Page 102 of No Place in Time

Beja dashed into the kitchen to begin preparing food. Finn and Cecily were alone with Anton.

“How long have you been gone?” Anton asked. “Where, when, did you go?”

“For us?” Finn exchanged a glance with Cecily. “About four years.” He paused. “Here? Now? We don’t know. How long has it been since we left?”

“Three days.” Anton studied him. “Almost four. Long enough for your family to worry, short enough that no one has gone to the sheriff yet.”

Nearly four days. Finn breathed slowly. That was manageable. That could be woven into a story they could sell.

Beja returned and drew them into the kitchen. “Sit. Ye look like ye haven’t eaten in years.”

Finn barely heard Beja’s commentary as he tore into the roasted meat, savoring the taste of roasted meet. He washed it down with ale, the simple bitterness a comfort. Across from him, Cecily was eating just as intently, her eyes closed for a moment as she ate a piece of cheese.

“It’s a fine thing,” Beja said, “runnin’ away like that, and together, ye shameless wastrels. Why, yer parents are beside themselves.” She turned to face Cecily. “Yer pa, don’t ye forget he’s my own dear son, almost lost his mind lookin’ fer ye. Where’ve ye been, anyway? Oh, don’t bother makin’ up stories. It’s no use with me.”

Finn looked at Cecily. He saw her eyes fill with tears at the mention of her father’s name.

“What’s the matter with ye, girl? How could ye take off like that?” asked Beja.

“I…” Cecily offered no explanation. “I’m sorry.”

After they’d finished, Anton drew them into his workshop. They left the kitchen with Beja still muttering. “Ye’re no better than wild things, the pair of ye.” Her voice trailed behind them.

Inside the workshop, Anton gestured to a pair of stools. He waited for them to sit, his expression calm, giving them a moment to gather themselves before they told the story he knew must come.

“Tell me,” he said. “Where have you been?”

Finn began, the words spilling out—arriving in 1296, the forest, Hawthorne Manor.

“Sorcery?” Anton interrupted, his brow furrowed. “They accused you of sorcery?”

Finn nodded, then pushed on to the Scottish campaign, the year he’d lost Cecily. He faltered there, the memory still raw.

Cecily took his hand and spoke of Julian, of her other self, dying. She told him of the poison, the escape, the final jump. Through it all, Anton listened, his face a mask of concentration, the only person alive who could hear such a story and believe it.

When Finn finished, the workshop was very quiet.

“You say the machine disappeared?” Anton asked at last.

“Yes, the moment we arrived,” Cecily said. “It was there one second, gone the next. We were still catching our breath when it vanished.”

Anton walked to the back room. He returned with a roll of parchment, drawings, diagrams, dense columns of notation in his cramped handwriting. He spread them on the table and stood over them with the expression he wore when a problem was finally, irritatingly, resolving itself.

“I think I understand,” he said. “I couldn’t test it before, though.”

“Test what?” Finn asked.

“This device, this time-traveling machine, is not my design. It was built by someone else. I created a drawing of the way it works, then I began to work on repairs. There’s a mechanism, here,” he said, pointing to the drawing, “in its design that controls the return. And here’s the lever that activates it. I believe the original designer intended it as a failsafe.”

Anton ran his finger over a section of the diagram, a small cluster of symbols that had always looked like meaningless jottings to Finn.

“Unless you make certain this lever is in the correct position, it will return to its point of last departure.” Anton traced the notation. “When you activated it in 1301, that became the origin. When you arrived here, the sequence triggered automatically and sent the machine back. The lever must have been in the wrong position when you traveled. It’s easy to miss, I grant you that.”

“Then it went back to 1301,” Finn said.

“Yes,” Anton confirmed. “To the exact moment and place you left from.”

Finn said, “I was punching in numbers so quickly, I didn’t notice that lever at all.” He thought for a moment. “But I never touched it. I only adjusted the time sequences and dials. The machine always stayed with us before. I wonder…” He paused and tilted his head. “I wonder if Julian and Benedict, on one of their trips, figured out how to use this lever to return it to its original time. Maybe they moved the switch.”