Of course a man making his fortune could not be expected to show up for his junior year in high school. Tod Lockwood was disgusted when his parents, principal, teachers and even neighbors did expect just that.
“In the olden days,” Tod explained crossly, “a boy quit school in the eighth grade and went out and made his fortune.”
“How olden are you getting?” his father asked. “That’s more olden than I ever was. You’re going back a century.”
Tod felt there had been many possibilities to the nineteenth century. Men were men. Fortunes were waiting to be made in railroads and shipping and automobiles.
Tod had to live in an era of computer keyboards. Tod got bored sitting still that long. He did not want to spend his life typing.
Luckily, he had a truly brilliant idea: designer water.
People were thrilled by water in bottles. Tod couldn’t figure out what they saw in those bottles, other than water, but they sure did, and they sure paid for it. How many businesses were there where all you needed up front were some bottles and your own faucet?
Of course Tod’s Kitchen Tap Water probably wouldn’t sell. So he was taking the water from the spring at Stratton Point, an old waterfront estate that was now the town beach. Over the spring was the original pump, with a curved red handle, which had to be pumped several times to get the pressure up. Then Tod had to lug all those gallons of water away. How many times did a person want to hang around the picnic grounds pumping water by hand?
Once.
So Tod was diluting the water from the spring at Stratton Point with his kitchen tap water, and it tasted just fine.
An artsy friend designed a label for his bottles: pine trees (Stratton Point didn’t have any), a romantic mansion (the Stratton mansion had been torn down), and a sweet tumbling brook (the water came out of a rusty pump). According to business magazines, red was a selling color, right up there with cobalt blue. He was going with red. He obtained several thousand eight-ounce plastic bottles and spent happy hours sticking labels on them.
The designer water business gave Tod plenty to think about when he was home. His parents had gotten back together, so thoroughly that they were having a second honeymoon right there in the house. They were so mushy Tod had to spend all his time with his face averted.
Sure, Tod was glad the family was back together and all that stuff, but he wished they weren’t this together. It was embarrassing. Tod wished he lived in a time when men led their lives and women led theirs, and nobody had to pay attention, or make an effort, or compromise.
He used to have an ally of sorts: his sister, Annie. Annie and Tod had never gotten along well, but they got along somewhat, in certain circumstances. But Annie had a chance to spend a semester abroad and was in Norway, while he was bottling water and watching his parents smooch.
Then the water didn’t sell.
It turned out there was a lot of competition in the bottled water business. This was discouraging for an afternoon, and then Tod realized that he had to do some serious marketing. The first thing to do was to increase demand for water. People had to drink more of it.
He was going to hire pretty girls in tights and spangles to sell his water at the high school, but the principal said this was sexist—plus school was not about sales, it was about knowledge.
Then he decided to convince people that cafeteria liquids (milk, soda, iced tea) were defective, and gave you disease, and you’d better buy Stratton Point Spring Water. The cafeteria ladies threatened to beat him up.
Okay, fine. If people wouldn’t drink it, they’d wash in it. He’d sell it in the chemistry and biology labs. “Your hands are safer from acids and frog blood if bathed in Stratton Point Spring Water.”
It turned out that people who were willing to pay almost two dollars to drink water were not willing to pay to wash their hands in it. Tod tried to point out how stupid this was, but the class told him to get lost, and take his water with him.
Well, there were always tourists.
Tod went downtown among the leaf peepers—in October, New England was full of tourists from the rest of the United States, Europe and Japan—and hawked his water. At last! Success! Foreigners who did not know much about water in the United States were delighted with this souvenir. Tod’s former scoutmaster, a man who lived up to being clean, strong, honest and true, said if Tod didn’t give back the right change, he was a dead ex-Scout. This cut Tod’s income, but still, he sold every bottle in one weekend.
So Tod went down to Stratton Point to get more spring water, because what with scoutmasters on his case, he had to have at least a drop or two of the real thing in each bottle.
Tod was not thinking of love.
Tod did not have a whole lot of use for love, being more interested in money. Besides, love involved girls, and Tod was not that drawn to girls. They giggled; they resembled his sister and mother, who were extremely difficult human beings to understand. Tod figured when he was thirty and a millionaire, established in the world and driving several cars, maybe racing them, there would be time for love. No need to rush it.
Carefully arranging her enormous skirts to prevent grass stains, Devonny Stratton went down on her knees and prayed for rescue. All brides forced into weddings pray for rescue. But there could be none, for only a man could rescue a woman, and the man in Devonny’s life had arranged the marriage.
Far across the meadows, the three towers of the Mansion glinted in the sun. Between Devonny and that imposing silhouette were hundreds of elm, chestnut, maple and oak trees, brilliant October blurs of scarlet, gold and yellow. What a contrast was the dark cold green of the holly garden where Flossie and Johnny had dared snatch a moment.
By now, Flossie would be back at the house, probably agreeing to golf with Gordon or Miles. Her flushed cheeks and pounding heart would not betray her, for Gordon and Miles were so proud that each man would think himself responsible.
Devonny too must return to the house with nothing in manner or speech that could betray her. Fury and fear alternated in her heart. Fear won.
The next few years should have been such fun! Her girlfriends and Strat’s buddies from college—laughing, rowing across the little lake, having clambakes, dancing in the ballroom, acting out plays, and laughing again.
And it was not to be.
“Mama,” she said brokenly, though she hardly knew her mother. The two children had been kept by Father when he divorced and began his string of remarriages. Mama lived in poverty, with barely enough to keep warm in winter, never mind stay in fashion, and give parties for friends.
Devonny thought bleakly of her mother’s awful dark little house in Brooklyn, only one room heated in winter; only one servant to help. How could Flossie possibly find romance in poverty?
In all these years, Mama had found no way around poverty, and if she could not help herself, she certainly could not help Devonny. Mama had not been able to help Strat either, though she had tried.
Father was lying to Lord Winden about Strat’s end, claiming that Strat died in a hunting accident in the mountains. But they did not know that. Strat had vanished. That was all they knew.
Devonny herself had given an order to Annie Lockwood: If you have no other way to save Strat, bring him with you into your own century.
It was such a strange thought: that Strat might be out there—breathing, running, laughing, reading the paper—but not for a hundred years.
What if Strat came back?
The question of money would also come back. If Father’s only son returned, it would be much less likely that Devonny would inherit everything. And much less likely that Lord Winden would want Devonny. In fact, Lord Winden would not want Devonny!
As for Father’s threat … forbidden to marry; a useless dried-up old spinster kept in a separate room … if I could get Strat home, thought Devonny, I could prove he is no lunatic. Then there could be no blackmail! And Strat would take care of me. He’s a man now, and would overrule Father. I would not be thrown into a marriage like a ball into a game! I could marry for love.
I must bring Strat home.
Devonny straightened the long glimmering yellow skirt. She retied the lovely sash. She touched the cameo at her throat. She felt the freshness of the flowers on her hat.
How had they done it?
How had they stepped through?
What magic word, or place, or thought, or need had ripped her brother and Annie Lockwood through a century?
“Strat!” she cried. “Strat! I need you!”
But nothing happened.
Devonny stomped her small foot, but her soft leather sole made hardly a sound in the high grass. She did not even have the power to make noise.
There was no Annie Lockwood. There was no Strat. In fact, what her father had told Lord Winden was probably the truth: that Strat was dead in the mountains.
“Somebody help me,” said Devonny tonelessly. She did not raise her voice. “Somebody think of something to do,” she said, not loud enough to make a swallow change flight.
She shaded her eyes to see the nearest village on the shore. Was Strat there? Just a few miles away—and a hundred years?
If she stepped through, as somehow they had stepped through, could she find him? Would he be waiting for her? Would he even know her?
Devonny clasped her hands and held them before her. She addressed Time, which held Strat: I need him, she said, take me to him. I have no power. Only my brother can save me.
Tod put his mouth to the spigot and drank several cooling gulps. He never worried about stuff like germs or dirt. When he got a mouthful of rust, he just swallowed it. Tod never got sick. It was a matter of choice. You wanted to stay well, you informed your body, and it obeyed you.
Within seconds, Tod was hideously sick.
His head was coming off. His whole body was being wrenched apart.
Tod had never even had the flu. He could not imagine what was happening. He wanted to throw up, or grab on to something, or scream, but there was no Time.
Time, he thought; and somehow, grotesquely, he could touch time.
Time, which was invisible, like love or power, pressed up against him, and scraped his skin, and tried to break his bones.
Tod tried to brush it off himself, as if he’d walked into spiderwebs, but he had no control over his hands, and then his hair peeled away as if he were being scalped.
There was so much Time.
Years and decades of Time, fat swollen hours of Time, like disease. The sickness lasted a century, and yet used up no Time at all.
Then came the after-feeling of sickness: a thin brain and a weak belly. Tod found himself still gripping the red-handled pump, still kneeling on the soggy grass.
He tried to breathe deeply but his body was unwilling. He panted in a shallow fashion and forced his hand to relax on the pump handle. A drop of water lay neatly on the rim of the spigot. It grew larger, and fell. The paint was not peeling. The red was shiny, as if painted that morning. There was no rust around the iron rim. In fact, beautiful brass trim covered the place where Tod had just put his lips.
What if the water’s poisonous? he thought. Oh, that’ll be great. I can’t wait to announce that downtown. You know those tourists who overpaid for my bottled water? Well, get the hospital beds ready.…
Using the pump for support, Tod stumbled to his feet. He felt disoriented, or else carsick.
A girl was standing there. He didn’t remember running into anybody else at Stratton Point.
But this was not anybody.
She wore an enormous dress, yellow satiny stuff cascading all around her. She had really strange shoes on—but then, Tod’s mother often wore shoes that a normal human would never shove over his toes. She had on an amazing necklace—but then, Tod’s sister wore necklaces made of anything from crystals to plastic bear claws. This girl’s hair, however, was in a class by itself. Long separate cylinders jostled for space on her shoulders and delicate tiny wisps lay sweetly on her cheeks and forehead.
I’m in the middle of a photo shoot, he thought.
The girl was staring at him with an incredulous expression, and now she was extending her hands, slow motion, as if she wanted to dance. “Yeah. Hi,” he said nervously. “How are ya? I’m outta here, sorry I interrupted.” He looked around to see the camera crew and retrieve the water carrier.
No camera crew. No water carrier.
No picnic ground. No parking lot. No car.
In fact, no road.
The sickness rolled over him again, and he focused once more on the girl. She was very pretty, although Tod tried not to judge these things; it just got him interested in the girl, and he was not ready to allocate time to girls. She was laughing, she was coming toward him, it was some creepy joke, it was—
She hugged him.
Tod had never had a girlfriend. Never been hugged by any female person except a relative, and then usually under orders. She was amazingly soft. She was definitely and completely not a boy.
She was laughing with delight. “Who are you?” She released him. “I’m Devonny. Have you come for me? Is Strat with you? How did you do it? I am so happy to see you! How are you going to save me?”
“What?” said Tod, feeling that his life had just come apart in some essential way. “I’m Tod Lockwood,” he said, because he was still sure of that.
“Annie’s brother!” she cried, clapping her hands.
She was wearing gloves. Tod had never seen anything so strange in his life. The gloves were lace and her real fingertips stuck out. Around her wrists the lace was gathered with living flowers, a sort of rose bracelet. The lace muffled her clap, giving it a strange, indoor sound.
“Annie sent you,” she said joyfully.
Tod felt marginally better. It was not surprising that his sister, who was nuts, would have friends who were nuts and dressed crazy. “Nope, Annie’s still in Norway,” he said. “This is my own business. I sell bottled water.”
A lace hand flew to her mouth and an expression of horror crossed the girl’s face. “What do you mean, Annie’s in Norway?”
“Well, you know, she got accepted in a student exchange, and she’ll be in Scandinavia for six months. Then we take an exchange student in our house. She’ll be back in February.”
“She sent you instead, then,” said the girl, and her smile became peaceful. “I,” said the girl, “am Devonny Stratton.”
“Cool. I didn’t know there were any Strattons left,” he said. He kind of liked the name Devonny. “Town’s owned the place for fifty years.”
“What place?” she said.
Yes, undoubtedly a friend of Annie’s. They were nothing but computer errors, Annie’s friends. Or viruses, depending on his mood.
That had been some drink of water.
Tod knew every inch of Stratton Point, all two hundred acres. Like every kid in town, he loved the Point. The beaches were best, but everything from holly garden to bell tower was his, by exploration and childhood. All those neat places where the Stratton family had had fountains, lookouts and stables all those years ago.
And yet, Tod did not know where he was standing. The sick feeling swirled through his head. His thoughts fogged up like a windshield. He, who knew every square foot of Stratton Point, could recognize nothing. Where was the road? Where was the car?
“I did not even know about you, Mr. Lockwood,” said Devonny Stratton. “Your sister never mentioned you.”
Mr. Lockwood? “I don’t mention her either, if I can help it,” said Tod.
“Is Strat living with you?” said the girl anxiously. “Did Annie bring Strat home with her?”
“We only have one pet right now,” said Tod. “A collie named Cotton. Listen, I’m feeling a little strange. Like, where are we, exactly?”
There was a long silence.
Tod had never known such silence. Not just the girl refusing to speak—but the world. No cars, no engines, no planes, no radios … He turned in a long, slow, full circle. There, on the Great Hill, stood the Mansion. Not the crumbling hulk the town had demolished last year. But a magnificent glittering three-towered—
—new building.
The peeled sensation came back, as if his brain tissue had been left open to the air.
“You have come to me,” said Devonny Stratton slowly, “in my Time. The year is 1898,” she said, “and you are on my estate.”
“Get out of town,” said Tod.
But memory was thick and suffocating in his brain. One time his sister had gone missing. Family and friends, and later police, had searched for Annie; searched every corner of this very beach and park, where she had last been seen. There had been no trace of her.
When she had showed up—two days later!—his parents had allowed her to get away with the flimsiest excuse: “I fell asleep on the sand,” Annie had said.
Had Annie, too, pressed her mouth to this pump?
A muffled cloppy rhythmic sound interrupted the silence. Through a meadow of asters and high grass came a woman on horseback. The woman was wearing a skirt, long and black, and rode sidesaddle.
Eighteen ninety-eight, thought Tod. He was furious and scared and having a little trouble breathing. No wonder Annie had not been able to think of a good excuse for being away a few days. “I bet my sister loved this, huh, Devonny? She’s just the type.” Tod was not the type.
“She fell in love,” said Devonny, “with my brother, Strat. She came back a final time to rescue Strat from a terrible fate.”
Maybe if Tod sort of skidded along the surface here, pretended this was virtual reality, he could flick a switch and be done.
“You must take me with you,” said the girl. “My brother must be with you. Annie must have brought him home. I need him. He must save me.”
“No,” said Tod. “She hasn’t dated anybody this year. She sure hasn’t brought anybody home. I don’t even know anybody named Strat.”
The girl began to cry.
Tod hated that; it was a crummy trick. “Don’t do that,” he snapped. “What does Strat need to save you from? Don’t even think about crying. Just give me facts.”
“Marriage,” she said. “My father has chosen a dreadful man for me to marry. A man with—well, evil personal habits. A man who wants only my money.”
“So?” said Tod. “Just don’t marry the guy. Just say no.”
She looked at him.
“It’s a big slogan in my day, Devonny. If somebody offers you drugs or sex or crime, you just say no.”
“I am not in a position to say no to my father,” said the girl.
“Sure you are. It’s America. Just say no.”
“But I am a girl.”
He was irritated. “Big deal. You’re half the population. Say yes, say no, make up your mind, I don’t see what your father has to do with it.”
“It would not work. There are complexities. There is blackmail, and there are fortunes, and you are being as annoying as your sister. I need my brother, and I know you have him! Now take me home with you!”
Take you home with me? thought Tod. Yeah, right. Like I’m gonna walk in the door to my house with a teenage girl in a long yellow prom dress and tell my mother we’re saving her from a bad marriage.
Tod aimed for control over his blood and bone and brain tissue. Keeping himself unreachable, so he could just slide home, like a baseball player, he said, “Devonny, I can’t take you home. And I don’t think Annie brought your brother home. Unless he’s invisible. And even then, I don’t think she’d go off to Norway if she had some cute guy around.” He stepped backward, hoping to be on a parking lot again, with his car behind him.
Didn’t happen.
“Even now my father and Lord Winden are drawing up a contract to dispose of my assets, Mr. Lockwood. I will be forced into a wedding in only a month.”
“What do you mean, dispose of your assets?”
“The opening settlement will be two million dollars for Lord Winden.”
“Wow. That should be enough to go around. Tell your father you want it. What could he do?”
“Mr. Lockwood, you are not listening! He can do anything he wishes. I can do nothing. I need Strat.”
“What could Strat do that you can’t?”
“He’s a boy.”
“You better not let my mother hear you talk like that, Dev,” said Tod. “She’d string you up. She hates when women have a poor self-image.”
“I would love to hear your mother’s advice,” said Devonny. To his absolute horror, she knelt before him and clung to his hands. Her rose bracelet brushed his wrist. He could not bear the sight of her on her knees.
“Take me back with you,” she cried, “and together we’ll find Strat. Then Strat and I will return to our Time and he will solve the nightmare in which I am caught.”
Tod felt cornered out here in a meadow with nothing in sight but grass and flowers.
“I’d stay in one of your guest rooms,” pleaded Devonny. “One of your extra maids could wait on me. You wouldn’t even have to seat me at your dining table. The footman could serve me in my room. Mr. Lockwood, I do beg of you.”
“Dude,” said Tod. He blinked a few times. “Listen, Dev, if you have all this money, you don’t need anybody to bail you out. Just get your own house, buy your own car, pay your own insurance, and hey—you’re set.”
“Oh, this is just like talking to your sister! Annie was so difficult, Mr. Lockwood. Your sister was obstructive and annoying.”
“It’s good we agree on something. Now you gotta call me Tod.”
She shook her head, which caused the long exotic curls to shake, and he wanted to run his finger up inside the cylinders of hair, and then he felt sick all over again, but it was not seasick, or carsick, it was some other sick entirely.
“We haven’t been introduced,” she said primly.
He yanked her to her feet. “Tod, Devonny. Devonny, Tod. There. We’ve been introduced. But even introduced, Dev, it wouldn’t work. I mean, like, my mom has better things to do. It would all be on me, and I personally don’t even like taking the dog for a walk.”
“Please, Mr. Lockwood. I must find my brother. He is my only hope!”
“Listen, Devonny, he isn’t there. As for me, I’ve started a new business and I’ve just figured out how to make money at it. I have customers now, and things to do. Bank accounts to open.”
“That’s wonderful!” cried Devonny. “I love men like that.” She looked at him worshipfully. Never had a girl gazed at him like that. It wasn’t too bad.
“I shall join you as soon as I pack my trunk,” Devonny said breathlessly. “I know this is why Time brought you to me, Mr. Lockwood.”
Tod tried to imagine Devonny in the school cafeteria. In an age of unruly hair, hers was a work of art. In an age of dirty heavy sneakers, she wore white slippers. In an age of torn jeans and obscene T-shirts, she carried a parasol. “What would we tell people? Especially my parents. Dev, you don’t wanna marry the guy, don’t marry the guy.”
“It isn’t that simple,” protested Devonny, crying again. Tod figured now her mascara would run and her makeup would look crummy, but then he realized that she wasn’t wearing makeup. He liked her for that. The whole face correction idea seemed pathetic and ridiculous to Tod. When the girls in school covered themselves with makeup, or when his mother and sister did, he made a point of gagging in front of them.
“I’m gonna leave now,” said Tod. Assuming I can, he thought. What if Time decides?
Tod was against that. A person should have complete control over his life. Well, I do, he told himself. I can do anything my sister can do, and she made it back and forth.
“I thought you would be a knight in shining armor,” said Devonny. She did not touch her tears, but let them lie on her cheek and throat. “I thought you would save me. Why did you come if you weren’t going to save me?”
“It isn’t like I meant to come,” said Tod.
She looked stricken. As if he had slapped her. Fleetingly, Tod considered what his mother would do to him were he ever to raise a hand to a girl.
He didn’t want any heavy thoughts here, or any responsibility. People had to be responsible for themselves. “You don’t need saving, Devonny. You just need guts.” Tod had no sympathy for weakness. “I’m going,” he told her.
She held out her hands, and the flowery bracelet fell from one wrist, and her voice trembled on, saying more, but he stepped back, grabbed the pump handle, closed his eyes—and it worked. Her words followed, crying without sound, But I need you!
The pain was worse this time. His vision and hearing and touch were torn apart and savaged. It went on and on, beyond counting, beyond belief. Through it all came the distorted syllables, jumbled and wrecked; But I need you!
It was not going to end. He had refused help to a person who needed it, and this would be his hell: falling through the years, unable to get off at one of them.
Time let him hit the edge of every stone and cliff.
He was not alone in this passage. Other bodies and souls, shot with pain, were thrust past him and through him.
But it ended.
His eyes burned, as if he’d ignored sunglasses during a whole day of lying on the beach. When he managed to focus, an old pump, its paint peeling, was next to him, surrounded by plastic containers.
His head throbbed. He hoped aspirin was in the car. He hoped aspirin worked in situations like this.
Tod looked toward the grass on which a girl had begged for help—his help—but there was no grass. Just a parking lot. No girl. Just his own car.
Drops trickled from the rusty edge of the open spigot.
Maybe he should drop the whole designer water idea.
There was something in this water.