A momentary silence filled the house as Jane stopped breathing. She stared at the six books that now lay on the table. She read each title in turn. They shared a common author.
“Good God” was all Jane could say. The room spun around her.
“I know,” Sofia said. “Cool, right?”
“Might I sit down?”
“Knock yourself out,” Sofia said.
Jane did not understand the expression but pulled out a chair all the same. Her hand shook. Of all the tricks her mind played in its current insane reverie, this took pride of place as the cruelest. Jane felt happy to entertain the notion that she had descended into madness, but not if her hallucination included her achieving the status of published novelist, the dearest dream of her heart. It seemed too cruel. For her to see her name in print this way answered a question her soul had been asking for twenty years.
She struggled to overstate the bliss she felt in every fiber of her being. Even if wicked fantasy now engulfed her mind, she allowed herself one indulgent moment to enjoy it. She sat and immersed herself in the idea that she was not insane; she had indeed cast a spell and travelled through time. She found herself in a future moment of human existence, in which her manuscripts were not rejected, but accepted and published, to the point where they now sat on a bookshelf in someone’s home. Jane felt glad she had sat down, for all the liquid drained from her head, and fainting felt likely. She blinked and picked up one of the books. The cover read:
EMMA
A Novel
JANE AUSTEN
Jane opened the book. A portrait rested on the inside cover, a watercolor of a woman around age thirty. The woman wore a bone-white gown and her curls poked out from under a lace bonnet. “My goodness,” Jane said. “It’s me.” The nose stretched too beaklike, and the eyes were too round, but the similarity of the portrait to her own face remained remarkable.
“They’ve cast you well,” Sofia muttered.
Once more Jane did not understand Sofia’s meaning but she had larger things to distract her. “I’ve never posed for a portrait in a lace cap,” she said, pointing at the picture. The detail seemed odd; the rules of society reserved lace caps for married women. Jane studied the painting of herself more closely and identified the unmistakable broad strokes of a familiar artist. “Cassandra painted this,” declared Jane. She felt confused and intrigued; she never recalled sitting and posing for this portrait for Cassandra, yet it was for certain a painting done by her. How?
“Who is Cassandra?”
“My sister,” Jane replied.
“Of course, I knew that!” Sofia said. She puffed out her chest. Her ample bosom bloomed into the room. She shrugged. “Shall we go?”
“Go where?” Jane asked. She closed the cover of the novel again.
“Somewhere we might find clues.”
“Clues?” repeated Jane. She stared at the novel, still distracted by its strangeness.
“Yes,” replied Sofia with a nod. “To send you back to your own time.”
Chapter Fifteen
I believed I had arrived at my capacity for shock earlier,” Jane said, “but it has now been exceeded.”
They arrived at a modern town house, in the style of King George. From the grayish hue of the sun, Jane guessed the hour reached about three in the afternoon. She also noted that the fantasy sun appeared as gray and disappointing as the English sun of reality. Jane stared at the building’s facade. A sign across the top read The Jane Austen Experience. Jane inhaled. “This building has my name on it,” she declared. Her head still spun from seeing the novels she had supposedly written; now this.
“Isn’t it great?” Sofia said. “I thought we could gather some facts about your life. It will look great on camera.”
Jane shook her head, her mind whirring. How and why was there a building with her name on it? What could possibly be inside?
They entered through a blue front door. “That is my sitting room!” Jane said with a gasp. The foyer contained the Austens’ battered old settee, their French armchairs, and Mrs. Austen’s armoire. Why was their furniture in this place? How did it get here? It felt entirely odd to see her family’s possessions transplanted whole into this foreign building, their sitting room re-created, as if on display. Jane felt the blood drain from her head once more and sat down on the settee to compose herself.
“You there, in the pajamas!” a voice shrieked at Jane from the corner of the room. “Don’t sit on that.” A woman bounded over with a furious look. She wore an ill-fitting purple gown and a white bonnet.
“I beg your pardon,” Sofia said. “They’re not pajamas. That’s a safari suit! It’s vintage.”
“So is that furniture,” the bonneted woman cried. “Did you not see the sign? That is an artifact. It is priceless!” She scowled. “Jane Austen sat on that very sofa!”
Jane looked at the sofa. The woman told no lies; in fairness, Jane always sat on that settee in the sitting room and had indeed sat on it the last time she was there. It bore the same crescent-shaped burn on the arm where Jane once spilled a candle while reading in the small hours. A mixture of fascination and unease gripped her. The more real the details became, the more unsettling this dream grew. “Indeed. My apologies, madam,” Jane said, still not enough gone into her nightmare to forget her manners. She stood up.
“Two tickets, please,” Sofia said to the woman with a smile.
“The next tour leaves in ten minutes,” she replied. She studied Jane as she took Sofia’s money. “Have we met?” she asked Jane. She seemed to stare past Jane at the wall behind her.
“I believe not, madam,” Jane replied.
“Jesus,” Sofia said, also staring past Jane toward the wall. Jane winced at the blasphemy but found it warranted when she turned to look as well. On the wall behind Jane,
