“Magic will end forever, completely, seventeen days from now, and it will never return.” I realized that was likely a lie, that some agent from some other nation would still manage to recruit some other witch—that I was asking this not for the good of magic but only for the good of the United States’ ability to close the Magic Gap. I chose not to clarify this point.
“So,” she said, “magic will end in seventeen days no matter what I do, but in the next seventeen days, if I put this spell on myself, I will bring it back someday.”
“Yes.”
“What do I do for all the many long years that I am alive? How do I make my way? I am trained only to do magic.”
“I don’t know,” I said, taken aback. “But I know that you land on your feet. When we meet, more than a century from now, you have been staying somewhere for many years where all your needs are taken care of, so somehow you must stumble across money. Perhaps you marry a wealthy man and inherit his fortune. Perhaps you become a schoolteacher or scientist or take up with the Fuggers—remember that name, Erszebet, and ODEC, and Facebook, and—” My mind whirled: What else was I supposed to tell her? What else had the ancient Erszebet claimed I’d told her? “I don’t know, Erszebet. I wish I did. All I know is that if you had not agreed to do this, I would not be here right now.”
“I Sent you back?”
“Not this time. But most of the times that I have been Sent places, you Send me.”
She frowned. “Why do you want to be Sent so often?”
“We work for the government of the United States. It requires us to move around through time.”
Her eyes brightened for a moment. “Will I do that too? Move around in time?”
“You never expressed an interest, but I suppose you could. We can discuss it—but only if you agree to put the spell on yourself and Send me forward to my own time.”
She pursed her lips. “Why does magic end in seventeen days?”
“It’s very complicated,” I said. “Technology—like everything you see here in the Crystal Palace—it interferes with magic. In just over a fortnight, an extremely significant technological achievement will occur and that will end magic.”
“Why not just prevent the technological achievement?” asked Erszebet.
“It’s too important to the rest of the world.”
“More important than magic?”
“Yes,” I said, and she looked displeased in a way that made it clear this would be harder than I’d anticipated.
“Technology should not be more important than magic,” she said earnestly. Very earnestly, and naively, because she was actually only nineteen years old. Not one hundred and eighty appearing to be nineteen. “I will interfere with this technology. What is it?”
“It’s too far away,” I said. “It’s something that happens in Prussia.”
“I have friends in Prussia,” she said immediately. “I can communicate with them and tell them to sabotage whatever it is.”
“That will cause diakrónikus nyírás,” I said.
She looked terribly deflated. “I wish I did not know this,” she said.
“There is no other way,” I said. I had never believed much in fate, but I was shaken by how remarkable it was, that I had been sent to this DTAP as an act of Gráinne’s treachery, and yet being here—it turned out—was unavoidable. Perhaps on other Strands I got here by different methods.
“I need to think about this,” she said. “This is so much, so very much, to ask of anyone. Do you understand?”
“I do. I wouldn’t ask if it was not incredibly important. Please let me give you the information that you need in case we are separated.” Out of my reticule I took my journal and a pencil, and wrote down ODEC, Facebook, the approximate date we were to connect in the future, Tristan Lyons, and Fuggers (Bank). Then, remembering that she had impressed Tristan with her understanding of the ODEC’s mechanics, I scribbled what fractured physics-engineering babble I could remember from five years earlier, when Tristan and Oda-sensei were first bonding over developing the ODEC. I tore the leaf from my journal and handed it to her. She hesitantly took it, looked at it, grimly tucked it into her own reticule. I felt faint with gratitude. “So you will say yes?” I said.
“It would be easier if somebody else aged with me.” She looked relieved. “Perhaps my lover!”
“That’s a bad idea,” I said. “Do you know the saying, three may keep a secret if two of them are dead? It will be hard enough for you to pass undetected.”
“Then you shall stay here and keep me company until you die. By then I will have found somebody else. I will be a freak of nature if I try to remain in one community for very long. They will grow suspicious. I will need companions. You must be my first companion.”
“Erszebet,” I said, “I cannot do that. I must get home. I must warn my friends against some terrible things that are happening. If I do not warn them, even your sacrifice may ultimately be for nothing.”
She looked very weary then, and rubbed her face with her hand. “This is far too much for me to think about all at once,” she said. “I need some time.”
“There is no time,” I said with urgency. I glanced around and, with a sinking heart, saw her parents approaching us, her father with a scolding look on his face. “Please think about it,” I said, “and meet me again as soon as possible. Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow we go home to Budapest,” she said, looking down. “I cannot help you. And I will not extend my life to help you in the future, it is far too painful a calling.”
“Please,” I said, “please, Erszebet, reconsider. If you do not do this, I am mired here forever.”
“I would not be your jailor, but I cannot be your savior,” she said, almost apologetically. Then she rose, with a forced smile on her face, as her parents reached us.
Her mother gave me a look that might shatter concrete, and then in a low voice began to interrogate Erszebet right in front of me in Hungarian. My Hungarian was weak but the sentences were fairly rudimentary: “Who Sent her? Where is she from? What does she know about magic dying? What can we do?”
Perhaps Erszebet was not the witch I should have spoken to?
“Tell your mother!” I said urgently to Erszebet, as her parents began to move her away from me. “Tell her everything!” And to the mother, in bumbling Magyar: “Erszebet can help the magic. I told her how. But I can do nothing. She must do it.”
Her parents looked astonished. After a stunned moment, they both glanced at me and then back to her, and she seemed to wither under their gaze. To see Erszebet Karpathy cowed was even more disorienting than to see her joyful.
Her father took her arm and very forcefully began to lead her through the crowd. I was certain—I am certain—never to see her again.