8
CECILY
Cecily’s knees hit the ground first.
Hard earth, grooved with wagon ruts, bit into her skin. Gravel dug into her palms. A low thrumming vibrated from the ground up through her body, a phantom echo of the machine that left her stomach churning.
She sucked in a breath and tasted dust and smoke.
“Finn?” she rasped.
No answer.
Smoke hung in the air, close enough to sting her eyes. She pushed herself upright and looked around.
They were near a road. Not the Graston Road she knew should be nearby, but a wider one, churned and rutted by traffic. Footprints crossed it in every direction. The imprint of cart wheels gouged deep into the soil.
Anton’s workshop was gone. In its place was only a rectangle of scraped earth, the ghost of a foundation, as if the house had been plucked from the ground years ago.
Her chest felt hollow. “Finn,” she said again, louder.
A figure moved along the edge of the road, a woman, bent under the weight of a bundle. She did not look up as Cecily approached. She did not slow.
“Please,” Cecily said to the woman. “Can you tell me—”
The woman ignored her, kept walking.
The fields beyond the road were trampled, the crops torn and strewn on the ground. A cart stood abandoned at the ditch, one wheel cracked, its load of grain spilled and trodden into the dirt.
Farther off, the door of a small home stood open, scorched black along the edge. A body lay near the hedge. No one stopped to look.
Her mouth went dry. The accents, the soldiers, the body by the hedge. This was England, but not her England. This was a place she didn’t know at all.
She staggered back toward where the workshop should have been and nearly collided with Finn.
He caught her by the arms. “Easy.”
“You’re here,” she breathed.
“Looks like we both made it,” he said, though his eyes were fixed on the road, the smoke, the open gate. “But made it where? When?”
She shook her head. “Not where we were.”
His gaze slid past her. “Cecily.”
She followed it.
The time machine lay in a shallow ditch beside the road, its iron frame tilted at an angle, one side sunk deep in mud. The curtain had torn loose and dragged along the ground, streaked brown. A cart and horse aimed straight toward it and careened away at the last moment, barely missing it.
The road was too busy. Anyone passing would notice the iron frame of the machine, the wrongness of it, even if they didn’t understand what it was.
Finn set his shoulder against the frame and heaved. It scraped and groaned against the dirt. Together, they wrestled it into the shadows of the scorched house. They had just begun kicking rubble over it when the sound of marching feet grew louder on the road.
Finn froze, grabbing her arm. “It’s not well hidden.” He scanned the ruins frantically. “But there’s no time. We have to leave it.”
She knew he was right. She nodded once and turned away with him.
Cecily surveyed the scene before her. People and carts streamed past in a steady line. No one bobbed a curtsy to her, something she expected whenever she’d gone into town at home. The thought startled her, and then something more unexpected followed it. No one was watching her at all. No one cared.
And no one, she now understood, was going to protect them.
“Let’s go,” Finn said.
Cecily turned her face to the unknown and began walking.