“Which of you stupid whores threw up?” shouts a guard behind me. I hear a thwack and someone falls, suffering a punishment that should have been mine. I continue walking, despite the nausea, despite the guilt, as if my life depends on it—which it probably does.
We are pushed into a large room which holds chairs and nothing more. Some of the women sit, and some wander, muttering to themselves, lost in a dream world. Right now, as I stumble toward a chair as far from the guards as possible, I wish I was in a dream world too. Even if it’s only in my head, a dream of Henri is better than this, with my stomach rolling, sweat dripping into my eyes.
I’m going to be sick again. I drag in air, begging myself, begging the universe for help. Please. Not here. Not now. It comes up anyway, but the guards aren’t looking at me. Instead, they stare intently at a woman closer to them who is fading in and out—the same thing Henri insisted he saw me do.
“Did you see that?” one asks. “Kick her and see if she’s awake. Just don’t kick her in the stomach.”
The other grunts. “I’ll kick her wherever I please. There’s no hidden child nowhere to be found with this lot.”
Hidden child.
The words fall into my brain and doors there begin to open. Marie, the hidden child. I remember walking through Parc de la Turlure with her in 1918, wearing a dress so long it hit my ankles. We were looking for Marie’s mother, who disappeared there, just like my aunt did. I remember the pain of a needle plunging into my neck.
The truth comes to me at last, so horrifying that I forget I am ill. I forget the guards and the women around me. Marie and I were taken captive, just like her mother and my aunt must have been.
And Henri—he remains in 1938, waiting for me, assuming the worst.
I’ve got to get back to him.
3
HENRI
Sarah.
She’s the first thing I think of each morning, the last when I go to sleep. Her space in the bed is cold, untouched. I press my face to her pillow but the scent is fading.
Come back, I think. Please, please come back.
But no matter how hard I wish for it, no matter how many times I beg God for a different outcome…the bed remains empty and the house remains silent. I no longer see how to get through the day.
When she and Marie first left, I forced myself to go on, feigning optimism. I got Sarah’s forged passport, discussed honeymoons in Greece with a travel agent. Hours, then days, slipped by without her return, and that optimism became something else, something frenzied and irrational. I focused on ridiculous things, insisting all would be well. I bought her Christmas gifts, lavish items she’d have little use for on a farm. I worried our winters might be too cold for her and dug out enough of the basement to drive pipes beneath the slab—a new way of heating the floors some American architect has been perfecting.
I worked, sun-up to sun-down, as if I could bring her home with the force of my efforts, but still there was nothing.
Now all I can do is beg. My heart is outside of my body, beyond my control, and all I can do is beg the universe to return it to me.
I eat bread and sausage for dinner, with heavy helpings of whiskey, saying a quiet prayer before I begin. Please God, bring her back to me. It can’t end like this. You have to let her return.
After the third pour of whiskey my mind drifts. I think about the future. Living with Sarah in a flat in Paris, returning to the farm for holidays. I’ll take our sons out to the Bousonne Wood to get a Christmas tree. Will our daughters time travel? Will they shimmer, like she does?
My eyes open and I’m alone in the empty house. I’d laugh at my foolishness if I were capable of it. Instead I fill my glass and drink fast, laying my head on the table when it’s empty. They’ve been gone over a month now. How will I stand it if they don’t return? Why didn’t I stop them?
A memory suddenly pierces the fog in my head. Early in the fall, Sarah was ill, feverishly insisting she and Marie were trapped, telling me the stew was drugged. Is it possible she was traveling to me from 1918 then?
I sit up, jaw open, wondering why I’m only remembering it now.
“No,” I say aloud, sick at the thought. “No. It was just a fever.”
But only the silence of the house whispers back.
4
SARAH
It takes four days. Four days of cold sweats and vomiting until I finally wake one morning feeling well again, or at least more like myself. We sit at the long table and I, like the others, spoon gruel into my mouth, necessary because the guards are watching and that noise is unbearable without it. I switch my bowl with that of the woman beside me as soon as I can and try to think.
I’ve tried to convey what’s happening to Henri, hoping he can warn us, but nothing seems to work. I don’t seem able to control what I tell him, and I doubt it would matter if I could. Marie wouldn’t listen. Marie would still come here and need someone to save her.
I wish she would wake up so we could talk all this over. She is twitchier now that they are decreasing the drug, though she still won’t respond when I whisper her name. And I’m not sure she should wake up. They are looking for the hidden child. Maybe it’s best that she remains too drugged to give herself up until I figure out how we can escape...if I figure out how to escape.
We won’t be able to time travel out of here—the noise keeps us all at half-strength and makes that kind of focus impossible—and walking out doesn’t look like an option either. I’ve only seen one door, and it’s both guarded and padlocked. Though the windows are blacked out, I can see the shadow of bars on the other side, which rules out jumping.
What would Henri do in my position, surrounded by armed guards? He’d realize fighting back, outmanned like this, would be suicide, so he’d look for another way. He’d survey the information he had and create a new plan.
I squeeze my eyes shut and consider the only thing I know so far: they hope one of us carries the hidden child of the prophecy. But they must realize by now that few, if any of us, are pregnant, so why haven’t they killed us yet? And they will have to kill us once they have what they want—you can’t set someone free if you’ve tortured her and she has the ability to go back in time to punish you for it.
So, they want something more. What is it?
I watch as a guard pulls a woman from her seat by her hair. They clearly aren’t trying to win us to their side, which means that whatever it is they want won’t require our cooperation. It’s something they plan to take.
That night, after the lights are out and the guard sleeps soundly in the chair at the end of the room, I allow myself to go, in my mind, to Henri. I want to remember how things were, remember all the things I need to get home to.
He’s coming in after the hired help are gone for the day, exhausted, in need of a shave. The harvest is nearly done, thank God. I miss my fiancé. I want him to myself once more.
I smile. “Go bathe,” I tell him. “I’ve made us dinner, and Marie didn’t even help. Which means it may be inedible, but that’s beside the point.”
He pulls me to him, his hands gentle on my face. “You should be resting.” His mouth closes on mine. A sweet, chaste kiss. Not the kind I am hoping for. I feel the edge in him, the restraint, but I’ve never wanted restraint from him, and I especially don’t want it now, when we’ve had so little time alone.