me. “Get out of my way,” he said. “I’ll kill you if I have to, because it won’t matter. If I kill myself, none of it will have happened. I can do anything right now because in a few moments this will all be gone.”
I fell back before his fury, but I kept talking. “That’s not it,” I said. “You’ve got it wrong.”
“How else is there a dead baby?” he said, then grinned savagely at my reaction. “Oh, yes. I know about it. I talked to your friends in the future, Keisha and Melissa, before I—I didn’t mean to hurt them, though. I just wanted to make them let me back in the mirror. I got lost and I had to get you before—but I didn’t. I can’t.” His expression turned pleading and he looked from me to the baby. “Don’t you see? It’s better if I just end this thing. I remember everything now. Almost everything.”
He had backed me into the room now, and had his own back to the stairs, as if preparing for a quick escape. Behind and below him, I could see the mirror.
Older Curtis shook the baby again for emphasis. “He’s the problem,” he said. “This one here. All this year, you’ve been living in two times at once, one with the baby dead, one with him living. Now I get to choose. Dead baby or mad Curtis.”
“That’s crazy,” I said, and immediately regretted my choice of words. “You’re not thinking about it. Both things can’t be true. You live. You have to live. If you kill that baby—but you can’t. You don’t want to. If you wanted to, you would have done it. You’re not the bad guy.” I pointed at the red-and-purple burden in his hands. “How can you go from being that to killing that?”
“But it hurts,” he said to me, his eyes full of tears. “I thought I could stop you, and I couldn’t. Nothing stops it and it—hurts.”
“Hurts?” said the ten-year-old’s voice from behind his future self. “Hurts like when I touched you before? Did that hurt too? Let’s try it. Get away from my friend.”
And with that, he touched Prince Harming’s scarred and bloody hands.
I jumped forward. So did Lilly. Blue fire erupted from the place where the Curtises met. Both screamed. Older Curtis began to topple back, and I swear I saw him in my memory cradling that baby, instinctively bringing it close as he fell into his younger self and sent them both down the stairs in a tumble of sparks and limbs.
I didn’t see the baby die.
Lilly and I got to the top of the stairs at the same time and scrambled down together, but what we saw on the floor made me stop in horror while she pushed on. Little Curtis and his older self lay spread out on the floor, their hands close enough to exchange bright flashes. Both were convulsing slightly.
But it wasn’t the sight of them that stopped me, and it wasn’t either of them that Lilly rushed to.
Rose’s baby must have been flung clear of those maimed hands at the apex of his tumble. Maybe the blue fire had done it, making his hands and arms convulse even as he tried to protect the baby.
It had fallen in an odd path. Older Curtis must have grasped for it, sending it tumbling to one side, and now it lay on the low dresser, directly against the mirror, unmoving. Horrifically and impossibly dead.
Three
Holler loud, holler proud, you shall wear a coffin shroud.
Lilly touched the baby, even snatched a locket from her neck and held it before the tiny face to see if it was breathing, but when she turned to me and shook her head, she was only confirming what I already knew. “Move them apart, Kenny,” she said, pointing to the two Curtises exchanging blue sparks on the floor, then picked up that tiny, sad weight and headed toward the stairs.
Luka groaned and sat up as I grabbed younger Curtis by his shirt and dragged him a safe distance from his older self. Just then, as though sounds were coming back into the world one by one, I heard Rose’s wail.
“Let me hold him,” she cried. “Why did he do that? Why did you let him? Let me hold my baby.”
“I have to go there,” I said. “Are you okay?” She nodded and waved me upstairs.
When I got there, Rose was holding her baby. Her mother and Lilly knelt on either side.
I didn’t understand it. I had been so sure. So had she. Curtis was her baby. Who was he then? Who was the burned man downstairs, and the boy he once was?
“Why didn’t you stop him?” she said, looking from Lilly to me. “That’s why you came here wasn’t it?”
Lilly opened her mouth, then closed it. What could she say? What could I say? Rose was right. We had come all this way, gotten lost, gotten found, met each other at different times, different ages, solved mysteries— but for what?
“Well,” said her mother at long last. “Rose, it’s terrible, but … perhaps this is for the best. Everything happens for a reason. With no father … and you unmarried … ”
Rose’s face twisted and she took a breath as though to speak, but whatever she would have said to her mother was cut off by a convulsion and a cry of pain. Her hands clutched and trembled against the baby she was cradling. When she could speak again, she beat a weak fist against the bed in frustration. “Why can’t it be done?” she said. With a worried look, Lilly left Rose’s side and went back to the bottom of the bed.
I took that moment to approach Rose. “I—I think Curtis is okay,” I said. “I mean—downstairs. My friend Luka is with him. I think he’s going to be okay.”
Another shudder of pain took her. When it was gone, her mouth was twisted in a grimace. “What does that matter to me? I was wrong about him. He’s not mine. Why should I care? All this time I thought he was mine. I thought I had been given this gift of the lonely little boy I wouldn’t get to see.” She sniffled and looked at the dead baby again. “But that wasn’t him. My baby is dead.”
She drew a ragged breath and closed her eyes. Lilly, looking more worried than ever, ran her hands over Rose’s stomach and asked Mrs. Hollerith to come to her.
“I can’t hate him, though,” said Rose to me. “He was being brave. I should—I should forgive him. He didn’t want to do anything wrong. He’s a dear little boy. But—oh, Kenny, why couldn’t you stop it? Why couldn’t you—” Another convulsion took her words away, and the hand that clutched mine almost drew blood. “It’s—it’s funny,” she said around her gasps and sobs. “Remember I said I was going to call him Clive? I suppose I will after all. Clive after his father.” She shut her eyes against the pain. “I suppose I’ll never even know where Curtis comes from.”
“Don’t be too sure about that,” said Lilly from the foot of the bed. Her eyes were bright again with new tears. “You’re not done yet, girl. Oh, Rose, you’re not done. It’s twins. That’s what your mother tried to tell us. Curtis is a twin.”
This time they didn’t send me away. Even Mrs. Hollerith was too frantic to object to my presence. My only job was to sit and comfort Rose, who had already endured more than anyone should. It was amazing to me that someone deprived of food for so long could push as hard as they were telling her she must or crush someone’s hand as hard as she did mine. Her other hand, curled around the dead baby that I was already thinking of as Clive, petted him with feathery caresses.
Less than five minutes after his brother’s death, Curtis Hollerith made his first appearance in the world, yelling and screaming the way his brother never did.
Not long after the second baby was born, Mrs. Hollerith remembered my existence and sent me downstairs. Luka had managed to heft little Curtis onto the couch and was staring glumly into the mirror. The boy’s breathing was regular, and his hands showed no damage from the blue fire. Lying there, he could be any ten-year-old kid. I wondered how much of this night he would remember. Enough that it would trouble him later, I was sure. Half- remembered images that would bring him and Peggy back to look for me, that would bring her to her death.
“I thought we could save him,” Luka said.
Something strange was happening upstairs. I could hear coos and sighs from Lilly and Mrs. Hollerith, and from Rose sobs that were turning from despair to joy. “We did in a way. If I hadn’t gotten Lilly back here, I don’t even think baby Curtis would have lived.”
Luka groaned. “Time travel gives me a headache.” I suddenly realized that older Curtis wasn’t there. “Out the door,” said Luka, reading my expression. “He got up a couple of minutes ago. I was ready to take him on again, but he backed off. Said nothing matters because as soon as it all gets fixed, he won’t exist anymore.”
“Did you tell him—” I nodded my head upstairs.
“No. What if he tried again?”
