I ran to find Grumpkin. On the shelf of my closet were the boy clothes I had arrived in. They went in one pocket and Grumpkin in the other. He hung there, paws and head protruding, wondering what was happening, growling a little as he caught my mood. As we had arrived together, so we would depart together.
I had just fastened the cloak when the knocking started: a soft, insistent, teasing knock on the door. I stood in a corner, paralyzed. He called me. “Beauty?” Softly, sweetly. “Beauty.”
Sickness and terror rose in my throat and Grumpkin moaned in his throat, almost a snarl. “Shh,” I told him. “Be still Grumpkin, my cat.”
“Beauty?” Jaybee called again. “Let me in or I’ll break down the door.” He laughed, a liquid, bubbling laugh, like molten lava, molten lead, searing in its vile heat. “I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house down!”
He would. I knew he would, but I couldn’t move. He would huff, he would puff, he would blow my house down. All my safety he would rip away. He liked to do that. I leaned down and touched the boots, but still waited, as though I had to see him do it. No. It was because I was so afraid the boots wouldn’t work. Until I had tried and failed, I could hope. Once I had tried and failed, there would be no hope.
He kicked in the panel of the door with a splintering crash. His hand came through the hole, releasing the latch. Then he was in, grinning, whispering, “Beauty? Beauty?”
“Go!” a voice said in my ear.
He didn’t see me! He went past me and didn’t see me! He went through the living room into my bedroom. I heard the closet door slam against the wall. He was calling, “Beauty, Beauty, Beauty,” as though he was calling a dog or cat. “Don’t make Jaybee mad,” he sang, like a spell, like an enchantment. But he didn’t find me so he became angry, angrier still as he searched everywhere.
“Go!” said the voice again.
I tiptoed toward the broken door. Behind me I heard crashing and breaking. Anything I might have treasured, he would wreck. I heard the shattering, the bellows of rampaging fury.
I got out, onto the sidewalk, onto the lawn. Someone had heard the noise and called for help, for there were sirens at the end of the street.
“Boots,” I whispered softly, praying I had not miscalculated, “take me home.”
I took a step. A whirlwind bent down to take me, and I heard Jaybee running past me on the walk. The world spun and dizzied. I was standing on a street corner I recognized, not a block from the house. There was a newsstand beside me and the papers in it were dated August 13, 1981. Only ten years. I trembled. It was probable Jaybee could not find me here, but it was a long way from where I wanted to be. Grumpkin meowed in the pocket of my cloak. Someone coming along the street looked at me, then away, then back again, as though they saw me but not quite. Jaybee hadn’t seen me because of the dark, the shadows. In the daylight, he would have.
“Go,” whispered the voice, gently.
“Boots,” I whispered again, taking another step.
I was on another street corner, in the midst of a huge crowd. Soldiers were marching in the street. People were screaming and throwing paper. “What year is it?” I asked a man from behind him, hoping he would not turn to answer. He gave me the answer over his shoulder.
“Nineteen forty-five,” he cried. “Nineteen forty-five.”
“Boots,” I sighed.
The next stop was in the early years of the century, then the century before. Each time the boots surged more strongly upon my feet, and I knew that as I went back, the power grew stronger and stronger. There had been none of it in the twenty-first, and little enough in the twentieth. By the time I reached the sixteen hundreds it was strong enough to carry me the rest of the way home. When I said “Boots,” there was only wild wind and bent time and the shriek of ghosts sucking all the air away. I gasped. There was nothing to breathe. Everything was dark and bloody red inside my eyes, and then only dark.
[And then only dark, thank God. We stood looking down at her, only now beginning to breathe again.
“Is she all right?” asked Israfel, leaning down to put his hand on her breast. Can he feel what is there, inside? “She looks … she looks drawn very fine.”
“We need to get her to Chinanga,” I told him. “To the place of safety we planned for her! Now she’ll go to find her mother, and all will be well. If her mother is still there!”
“Oh, Elladine’s still in Chinanga,” said Israfel. “So far as she’s concerned, no time has passed at all. I wish Beauty didn’t look so tired.”
“She’s been through hell,” I snapped at him. I leaned down and smoothed the hair back from her brow. Beauty. My beauty. Poor child.]
15
SAINT SERAPHIA’S DAY, YEAR OF OUR LORD 1350
I wrote the last few pages when I woke up at the first light of dawn, on a weedy road looking up at the hedge of roses, now some sixty or eighty feet high. When I sat up, I felt dizzy and weak, but the feeling passed, so I pulled out the book and wrote of Jaybee’s wrecking the house and my escape while I could still remember everything. It gave me something to do and stopped my wanting to scream or run or do something else loud and foolish. I wrote until I was too tired to write anymore, then I lay back down for a while, the cloak tight around me, and did not wake again until the sun was halfway up the sky. I dreamed someone came and told me I looked tired, smoothing the hair
