LISA DUCKED AS the plank came whooshing past her a second time.
She climbed out of the bathwater at once and scrambled up onto the edge of the tub.
Around and below her was a living carpet of pink pig backs all bumping into the time-traveling bathtub and each other.
“Shh! Piggy, piggy, shh!” the furious farmer urged, closing in on Lisa with his plank.
Lisa jumped. She landed on one of the pig’s backs, and a piercing squeal was heard above the steady drone of munching and snorting. Instinctively, she grabbed the pig’s ears as it started to run. It pushed its way through the herd of pigs and continued toward the fence enclosing the pigpen, kicking up a splash of manure as it ran. When it reached the fence it lurched to a sudden stop, heaving up onto its front feet and bucking its rear end to send Lisa sailing through the air all of a sudden. She flew over the fence, over a pitchfork, over a piglet that had strayed from the pen, and closed her eyes as she prepared for a hard landing.
Astonished when that didn’t happen, she opened her eyes again and determined that she was lying on a big, soft bale of hay. Lisa stood up, brushed the hay off her clothes, and watched the farmer, who was approaching her at full speed.
Lisa was tired. Tired of being chased, tired of being afraid, and tired of traveling and not finding what she was looking for, tired of not being home with her mother and father, and tired of not having her teddy bear. She’d had enough. So she jumped down, pushed the piglet out of her way with her foot, grabbed the pitchfork, and aimed it at the farmer as she screamed, her voice trembling with rage:
“I’m going to skewer you and feed you to these pigs, you miserable bumpkin!”
The farmer stopped suddenly and let go of the plank.
“Wha-wha-what do you want?” he asked in a gentle voice.
“I want my teddy bear!” Lisa howled, moving toward the farmer. “Apart from that, I want you to tell me the way to the Pastille! Right now! Let’s hear it!”
“The P-P-Pastille?” the terrified farmer stuttered, scrambling to get out of pitchfork range. “Well, that’s … that’s here.”
“There’s no prison here! Where’s the Place de la Révolution?”
“Oh … I think you must mean the Bastille with a B.”
Lisa’s eyes lost a little of their fury. “The Bastille?”
“Yeah. That’s in the middle of the city, right in front of the Place de la Révolution.”
“How far away is that?”
“It’s kind of a long walk, but may—may—maybe you’re not in a hurry?”
“I need to get there before they behead the Count of Monte Crisco, thank you very much.”
“Uh-oh,” the farmer said. “Then—then you don’t have much time.”
Lisa lowered the pitchfork. “Why not?”
“Because they’re planning to behead that Monte Crisco guy today.”
Lisa tossed the pitchfork aside. “Quick! Do you have a horse I can borrow?”
“A horse?” the farmed scoffed. “I’m a pig farmer, not some yeehaw pony-pusher.”
Lisa sighed. She looked around. A hairy, black pig—monstrous, the size of a motorcycle, with sharp tusks—had just rolled over in the manure, stood up, and was now grunting at her menacingly. Lisa sighed again. This wasn’t going to be pretty. This wasn’t going to be without risk. This was going to be pig riding.
ON THIS DAY, a boy named Marcel had come to the Place de la Révolution with his parents to enjoy the crowds. “And to make sure the executioners do their jobs,” his father had said.
His mother had fixed a nice lunch basket, and Marcel was looking forward to the brie and French bread. Of course Marcel didn’t call it French bread, just like Spaniards don’t call theirs Spanish bread, the Danes don’t say Danish bread, the Americans … well, you get the idea.
He just called it bread.
And brie.
And maybe a little red wine mixed with water.
They were sitting on a blanket his mother had spread out over the cobblestones in the overcrowded square. Marcel was eyeing the lunch basket longingly while his parents and the other people kept their eyes on the wooden platform up ahead of them. The executioner—a guy with no shirt on, a sweaty torso, and a black hood pulled over his head with just holes for his eyes—would read the person’s death sentence in an authoritative, gravelly vibrato voice. Then he’d pull a cord and, with a whistling sound, the razor-sharp knife would plunge down from the top of the twelve-foot-high stand and make a chop! sound as it cut off the head of the poor guy who was lying below with his neck in the guillotine. The chop would then be followed by a cheer from the crowd.
“You see that?” The father nodded appreciatively. “That’s what I call a great beheading. Did you see that, Marcel?”
But Marcel hadn’t seen it. He was bored. These beheadings had been going on all summer. They’d been chopping and chopping. The heads would dance their way into the woven baskets in front of the guillotine and the blood would pour off the stage onto the cobblestones below. And every now and then, when someone had done something extra awful or had been just a little too rich or aristocratic, they would sew the head back onto the body and behead the person one more time.
No, Marcel had liked Sundays before the revolution better. Back then, he and his mother and father used to come to the Place de la Révolution and listen to musicians playing on the stage out in front of the Bastille. Marcel loved music and wanted to be a musician when he grew up. He brought the trumpet he’d gotten from his grandfather with him everywhere he went. Today was no exception. So while all the other people were absorbed in what was going on up on the stage, Marcel raised his trumpet to his lips to play a little song he’d come up with all on his own. But he never started playing because he got distracted, staring at something that was galloping down one of the side streets toward them. It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t without risk. No, in fact it actually looked an awful lot like pig riding. And there was a girl sitting on the back of the monstrous black pig!
The pig stopped and the girl hopped off and ran into the crowd shouting, “Doctor Proctor! Doctor Proctor! It’s me, Lisa! Are you here? Doctor Proctor!”
But the girl’s voice was drowned out by the whistling of the blade, the chopping, and the cheering of the crowd. The girl stopped and stood there, shouting and shouting, but got no response. Of course not, there was no way anyone could hear her delicate girl’s voice. She gave up, and Marcel could see the tears welling up in her eyes as she stood there scanning the crowd in despair. Since Marcel was a sensitive boy who was more interested in music and the happiness of his fellow man than beheadings, he took his trumpet and went over to the girl.
“Hi,” he said.
But the girl was too busy scanning the crowd to notice him.
Marcel cleared his throat. “Hi, Litha.”
She turned and looked at him in surprise. “Did you say Lisa?” she asked.
“Yeth, Litha. That’th what I thaid. Do you need thome help?” Marcel asked.
“How did you know my name?” the girl asked.
“Becauthe you hollered ‘It’th me, Litha’ theveral timeth.”
“Oh, right,” Lisa said, smiling, but it wasn’t a happy smile, more like an about-to-cry smile.
“Your voithe doethn’t carry that well becauthe of all the noithe from all theeth people,” Marcel said. “If you want thith Doctor Proctor fellow to hear you, you need thomething loud. Thith, for exthample.” Marcel held out his trumpet. “And maybe you ought to take that thtrange clip off your nothe.”
Lisa looked at his instrument. “I can’t shout his name with that.”
“No,” Marcel said. “But maybe I could play thomething that would make him underthtand that you’re here.”
“What would that be?”
“I don’t know. Ithn’t there a Doctor Proctor thong? Or a Litha thong?”
Lisa looked discouraged and shook her head.
Marcel cocked his head to the side. “Maybe a thong from the plathe you’re from?”
“A Cannon Avenue thong, I mean, song?” Lisa said. “I don’t think so.”
“Well, then,” Marcel sighed, thinking for a minute. “Would you like a thlice of bread with thome brie and pâté?”
Lisa stared at Marcel’s trumpet. Imagining is imagining, she thought. And dreaming is just dreaming. Or maybe not.
“Could I borrow your trumpet?” she asked.
Marcel looked first at her and then down at his instrument. He hesitated. But then he nodded and handed her the trumpet. She put her lips to the mouthpiece, concentrated to block out the sound of yet another swish!—chop!—hurrah! Because this was what she had dreamed of. Not that it would happen in a place where people’s heads were being chopped off, exactly, but still: playing this song for a large crowd.
She placed her fingers over the keys like Nilly had taught her and then she blew. The first note quivered, hesitant and timid. The second was flat and sounded awful. The third was just wrong. But the fourth was right. Marcel nodded in approval as the sixth note rose, clear and strong, into the blue afternoon sky over the Place de la Révolution in Paris. It’s funny to think about this, but no one other than you and I know that this was the first time in history that anyone in France—and anyone anywhere in the world for that matter—heard a song that wouldn’t be written for another sixty-something years, a song that every Norwegian would one day recognize, a song that would go on to become the Norwegian national anthem, “Ja, vi elsker.”
The notes pierced through the noise of the crowd and made everyone turn around to listen. Even the executioner up on the stage, who’d been nicknamed Bloodbath because of his efficiency, stopped his work, cocked his ears under his black executioner’s hood, and scratched his naked barrel-shaped torso. He thought it was quite a captivating melody. All it lacked was … well, what was it missing, actually? … an accordion maybe? Bloodbath was roused from his musical contemplations by the fact that the guy with his head currently locked into the guillotine, a thin beanpole with some weird eyeglasses that looked like they were glued onto his face, started yelling and shouting in some strange foreign language:
“Nilly! Lisa! Here! I’m up here!”
Lisa quit playing and looked around, her heart pounding, because there was no doubt about whose voice that was. He rolled his Rs like a rusty old lawnmower. It was Doctor Proctor! She jumped up and down, trying to see where his voice was coming from.
“Why don’t you thit up on my thoulderth tho you can thee,” Marcel offered.
“Are you sure you’re strong enough?” Lisa asked, looking skeptically at the skinny boy.
“Of courth,” Marcel said, kneeling down.
Lisa climbed onto his shoulders and Marcel stood up, staggering and wobbling.
“I’m over here!” Doctor Proctor called. “Quick! The situation is a little, uh … urgent!”
“Oh no …,” Lisa said, losing hope. Up on the stage she saw a thin, bony man with scraggly, disheveled hair over a pair of sooty motorcycle goggles, who was screaming in a language she assumed was Norwegian, as Lisa was still wearing the French nose clips. Doctor Proctor!
“What ith it?” Marcel groaned underneath her.
“Doctor Proctor is in the guillotine! They’re going to behead him! We have to save him!”
Lisa swung herself off, slid down Marcel’s back, and started running forward, pushing her way through the crowd.
“No!” Marcel shouted. “They behead anyone who trieth to thtop people from being beheaded! Litha!”
But Lisa wasn’t listening, she was just forcing her way through.
Bloodbath’s gravely, vibrato voice rang out from the stage: “The Revolutionary Court of Paris has sentenced Doctor Victor Proctor to beheading because he tried to prevent the beheading of this fellow here …”
Bloodbath stuck his hand down into the woven basket, picked up a head by its hair, and held it up to the attentive audience.
“… the recently deceased Count of Monte Crisco!”
The crowd erupted into cheers.
Lisa had almost reached the stage, but was stuck behind a tall person who wouldn’t budge. “Please let me through!” Lisa cried loudly, using the trumpet to poke the person in the shoulder.
The person slowly turned to stare at Lisa, smiled broadly, and whispered, in a voice as dry as a desert wind: “Ship ahoy, there you are. Let me give you a hug!”
Lisa felt everything freeze into ice. The blood that ran in her veins, the scream she had on her lips, yes, even time seemed to stop moving as a couple of arms—thin, but as strong as steel wires—coiled around her. The breath hit her at near gale force and reeked of stinky socks.
Bloodbath tossed the Count of Monte Crisco’s head back into the basket and put a pair of glasses on over his mask. He started to read aloud from a document.
“The jury had the following to say about the condemned: ‘Doctor Victor Proctor is a funny guy who speaks well for himself. But he chose the wrong tactic and made a nasty mistake when he argued before the court today that he had just invented a time-traveling bathtub that—’”
The audience laughed in delight and Bloodbath had to wait for a moment before he could proceed.
Meanwhile Lisa squirmed in vain in the tall woman’s iron grip.
“Let me go!” she roared, but the woman’s arms remained locked tight.
“Calm down, child,” the woman whispered into her ear. “Let’s enjoy the conclusion together. After this, the invention will be all mine, don’t you see?”
She had the same sharp teeth and black eye makeup as before, but what made Raspa seem even more terrifying than she had in Lisa’s imagination was that frenzied, crazed gleam in her eye.
“Now, Lisa, are you trying to save that poor slob up there?” Raspa asked, nodding toward the guillotine and Doctor Proctor, who was staring out over the crowd in desperation while Bloodbath read the rest of the sentence to occasional jeers from the audience, which was clearly starting to get bored.
“Whatever,” Lisa groaned. “If they cut off his head, I could just travel back in time a few hours and save him then.”
Raspa laughed and shook her head. “It’s not as easy to change history as you idiots obviously think it is. Haven’t you noticed that? Not even Victor seems to understand that it’s impossible to change what’s happened without giving up your life. Or have you forgotten what I told you in the shop? History is carved in stone and you can only change what’s written if you’re willing to die.”
Now Lisa remembered. Was that why they hadn’t managed to prevent anything from happening?
“Why do you know more about changing history than Doctor Proctor?” she asked to win herself some time as she tried to wriggle her hand that was holding the trumpet free.
“Because no one has studied or knows more about time than me, my girl. After all, I was the one who invented the time soap.”
“Time soap?” Lisa groaned. She thought about the clocks in the Trench Coat Clock Shop and knew instinctively that Raspa was telling the truth. But she also realized something else at the same time.
“But … but if history is carved in stone, then Doctor Proctor can’t die now! If he did, fartonaut powder would never be invented, which would change history. And that’s not possible. At least according to you.”
“You’re not hearing what I’m saying, you stupid girl,” Raspa said, letting her black made-up eyelids slide down over her enormous eyeballs and lowering her voice, “Death is the exception. Only if you die can you change history. Because then you yourself disappear into time and never come back. And, see? It’s about to happen now. Victor is about to die, to disappear forever, which will change history.” Her eyes were open wide, and there was an icy laughter in her voice: “It will all be mine and only mine!”
Lisa had managed to tug her arm halfway free, but couldn’t get it any further.
“What do you mean it will all be yours?”
“If Victor Proctor dies in 1793, who do you think will patent the time-traveling bathtub? Who will become the greatest inventor in the world?”
Up on the stage Bloodbath stopped reading. He skimmed down the rest of the page and then shouted over the increasing chorus of boos, “All right, people, there’s a bunch of other stuff here, but it’s pretty much the same as all the others. So I suggest that we get on with it.”
Enthusiastic cheering.
Raspa tilted her head back and laughed an absolutely gruesome laugh.
Lisa seized this opportunity to try one final, vigorous tug. She got one hand free from Raspa’s grasp.
“Hey, you miserable landlubber—” Raspa began, but didn’t make it any further. A trumpet hit her on the head and the towering spectacle of a woman listed to the side and then capsized.
Lisa hurried, sneaking under the arms of the guards who were stationed on either side of the stairs, and ran up the steps onto the stage. There she jumped up onto the back of Bloodbath, who was already holding the cord preparing to release the knife blade.
“Stop!” she screamed. “Doctor Proctor is innocent! You’re making a mistake!”
Bloodbath twitched his back, as if what had landed on him weren’t much more than a fly. “Guards!” he yelled.
“We’re coming!” a voice responded.
“Forgive us, Mr. Bloodbath,” another voice said.
And immediately thereafter Lisa felt strong arms ripping her off Bloodbath’s back and holding on to her tightly. There were three faces in front of her:
A blotchy face with a Fu Manchu mustache.
An equally blotchy face with a handlebar mustache.
And one that wasn’t a face at all but a black mask with holes for the eyes.
“You are trying to stop a beheading,” growled Bloodbath, pointing a trembling finger at her. “I accuse you and demand that you be beheaded. Does the accused have anything to say?”
Lisa gasped. “I, uh … the professor, uh … we’re innocent!”
“And what does the jury have to say?” Bloodbath growled, staring at Handlebar and Fu Manchu.
“I, uh … I …,” stammered Handlebar. “She’s just a little girl.”
“Just a little girl, yes,” Fu Manchu said. “So I, as far as I’m concerned, uh …”
Bloodbath stared at them. “Is there anyone else here who wants to try to stop a beheading?” he growled in a deep voice.
“She’s guilty!” yelled Handlebar.
“Guilty!” yelled Fu Manchu.
Bloodbath walked over to the guillotine and opened the pillory holding Doctor Proctor in place.
“There’s room for one more. Get her over here. Let’s make it a doubleheader!”
The guards pushed her head down next to Proctor’s. Then the pillory slammed back into place over their necks and they were locked in.
“Hi, Professor,” Lisa said. “Nice to see you again.” She craned her neck struggling to look sideways, but it was quite difficult since her head was locked in.
“Hi, Lisa,” Doctor Proctor said. “I’m sorry I got you into this mess. Really very sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s not that important,” Lisa said, tilting her head back so she could look up and see a little of the sky over the crowd. And up above, a few yards over them, the sun gleamed on a very shiny, very sharp knife blade.
“Then give me a CHOP!” shouted Bloodbath, holding onto the cord. “Ready, everyone?”
“OUI!” the answer rang out from the Place de la Révolution.
“Give me a C!” Bloodbath cried.
“C!” the crowd shouted.
“Give me an H!”
“H!”
“I’m supposed to say hi to you from a bunch of people,” Lisa said. “Anna from Innebrède, Gustave Eiffel, and Juliette, of course.”
“Oh, Juliette,” Proctor whispered, tearing up and closing his eyes. “I’ve failed Juliette….”
Lisa’s eyes welled up, too. And maybe that’s why she thought she saw what she saw, as she looked out over the crowd and caught sight of Raspa’s face there in the second row. Because it really looked like Raspa had tears in her eyes, too.
“Give me an O!”
“O!”
“Give me a P!” Bloodbath shouted.
“P!”
Behind her, Lisa heard Bloodbath hurriedly ask the guards in a whisper:
“Is there only one P in ‘chop’ or two?” Bloodbath shouted.
“I’m going to go with one,” Handlebar whispered.
“I think it’s obviously two,” Fu Manchu said.
Lisa blinked away a tear. So this was how it would end. The sun was shining, the air smelled of jasmine and freshly baked bread, and she could hear birds singing and pigs oinking in the distance. Her eyes filled with tears again. Was she really never going to see her mother or father or Nilly again? She blinked two more times. Something was dancing over the top of people’s heads out there, maybe a butterfly.
“Give me another half a P!” Bloodbath shouted.
“P!”
A blue butterfly. With white pants. And a three-cornered hat that was on backward. And it was heading this way.
“What does that spell?” Bloodbath shouted.
“CHOP(P)!”
“I can’t quite hear you.”
“CHOP(P)!”
The butterfly was getting bigger. It was getting clearer. Lisa could tell now that it wasn’t flying, but jumping from one person’s head to another’s, making its way over the top of the crowd. And it had … freckles?
“What do we do now?” roared Bloodbath.
“CHOP!”
It was … it couldn’t be … but it was … IT WAS NILLY!
How wonderful! Oh, and how awful! Because it was too late. Lisa heard Bloodbath yank on the cord, and the birds stopped singing and the pigs stopped oinking. The only thing you could hear now was the whistle of the blade on its way down.
