dollar bonus if I catch you.”
“And how are you going to do that?”
Timson’s hands had been behind his back. Now he took out the baseball bat he was hiding. “Threats, probably,” he said. “But anything’s possible.”
“You’d be surprised,” I said. I took the spoons and string from my pocket and wrapped them around my hand.
Fenton laughed. “Look, Johnny, the little nosebleed’s got silver-spoon knuckles. What are you gonna do, reject, tap us to death?”
When you’ve dealt with bullies a lot, you fight twenty different battles in your head for every one you concede in the real world. You come up with a million fool-proof strategies you never have the guts to try out in person. And if you have a time-travel mirror whose rules you’ve figured out, you can add about ten more to that million.
I snaked my hand out as quickly as I could and tugged the end of the bat toward the mirror. It sunk inside.
Fenton took a half step back and made a tiny, quiet choking sound. I think Timson would have fallen back as well, but he was holding onto the bat. My arm went into the mirror up to my elbow, and though he got tense and almost began to tug back, he didn’t let go.
I did, and quickly pulled my arm out of the mirror, closing it.
As I had hoped it would, the part of the bat that was outside of the mirror pulled away, its top half lopped off in the Silverlands.
“Now,” I said, “want me to try that with your hands, or do you want to get lost?”
Timson’s face turned dark and he twisted to look at Fenton. “That was a two-dollar Louisville Slugger.”
Fenton, still staring at the mirror, said nothing.
Timson shook his head and turned to me. “I better be getting all the reward money for this,” he said, and launched himself at me.
I shoved the mirror toward the onrushing Timson, smashing it into his face, then grabbed it back, tucked it under my arm, turned, and ran to the backyard.
Next to the Tarkingtons was someone with a real love for berry bushes, and I held the mirror high as I thrashed my way through. Their fence was low. I tossed the mirror over and took a flying leap.
Almost made it, too.
Timson caught my ankle as I went over. I kicked him free, then tumbled sideways over the fence.
I went in so fast I was halfway to 1947 before the Silverlands slowed me down. I steadied myself against the cold, then stepped back uptime, to warm it out of me. When I turned to the swimming images in the 1957 exit, I could make out a patch of petunias the mirror had fallen into, and above them, sky. It was strange to be standing in the Silverlands, looking out and up at the same time.
John Timson’s face appeared in front of me, above the mirror. Without stopping to think about it, I pushed my hand out of the mirror and punched him in the face.
Then I wondered all over again what Luka would do. I had never seen her shy away from a fight, but I’d never seen her actually beat someone up. She found other ways of doing things. She talked to people. She cajoled. Sometimes she lied.
Maybe there was a way to be like Luka.
I reached for Timson’s shirt. He jerked back, but not fast enough. I grabbed a fistful, and dragged it back into the mirror. It was easy, since in the world of 1957, he was leaning over and gravity was on my side. As I pulled him closer, I pushed my face out.
“Come into the mirror, John Timson,” I said. “Come in and be with us forever. We’ve been waiting for you, John Timson. And we’re hungry.”
Timson cried out, a strangled kind of scream, and pulled away.
From my vantage point in the Silverlands, all I could see were his feet as he jumped the fence. I waited a moment, not wanting to take the chance of Timson or Fenton having a change of heart, then pulled myself out. With the different up-down orientation, I had to put out my two arms, brace myself against the dirt and petunias, and heave with all my might, gritting my teeth against the uptime heat.
Once out, I shook myself off, picked up the mirror, and clambered two fences to Brian’s house.
I checked my watch. The Maxwells would have left for work. I took the mirror down to the coal cellar, and planned for what was next. A quick check uptime told me the 1967 mirror was still submerged.
I steeled myself against the pain that came when you mixed mirror-heat and water, and stuck my hand through to feel around. Sand and mud. I felt a slimy bit of weed and yanked it through, but what good was that? In the last couple of months, I had come up with a hundred schemes for getting back out of that mirror, but none was any good. I could have put a scuba suit on and gone through, but what if John Wald was right, and it wasn’t a breathing thing, just the shock of the water mixing with the mirror-heat?
So there was still no hope of getting through into the future. Not yet.
I had an appointment in the past.
I went back into the coal cellar and left a note for Brian, asking him to leave the mirror and promising I’d be back. Then, making sure I had everything, I held my key and headed into the mirror.
It was the longest, coldest downtime journey I had taken. Out into the carriage house, turn around, hold out the key, and back in. Out into what must have been Lilly’s room in 1937, turn around, hold the key, and back in. Out into the same room in 1927, nobody around in the midmorning, but I could hear sounds from the hallway, so back in again.
Hold on, I said in my head to the baby my father had taken out of the wall, here I come.
I stopped in the Silverlands and watched 1917 before bursting out into it. Just as I had expected from Rose’s diary, the mirror was back in the carriage house where her mother had sent her to live. Half-finished lath on the wall. A neatly made single bed. A pile of books.
A crying girl huddled in a corner.
Time to be like Luka again.
Without another thought, I stepped out of the mirror.
Rose’s head sprang up and her eyes grew round with surprise. “Who on earth are you?” she said as I stepped down off her dresser.
“I’m Kenny Maxwell,” I said, trying to channel my inner Skywalker. “I’m here to rescue you.”
Five
Rescuing, it turns out, is a lot harder than in the movies.
As soon as Rose got over the shock of seeing me, she went right back to sobbing. I had no idea what to do. I stood on the low dresser the mirror was mounted on, and felt like an idiot way out of his league.
“You might as well come in,” she said after a long while in between choked sobs. “What do you mean? I’ve never met you before in my life, Kenny Maxwell.” She pushed herself up, feet braced against the floor, back sliding up the wall, and I saw just how right Luka was about Rose Hollerith’s “condition.”
She had the condition all right. Big. Seeing the direction of my gaze, she sniffed and looked away. “Am I a sideshow attraction, then? No wonder Mother keeps me shut up here. I remember your name now. Past Margaret Garroway and Anthony Currah, am I right? I’ve been making a list of you all. What are you here to rescue me from, Kenny Maxwell?” She looked down at her stomach. “I haven’t exactly been captured by the enemy, have I?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but couldn’t think of anything. She motioned again and I stepped down from the dresser.
“It’s … Prince Harming, I think. There’s … something bad is going to happen. Didn’t anybody tell you? A baby dies.” We were on the second floor of the carriage house, just as I had been in 1947. I looked at the place where one day my father would draw out that tiny blackened parcel. Someone had left it half built in just about the
