A World Without You(63)

“Everything’s okay now,” Sofía tells the Doctor in a soft voice that still holds a note of steely determination. She sounds as if she’s made a decision.

And then she turns to look at me. Her irises are invisible. They always were the first things to go.

“You need to wake up,” she says, staring at me.

“Can you see me?” I say. “What’s going on? Why can’t Dr. Franklin see me? And what do you mean?”

“Wake up!” she shouts, the last word drowning into a scream.

I jerk back, stumbling out of my chair.

“Bo?” the Doctor asks.

I’m back in the present.

“Is something wrong?”

I stare at the empty chair beside me. “No,” I say slowly. “No, everything’s okay now.”





CHAPTER 41




I sit cross-legged on the cool sandy soil in front of the ruined remains of the chimney at the edge of the marsh. I’m so still that an observer might think I’m meditating.

But I’m not. I’m waiting.

I stare at the timestream, concentrating on the areas that are leaking around me. Not all of the times and places breaking through are connected to the island, but most are. The Native American tribes I catch glimpses of look like the ones that lived here before the first European settlers, and the Pilgrims I see could be from any of the colonies, but it seems likely that they live nearby. The kids from the sick camp are obviously from around here.

It takes me a while to realize that the people who are showing up from different places—people like Carlos Estrada, or a Mexican family speaking Spanish rapidly, or a group of giggling girls around fifteen years old dressed in fluffy dresses—they’re all coming from different places, but they all link back to her.

All the leaks in time are centered on either the island or Sofía. Somehow, they’re connected. And if I can figure out that connection, maybe I can figure out how to stop the leaks, control the timestream, and save Sofía.

So I’m waiting, watching, trying to piece together all the different bits of time swirling in and around this place.

Trying to forget the way Sofía’s eyes turned invisible as she screamed at me.

I am perfectly still as the timestream creaks and groans like the deck of a wooden ship. I turn my head slightly to see a group of kids rushing by, running and laughing, one of them waving a long, colorfully decorated stick. Something from Sofía’s past—some childhood birthday party or similar. I consider jumping up and chasing them back into their time, where I could see Sofía when she was eight or nine years old. Maybe I could warn her to stay away from the boy who can control time.

But she’d be too young. And I’d be too out of place.

A fire crackles in the ruins’ hearth. The fire spreads, both creating and destroying the house as it burns. I can feel the heat of it on my skin, and its smoke blinds me. I start coughing and stumble back, moving away from the flames. This is how the house was destroyed in the 1700s. It wasn’t people who slipped through the timestream this time, it was the whole damn house.

And then I hear a scream.

“Sofía?” I gasp, choking on the smoke.

No. That’s impossible. Sofía was sent back a hundred years before the fire started. There’s no way—

And then I see her. In the second story of the burning building. She’s screaming, beating her arms on the glass panes. She’s trapped. She’s burning alive.

“SOFíA!” I roar, rushing toward the flaming house.

It disappears.

The sound and the smoke disappear too, leaving me gasping, my head spinning.

She was there.

But . . . how?

Maybe . . . maybe the cracks in time are all linked to Sofía and this island not because she’s trapped in the 1600s, during the Salem Witch Trials, but because Sofía’s trapped in the cracks, falling through time, and the only thing linking her to reality is this island.

As I stand there, trying to figure out what’s going on, the house reappears. It doesn’t smell of acrid burning; it smells of freshly sawn wood and new paint. The stone steps leading to the front door grow up under my feet, and I turn, slowly, my back to the house.

I see Sofía again.

This time, she’s crying. Silently but violently, her shoulders shake and her teeth chatter in fear.

There’s a rope around her neck.

Four men—two of whom I had seen before on horseback in the marsh—stand over Sofía’s body. She’s gotten her hands on some time-appropriate clothes; she looks like a Pilgrim. Except for her too-dark skin.

Another woman is there, a teenaged girl with blonde hair and dark eyes. She points at Sofía and yells, “Witch!”

The girl starts moving as if she’s having a seizure, but her motions are too planned, too repetitive. The men standing over Sofía take action. One leaves the group to comfort the girl. The others throw the end of the rope over a heavy branch of a nearby oak tree, and they use a horse to drag Sofía’s protesting body up and up and up. She claws at the noose around her neck, her eyes wide and popping.

“Stop!” I shout, striding forward.

But before I can do anything, they all disappear.

I spin around wildly, looking for whatever break in the timestream is going to happen next. The chimney is a ruin; the tree they were stringing Sofía up on is nothing but a stump. I sink to my knees. Is this Sofía’s hell? To be found and killed throughout time?