Wayfarer by Alexandra Bracken
The chain she had used to carry her mother’s earring had slipped down the front of her dress and caught on the beadwork, but the earring itself was gone.
Etta couldn’t stop the panic that writhed in her as she looked around the floor for it. Why do I care? She’d used the earrings as proof of her mom’s belief in her, to steady her when she was afraid. The mere thought of what it represented should have sickened her.
And yet…it didn’t. Not entirely.
Alice, she reminded herself, she killed Alice—
“What’s the matter?” Julian whispered, doubling back when he realized she wasn’t behind him.
She looked up. “Nothing. Where to now?”
He opened his mouth, eyes narrowing, but thought better of it. They walked in silence, Etta trailing a step behind him as she tried to pull the pieces of herself back together, to forge them into new armor.
Julian stopped, backing up a few steps. “Wait—” He looked at his journal, checking something. “Ah. This is my stop. Yours is three doors down, just at the entrance to the apartments.”
He pushed the door to the small chapel open.
“Are you not coming with me?” Etta asked. “You could do real good.”
He threw her one last smirk over his shoulder. “Where’s the fun in that, when I could go to Florence instead?”
She blew out a harsh breath from her nose and let her expression tell him what she thought of that. The idea of him slipping away from facing the consequences of his actions sparked that same helpless anger she’d felt while listening to Nicholas confess his pain and shame and doubt over what had happened on the mountain.
“Godspeed, Linden-Hemlock-Spencer,” he said, stepping into the small chapel. “Here is my final benediction: wherever your road takes you, may it never cross with Grandfather’s.”
She heard the passage’s tempestuous language bang on through the wall.
“A-hole,” Etta muttered, blowing her hair out of her eyes. She had turned to continue down the hall when a sound like a gunshot bit the silence. Something heavy smacked into the door with a grunt of pain.
She fumbled with the latch and opened it. Julian spilled out at her feet, blinking up at her. After a moment, he pressed his hands against his face and let out a frustrated holler.
“What…just happened?” Etta asked, alarmed.
He pushed himself upright and began the impossible work of patting down his unruly hair. “I got bounced out of the passage. Crossed paths with myself. Some version of me is already there.”
Whoa. “Didn’t you check your notebook?”
“I did,” Julian said, smacking a hand against the stone. “Which means it’s the future me, and I haven’t gone yet. Damn!”
Etta stared. “Does this…happen a lot?”
“To me more than others, apparently. Once or twice it’s kept me out of a bad scrape, but I cannot even begin to explain how obnoxious it is to be babysat and scolded by your future conscience. I can’t believe Future Me is such a…a wurp. A chuffing bluenose!”
What he was saying seemed possible and impossible all at once—but it was time travel, and the usual rules never did apply.
“You’re sure you didn’t just get completely drunk and forget to note your visit?” Etta asked, leaning over him.
“I love that you know me so well, Linden-Hemlock-Spencer, but I assure you, no. Say what you will about changing the timeline, but my whole life has been a lesson in self-fulfillment. I can’t know what’s ahead, but Future Me knows what’s behind, and he’s a humorless fool about letting me have my fun.”
To her, it sounded like Julian’s future self was pretty skilled in keeping himself alive, but Etta kept her mouth shut and moved away, so he could stand up and brush himself off.
“Maybe Future Julian wants you to be a better person?” she suggested.
He pulled a horrified face.
“All right, kid, let’s go to the Big Apple, then. We’ll split up in Little Italy. I’ve a hankering for good pasta, anyway,” he whispered as he stood. “Oh boy, 1939 means that my old nanny will be there—she retired to her natural time once she was finished with me and Soph. I like to think we were the ultimate cosmic test, and she didn’t dare risk getting worse little demons—”
“Shhh,” Etta begged, her head pounding, as they walked. “Shh…”
“I wonder what the old bird is up to? I could give her the fright of her life and drop in,” Julian said, his voice low. “You know, I think I’ll do just that. She can keep a secret, especially now that Grandfather no longer controls her purse strings. Or I’ll just play it off as past Julian, rather than present Julian…. Hmm…”
Etta gave up and let him talk, let him fill her head with his memories until they pushed away her own painful ones for a time. She tried to bring up Nicholas’s face, to imagine finding him after she saw this mess through to its end, but seeing its bold lines, the curve of his contemplative smile, brought no relief—it only made her feel desperately alone.
THE PASSAGE SHOVED THEM OUT TOGETHER, SENDING JULIAN to his knees and throwing Etta on top of him. Black ringed her vision at the jarring impact, and it took her longer than she would have liked to recover enough to stand.
“That was a definite ouch,” Julian said, staggering up. “You sure your head isn’t made out of marble?”
Etta held her throbbing arm close to her chest, waiting until the pain passed before saying, “Sorry.”
They’d landed in the middle of a rocky, fog-smothered path. Etta could hardly see a few inches in front of her, let alone take in what was supposed to have been the city’s skyline.
“Manhattan, huh?” she said, turning to Julian with an arched brow. “What was that about having excellent records?”
But Julian was rooted to the spot, one hand twisting the front of his shirt.
“No, Etta,” he said. “This is New York City.”
“In prehistoric times?”
The terrain was wild—craggy hills shadowed by thick, silky fog. Etta could just make out the shape of other mounds in the distance. Someone nearby had lit a fire; the smell of charred wood bloomed in the air.
The silence breathed thickly around them, as if trying to get her attention. To tell her something. Listen.
“Maybe we took the wrong passage out of the Vatican?” she suggested.
“No,” Julian said, the word harsher now. He still hadn’t moved. “This is New York.”
Etta was about to shake him when a breeze stirred the fog, swirled it. The muddied shapes, which had clearly been hills and rough terrain, were now sloping piles of brick and stone, the warped frames of buildings and burned-out bodies of cars. The frost near her feet wasn’t frost at all, but shattered glass. Flecks of white flurried around her, and for one stupid, insane second, Etta thought, Snow. It’s snowing.
But the only thing falling around them was ash.
THE DARKNESS NEVER LIFTED.
For a single terrifying moment, Nicholas was certain he, too, had somehow lost vision in one or both of his eyes. The blackness was absolute; the air breathed around him, thick enough to slice into ribbons. Already unsteady from exhaustion and—Christ—blood loss, he landed hard enough on his knees to nearly bite off his own tongue. Sophia almost slipped out of his arms. He gripped the back of her tunic for purchase, avoiding her cold, slick skin.
“Sophia?” he said, his voice echoing back to him threefold. “Sophia? Can you hear me?”
Silence.
Stillness.
The touch of death, he thought.
The hairs on his body prickled to attention as panic surged through him, and he shook her gently, trying to provoke any sort of cutting word. “Sophia!”
“Give her to me,” Li Min said, forcing the matter. He should have fought her, he should have argued with her for propriety’s sake, but there wasn’t the time, and he hadn’t the strength. Sophia was inches taller than her, but the other young woman easily arranged her on her back and carrie
Pounding steps…or perhaps his own heart. No—there was another sound underscoring it, one that pierced his awareness. Someone was dragging a blade against stone, and he felt it, he felt it as if the sword or knife were scraping at his own bones.
“There’s nowhere you can hide that we won’t find you!” Miles Ironwood. “Come out now, Carter, and I’ll let you choose how you’d like to die.”
The other men laughed in response to Miles’s threat. Nicholas barely managed to catch his tongue before he shouted something back.
“Blade or barrel, blade or barrel,” Miles sang out. “I don’t think you want the old man to choose for you. Blade or barrel, what’ll it be, Carter? My knife or gun at your throat?”
Li Min muttered something he was sure was an oath.
“This way!” Her voice floated to him through the darkness, bounced between whatever walls were around them, cutting through even the passage’s groaning.
“Where—?” He coughed, trying to clear the tightness in his throat. “Where are you?”
It was so dark—so very, very dark and still. There wasn’t a hint of starlight or moonlight to warm the air with their glow, and there was no wind stirring against his skin. The utter stillness of this place was devastating. Terrifying. There did not seem to be a beginning or end to it.
“Get up!” Li Min sounded nearly breathless.
Where are we? A cellar of some sort? Holy Christ, why hadn’t he even thought to ask before he’d gone charging through the passage?
Get ahold of yourself. Nicholas was nearly frenzied with the need to seize some sort of control, some understanding, over what was happening.
Over the scraping and footfalls, there was a snick of sound, and a small spark of light floated like a firefly a few yards in front of him. His mind reached through its tangled mass of chaos for the word. Match.
Li Min had lit a match. She drew it close to her face, illuminating the stark lines of concern etched there.
“She’s not…” he tried to tell her. “I can’t…”
“We haven’t much time—stand up, Nicholas Carter. If you cannot, then I will carry you both.”
His legs bobbed like a newborn calf’s, but Nicholas, seemingly by the grace of God alone, got his feet under him. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness well enough to see the stark lines of the narrow walkway, the walls that opened here and there in doorless entryways.
In this state, he couldn’t think and walk at the same time, so he shut off the valve to his thoughts and followed each prick of light that the girl lit, until finally they veered off the main walkway, and into what looked like…
A mausoleum.
It was one in a string of three that shared walls. Li Min had stepped through the nearest, her hand brushing a small engraving of a leaf, nearly hidden by the fading fresco of men. Nicholas stepped down into the structure, carefully balancing as loose stones bit into the thin soles of his sandals.
“Is she alive?” he whispered, but Li Min ignored the question. Sophia hadn’t said a word since they’d made their way through the passage, and he could no longer feel to ensure her chest was rising and falling. He could barely see her in this impenetrable darkness.
You cannot die, he thought, the words searing and unyielding. You owe me a debt.
Etta’s terrified face, the moment before she disappeared, cut through his mind. What would happen if Sophia died? The passage they’d come through would likely collapse—but would she disappear, the way Etta and Julian had when they’d been caught in a wrinkle and tossed through time?
I need your help. Desperation turned his stomach hollow. I cannot do this without your assistance. Do not die, do not die, do not die—
Li Min blew out her match just as the passage began to make itself known again, beating out a warning against the stale air.
Reinforcements. Nicholas clenched his jaw, struggling with the pain in his shoulder, the way it leeched at his strength.
Li Min grunted in the darkness, adjusting Sophia’s weight. “This way.”
From what he’d seen before the light went out, there was nowhere else to go. Nothing to do but hide and hope and pray.
“Must be up in the Basilica by now—”
“—split up, see if we can find a light—”
The voices were thrown between the walls, allowed to volley back and forth, to meet the passage’s calls blow for blow.
“This way!” Li Min’s voice became more urgent.
She struck one last match. Nicholas felt himself balk—first at the sight of the open sarcophagus at the center of the mausoleum, and again as Li Min all but shouldered him toward the stairs that had been hidden beneath its lid and silently urged him down into a darkness deeper than sleep.
The quick steps of the Ironwoods were pounding down like rain, growing in speed and strength. Nicholas couldn’t question it. He had to move.
The sensation of descending into a tomb, into a maze of graves and stones, made him feel as if Death himself had one hand around his throat, his bony fingers bruising. Nicholas stopped, poised at the edge of the steps. What small sliver of light Li Min’s match had provided disappeared as the girl set Sophia down and pulled the lid shut over them.
For the first time in a long, long while—since he’d been a child, since his mother had told him to climb into that cupboard and stay hidden until it was safe to come out—Nicholas felt his throat tighten to the point of choking. His mouth had gone so dry, it felt as if he were breathing ash in and out of his lungs. Every sense was dampened; what innate sense of direction he possessed was stripped away, leaving him with only touch to feel his way down the last of the steps.
“‘Through me you enter into a city of woes,’” he muttered, half-delirious. “‘Through me you enter into eternal pain…through me you enter the population of loss….’”
“‘Abandon all hope, you who enter here,’” Li Min whispered, just above his ear. “Dante. How original.”
Nicholas grunted back, his feet finding flat ground, and his forehead the disastrously low ceiling. His forehead cracked against some sort of stone support, igniting the aches and agony he’d managed to push aside. That was it for him—his body simply ran out of whatever means it had of continuing on. He drooped like a slack sail.
Distantly, he heard Li Min set Sophia down and race back up the steps to pull the cover back over them.
Nicholas fell onto his knees, his strength draining as quickly as the blood from the arrow wound. His limbs shook from the strain of their run, from carrying Sophia’s slight weight for as long as he had, and he fought to stay conscious. Inching forward, even just a foot, felt like a Herculean task. A beast that would not be slaughtered.
And then…there was light. It spilled out from a gas lantern in Li Min’s hands, illuminating the mosaics on the floor and the peeling frescos dancing on the walls around them. She was rummaging through a small bundle of wares in the corner: blankets, pots, a ruthless-looking dagger, and a leather sack of something he hoped was food.
This was her hiding place, her stash—or someone else’s stash that she’d taken advantage of. He watched as Li Min spread the blanket out over the ground, snapping it to shake the dust free.
Nicholas felt himself take his first deep breath in hours.
Li Min drew her lantern closer and unknotted the laces of her hooded cloak to drape over Sophia’s shivering form. She wore an approximation of the longer draped dresses he’d seen on the women of Carthage, her hair braided into a crown around her head. She worked silently, her fingers pressing along a point on Sophia’s neck. Then she leaned forward, an ear to Sophia’s chest.
“Is…is she dead?” Nicholas asked, voice hoarse.
Li Min sat back. Shook her head. “She lives. Barely.”
“I brought—” Nicholas fumbled with the physician’s bag, yanki
She snatched the leather bag and began sorting through its contents, lining up each sachet, small bottle, and pressed herb on the ground beside her. She stopped now and then to sniff one or dab a drop of liquid on her tongue.
“Sit her up,” Li Min commanded at last, seizing one of the small bottles and uncorking it. “Hold her jaw open with care, or else you’ll break it.”
He rolled his stiffening shoulder back, trying to loosen it into use, and felt a trickle of fresh blood race down the curve of his spine. His thoughts took on a flickering quality that set off a clanging bell inside of his skull.
Still, he did as Li Min asked, sitting Sophia’s slack body up and tilting her head back. He used his index finger and thumb to nudge her jaw open wide enough for Li Min to pour whatever was in the bottle down Sophia’s throat. She measured it out, sip by sip, her free hand stroking Sophia’s face sweetly, like a delicate spring rain.
“What—what is that?” he demanded. “Won’t she choke—?”
Sophia had been nothing but deadweight from the moment he’d carried her out of the house in Carthage, but she’d at least had her usual barbed edges and venom. Over the course of ten, fifteen minutes, it had all bled away, leaving nothing but a husk of bones and skin. But now she returned to life, seemingly all at once: retching, gagging, and then casting up her accounts all over him with a wet, putrid splatter. Her eyes remained closed, but he could feel her breathing more steadily now, the puffs of it warming the air between them.
“Dear God—” he said in alarm, pounding on her back to help her clear her throat. The smell—the smell—
“Something to help her get the vile poison out of her,” Li Min said, finally answering his earlier questions.
“Thank you,” he said, wiping his chin against the shoulder of his tunic, “for that timely warning.”
“Lay her back,” Li Min said, sitting back on her heels. “She needs to rest now. Some of the poison has been absorbed by her body, but we may have luck on our side yet. The Thorn’s intention wasn’t to kill her. Ironwood’s bounty specifies he wants you both alive, or else the payment will be forfeit.”