps I could see, and handed them to Juana.

“The night watch looks like he's asleep. Which way do we go?”

Juana pointed the way I had come. “But let's go around the camp, so as to not wake him or the others.”

I felt something cold against my bare calf. I looked down, but it was just Alma, half under my skirt.

“I know you don't want to be left behind, but you can't come with us,” I whispered.

We walked out of our tent, and Alma followed us.

I took Alma and walked her back in. “You need to stay here.”

She started whining.

Juana peeked her head back into the tent. “She might wake someone if she barks.”

“I know, I'm trying to quiet her down,” I said.

“Just bring her along. It'll be quicker.”

I looked at Alma. “All right, you win. You can come.”

I swear she stuck her tongue out at me.

We trod lightly, trying not to step on any twigs or dry leaves near the tents. Alma quietly trotted behind us. Soon we were in
the forest from which I had come just a few minutes before.

There was a crackle of twigs next to us, and Juana jumped.

“That was probably just Alma,” I said, calming her down. To say that Juana was having a complicated day would be the understatement of the century—any century. “I'm sorry I couldn't talk to you earlier.”

“How long did you know?” she asked, staring straight ahead as we walked briskly through the woods.

“I suspected almost right away.”

“Just like I suspected you,” she said. “But how did you know my name?”

I smiled to myself, wondering if she'd believe me when I told her. “I'm from another time. The future.”

Juana briefly closed her eyes. Upon opening them, she shook her head. She didn't say anything. Just kept walking.

“Have you ever sat for a painting?” I asked, changing my tactic.

“Yes . . .” Juana glanced at me, trying to judge where I was going with the question.

“There's one of you in a dark-red dress. And you're sitting in a dark-blue armchair.”

“My mother's favorite chair,” she said automatically. “I had that painted a year before my mother's death. It hung in the parlor. How do you know about it?”

I could recall every detail of that painting from memory. “Because I've seen it. I knew the man who owned the painting in the future.”

I thought of Miss Hatfield, who had instructed me to steal the painting from Mr. Beauford as my first task. I originally
hadn't known why that painting was of such great importance to her. I had thought that the painting had been a random first test of some sort, but I soon found out Henley's father had an obsession with immortality and I also later found out Miss Hatfield's connection with the Beaufords.

“What? A hundred years from now?” She sounded like she was joking.

“More like four hundred.”

There was silence in which all we could hear was our own footsteps.

“You're serious, aren't you?” Juana said.

“Yes, I am.”

“How did you get here?”

“Now that's tied to your so-called disease.”

She was asking all the right questions, and I was afraid of telling her too much. I didn't know what she wanted from me yet. What if she was the one after my life?

But I felt I had to take a chance. There was an equal probability that she wasn't the killer at all. Just someone who didn't know what she had become.

“When you were turned immortal by drinking from the Fountain of Youth, it was as if your body was taken out of the loop of time,” I started. I tried to explain it the way Miss Hatfield had explained it to me a long time before. “Because of that, you don't belong in any time. You
can't
belong. Every time period you live in will slowly reject your body as something unnatural it cannot keep. That's why you feel the pain and the sickness.”

“So you feel this too?”

I nodded. “When I stay in one time period too long. Which
brings me to the clock.”

“A clock?”

“A time-traveling device. It helps me move to different times when I start feeling ill.”

Juana indicated we should turn left. I followed her.

“And where did you find such a thing?” she asked.

“It was given to me by my . . . mentor.”

She grew quiet. “So there are others like us? People who are not meant to be?”

“Yes . . . Well, there were. There were seven, including me, but all at different times. Only two at most were alive—existed—at any given point.”

“I don't understand,” Juana said. “If they were immortal like us, doesn't that mean they couldn't die?”

“They can't die of sickness or old age,” I corrected. “Physical harm—murder—can still happen.”

“They were killed.”

“Hunted down,” I said.

“And someone's after you too?” she guessed.

I told her about the priest and what I knew of him.

Juana's eyes grew so large I could see the moon reflected in the whites of her eyes. “But . . .”

“It's him. I'm sure of it.”

I spent the next two hours answering Juana's questions about both my Miss Hatfield and the former holders of the name. Alma walked slowly behind us. It was amazing that she was keeping up so well despite her age. It was as if she enjoyed the company.

Juana asked a little bit about Mr. Beauford and why he had
bought her portrait, but she didn't ask about what the future was like.

“Don't you want to know?” I said. I'd have been curious if I hadn't known how history went. “I could tell you about Florida in the future. New inventions. How the fashions change.”

Juana smiled, but she declined. “I don't want to know.”

“But
why
?”

“Because I'm not supposed to,” she said simply. “There are certain things I'm not supposed to know until they happen to me.”

“But you're also not
supposed
to be immortal and never die,” I pointed out.

“Yes,” Juana said. “That's unnatural too.”

Unnatural.
There was that word again.

“You think you're some atrocity, don't you? A scar on the earth.” I knew the feeling, because I felt it often. “You can't live thinking that way.”

“I don't intend to.”

Juana sounded so matter of fact that I did a double take.

“I don't intend to live this way,” she repeated. “That's why I'm seeking out the lake again. I don't need to turn myself immortal. I received that curse the first time. I'm going back to reverse it.”

I had never thought of going to the Fountain of Youth to reverse immortality.

“And you think it'll work?”

“It's the only chance I have. I couldn't spend my life—my existence—alone in Spain, wondering.” Juana smiled bravely into the dark. “I'm looking forward to curing the discomfort
and pain that comes with immortality too.”

I couldn't tell Juana why I was going to the lake. She would hate the idea of me inflicting this upon Henley.

Luckily, she didn't ask.

The ground beneath our feet started to give a little where we walked.

There was a rustle of leaves when we stopped.

I paused to check the ground with my hand. Wet dirt.

“We must be close to the lake now.”

Alma pushed against my hand, and I gave her a pat.

“The forest hasn't changed since I was here last,” Juana said.

“When you were here with Ponce de León?”

“When I made the mistake of drinking from the lake,” she said.

I knew she wouldn't have picked immortality if she'd had the choice—Juana and I were alike in that—but it was still strange to hear immortality being referred to as a
mistake
. It was a horrible fate. Maybe it was something forced upon you. But a mistake you accidentally made? That made it sound too simple.

“There,” Juana said. “I can see it.”

She pushed apart the branches of the trees in front of us and ran ahead. The ground sloped down toward the lake, and Juana skidded as she ran.

I ran after her, and Alma limped after me.

“This is it. I remember it.” Juana was knee deep in the lake.

She flopped, chest first, into the water, immersing herself. When she came up, her dark hair streamed down her face. She pushed her hair back and started gulping down handfuls of the water.

Poor thing.

Juana wanted the lake to undo what it had done to her, but of course it couldn't. She wanted so hard to believe, but there was no reason to believe the Fountain of Youth could work both ways. I think Juana knew that too.

I waded in after her and took her in my arms. She was sopping wet, and she clung to my arms as her clothes clung to her skin.

“Do you see anything? Is there anything different about me?” She was hysterical, and I didn't know if it was her emotions or the curse of immortality speaking.

Juana's cheeks were wet, and I felt the moisture on my own cheeks as I held her. Tears or water from the lake? I didn't know.

I think Juana understood the truth, as she couldn't stop crying. Her body wouldn't stop trembling, even though I tried to hold her still.

“Shh . . . We'll think of something,” I said. “You could come with me and Henley. You could start a new life like Miss Hatfield and I did.” That was the best I could offer her.

Juana calmed down and walked back to the shore of the lake. Even then, she couldn't bring herself to withdraw her legs from the water, so she sat on the shore with her feet still in; it was as if she still couldn't fully go back and give up on her hope of the lake restoring her.

Satisfied that Juana was as all right as she could be, I got back to my own task. I unscrewed the cap from the flask I carried and carefully filled it with water from the lake.

I didn't need much. Henley would only need a sip, so I filled the flask halfway. Too much would only weigh me down.

There was a splashing sound close by.

I looked up, toward the sound, but didn't see anything.

Something else caught my eye. It was a dart of movement from across the lake.

Alma was on the other side, bounding through the water. She was drinking the water every few steps.