48
FINN
Anton’s house sat in the center of Graston, a stone building, expansive even for the merchant class, with a kitchen garden tucked along the western wall and a small, detached workshop where Anton did his private work.
Smoke curled from the chimney. An upper window stood open to catch the evening breeze.
Cecily’s hand was in Finn’s.
“Let’s get some answers,” Finn said.
Cecily fell into step beside him.
Beja answered the door.
She took one look at them—travel-worn, hollow-eyed, dressed in clothes that had been tossed through time itself—and stepped aside without a word, pulling the door open wide.
“Come in,” she said. “Quickly.”
The house was warm, smelling of roasting meat and herbs. It was all so painfully ordinary. Finn leaned against the doorframe, the solid wood a comfort at his back. For the first time in what felt like a lifetime, the frantic rhythm in his chest began to soften.
Anton emerged from the back room. He stopped when he saw them, taking in their appearance.
For a moment Finn saw it all in his face: the sleeplessness, the hours of not knowing, the particular hollowness of someone who had spent days bracing for the worst. Then it passed, and Anton’s face composed itself into the careful expression he wore when something difficult had to be managed.
“You’re back,” he said.
“Somehow,” Finn managed, the single word carrying the weight of years.
Beja dashed into the kitchen to begin preparing food. Finn and Cecily were alone with Anton.
“How long have you been gone?” Anton asked. “Where, when, did you go?”
“For us?” Finn exchanged a glance with Cecily. “About four years.” He paused. “Here? Now? We don’t know. How long has it been since we left?”
“Three days.” Anton studied him. “Almost four. Long enough for your family to worry, short enough that no one has gone to the sheriff yet.”
Nearly four days. Finn breathed slowly. That was manageable. That could be woven into a story they could sell.
Beja returned and drew them into the kitchen. “Sit. Ye look like ye haven’t eaten in years.”
Finn barely heard Beja’s commentary as he tore into the roasted meat, savoring the taste of roasted meet. He washed it down with ale, the simple bitterness a comfort. Across from him, Cecily was eating just as intently, her eyes closed for a moment as she ate a piece of cheese.
“It’s a fine thing,” Beja said, “runnin’ away like that, and together, ye shameless wastrels.
Why, yer parents are beside themselves.” She turned to face Cecily.
“Yer pa, don’t ye forget he’s my own dear son, almost lost his mind lookin’ fer ye.
Where’ve ye been, anyway? Oh, don’t bother makin’ up stories. It’s no use with me.”
Finn looked at Cecily. He saw her eyes fill with tears at the mention of her father’s name.
“What’s the matter with ye, girl? How could ye take off like that?” asked Beja.
“I…” Cecily offered no explanation. “I’m sorry.”
After they’d finished, Anton drew them into his workshop. They left the kitchen with Beja still muttering. “Ye’re no better than wild things, the pair of ye.” Her voice trailed behind them.
Inside the workshop, Anton gestured to a pair of stools. He waited for them to sit, his expression calm, giving them a moment to gather themselves before they told the story he knew must come.
“Tell me,” he said. “Where have you been?”
Finn began, the words spilling out—arriving in 1296, the forest, Hawthorne Manor.
“Sorcery?” Anton interrupted, his brow furrowed. “They accused you of sorcery?”
Finn nodded, then pushed on to the Scottish campaign, the year he’d lost Cecily. He faltered there, the memory still raw.
Cecily took his hand and spoke of Julian, of her other self, dying. She told him of the poison, the escape, the final jump. Through it all, Anton listened, his face a mask of concentration, the only person alive who could hear such a story and believe it.
When Finn finished, the workshop was very quiet.
“You say the machine disappeared?” Anton asked at last.
“Yes, the moment we arrived,” Cecily said. “It was there one second, gone the next. We were still catching our breath when it vanished.”
Anton walked to the back room. He returned with a roll of parchment, drawings, diagrams, dense columns of notation in his cramped handwriting. He spread them on the table and stood over them with the expression he wore when a problem was finally, irritatingly, resolving itself.
“I think I understand,” he said. “I couldn’t test it before, though.”
“Test what?” Finn asked.
“This device, this time-traveling machine, is not my design. It was built by someone else. I created a drawing of the way it works, then I began to work on repairs. There’s a mechanism, here,” he said, pointing to the drawing, “in its design that controls the return. And here’s the lever that activates it.
I believe the original designer intended it as a failsafe. ”
Anton ran his finger over a section of the diagram, a small cluster of symbols that had always looked like meaningless jottings to Finn.
“Unless you make certain this lever is in the correct position, it will return to its point of last departure.” Anton traced the notation.
“When you activated it in 1301, that became the origin. When you arrived here, the sequence triggered automatically and sent the machine back. The lever must have been in the wrong position when you traveled. It’s easy to miss, I grant you that. ”
“Then it went back to 1301,” Finn said.
“Yes,” Anton confirmed. “To the exact moment and place you left from.”
Finn said, “I was punching in numbers so quickly, I didn’t notice that lever at all.
” He thought for a moment. “But I never touched it. I only adjusted the time sequences and dials. The machine always stayed with us before. I wonder…” He paused and tilted his head.
“I wonder if Julian and Benedict, on one of their trips, figured out how to use this lever to return it to its original time. Maybe they moved the switch.”
“Or maybe,” added Cecily, “it slipped accidentally when we were dragging it.”
“It could be anything,” Anton said. “But the result is that the machine is not here.”
“Is there a way to get it back?” asked Finn.
Anton sighed. “Not unless someone in 1301 activates it. If you’ve changed that future by coming back, then the machine may be sitting on your family’s estate, where you left from.
Or Julian and Benedict, if they’re alive, could have it.
Everything depends on whether your return to this time has actually changed the future. ”
Finn met his eyes. “Has it?”
Anton spread his hands. “I don’t know. I can’t know. The change doesn’t become certain until the thing you’re trying to change actually happens, or doesn’t happen.”
“Until my father dies,” Finn said. “And I inherit instead of Geoffrey.”
“Yes.” Anton said it plainly, the way he said most things.
“Until then, you can’t be certain that the future you came from is the one that gets prevented.
There may be…” He paused again, tilting his head, the way he did when he was trying to simplify something that resisted simplification.
“Think of it as a river. You’ve thrown a stone in.
But you won’t know if you’ve changed the course until the water reaches the bend. ”
“So all we can do is wait,” Finn said. “We came back to 1239, we live our lives here, and we wait for my father to die.” He knew how cold it sounded.
“Yes, you wait,” Anton agreed. “How long?”
Finn pictured his father, not his face, but the back of his head, always turned away, bent over some ledger. He could hear his voice, not speaking to him, but to a servant, crisp with command. His lack of warmth as Finn grew up in the care of servants and tutors. His mother.
“The monastery records say he died—dies—in the year 1241. Two years from now.”
“Then you have time.” Anton looked at Cecily. “Your situation right now is the more immediate one. If your family intends to marry you to Alard—”
“I should have trusted them,” Cecily cut in, her voice low. “I was so afraid, I didn’t give them time to find another way.” She glanced at Finn. “I just ran.”
“Then it shouldn’t be difficult to get them to agree to a delay,” Anton said. “I’ll tell your parents you were upset about the marriage and came here to stay. That you needed time to think. I’m sure Beja will go along with the story to keep you out of trouble.”
Cecily placed a hand on Anton’s. “Thank you, Grandfather.”
Then Anton turned to Finn. “And in the meantime, what story do you tell?”
“The simplest one,” Finn said. “That I’d gone hunting, got turned around, maybe I met some friends and stayed with them for a day or two. I’ve done it before. My father will be irritated, but not suspicious.”
Anton considered this, then nodded once. “Simple is best. Don’t embellish.”
Anton’s gaze moved between them, then fell to their hands, still linked on the table. He said nothing, but the barest hint of a smile touched his lips before it vanished. It was enough.
“You did well,” Anton said after a moment. “Both of you.”
“We don’t know that yet,” Cecily said.
“No,” Anton agreed. “You don’t know if you changed the future. But you found your way back, and in a machine that is finicky at best. That’s the part that was never guaranteed.” He picked up his diagrams and tucked them under his arm. “The rest is just time. And time… time we have.”
“Grandfather, we lost your machine.” Cecily had a grip on his arm.
Finn cut in, “To be more accurate, we lost both machines. Don’t forget the one hidden in the woods, though we don’t know it survives if—when—we change that future.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Cecily.
“Don’t be sorry,” he said. Then, after a pause: “Come with me.”