“Who are they?” Jane exclaimed, gasping at a curious sight that stood inside. A group of ten women, laughing and chatting, walked toward her in muslin gowns, à la grecque, as she donned herself in her own time. They wore bonnets, gloves, and pelisses, and giggled and gossiped as though they made their way to a ball or an assembly. Jane thought she had stepped into 1803 once more.
Fred looked to where she pointed and smiled. “Hey, man. What are the costumes for?” he asked a young person who swept the floor with a wooden broom.
“We’re hosting a Jane Austen film festival,” the sweeper replied. “To celebrate the new movie being shot in town, we’re showing all the films made from her books.”
“Cool,” Fred replied. “This is one of the actors from the shoot.” He pointed to Jane.
The young man put down his broom and held his hand out. “Nice. What part do you play?”
“Oh, I, um . . .” Jane stared at him, wide-eyed, and scrambled for a suitable answer. The only line she could recall was one Sofia had taught her; she spat it out in a strangled voice. “I am an actress. I am from the twenty-first century,” she said.
The man stared at her with a smile and seemed to wait for her to elaborate. She did not. “I get it. Top secret, huh?” he said. “You could tell me but then you’d have to kill me?” Jane stared back at him and sighed, understanding nothing, then nodded dumbly and hoped it was sufficient.
“Okay, then,” he said mercifully, and returned to his sweeping.
“Shall we see a Jane Austen movie?” Fred said to her.
“Yes,” Jane said, burning with curiosity, and then, “No!” almost as quickly. “Sorry, no, I don’t want to,” she added. She was aware she acted rather strangely, yet again, but this time it could not be helped. She felt well-versed by now in the risks of exposing herself to her own creative output, and as she was already breaking one of Sofia’s rules by venturing outside, she did not feel the need to violate another for the sake of something as silly as a movie.
“That’s okay, we’ll see something else. Not a fan of Jane Austen, huh?” Fred said with a smile. “You don’t like her stuff?”
“No,” Jane said, keen to maintain the ploy. “Dreadful stuff.”
Fred nodded. “Probably feels a bit like work, I guess.” He purchased tickets and ushered Jane inside a darkened theater.
“What is this place?” she asked him.
“The movie theater?” he replied with a resigned laugh, pointing to the stage area. “As I said, you are a strange one.”
Jane glowered at him again and went to provide him with a rebuttal, but she found herself too astounded by the sights around her to argue further.
A huge screen of fabric, twenty feet high, stood across the stage, from which a sort of theater production beamed out to them with lights and sound. Jane gasped. They sat down and the theater grew dark. The crowd hushed; the main show began. Jane watched the actors move and perform in the frame. “It’s like television, only bigger,” Jane whispered to Fred.
He turned to her and chuckled. “That’s right.”
The story unfolded over various scenes. A ship moved through the universe, past planets and the sun. The ship’s crew rivalled Odysseus and his men for their prolific touring and adventures. Jane hung on every word. During a quiet moment in the story, she looked around the theater. The audience all stared up at the screen, as she did, bound by its spell.
A realization came to her. In the theater next door, those women, dressed in their muslin gowns, watched a production in the same vein as this, with the terrific sounds, actors, and theater sets. Only there, the theater played a story from Jane’s own head. Jane inhaled. Her mind leapt in circles.
“I see now!” she cried out in the darkened theater.
“Do you mind?” a young man in the row of seats behind them said.
“A thousand apologies,” she said. She turned to Fred. “They watch a Jane Austen story next door!” Multiple audience members turned in their seats this time and hissed angry shushes at her. She apologized again.
Fred nodded to her with a laugh and whispered, “Yes, a Jane Austen film plays in the other theater.”
Jane inhaled. She looked once more at the audience who watched the screen, and then thought of the women in the muslin dresses and bonnets. They were there for her. The idea required such leaps of her mind and stirrings of her soul that she could barely grasp it fully. Seeing her books in print, the museum built in her honor, now this . . . it all contributed to a growing suspicion that she might not know the half of what she was to become—what she meant now. Jane closed her eyes for a moment, before watching the rest of the story in awed silence.
When it ended, the audience stood to leave. “Did you like it?” Fred asked her.
“Can we see another?” she asked him.
Fred chuckled. “Sure. Whenever you like.”
“Thank you,” Jane said to him. “That was extraordinary.” She felt too filled with wonder to argue with him now, so she settled for genuine feeling. She looked over, expecting him to be laughing at her, but he was not. His face bore a look of joy.
“Good to get out of the house,” he said. They walked home and spoke at length of the story, the ship on its journey through space, the characters. They did not argue; there were other things of which to speak.
LATER, FRED CAME to Jane, and asked, “Now that you’re well enough to go outside”—he still believed this lie, bless him—“do you not want to explore Bath?”
“I have been to Bath before,” she answered.
“Bath is beautiful, even if you have already been here.”
“I do not care for it,” she replied. She spoke the truth.
“Yes,” Fred said. “You’ve said so, a few
