Prince Harming gave a small snarl and spoke through clenched teeth. “Listen. Murderer. No friend. Said he was. Pushed her and she’s dead and wouldn’t let me follow. Pretends to be friend. Tie him or stop him or you kill her like it was your own hands. Said he was a friend!”
His words grew faster, more furious, and with a reluctant shrug, Wald replaced his gag.
“He names thee killer,” he said, turning to me. “I know it is not so. Why thinks he that?”
“That’s not the question,” said Mrs. Hollerith coming down the stairs. “The question is why have you brought a lunatic into a birthing house?”
Wald and I looked at each other. “We were … rushed,” I said. “He’s dangerous. We couldn’t let him run loose.”
She shook her head. “Well, it won’t do. D’you hear me? I won’t have my daughter upset by that. Get him out.” Wald, looking as sheepish as I probably did, opened his mouth to speak, but she didn’t let him. “I’m serious. She’s sleeping now, poor thing, though it’s a miracle she can in this madhouse. Go upstairs, and fetch that dresser down. I don’t know where you come from inside that thing, but I want you to take this screaming idiot back into it.” She smiled thinly at the shock on our faces. “Oh, you thought I didn’t know, did you? Well, a mother’s not so stupid as you might think.”
Prince Harming’s cries had acquired a mournful sound, like a locked-up puppy, but she never looked at him as she spoke.
“But I want to help,” I said. “I came all this way to help.”
“And you have,” said Lilly from the top of the stairs. “You brought me.” She walked down wearily and addressed herself to Mrs. Hollerith. “She wouldn’t have survived. You’d have found her dead.” Rose’s mother absorbed this in silence. Even Prince Harming quieted at Lilly’s appearance. “I think she’s right, though, John. I think you and Kenny have to get him out of here.”
But the baby, I wanted to say. The baby in the wall.
Was I wrong about everything? Rose said the baby was Curtis. Curtis was alive.
I looked at Wald. “Where do we take him?”
He rubbed his bearded face. “It clackers my wits.” He counted on his fingers. “Curtis, nay. Lilly, nay. Peggy, nay—a watch will be set now her vanishment is noted. Anthony?”
I shook my head. “No. It’s not even in his house anymore, and I’m not dumping this man on—it just wouldn’t work.”
“Past that, the water,” he said. “If indeed the glass is still a’drowned.”
“I think it is,” I said. “But maybe I’ve figured out how to get it out. Something Curtis said about submarines got me thinking. Maybe we can get him up to Rick and Jimmy’s time.” I turned to Mrs. Hollerith. “Can you get—I don’t know—a small chest? And—a broom handle?” I tapped my forehead with my hand as I thought it out. “And a couple of two-by-fours and some nails? And something airtight that’ll float.”
She looked at me like I was as mad as our prisoner. “A wineskin?”
“That should do. If you can get that and give us some time, I think I can get us out of here.”
She sighed, shook her head, and left.
It didn’t take long to explain my idea to Wald and Lilly. As soon as Wald understood, he clapped me on the back. “’Twill out and up, then Kennit. ’Twill out and up.”
Lilly shook her head. “He’s right. That should work. Why didn’t we think of that ten years ago?”
I grinned. “I just did.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it again and smiled warmly. “I suppose you did.”
It took Mrs. Hollerith some time to gather what we wanted, but when she had it, we set to work. Wald double-checked our prisoner’s bonds and then dragged him out to the front yard of the carriage house. For a guy born hundreds of years ago, John Wald had no problem using modern tools—if what they had in 1917 could be called modern. He sawed two lengths of wood, broke the head off the broom, and started nailing everything together according to my instructions. By noon, we had something even better than I had conceived. Light enough for me to carry, and when it was folded up, small enough to fit through the mirror. I shouldn’t make it sound more impressive than it was, a chest with a broom handle sticking straight up from its lid. At the top of the broom handle were a pair of two-by-twos that could either scissor together, or open out into a large X hovering over the chest. It was like a helicopter made by a five-year-old. When we scissored the arms together, I could use them to pick it up and carry it awkwardly under my arm. The chest held three air-filled wineskins.
We completed it just after noon. Wald looked at the thing speculatively, tugged, banged, and rocked it to make sure it was sound. “It isn’t much nor muckle, lad. A storm will shake it asplinter.”
I shrugged and grinned. “Let’s hope for good weather in 1967 then.”
He nodded and glanced toward the carriage house where we could still hear Rose’s cries. Twice in the last couple of hours we had seen her hard-hearted mother come out to lean against the wall and cry.
Now I had to think about Rick. I needed his help. How could I get a message to someone who wouldn’t be born for more than twenty years?
“What did you mean by the ‘stony world’?” I said to Wald. “You told me there’s a way to float above the stony world. What did you mean?”
Wald frowned and spread his hands. “‘Tis like they beasties we oft see on the creek, water-skimmers you call ’em. For them, so light, even the water is part of the stony world, what they without the mirrors are sunk into. The mirror makes us skimmers, above happenstance and accident. We can’t change the course of the river, but we can see where it’s going and pick with careful legs where now to step. We can use what we know.”
What did I know that would help? I knew Rick’s name. I knew he was going to find out about the mirror in the madman’s diary, and that he’d actually believe what he read.
I knew his address.
When Mrs. Hollerith came out next, I asked her if she could give me an envelope, and I wrote a quick note:
While I was puzzling out how to arrange delivery, Lilly took a break from her patient and came out to join us in the sunlit yard.
I studied her face, so different and yet so much the same. “Did I really never see you again?”
She shook her head. “Things started moving fast, Kenny. That Peg did her homework. Came through with sure-fire investments to make money right away. My parents thought us batty, but she brought newspapers from a week in the future and we waited while they came true. Within two months, father had sold the farm and invested everything. They moved into the city, sent us off to nursing school.”
“Where’s Peggy now?”
Her smile grew sad. “I don’t know. Funny, isn’t it? The friends you make in youth—we think we’ll know them forever. I was stationed in England, Peggy in France. She found a fellow from back home, as I understand. We lost touch.” Mrs. Hollerith poked her head out of the hayloft window to request some help. Lilly stood up and stubbed out her cigarette. She nodded to the contraption Wald and I had built. “Look, Kenny, I know you don’t want to leave, but that man’s an unexploded bomb. The battle-axe is right about that. You’ve brought me here. Maybe your part is done.”
“’Tis truth, lad,” said Wald. “’Twere my culpis first in bringing him. Let’s foot it up the years.”
There’s not a single day that’s gone by since then that I didn’t wish I could have argued with them, but it was two adults against a kid. They weren’t asking. They were waiting for me to do what they said.
“Okay,” I said emptily. “Let’s get going.”
I was able to say a brief, guilty goodbye to Rose. I wasn’t even certain if she knew I was going.
We brought the mirror down to the first floor, just as Mrs. Hollerith wanted.
Wald loosened Prince Harming’s bonds and gave first his hands and then his feet a few minutes of freedom to restore his circulation, then tied him up again, this time with some rope between his feet so he could
