“Go on,” Nicholas urged.
“I was trying to figure out the ‘deaf ears’ part, thinking of real, living people, but what if it’s talking about the statues themselves? They can’t hear or see or feel.”
“Do you recall ever hearing any strange noises while in their proximity?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Based on the way your mother used the clue about Nathan Hale’s execution, it’s likely the passage is in the museum, near where those statues are housed. The British Museum of my time is likely quite different than the one you know; I’ve never been granted access to it, nor was I ever given the full record of where all of the known passages are located—I’m a bit lost as to what to suggest.”
Frustration pooled in the pit of her stomach, rising with each passing moment. Nicholas watched her, waiting. “I don’t know—are we overthinking this? Should it be something simpler? More obvious?”
He stooped slightly to look her in the eye. “It’s all right. Perhaps it would help to think aloud? Anything, however small, might help us.…”
She nodded. He could help her clarify her thoughts, and might catch something buried in the words. “Mom works for a museum, but in New York. There’s been a lot of renewed debate recently about whether or not the Elgin Marbles should be returned to Greece—it’s been all over the press. The British Museum is just the British Museum, you know? Or, well, I guess you don’t. Yet. But…Alice used to give us her own special tours. Her father was a curator. She told me the whole story about how they came to be in the museum’s collection.”
“Alice…your instructor?” he clarified.
Her throat was suddenly too tight to speak. Nicholas merely nodded again, as if he’d somehow put all of the pieces together.
With a small, tentative smile, he asked, “Shall we go, then?”
With the image of Alice still too close to the front of her mind, and exhaustion stretching every emotion, Etta didn’t trust her voice. She nodded, accepting his arm when he offered it. It didn’t even occur to her that her hands were cold until she placed one into his. Despite everything, Etta felt anticipation fizzing through her veins, prickling across her nerves. The scene around them sank through her, became real. Nicholas gave her a knowing look.
“It’s just…unbelievable that we’re here,” she told him. “All of this…”
It was beautiful, and strange, and unnatural, and she couldn’t help it—she wanted to explore what was around her. To see it for herself, the world unfolding as it was—not the edited versions presented in films and books.
“Under other, less dire, circumstances,” he said, “might you be glad to see this?”
It felt like a betrayal to her anger at the Ironwoods to give the yes that was in her heart, even with the way he’d couched the question. “I don’t know. Let’s see how we do, and then I’ll answer that.”
Let’s see if I can find the astrolabe and my mother, and set my life straight again.
Nicholas slung the leather bag over his other shoulder, letting it slap against his hip as they navigated the maze of debris. He stopped suddenly, craning his neck around. Etta followed his gaze to where gold letters gleamed high above the entrance archway. The contrast between them and the battered ruins of the structure made the hair rise on the back of her arms.
“Burlington Arcade,” he read.
She knew this place—she’d been here once, years ago, for a performance. Alice had walked her through the long enclosed shopping center with all of its glittering stores. They’d found Christmas presents for Rose.
“I think I know where we are,” she said. “Roughly.”
Rough was a good way to describe what they saw as they stepped out of the ruined arcade and onto the street. She’d known to expect destruction—she’d seen pictures, heard Alice and Oskar describe it with a raw pain that lingered decades later. What Etta hadn’t expected was that so many Londoners would be out and about in suits, dresses, and heels, carefully picking their way through the piles of debris that had blown out of storefronts, deftly avoiding the craters that had collapsed in whole sections, the surface of the street torn away to reveal the pipes beneath.
Clouds passed over the sun, spotting the ground with shadows. Etta watched Nicholas as they made their way down a succession of connecting streets, heading east. He was drifting to the left, pulling away, until her hand slipped off his sleeve. The nausea and wooziness from the traveler’s sickness had passed, but she felt disoriented all over again, in a very different way. Though Nicholas stayed only a step ahead of her, she felt the distance build between them until she felt suddenly alone.
Every now and then Nicholas caught sight of something new—a bicycle, a window display, a police officer in uniform, a traffic light—and it would drag his attention away. Etta could tell he didn’t want to have to ask her to explain—there was some part of him that was enjoying the process of figuring it out himself—but he was curious.
“Have you been here before?” she asked finally. “Here-here?”
He shook his head, answering quietly, “I only went as far as 1925, and that was in New Orleans.”
Compared to the quiet of the eighteenth century, twentieth-century London practically roared around them. A car beeped and sped past them, and Etta felt a hand clamp over her wrist. Nicholas flew back against the nearby shop, and Etta stumbled after him.
A nearby shopkeeper was writing BUSINESS AS USUAL on a piece of wood in the shattered front window of his store, and looked up at the sudden movement in alarm. Etta sent the man a reassuring smile before turning back to the man next to her.
The breath tore in and out of Nicholas, his nostrils flaring as the car rolled to a rattling stop nearby.
After a moment he explained, “They’re…louder than I recall. Faster.”
She nodded. “They probably are.”
“And,” Nicholas said, his voice lowering as he looked down at her, “you have them in your time, as well?”
“Yeah, even better ones. Faster, quieter—they use less energy, some have built-in navigational systems—” Okay, too much detail. His eyes had widened at the words less energy, and she knew she’d lost him. “Everything changes, when given enough time.”
He worked his jaw back and forth. “Everything?”
It might have been the way he was studying her mouth, or how his hands seemed to be lightly tracing the folds of her dress’s skirt without even being fully aware of it, but the trickle of confusion roared into a jagged, painful understanding.
Oh, she thought, throat thick. Oh…
“Do you want me to tell you?” she asked him. “Do you really want to know what my time is like?”
If he did plan on returning home and never traveling again, he would never benefit from any progress—never see it for himself. It would drive anyone crazy, knowing what was out of reach of his natural lifetime.
Finally, Nicholas shook his head. “I’d rather discover it for myself.”
She could protect him in the meantime, at least. “You covered for me on the ship. The least I can do is return the favor now, the best I can.”
His smile turned rueful. “This ‘partners’ business is a rather novel concept for me…but I appreciate that.”