The bed is but an empty steel frame, listing to one side, in a room that stinks of disuse. The moon shines through the curtain-less window.
I look around. It is structurally the same room, yet
entirely different in its furnishings. There's a narrow bed frame and an odd white-painted chest of drawers. A vanity sits to one side, its top scattered with jars, all of them coated in a quarter-inch of dust.
I walk to the vanity and lift one bottle. It looks like red
glass, but the material is like nothing I've seen before,
lightweight and covered with glossy printed paper that has
faded with age. Big letters proclaim "Sun In," and the
picture . . . Is that a photograph of a young woman?
I turn the bottle into the light and nearly drop it. The
photograph depicts a naked woman. I blink and stare. No,
she's not entirely unclothed, but she might as well be,
dressed only in scraps of blue fabric over her breasts and
nether regions. She's at a beach, holding some sort of ball like sphere, and I can only stare in horror and fascination.
I gingerly set down the bottle and pick up a tiny tube
made of the same strange material. It bears the words Dr
Pepper. Some kind of remedy, then? I open the cap to find a
waxy sweet-smelling stick. A third container is white with a
bright pink lid. The glossy paper is covered in lips and
hearts, and the typeface screams "Teen Spirit" and
proclaims it to be something called deodorant. A deodorizer?
I have heard of such a thing to cover the scent of manure. As
for "teen spirit," I know what spirits are—either alcohol or
ghosts—but whatever is a teen?
Clearly I am sleeping. I only dreamed that I awoke and
rode to Thorne Manor. I've never been an imaginative sort—
my sister is the writer—but some latent talent has arisen in
this fantastical dream.
I set down the "deodorant" and walk from the room. It
does look like Thorne Manor. Pictures line the hallway, but
it's too dim for me to see them, and I don't pause to look
closer. Downstairs, a clock strikes the hour, and it is
unmistakably the same clock.
I reach the front door, and that, too, is the same, or so it
seems until metal glints, and I notice an odd locking
contraption above the knob. When I turn the handle, a metal
bolt slides back. The doorknob itself has also changed, but
after a few tries, it opens with a click.
I pull the heavy wood door to look out at a front lawn so
wild and overgrown it would give Mr. Shaw heart failure. I
walk down steps to a laneway that now runs to the stables
instead of circling past the house.
There's no sign of my horse, but by now, I don't expect to
see him. This is clearly a dream, and I am exploring it out of curiosity. When I wake, it'll be a delightful story to tell
August.
Should I share it? What if he wonders why I am dreaming
of Thorne Manor? My heart thuds. Is this how it will be
forever now? I cannot even share my dreams with my
husband for fear he'll read something untoward in them?
No, we will overcome this obstacle. It may take time, but
he will see he has no cause for jealousy.
I cross the lawn to find a wider road than I remember. At
the foot of the hill, High Thornesbury glows with an eerie
light, a dome of it cast over the village.
Entranced, I hike my skirts and make my way down the
hill. It is not a short walk. Not an interesting one, either.
Everything seems exactly as I recall until I round a corner to
find a metal signpost. It seems to be warning of a sharp
curve, which makes me laugh. Any fool can see the curve. It's
not as if a horse will come careening around and miss the
turn entirely.
A sheep bleats in the distance, and a cow answers. I smile.
That, at least, has not changed. Nor have the brambles along
the roadside, already thick with red berries that will turn
black and sweet in another month. The air smells of heather,
the scent of the moors. There's something else, an acrid
scent I don't recognize, but the heather is stronger, along
with the less pleasant odor of sheep droppings.
I'm nearly to the bottom of the hill when thunder
rumbles. I peer up, but the night sky is clear, moon and stars
shining bright. The sound grows closer and becomes like the
growl of some wild beast. I stagger backward as lights appear from nowhere, two blindingly bright orbs bearing down on
me faster than a horse at full gallop.
It is, of course, my imagination. A new fancy from my
dream. After that initial moment of terror, I fix my feet in
place, determined to see what my mind has conjured. I am
curious. Yes, that is an odd reaction to a creature barreling
toward me, growling and shrieking as it rounds the corner.
But I want to see it. I want a tale to tell August and a tale to
tell my sister Miranda, one that might inspire a fresh tale
from her pen.
At the last moment, my resolve cracks. This creature—a
low-slung carriage-sized shadow—is charging me at
demonic speed, its eyes blinding my own, and a tiny voice
whispers, "What if it is not a dream?" I throw myself to the
side, diving through a tangle of hedge and bramble as the
beast screams to a stop.
Through the thorny vines, I watch as the beast sprouts
wings that disgorge two men. The one closer to me is
dressed in blue trousers that fit as tight as riding breeches.
Over his chest, he wears a shirt without collar or sleeves or
buttons or cravat. He looks like a vagrant, unshaven with
wild and uncut hair.
"What?" His shadowy companion throws up his arms.
"Are we stopping for hallucinations now?" His voice is thick
with the local accent, but it's not quite right.
"I saw a girl in the road," the other says. "A blonde in a
blue dress."
The first man snickers. "Like the one who shot you down
tonight? Had one too many pints, and now you're seeing her
everywhere?"
"That was a purple dress. This one was blue. A long, oldfashioned dress."
His companion gasps. "Oh, my God, you saw her!"
"Saw who?"
"The ghost of the moors." The shadowy figure waves his
hands. "Whooo! She's coming to get you!" The figure starts
climbing back into the beast. "Get back in the bloody car, or
you're walking home."
The other man returns, and the beast roars oŷ. I watch it
go . . . and then I run.
I race back to Thorne Manor, up the stairs to that strange
and empty room, where I wait to wake up.
I do not wake up. At some point, I sleep, instead, drifting
into a fitful dream of hearing my son's cries and being
unable to find him. Then I wake from that to find myself on
the floor of that bedroom, in a house that is and is not
Thorne Manor.
I investigate. It is all I can do, short of sobbing in a
corner, which would hardly solve anything. The house is
empty. Long empty, although furnishings suggest it has not
been abandoned. And those furnishings . . . the strangeness
of them, like the house itself both familiar and not.
The kitchen is filled with devices I do not recognize,
cannot fathom the purpose of, mingled with ones so familiar
I find myself stroking them like talismans that will carry me
home. The entire house is like that—things I know and
things I do not. Somehow that is worse than if it had been
entirely unfamiliar. It's like seeing a portrait of my parents
that does not quite look like them, teasing me with grief and
longing and frustration.
I find water, and I find food, and I ponder my situation for
a day and a night before coming to the only conclusion that
makes sense. I have passed through time.
Later, I will laugh at how long it took me to realize what
would seem obvious to any modern denizen of the world.
Time travel is so deeply embedded in modern storytelling
that it is almost cliche. Yet I come from a world that has not
yet birthed H. G. Wells and his time machine. I have read
both Rip Van Winkle and A Christmas Carol, which lightly touch
upon the concept of moving through time, but that is
nothing like what I experience.
And yet I have encountered the concept, in a way, which
might be the only thing that keeps me from declaring I've
gone mad.
It happened on my honeymoon. August and I were on a
ship bound for Italy. It was our second day into the voyage,
and we'd only left our stateroom for food. That morning, we
were stretched out naked on our bed, the sea breeze drifting
through the open porthole. I remarked on how incredible it
was that we could travel to Rome in a few days, and I mused
on how much faster it might be for our great-grandchildren.
"You should ask William about that," August said, cutting
an apple and handing me half. "I believe he may have secret
knowledge of the future."
"It certainly seems like it, with his gift for investing."
"Not a gift at all. As I said, secret knowledge." He slid
closer and lowered his lips to my ear, as if we were not alone
in our stateroom. "I believe he once knew a girl from the
future."
I sputtered a laugh. "The future?"
He rolled onto his back. "The summer we were fifteen, he
became incredibly, irritatingly distracted, with scarcely any
time at all for me."
"No time for you? Or your youthful shenanigans?"
"Shenanigans? True, I was a bit of a rascal, getting myself
into this bind and that."
"Bind," I murmured. "Now that is a word I have never
heard used to refer to a lady's private parts."
He choked on a bite of apple, sputtering as he coughed it
out. He waggled a finger at me. "I was a very proper young
man, Rosie, who saved himself for his marriage bed."
That had me laughing hard enough that someone rapped
on our door to be sure we were all right. August assured him
we were.
"So William shunned your company," I said. "That
summer you were busy falling into binds, and he did not
wish to join you."
August shook his head. "I will not rise to your bait, only
saying that your opinion of my youth is very wicked. Not
inaccurate, but still wicked. So William spurned me, and
being mildly jealous—"
I cleared my throat.
He gave me a look. "All right. Very jealous. A man must
have one flaw, and that is mine."
"One flaw?"
"Others have more. I have but one." He coughed to cover
my laugh. "And so, to resume my tale, I became jealous and
resolved to learn the reason for his distraction. It was a girl."
I gasped. "Truly? A young man distracted by a young
woman. What a twist in the tale!"
He rapped my bare bottom with one finger. "You mock,
but William was not me, and I had never seen him display
more than mild interest in the fairer sex. Yet there he was,
enthralled by a secret love. Even more remarkable was the
girl herself, who dressed and spoke in the oddest way."
"Because she was"—I gripped his arm, my eyes mock
wide—"from the future!"
"Well, no, at first, I thought she might be French. Or
American. Or perhaps some fae creature from his beloved
moors. After that summer, William fell into the darkest
brood, and I realized the affair had come to an unhappy end,
and I resolved not to tease him about his mysterious buxom
brunette. Then, years later, when his mother passed and he
realized the family coffers were near to empty, he began
making the maddest gambles, investing in newfangled ideas
that seemed destined to failure."
"Yet they succeeded, and thus he filled the family coffers
to overflowing. And somehow that is proof that this girl was
from the future . . . ?"
"She gave him information on the future. On inventions
yet to come."
"So William Thorne fell madly in love with a girl from the
future, who broke his heart but shared secret knowledge of
her advanced culture." I peered at him. "Are you sure she
wasn't French?"
He laughed and pulled me to him for a kiss. And that was
the end of the conversation as we resumed our honeymoon
and promptly forgot everything else.
I still do not leap on August's speculations as the obvious
answer. Yet there is another aspect to the tale that forces me to consider it.
August hadn't merely raised the possibility of traveling
through time as a hypothetical fancy. He'd been talking
about William Thorne, who'd met a strange girl at Thorne
Manor, a girl with odd dress and odd speech, whom William
kept hidden, a girl August believed came through time.
A girl who came through time at Thorne Manor. Where I
opened a box and tumbled into the dusty and abandoned
bedroom of a girl.
It is then that I remember the kitten. I return to the
bedroom and, in the light of day, clearly see tiny feline tracks
on the dusty floor. Tracks that lead to the foot of the bed and
disappear.
A kitten from the future, who somehow passed through
time and found herself trapped in a box that doesn't exist in
her world. She cries for help, and I come running, only to
pass through time in the other direction.
That is both perfectly sensible and perfectly ridiculous.
Yet if time travel exists perhaps it is like yeast, an
inexplicable but proven chemical reaction. Add yeast to the
right ingredients, mix in the right environment, and you can
make dough magically rise. Add a portal to a house, mix in
the right circumstances, and you can blink through time.
Someone in the distant past discovered that yeast makes
dough rise. For centuries before that, people ate unleavened
bread. Was it not possible that I had made a discovery of my
own? One made before me by a girl who met a boy from
another time, loved him and then disappeared back to her
own realm?
The solution then is obvious. Recreate the circumstances
and return to my husband and child.
I plant myself in that spot, matching my dust-cleared
footprints exactly. And there I stand through four hourly
chimes of the clock below.
I had arrived shortly before the grandfather clock struck
three in the morning. Perhaps timing is the key then. That
night, I stand on that spot from one until five. I repeat this
every night for a week. Then I think perhaps the moon
matters, and I wait for it to be in the same portion of the
cycle and try again.
I wear the same dress. I position myself as if opening an
invisible box. I arrange my features in some semblance of
surprise, as if seeing a kitten. Nothing works.
For six weeks, I try to get home. When I need food, I
forage or raid village gardens at night. Days and weeks come
and go, and I stay. I stay in an empty house, crying myself to
sleep, dreaming of my husband and child, becoming a mere
ghost of myself.
I stay, and the kitten does not return, and when six weeks
have passed, I begin to understand what that means.
I am here, and I am not going back.
That leaves me two choices. Fade away with wanting,
drifting into madness as I haunt this empty house. Or make a
life for myself here. Make a life while never giving up hope,
while never stopping my eŷorts to return to my family.
I stay until the second change of the moon brings me no
closer to home. Then I dry my tears and walk out of Thorne
Manor.
The bed is but an empty steel frame, listing to one side, in a room that stinks of disuse. The moon shines through the curtain-less window.
I look around. It is structurally the same room, yet entirely different in its furnishings.
There's a narrow bed frame and an odd white-painted chest of drawers. A vanity sits to one side, its top scattered with jars, all of them coated in a quarter-inch of dust.
I walk to the vanity and lift one bottle.
It looks like red glass, but the material is like nothing I've seen before, lightweight and covered with glossy printed paper that has faded with age.
Big letters proclaim "Sun In," and the picture . . . Is that a photograph of a young woman?
I turn the bottle into the light and nearly drop it. The photograph depicts a naked woman.
I blink and stare.
No, she's not entirely unclothed, but she might as well be, dressed only in scraps of blue fabric over her breasts and neither regions.
She's at a beach, holding some sort of ball like sphere, and I can only stare in horror and fascination.
I gingerly set down the bottle and pick up a tiny tube made of the same strange material. It bears the words Dr Pepper.
Some kind of remedy, then? I open the cap to find a waxy sweet-smelling stick.
A third container is white with a bright pink lid.
The glossy paper is covered in lips and hearts, and the typeface screams "Teen Spirit" and proclaims it to be something called deodorant.
A deodorizer?
I have heard of such a thing to cover the scent of manure.
As for "teen spirit," I know what spirits are—either alcohol or ghosts—but whatever is a teen?
Clearly I am sleeping. I only dreamed that I awoke and rode to Thorne Manor.
I've never been an imaginative sort— my sister is the writer—but some latent talent has arisen in this fantastical dream.
I set down the "deodorant" and walk from the room.
it does look like Thorne Manor. Pictures line the hallway, but it's too dim for me to see them, and I don't pause to look closer.
Downstairs, a clock strikes the hour, and it is unmistakably the same clock.
I reach the front door, and that, too, is the same, or so it seems until metal glints, and I notice an odd locking contraption above the knob.
When I turn the handle, a metal bolt slides back. The doorknob itself has also changed, but after a few tries, it opens with a click.
I pull the heavy wood door to look out at a front lawn so wild and overgrown it would give Mr. Shaw heart failure.
I walk down steps to a laneway that now runs to the stables instead of circling past the house.
There's no sign of my horse, but by now, I don't expect to see him.
This is clearly a dream, and I am exploring it out of curiosity.
When I awake, it'll be a delightful story to tell August.
Should I share it? What if he wonders why I am dreaming of Thorne Manor?
My heart thuds.
Is this how it will be forever now?
I cannot even share my dreams with my husband for fear he'll read something untoward in them?
No, we will overcome this obstacle.
It may take time, but he will see he has no cause for jealousy.
I cross the lawn to find a wider road than I remember.
At the foot of the hill, High Thorne's bury glows with an eerie light, a dome of it cast over the village.
Entranced, I hike my skirts and make my way down the hill.
It is not a short walk. Not an interesting one, either.
Everything seems exactly as I recall until I round a corner to find a metal signpost.
It seems to be warning of a sharp curve, which makes me laugh.
Any fool can see the curve.
It's not as if a horse will come careening around and miss the turn entirely.
A sheep bleats in the distance, and a cow answers.
I smile.
That, at least, has not changed.
Nor have the brambles along the roadside, already thick with red berries that will turn black and sweet in another month.
The air smells of heather, the scent of the moors.
There's something else, an acrid scent I don't recognize, but the heather is stronger, along with the less pleasant odor of sheep droppings.
I'm nearly to the bottom of the hill when thunder rumbles.
I peer up, but the night sky is clear, moon and stars shining bright.
The sound grows closer and becomes like the growl of some wild beast.
I stagger backward as lights appear from nowhere, two blindingly bright orbs bearing down on me faster than a horse at full gallop.
It is, of course, my imagination. A new fancy from my dream.
After that initial moment of terror, I fix my feet in place, determined to see what my mind has conjured.
I am curious.
Yes, that is an odd reaction to a creature barreling toward me, growling and shrieking as it rounds the corner.
But I want to see it.
I want a tale to tell August and a tale to tell my sister Miranda, one that might inspire a fresh tale from her pen.
At the last moment, my resolve cracks.
This creature-a low slung carriage sized shadow—is charging me at demonic speed, its eyes blinding my own, and a tiny voice whispers,
"What if it is not a dream?"
I throw myself to the side, diving through a tangle of hedge and bramble as the beast screams to a stop.
Through the thorny vines, I watch as the beast sprouts wings that disgorge two men.
The one closer to me is dressed in blue trousers that fit as tight as riding breeches.
Over his chest, he wears a shirt without collar or sleeves or buttons or cravat. He looks like a vagrant, unshaven with wild and uncut hair.
"What?" His shadowy companion throws up his arms.
"Are we stopping for hallucinations now?" His voice is thick with the local accent, but it's not quite right.
"I saw a girl in the road," the other says. "A blonde in a blue dress."
The first man snickers.
"Like the one who shot you down tonight? Had one too many pints, and now you're seeing her everywhere?"
"That was a purple dress. This one was blue. A long, oldfashioned dress."
His companion gasps.
"Oh, my God, you saw her!"
"Saw who?"
"The ghost of the moors."
The shadowy figure waves his hands.
"Whooo! She's coming to get you!"
The figure starts climbing back into the beast. "Get back in the bloody car, or you're walking home."
The other man returns, and the beast roars oŷ. I watch it go . . . and then I run.
I race back to Thorne Manor, up the stairs to that strange and empty room, where I wait to wake up.
I do not wake up. At some point, I sleep, instead, drifting into a fitful dream of hearing my son's cries and being unable to find him.
Then I wake from that to find myself on the floor of that bedroom, in a house that is and is not Thorne Manor.
I investigate. It is all I can do, short of sobbing in a corner, which would hardly solve anything.
The house is empty.
Long empty, although furnishings suggest it has not been abandoned.
And those furnishings . . . the strangeness of them, like the house itself both familiar and not.
The kitchen is filled with devices I do not recognize, cannot fathom the purpose of, mingled with ones so familiar I find myself stroking them like talismans that will carry me home.
The entire house is like that—things I know and things I do not.
Somehow that is worse than if it had been entirely unfamiliar.
It's like seeing a portrait of my parents that does not quite look like them, teasing me with grief and longing and frustration.
I find water, and I find food, and I ponder my situation for a day and a night before coming to the only conclusion that makes sense.
I have passed through time. Later, I will laugh at how long it took me to realize what would seem obvious to any modern denizen of the world.
Time travel is so deeply embedded in modern storytelling that it is almost cliche. Yet I come from a world that has not yet birthed H. G. Wells and his time machine.
I have read both Rip Van Winkle and A Christmas Carol, which lightly touch upon the concept of moving through time, but that is nothing like what I experience.
And yet I have encountered the concept, in a way, which might be the only thing that keeps me from declaring I've gone mad.
It happened on my honeymoon. August and I were on a ship bound for Italy.
It was our second day into the voyage, and we'd only left our stateroom for food. That morning, we
were stretched out naked on our bed, the sea breeze drifting through the open porthole.
I remarked on how incredible it was that we could travel to Rome in a few days, and I mused
on how much faster it might be for our great-grandchildren.
"You should ask William about that,"
August said, cutting an apple and handing me half.
"I believe he may have secret knowledge of the future."
"It certainly seems like it, with his gift for investing."
"Not a gift at all. As I said, secret knowledge." He slid closer and lowered his lips to my ear, as if we were not alone in our stateroom.
"I believe he once knew a girl from the future."
I sputtered a laugh. "The future?"
He rolled onto his back. "The summer we were fifteen, he became incredibly, irritatingly distracted, with scarcely any time at all for me."
"No time for you? Or your youthful shenanigans?"
"Shenanigans? True, I was a bit of a rascal, getting myself into this bind and that."
"Bind," I murmured. "Now that is a word I have never heard used to refer to a lady's private parts."
He choked on a bite of apple, sputtering as he coughed it out.
He waggled a finger at me.
"I was a very proper young man, Rosie, who saved himself for his marriage bed."
That had me laughing hard enough that someone rapped on our door to be sure we were all right. August assured him we were.
"So William shunned your company," I said.
"That summer you were busy falling into binds, and he did not wish to join you."
August shook his head. "I will not rise to your bait, only saying that your opinion of my youth is very wicked.
Not inaccurate, but still wicked. So William spurned me, and being mildly jealous—"
I cleared my throat.
He gave me a look. "All right. Very jealous. A man must have one flaw, and that is mine."
"One flaw?"
"Others have more. I have but one."
He coughed to cover my laugh.
"And so, to resume my tale, I became jealous and resolved to learn the reason for his distraction. It was a girl."
I gasped. "Truly? A young man distracted by a young woman. What a twist in the tale!"
He rapped my bare bottom with one finger. "You mock, but William was not me, and I had never seen him display more than mild interest in the fairer sex.
Yet there he was, enthralled by a secret love.
Even more remarkable was thegirl herself, who dressed and spoke in the oddest way."
"Because she was"—I gripped his arm, my eyes mock wide—"from the future!"
"Well, no, at first, I thought she might be French. Or American. Or perhaps some fae creature from his beloved moors.
After that summer, William fell into the darkest brood, and I realized the affair had come to an unhappy end, and I resolved not to tease him about his mysterious buxom brunette.
Then, years later, when his mother passed and he realized the family coffers were near to empty, he began making the maddest gambles, investing in newfangled ideas that seemed destined to failure."
"Yet they succeeded, and thus he filled the family coffers to overflowing. And somehow that is proof that this girl was from the future . . . ?"
"She gave him information on the future. On inventions yet to come."
"So William Thorne fell madly in love with a girl from the future, who broke his heart but shared secret knowledge of her advanced culture." I peered at him.
"Are you sure she wasn't French?"
He laughed and pulled me to him for a kiss. And that was the end of the conversation as we resumed our honeymoon and promptly forgot everything else.
I still do not leap on August's speculations as the obvious answer.
Yet there is another aspect to the tale that forces me to consider it.
August hadn't merely raised the possibility of traveling through time as a hypothetical fancy.
He'd been talking about William Thorne, who'd met a strange girl at Thorne Manor, a girl with odd dress and odd speech, whom William kept hidden, a girl August believed came through time.
A girl who came through time at Thorne Manor.
Where I opened a box and tumbled into the dusty and abandoned bedroom of a girl.
It is then that I remember the kitten.
I return to the bedroom and, in the light of day, clearly see tiny feline tracks on the dusty floor. Tracks that lead to the foot of the bed and disappear.
A kitten from the future, who somehow passed through time and found herself trapped in a box that doesn't exist in her world. She cries for help, and I come running, only to pass through time in the other direction.
That is both perfectly sensible and perfectly ridiculous.
Yet if time travel exists perhaps it is like yeast, an inexplicable but proven chemical reaction.
Add yeast to the right ingredients, mix in the right environment, and you can make dough magically rise.
Add a portal to a house, mix in the right circumstances, and you can blink through time.
Someone in the distant past discovered that yeast makes dough rise.
For centuries before that, people ate unleavened bread.
Was it not possible that I had made a discovery of my own?
One made before me by a girl who met a boy from another time, loved him and then disappeared back to her own realm?
The solution then is obvious. Recreate the circumstance and return to my husband and child.
I plant myself in that spot, matching my dust-cleared footprints exactly.
And there I stand through four hourly chimes of the clock below.
I had arrived shortly before the grandfather clock struck three in the morning. Perhaps timing is the key then.
That night, I stand on that spot from one until five. I repeat this every night for a week.
Then I think perhaps the moon matters, and I wait for it to be in the same portion of the cycle and try again.
I wear the same dress. I position myself as if opening an invisible box.
I arrange my features in some semblance of surprise, as if seeing a kitten. Nothing works.
For six weeks, I try to get home. When I need food, I forage or raid village gardens at night.
Days and weeks come and go, and I stay.
I stay in an empty house, crying myself to sleep, dreaming of my husband and child, becoming a mere ghost of myself.
I stay, and the kitten does not return, and when six weeks have passed, I begin to understand what that means.
I am here, and I am not going back.
That leaves me two choices. Fade away with wanting, drifting into madness as I haunt this empty house. Or make a life for myself here.
Make a life while never giving up hope, while never stopping my eŷorts to return to my family.
I stay until the second change of the moon brings me no closer to home. Then I dry my tears and walk out of Thorne Manor.