“Thank you.” The witch settled into her seat. “I was studying and lost track of the time. I was afraid I would be too late to get a seat.” She smiled kindly. “I almost wished I had a time machine to get me here earlier. Sort of ironic, being late to a lecture about time travel, no?”
“Totally,” Will agreed, elbowing Zani, who was still preoccupied with Buffalo and Larkspur. She kept craning her neck backward to steal glances at them and was currently attempting to spy with her compact. Will wondered if she was seeing what he saw.
“You’re not from here, are you?” Amrita studied Will. “I haven’t seen you on campus before.”
“We’re friends of Burnside’s.” Will supplied the same simple story to Amrita that he’d given to Larkspur. Simple and true.
“Right.” Amrita nodded, a small smile playing about her lips. “And your girlfriend?” She nodded at Will’s hand, still clenching Zani’s.
“She’s a friend of Burnside’s too.” Will swallowed. “We were both in town because, uh..”
“We had a layover in Baltimore. We’re on a trip researching an artifact.” Zani leaned forward to add her two cents. Her eyes grew wide as she realized who she was speaking to.
“What artifact is that?” Amrita asked casually, looking over her program. “I’m rather obsessed with artifacts myself.” She toyed with the fringe on her shawl as she looked at Zani.
“The bloodstone amulet of Catherine De Medici,” Zani blurted out, looking miserable in the process. A second later, she frowned. “You just compelled me to tell you that, didn’t you? That’s not very polite!”
“No, it wasn’t, I’m so sorry.” Amrita threw off the shawl. “It’s this blasted shawl, I think. My roommate borrowed it and did something to it. I keep forgetting it’s spelled to collect gossip. Take it. I don’t want it.” She tossed the shawl into Zani’s lap.
Zani examined the delicately crocheted garment and Will could see the wheels turning in her head.
“Are you sure? It’s quite a lovely shawl,” Zani said.
“It’s all yours. Just be careful what you wish for when you wear it. It’s not a lot of fun when you end up hearing things you didn’t want to know.” Amrita glanced over her shoulder, ever so briefly, in the direction of Buffalo and Larkspur, and winced. “Let’s just say my roommate borrowed way more than my scarf, and some things you don’t just help yourself to.”
“What things?” Zani asked.
“Boyfriends, precious artifacts, the last of my custom blended shampoo and conditioner…” Amrita rattled off a list.
Will opened his mouth to say something. He wanted to ask her about the necklace, if that was the artifact she was referring to, but no words came out. The tattoo on his wrist grew warm. He noticed the way Amrita’s eye teared up after glancing back at the couple, and tried to find the right words to comfort her.
“I’m sure you’ll do just fine without him,” Will said. He patted the young witch’s arm. “Anyone who doesn’t choose you would have to be a fool.”
Amrita sniffled and took a moment to regain her composure before she turned back to the lectern.
“Sometimes I wish time travel was real,” she said. “I’d love to know how some things will work out in the end. But then again, I worry it might be like that scarf. I might be better off not knowing things I’m not meant to know.” She eyed Will and Zani with a certain canny curiosity, almost as if taking stock, and adding up a sum. “I’d rather study the present. You never know what you might need to recall in the future.”
Will could see the gooseflesh rising on Zani’s arm. It mirrored the bumps on his own.
“But what if, forearmed with that knowledge, you could go back and change something?” Zani asked Amrita. “Without doing damage to the timeline, or anything else,” she quickly amended. Will knew she was thinking about the train again. He’d hoped she’d moved on.
“I don’t actually know if that’s possible.” Amrita shrugged. “What’s done is done, don’t you think? That’s just life. We all want something from time that it isn’t meant to give.”
Eighteen years old. She was only eighteen years old.But in her case, this did not matter. Amrita Berman, the future Director of the Society, was still one of the wisest women he’d ever encountered.
There was no time to talk anymore, as the lights began to flicker on and off in a request for silence. Burnside Porter was finally taking the stage.
Item No. 206-B | Folds to the size of a scarf. Expands to fit your feelings
The Blanket of Belonging
The rain in Kyoto arrived suddenly. Clean, quiet, and insistent. I ducked into an antique shop - the kind with paper lanterns glowing softly and shelves that seem to rearrange and restock themselves when you aren’t looking.
The blanket lay neatly folded on a bench near the door. Woven in muted earth tones, nothing about it demanded attention. But when I pulled it around my shoulders, I was no longer in a strange shop on a foreign street. I was in my great aunt’s kitchen in Montauk. I smelled cinnamon buns in the oven, and felt the warm hug of a well warded space.
The Blanket of Belonging folds neatly into a traveling case, no larger than a scarf. But when unfurled, it transforms, softly, subtly, into whatever home means to you. A memory made tactile.
For one traveler, it became a crocheted afghan, threaded with the scent of orange blossoms drifting in from a balcony in Seville. For another, a cotton quilt set on sun-warmed stones beside a lavender field in Provence.
