Roman stumbled out of the tent. His sister’s head fell back against his arm. Her eyes stared.
“Let’s go,” Dorothy said again. But her throat felt thick.
She couldn’t admit it yet—she didn’t even want to think it—but, in some deep place, she felt that she was starting to understand.
They returned fifteen minutes before his sister’s death. This time, Roman remembered to bring a bottle of insulin from their last theft, so they were able to skip the hospital and fly straight to Tent City. They parked the Black Crow as close to the university grounds as they could manage, cutting the engine with nine minutes to spare.
At seven minutes, they were weaving through the black tents, rain beating on their shoulders.
At three minutes, they could see the clearing in the distance. Dorothy watched the younger Roman stumble out of his tent, carrying his sister in his arms.
At two minutes, he dropped to his knees. The Roman beside her started running faster, pulling ahead—
And then he tripped. The root seemed to come from nowhere, tangling around his ankle and bringing him down, hard, in the mud. He gasped and struggled to push himself back to his hands and knees, but it was no use. The mud was thick, and it was everywhere.
“No,” he said finally, standing.
Dorothy followed his gaze and saw his younger self kneeling in the clearing, his sister dying again.
Dorothy thought she understood.
“Do you remember holding her in your arms?” she asked.
Roman closed his eyes. “I can’t.”
She tried to keep her voice gentle. “You felt her die. Remember?”
Shaking his head. “I don’t know.”
“If it were possible to change this, you wouldn’t be able to remember her dying because we already would’ve gone back and prevented it from happening.” She gripped his arm. “Time is a circle, remember?”
She thought he was going to push her away. But he lifted his own hand and dropped it over hers.
For a long while, they stood in the rain.
38
Ash
NOVEMBER 8, 2077, NEW SEATTLE
Zora was staring at him, her mouth agape.
After a moment she said flatly, “That’s impossible.”
“I know,” said Ash. They’d pulled their motorboat up to the dock just outside of Dante’s, but Zora had refused to go inside and let Ash order a much-needed drink until she’d bandaged up his open wound using a torn-off bit of her shirt and he’d told her everything.
She didn’t believe him.
“You’ve read my father’s research,” she said. “You can’t enter an anil without any exotic matter. Only two people have ever even tried, and one of them died while the other—”
“—was flayed by the intense winds inside of the time tunnel,” Ash finished for her. “I know. I’m not arguing with you. All I’m saying is that I just went through an anil without any exotic matter.”
“And even if you had any exotic matter, you would have needed to incorporate it into a protective vessel, like a time machine,” Zora continued, seeming not to have heard him. “Long before my father came up with the plans for the Second Star, he thought that exotic matter might have stabilizing effects inside of an anil, but he found that when the material wasn’t properly incorporated into the design of his ship, it failed.”
Ash dropped his face into his hands, groaning loudly. “Zora,” he said. “You’re lecturing.”
Zora blinked at him. “Sorry. It’s just that . . . well, this doesn’t make any sense. Why are you different from my father, and all the other scientists who’ve tried and failed? It shouldn’t—”
“Be possible?” Ash untied the bandage around his ribs and then retied it tighter. There was already blood leaking through the fabric, a deep, dark red. “Yeah, you might have mentioned that.”
Zora looked chastened. “Sorry,” she said again.
“And you’re wrong, anyway. Dorothy went through the anil without a time machine, and she survived.”
“True. But she was holding the container of exotic matter,” Zora said thoughtfully. “And her hair turned white. All of us got white streaks in our hair after we fell through the anil without a vessel.” Absently, she fingered the white braid beneath her ear. “But your hair isn’t white.”
Ash lifted his eyebrows. “It’s not?”
“Nope, dirt blond, as usual.”
“Hey,” said Ash, but he couldn’t even muster up false indignation and the word fell flat. He ran a hand back through his hair.
“Okay, say you did travel back in time. Somehow. How did you end up in the exact time that Dorothy and Roman went back to?”