The Time Roads

I touched his cheek. “Because you found me first. Let me explain.” I needed a few moments to do so, however. I rubbed my cold-numbed hands together and paced around the room, finding it easier to speak when I did not look at Breandan directly. “For me, the year is 1914. You came to me at midnight, on March twenty-ninth.”

“Yes, to warn you. There is a plot against Éire. Lord Ó Tíghearnaigh—”

“Ó Tíghearnaigh?”

“It started with another man. I can’t remember his name. There were bribes, monies offered in exchange for more favorable trade agreements with the Prussian Alliance. Lord Ó Tíghearnaigh entered the scheme later, on the promise that he—”

“Enough,” Gwen said sharply. “We must return to Cill Cannig, Your Majesty.”

From outside, I heard the quarter bells ringing. Once, twice. We had half an hour, or less, before the time roads closed to us. “One moment,” I said to Gwen. “Breandan. You must not return to the past. If you do, you will die. You already have.”

“But Áine, I must tell you more.”

I shook my head. “I have Ó Tíghearnaigh’s name. I will find out his accomplice. But you—you must not attempt to come back in time. Promise me, Breandan.”

He seized me in an embrace. “I love you,” he whispered in my ear. “I will always love you. Go, my love. Go, before you too are caught in the web of time.”

He pressed his lips against mine in one last, long passionate kiss. Then, with a laugh, he caught up a book from the worktable and pressed it into my hands. “My last message, my love. Farewell.”

* * *

I remembered only fragments of our journey back to the Éire of 1914. We hurried through the lanes to Cill Cannig’s ruins. There, in that same courtyard where we had emerged, the air had already taken on an iridescent quality. Then a man’s voice called out from the shadows. Gwen tightened her grip on my wrist and hurled us into the maelstrom.

Again the blackness. Again the stars blurred and jumped. Again the thousand and more paths radiating outward from each step. A numbness overtook me, until I knew nothing except Gwen’s cold hand clasping mine, and the book Breandan had thrust at me in those last moments, which I held against my chest.

The stars spun around, and down toward the horizon, to a speck of gold, which seemed much smaller than the golden disc of the future. Gwen was reciting her numbers again, but with longer pauses in between. The numbers were growing smaller—from six digits, to five. I recognized a prime number from the mathematical studies of my childhood. The light marking our destination wavered, but Gwen did not deviate from the road, nor did she stop her recitation of ever smaller and smaller numbers.

… Forty-one. Thirty-seven. Thirty-one. Twenty-nine. Nineteen. Seventeen. Thirteen. Seven. Three …

Zero.

* * *

We tumbled into the time machine, skidding over the smooth floor until we crashed against the far wall. Bruised and dizzied, I lay gasping for breath. My skin prickled in the unexpected warmth. My heart thudded against my ribs. My thoughts tumbled even faster than my body had.

Gwen had loosed her grip on my hand. Dimly I heard her stumble to her feet. I rolled over onto my hands and knees. A stitch caught beneath my ribs and I bit back a groan. Already the images from Éire’s future had blurred in my memory. It would be all too simple to believe them a fantasy. And what, after all, had we accomplished?

My companion was now hunched over her keyboard, tapping out a new command sequence. Her gaze skipped from me to a point beyond. I followed the direction of her glance and saw a book lying a few feet away, surrounded by a spattering of melting snow. Breandan’s gift. I snatched it up.

The cover was plain black cardboard, worn around the edges with handling, and with a crack running diagonally across the title—A History of the Modern World, Volume III—printed in thick square letters.

The author’s name was printed along the bottom edge of the cover. I could just make out the title of professor and a few letters of the surname. My hands still shaking, I opened the book and leafed through several blank pages until I came to one with the title repeated, then in smaller print, Herr Professor Edward James White, Professor of Anglian Histories, Second Edition, Copyright 1939.

My breath deserted me in that moment. This, this was more than a last message. This was a roadmap to the future.

I closed my eyes. No. This was a record of one future. Remember all those other roads, leading to other futures, I told myself. They might all be true, a set of parallels, or they might each represent potential futures, with only one remaining in the end. It didn’t matter which. It only meant that changing one moment now did not necessarily create the future I desired.

Gwen had finished with her manipulation of the equipment. Now she eyed me with a strange intent expression. “Think carefully what you do.”

I nodded. “I will. I promise.”

Her brother had vanished from the outer laboratory. Gwen sat down at the nearest worktable and switched on one of the electric lamps. She had already dismissed my presence from her thoughts and was writing in a journal. I tucked Breandan’s book underneath my arm and continued on to the outer doors, where my guard waited. We stared at each other, and I was conscious of my wind-blown hair and the mud stains on my coat. Then his gaze went blank and proper. Oh, there would be rumors, I knew. But not yet. Not until I had a chance to act.

Once I gained my apartments, I dismissed my escort and passed alone through the darkened rooms to my bedchamber door. I slipped the key from my pocket and let myself inside.

A turn of the switch flooded the room with cold light. I saw my rumpled bedclothes. Saw a shadow on the carpet, like that of a blanket hurriedly cast over a figure. Even as I fixed my gaze upon it, the image faded.

My breath trickled out. I drew another, and another.