some old. CB + RH. CH. Clive, Rose, and Curtis. They looked faded and worn, though perhaps not so much as before. And below, where before I had read the initials of Lillian Huff, Anthony Currah, and Margaret Garroway— nothing. Uncarved wood. The bigger surprise, however, came at the bottom of the list. KM and LB. Kenny Maxwell and Luka Branson. Even back in this time, whenever this was, they were not fresh.
We had carved them even further in the past.
But how far in the past was I?
“Fleet now,” said the bearded man. “There’s much to speak ere dark enshrouds us all.”
I returned his flashlight and emerged from the cave mouth into a grey day on the shores of a much stronger Manse Creek. In my time, the hole had been halfway up the creek bank. Here, now, it was five feet of sloping sand from a deeper and wider stream.
Two girls about my age sat by a campfire. They looked up as I came out.
The taller one had bright blond hair in long curls. She wore a heavy wool coat, patched and worn. The other was her opposite in every way. Her dark hair was short, framing a round face that was both soft with plumpness and hard with some inner resolve. She stood and spoke.
“Kenny Maxwell,” she said. “Welcome to 1947. I’m Margaret Garroway. Everyone calls me Peggy. This is Lilly Huff. And I guess you’ve already met John Wald. I know he looks like a rough sort, but he’s okay. He’s from the seventeenth century.”
I straightened painfully, wincing and worrying about my wound. “How do you know who I am?”
Peggy shrugged. “You’ve heard of us, haven’t you? Anthony’s been talking about you for weeks. Isn’t that what we do, talk about the kids further up and down the line?”
She put a cigarette to her lips and took a long draw on it. I tried to remember, had we figured out her age? Sixteen? Seventeen? Was she trying to act older, or was that how kids were in 1947?
Lilly looked about the same age, but she wasn’t wearing makeup, and didn’t have the same hard-bitten look. She remained seated, and now indicated a rock by the fire. “You’ve been through a lot. Care for a seat? John has cooked some fish for us. He’s something of an outdoorsman.”
I stood and blinked for a moment. How did they know this John Wald? And here she was talking about Anthony as though everything was fine. Wasn’t he missing? And shouldn’t I talk to Margaret Garroway right now about how she was supposed to go missing?
Lilly smiled, and I shrugged inwardly. They seemed to know what was going on. Best just to listen. Shivering despite the blankets, I sat, and when Lilly handed me some charred fish on a chipped, dirty plate, I wolfed it down.
The others ate as well, and I stayed quiet for a while, listening to them talk. If you didn’t trouble about every word, John Wald became comprehensible. He gestured expressively as he spoke, perhaps used to not being understood.
Lilly complimented John Wald on the fish. Peggy wondered if it was going to rain. At this, John raised an eyebrow and examined the sky before nodding.
“I’ll have to get home before that in any case,” said Lilly.
Peggy tossed her cigarette in the fire. “Not me. Mother’s gone to Auntie Nina’s again and the ogre will be brooding. I could stay out another night if I choose.”
You’re supposed to go missing, I wanted to say. But there was something forbidding and sharp in Peggy’s manner. “Where’s Anthony?” I said at last. I would have much preferred to ask about Luka, but it didn’t seem the time yet.
Peggy shrugged. “Back at home with mumsy and daddy-kins in the fierce familial embrace. Got away from the bad man, don’t you know, thanks to John Wald here.”
I was silent for a long moment, trying to sort it out. I was shot; the pain still throbbed, burning if I shifted or tensed. I was in 1947. This was the thing Luka had been dreaming of for months. I could ask what they knew about the dead baby. I could do what Jimmy had been avoiding for weeks; I could ask about Peggy’s disappearance.
But before any of those questions—and I felt like a traitor to Luka for acknowledging it, but it was true— before anything like that, came a much greater concern.
“I have to get home,” I blurted. “My parents will be going nuts.”
Lilly opened her mouth to say something, then hesitated.
“Come on, Lil,” said Peggy. “Out with it. Rip the Band-Aid off already. Tell the kid he isn’t going home.”
Six
It took a while to get the full story. Peggy and Lilly kept interrupting each other, and then John Wald had to tell part of it in his half-English gibberish. But between the three of them, they managed over the next half hour or so to tell me everything.
The trouble had started for them just about the way it had for us further into the future, with the disappearance of Anthony Currah.
“It was the man who shot you,” said Peggy, “not that we knew that at the time. He came out of the future as far as we can tell. Seems able to get into the mirror. Caught Anthony alone. Screaming something about you, and being back from Wales of all places. Forced Anthony into the basement and through the mirror. Brought him back to now—1947—and hid him in the little cave. I came home to muddy footprints leading from my mirror and —nothing.” She abruptly stood up, took out a cigarette, and turned her back, walking a few paces away.
“It was a terrible shock for poor Peg,” said Lilly in a lower voice. “To me as well. John had just come through my mirror the night before. I brought John to meet Peg when she came back to my 1937 to tell me about her mysterious footprints. Her parents—well, they’re not as … supervisory, I suppose, as most. John could hide out in the coach house for days, I reasoned. He helped us look. We scoured the countryside for days. Then it got worse. Peg came home to find her house broken into. I’ll bet you can guess the one thing that was stolen.”
“The mirror.”
“Exactly. Ripped from its frame. I think Peg must have been going wild. I was in my time, so apart from John, she was all on her own. No going back to get me.”
“What happened next?”
Peggy turned back toward us and fixed me with a hard but unreadable expression. “Anthony almost died is what happened next. The man made him put a doorstop in the mirror, then tied him up and left, taking the mirror with him.”
“Five days he was gone,” said Lilly. “And Anthony tied up all that time in that little hole. If the rain hadn’t been making it through there, I’m sure he would have died.”
“Five days,” I said. “Looking for me? Wait.” I held up my hands and tried to line the times up in my head. “This started, what, two weeks ago? That’s when Melissa and Keisha got attacked.”
They made me tell them what I knew about those attacks. “But wait,” I said, looking at Lilly. “What about you? What happened when you tried to come through?” I looked back at the hole in the creek bank I had come out of. It wasn’t large, and was mostly hidden by grass and weeds. “If he took the mirror away, where did he put it?”
Lilly opened her mouth to speak, then paused, thought for a moment, and tried it again. “That’s … part of what we need to talk to you about, Kenny. There’s a lot this man doesn’t understand about the mirror, we think, but some things he must understand better than we do.” She looked at my face and shook her head. “Oh, I mustn’t be making any sense at all. It was in water, Kenny. It was sunk in water. I found a doorstop in my mirror. Thinking it must have been left by Peg, I tried to come through, and I almost died. John says he’s seen exactly that happen. You know, of course, that terrible heat or cold you go through when you pass through the place in between. Somehow it’s worse when you pass from the mirror into water. It makes your muscles cramp and tighten. My lungs filled with water and I could barely drag myself back in time to save my life. I kept trying, but I could never go through. Wherever he had taken the mirror, he had sunk it in water.”
“Why do you think he’s looking for you?” said Peggy abruptly, directing a steady gaze at me.
“What?”
