Page 21 of Across Time

I’m willing to admit to myself that Henri is attractive, but saying it aloud is something else. I’m not sure why—I’ve told Mark a thousand times about my crush on Sean Connery. But that’s different. It’s not real. Which I suppose means my crush on Henri sort of…is.

"We should probably not speak too much of the future?" I suggest gently, and she nods in agreement, but worry creases her brow again.

She has guessed, or is at least wondering, if I'm describing a future in which she does not exist. She's asking about the son she adores and she wants to know that he's okay.

"He's the most handsome man I've ever laid eyes on," I tell her quietly, looking once more at his photo before I set it on the table.

When I glance up at her something has changed in her face—as if I just gave her the critical clue in a mystery she could not make sense of until now. She refills my tea. "You were asking about the circle of light,” she says. “What did you want to know?"

I blink in surprise. Two minutes ago she was politely asking me to leave, and just as suddenly she appears to have changed her mind. I lean forward, eager to get an answer before she rethinks the decision. “I’m trying to figure out why my aunt went after it and where she would have gone.”

She tsks. "Why she went after it? Because it’s what we all crave, of course. Surely your mother explained all this to you?”

"My mother can't time travel. And if she did know, she wouldn't tell me." I swirl my cup in my saucer. "She thinks time travel is a bit of a, um, curse.”

She gives me a sad smile, one that reminds me of Marie. "That must have been very hard for you," she says. “People can be very ignorant sometimes. If she were capable of it, she’d feel differently.”

I can’t say I agree. What good has time travel ever brought into my life? Could a few trips backward to warn myself about pop quizzes and a paper I was going to botch possibly be worth all the terrible things it’s been responsible for?

"I can do it, and it seems to have led to more bad than good for me."

She holds my gaze for a moment. "Without it, I'm not sure what we'd have done after the war. It's saved my life and my children's lives on more than one occasion. It’s how I was able to visit my husband during the war,” she adds with a small, wistful smile. “Which is the reason your friend Marie exists.”

I grin. Madame Durand time traveled to have sex with her husband during the war. Henri seems like the type who would hate knowing that. It’s going to be so tempting to let it slip.

“Anyway,” she continues, “you know the prophecy, I’m sure.”

I sip my tea. “Only the outlines.”

“In France there will be a hidden child born of the first family, conceived during a great war and born on the other side of it,” she recites. “In her our hope shall rest, for she will produce the circle of light, and within that circle, our past and present will be safe from those who would do us harm.”

Marie got most of it right, but she left something out: a product of the first families. I’m not sure who the first families are exactly, and I don’t dare draw her suspicion again by asking.

“None of us are certain what the circle of light is,” she continues. “To be honest, I always thought it would be a person. But there were reports of something that sounded like it just after the war—a mysterious golden circle people saw just behind Sacré-Coeur.”

My stomach sinks. The war ended in 1918. If that’s where she went, twenty years have passed. She’d have gotten home by now if she were going to.

“A mysterious golden circle doesn’t seem like much to go on,” I reply. “That could be anything.”

“It was all over the news. For weeks there was chaos in Paris—the city was flooded with visitors, entirely female. Clothing and food disappeared to such an extent that it became international news. And in Paris they began calling it le plus beau mois, the most beautiful month, because of the loveliness of the women. It's suspicious, do you not think?"

I sigh. It's very suspicious. An object straight out of a prophecy, and an influx of what very obviously sounds like time travelers coming to check it out. "And no one found it?"

"Not as far as we know," she says, her mouth tipping up at the corners. The way Henri smiles sometimes when he's trying not to. "Not yet."

Don’t go, I want to plead. Don’t do this. How could it possibly be worth what you’ll lose? "What would make anyone believe they could find it when no one else has succeeded?"

She smiles again. “Haven’t you ever heard the legend of King Arthur?” she asks. “Only the chosen one could remove the sword. Perhaps the circle of light is the same.”

There is something she is not telling me, but what is it? She clearly doesn’t realize there’s such a risk involved in going back for this thing, but she isn’t a naïve woman. Why would she think she could do what no one else could? And why wait seventeen years if she thought she could?

“I’m surprised you didn’t go try to find the circle at the time,” I suggest.

She looks out the window, seeing nothing. “I was a widow with a newborn and a toddler. I was in no position to go anywhere. And there’d have been no point—it’s not as if I am the chosen one.”

It makes even less sense, then, why she’d be going to see it now. But I’m not here to understand it. I’m here to know where she’d have gone.

“So if I were to go looking for my aunt, where and when should I go?”