He sensed that he might forget the future they had just come from, might slip seamlessly back into whatever former version of himself that he was returning to. For he instinctively understood that this was not like using a Time Turner—this was not his future self doubling back to revisit a previous memory, while still essentially tethered to the future.
This kind of time travel unwound along his own lifeline, de-aging him, returning him to the very person that he had been then, younger, and ultimately oblivious to whatever future he had just come from. He would only remember that future if he forced himself to concentrate on it, to cling to it like a dream upon waking.
There was motion around him, as if the whole world was rolling, rocking, creaking faintly, banging with footsteps and distant, urgent voices. The drone of noise finally resolved itself, and James recognized it.
He knew where he was.
He knew when he was.
There was a bliss of relief, even in the midst of the worrying motion, the creaking and rocking, the ominous groan of approaching thunder and howling wind.
Because none of it had happened yet. Somewhere, far away, the Vault of Destinies was still intact. The Loom was still spinning its mysterious, unbroken tale of earthly destiny. The Vow of Secrecy was yet intact, absolutely inviolate.
And amazingly, wonderfully nearby—James sensed this almost as if he could hear and feel her very beating heart—was his cousin Lucy.
She was still alive.
This won’t be any magical storm, Barstow, the first mate of the Gwyndemere, had said to James. Not like what nearly overtook the fabled Treus and his crew…
How wrong he had been about that.
As James clambered up the stairs to the swaying, rocking mid-ship deck, he recognized the storm that bore down on the ship, chilling the wind, whistling through the rigging and sails, growling with deliberate intent. It was Judith’s cursed tempest, unrelenting, still seeking payment in death. It had pursued James first to Hogwarts, and then to the cemetery, and now, incredibly, it had followed him back through the years, into his own past, to the ocean voyage of the Gwyndemere, during James’ third school year.
He remembered the smell of it, the sudden roaring violence of it, only unlike the first time he had encountered it, now he understood it.
It had always been Judith’s cursed storm, seeking payment in blood. It had been cheated once, but only for a time. The clock had turned back.
James had a sinking certainty that, this time, there would be no escaping payment.
The sky moved overhead with sickening speed, as dark and heavy as a tombstone. The ocean all around was a mountainscape of leaden waves, carrying the ship over looming peaks and down into guttural valleys.
Ensconced in the elevated pilot’s chair atop the bow, Barstow himself clapped his hat tight to his head with one hand, hung on to the guiding pole with the other. James marveled at it all, remembering every detail in a giddy rush—the sea monster, Henrietta, that powered the ship, corkscrewing the waves with her lithe, scaly body; his parents and relatives in the captain’s quarters beneath the stern, waiting out the storm while Merlin observed keenly, knowing that something portentous was afoot; and Petra standing on the deck above them, her dress and hair whipping in the gale winds, her eyes calm but eerily haunted, tormented by dreams of her stepsister, Izzy, drowning to death, murdered for a bargain of lost love and hopelessness.
The Petra of that time did not understand that she was, in fact, infected by the dreams of her dimensional twin, Morgan, soon to be unleashed onto a world that was not her own.
But this version of Petra did understand.
James turned and tried to run up the mid-ship steps to the stern.
The rocking ship pitched him, made him stumble. He flailed for the bannister and groped his way to the top.
Petra was there, just as before, her back to him, her hands resting calmly on the railing that arced around the stern. He hair whipped and flicked in loose ribbons. Her drab dress fluttered about her legs like a flag.
“Petra,” James called, raising his voice over the storm.
She turned to look back at him, and he stopped in place, his heart thudding up into his throat. She was so much younger than he remembered. And yet her blank face, her haunted eyes, made her seem much older than even the Petra in the Time Between the Times. She looked at him only briefly, a mere sidelong glance over her shoulder, and then, without a word, turned back to the raging storm and the mountainous waves. The ship rocked in slow, precipitous rhythm, like an enormous pendulum dividing time into dwindling moments.
James braved the canting deck and joined her at the stern, grabbing onto the railing himself. It was cold and wet. In mere moments, if things weren’t changed, Petra would be thrown over it, swept by the falling mast and its swinging booms.
“We should go below decks,” he said, raising his voice over the wind and looking aside at her. She was the same height as him in this timeframe. Her hair flitted and swirled around her face, hiding her eyes.
Just like last time, she made no sign of consent or agreement. But she did place her hand on his, covering it. Whether giving or taking comfort, there was no way to tell.
“Petra…” he called again, trying to get her to look at him.
“She’s out there,” Petra replied, not taking her gaze from the marching waves. Each was of nearly alpine height, dwarfing the ship, topped with white crests that tattered in the gale winds.
James looked out and up at the constantly shifting ocean topography. He nodded. “She always was, wasn’t she? Water is her medium, after all. She was the waves and the rain. She followed us the whole way, biding her time, watching, waiting for her moment. We can’t give it to her. We need to go below, Petra. Right now.”
“Lucy is still alive here,” Petra nodded to herself, ignoring him.
“If we do it right, she won’t have to die again. None of it will have to happen.”
A shiver coursed down James’ back, chilling him. He reached to touch her elbow. “Odin-Vann let slip with his plan,” he said. The wind batted his words, tried to steal them away. “He said that the only way to change the past was to find something that almost happened differently, and to make sure that it does. I think… they mean to see you fall from the back of the ship, to die, like you almost did the first time. Then, Odin-Vann will take over as Judith’s host in this world.”
Petra nodded again, slowly, her eyes still hauntingly clear as she looked out over the tempest, measuring it. “She will be weaker with him as her host than she was when Izzy and I were her sister fates. She knows this. She is a creature from outside of time. Her future, dying self has informed her past, vibrant self. Donofrio won’t multiply her power as we did. But neither will he oppose her. Where Izzy and I defied and broke her, he will submit and bow to her. That’s all that matters to Judith now.”