I marveled at the rain beginning to fall around me. I yearned to stay standing outside,
with my face turned up the cold drops coming down hard, faster with each
passing second. To feel them, wet
against my cheeks. There was no
rain where I lived. Not for the
last hundred years, according to the history books at school. But the cotton candy wrapped around the
paper cone in my hand was rapidly transforming from a fluffy mound into sticky,
pink syrup, and had started to run down my fingers. Everyone around me was running for cover towards the
colorful, striped tents that dotted the carnival. I had learned long ago that the best thing to do was to blend
in, so I shielded the remains of my precious treat and ducked into the nearest
tent.
I was alone in the tiny enclave. It belonged to the fortune-teller. I could tell by the crystal ball and the deck of cards on
the small table. I took a seat in
one of the two empty chairs and proceeded to wipe the goo off of my fingers,
and tried to salvage the remains of my cotton candy. It had taken me four trips to put together enough money for
my day at the carnival, and I wasn’t about to waste any of it.
I jumped at the sound of a voice behind me.
“Oh, sorry dear.
Didn’t mean to scare the life out of you.”
I turned as the old fortune teller came through the curtains
at the back of the tent. My gaze
traveled up her colorful robes, to her gnarled hands covered in gold rings and
finally to her face, run through with deep creases and encircled by a halo of
brilliant red curls. The sight of
that face made me go cold all the way to my toes. It was immediately apparent that the sight of mine had done
the same to her.
We both held our breath for a moment, equally unsure of how
to proceed. Time-travelers had,
for the most part, been bred out of the population, thanks to some disturbing
laws regarding procreation that had been issued back in 2310. But there were still some of us. Some were older people, who had been
born before the new laws, and then there were kids like me, whose parents had
somehow managed to cheat the system.
Usually by falsifying their family tree, which is what I assume my
parents did in the name of true love, since I had never met any members of my
extended family.
It was highly illegal to be a time-traveler. The first time I disappeared at the
dinner table, and my parent’s realized I had inherited the ability from
somewhere in their genetic makeup, they told me I must never do it again. That if I did, and I got caught, someone
would come and take me away forever.
I was four.
By thirteen, I had been to hundreds of different places and
times. I couldn’t help it. Life was just better in the past. The smell of fresh air, the feel of
rain, the taste of sugar. I
usually went from a hidden cabinet that had inexplicably been built behind the hanging
bar in my closet. It was just big
enough for me to fit into. In all my trips, I had never met another
traveler. But here I was, in 2004,
at least I think it was, staring into the eyes of my eighth form history
teacher.
“Azalea. What
on earth are you doing here?”
I had always been terrified of Dr. Lexington. She was a tyrant of a teacher, not to
mention a stickler for detail. And
it suddenly occurred to me how she always seemed to know more about history
than just what was in the books.
Now I was terrified for a whole different reason, despite the fact that
she looked borderline ridiculous in her fortune-teller costume.
“I, uh…” I had
no words.
“Oh, for God’s sake, child. Find your voice.
I’m not about to report your parents to the authorities for violating
procreation laws. Nor am I
planning to turn you in, though you no longer have an excuse for your pitiful
grade in my class. Which means you
can let go of that breath you are holding. Now, how many trips have you been on?”
I exhaled, and then sucked in a breath of the moist air,
unlike anything pumped through the vacuum sealed world that was my everyday
life.
“Six hundred and thirty-six.”
“Impressive.” I
wasn’t sure, but I thought there might have been a hint of a smile playing at
the corners of her lips. She
pulled up the other chair and sat down at the small table. She absentmindedly picked up the deck
of cards and shuffled them lightly before setting them down again, never taking
her eyes off of me. And then she
did smile.
“Did you know,” she said lightly, as she reached out and
smoothed her hand over my damp, fiery red ringlets, “that your mother’s maiden
name is Lexington?”
In a sudden moment of clarity, I looked up into the
twinkling eyes of my grandmother.
“Now,” she said, laughing at my wonderment. She had always known who I was. “My darling, granddaughter. You must tell me how you’ve managed so
many trips without detection.”
“There’s this cabinet in my closet,” I began.
“Oh, my.” she cut me off. “I had forgotten all about that.”
“You know about it?”
“Of course.”
She smiled. “How do you
think it got there?”
In that tiny carnival tent, a history I had not known began
to fall in place, drop by drop, like the rain coming down around us.
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