I give him a quick humorless smile as I open my chaser and switch it back to the tracking app. Lidia is moving to the northeast, away from our position. I then check to see where exactly we are.
Europe. East of Vienna in an area I know as one day being part of the Russian Empire, and in Iffy’s world would be Slovakia, I think, or maybe Hungary. The year turns out to be 1242.
I’ve never been this far back in time before, and I’d be lying if I said I’m not experiencing an irrational sense of unease. Home, whether Lidia has destroyed it or not, is so far away.
Now that we are earlier than 1775, we are in the part of history that I loved to study growing up. I close my eyes and try to remember if there’s any historical significance to this time and place.
Yeah. There is something, but my mind is too scattered with all that’s been happening to function the way I need it to, and I’m having a hard time remembering.
Frustrated, I say, “Stay close,” and start moving in the direction Lidia has gone.
“Where are you going?”
I look back and see that Scout Me hasn’t budged. As much as I’d rather not waste the energy, I limp back to him. “You need to come with me. We need to stop her.”
“Stop who?”
“Lidia.”
His eyes widen. Perhaps I didn’t hate her as much at his point in my life as I do now, but I never liked her.
“She’s trying to destroy everything,” I say, attempting to push him over the edge.
“What do you mean?”
He’s having a hard time connecting the dots, so I give it to him straight. “She’s changing the time line. She’s already done it probably a dozen times.”
Blood drains from his face. “Why would she do that?”
Because you did it first, I think. But those words will do nothing to help me at the moment, so I say, “It’s complicated and I don’t have time to explain it to you. You’re free to stay here, but if I suddenly jump, you’ll be left behind without a chaser.”
A whole other type of fear fills his eyes. “Why would you do that?”
“Because my chaser’s slaved to Lidia’s. I go where she goes.”
When we start off, I tell Scout — as I’ve decided to think of him — to keep a hand on my shoulder, in case Lidia decides to jump. I’m not sure this will be enough contact to guarantee he’ll be pulled into the mist with me, but before long, it’s no longer an issue. I’ve been going nonstop, and my leg has decided it’s done being numb and starts throbbing again. Seeing me wince with every step, Scout puts his arm across my back and takes some of the pressure off my uncooperative thigh.
“What happened?” he asks.
“Knife accident.”
“Lidia?”
“Her grandson.”
He looks at me as if I’ve gone crazy. “What?”
“I told you it’s complicated.”
My chaser guides us after Lidia through a patch of densely wooded hills. That’s another surprise for Scout. He had no idea the device could locate another one. But I have no doubt his day of being shocked is only just beginning.
Though we are steadily moving, we can go only so fast traveling in tandem, and much to my dismay Lidia is increasing the gap between us. Finally, fifteen minutes into our hike, she stops moving.
I want to hurry so we can make up some ground, but we’re walking through an area where the terrain rises and falls like static waves in the middle of the ocean. The downward slopes are hardest for me to negotiate, and if not for Scout’s support, I would have fallen and hurt myself worse long ago. When we reach the top of what turns out to be the final ridge, we stop, both of us taken aback by the beauty in front of us.
We are on much higher ground than I had thought. The ridge where we are standing falls off in a long gentle slope down to a wide grass-covered valley. To our right, the valley continues on to what look like distant hills, though it’s hard to tell for sure. In the other direction, though, the expanse quickly narrows down and funnels into a pass between the forested hills we are on and those directly across from us.
Deep in the valley I see thin columns of controlled smoke that hint at civilization, but excluding that, there are no signs of people anywhere.
I check the map. Lidia is approximately seven hundred feet to our right. It’s impossible to see her through the trees, but I’m certain she is on the same ridge we are.
I look back at the valley, once more trying to figure out what it is about this place and time that has brought her here. I feel as if I should know this. History’s my thing, after all, but I’m still trying to pull whatever nugget I can from the depths of my memory when we jump.
Interestingly, the only thing that’s changed is time. We’re still on the ridge above the quiet valley, just forty-eight hours forward on the time line. As I turn to tell Scout this—
Jump.
Same place. An additional seventy-two hours ahead.
Jump.
We’ve gone ahead a week this time, our feet anchored to this spot as if we’re rocks that have been here forever.
Jump.
Another week.
Jump.
Another.
Jump.
A month.
Jump.
We pause.
There’s been a change to the valley. While it’s still empty and quiet, much of the grass has been churned up, creating a corridor of destruction that continues off to the right as far as I can see and into the pass on our left.
Something has moved through here. Horses, I would guess, thousands of them.
A light flickers dimly in my mind, a marker taunting me that I should know what’s going on.
“Why is she doing this?” Scout asks.
I open my mouth to tell him to be quiet while I think, but then I pause.
Not only is he me, he’s the innocent version of me who hasn’t lived through the chaos that has rained down through the additional months I’ve lived. His mind is not clouded in the same way as mine.
“Twelve forty-two,” I say. “Eastern Europe. What’s the significance?”
His face scrunches in confusion. “Is this some kind of test?”
“Just answer the question.”
He looks at the ground in the way I often do when I’m thinking.
This is the pose he’s in when we jump again. For the first time since our initial arrival, we move backward in time, a week. The valley floor is still trampled into a muddy mess.
“Well?” I ask.
“Where in eastern Europe?”
We jump back again, another week. No change in the scenery below.
I almost tell Scout Slovakia, but that’s not a name he’d be familiar with. “Not far from Vienna. Between it and Budapest.”
Another jump, another week. Only this time the grass has returned. Whatever force will come through here has not yet done so.
Lidia takes us on a series of four quick micro jumps, each moving us twenty-four hours in a forward direction again. The first three are mirror images of one another — the silence and the grass and the wisps of smoke in the distance.
Day four, though, is something else entirely.
About a quarter mile below us, moving from the valley into the pass below us is a vast army. Almost everyone is on horseback. Both Scout and I stare at the mighty sight as they ride on.
“The Mongols,” Scout whispers and then looks at me. “It’s the Mongols. You said 1242, right?”
I nod, unable to speak.
“That’s the year they retreat from near Vienna.”
His words open the dam holding back the identical information in my mind. Retreat is not the right way to describe it, though. Their leader back in their homeland — not Genghis Khan, but one of his sons… Ögedei, I believe — has recently died. When word gets to the khan’s army in Europe, something that takes months, the advance will grind to a halt not far from Vienna, and the troops will return to the steppes, while the leaders head all the way back for the gathering that is supposed to choose a new khan.