My brow arches. “So you know about the wood, then?”
“I told you, I will not return,” he says, his voice tight as he strains against me. “Not until I have done what I must.”
“Unfortunately for you, I can’t just let you waltz right out of here. It goes against my job description.”
His face screws up like he’s trying to make sense of what I just said. He knocks his head back against the ground and sighs. “You cannot make me go anywhere.”
“Oh, I beg to differ.”
I need to get him out of here, and this back-and-forth stuff isn’t working for me. It may be a slow afternoon so far, but that doesn’t mean anything, and I don’t want to be distracted by another traveler and accidentally let one—or both—slip through the cracks.
I press the knife harder into his throat. “I’m guessing by your accent and your clothes that you’re British, from the eighteenth or early nineteenth century. Close enough?”
His chest rises and falls as he tries to catch his breath. “You cannot send me back if I do not say. Travelers must be returned to their own time and place and no other.”
My eyes widen. “How do you know that?”
“I would rather not say.”
There was a time, or so I’ve been told, when the wood’s secrets were common knowledge in our world, before they passed into the realm of fairy tales. So I guess it’s not that surprising that I would eventually come across a traveler who knows what this wood is, what it does. But that knowledge doesn’t give him the right to cross into my time—which seems to be where he was headed, judging by his trajectory—or any other, for that matter.
“You’re right, I do have to send you back to your own time and place.” I shrug. “Give or take fifty years.”
“You lie,” he says, but there’s the tiniest spark of doubt—or maybe fear—in his eyes, and it’s all I need.
“It isn’t an exact science, you know. So you have a choice. I can send you back through the right threshold, or I can guess and send you back anyway. I may be right; I may be wrong. It won’t matter much to me either way. But if I am wrong, you’ll live without your family, without your property, and without everything else you’ve built for yourself for the rest of your life. Which will it be?”
He moves fast, pulling an arm out from underneath my grasp and laying his hand over mine, pushing the blade away from his neck. The knife nicks him in the process, and a drop of blood beads on his skin, lazily dripping down his collarbone. He lifts his head and stares into my eyes.
“Even were that true, which I know very well it is not, I have lost everything already.” His voice cracks, and the brittle sound pierces my heart. “That is why I am here. Please. Let me pass.”
“I can’t.” I say it with conviction, with all the authority my position bestows upon me, but I can’t quite meet his pained gaze. He lets out a frustrated breath. I decide to try one more time. “From whence—”
“Brightonshire. The third of June in the year of our Lord, 1783.”
I exhale but don’t move. “Now the question is, are we going to do this the easy way, or the hard way?”
“I will not give you any trouble.”
I don’t believe him, so when I push away from him and stand, I grip the coin dangling from my makeshift bracelet and rub my thumb over the ancient glyphs carved into its face. The glyphs light up, pure white on black obsidian.
He stands slowly, wipes the dirt from his breeches. The silk stockings beneath his knees are torn, his leather shoes flecked with mud. The white linen shirt he wears beneath his open coat is damp and clings to his chest. Muscles that would put Trevor’s to shame stick to the fabric, looking sharp enough to cut diamonds.
My stomach flutters, and I silently curse my hormones. Even if it weren’t highly unprofessional, this is no boy to be checking out.
In my time, he’s long past dead.
I tuck the knife into my back pocket and gesture toward the path behind him, where sunlight filters through the canopy in lemon-yellow strips. “After you.”
He straightens, tugging on the hem of his coat. “I apologize, Madam, for I have no intention of returning. Please move aside. I would rather not harm you.”
I smile, and it catches him off guard. “The hard way works, too.”
He hesitates, just a moment, but it’s enough. By the time he’s started running toward me, I’ve already opened my mouth.
“Sahabri’el.” The word rushes past my lips in a voice that is not entirely my own. This voice trills its r’s and practically chokes on its h’s. It is a dead language that has not been heard outside the wood for thousands of years, and it stops him cold.
The coin pulses against my wrist as the word travels through the trees. It all seems slower to me—the sound of the voice drifting on the air, growing louder as it moves farther away; the widening of the boy’s eyes and the falter in his steps as the odd language tickles his ears—but I know, for him, it takes less than a second, and then he is surrounded by a net of blue fireflies.
My last resort.
He lifts his hand toward them, their light shining against his palm.
I shake my head. “I wouldn’t do that—”
There’s a zap, and the smell of burnt knuckle hair singes my nostrils. The boy pulls his hand back and cradles it against his chest. Small, red burns dot the tips of his fingers. He grits his teeth hard and starts to barrel forward.
“Stop!” I yell.
He does, eyeing me with distrust.
“You can try to move through them faster or harder or whatever it is you think you need to do,” I say, “but the burns will only get worse. Now”—I cross my arms over my chest—“are you ready to follow me like a good little boy?”
The emotion flickers through his eyes so quickly I almost miss it.
Defeat.
But it isn’t what I expected. It’s deep and filled with a pain so intense, I’ve only ever seen it once before, in my mother’s eyes. On the day our world shattered. And I can’t help but wonder, What the hell happened to him to leave him looking so utterly devastated?
No. I can’t read too much into his life. Can’t let myself become curious. Everyone feels pain at some point or another. It doesn’t give him the right to cross time and muck everything up.
He follows me down the path without saying a word. The fireflies buzz like static around him as we twist and turn through the trees. Ten minutes pass. Twenty. I can feel his eyes on me, but I don’t look back.
Even though I want to.
We finally reach his threshold, the words Brightonshire, England carved into the shingle hanging above it. The fireflies unfold from their net, allowing him to move forward, through his threshold, while creating a wall behind him, blocking his escape.
He gives me a sidelong look. “I will return, and I will find a way around you.”
I shake my head. “I don’t think so, Jack.”
“That is not my name.”
“It’s an expression.”
“It is an odd one.” He studies me. “You are not what I expected.”