Page 6

SARAH

That evening, Marie’s fingers begin to jerk. When she wakes the next day, for only a moment, there is a startled awareness in her eyes. It fades away to nothing before I can capture it. She’s waking, and whether that’s a good thing or bad, it’s vital that it happens without the guards noticing, and that it happens before this Monsieur Coron, whoever he is, arrives.

That night at dinner, when the guards aren’t looking, I knock the spoon out of Marie’s hand. It falls to the floor, and she blinks before lowering her face to the bowl, to lap up its contents like a cat. “No, Marie,” I whisper, pushing a roll in front of her. “Eat this.”

She knocks it away and the sound, as it falls to the floor, attracts the notice of a guard.

When he moves past us, I try again. “Marie, it’s Amelie,” I whisper. “We’re trapped in 1918. Remember? You need to wake up. You have to stop eating.”

There is still no response. I glance at the guards who stand at the end of the table and then I reach for her tray.

A hand belonging to the woman beside her comes down to stop its movement.

“Are you insane?” she hisses. “Stop before the guards notice you.”

I freeze, more startled than scared. It’s been so long since I’ve heard a female voice that I’d almost forgotten it was possible. I allow myself a quick glance at the owner of that hand and voice and find the woman I saw the week before—the one who flickers in and out, the way I do. And she is absolutely clear-eyed. My heart begins to beat a little faster at the idea that I’m not in this alone. Between the two of us, surely, we can come up with a plan.

My mouth opens and she shakes her head. “Not here.”

Only the dormitory offers a chance of being left alone long enough to talk, and it’s late when she appears beside my bed. “My name is Katrin,” she says. She’s speaking French but her accent is strong. Swedish, perhaps. “We don’t have long, but you must be careful. They’re looking for descendants of the first families—so you can’t let them know you’re awake.”

“I don’t plan to,” I reply, “but I’m not from one of the first families so maybe it won’t matter.”

Her brow furrows. “Of course you are. How else do you think you woke early?”

I shrug. “I was sort of in two places at the same time, after we arrived. I think maybe the drug was diluted for me.”

She stills. “Two places at once?” she whispers. She leans closer, staring at my face as if she’s trying to read something there. “But that’s my gift.”

Not much of a gift, I think, as she continues.

“You aren’t from 1918.” Her eyes are wide now, astonished. “If you have my gift, you must be my descendant. A daughter or granddaughter, perhaps.”

I’m not sure how she’s leapt to what seems, in my estimation, a fantastic conclusion. “Just because we can both sort of be in two places at once doesn’t mean we’re related. It’s just an…aberration.”

“It’s the gift of all daughters of Adelaide,” she says, brow furrowed. “And our gifts aren’t meant to be special on their own…we are like puzzle pieces. We only make sense in combination. But surely you know this.”

I shake my head. Everything I’ve learned about time travel came from the blank-faced girl in the cot next to mine. “My mother didn’t time travel. I really don’t know much about it. But I’m definitely not from a first family,” I insist. “And I have no idea who Adelaide is.”

She stares at me as if I might be making a joke and seems to finally conclude that I’m not.

“Adelaide was one of the four girls who left the island,” she explains. “The start of the first families—four families, four gifts. And your gift could only come from one source. Me.”

She’s gripping my hand as if this is all very important, but everything she’s saying is impossible. Yes, if this is her time, she could conceivably be my grandmother or great-grandmother…except I know my grandmothers, and great-grandmothers, or at least know of them. “I can trace my family back on both sides to the Civil War.”

“What children know of their history is what their parents choose to tell them, and for you to exist must mean that I will have a child.”

I want her to be wrong, and yet I feel wheels in my head turning—things I’ve wondered about my entire life, like the fact that I look somewhat like my mother, but nothing like my father. And while my father was not cruel, he was also never involved, and once he left, I never heard from him again. He continued to call my brother Steven, though, and paid Steven’s tuition. I always assumed it was because he blamed me for Kit’s death, and perhaps that was true, but maybe it was more than that: maybe it was because he knew, or realized somewhere along the line, that I was not his daughter.

But if Katrin’s right, and she doesn’t escape, it means the child she’ll give birth to will be…Coron’s.

My stomach tightens. “Maybe someone else is out there with your gift and you don’t know it.”

She shakes her head. “There’s no other explanation, though we both wish it were true. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking the child I will have is Coron’s. But you’re wrong. I’m going to escape, so it can’t be his.”

“Escape how?”

“The infirmary is our only option. Each Sunday night they leave to take the corpses out. It’s the only time the door is unlocked, aside from when the cook goes out to shop. If we convince them we’re dead, we can time travel from the outside.”