Page 142

The sky had deepened to that strange violet-grey that came just before full dark, electric lamps flickering on one by one along the street. This Oxford was different at night, brighter, louder, alive in a way that would have been impossible in the world I had just left. Music drifted from somewhere. Laughter. The ordinary sounds of people who had never known what it meant to hide.

My arms ached, but I did not loosen my grip. Every book that mentioned Weavers, the Unraveling, I had taken. If answers existed, they would be here. If August existed in this new history, if there was any trace of him at all, I would find it.

The walk back seemed longer than I remembered. Or perhaps I was simply afraid of what I would find, or not find, when I arrived.

What if my flat isn't there?

The thought had followed me the entire way, quiet and relentless. Too much had changed. Entire lineages now existed that had not before. Why should anything else remain the same?

But when I turned onto my street, the air left my lungs in a rush.

It was still there. Same narrow brick facade. Same shallow steps. Same uneven paint on the door. A blue I had chosen on a whim years ago because it reminded me of a summer sky.

I stood on the pavement for a long moment, unable to move. It looked exactly the same. That frightened me more than if it had vanished.

Slowly, I crossed the street. The tiny square of garden beside the steps lay bare for winter, but one stubborn tuft of green pushed through the frost-hardened soil. And beside it sat the little ceramic frog. Green paint chipped. One eye slightly crooked. Ridiculous. Beloved.

My throat tightened so sharply it hurt.

I crouched, balancing the books against my knees, and lifted it with shaking fingers. The key lay exactly where I had left it. A small, ordinary miracle.

My hands trembled as I fitted it into the lock. The mechanism turned with a soft, familiar click, impossibly loud in the quiet street. I pushed the door open and stepped inside.

Warmth wrapped around me. Not heat exactly, but presence. The faint scent of tea. Of clean laundry. Of something baking long ago that had left sweetness in the walls. Not the stale emptiness I remembered from before. Before, my flat had been little more than a place to sleep. This was . . . lived in.

My gaze lifted.

Photographs covered the walls.

The books fell from my arms in a clatter.

Not one or two. Dozens. Different frames, different sizes, arranged in a way that looked organic rather than deliberate, as if they had accumulated over years of a life I did not remember living.

My family.

My mother laughing at something outside the frame, head thrown back, eyes bright and unshadowed. My father mid-gesture, caught in motion, alive in a way photographs had never captured before.

And my sister.

The breath left my lungs in a soundless rush.

She was not six.

In one photograph she stood nearly as tall as our mother, gangly in that fragile in-between way, braces flashing as if she hadn't yet learned to be self-conscious about them. In another she wore a graduation gown, golden curls hanging long down her back, her posture steadier, her eyes older. Still, unmistakably, my sister. In a third she held a sketchbook up to the camera, cheeks flushed with pride, paint smudged across her fingers.

Years. Years she had never been allowed to have before.

My knees weakened. I caught myself on the edge of the table, fingers slipping against polished wood as the room tilted. I crossed the space without deciding to move, drawn forward until I stood inches from the wall. My hand lifted but would not quite touch the glass, as if I were afraid she might vanish if I did.

"You lived." The words formed soundlessly against the back of my teeth. "You grew up."

The Weavers I had pulled from the void, returned to their lives, they hadn't just gone back. They had changed everything. Every choice they made rippled outward, intersecting with other threads, other lives, other futures. Pull one thread and the whole tapestry reorganizes itself around the absence. Restore that thread and everything shifts again.

I had changed the pattern. And in this new pattern, my family's thread existed. My sister had lived.

My vision blurred until her face fractured into light and color. I dragged in a breath that hitched halfway down, splintering into something raw and broken. Saving the Weavers had not only changed their future. It had given my sister a life. It had given me my family back.

A sob tore free, violent and ugly. This was the sound of something breaking open after being held shut too long. I doubled over, pressing my fist to my mouth, but it did nothing to contain the noise clawing its way out of me.