A breeze blew through the trees. Mia looked up wistfully. She had forgotten how beautiful it was out here before the bulldozers flattened everything for the houses that were never built. She wiped her sticky hands on her jeans before getting back on the bike. Mia marveled that she could still pedal, considering the five miles she had already traveled. “This is what my father meant by young legs,” she said, talking aloud. She continued down the road, and as she approached the farmhouse, she hoped she’d be returned to 2018.
The drive was nothing more than a couple worn ruts in the hardpacked soil. She got off her bike and walked it up the lane. The farmhouse stood empty, its lower windows boarded up. It had such an air of abandonment that Mia dropped her bike and started to cry. Whatever her hopes were at that moment, they were gone. There wasn’t an elaborate cosmic joke involving her. She was stuck in 1998 without a reason why.
She sniffed, wiping her nose on her sleeve. She picked up her bike and leaned it against the old woodpile. She waded through the brambles until she found the old icehouse where she knew Stephen Murphy’s bones were. This was where his body was placed after he was found dead under a fallen tree. They couldn’t separate the axe handle from his death grip, so they laid him out with the axe still in his hand. The ground was frozen, so they couldn’t dig a grave. They put him in the ice house and forgot about him.
It would be a few years until she would meet Murphy for the first time. He would be her champion when she was being tortured verbally by the teenagers she chose to hang out with. Her peers were mean to her, but still, she needed to belong to something. She couldn’t go her whole life without being connected to other people.
“Oh my god, does this mean I have to do it all over again?” she asked.
“Pardon?”
Mia tensed. She turned around slowly, and there was no one there. She sighed and turned back.
Standing right in front of her was Stephen Murphy, axe in hand.
Mia gasped. “Damn it, you did that on purpose. Just to scare me,” she accused.
Murphy looked down at the young girl, and his eyes twinkled. “Maybe.”
“Geeze, I’m sorry. I just realized I’m all but dancing on your grave.”
“Grave,” he repeated.
Mia reached down and knocked on the exposed wood of the icehouse. “Your grave.”
“How?” Murphy asked, pushing back his hat.
Mia frowned. She was caught out with information she hadn’t learned yet. Would this be enough to alter history and stop her and Ted from ever meeting, let alone having Brian and Varden? “I may not look the part, but I’ve actually known you for eighteen years.”
“How old are you?”
“Twelve, give or take a few months,” Mia said.
To give Murphy credit, he didn’t laugh at Mia. “How is this possible?” he asked.
“To be honest, I don’t know. Last night, I was thirty-two years old. This morning, I woke up a kid.”
“Witch’s curse?”
“Maybe,” Mia said. “Would you like to help me figure this out? I could use an ear, and you’ve been known to come up with some pretty good suggestions when we were working.”
“We worked together?”
“Yes. I’m not sure how much I should tell you because of the butterfly effect.”
“Butterflies are stopping you?”
“No, but… Damn, how do I present this? Where is Ted or pedantic Cid when I need them? Okay, it’s a theory that all things are connected. That if a butterfly bats its wings in South America, it has a ripple effect and can influence our weather here.”
Murphy looked skeptical. He had no idea what this South America was, let alone how an insect could change the weather.
Mia ignored him and continued, “Now we enter time travel. If you go back in time and, let’s say, accidently kill the butterfly, the weather will be different. Maybe a drought happens, or people don’t meet because they don’t have to share an umbrella. Whatever it is, things will not be the same. If I tell you too much, then you may react differently and change the future. I can’t have that.”
“Why would it be bad?”
“Because, possibly, my children will never be born,” Mia said sadly.
“But you’re just a child.”
“But last night, I was a married lady with two boys and an adopted teenage son. This morning, I’m a child again. It’s not fair.”
“What if you can go back right now?”
“I don’t think I’ve screwed anything up - with the exception that I waved at Tom Braverman. I don’t think that’s enough to tip the scales?”
“Is Tom Braverman your husband in the future?” Murphy asked, looking sideways at Mia.
“No.”
“Why did you wave at him?” he asked.
“I don’t know, to be friendly.”
“Why are you talking to me?” he asked.
“Oh, I see where you’re going. Damn, this is going to be harder than I thought,” Mia acknowledged.
“First, let’s find out why you’re here,” Murphy insisted. “Let’s find the witch.”
Mia couldn’t help grinning. “I don’t think a witch is this powerful because…” She stopped and thought about the hag who had
