The Time Travelers, Volume 2 (5 page)

That had been some drink of water.

Tod knew every inch of Stratton Point, all two hundred acres. Like every kid in town, he loved the Point. The beaches were best, but everything from holly garden to bell tower was his, by exploration and childhood. All those neat places where the Stratton family had had fountains, lookouts and stables all those years ago.

And yet, Tod did not know where he was standing. The sick feeling swirled through his head. His thoughts fogged up like a windshield. He, who knew every square foot of Stratton Point, could recognize nothing. Where was the road? Where was the car?

“I did not even know about you, Mr. Lockwood,” said Devonny Stratton. “Your sister never mentioned you.”

Mr
. Lockwood? “I don’t mention her either, if I can help it,” said Tod.

“Is Strat living with you?” said the girl anxiously. “Did Annie bring Strat home with her?”

“We only have one pet right now,” said Tod. “A
collie named Cotton. Listen, I’m feeling a little strange. Like, where are we, exactly?”

There was a long silence.

Tod had never known such silence. Not just the girl refusing to speak—
but the world
. No cars, no engines, no planes, no radios … He turned in a long, slow, full circle. There, on the Great Hill, stood the Mansion. Not the crumbling hulk the town had demolished last year. But a magnificent glittering three-towered—

—new
building.

The peeled sensation came back, as if his brain tissue had been left open to the air.

“You have come to me,” said Devonny Stratton slowly, “in my Time. The year is 1898,” she said, “and you are on my estate.”

“Get out of town,” said Tod.

But memory was thick and suffocating in his brain. One time his sister had gone missing. Family and friends, and later police, had searched for Annie; searched every corner of this very beach and park, where she had last been seen. There had been no trace of her.

When she had showed up—
two days later!—
his parents had allowed her to get away with the flimsiest excuse: “I fell asleep on the sand,” Annie had said.

Had Annie, too, pressed her mouth to this pump?

A muffled cloppy rhythmic sound interrupted the
silence. Through a meadow of asters and high grass came a woman on horseback. The woman was wearing a skirt, long and black, and rode sidesaddle.

Eighteen ninety-eight, thought Tod. He was furious and scared and having a little trouble breathing. No wonder Annie had not been able to think of a good excuse for being away a few days. “I bet my sister loved this, huh, Devonny? She’s just the type.” Tod was not the type.

“She fell in love,” said Devonny, “with my brother, Strat. She came back a final time to rescue Strat from a terrible fate.”

Maybe if Tod sort of skidded along the surface here, pretended this was virtual reality, he could flick a switch and be done.

“You must take me with you,” said the girl. “My brother must be with you. Annie must have brought him home. I need him. He must save me.”

“No,” said Tod. “She hasn’t dated anybody this year. She sure hasn’t brought anybody home. I don’t even know anybody named Strat.”

The girl began to cry.

Tod hated that; it was a crummy trick. “Don’t do that,” he snapped. “What does Strat need to save you from? Don’t even think about crying. Just give me facts.”

“Marriage,” she said. “My father has chosen a
dreadful man for me to marry. A man with—well, evil personal habits. A man who wants only my money.”

“So?” said Tod. “Just don’t marry the guy. Just say no.”

She looked at him.

“It’s a big slogan in my day, Devonny. If somebody offers you drugs or sex or crime, you just say no.”

“I am not in a position to say no to my father,” said the girl.

“Sure you are. It’s America. Just say no.”

“But I am a girl.”

He was irritated. “Big deal. You’re half the population. Say yes, say no, make up your mind, I don’t see what your father has to do with it.”

“It would not work. There are complexities. There is blackmail, and there are fortunes, and you are being as annoying as your sister. I need my brother, and I know you have him! Now take me home with you!”

Take you home with me? thought Tod. Yeah, right. Like I’m gonna walk in the door to my house with a teenage girl in a long yellow prom dress and tell my mother we’re saving her from a bad marriage.

Tod aimed for control over his blood and bone and brain tissue. Keeping himself unreachable, so he could just slide home, like a baseball player, he said, “Devonny, I can’t take you home. And I don’t think Annie brought your brother home. Unless he’s invisible.
And even then, I don’t think she’d go off to Norway if she had some cute guy around.” He stepped backward, hoping to be on a parking lot again, with his car behind him.

Didn’t happen.

“Even now my father and Lord Winden are drawing up a contract to dispose of my assets, Mr. Lockwood. I will be forced into a wedding in only a month.”

“What do you mean, dispose of your assets?”

“The opening settlement will be two million dollars for Lord Winden.”

“Wow. That should be enough to go around. Tell your father you want it. What could he do?”

“Mr. Lockwood, you are not listening! He can do anything he wishes. I can do nothing. I need Strat.”

“What could Strat do that you can’t?”

“He’s a boy.”

“You better not let my mother hear you talk like that, Dev,” said Tod. “She’d string you up. She hates when women have a poor self-image.”

“I would love to hear your mother’s advice,” said Devonny. To his absolute horror, she knelt before him and clung to his hands. Her rose bracelet brushed his wrist. He could not bear the sight of her on her knees.

“Take me back with you,” she cried, “and together we’ll find Strat. Then Strat and I will return to our
Time and he will solve the nightmare in which I am caught.”

Tod felt cornered out here in a meadow with nothing in sight but grass and flowers.

“I’d stay in one of your guest rooms,” pleaded Devonny. “One of your extra maids could wait on me. You wouldn’t even have to seat me at your dining table. The footman could serve me in my room. Mr. Lockwood, I do beg of you.”

“Dude,” said Tod. He blinked a few times. “Listen, Dev, if you have all this money, you don’t need anybody to bail you out. Just get your own house, buy your own car, pay your own insurance, and hey—you’re set.”

“Oh, this is just like talking to your sister! Annie was so difficult, Mr. Lockwood. Your sister was obstructive and annoying.”

“It’s good we agree on something. Now you gotta call me Tod.”

She shook her head, which caused the long exotic curls to shake, and he wanted to run his finger up inside the cylinders of hair, and then he felt sick all over again, but it was not seasick, or carsick, it was some other sick entirely.

“We haven’t been introduced,” she said primly.

He yanked her to her feet. “Tod, Devonny. Devonny, Tod. There. We’ve been introduced. But even introduced, Dev, it wouldn’t work. I mean, like,
my mom has better things to do. It would all be on me, and I personally don’t even like taking the dog for a walk.”

“Please, Mr. Lockwood. I must find my brother. He is my only hope!”

“Listen, Devonny, he isn’t there. As for me, I’ve started a new business and I’ve just figured out how to make money at it. I have customers now, and things to do. Bank accounts to open.”

“That’s wonderful!” cried Devonny. “I love men like that.” She looked at him worshipfully. Never had a girl gazed at him like that. It wasn’t too bad.

“I shall join you as soon as I pack my trunk,” Devonny said breathlessly. “I know this is why Time brought you to me, Mr. Lockwood.”

Tod tried to imagine Devonny in the school cafeteria. In an age of unruly hair, hers was a work of art. In an age of dirty heavy sneakers, she wore white slippers. In an age of torn jeans and obscene T-shirts, she carried a parasol. “What would we tell people? Especially my parents. Dev, you don’t wanna marry the guy, don’t marry the guy.”

“It isn’t that simple,” protested Devonny, crying again. Tod figured now her mascara would run and her makeup would look crummy, but then he realized that she wasn’t wearing makeup. He liked her for that. The whole face correction idea seemed pathetic and ridiculous to Tod. When the girls in school covered
themselves with makeup, or when his mother and sister did, he made a point of gagging in front of them.

“I’m gonna leave now,” said Tod. Assuming I can, he thought. What if Time decides?

Tod was against that. A person should have complete control over his life. Well, I do, he told himself. I can do anything my sister can do, and she made it back and forth.

“I thought you would be a knight in shining armor,” said Devonny. She did not touch her tears, but let them lie on her cheek and throat. “I thought you would save me. Why did you come if you weren’t going to save me?”

“It isn’t like I meant to come,” said Tod.

She looked stricken. As if he had slapped her. Fleetingly, Tod considered what his mother would do to him were he ever to raise a hand to a girl.

He didn’t want any heavy thoughts here, or any responsibility. People had to be responsible for themselves. “You don’t need saving, Devonny. You just need guts.” Tod had no sympathy for weakness. “I’m going,” he told her.

She held out her hands, and the flowery bracelet fell from one wrist, and her voice trembled on, saying more, but he stepped back, grabbed the pump handle, closed his eyes—and it worked. Her words followed, crying without sound,
But I need you!

The pain was worse this time. His vision and hearing and touch were torn apart and savaged. It went on and on, beyond counting, beyond belief. Through it all came the distorted syllables, jumbled and wrecked;
But I need you!

It was not going to end. He had refused help to a person who needed it, and this would be his hell: falling through the years, unable to get off at one of them.

Time let him hit the edge of every stone and cliff.

He was not alone in this passage. Other bodies and souls, shot with pain, were thrust past him and through him.

But it ended.

His eyes burned, as if he’d ignored sunglasses during a whole day of lying on the beach. When he managed to focus, an old pump, its paint peeling, was next to him, surrounded by plastic containers.

His head throbbed. He hoped aspirin was in the car. He hoped aspirin worked in situations like this.

Tod looked toward the grass on which a girl had begged for help—his help—but there was no grass. Just a parking lot. No girl. Just his own car.

Drops trickled from the rusty edge of the open spigot.

Maybe he should drop the whole designer water idea.

There
was
something in this water.

THREE
 

T
he meadow stretched to the sea. Tall grass, blown down by the wind, lay rumpled like a bed. Clouds scudded into other lives, to hang above other eyes.

Had a boy in strange crude clothing, using strange rude speech, spun briefly through Time just to tell her, “No, nobody will save you”?

Devonny stepped toward the pump, to touch it, and then snatched her hand back, as if it might burn. If she had made up that moment with Mr. Lockwood, perhaps there
was
insanity in the Stratton blood.

She did not hear the clomping of horses coming, nor their windy breath, nor the gentle squeaking of leather saddles, nor the voices of the riders. When a hand touched her shoulder, Devonny cried out, spinning around, ready to fend off another century.

Lord Winden was staring at her.

And Gordon and Miles, with Flossie and a friend she had not expected today, Rose. How splendid they
looked, in their formal riding costumes. And how foreign; how unknown to her. She thought: Am I half in Mr. Lockwood’s century? Am I entirely here?

But that way lay madness.

Rose dismounted and rushed to Devonny to hug and kiss her. It felt strange and wrong. What had Tod Lockwood done to her? What veil or mist had he dropped that she could not quite rejoin her time?

“Oh, Devonny!” cried Rose. Her voice was loud and brittle. Devonny wanted to step away from it. “Such news! So thrilling!”

“What news?” she said.

Rose giggled. “Silly girl. That you and darling Lord Winden will be married! Oh, Devonny, I am so happy for you! Lord Winden has been telling us about his magnificent estate. Devvy, it has two hundred rooms.”

“And no plumbing,” teased Flossie. Her eyes met Devonny’s and they tried to exchange messages, but Flossie’s situation was too complex; they needed time together, and words.

“And in need of a new slate roof,” agreed Lord Winden. “But my bride and I shall remedy such problems.”

At least Devonny would know where her money was going.

“What are you doing here, so far from the house?” asked Rose. “This is such a remote little spot.”

“On the contrary,” said Devonny, “it has a beautiful view. When we were little, Strat and I often played in this meadow.” This was untrue. When they were little, Devonny and Strat could not stand each other, and would never have dreamed of spending an instant in each other’s company.