At first it seemed like Drift House turned upside down.
Then it seemed like Drift House turned inside out.
And then everything seemed to straighten out, save that Susan felt the familiar sensation of rocking floorboards beneath her feet.
Drift House was afloat.
“Um, Uncle Farley?”
“I don’t know, Susan.”
“I didn’t ask a question yet, Uncle Farley.”
Uncle Farley sighed. “Ask away.”
“Um… what just happened?”
“I don’t know, Susan.”
There was another long silence. Susan looked around the room. Though it had felt like an angry giant had picked up the house and shaken it, nothing was out of place. There was a teacup in its saucer on the table. The metronome on the harpsichord was as still as it had been a moment ago. Uncle Farley had been standing; now he sat in a chair, but Susan didn’t think he’d been knocked down.
“Do you,” Susan began quietly, not wanting to startle her glazed-looking uncle, “do you think Mr. Zenubian had something to do with this?”
Uncle Farley sighed heavily. “Mr. Zenubian took the little radio.”
Susan was confused for a moment. “Mr. Zenubian took the—” Suddenly she got it. “He took the little tombstone radio?”
The last time she had been here, Susan—along with her uncle and everyone else in Drift House—had learned that the house’s time-traveling abilities were controlled by a pair of radios, which, because of their arched shape, were referred to as tombstones: a large one in the drawing room, and a smaller one Uncle Farley kept in his bedroom. But:
“Once I figured out how to work the radios,” Uncle Farley said, “I moved the smaller one to my study. After Mr. Zenubian stormed off, it occurred to me that I should make the rounds to see if he’d taken anything. As far as I could tell, the radio was the only thing missing.”
“But could he…I mean, can the radios control Drift House if they’re not in it?”
“I keep meaning to ask Bjarki that very question, but always forget.”
“Bjarki?”
“Bjarki Skaldisson. You heard his voice once, on the big radio. ‘Echo Island to Drift House…’”
“You’ve talked to him?”
A slightly mischievous smile crept onto Uncle Farley’s face. “A few times, yes.”
Susan was a respectful preteen, but she felt herself get the teensiest bit impatient with her uncle. “Do you think perhaps we could talk to him now?”
Uncle Farley bopped himself on the forehead. Springing from the chair, he grabbed his niece’s arm and headed toward the hall.
“Susan, my dear, you are ten times the tactician I will ever be.
Sometimes I think I would lose my beard if it weren’t attached to my cheeks.”
The drawing room walls were still dark, and Uncle Farley had to throw the curtains wide to let in light. Susan glanced at the expanse of blue beyond the glass, then followed her uncle to the cabinet-sized radio on the opposite side of the room. The peak of the radio’s arch was a few inches taller than she was, but its knobs were situated close to the base, just above the fretwork that covered its single large speaker. Uncle Farley squatted down and turned the left knob, and immediately a voice barked into the room.
“—land broadcast, to any and all transtemporal vessels within range. I repeat, this is Echo Island. Drift House, Chronos, Equus, do you copy, over.”
“Uncle Farley, it’s working!”
Before her uncle could answer, the voice on the radio said, “Farley, is that you? Confirm receipt of signal, over.”
“Bjarki, it’s me. I’m here with my niece, Susan Oakenfeld, over. Er, Susan, say hello to Bjarki.”
“Hello, Bjarki!” Susan said, in the kind of voice you use to talk to deaf people. “This is Susan, over!”
Bjarki’s wince was almost audible. “No need to shout, Ms. Oakenfeld. I can hear you just fine. Confirm Drift House on Sea of Time with two passengers aboard, over. Hello, ma’am,” Bjarki added, then paused. “Where’s … the bird?”
Uncle Farley chuckled at what was apparently a private joke between him and the voice in the radio. “President Wilson and my nephew Charles weren’t in the house when we, that is, well, what did happen?”
“Something extraordinary, Farley. A temporal squall of a magnitude I’ve never seen.”
“What’s a temporal squall?” Susan said.
“Well now, ma’am.” Susan heard a squeak, and had a vision of a bearish man settling back in a reclining chair. “‘Squall’ is a convenient term we use to describe certain events on and around the Sea of Time. It’s a disruption in the regular temporal flow, a bit like a storm breaks up the normal weather.”
It made sense that if there was a Sea of Time there should be storms on it. Still, Susan wondered: “Do you know what caused this squall, Bjarki?”
“Well, now, I’ll come clean and tell you, ma’am: no I don’t. This storm is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. It’s a regular temporal hurricane.”
“Bjarki,” Uncle Farley cut in, “are you saying it’s still going on?”
“Raging from the conquest of Egypt in the eighth century right up to the Gulf War in 1990. And spreading.”
Susan, who had never thought to measure the weather—even temporal weather—concentrated on the obvious.
“But it’s quite calm where we are.”
“I assumed as much. You’re in the eye. We both are, or else I doubt you’d be receiving this transmission.”
“Bjarki,” Uncle Farley interjected, “I’m quite concerned about my nephew. How exactly do we get out of the, um, eye?”
“There’ll be no sailing through this squall. There are warps in time and space. You’re as likely to end up green as end up on the Bay of Eternity.”
Uncle Farley glanced at Susan. “We’re stuck here?”
“For the duration. And there’s no telling how long that’ll last.”
“Isn’t there anything we can do?” Susan said.
“Actually,” Bjarki said, then hesitated. “Pardon my forwardness, ma’am, but you’re just a girl, yes?”
Despite the fact that Bjarki couldn’t see her (well, she assumed he couldn’t see her) Susan stood up straight.
“I’ll be thirteen in August.”
“Mmmm, yes, Farley told me you were young.”
“Mr. Skaldisson,” Susan said in the sternest British accent she could muster, “if you are refraining from saying something because you think I am too inexperienced or delicate to handle it, I should inform you that I am quite capable of taking care of myself.”
“Susan,” Uncle Farley said, “it would be remiss of me to put you in danger. After what happened last time—”
“Last time? You mean the time I successfully impersonated a pirate, defeated Queen Octavia, became the first person to return from the Great Drain, and saved the flow of time?”
A chuckle came through the speaker. “She’s got a point, Farley.”
Uncle Farley sighed. “Well, what were you going to say, Bjarki?”
“Just this. The squall seems to be centered somewhere around 1500 or so, just off the northeast coast of Canada. If I had to guess, I’d suggest the southern tip of Greenland.”
“Greenland,” Uncle Farley said. “Isn’t that where the Vikings had their New World colony? Their own”—he paused, glancing at Susan—“lost city?”
Susan had a vague memory of this—something about Erik the Red, maybe? But Uncle Farley was still speaking
“But, Bjarki,” he said, “it was my impression that the Viking settlement had died—er, disappeared by 1500. And at any rate, are you actually suggesting someone in a medieval Viking colony might have caused this squall?”
“Well, now, history’s your department, not mine. But near as I can recollect, the Vikings hung on till right around the time we’re talking about. As for them causing the squall, well, I wouldn’t go that far, but only because I don’t know how anyone could cause a disturbance like we’ve got here. Still, time’s a pretty even-tempered entity. It’s only your kind that tend to stir it up.”
At this “your kind,” Susan caught her breath, suddenly realizing Bjarki might not be human. But she was too caught up in another possibility to give this idea much thought.
“You want us to investigate?” she said, doing a poor job of keeping the excitement out of her voice.
“Susan, please—” Uncle Farley began, but the voice on the radio spoke over him.
“I’ve tried hallooing the Chronos, but they’re not responding. My guess is Captain Quoin had them out beyond the squall’s perimeter on one of his missions or other. Ditto the Island of the Past. You’re the only contact I’ve been able to make.”
“You must understand, Bjarki. It’s not that I don’t want to help. But Susan is my niece. My sister sent her to me for a summer of diversion and esoteric study, not to remedy anomalies in the temporal flow. I can hardly risk her well-being by dragging her into this”—he glanced at Susan—“‘investigation.’ ”
“I hate to belabor the obvious,” Bjarki said in a gentle voice. “But she’s already in it. The question seems to be, how are you going to get her out?”
Susan was wise enough to bite her tongue here and let the truth of Bjarki’s words sink in.
At length Uncle Farley sighed and, in a resigned voice, uttered two words.
“Where?” he said. And then the magical addendum: “When?”