“Yes, North Wind, that is my arrow, sticking out of your demon friend. I suppose, since we are trapped here, I should just wait for him to die from blood loss and then drag him to the village, like an old woman who has found a beached trout and brings it back as if she’s a great hunter. Then again, we will be lucky if an old woman finds us here at all and fetches help. My life as a warrior is over before it has begun. Instead I will be like Coyote, chasing my own tail, acting like a fool.”

“I always thought Coyote offered much wisdom,” North Wind says. “In his own crazy way.”

“Then perhaps I should offer myself as an assistant to a Mandan shaman-in-training, cheering up his patients before he works his wonders.”

Crow’s Eye isn’t happy at all. You don’t even need to hear his words. With just the small light we have, you can see it in the way shadows move across his face.

“Crow’s Eye. Look around,” North Wind says. He’s not happy either. “We can’t wait for old women, or young girls, or the rest of your raiding party, or anybody else. We have to get out of here now.”

Yes, we do. Because I have brought some plasmechanical material to this world that has become infected, and if left untended, it could make life even more unpredictable for these mammals than they make it themselves.

I also have to find time, away from Crow’s Eye, to warn my friend that the gift I thought I was giving him — the gift of understanding, from the lingo-spot — may be doing things to his body.

Or his mind.

But first there is the problem of the jabberstick jutting out of my leg. And how we all got in here in the first place.

“Thank you, yes,” I say, trying to mimic at least a faint cheerfulness. “ My jumping limb is aching fiercely, I have lost more blood than I am comfortable with sparing, and if you could keep me awake, I’m sure I can guide one of your medical practitioners through the proper care and suturing of Saurian wounds.”

As the Saurian elders are fond of saying, You must count to one before you reach two. No need to wait for a far-off school nurse or even the lucky old woman that Crow’s Eye mentioned, who might be looking for us. I will simply use the first-aid training I learned as a vacation-time assistant in the play area for nestlings, back on Saurius Prime, and guide one of these mammals in the true healing arts.

That is, I would if either them were paying attention to me.

In the dim light, Crow’s Eye finds something scattered on the ground that intrigues him, and he begins grabbing it up by handfuls.

“Now do you believe me, North Wind? The devils that live here are not as harmless as you would wish.” Crow’s Eye clutches a fistful of raw bones. Some are bleached with age. Others have been more recently gnawed.

The bones are everywhere. Bones and skulls and dried bits of skin and fur. You’d think the Bloody Tendon Wars had just been fought here. Except, most of these remains are mammal.

I am the only injured Saurian.

“Perhaps, North Wind Comes, you should use your shaman magic to get us out of here.”

North Wind doesn’t answer right away, so I take the opportunity to ask what I think is a sensible question under the circumstances:

“Mammal men, how did we get inside the Spirit Mound?”

I’m feeling a bit strange, lightheaded.

Arrak-du.

Lost lands up ahead.

“It happened, Many Lights, right after we ran into Crow’s Eye’s trap. The ice, the snow, had frozen over an opening. Your jumping, and the horse’s stomping, caused great cracks to appear. We might have escaped the cave-in had not Crow’s Eye arrow hit you just before the collapse.”

“I had dismounted and was going to finish you off myself,” Crow’s Eye adds. “Perhaps it’s still not such a bad idea. I will find my way out of here and take this demon’s body back to the Mandans, to let them see where their shamans draw their power.”

“You misconstrue, war mammal,” I say, attempting to gently correct him. “Any power North Wind has is his own. Do you think you could cut this jabberstick out of my limb now?”

In the firelight, I could see Crow’s Eye staring at me in amazement. I had switched from speaking Mandan to the particulars of the Hidatsa tongue. I don’t know if that was the reason he was starting to look even more upset. Or perhaps it was because I was asking him to undo his handiwork with the jabberstick.

“I trust I must have blacked out during the fall,” I say.

“Only briefly.” North Wind is working his way over to me, now that he can see me. Perhaps as a means of keeping Crow’s Eye at bay.

“Crow’s Eye, if we are in a trap set by devils, then the dishonor of being caught so easily would scarcely be offset by killing the lizard man.”

Crow’s Eye considers this observation, then says, “Is that the only mind-trick you have, shaman-to-be? Trying to use words to change my purpose?

“His blood,” North Wind adds, “will only draw the devils to us.”

“But there are no devils. That’s just a story for children and shamans. A warrior wouldn’t really believe such things”

“You just spoke of them.” North Wind says.

North Wind and Crow’s Eye continue their debate. No one is paying much attention to my steady blood loss, or worrying about the eventual effects of necrosis on my wounded extremity.

Nor are they worried at all, as am I, that a technology from another planet has been infected with a disease from another era, which may affect their world far more than small devils, diminutive spirit beings, or tribal rivalries between jittery mammals.

I look around in the expanding firelight and see better the remains around us. I can also see that while neither of my two companions has to contend with protruding jabbersticks, the fall into the void has been hard on their bodies as well.

“We need to leave this place,” North Wind says, deciding that will end his half of the devil argument.

“Yes. Well, my horse is still up there, in the world,” Crow’s Eye replies, pointing. “Outsmarting all of us by avoiding this fall. Perhaps you could call him and he’ll fly down to us.”

North Wind doesn’t answer him. There’s no horse and no flying, but all of a sudden there’s considerable movement, the flickers of many shadows, and breathing.

A lot of breathing.

Glinting just out of range of the firelight, there are many pairs of eyes staring at us from the darkness beyond. I don’t know if these are the devils that North Wind and Crow’s Eye were arguing about.

But now we have company.

 

 

 

Chapter Eleven

Eli: Good Humor Island

September 1804

 

The last time I had a gun in my hand felt like a lifetime ago. Or at least a couple of months. It was Clark’s rifle, and he wanted me to shoot a buffalo.

The buffalo was shot, all right.

It turned out Floyd — Kentuck — was coming up behind us, and he was firing, practically right over my shoulder. It was a dangerous thing to do, but he was a good aim.

Floyd’s dead now. Just like the buffalo. But with Kentuck, it wasn’t a gun. He fell sick and died in August.

We’d been going upriver, sketching the animals, counting the fish, pulling the boats, swatting the mosquitoes. It took so long to get anywhere. How did people do anything except stay home?

Were Thea and Clyne on journeys like this, too?

“My stomach ain’t right,” Kentuck said to me one afternoon.

“I think it’s all this meat,” I told him. “It’s like being stuck on some crazy grownup fad diet.”

But it never got righter. He couldn’t keep any food down and he kept shaking from a fever. This went on for a couple weeks or so.

The last couple days, we’d stopped completely to let him rest. And he just died… in the middle of the night.

Me, Clark and a few of the others were sitting up with him when it happened. “Here,” Kentuck said. He took something from under his heavy shirt and tried to press it in my hands. He didn’t have much strength. “For good luck.”

It looked like a really old, really falling apart, softball of some kind. A leather softball. “What…?”

“Shhh.” Clark said. “Looks like he was saving his old Fives ball.”

“‘Fives?’ What is…?”

But Clark held his finger to his lips again. He didn’t want to use up the last of Kentuck’s strength telling me about some old softball.

It was hard to think of Kentuck with no strength. The same guy who always made jokes with me in the keelboat, or showed me how to cut and skin an animal that’s been shot.

That’s what we did with the buffalo he killed. Since I was already eating buffalo meat (I still am — it’s the main part of our diet now, and it still makes me run off to the bushes sometimes), I decided that maybe I had to take some responsibility… for my food. It didn’t come in some tidy package from a store, so I couldn’t pretend that the “food” had once been anything else but a living, breathing creature.

So when Kentuck had his big knife out that day and asked if I wanted to help, I said yes. He was covered in blood up to his elbow as he cut through the stringy white and pink tendons that kept the “meat” — the young bison’s fat and tissue and muscle — connected to its skin and fur.

“You can live all winter sometimes off’n one well-dressed animal, if it’s big enough.”

“Dressed? I thought we were cutting it up?”

Kentuck laughed. I’m not sure if he thought I was making a joke, or if he understood I really didn’t know what he meant. It turns out that dressing an animal is how you cut up the meat, and how you save the really big pieces — whether you smoke them or cover them in salt — for eating later. Sometimes a lot later.

“Whatever state you said you were from, must be a lot of funny people there.” Kentuck smiled. Did I tell him I was lived in California? “Here.”

He handed me two big handfuls of… guts. Guts, stomach, intestines, I’m not sure which. I almost passed out right there, thinking we were going to eat all that. Then I remembered that these were the parts the men usually threw into the river.

“Tres bon pour les poissons!” Cruzatte said. Good for the fish. Apparently these guys believed there were a lot of piranhas in the water or something.

But they kept the livers. The men liked cooking up the livers.

Soon I was covered in blood myself. I wasn’t happy about it, but if you’re going to eat food that used to walk around you can’t keep fooling yourself either. But I still told the Corps I didn’t want to hunt.

Right now, though, there’s a gun in my hand, and members of the Corps are telling me to get ready to fire my first shot.

What’s even worse is that this isn’t a hunt and they don’t mean to shoot a buffalo.

They mean, “Fire at a human being when you hear the order.”

Basically, I’m expected to murder someone, because we’re on the verge of maybe getting murdered ourselves.

We’re on a sandbar, in the middle of the Missouri River. Clark has named this little patch Good Humor Island. Across from us is a tribe of Lakota Indians lined up onshore, with their arrows pointed at us.

Clark is in front with a drawn sword, looking real expedition-leader-like, yelling across the water at a Lakota chief whose name, of all things, is the Partisan.

It’s a name for someone who takes a side in a debate, or an argument, or a war. Lewis told me that. It’s a funny kind of name, and, right now, about the only funny thing at all on Good Humor Island.

In fact, as I stand here holding a rifle that I really have no intention of using, the thought strikes me that the Partisan could be a kind of Barnstormer character — a ghost Indian, haunting people who took his land.

Buffaloner, meet the Partisan.

At the thought of it, I giggle. Everyone — Indian, American, French — stares at me. Right. No laughing on Good Humor Island.

Except maybe for one other rule-breaker: He’s a Lakota boy, about my age, holding a bow and arrow, pointed pretty much right at me. I think he’s the son of Black Buffalo, one of the other chiefs. He’s been watching me the whole time we’ve been here. Now, I guess, I’m his number-one target in case a war breaks out.

Except that my giggle almost made him laugh, too.

The Lakota, I learned, is a tribe that lives by the river and demands a kind of toll from anyone who passes by. A shipping tax. Even if what’s being “shipped” is you.

We just want to get upriver to a place called Mandan Village. It’s where we’re supposed to be spending the whole winter. We need to be there in a few weeks.

But we’re not spending the winter anywhere unless we get off this sandbar. The Corps tried to pay the tax with some knives, an American flag, an old but usable coat, some buffalo meat, and some medals.

Those were the “Great Father Jefferson” medals Lewis and Clark had with them to introduce all the tribes they were meeting to the president, since the idea was that the land now belonged to America, and the president was going to be the main chief now.

You can imagine how that idea didn’t really sit well with anyone who was already living here, with chiefs of their own already picked out.

Plus, the Lakota are smart enough to know that when the American “Great Father” takes over, they’ll be out of the shipping-tax business, and they don’t want to see a good thing go.

Well, not such a good thing for us in the Corps.

Everyone was edgy and nervous. Maybe the Indians could sense that no matter what they did to us — fired their arrows, or let us pass — it might not really matter. Big journeys change things. Lewis and Clark’s journey would change things forever. Eventually tons of people would be pouring into the West, once they knew what was out there. For the Indians, that would be another kind of death.

Maybe the Lakota thought that by killing us, they could just put that particular death off a little while longer.

“I am going away,” Floyd had told me, right before he died. “I want you to write me a letter.”

I was sitting there, silently, just like Clark wanted me to. Not asking about “Fives” or anything else. I thought Clark wouldn’t mind if I asked who Floyd wanted the letter sent to, though.

But Kentuck never got to tell me. I went to find some sheets of paper and one of those feather quill pens everybody uses. I couldn’t use my vidpad in front of him. Though maybe, if he was dying, why not? It wouldn’t mess up history too much for him to have seen it, would it?

Anyway, when I got back to where Floyd was laying, he was gone. Just like that. From nothing more than what seemed like a real bad flu. Lewis called it something else — like that thing babies get — cholera? No — colicky, that’s it. Cholic.

I didn’t know that could kill you.

“We name this river Floyd’s River,” Clark said at the funeral. We buried him on a hill in a really pretty spot, and the men in the Corps fired off their guns. Cruzatte played a sad fiddle tune, and Seaman howled, so it was an official military event. I’d never been to anyone’s funeral before.

“We name this hill Floyd’s Bluff. Both will bear his name for ages afterward, and those names will tell of his great deeds. He was a brave and worthy man. And now he’s gone.”

Clark wasn’t a preacher and there didn’t seem to be much more to say. He turned to the other captain. “Meriwether?”

Meriwether shook his head. “Kentuck was among the most cheerful of us,” he added. “The universe doesn’t always reward cheerfulness. Perhaps, in honor of our friend, we should all remain cheerful, out of spite. May God take his soul.”

No one said anything else, but really, how could they? They were all trying to figure out what Lewis meant.

Everybody took a turn putting a shovelful of dirt on Kentuck’s body. It was wrapped in an American flag, and I could actually see his feet sticking out from it, down in the hole. I put some dirt on him, too.

That must be why there always seems to be a tiny part inside grownups that seems a little sad, because if you live long enough, you see it. You know.

People go. Places, things.

You love them, and they still go. Thea knows that now. Look what happened to her mom.

Even being unstuck in time, like I am, you don’t get “do overs.” Not really. You can’t hold on to everything.

Or anything. Sometimes.

Standing on Floyd’s Bluff, I couldn’t remember from school if anyone on the Lewis and Clark expedition actually died. What if they hadn’t, originally? What if I caused that by being here, by changing history?

That’s what’s going through my head now, here on Good Humor Island, with this big museum gun in my hand, pointed at people I hardly even know. I’m pretty sure Lewis and Clark survived, but what if my changing things means, this time, they don’t?

What if things go really wrong in the next few minutes, and a lot of us don’t even make it out of here?

“Eli?”

It’s York. The Indians seem fascinated by him. They were touching his skin before. They’ve seen French fur traders coming down the river, but they’ve never seen a black man. It’s hard to imagine a time in America when having different skin color was unusual.

“What is it, Mr. York?”

“You ready to fire that thing, if you have to?”

“I’ve never fired a gun before. I’ve never killed a person.”

“Well, me neither.”

“And I’m not going to start now! This isn’t some Comnet game!”

“Some what?”

On the shore, the Indian boy, with his bow and arrow, is watching me talk to York. You can see his eyes follow us every time we shift positions.

I’d like to throw my gun down, to show how ridiculous I think this all is, but any sudden move like that would get everyone scared, and all those bullets and arrows would go flying. But I wonder, if there was some way to signal a truce to that Lakota kid, would he go along?

I’m not sure how it all went so wrong, anyway. Clark had been going back and forth from our island, giving gifts to the tribe for the last day or two. Maybe it was the “Great White Father” medal that finally rubbed them the wrong way. Or maybe it was when they tasted Lewis’s “portable soup.” That was probably a mistake, as gifts go.

Clark had ordered us to set off from Good Humor Island, but when we were getting the pirogues ready, the Partisan grabbed the ropes to keep us from leaving.

That’s when we noticed all the arrows pointed at us.

Lewis, for his part, calmly got out his air rifle. He explained what it was, the translator told the chiefs, and nobody moved an inch after that. Nobody gave in.

This silence is dangerous. Unless somebody says something soon, shots will go off just from the tension.

Clark must be thinking the same thing. “We are not squaws, but warriors,” he says suddenly, out loud.

I’m not sure that’s the kind of silence-breaking that helps. I guess Clark is getting pretty frustrated, too.

Why does he make fun of girls, anyway? Like all girls are scaredy-cats and all boys aren’t. That’s not true. If they met Thea or her mom, they wouldn’t say stuff like that. Or if they met my mom.

Though it doesn’t exactly help to think about her right now.

The Lakota translator is telling the Partisan, Black Buffalo, and the others what Clark said. He gets a reply.

“We are not squaws, either.”

I get it with my lingo-spot, before our translator —Cruzatte — tells Clark.

Share…

What? Share what? Was that me thinking that?

Somebody has to think of something, though. These grownups will get us all killed.

What would Kentuck be doing if he were here? Would it have changed our luck if he was still alive?

Kentuck…

With my non-rifle hand, I slowly reach into my pants pocket and pull out the scraggly, leathery “Fives” ball he’d given me. It feels like every eye in the world is watching me.

I slowly hold up the ball. And then I start to bend over and — slowly, slowly — lay down the rifle on the sand.

Clark and the others are casting glances at me, too, while trying to keep an eye on the Lakota. “Eli? What in thunder are you doing?”

“Trust me, sir.”

Showing the Lakota I only have the ball in my hand, I point across the river to the boy. He’s confused and looks over to his chiefs for advice. The Partisan just shakes his head no, without knowing what I’m going to do. Black Buffalo, though, holds up his hand in more of a let’s-wait-and-see gesture.

I make a sweeping arc with my hand, for practice, without releasing the ball.

I found out at Floyd’s funeral that Fives is some kind of handball game. Nothing to do with bats. But Floyd wanted me to have it, anyway. For me it’s become a kind of softball.

Cocking my arm back, I swing forward and throw it — a nice, easy, underhand pitch — across the water.

It lands at the Lakota kid’s feet on the far riverbank. He doesn’t know what to do. Black Buffalo looks at the ball, back at me, and then at his son. This time, he nods. The Partisan turns away in a huff.

The kid sets down his bow and arrow and picks up Floyd’s ball like I hoped he would. He looks at me, and I mime the throwing gesture. He gets it, and without even practicing, throws the ball over the river, back to me.

We do that one more time. Though after I throw the ball to the Lakota side, I make another deliberate show of picking up a damp piece of willow tree driftwood and holding it aloft.

The Lakota kid is puzzled, but he throws the ball back again.

And now, as the ball comes flying toward me, I swing, make contact, and hit the ball toward the boy and the Lakotas. It falls a little short, landing with a plop in the water near their feet.

Some of them scatter. An arrow whizzes by overhead. One of the Corps is about to shoot back, and I think, how ridiculous, I’ve ruined everything by taking an at-bat. Clark is screaming “No!” and so is Black Buffalo — you can tell, without a translator — but no one else fires, and the kid runs over to where ball rolls by the riverbank. He picks it up again, and turns to look at me…

…and seems to be smiling.

“What game is that?” Black Buffalo asks.

I’m so excited, I don’t wait for the translator and answer, “Baseball!”

Clark and Lewis both give quizzical looks at my evident understanding of Lakota.

“And if this is September,” I tell Black Buffalo, “it’s just about time for the playoffs.”

The Lakota translator is giving me a quizzical look, too. He’s never heard anything like that from any of the fur traders.

I see that the Lakota kid is picking up a stick, too. He stands, holding it the way I held mine, but not before tossing the ball back over the water to me.

I guess he’s ready for an at-bat.

Men on both sides are lowering their weapons.

It looks like the Corps of Discovery will make it through the day and off of Good Humor Island.

And if that means I’ve messed with history a little, it feels all right.

 

 

 

Chapter Twelve

Thea: Monticello

May 1804

 

We follow Jefferson outside, going back up Mulberry Row.

Sadness…

Eyes watch us. There are a few nods, but fewer smiles.

Jefferson occasionally nods back at a slave or two, but doesn’t stop to make conversation.

…sore…. tired…

I don’t know who’s talking…

No, I do know. No one is talking. The lingo-spot is not only translating words now, but feelings. But which feelings? Maybe…the strongest ones?

If this ability should grow, I may well go mad.

And as mother might have observed, going mad will not help me think clearly about my situation.

The slave cabins are opposite the extensive, and apparently experimental, gardens that Jefferson keeps. Orange light from a setting sun plays over the flowers, trees, and vines there. Looking at them, smelling them, I could almost imagine myself back in the gardens in Alexandria.

Almost.

We’re back at the front entrance to the house quickly enough. “Come with me, girl,” Sally says, and takes me upstairs.

I noticed she didn’t look too closely at the slaves on Mulberry Row, either. She doesn’t quite belong there, but she doesn’t quite belong here, in Jefferson’s house, as a full family member.

Like me, she is caught between worlds.

Two of Jefferson’s granddaughters run by, giggling as they see me. Jefferson’s grown daughter, Patsy, is here with her family — I don’t think I’ve counted all the young ones yet. There are around six or so. I don’t know how they can move so fast in such garments, though, with all the bows and sashes around their waists.

Even the men, those who aren’t slaves, seem to wear numerous layers of clothing.

But to be a child is to move fast, no matter what your clothing, so off the children go, perhaps to look at some of the antlers on the wall. This is a busy house, which also reminds me of Alexandria and the library. Something was always happening there. Guests were forever arriving. Back when I was a child.

And if I’m not quite a child now, but not yet grown into the sort of woman Mother was… then what am I? Who am I?

Honoré stomps by on his way to the kitchen, holding a basket full of peas he’s brought in from outside. “And I still have to make ice cream for tout les petits Jeffersons!” he yells to no one in particular.

“We’ll go up here and wait in the cabinet room.”

I follow Sally up the stairs, into what must be Jefferson’s study.

Like Mother’s, it is strewn with papers and scientific implements of every sort. There is a kind of paddle hanging on the wall. There is a plate of oranges on his desk. The scented fruit reminds me of home. I wonder if he has any lemons.

There’s an apparatus on his desk that seems designed for making scrolls. There are sheets of parchment in it, but I’m not sure how it works. Most peculiar of all, though, are several large bones set out on tables, trails of dirt and debris around them.

I believe these may be some of the bones Jefferson brought back from the trip where we found Eli.

Where I found him, only to lose

Miss.

—him again.

Who said miss?

“Jefferson has an active mind,” Sally tells me. I realize I have been staring at the large animal bones. “Mostly that’s a good thing. It keeps him busy, keeps all that sadness of his at bay.” She shakes her head. “But sometimes it keeps him from paying attention to the things that are right in front of him. To the life he’s leading right now.”

“Sally, you say the worst things about me. It’s scarcely fair.”

“Yes, Jefferson, it’s scarcely fair.”

Jefferson has entered through a side door. He holds a large, musty volume in his hands, a “book” as scrolls are now called.

Even in this quick exchange, I can tell there’s a bond between these two, but I can’t make sense of it.

“If I believed in Providence, I would say that my continued delay in getting back to Washington is a penalty for having indulged secret travels in the first place. Except that I don’t mind the delay at all. However, I expect my political enemies in the Whig Party will not let it be forgotten.”

I nod toward Jefferson, just to be agreeable.

“Do you speak much English?” he asks me.

“Some bit,” I tell him. I’m surprised to hear myself say it.

“You appeared to understand it in the stables. You’ve taxed all the Greek and Latin out of me, though I enjoy the practice. It may save time if I can proceed in the common tongue. Is that all right?”

I nod again. I can’t tell him about the lingo-spot.

And then it occurs to me that by using English, he’s including Sally in the conversation, too.

He’s trusting her.

“I am always trying to save time. There never seems to be enough.” He pauses at the parchment machine. “For instance, this polygraph I invented. It allows a duplicate to be made of every letter I write. It works by putting a pen in a brace that copies every stroke I make with my own hand.”

The scribes in Alexandria could have used that. We would have had extra copies of all our scrolls and perhaps wouldn’t have lost them all in the fire.

“These bones,” Jefferson says, coming up to the table. “They save no time whatsoever, but I am fascinated by them. I cannot help but wonder what sorts of mighty creatures lived here in America before us. I believe there may have been giants.”

He looks at me…

Tell me.

…to see what I know. He suspects something. “These bones, for example, come from a creature I’ve been calling the incognitum because I have yet to ascertain what species it is. Though, lately, I wonder if it might not be some kind of elephant. I recalled reading that Alexander the Great used elephants for military purposes, then went to find a volume about him that I had procured in Europe. It was richly illustrated, and I hoped the engravings might give me a basis to make a few renderings of our own prehistoric elephants.

“Alexander, of course, founded the great city of Alexandria. The original one, in Egypt. Our smaller, humbler settlement of the same name, here in Virginia, hopes to draw inspiration from its source and someday serve as a seat of learning.”

He is still looking at me.

Tell me.

“Jefferson, for this poor girl’s sake, come to your point.”

“Here is the section of the book on Alexandria.” He lets the volume fall open. I see a series of accurate engravings of the great legends of my city: Alexander’s arrival, its transformation to a great shipping port, the building of the library, the museum, and Pharos — the great lighthouse. That was the last place I saw my mother alive.

They’re all there in Jefferson’s book.

“And then there is this brief section about the great fire in Alexandria, and the destruction of its golden age.”

He flips the large, moldering pages.

In the engravings, I see the fire taking the library. I see the animals fleeing the zoo on the palace grounds, just as I remember them. I see K’lion.

“I noticed this lizard man in the illustration,” Jefferson says, tapping his finger on the pages. “And I do not recall ever seeing him there before. But there was an even bigger surprise waiting for me on the next page.”

He takes the bound parchment to reveal another engraving on the next page.

The mathematician and scholar Hypatia

stood accused of consorting with demons and

demigods, and this may have led to her

downfall.

The caption is the Gaul language, French, and Jefferson reads it in the original.

“Do you need me to—”

“No,” I tell him. I don’t need him to translate.

He just shakes his head.

The picture is of Mother. Mother talking to K’lion.

It never happened, but somehow the author of this book thinks it did. Somehow, a version of our story has made its way down through the ages.

“You mentioned Hypatia’s name during your restless sleep . You called her ‘Mother.’”

“Jefferson, this child’s clearly upset, she’s still weak. What are you—”

“I am beginning to wonder, Sally, if I’ve made a serious mistake letting that boy join the Corps of Discovery to capture the lizard man. I am beginning to wonder if the West may hold such mysteries that the entire country may come undone. And I certainly wonder how a bound and printed book is able to alter its very illustrations.”

Sally is getting upset.

“You need to leave this girl be, Tom!”

Jefferson’s eyes widen.

“Not everything that passes in front of your eyes is something to be used in an experiment or examined like some bug!”

Silence envelops the room. Even the transforming lingo-spot doesn’t try to fill it. Somehow, it understands that the silence is the very thing being said.

“Sally, my wife and four of my children are dead. Of my original family, only two daughters have survived. I do not need to be reminded of what things in life are authentic, and which are passing distractions. I do not need to be lectured on whether I am in some kind of flight —“

—from grief.

Jefferson doesn’t finish his sentence. But I know. He pauses again, and smoothes out his long coat.

“I am sorry, Sally.”

“I’m sorry, too, Tom.”

“You really shouldn’t call me Tom.” Jefferson turns back to me and puts his hand on the leather box next to the excavated bones.

He flips the box open, and I see Eli’s cap inside.

“I need to know how this fits in to the puzzle. I need to know what the link is between you and the boy and the lizard man. I need to understand if there is an immediate danger confronting us. I am beginning to suspect that you are not this ‘Brassy’ who belongs to Governor Claiborne. But I’d like to know who else you might be.”

I don’t know enough about the history of Eli’s country — the United State, I believe it’s called — to know what is supposed to happen next in the years between the presiding of Jefferson and the invention of time displacement by Eli’s parents. I do not know how things turn out— if there are wars or not, whether the slaves stage a rebellion, and whether the leaders of this United State are always wise and just.

I do not know; but if I did, it wouldn’t matter.

It would appear that because Eli, K’lion and I have been loosed upon history, history itself is no longer quite fixed. Or to put it another way, since we can now travel into the past, the past therefore becomes as unpredictable… as the future.

“I am taking this cap with me to Washington tomorrow. I wish Ben Franklin were still here to look at it, to offer us theories about its electric properties. But I intend to have it examined, so its true nature may be discovered.” The look on his face softens. “I wish you no harm. No harm at all, Miss Whoever-You-Are. But what else is incognitum in America that I’m not being told about?”

Sally watches Jefferson and me. She’s waiting for an answer, too.

It never comes.

The door to the study bursts open, and Honoré is there with Patsy. They’re having an argument.

“Sir! Monsieur! S’il vous plait! Will you tell your daughter that macaroni and cheese do not belong together! That you regret having ever asked me to combine —”

“Father, I’m sorry for the interruption. I asked Honoré to make the dish the children are so fond of.”

“Honoré — Patsy and I felt that putting macaroni and cheese together makes a simple, satisfactory American dish, and I would ask that you keep experimenting with the different cheeses to find the best possible combination. Any dish that all of my grandchildren like equally well without complaint should command our respect. Now, is there some other reason you have chosen to violate the strict edicts about my not being interr—”

But the word interrupted is itself interrupted.

I have reached into the leather box and pulled out Eli’s cap. I can feel the tingle in my hands already.

There’s no other way. If the cap disappears, so does Eli’s ability to move through time with it. None of us might ever get back.

We would be stuck here, unmaking history.

“What—”

“I’m sorry,” I say, as Jefferson lunges for me.

As he fades from view, the world around me goes gray, then blue, then explodes in a frenzy of color, fog, and light.

If this is the Fifth Dimension now, it’s different.

Or maybe I am.

And then I realize, I have no idea where I’m headed.

 

 

 

Chapter Thirteen

Eli: Fort Mandan

December 1804

 

There’s one hour of warmth today — and I want to use it all. Of course “warmth” means anything less than about a million degrees below zero. It’s anything that lets you step outside for a few minutes without worrying that if your finger touches your cheek, it’ll be frozen there.

Not that your finger actually can touch your cheek, because cheeks and faces are bundled up in strips of cloth and your hands are usually wrapped up in these big smelly leather gloves that remind me more of baseball mitts.

I look like one of the zombie characters in a Barnstormers game now. Like a bundle of old clothes that suddenly came to life.

But which life? I really don’t want to think about Barnstormers, or anything that reminds me of how my life was before.

Round and round our little fort I go, walking to keep warm, to keep distracted.

Since I’ve become tangled up in time, this place, this journey — this “now” — is the longest I’ve stayed in one spot. Or time. It’s been half a year now, traveling with the Corps of Discovery.

I cover myself with stinky buffalo hides. I eat meat and jerky and nuts and fish. And I live with a bunch of guys who think that if I took a sip of whiskey every once in awhile, it might help my growth.

They’re good men, and they’re brave, pretty much. Sometimes they’re silly and weird. But I don’t know how much longer I can keep traveling with them.

I have to find Clyne soon, and then we have to find Thea, and then we all have to get back home, to 2019, and get all this bad history sorted out.

I have an orange that I’m holding, deep in my pocket. It might be an orange freeze by now, but I know someone who’d like it, no matter what.

I had to trade my Christmas portion of brandy to get it, so it was well worth it. Lewis was handing out some fruits earlier that Jefferson had sent up river for a special occasion. He had originally handed the orange to Cruzatte.

“Another of Jefferson’s crop experiments evidently,” he said, trying to figure out what it was.

“A crop experiment will not inspire za muse!” Cruzatte said indignantly. So he was only too happy to trade.

I’d like to go across the frozen river to Mandan Village and show this orange to this shaman I keep hearing rumors about. North Wind, I think his name is. He’s the one who was supposed to have seen the same “lizard god” that the fur trader Banglees saw.

But I can’t just leave by myself, without permission from one of the captains. I’ve seen ’em actually whip guys for stuff like sneaking off.

So I keep tromping through the ice and blistery winds, somewhere in the Dakotas, trying not to get distracted by the two things I’d normally be thinking about today.

“Merry Christmas, Eli! Want to play some baseball?”

It’s Gassy. He’s eating some of the dried apples that Lewis passed out earlier for Christmas presents. He also had a few big sips of the brandy that was part of Christmas breakfast.

The apples had been in the crates with other treats, and were meant to celebrate both the holiday and the fact that we finished building the last part of “Fort Mandan” yesterday.

The fort is really just a group of small wooden huts surrounded by a big fence, right across the frozen river from the Mandan village.

You can see the round huts from here.

Lewis said the Mandan village “is the last known stop on the white man’s map. Fur traders come up here. West of this, terra incognito.”

I’ve been meaning to ask him what that means. Maybe he meant “terror”? Like he’s afraid of what lies ahead?

The Mandans and their neighbors, the Hidatsas, have been really friendly to us. They’ve sent food, and visited us, and had us over in the village for feasts. They don’t celebrate Christmas though.

Gassy’s still waiting for an answer. The men all seem intrigued by “base,” as they originally called it, until I updated them, since it was the game that helped get us out of that jam downriver. I left Kentuck’s Fives ball with the Lakotas, but I’ve managed to make another one out of some old rags, and that’s been usable. Barely.

“I can’t right now, Gassy. I’m busy.”

“Busy? On a field of ice on Christmas Day? The Fort’s built. There’s nothing to do but freeze. And play. Oh, and fire off the cannon, tonight.”

He’s grinning when he says it. He’s weaving a little bit.

“I know, Gassy. I’ll be there for the cannon firing.” I mean, that sounds cool, as long as it’s not actually aimed at anybody.

He holds up the rag bundle, and the small willow branch I helped carve into a vague Louisville Slugger shape.

“Come on, Eli. You can hit first. Christmas present.”

Every mention of Christmas gets my thoughts all churning up again. It’s not Gassy’s fault. The last Christmas I spent was with my mom, in San Francisco, during World War II. And that involved keeping her from getting blown up.

I don’t know what’s happened to her since.

I don’t even think it’s been a full year since that Christmas happened. Not for me. That’s another problem with time travel. Holidays don’t obey any rules about how often they’re supposed to come.

That might be good if, say, you really liked Halloween, or chocolate Easter eggs. But not when you’re missing somebody on Christmas.

I miss my family. And if I find Clyne, maybe I can get back to them.

“Sorry, Gassy. I don’t think I feel like it right now. I don’t feel very Christmasy.”

“But you feel cold, don’t you? That’s Christmasy. And you said you love this game. Besides, what else is there to do?”

I don’t know. Maybe he’s right. Maybe that would cheer me up.

“Eli will be coming with me.” Lewis had come out of the fort, wrapped up like some shaggy swamp creature from a Comnet cartoon, like the rest of us. “I know it’s a holiday, but I’ve got to walk across the river to the village and see about hiring that French trader who came into camp. We could use him as a guide for the second half our journey.”

“That Charbonneau fellow they were talking about around the fire the other night? You want him to be our guide? Sir?” Gassy asks.

“Well, I’m actually more interested in hiring his wife. She’s not much older than Eli here. Her name’s Sacagawea. She’s supposed to be a full-blooded Shoshone, and we’ll be meeting that tribe sometime in the spring. She may know the area, and we could use a translator.”

“Well that’s too bad the pair of you have such highfalutin important business on Christmas Day,” Gassy says. “Forgettin’ already it’s a holiday and such. But you both have yourselves a good time with the Mandans.” Still grinning, he throws up the rag bundle, swings the branch, and knocks a pretty good pop fly out over the snow.

“You don’t mind the walk, young squire?” Lewis asks me, after Gassy goes after the rag ball.

“It’s best to keep moving in weather like this, sir.”

As we walk across the ice toward the village, I lose my balance and almost drop the orange. Drawing closer, we can smell the sharp smoke trailing from the chimney-holes on top of the round huts.

“You seem to be feeling particularly alone today, Master Sands,” Lewis says at last. The words are muffled, and he has to say them more loudly than usual, in order to get them past all the fur strips. “Missing anyone in particular? Anything or anyplace?”

“Nothing — no one — that would make any sense, sir.”

“It never does.”

Lewis lets the conversation stop there. We cross from the slick river ice to the mushier snow on the banks, which is a little easier to walk on. Lewis taps me and points to the largest of the huts. We walk toward it and pull back the flaps

“Hello!” Lewis says. “Happy Holiday.”

One of the Mandan men jumps up and begins shouting at us. I think we startled them. They were all planning on spending a cold day around the fire, and here we are, yelling about a holiday on a calendar they don’t even follow.

The Mandan children surround Lewis and me. A couple of them touch me, giggle, then run back toward the fire and smoke, and the grownups, in the middle of the lodge. All of us in the Corps still seem so strange to them.

We’re the outsiders, with the weird customs. We’re like Barnstormer teams, showing up in a new town. Needing to prove ourselves to everybody. To prove we can be trusted. Of course, in Barnstormers, it never works out.

Closer by the fire, I think I see at least one of the people Lewis had come for: Sacagawea. She’s young — I mean, not as young as me, but she’s still a teenager. With long black hair, tied in several rings down her back. And she’s pregnant.

I walk with Lewis in her direction, when someone taps me on my shoulder and says, “You are probably looking for me.” I turn to see another young Indian, about the same age as Sacagawea, who steps forward from the haze. He has a large painted blanket wrapped around himself. There are wolves on it. There are also stars, and what appears to be a planet, sort of Earth-like, except with two suns.

He motions for me to head back to the corner — well, the “round,” maybe, since technically there aren’t any corners — with him.

“I’m looking for —” I have to struggle to remember the name — “North Wind Goes,” I said. “The medicine man.”

The Indian nods. “He may have medicine. Or he may not. But ‘medicine man’ is a white term.”

Did I say something wrong? I know that medicine can also mean “power,” but I wonder if I’ve offended him. Hey, wait. He understood everything I just said in English. How could he? Unless…

“My name is now ‘North Wind Comes.’ It’s changed. I’ve gone out and come back.”

Come back from where? I want to ask. Instead, it comes out like this: “I hear you might know the lizard man.”

“The lizard man is just a rumor.”

I hold out the orange.

“If you know this rumor, if you see him, would you give this to him? From me. That’s all.”

North Wind takes the orange in his hand, and holds it to his nose. Then he looks into my eyes and nods.

“Then you must be Eli.”

 

 

 

Chapter Fourteen

Thea: The Sklaan Room

February 2020

 

I watch Eli’s father for several minutes, walking around the room. He’s holding something in his hand: two prongs with an arc and a ball of light, dancing between them. The light changes color, turning bluer and bluer as he comes closer.

He wears some kind of messenger bag at his side.

This room hasn’t been lived in for a very long time. There’s dust, and clutter, and the furnishings seem strange even by the standards of Eli’s era, as though they’re not quite of the same period.

Near me, on a shelf, is a brown glass bottle with an orange covering. The covering says OVALTINE, and I try to pronounce the strange word.

No sound comes out.

Eli’s father hasn’t noticed me yet, either. I don’t want to startle him, but I need to make my presence known.

The blue light glows brighter still as he turns the apparatus toward me.

I try to speak, but still nothing. I reach for the Ovaltine jar but cannot grasp it. My hand goes through it, like a specter, a phantom. And I realize that as I hold my hand in front of the bottle, I can see both my hand and the glass container behind it. I am in the same ephemeral state as the projected light of Mother’s in the lighthouse. I am here. But not completely.

What does this mean? What happened to me after I put on Eli’s cap in Jefferson President’s house? How is it that I am mostly here… but not quite?

Eli’s soft helmet, the one he uses for personal time displacement, seems to have affected me in a different way.

Eli’s father is staring at me now. The apparatus in his hand is a brilliant blue.

He’s staring at me, but he doesn’t see me.

Instead, he sets the portable down on the floor, where it continues to glow. Looking toward me, but not seeing, he reaches into his pocket and puts on a glove. And then another. Then he reaches into the bag, and pulls out…a cloth of some kind. A… sklaan. The sklaan. The artificial skin covering I was given on Saurius Prime to keep me warm or cold, as needed.

I had given it away to a woman named Hannah, a refugee from Peenemünde. She was fleeing the slave caves of the Reich, where captives worked on building rockets that would be used to destroy more lives. That was the place that taught me just how fearsome the future could be.

What is the sklaan doing here?

“Sandusky…”

I say his name. I mouth it. Still no sound.

He looks at me, where I … where I’m not standing. I’m floating. My feet aren’t touching anything solid, either. It’s like being in a dream.

But Eli’s father keeps looking in my direction, with an intense, yet quizzical, look on his face. I remember those sorts of expressions on my mother’s face. And in remembering, might cry damp tears if I were more solid.

Sandusky reaches into the bag, and pulls out a small sharp blade. He begins to cut a piece off of the sklaan. Then he stands back and throws the cutting into the middle of the blue orb, like tossing meat onto a fire.

The blue light explodes.

I am surrounded by arcing, sparking streaks of lightning and other light that moves like liquid waves. It’s as if a great sluice gate of water has been flung open, and I’m cascading into the middle of the room.

Sandusky, surprised, is knocked back into the shelves by the reaction. He turns to where I am, where the light is most intense.

“Thea?”

Now he can see me.

I try to speak. Still nothing. I nod instead.

“What are you…?”

He steps toward me, stands in front of me, reaches out…and his fingers go right through me.

“Are you… are you… are you all right?”

I nod. Though how can I be sure?

“Are you a ghost?” He looks around, as if he might want to retract that question.

I shake my head no.

But then again, how can I tell?

“Where’s Eli?” He’s staring at my hair when he says it… at the hat. Even in an ephemeral state like this, Eli’s cap is visible on my head.

He returns his gaze to my eyes. “Where are you now?”

That’s a good question. Since I am not fully here, is part of me somewhere else? Has some of my life force been lost, perhaps forever, in transit through the Fifth Dimension? Am I also appearing as a ghost in Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello at this same instant?

But I can’t ask any of these questions. Not out loud. So instead, I shrug.

Mother always hated shrugs. She preferred a good no to a shrug, even if she was looking for a yes. She loathed anything noncommittal.

“Is Eli all right?” A yes-and-no question. I could nod, if I knew the answer. But I don’t want to shrug again. For Eli’s father, that would be as bad as a no. So I nod. It’s not quite a lie. It’s giving us all the benefit of the doubt.

“Have you seen my wife?”

I shake my head. It’s the first clear answer I can give him, and it’s sad news.

“The dinosaur boy?”

His voice is rising. He has to compete with the sparking blue energy swirling around the room.

I’m so sorry I can’t tell him what he wants to hear.

I’m so sorry.

I reach out for him. He reaches back.

Our fingers nearly touch. But more sparks, not just blue ones, burn and crack between them.

Sandusky snaps his hand back. “Thea! What have I done to you?”

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

I can’t tell him it’s not his fault. Even if I could speak, he wouldn’t hear me over the sudden loud thudding as the door flies open — SHZZZT! —and slams shut. I’ve seen this man before. He once ordered soldiers to open fire on a Saurian time-craft I was in. “Hello, Sandusky.”

He’s there with a woman.

“Howe. Thirty.”

There are two armed guardians behind them now. He’s keeping the same kind of company.

Thirty — I wonder if she’s a mathematician — and Howe both squint against the brightness.

“Quite a dramatic meeting, Mr. Sands,” Thirty tells him. “And quite clever. We thought you had run away. And yet here you were, under our noses, in the most restricted area of the tunnels.”

“Everything seems to be here. Every last splinter and crumb from the hotel room. Everything but my wife.”

“She’s never been here, Sands.” The one named Howe seems always impatient, whereas Thirty acts more like this is a game. “If you’d cooperate, maybe we could find her.”

“And look,” Thirty makes her next move, “you’ve brought the artifact.” She points to the sklaan. “We’ve kept that under very tight security, since our predecessors found it. You’ve been quite busy, Sands, stealing it, breaking in here and contaminating the entire room.”

“How long has this project been going on? How many ‘Danger Boys’ have there been before my son?”

It’s not a game to Sandusky. But there’s still some strategy. He has put himself between me — the apparition of me — and the intruders.

“Your wife doesn’t appear here, Sands. She doesn’t haunt this place like a ghost. We need you back in your lab. Helping us. Helping your country. Helping the world.”

“You’ve taken my family from me. How much more help can I give?”

Howe doesn’t respond to that but keeps looking around the room. Perhaps after you’ve done certain things to someone, it becomes impossible to look them right in the eye.

But Sandusky looks at Howe. “You even took a hotel room my wife lived in once and rebuilt it here, in this tunnel, where no one could find it. Why?

“Things in the world…are not as under control as we would like, Sands.” The guardians are moving slowly toward Eli’s father. Howe keeps talking to him. “It’s dangerous for all of us.”

“This isn’t a man who worries about danger, Mr. Howe.” Thirty still seems to be enjoying this situation. “This is a man who brings an alien artifact like that”—she nods at the sklaan—“into a room like this, hoping all the time-particle residue will ignite a reaction with his portable time-sphere. He wants to tear open another hole in time and space. This isn’t a man who worries about danger at all.”

“Maybe this is a man who needs to be left alone to experiment, if you ever want me to help you.”

The guardians are steps away from Eli’s father, but at these words, even Thirty and Howe involuntarily step forward. As everyone closes in, Sandusky is forced to adjust position, and can no longer block their view of me.

“My God.” Howe stares.

Thirty moves toward me. I move — drift — aside. She circles around me, then looks at Eli’s father. “So, Sands, do you know this… emanation?”

He doesn’t answer.

“We’ve seen her before, I believe.” She motions at the guardians, who lower their weapons, pointing them at both Sandusky — and Mr. Howe.

“This room is contaminated in all sorts of interesting ways. Mr. Howe and Sandusky, you’ll have to stay here. And so will the girl. However much of her there is.”

Howe seems shocked. “But—”

Eli’s father just shakes his head. And laughs.

Thirty continues. “We’ll say it was slow pox and keep these corridors sealed off.”

The laugh turns into a sudden roar as Sandusky charges Thirty. “Taken…everything!” The guardians look like they want to fire, but Mr. Howe, still loyal to her, tries to stop his charge, and they don’t have clear aim.

As Howe and Sandusky grapple, Howe is spun toward the center of the room, toward the sklaan, and the glowing blue orb. Toward me.

Howe hits me first.

But there is no “hit,” no impact, just tingling, and the skittish release of even more energy.

Howe flails his arms and tries to grab ahold of me, to slow himself, but I’m not solid.

And then it starts to feel like there’s an electrical storm, like it did when Eli and K’lion and I were ejected from the Saurian time-ship, and fell through the Fifth Dimension, seemingly so long ago…

From somewhere comes the sound of one of the guardian’s weapons firing.

Howe still tumbles, still trying to hold me, but he can’t. I’m not really all there, all here — I haven’t been all anywhere for a while — but still, he slows down going through me. It’s as if I am made of sticky ether. Then he slips away, and much to my surprise, it feels like he’s pushing me along with him, like we’re tangled up…

There are more flashing lights and then BAM! I hit something really solid. Somebody falls on me, or over me, and knocks the wind out of my stomach. There are screams and running feet, and then I hear a voice. Sally’s.

“Amazing, child. We thought we’d lost you for good.”

 

 

 

Chapter Fifteen

Eli: Sacagawea

February, 1805

 

Thwap!

The bundle of rags lands in the snow. Well, of course it lands in the snow. There hasn’t been anything else for it to land in for months. And it’s far enough away that I think we can count it as extra bases, and say that North Wind Comes has a couple of RBIs.

It’s my first time back outside since Sacagawea and the others found me. I had to promise both Clark and Lewis that I wouldn’t run away and wouldn’t go looking for Clyne, “the big rumored lizard,” as Lewis called him, on my own.

I promised. And besides, I just barely escaped getting frostbite the last time. I’m still thawing out, still a little sore. And it won’t do Clyne or me any good if I get lost again.

Still, the two captains make sure there’s always somebody around to watch me.

Right now, it’s Gassy, watching the baseball game unfold.

He just told me that Sacagawea was inside the fort, having her baby. He heard the labor might have started a little early because she was outside in the cold so long, helping to find me. My hands go around the small jagged crystal she gave me, the one for good luck.

“Eli… I score?”

“A double,” I tell him, and hold up a couple of fingers.

North Wind’s English has gotten better in the three months we’ve been here. He’s picked up a lot from me and the other Corps members.

It’s better for both of us if he uses his English, rather than us being seen in high-speed Mandan/English exchanges that might raise a few eyebrows.

But even though he has a lingo-spot — he must — he still won’t tell me much about Clyne. A good shaman doesn’t reveal many secrets, I guess.

Including the secret of where Clyne has been spending the winter. I think, with the harsh climate, North Wind’s only been out to see him once or twice since we got here, anyway.

Once was to give Clyne the orange.

That was when I tried to follow him and it didn’t work out so well. And it doesn’t look like I’ll get another chance to do that.

“What did you think you were doing?” Lewis asked me after that first time, when he felt I was defrosted enough to answer a couple of questions.

“I—I…” I stammered a bit, then fell back on the classic you use with your parents, when you tell one of them that the other said something was okay. “Jefferson. Instructions… from Jefferson.”

Lewis shook his head. “I am dubious that your instructions included freezing to death in the Dakotas. In fact, I believe I am supposed to send you back in decidedly nonfrozen condition when the spring comes. Besides, a president shouldn’t keep secrets,” he added. “It’s bad for the country. Even if the rest of us,” and here he looked right at me, “walk around with secrets all the time.”

Did he mean my secrets? Or did Lewis have a bunch of his own?

North Wind came into the fort after my rescue to see how I was doing. “I have a message from your friend,” he told me. “‘Prolific thanks. And soon, a good time to meet.’”

A good time to meet. Clyne’s favorite greeting. But this time, did he mean we’d actually be seeing each other?

Clark was nearby and overheard. “Does Master Sands have another meeting planned with the Indians? So soon? You’ve barely warmed up from the last attempt. Unless it means we’re wasting money hiring Charbonneau and Sacagawea. Perhaps fate has already selected the translator’s role for you.”

It reminded me of something Thea told me once, when we were in Clyne’s time-ship. She got it from her mother, Hypatia: “The journey selects us, Eli. It calls us to it. Because, somehow, we fit the task.”

I think Thea was trying to make herself feel better since any thought of her mom usually made her sad.

But if the journey really picks us, instead of the other way around, then I do have to get to Clyne soon — not so he could be shipped back as some kind of specimen for President Jefferson — but so he and I can leave and find Thea.

So Clark should let Sacagawea keep her job, baby or not.

And that baby, it seems, is due any moment.

Lewis is with her, with his medical bag, along with some of the Mandans. LeBorgne, the Hidatsa chief, is in there, too. Since Sacagawea was captured by the Hidatsas, before Charbonneau married her, I guess he felt like he had the right to watch over things.

According to North Wind, LeBorgne’s been in a bad mood ever since his favorite warrior, Crow’s Eye, ran off.

That’s why North Wind isn’t in there helping out. LeBorgne has some kind of personal grudge against him because of the whole Crow’s Eye thing.

But despite all those people in the room, or maybe because of it, the birth wasn’t going smoothly. That’s what we heard each time Cruzatte or York or somebody ran out to find some more firewood to boil water, or old cloth to use for towels.

“I shouldn’t let LeBorgne keep me out,” North Wind said, as we paused our game of over-the-line to watch another firewood run.

“Do shamans help deliver babies?”

“Shamans just try to improve the odds for everyone.” He gave me a smile that seemed at least a few years older than he was. “Maybe even you.”

He sounded like Lewis, who was always wondering about “the real odds of any of this succeeding — this entire elaborate journey.”

Now Clark has come out. They sure must be using a lot of firewood in there.

He sees me, and tromps over as fast as he can in the snow. The look on his face isn’t a happy one. “The baby’s tangled. The baby’s not coming.” He looks at North Wind. “Sacagawea wants you. She insists. Lewis will handle LeBorgne.”

North Wind doesn’t reply right away, and in his panic, Clark turns to me. “Does he understand me?”

“He understands you.”

“She’s saying something about how North Wind Comes can speak with the animals, but she’s feverish, so we can’t be sure.”

Since nobody tells me not to, I follow them inside the fort, where the constant smell of smoke and grease and sweat is mixed with something else.

There are voices, Mandan, Hidatsa, American, coming from the next room. I step in there, and when my eyes adjust to the firelight I realize I’m still holding the stick bat and rag ball I was playing with outside.

But it doesn’t seem right to just set them down, even among the big mess of blankets and buffalo skins and pots of water and baskets of herbs and Lewis’s bottles of medicine. It doesn’t seem right to treat it like just any room, because you can feel in the air that something serious, something special is going on here.

This is before I see Sacagawea.

She’s on the other side, all bundled up, grabbing the hand of her husband, Charbonneau, who looks around like he wants a hand to grab, too. Amazingly, Lewis looks completely calm, kneeling next to her, dabbing a rag against her face.

She’s resting on a pile of padding and hides, not lying down all the way, but not quite sitting up either. There are some Hidatsa women behind her, helping to hold her.

Sacagawea’s eyes usually sparkled if she looked in your direction, like she was really sizing you up in an intense way. Even half-frozen that day in the snow, I could feel the intensity in her gaze.

Now her eyes are glossed over, like all her concentration has gone inside.

And then she turns and one of the blankets falls away and there are her legs, spread wide open, and I’ve never seen anything like that, even on the Comnet when I looked at an image bank I wasn’t supposed to go to. There’s blood and goop and hair and a head…

It’s the top of a little head, but it’s hard to see in the firelight. I’m squinting like crazy but yes, I think it’s the top of a head, peeking out from the middle of Sacagawea’s…

…privates. There’s more oozy stuff and a little of the baby’s hair. It has really blue skin, which looks weird. How can a baby have blue skin?

I drop the bat and ball.

And then there’s a loud groan, and Sacagawea slumps back, and I lose track of the head, and the baby’s still not out. North Wind walks over to where Lewis is, but before he can speak to him, LeBorgne steps out from one of the corners of the room. I hadn’t even seen him. He spins North Wind around.

“He’s the one!” He points to North Wind for the benefit of everyone else, but Sacagawea just moans again. “Let him do some good now! He knows the lizard man! He will lead us!”

Lewis looks around, stands up, and wipes his hands.

North Wind isn’t sure what’s going on and calls me over.

“I thought I was to help?” he says to me, low, in Mandan.

“He wants to help deliver the baby,” I explain to Lewis. “He’s the shaman.”

“I know who he is,” Lewis replies. “But the labor is becalmed. The baby may be tangled in the umbilical cord. Someone in here said that a rattlesnake’s rattle, ground up and taken internally, might help the delivery. I never heard of such a use, but I’m willing to try it.”

LeBorgne puts himself right in the middle of the conversation, and switches into shout gear: “The lizard man kept Crow’s Eye from becoming a warrior! He makes things happen that aren’t supposed to happen! He’s the one to get!”

I turn to Lewis. “So how come he wants the, um, ‘lizard man’ if what you really need is part of a rattlesnake?”

“It was LeBorgne’s idea,” Lewis says in a lowered voice. “At first he didn’t want North Wind in here, but as soon as he saw him, he switched the snake talk to bigger game, and kept mentioning the lizard man.”

“He should take us!” The Hidatsa chief points angrily at North Wind. Sacagawea keeps making loud noises. I bet an argument in the birth room is just about the last thing she needs right now, but she keeps a firm grip on Charbonneau’s hand, which is a good thing, ’cause he looks like he’s about to jump out of his skin.

And then I see the women taking Sacagawea and gently turning her over, so that she’s up on all fours, on her hands and legs. She’s trying to push the baby out from a different angle, and there’s that blue head again, and everything else. I wonder if I’m blushing or if that’s just the smoke and grease again. Who knew that a time-traveling baseball cap would lead to all this?

“Does anyone think the lizard man can help?” I turn to North Wind, mainly so I’ll have something — someone —else to look at.

“They think his skin can. LeBorgne convinced them that if a small rattler is good, a giant lizard is better.”

“You mean—”

But LeBorgne answers the question for me: “With the lizard man’s skin, the medicine between Hidatsa and Mandan will be made right again!”

“They want to kill him,” North Wind tells me.

I look at him. “But they don’t know where he is. Only you do. Right?”

North Wind doesn’t speak.

“Right?”

But LeBorgne is full of answers. “And because we’ve had the shaman tracked, we know where that boy was heading!” He points at me. “We know the lizard man is hiding in the Spirit Mound! A new hunt calls to our wintering bones! Who is with me, to save this baby, and kill this wicked demigod?”

A cry goes up from a couple of the other near LeBorgne, who whoops back at them. The women in the room hiss back at him to be quite, but he ignores them and charges out, the men following.

“What just happened?” Lewis asks me.

“I think I’m going back out there,” I tell him. “I don’t have a choice. And I definitely won’t be alone.” I turn to North Wind. “Are you coming with me?”

He nods.

“All this time, I was trying to protect him,” North Wind says.

Sacagawea groans again. This isn’t what she had in mind when she called for a shaman.

 

 

 

Chapter Sixteen

Clyne: Silver Throat

February 1805

I’ve made contact with another mammal species here. Maybe I shouldn’t give up yet on the idea of getting home and filing more extra-credit reports. Not because, in the entire grand Cacklaw field of life, my own grades are important, but because things are so routinely unpredictable here that Earth Orange — and mammal culture — continue to cast doubt on every established Saurian theory about the orderly progression of life, and the ultimate purpose of evolution.

The other species I’m now in communication with are called wolves. At least, that is how humans have named them, and it is these wolves who have been living in the Spirit Mound, in a kind of nest-community called a pack. Their tribal leader is a matriarch called Silver Throat.

I am on a hunt with them now and remain hopeful that soon I will see Eli.

After my seasons living with the pack and healing up, I am also hopeful that my lower limb will again experience full and true functionality.

They were wolf eyes that surrounded us last winter in the dark.

 

“They have come to rescue their devil brother!” Crow’s Eye shouted, looking into the orb-populated shadows of the Spirit Mound. I gathered this meant Crow’s Eye had suddenly become a believer in the stories about this place. Trauma makes mammal minds very elastic. “Let us die bravely, North Wind! Let us give our tribes a new tale to tell in snow season!”

And then he had his knife against my throat.

“Why bother?” North Wind said, helpfully pushing the knife away from my throat. “They won’t tell stories about a shaman who could not protect a god-spirit.” He nodded toward all the visiting eyes. “And we still don’t know what kinds of stories they tell.”

Couldn’t either of my human companions smell the deep woolly mammal scent that goes with the eyes that are peering at us? Would it be up to me to make an introduction?

“Shamans talk too much.” The knife flashed back in my direction, and this time, North Wind couldn’t stop it. I rolled out of the way, even with the jabberstick in my limb and the deep rumbus of pain in my leg. The blade just missed, and I started to wonder if I would have to bite Crow’s Eye, or at least growl to scare him off. As ridiculous as mammals are, I’ve never had to hurt one. Yet.

“Crow’s Eye—”

But North Wind didn’t have a chance to finish.

The eyes began a long, low music together. A chorus. It reminded me of the Song of the Gurdlanger, a song cycle chanted by the armored, horned Saurians who served as King Temm’s guards, when the time came to bear his body away at last toward Saurius Prime’s two falling suns.

Like those songs, the Spirit Mound music captured both a sense of timelessness, of the eternal, and the utter, fleeting swiftness with which all things pass. It was sweet and sad all at once.

The howling, growling sounds must have reminded North Wind and Crow’s Eye of something, too. They stopped — Crow’s Eye forgot all about his blade and making a story out of me — and looked with new appreciation at the eyes encircling us.

One pair of eyes stepped into the pool of flickering light. She was fur-covered, walking on four legs. Long snout, inquisitive, intelligent face.

At first, I thought she was a dog, but the spreading rumbus of pain in my limbs was wreaking havoc on my taxonomy skills. She and her companions were larger than dogs. A pair had been kept in the zoo in Alexandria, in Thea’s time.

The one who stepped forward was silver gray, a female — and a leader. You could read it in her bearing. She cocked her head at me, forming a question with no spoken language whatsoever. Her eyes were fierce and filled with green fire. They stayed locked on me when she spoke.

In the snow outside… we watched. You left a substance that allows us… to understand the humans. And you.

There was some of the lingo-spot left outside after my experiments! And it was on her now!

We could hear it… resonate. I tasted some.

She’d ingested infected slow pox! My laboratory methods were getting so sloppy I could be set back several grade levels if I ever made back home.

“The substance you speak of… has become tainted, transformed,” I said, overriding my self-aches to speak up, so North Wind might hear me, too. “I would advise strongly against ingesting anymore.”

It was a sad piece of advice to dispense on a planet so in badly in need of good translation, like Earth Orange. I looked at North Wind.

“I should have told you sooner, but circumstances remained hopscotchy.”

“Is the talking-substance dangerous to me, then?”

“I am hoping it is merely changed — but I need to do more research.” The pain was getting the best of me. I wanted to make a few good notes before passing out. “So… what kind of mammal dances do you do?” I asked, not sure if that was the right first question to ask a new species,

The gray fur’s eyes widened. She uncocked her head and I looked at her face. I read acceptance and the merest whiff of a deeply wise sense of humor there.

Dances? Some mammals we hunt and eat; others we ignore; some we play with; others, lately come here, wish us harm. Those two-leggeds— she nodded toward North Wind and Crow’s Eye—call us “wolves.” My clan calls me Silver Throat.

Another wolf with reddish fur came up and growled something to Silver Throat. She answered the red-fur with a soft series of growls, then turned back to me. My daughter, Birdjumper. She tells me not to ingest any more creations of yours until you grow more sure of them. She reminds me to be wary. I need no such reminders. But what kind of two-leg are you? You look almost like a big fish.

 

That was my introduction to Silver Throat. I drifted in and out of consciousness for a few days, and while North Wind grew to accept our multi-mammal situation, Crow’s Eye did not.

Both of them eventually left the Spirit Mound, with the wolves’ blessings and the wolves’ guidance in finding hidden passages to take them out.

I remained, in order to heal. The wolves, for their part, would occasionally lick my wounds — especially after the jabberstick was removed with a searingly painful yank by Birdjumper — and Silver Throat and I would converse.

“Perhaps someday you could see my home, as well.”

You mean, journey with you?

“Yes. You might be able to get a job teaching philosophy.”

To humans? That might be difficult.

“To Saurians. You could come to Saurius Prime.”

Where you fish-people live? But you say I wouldn’t be allowed to hunt.

I loved talking to Silver Throat. Conversations with her kept me alert and ready for debate class. I enjoyed talking to North Wind Comes, of course, but I didn’t see him as often. His people have placed confidence in him as a healer and now have more need of him.

And of course, there is Eli. After his gift of the orange, it was my wish to leap straight into the Mandan village to greet him quite loudly with maximum friendship.

But Silver Throat, and later North Wind, advised me that wouldn’t be safe. Eli is traveling with an exploratory regiment that might wish to harm me out of pure reflexive action. North Wind doesn’t feel his people are ready to have me show up in his village.

But when I heard Eli had come looking for me and nearly perished, I felt I must make contact with him soon. After all, we have to find the time-vessel and find out what effects mammal-borne disease is having on it. I fear ever greater chaos within the human time stream the longer we are delayed.

And so I have agreed to come on one of the wolf pack’s winter hunts. To strengthen myself, to catch a glimpse of the village where Eli is, and formulate a gra-baak-proof plan to rendezvous.

If you join us on the hunt, Silver Throat said to me, you can share the meat.

If I start actively hunting mammals, I replied, I will be in even greater violation of every Saurian agreement made since the end of the Bloody Tendon Wars. I’ve already been living off the meat you’ve provided. An even more severe appetite for flesh would create enormous social problems on my home world. And furthermore, would be very bad manners here among my hosts.

I had eaten bird bones when foraging on this planet, but I dared not purse larger game. Especially involving my host phylum.

There is a stray, solitary ungulate ahead of us — an elk, I believe — separated from its herd. Silver Throat watches while members of her pack surround it. Soon she will join them to take down their prey.

Thankfully, the limp from the jabberstick keeps me from being a more effective hunter.

Did you not say that returning to this other home of yours is a matter of both distance… and time?

I nod.

But time only moves in a single direction. There’s no going backwards, no matter how much we wish it. That animal’s life will end in a few moments. She nods toward the elk. In its last moments, it will wish to undo its end. But none of us can undo endings. The stream takes us all.

“That’s why I need to find my ship. The stream may be flooding in all directions, if we’re not careful.”

A ship like the watercraft that humans use?

“More like the aircraft that they will come to use in their future.”

The humans will be able to move around by air? That is very worrisome.

The hairs on the back of Silver Throat’s neck have raised up, ever so slightly. But it doesn’t seem to be caused by the consideration of airborne humans. Her nose twitches, then she springs to all four feet, growling.

Birdjumper and some of the others come running in from the outside. They’re wet with snow and ice.

Birdjumper and her mother exchange yelps and growls. I can make out some of it, but not all. The humans are… moving?

They’re coming right now. Silver Throat looks at me. On foot and horse. The one you know is coming, too.

You can see the figures moving toward us.

The wolves are sounding a retreat. And then I understand why: They aren’t the only ones hunting today.

The humans are after us.

Arrak-du…

This won’t be a friendly encounter. You can feel it.

And Eli’s with them.

It’s been so long since I’ve seen him.

Whose side will he be on?

 

 

 

Chapter Seventeen

Thea: Canal Street

February 1805

 

They’ve finally decided I’m well enough to travel. For months, I’ve been “rehabilitated” at Monticello, quarantined on Mulberry Row by Mr. Howard while Jefferson President was away at the capital.

My “fevers and fugues” were to be “sweated out of me,” until I was “fit to be returned,” in Mr. Howard’s words, “in working condition.”

So I spent my long days planting and gathering crops, spinning cloth, sewing, mending, washing, watching over the slave children and sometimes, if they were outside, Jefferson’s own grandchildren.

I lived in a shed near Isaac’s, with some straw on the floor, a couple of blankets, and two servings of food a day — stews made of greens and the cast-off parts of farm animals, like cows and chickens. Sometimes there is an allotment of a pasty substance called cornmeal. And once in a while, I have received a pudding made of something called a pumpkin.

But what matter my diet? Eli’s soft helmet was gone, and I had no more visits or visions of the future. I kept looking for chances to escape, to somehow return to my friends.

There were none.

In spite of living near Isaac and the horse stables, I had no opportunities to be alone with the horse Soysaa, either.

But I did see him on the day he was taken away.

Isaac held him by the reins and brought him down the row.

“Where is he go?” I asked, in the English I was using more and more.

“Where troubled horses go, little miss. Now you best move aside. Don’t spook him.”

Soysaa reared up when Isaac spoke, and it took more slaves to subdue him.

I don’t know where he was headed.

But my journey has been less mysterious. After my rehabilitation, and Jefferson President’s return from Washington, I am being returned to my “owner,” a man named Governor Claiborne — Claiborne Governor? — in a city named New Orleans, in a region called Louisiana. During a festival called Mardi Gras.

The festival has started already, and it is the reason I was given for the repeated explosions of light and large rumbles of thunder in the sky.

When the light flashes, I remember my journey through the dimensions and my visit to Eli’s time.

Show…

There’s been no one I could tell.

…me.

I’ve tried to talk to Sally about it but don’t want to get her in trouble. Sometimes I feel like light is exploding inside me, too, looking for a way to come out.

Another boom fills the air. “That one’s not a firework — that’s from God.” Sally turns to me, her face covered in feathers. “Maybe you attract lightning, too.” She smiles to let me know it’s a small joke, but around Monticello, Mr. Howard let it be known that I was “spooked.” Sally wasn’t allowed to spend much time alone with me, anyway.

We couldn’t even ride down together in the same carriage. I was not outside, on the top, as I was that time with Sally. Instead, I was kept behind a locked carriage door, on a hard bench across from Mr. Howard, who watched me the whole time.

Even when we stopped to spend the night at various inns — or rather, when Jefferson did, since the slaves slept in barns — Mr. Howard seemed impervious to sleep. Whenever I’d awaken, he would still be watching me.

I could scarcely exchange words with Sally. At what point in the journey did she start wearing feathers?

“Sally…” I have so much I want to tell her, but so little English. Maybe now’s the time to give her some of the lingo-spot.

Except then, would she wind up like Sooysaa? Like me? With the voices cascading in whether she wanted them to or not?

Even in the shadowy moonlight, my eyes do the job of my tongue. She sees me looking at her costume.

“Do you like it? It’s for Mardi Gras.” She turns around to let me see all of her cloth feathers. Facing me again, she raises the wooden beak off her nose, so I can see her more clearly in the dark. “I’m an American Eagle.” Then she looks at me, trying to see what else can be read in my face.

“I know why they brought you back, Thea. Aren’t they even going to let you wear a disguise? Just for tonight?”

I gather that costumes, or disguises, are required for this Mardi Gras — “fat” something, if my sense of the Latin is correct. But I have only the dress I was wearing at Monticello.

There is laughter as a group of people walk down the street near us. They have noisemakers and horns. One appears to be dressed like an insect; another, like a giant goat; and another, still, appears to be a type of fool or trickster, with a mask of exaggerated facial features and outlandish baggy clothes. The fool laughs. The insect seems to stare at me.

“They’re headed to the river,” Sally says. “You know, all those articles about you in the Truth, you’ve become famous. They even ran that portrait of you. You don’t need anybody staring at you. Put this on.” She hands me the wooden beak. She wants me to tie it around my face.

As I do, she explains how it is that I have become famous, perhaps even infamous, in the last few months.

“Brassy” sightings continued even after I was at Monticello. These caused Jefferson President a nearly endless string of political trouble, since Brassy was supposed to “belong” to Governor Claiborne and should have been returned right away. As president, Jefferson couldn’t be perceived as taking the side of a slave in a runaway dispute, especially a slave who was, according to the rumors, getting ready to lead a slave revolt.

The rumors, and Jefferson’s troubles, grew as sightings of “Brassy” were reported in far-flung areas: in Virginia’s own Alexandria; in the capital, Washington; down here in New Orleans. Each sighting of the “ghost slave” was then reported in something called the Weekly Truth.

“Jefferson hates that paper. Says he’s not sure if Tom Paine is behind it or not, but it’s always stirring up trouble.”

I wonder if the random appearances of Brassy, or rather me, had to do with my travels through the Fifth Dimension? Could it be, with Eli’s cap on, that I was somehow “split” in two? One self not fully appearing in the world of Eli’s father while another kind of remnant emanation was left behind here?

Was I at risk of becoming a ghost?

“In any case, Jefferson’s problems just kept piling up,” Sally says. “He had to agree to come down here and give a speech — which he hates to do. To try and make it up to the governor, since it was his slave he lost. Mr. Howard keeps worrying that the situation isn’t ‘stable enough.’ And you know what? It turns out, for once, that man may be right.”

Evidently, Brassy had been seen recently in the New Orleans area, calling for a mass slave escape on Mardi Gras night. Carnival time. Or so claimed the Weekly Truth.

Consequently, there was a bounty hunter in the area, looking for Brassy. He was describing her to locals, saying she was dangerous, saying she might be seen in the company of “a white boy” and, according to the Truth, “other creatures too strange to mention.”

“They decided to let all the Mardi Gras balls still go on, though,” Sally explains to me, “ to show they aren’t afraid. Since the president had you all along, they want to make a big show of handing you back. Except they did add a curfew, so everyone would have to go home early. Those costumes you saw were headed to one of the parties: American, French, colored. They all celebrate separately. Only the Creoles seem to mix it up a little.”

“Creoles?”

“Native Louisiana people. They’re kind of like a big stew of different races already — Spanish, French, sometimes Indian or colored, all in the same blood.”

“But Sally, it is the same blood. It’s just blood.”

“I know that. And you know that. But when someone keeps slaves, I guess they have to pretend to not know that.”

Brassy, or her ghost, evidently had called for using the parades and disguises to transport recently escaped slaves straight out of the city. They could march their way to freedom under cover, I suppose. It was a good idea, except that somehow everybody had heard about it.

According to the paper.

That’s why there are armed guardians patrolling the streets.

That’s why Mr. Howard had me put in leg braces, sitting in the wagon, with strict orders for the guardians around me that I was to stay put until everything was ready for me to be handed over.

Sally looks around, to make sure no masked insects or armed guardians could hear us. “Since you couldn’t come into Jefferson’s house, you missed a real nervous visit from this governor. He’s all worried ’cause a lot of slaves seem to be up and disappearing outside New Orleans and no one ever sees ’em again, anywhere. And the governor wants to put a stop to it. Jefferson felt forced to go along. ‘Politics,’ he called it. ‘Sally,’ he told me one time, ‘it’s politics that has me thinking the office of president might have already outlived its usefulness.’

“And then later that same visit, one of the governor’s slaves whispered to me that it was magic helping the escapees. Magic that you could find right here in New Orleans, for a price. Maybe from one of the fortunetellers. I don’t know if I believe it, but I told Jefferson I wanted to investigate this thing from the slave side, in case somethin’ bad was happening to ’em.

“There were other reasons they couldn’t shut down Mardi Gras. The French refused to be deprived of their celebration, the Americans refused to be shown up by the French, and the Creoles said they were free to do what they pleased. So, because we still have the masked balls and the parties, I have my disguise, and I think we should find out what’s happening.”

“Are you running away, too, Sally?”

“I’m too famous to run away, missy. I’m President Jefferson’s favorite slave.” She isn’t saying it like she means it as an honor. “But I have to find out about this…”

Boom.

Show me.

There’s more thunder, and another crack of light pierces the night, the way the light from Pharos used to with its great beam. Then I notice light from someplace else: under Sally’s clothes, her costume, from her feathers. She takes out a small glass vial with a shifting, glowing mass contained inside.

I recognize the material. It’s plasmechanical.

It’s from K’lion’s ship.

“The governor’s slave, her name was Tomasina, gave this to me at Monticello, when nobody was looking.”

Clop clop clop.

“These get passed on to the people fixin’ to run away to freedom. Helps ’em find the trail, or something. Like a pathway, or one of those new railroad lines.” She looks over her shoulders. “I got somethin’ else, too, for when nobody is lookin’”

Revelers — I see the insect and the goat running in the opposite direction from which they came — are now fleeing up the street. Ahead is another small squad of guardians, armed with long weapons and dressed in their triangle-shaped hats.

The people in costume run ahead of the soldiers — clop clop — who stay in formation and move like a dreadnought, splitting the seas.

Sally is counting. “Three…two…one…”

And just as the guardians clop by, with people fleeing ahead of them, the men who watch me begin to fall out of formation to see what’s happening. There is another roar of thunder—Sally keeps counting —and then another blaze of lightning, during which she moves her pretend feathers to cover up her own swift motion.

“Come on, child.”

She unlocks the leg irons with a key that suddenly appears in her hand. The braces fall away and drop to the pavement. Then she grabs me and starts running.

“How did you—?”

“Slaves gotta keep their eyes open for each other, child.”

“You, there! Halt!”

Two of the soldiers who had momentarily ventured into the boulevard now turn and come after us.

“Stop, I say!”

We’re running the direction the revelers came from. Ahead of us, I can see the canal — or I can at least smell and hear the water.

“Sally! You can’t! You’ll get in trouble!”

Tied up to one of the moorings near the water is a small boat. A man stands in it, nervously puffing a small clay pipe that produces smoke like a steady fire. Sally holds out the small vial to him. He nods quickly.

“Banglees?” Sally pants.

“C’est moi,” the man agrees. “But I don’ know if I want the trouble.” He points toward the rushing soldiers and hurriedly unties the boat. “I may jus’ celebrate this Mardi Gras by myself!”

“Wait!” I yell.

“Pardonnez-moi, but I cannot stay!”

“We need to know about this!” I hold up the plasmechanical orb in Sally’s hand.

“I think after tonight, zat doorway ees going to be closed.”

“What? What doorway?” I shout.

He has the last of the rope uncoiled from the post.

“Stay there and do not move under the severest penalty of martial law!” the closest soldier yells.

“I told Jefferson I would do this on my own. Letting you go was my idea,” Sally whispers. “I thought we could make it.”

Boom!

Another firework.

Boom!

More thunder. But none of it distracts the soldiers this time.

Wait.

I might just be wrong about that.

That’s not lightning. Or fireworks.

Zut alors!

The boatman has passed out. The soldiers have stopped clopping and are pointing their guns. Because those last two “booms” didn’t just make noise and light.

They produced a boy…

…and a lizard man.

 

 

 

Chapter Eighteen

Eli: Departure

February 1805

 

Clyne’s locked up in a cage, and I’m celebrating in the Mandan village. Men dance around searing hot fires, wearing shaggy buffalo skins or hollowed out buffalo heads that cover their faces like big trick-or-treat masks.

But they’re not dancing outside on a freezing cold night because they caught my friend. The dance is a buffalo-calling ritual, to tell the herds that it’s time to start appearing again. I guess the winter meat supply is running low for the Indians. I know it’s running low in the fort.

The dance is also the tribe’s way of getting ready for spring. It reminds everyone that winter will eventually pass and it will be warm again. That’s what North Wind Comes told me, the last time we talked.

When spring comes, I’m supposed to go downriver with Clyne and all the other “specimens” that Clark and Lewis are planning to ship back to St. Louis and, eventually, to Mr. Thomas Jefferson.

Clyne is the biggest specimen of all, of course. The plan is for him to spend the rest of the winter locked up, until we go. He’ll be locked up while we’re traveling and probably after that, too. Lewis is also sending a couple of the men back as guards, to make sure nothing happens to the shipment.

Until then, Clyne is supposed to stay inside his tiny wooden cage, right outside Fort Mandan, on the Corps of Discovery’s side of the river.

He was out hunting with the wolves the day we found him.

“Hello Clyne. How have you been?”

“Jabberstuck, but still inquisitive, and mostly well-hosted. There are things we need to speak of, though. A good time to meet, friend Eli!”

He might have talked more except that he was surrounded by spears and arrows and people who wanted to kill him. Especially LeBorgne. “You! You are the one who drove Crow’s Eye away!” The man stood up and pointed to Clyne. “Kill this spirit! Kill him now!”

I stood in front of my friend, ready to protect him.

At that moment, I saw North Wind Comes. He jumped off his horse and ran toward me. You could see the breath leave his mouth and turn to icy steam as he moved.

“No, no! Do not listen to LeBorgne! Do nothing to the lizard man! You will bring terrible medicine on all of us if you do!”

The hunting party stood still a moment, looking at North Wind, at LeBorgne, at me, a little afraid of Clyne, and unsure what to do next.

Then we heard the crying.

One wolf stood over another, giving a long, mournful wail. There was an arrow sticking from the dead one’s neck.

North Wind walked over to them. “Silver Throat. Forgive us for doing this to your daughter.” Then he turned to face the men again. “How stupid to kill a wolf for no good reason. Who did this?” But nobody said anything.

That seemed to be enough killing for one day, though. They decided to capture Clyne instead, and bring him back here. Where he remains in his cage.

But I don’t think Clyne can last that long in such a tiny, enclosed space.

I wonder if he can see these bonfires from where he is? The flames are pretty bright. I don’t know if it’s the heat from the fire, but my lingo-spot seems to be itching like crazy. And I’m distracted, thinking of home, of Dad, and of Mom, wherever she is.

And Thea.

I try to let the music fill me for a couple of minutes, to slow down the swirl of thoughts in my head. There’s drumming from the Mandans, fiddle music from Cruzatte, and lots of dancing around the flames, not only to call the buffalo, but also to celebrate the recent successful birth of Sacagawea’s baby boy.

His name is Pomp. Or at least his nickname. I think his real name is something pretty fancy, like John the Baptist. Or I guess the French version, which I think is Jean-Baptiste. Clark really likes the baby. Pomp was a name he came up with. And to everyone’s surprise, Lewis doesn’t seem to mind him, either. He even likes holding him.

Which is good, because Lewis was the very first person in the world to hold him. When we were out chasing Clyne, he found some powdered snake rattle in the fort’s supplies. He gave it to Sacagawea, and it worked.

They didn’t need dinosaur skin after all, and Pomp was born before we got back.

“Thinking about your lizard friend again?” I didn’t even hear Lewis come up. He’s holding a cup in his hand. “Some brandy? We’re celebrating tonight. And hoping, eventually, to get fed.”

“No thanks.”

Lewis shrugs and takes a sip.

“We’ll be leaving here, soon enough, and proceeding on. It’s too bad you won’t be joining us.”

“I’ll miss you, Captain. I’ll miss everybody. They don’t —” I search for the right words. When I was a kid, I didn’t worry about the right words so much. “They don’t have many adventures like this left, where I come from. Not real ones.”

“Where is it that you come from, lad? You’ve never really said.”

“Like I said… the territories.”

Lewis listens to Cruzatte’s fiddling a couple more minutes, looking thoughtful.

“How is it, young squire, you came to be so expert in the ways of this lizard man? I didn’t even believe the stories before. I thought Jefferson needed you out of his hair. Yet the beast is real, and you came to know him even before we arrived here. Do creatures like him live in your ‘territories,’ too?”

“I’ve… been on other expeditions with him,” I say.

“And if I asked you what expeditions those were, I’d surmise you wouldn’t answer.”

“That’s right.”

“Presumably for my own protection.”

“Yes.”

There is a long silence between us then. The music and drumming don’t fill it. Both our minds were elsewhere.

“There is much we do not know, Master Sands.”

I nod in the dark, even though he can barely see me.

“Perhaps, there is much we should not know.”

“I’m… I’m trying to get that part figured out, Captain.”

“Like the president, and his incognitum.”

“What do you mean?”

“We are, all of us, always going about trying to name everything, trying to quantify it and understand it. I’m beginning to wonder if that’s always the best idea.”

“I still don’t know what you’re getting at.”

“I’m wondering what will happen to your lizard man, your incognitum, once you and he are returned to Washington. You realize he will never be allowed to live freely, regardless of what or who he is?”

“I realize that, sir.”

“I’ve seen you actually talking to him, when you thought no one was looking.”

“Yes.”

“Do you consider a caged specimen like that… a friend?”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

The drums are getting faster, and Cruzatte tries to keep up on his fiddle. I’m stomping my feet on the ground, staying warm.

“This journey is teaching me about an otherness to things, Master Sands.”

“I’m still not sure what you mean, Captain.”

“An otherness. There is so much that exists outside ourselves, so much beyond our own experiences or viewpoints…so much life. It’s as if our very bodies, as if every thing, were filled with an unknowable essence, an energy, buzzing all the time, like swarms of bees on the prairies we’ve just crossed, crashing against every other bit of energy in the universe, all making an incoherent whole. Sometimes all of existence overwhelms me, Master Sands.”

I’m not sure, but he may have accidentally described the idea behind the reverse positron time-charge that my parents were working on.

“I’ve been overwhelmed a lot lately, too, sir.”

“And sometimes I wonder if Captain Clark and myself are responsible for more than we realize. Like the very course of the future itself.” He takes another sip from his cup. “For example, what will every one think of their world once I send the lizard man back with you? Will they feel as safe as they once did?” He doesn’t have an answer for himself. “You appear restless, young squire.”

“I am, sir. I’m worried about the lizard man, too.”

I stomp some more for my toes’ benefit, and listen to Pierre start up another fiddle tune. Some barking joins the music. “Ah,” Lewis says. “Seaman is in a festive mood tonight, too. He’s glad to be out of the fort, here with us, on this side of the river.” There’s another pause. “But perhaps you’re thinking of going the other way, back to the fort, to see your serpentine friend.” He sloshes the liquid around in his cup, like he’s suddenly really interested in it. “While the rest of us are distracted here?”

What does he mean? Does he suspect something? “He’s going crazy in that cage, sir. It’s not good for his spirit.”

“He’s being guarded, you know.”

“I know.”

It seemed like Captain Lewis was trying to read my expression in the dark.

“These are all good men on this expedition, Master Sands. All good men. My wish for them is that none of them is harmed, in any way.”

“That’s a good wish, sir.”

“I suppose that since we’ve been sent out to find so many things — new Indian tribes, water passages to the sea, tribes of giants — that it is unlikely we will find all of them.”

“Probably not, Captain.”

“Some of the things Jefferson expected us to come back with…may elude us, in the end.”

“Yes.” I think I’m getting what he’s telling me. But I can’t be sure.

“And perhaps, if we’re not meant to know everything just yet about the mysteries of our lives and our times and our land… perhaps that’s just as well. Perhaps that will leave room for other adventures later. Even in the territories you come from.”

I nod. Of course, in the dark, I don’t know if he sees me agreeing with him or not.

“All of which is a terrible thing for an expedition leader to say. So I expect I shall recant all this in the morning. But for now…” He finishes what’s in his cup, then turns back to me. “But for now… Godspeed, young squire.”

“Yes. Thank you, Captain Lewis.”

“So you’re walking back over the river now?”

“I’m not sure.”

“I believe I shall be going back to the fire. I’m not always one for company, but tonight seems like a good night for it. Oh— take this.” He reaches into his jacket and pulls out something wrapped in a heavy kind of cloth. He hands it to me. It’s sort of slushy, like it’s almost frozen. “What is it, sir?”

“A couple of servings of the portable soup I made. The paste. Wrapped well in oilskin. You need only add boiling water to it. In case you get hungry. Tonight, perhaps.”

I take it and put it deep inside my coat. “Thank you, sir.”

“You are welcome, young squire. And I will say it again: Godspeed.”

And with the slightest tip of his hat, he walks away.

I wrap my buckskin jacket tight around me, put the soup packet between layers of clothes — though I’d like to avoid having to eat any of it if I can — and pull my floppy hat down as low as possible without blinding myself. I head out across the ice, back toward Fort Mandan. Back toward Clyne.

Using what moonlight there is, I walk carefully over the frozen river, long slow steps, careful not to land too hard, in case I hit a patch of thin ice.

Though there hasn’t been much thin ice this winter.

I see a little flicker of firelight on the other side. Whoever had pulled guard duty at Clyne’s cage was trying to stay warm, too.

I use the flames as a beacon, a kind of lighthouse, and keep walking toward them. I’m almost at the other side, ready to step up on the bank, when I hear a noise ahead of me. You can hear the whispery crunches on the snow ahead. Something’s there, ahead of me. Waiting on the bank.

Something like a large dog. Seaman?

But it can’t be. Seaman’s on the village side of the river now.

And even in the little moonlight I have, I can tell. It’s a wolf. Sitting there. Waiting.

Right according to plan.

 

 

 

Chapter Nineteen

Clyne: Reaction

February 1805

 

Evidently nothing went quite the way Eli had planned.

Being the true friend he is, he wanted to release me from the wooden cage, where once again I was to be specimen-probed.

Eli had arranged with North Wind to send the wolf leader, Silver Throat, to the fortification of the explorers, Clark and Lewis. She was going to bring the survivors of her pack and scare off the guards. This way, they guards would have a legitimate reason for leaving their posts and, perhaps would not be whipped, as was the custom, for deserting them.

Such harsh penalties! Do mammals not take time to note the fragrance of their orange-graced world? If they did, it seems the consequences for small transgressions would necessarily be reduced.

Humans create such intrigues and problems for themselves. Eli’s main current problem was that he would only have a short period of time to free me from this prison.

Silver Throat would then lead Eli and me away, back to the Spirit Mound, where we would meet with North Wind, who still hadn’t returned to his people since Birdjumper’s killing took place.

After resting, we would then follow Silver Throat’s pack to another safehold, moving farther and farther away from settled human establishments. And when the spring came and rivers began to flow, we would navigate the waters again, on our own, and try to find Thea.

“Though you’d still be a big, giant scary lizard,” Eli observed, “to anyone who saw you.”

That, anyway, was the plan…

Silver Throat succeeded in scaring away the guards. She and her wolves swarmed out of the woods as if they were on a full-bore Cacklaw front press, and ready for an actual attack. My watchers fled, presumably to get help, which would leave a few minutes for Eli and me to make our departure. But another human showed up before Eli did — or rather, I should say two humans: Sacagawea, a name with a regal high-Saurian elegance to it, and her hatchling.

“Pomp.” Eli recognized the child. “Sacagawea, you shouldn’t have come. It might not be safe — in a couple of minutes.” My friend cast a nervous glance back across the river toward the mammal dancing.

Yes, finally, actual mammal dancing, and I, apparently, am to miss it.

“The baby was crying, and I was out, walking with him, trying to soothe him. I saw the wolves come into camp. I thought you or North Wind might be here. And I wanted to say goodbye. To you. And the snake man.”

“Actually,” I informed her, “I am not related to the local snakes, but instead a Saurian—”

Before I could finish, she reached up through the bars and put a finger to my lips. “No matter which, I know you are a friend. And along with goodbye, I give you this.”

She produced a small mineral sample. It was translucent, a crystal with a glow in its center from light that seemed to radiate from obscure parts of the spectrum.

“The flame stone,” Eli said. “The one you used when you found me.”

“Yes,” Sacagawea nodded. “I would like you to have it for your journey.”

“But it’s yours. You said it’s been with you since you were a child. Since you were kidnapped and sold.”

“Yes. I always thought it might help lead me home. Now, with little Pomp here, I’m feeling that going home may be possible at last. So you take it now. You and the snake man need to go home, too.”

Again, that flicker of thought: Where was my home now? Was it my nest-source on Saurius Prime, or was it here, with my friends?

Some other light — firelight — moved on the other side of the river. This was a different kind of dance, the kind I had grown more familiar with.

“They’ve been alerted to the wolves now,” Sacagawea said. “They’ll be coming. Fare warmly,” she said, rewrapping Pomp in the furry skins that humans permanently borrow from other animals. “Find good trails.”

“And you”— Silver Throat looked at her— “guard every moment you have with your little one.”

Sacagawea didn’t have a lingo-spot, and I don’t know if she understood the wolf, but before she was done covering her nestling, she kissed him. Then she waved at us and headed out across the ice.

“Wait—” Eli said.

She’s delaying them, Silver Throat said. For you. But hurry.

The only trace left of her was her voice, giving song, drifting back from the dark ice:

Always riding out

Never coming home

The trail takes me far

Blood and honor

dancing

 

She left singing of the arrak-du.

Eli regarded me. “All right. Then let’s get that cage unlocked, Clyne.”

“Yes. It is bound tight with strips of rendered skin.”

“Leather.”

“Yes. I have been steadily claw-tearing it when the guards were distracted. I will soon cut through the last of these practically applied tendons.”

“Just hurry.”

Eli warmed his hands with the mineral sample while looking over his shoulder. We both saw the portable firelights — torches, a word that’s not quite as crisp as taco but is still interesting — on the far side of the river. The exploring party would soon be here.

“We still have to pick up the supplies I left in the woods. And we still have to get far enough to make it hard for them to track us.”

“Friend Eli, may I see the flame stone in your hand?” While I worked on the task of freeing myself, I realized where I most recently saw light waves pitched to such arcane frequencies: Alexandria. They came from the light tower, where Thea and her mother were doing their experiments.

Eli held up the small crystal. Even with only the nearby campfire and distant starlight available to refract through the prism, I recognized the glow. It’s what my friend would call—

“WOMPER light.”

“What? Clyne, what?”

The wolves growled. The torches were starting to make their way over to our side of the river.

“I believe a WOMPER particle is trapped in that crystal, orbiting inside a gas that may be trapped there from ancient times. There may be such stones on this planet. Thea’s mother may have heard of their properties.”

“Clyne, can you please get out of the cage? We have to go!”

“Oh. Yes, friend Eli. A good time for freeing.”

I ceased work on the tendon straps that bound my cage shut. The jabberstick wound on my limb seemed to have healed, and I have just about enough room for a top-stompers Cacklaw move.

“Clyne—!”

“RRRKKKKGGGAAAHHHHRRRR!”

I hadn’t roared like that since my playing field days on Saurius Prime.

The wooden cage shattered.

I was free.

The torches sped up.

“Hurry—”

Eli and I began a fast trudge over the freeze-blanketed surface. Silver Throat and her pack accompanied us.

“What I am saying, Eli, is that — in theory — if that is a WOMPER, and it could be freed and contained, we could catalyze a reaction, much like the time-spheres your sire created.”

Soon the explorers would be at their encampment and discover our escape. My friend Eli would be in a state of severe reprimand consequence, on my behalf. There was no turning back for him.

“Can’t you go any faster?” Silver Throat queried. Now that I was able to jump again, I probably could. But Eli could not.

“That, I think, is why the stone keeps you warm. The WOMPER creates a reaction at the core, winking instantaneously in and out of different time continuums. There is constant sub-atomic friction—”

“Clyne, don’t you ever run out of breath?”

“But there is so much to talk about, friend Eli. Though all of this remains a theory, unless we can free the particle from the rock using through a very high frequency.”

We could hear the other humans behind us. They’d discovered our flight.

“High frequency?” Eli was talking to humor me, to distract himself. I could see the hard puffs of cold air coming from his mouth, even in the dark.

You mean a kind of song? Silver Throat asked.

“Right at the edge of human hearing. I don’t know how to create it. And even then it would be what we called a ‘wild,’ or uncontained, reaction, with unpredictable results, especially because we’d have to use plasmechanics to contain the particle. The only such material is on the lingo-spots, and there is something I must tell you about the lingo-spots and everything else—”

“Clyne—”

“I regret not telling you sooner but there was no time—”

“Clyne—”

“Yes?”

“The wolves. Look.”

Silver Throat had heard what I’d said about high frequencies. She’d gestured to her pack. They stopped and had begun singing, howling to the stars and the Earth’s moon. They were making their own song cycle, with notes going higher, and higher still….

A song of farewell…

Then Silver Throat joined the inchoate keening.

In the distance, the pursuing torches stopped.

Eli put his hands over his ears, after handing the flame stone to me.

I hurried, peeling some of the plasmechanical substance from my lingo-spot, from his, to cover the stone before it might crack, leaving just enough exposed to the direct sonic vibrations provided by our wolf friends.

What grand theory testing!

And now, in these long seconds, I wait, unsure if my field theory will prove true, or if we have just lost more time to our pursuers.

The song grows, and I am reminded once again of the song cycle of King Temm.

“Eli,” I start to say—

—just as the WOMPER is freed and the wild reaction starts.

 

 

 

Chapter Twenty

Eli: Bayou St. John

February 1805

 

It feels like we’ve just been spit out by a thunderclap, and I can tell from my stomach, and the swirl of lights we’ve been though, that we just moved through the Fifth Dimension.

We’re in a city of some sort, by a small dock. It’s nighttime, I see fireworks in the sky and lightning on top of that, and we’re surrounded.

Surrounded by more soldiers in Nutcracker-type clothes, by a couple of people in weird costumes with animal heads, by a guy in a boat who’s just fainted, by a woman standing in the boat— Sally, I think— who looked after me in Thomas Jefferson’s tent so long ago —

—and by Thea.

Thea!

She calls my name —“Eli!” — and gives me a big hug, pulling me towards her. I now realize Clyne and I have appeared on the shores of the river, with our feet in the water, and I make a squishy sound as she hugs me.

“It’s so good to see you!”

And then, just as quickly, she lets go of me. I don’t know if she thought hugging me was too corny, or what. But I’m just as glad to see her.

“And it’s good to see you, too, K’lion.”

“A good time to meet, ktk! friend Thea,” Clyne tells her, “and I am gratified to discover fieldwork with wild WOMPER reaction was kng! successful in drawing us here, doubtless tkt! due to a prime nexus.”

“A what—?” I ask.

“Pulling us to this spot, together. A prime nexus is a crossroads of major outcome possibilities, first theorized in early Saurian time-venturing, and since borne out—”

Sally has been looking Clyne up and down. “I guess Jefferson is right. We don’t know what’s out there. But even though you can talk, lizard man, there’s no time for that.”

“You are right. I have to tk-tk! tell my friends what I now know about their lingo-spots ssskk! and the plasmechanical—”

“No, there’s no time…”

The Nutcracker soldiers are snapping out of their surprise and rushing down the street toward the river.

One of the people in costume — he looks like a cat with an enormous head — comes up to Clyne and starts tugging at his chrono-suit. And then on his head.

“Hello!” Clyne says.

The soldiers stop briefly to watch. Until the cat person realizes that Clyne isn’t wearing a costume at all, and starts to scream.

Right after that, the soldiers started firing.

“Oh, lord,” Sally says, jumping back into the boat.

Thea and I jump after her. It’s another kind of pirogue, and Sally uses the long poles to push us along the waterway while the boatman is still passed out. When you’re unstuck in time, hellos and goodbyes get constantly interrupted. I sort of said goodbye to Lewis, but not Gassy, Pierre, York, Clark, or even North Wind Comes. And I still haven’t found out where we are, or where we’re going.

It’s like the Corps of Discovery all over again.

Meanwhile, there isn’t room or time for Clyne to get in, so he’s following us, jumping along on the riverbanks — or canal banks, since they seem to be more wall-like— keeping up with us.

“Does zat phantom ‘ave to follow us here?” It’s the boatman. He’s waking up, pointing to Clyne, who hops alongside us, passing occasional small parades of people in costume who keep pointing to him like he ought to claim his prize somewhere.

“Yes, Banglees, apparently he does,” Sally says.

Banglees! The name from Jefferson’s camp. The fur trader who came back with the first reports of Clyne in the snow.

“Then I cannot take you wur I promised, because I will be trailing visions.”

“Oh, you can take us. After all that’s happened, I think we need to trust ourselves to the journey now. It’ll tell us what it wants from us.”

“Yes!” Clyne yells from the banks, clearing a low-hanging mossy tree branch that juts out over the water.

That Saurian hearing is pretty good.

“Sally sskt! may be right,” Clyne bugles over to us. “We could all be drawn here because of prime tkkt—tt! nexus!”

“Prime what?” Thea asks.

“Nexus!” Clyne has to cut into the trees, due to the overgrowth, and we lose sight of him quickly in the dark. The canal goes through someplace called Bayou St. James, according to Banglees. The canal itself is a kind of packed-earth water road, a dug-out channel, but we’re surrounded by swamp everywhere else.

Another flash of lightning gives us a quick electric snapshot of thick twisted oak trees, hanging moss, and tall grasses growing out of the water all around us.

“Nexus!” Clyne’s back from his detour, and jumps in the water, making a huge splash. Now Thea’s soaked, too, along with the formerly dry parts north of my feet. Even Sally and the bird-feather outfit she’s wearing get wet.

“Sacre bleu!” Banglees yells. He grabs the long guide pole from Sally and is about to use it to thwack Clyne. “I am not frozen anymore! And you don’t belong in New Orleans!”

“A good time to meet, mon-ami man! Can I not swim along?” Clyne asks. “Jumping ligaments still ck-ck-ck! sore. Swim muscles unused for many time clicks.” He does a kind of sidestroke alongside us. “Feels both tumbly and nice.”

While he swims, Clyne explains the “prime nexus” theory to us: In any universe, at any time, there are prime-nexus moments — like crossroads, where all history that follows is changed, no matter what.

“But doesn’t everything we do affect history, no matter how small?” Sally asks.

“Yes, always —sssh glgg!” Clyne accidentally swallows some water in mid-agreement. He comes up, treading water, spouting the water back out of his mouth, like a living fountain. “Hmm. Slightly brackish. But intriguing.” Then he swims close to the boat again. “Think of it like rocks being thrown in this water. Different sizes make different splashes, different size circles. And some moments cast skkkt! bigger circles than others. The moments that change the most tk tk! things for the greatest number of life forms — those are prime skw! nexus moments. They have energy. They draw things toward pt! them. That may be why we are swimming in this dark tk tk cht! canal together.”

“Um, Clyne,” I tell him. “You’re the only one who’s swimming.”

“I really had convinced myself it was an ice dream, from being frozen.” Banglees shakes his head. “Mon Dieu.”

Thea, Sally, and I get busy trying to figure out what the prime nexus might be. This trip has had so many of them: Lewis and Clark’s whole journey, which changed all the history that came after, Thea meeting the president, even Jefferson digging up bones and discovering the past. All of it had an effect.

Has.

“What about him?” I point to Banglees. “Does he have anything to do with this?”

“I was not working for history,” Banglees says to me, attempting to explain something. “I was working for money.”

Banglees, Sally tells me, is involved in helping runaway slaves find something called “the doorway.”

For a price.

“What’s ‘the doorway’?” I ask.

“That’s what I want to find out. That’s why we’re headed to the lake.”

“What lake?”

“Lake Pontchartrain,” Banglees adds helpfully. “If we ever get there,” he adds. Less helpfully.

“It ees very dangerous!” he says, to no one in particular. “Zat ees why I must charge!”

“What does this doorway do?”

“It makes people… disappear.”

“Like my hat,” I say. And then touch the top of my head. Why am I worried about getting to the lake? I’m still not sure how we’re going to get back home.

“Sally — Ms. Hemings — when you were at Thomas Jefferson’s, did you happen to see—”

“I lost your hat, Eli.” It’s Thea. Looking right at me with her big brown eyes. “I haven’t had a chance to tell you everything yet. I lived in Jefferson’s house, as a slave.”

She’s speaking low, in Greek, I think, letting the lingo-spot translate for her. Banglees is casually trying to listen in.

“What!?”

“I can tell you more, later. Your soft helmet— Jefferson had it. I tried it on, hoping we could all use it to go back. But then it was taken from me. I’m sorry.” And now her eyes aren’t looking at me at all.

My time-travel hat. With the Joe DiMaggio autograph. Gone.

“You… you wore it, Thea? Did you go back? What happened?”

Before she can tell me, Banglees spits out an urgent shhhh! and pulls the boat alongside another of the low, mossy branches.

“What is it?” Sally asks.

“A noise zat doesn’t belong here. Shh. Shh.”

There’s a distant boom of thunder, but that’s not what he means. There’s the splash-splashing of Clyne, swimming up ahead.

“Cannot zat creature be silent?” Banglees hisses. He’s hearing something else.

“I don’t know what happened, exactly,” Thea whispers, continuing. “I went back for a little while… I saw your father.”

“You did? Is he all right?”

“I’m not sure. He needs you. He needs your mother.”

“How long were you there?”

“You people would make terrible trackers! Shh!” Banglees is getting more impatient. He ties up his boat to the branch and hops out. “Something ees following us.” He walks along the bank of the canal, balancing himself, not making a sound.

He’s pretty good. Almost like a wolf.

“Eli… I’m not even sure how long I was gone.” Thea’s still whispering. “But I’ve been back a long time. Worrying about you, and K’lion, for all the seasons we were separated.”

She pauses suddenly, then says, “By the gods, Eli. I believe I’ve had… a nativity day.”

“You’ve had a what?”

She tries it in English. “My native…day. Of borning. My day of borning.”

“A birthday, child. She’s telling you she’s had a birthday.” Sally was a better, quieter eavesdropper than Banglees.

“Happy birthday, Thea,” I say. “How old are you?”

“Fourteen summers, now.”

Then I stop and realize I’ve been here for months, too. I’ve been traveling with the Corps. This is the longest I’ve been away since coming unstuck in time in the first place.

“Thea… I think I’ve had a birthday, too. Last August. Around the time Kentuck died.”

“Who?

“A friend. I wasn’t even thinking about birthdays, then. I guess I’ve had thirteen summers. I still haven’t caught up with you.”

“Happy… birthday… Eli.” She sticks with English so I don’t have to wait for the lingo-spot. A bolt of lightning rips through the sky, and everything’s a bright brilliant blue for a moment. Thea’s looking at me like she doesn’t know what to say next.

And then she leans over and kisses me.

It’s a cheek kiss, mostly, sort of, I think. And it’s fast. And I can feel a deep burning red wash over my face, all the way to the tips of my ears.

“I am glad K’lion is safe. And you, too,” she says quickly. Still in English.

Sally is humming to herself. Her smile’s just grown, and then she sees me looking at her, mostly because I’m not sure where else to look at the moment.

“Where is that man?” she asks, helping me to change the subject.

Boom. Thunder follows the lightning boat.

“You!” I hear a voice shout, also in English.

“A good time to meet!” Clyne shouts back.

There’s splashing, and what sounds like fighting — “Zut alors!” — and Sally doesn’t waste any time. She grabs the guide pole, unties the rope, and pushes us into the canal toward the scuffle a few yards away.

“Who’s there? Who’s there?” Sally shouts.

It’s dark, but there’s just enough moonlight to recognize who Banglees is fighting with. It’s Mr. Howe. And Banglees is about to cut him with a knife.

 

 

 

Chapter Twenty-one

Eli: Lake Pontchartrain

February 1805

 

“Don’t hurt him,” I say to Banglees, nearly falling over as I step out of the boat.

“Why not? I think he ees a bounty hunter. He will turn us in.” With his other arm, he has Mr. Howe in a grip by the neck.

“Why do you think that?”

“Because I use to be one! I know!”

I move closer. “No. I know him.”

Banglees looks at me, looks at Howe, then releases him. He doesn’t sheath the knife right away.

Howe tries to brush himself off. “What are you doing here?” I ask him.

His clothes are torn and muddy, and soon he gives up the idea of trying to clean himself off.

“Are you really here?” Howe asks. “Or is this some other part of the test?”

Back toward New Orleans, a lone rocket explodes in the sky.

“We are all really here. Some tracker.” Banglees spits.

“You know who he is?” Sally asks, coming up behind me.

“I do.”

“It feels like I’ve been here for months,” Howe tells me. I squint at him. The dark covers him with shadows, but I can tell that besides being dirty, there are whiskers all over his face and he’s lost weight.

“It looks like you have.”

“Eli?” Thea’s there when I turn. She’s shivering, and not from the cold. “Eli… it’s my fault. I did this. I brought him here.”

“How?”

“When I was — when I had your soft helmet on. I was turned into a kind of ghost. I didn’t fully… materialize…in your world. That’s when I saw your father. That’s when I saw him.” She points to Howe.

“How did he get back here?”

“We were tangled up, fighting. He was caught in my… presence.”

“You mean — you were a kind of time-sphere yourself?”

Thea nods, then shrugs. “I’m not sure. I felt someone with me when I was taken back here, as I moved through the dimensions. But I arrived alone.”

“I have to ask Clyne if that’s possible. If I—” I look around. No dinosaur. “Clyne?” And no answer. “Clyne?”

“I think he went on.” Sally nods in the direction ahead of us.

“Are we close to this lake?”

“Uuuuuf!”

The question was for Banglees, who doesn’t answer, because he’s just been shoved by Mr. Howe who sprints past him, quickly disappearing in the dark.

“Come back ’ere!” Banglees yells, running after him.

“We’ve got to get to the lake,” Sally insists. “We have to warn them.”

“Warn who?” I ask.

“Any slaves there, trying to escape. Jefferson told me of the plans. Governor Claiborne’s headed there, to find this ‘doorway,’ too. He wants to make an example of the slaves and end this runaway business. Jefferson may not be the most enlightened man, but he wants to prevent a massacre. Only, as president, he can’t do it, officially. So it’s up to me. And the two of you.”

So we climb back into the boat, and Sally and Thea and I take turns with the pole, pushing and steering our way toward the lake.

And during my turn piloting the boat, I realize that in my months with the Corps, I’ve grown. My body’s gotten bigger. My arms are stronger. I’m changing.

But then we get to the lake, and all the thoughts about how long we’ve been here in this time, or how glad I am that Thea and Clyne and I are together, all those thoughts disappear in one huge thunderclap of surprise.

You’d think the surprise would be that the governor’s troops were already there —a whole group of men, some of them soldiers, some who looked like farmers. Most of them brought rifles and fire. They brought dogs with them, too. Bloodhounds, I guess. Used for tracking.

And they had a bunch of people lined up, black people, sitting on their knees. They were all in costumes, or parts of costumes — wings and masks and papier-mâché animal heads — like they’d just come from a big party.

Didn’t Sally say it was carnival time?

But none of this is fun; none of this was celebrating anything. They all have their hands behind their backs — men, women, children — and they’re weeping.

You’d think all of that would be the biggest surprise, the biggest shock, but it isn’t.

The biggest surprise of all is seeing Clyne’s ship.

It’s kind of wedged between two gnarled oak trees, pulsing, emitting a steady, low glow, and looking a little like—it’s melting.

“The doorway,” Sally said. “That must be it.”

She meant Clyne’s ship.

“Nexus watch! Careful!” I hear Clyne but don’t see him right away in the all the shadows. Then a torch emerges from between the oak trees, near the ship. The light briefly touches on one of the dogs, who’s digging furiously in the mud.

The light also shows Clyne with chains on his wrist. He’s being led by one of the soldiers, one of the guys in an actual uniform. He holds up the torch directly in front of Clyne’s face.

“Get that costume off now, boy!” He tugs at Clyne’s head.

“Ouch! Grab-twisting is not called for!”

“Don’t talk to me. Don’t try to fool me.” Frustrated, the man turns away from Clyne, and toward us. He seems familiar.

“Howard!” Thea gasps. “Jefferson’s guard.”

“Sure enough,” Sally says. “It’s Mr. Howard. I better get over there and talk sense to him before someone gets hurt really bad.”

“No!” Thea says. In English.

“We have to keep him from doing something stupid to those people,” Sally says.

Know.

“No what?” I ask. But I’m not sure if that was Thea or Sally. And my lingo-spot is itching like crazy.

“No,” Thea says. “Not again. It’s just like Tiberius.” The gang of men, the torch light — it reminds her of what happened in Alexandria, to her and her mother. She’s having that thing that people who’ve been through war get — a memory throwback. A flashback. Whatever it’s called.

“No.”

Know.

“No,” I tell her again. “This is not like Alexandria. We’ll be all right.” I hold her. I don’t want her to run and get hurt by the dogs. “It will be all right.”

“It’s always men with fire,” she whispers to me.

“Yes,” I agree. And soon we are surrounded, clamped into chains, and there’s nowhere left to go.