A Bounce in Time
As the paneled station wagon disappears down the road, I lean against the door frame, my chest tightening with each breath. The gravity of the moment bears down on me. Nostalgia and dread surges in my gut. The station wagon veers to the right, waiting at a muddy breach in the road before letting a familiar truck pass. Spencer is grinning from ear to ear when his truck rolls to a stop.
“That was you, wasn’t it, in that car? Cute as a button and looking just like I remember the first time I saw you back at high school orientation.” He climbs out, his movements slow and deliberate, fatigue etched into every line of his face. He shuffles toward me, up the steps, relying heavily on his cane. “Hello, my beautiful,” he says, his voice low and gravelly as he reaches me and kisses my cheek. “How are you feeling?”
I can barely hear him. I can’t quite get enough oxygen, and I’m breathing hard. In one turn of the Earth, this will all be gone.
“Is it done?” I ask.
“It’s done. The last of the sacred books are on a train to North Carolina, and The Key of Hell and Death is going out in tonight’s mail to Dublin. Our books are now hidden away in thirty-seven safe houses, all waiting for Veronica to be born, grow up, and need them. They’ll keep her safe, and she’ll save the human race.”
I nod. Relief and sadness war inside me. “We can rest now,” I murmur, more to myself than to him. I’m tired, so tired. I’ve always heard that the sick and frail rally before they die, but I don’t seem to have it in me.
Only regrets. I last saw Veronica a few days before The Shift. To me, that was twelve years ago. I’d hugged her and kissed her cheek goodbye and explained that I was retiring to 1960 rather than take up resources in the middle of disaster and the difficult years after, but the truth was, I couldn’t bear to see the earth I’d loved and most of her people lost in a disaster I couldn’t stop and that the priesthood had chosen not to. Spencer had spared me of it by bringing me back in time to a place I could be safe, productive, and at peace. But it’s still been twelve years since I’ve seen my daughter, and my heart aches for her, somewhere in the first quarter of the twenty-first century.
The Shift, a cataclysmic event that would reshape the world as we knew it, loomed in the future. Massive tectonic movements, devastating climate changes, and the loss of billions of lives—it was too much to comprehend. Yet, here we were, preparing for it from the safety of decades past, hoping our efforts would guide Veronica through the chaos to come.
“Aw, Maeve. You look sad. I thought you’d be pleased. We’ve done everything we can to help our girl.”
“I am pleased,” I say as he follows me inside. But what I’m thinking is that we haven’t done everything we can, not since Cora gave me that book about astrology and timelines. Mr. Casey will be back tomorrow with a copy of all his paperwork for me, but I won’t be here. I’ve told him to come tomorrow so he can take care of matters without the local law enforcement not understanding who to contact on our behalf when we’re. . .gone.
“Then what’s wrong, my love?” Spencer pauses with his cane and bends awkwardly to rub a kink in his hip. As I close the front door and lock it, he steps forward but, bone on bone, his knees crackle like cereal. He must be in pain again, poor sweetie, but he refuses to let it show.
“Spencer,” I begin, my voice hesitant, “will we see Veronica again? Are you sure we won’t?”
He pauses, his watery eyes meeting mine. In that moment, I see a flicker of uncertainty that I’ve never noticed before. “Maeve,” he says slowly, “I’ve never been sure if we saw Veronica again after clearing out the archive. I thought it might be easier if you believed we had a last visit with her.”
The admission hangs in the air between us, heavy and raw. All this time, he’d never given me a straight answer, but I’d let myself believe it. I’d always felt in my gut that I’d see her again, even if I’d not been so positive of Spencer’s last memories or their clarity.
“But now that we’re here,” he continues, “I can’t imagine spending what little energy I have left on another trip through time. That last night. . .I remember wanting to see her, but I’ve always thought I fell asleep with you in my arms and maybe I dreamed it. My mind isn’t what it used to be. Nor is my memory. The bottom line, my sweet Maeve, is that I don’t think we made the trip. No matter how much we both wanted to.”
His words stir something in me. Hope? Determination? “What if we went anyway?” I ask, my voice stronger than I expect. “I could power the trip with my remaining strength.”
Maybe this is the end-of-life rally I’ve been saving for, I think but don’t say aloud and hope he’s not reading my mind.
Spencer’s hesitation is obvious. “I don’t know, Maeve. I’ve never fought against or tried to change what I knew was going to happen. If we went now, well, that timeline. . .it would differ from the one I remember. My entire lifetime since I was initiated and given the gift of knowing has been filled with memories of things that happened later in my life. I don’t think we can change that. We’re destined to live in the timeline we remember.”
I bite my lip, holding back the urge to tell him about Cora’s book. The fear of altering the timeline, of somehow messing up the future, keeps me silent. Instead, I say, “What if we didn’t go, based on what you don’t remember, and we’re supposed to go? Does that make a difference? What if we didn’t go based on what you do remember, but choose to go now? We could. . .we could go to Terre’s funeral. Watch from a distance. We know she’ll be there. She and I talked about it and her trip to Vail right after where she met Shelby.”
Spencer’s eyes narrow to slits as he considers my argument. After a long moment, he nods. “All right,” he murmurs. “Let’s try. But just to see her from afar, one last time. I’m positive we didn’t interact with her, but maybe we saw her. Honestly, I just can’t remember anymore all the things that happened that night. This night, Maeve. I just want to spend it with you and make you happy one last time.”
The tension between us softens but doesn’t disappear entirely. I can sense his reluctance, his fear of disturbing the delicate balance of time. But my need to see Veronica, to ensure her safety in the face of the impending pole shift, overrides everything else.
“Then let’s go see Veronica one last time. From afar. Just to watch her and know she’s okay.
I’ll take us.”
With a sigh and a smile, he cups my cheek in his gnarled hand. Even after all these decades together and extra decades he’s aged through all his time journeys, when I gaze into his eyes, I still see him the same as he was in high school. Those eyes, that smile. Age and frailty fade away, filtered through the eyes of lifelong love.
“Sweetie?” I mold the palm of my hand to the back of his and crush his touch against my face. “Do you need to go to the bathroom before we leave?”
“You know me too well!” He chuckles before trudging off to the restroom in the archive’s main room.
Yes, I know him well enough to know what might interfere with our time travel escapades at this age, but I also need him out of the room for a minute or two. As soon as he’s out of sight, I slip Cora’s tote with the book inside over my shoulder. I push it toward my spine, away from his view unless he notices the strap that blends with my clothes. I’m not sure how I’ll get the book to her without interacting with her.
Maybe I can drop the tote near where she’s standing? Maybe Spencer doesn’t remember interacting with her because only I did?
A chill runs down my spine. What if my actions create a ripple effect, altering the future in ways I can’t foresee? The weight of the book seems to grow heavier, warning me of the responsibility I’m taking on.
As soon as I hear the toilet flush, I reach for the pearl necklace Spencer made for me forty-five years ago and pull it over my head, high above and wait for Spencer to hobble toward me as fast as the neuropathy in his feet will allow.
“Don’t start without me,” he teases with a wink. It’s an old joke between us from a time when intimacy was more than snuggling. He slips his arm around my waist.
I lift the necklace higher, over both our heads. As I focus on the full moon, just as I always have, the familiar shimmer of the portal begins to form above us, slinking down like a sparkling sphere around us. Heat starts in my crown chakra, then spirals down my spine through each chakra, to my tailbone and then down my legs, to the soles of my feet, deep into the earth and then back up to my fingertips. I’ve done this dozens and dozens of times. The energy drain may wear me out, but it no longer nauseates me.
Sparkles form around us as the scene begins to take shape—a cemetery under moss-bearded oaks, hot sunshine, a bird singing somewhere overhead. The sparkles coalesce into something more solid, then — Bam!
We’re back in the archive.
My head hurts. I run my fingers through my hair, blood on my nails. I stare at my hands until I realize I’ve bumped my head on the wing chair near the door. “Wh—? Spencer!”
He sprawls a few feet away from me on the wood floor. Already, he’s picking himself up, one muscle at a time, checking for damage. Then crawling toward me.
“Maeve! You’re bleeding! Are you—”
I touch my head again. Fresh blood. “Fine. I’m fine. Just a scratch from how I landed. But Spencer, what happened?”
He shrugs as he lays his head in my lap and inhales deeply, steadily. Closing his eyes, he forces a chuckle. “Oh, Maeve. Time travel is a young person’s game. Either that or—”
“My heart?” I smooth his white hair, so thin I can see through it now. “I haven’t powered a time travel journey in twelve years, and certainly not since my heart attack. Maybe I’m just not strong enough.”
“Hmmm, maybe. That was weird. The only time that’s happened before where I bounced back was when Lady Moira was blocking me from portaling in to get you and Veronica out when she was three.” He frowns, sitting up quickly. “No, that’s not true. It’s happened every time I’ve tried to time travel beyond the pole shift. Like there’s a wall there or force field that won’t let me portal past. I’ve seen The Shift happening, and I think you can live past it in that time, but you can’t portal past it. Maybe not in either direction.”
I clamp my hand to my mouth. “Spencer, you don’t think that it’s happened early, do you?”
He pushes to his feet, using the chair to stand, then offers me his hand. My necklace is still in my other hand, so I quickly start to raise it so we can try again.
“No, Maeve. We don’t know what threw us back across time. Put your necklace back on. I’ll take us this time. You save your strength. If I can’t get us through whatever was shielding us, then we know the pole shift has come earlier than I remember.”
A thin stream of blood runs down my forehead, then down my nose. I backhand it, then stare at the red. “Unless I got it wrong. Terre’s funeral, right? Near the university town where he was murdered, right?”
Please don’t let it be my heart, I pray. Please let my heart hold out to see Veronica once more. To get her this book.
“Did something distract your focus, Maeve?”
“No. Not at all. I followed the moon and constellations like I always do when I travel. I felt the full moon before the funeral and then, and then, and then we were thrown back here.
Like hitting a brick wall.”
“Don’t you remember what went wrong?”
He pulls me to him, his hands strong on my upper arms as if to either hold me in place or hold himself up. “Maeve. Maeve, my memories are getting all jumbled up, but I’m positive this never happened.”
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