The Time Traveler's Almanac

Her partner was a good-looking kid, probably nineteen or twenty, clean-faced and bright-eyed. Stuck in time, stuck with his fate – a ditch in France, most likely. Like a lamb to slaughter. It was like dancing a minuet in Paris in 1789, staring at a young nobleman’s neck and thinking, you poor chump.

She could try to warn him, but it wouldn’t change anything.

The kid swung her out, released her and she spun. The world went by in a haze and miraculously she didn’t collide with anyone.

When a hand grabbed hers, she stopped and found herself pulled into an embrace. Arm in arm, body to body, with Ned. Wearing green again. Arrogant as ever, he’d put captain bars on his uniform. He held her close, his hand pressed against the small of her back, and two-stepped her in place, hemmed in by the crowd. She couldn’t break away.

“Dance with me, honey. I ship out tomorrow and may be dead next week.”

“Not likely, Ned. Are you following me?”

“Now how would I manage that? I don’t even know when you live. So, what are you here for, the war bonds cash box?”

“Maybe I just like the music.”

As they fell into a rhythm, she relaxed in his grip. A dance was a dance after all, and if nothing else he was a good dancer.

“I didn’t thank you for helping me with Lady Petulant. Great distraction. We should be a team. We both have to dance to do what we do – it’s a perfect match.”

“I work alone.”

“You might think about it.”

“No. I tried working with someone once. His catalyst for stepping through was fighting. He liked to loot battlefields. All our times dancing ended in brawls.”

“What happened to him?”

“Somme 1916. He stayed a bit too long at that one.”

“Ah. I met a woman once whose catalyst was biting the heads off rats.”

“You’re joking! How on earth did she figure that out?”

“One shudders to think.”

The song ended, a slow one began, and a hundred couples locked together.

“So, how did you find me?” she asked.

“I know where you like to go.”

She frowned and looked aside, across his shoulder to a young couple clinging desperately to one another as they swayed in place.

“Tell me Ned, what were you before you learned to step through? Were you always a thief?”

“Yes. A highwayman and a rogue from the start. You?”

“I was a good girl.”

“So what changed?

“The cops can’t catch me when I step through.”

“That doesn’t answer my question. If you were a good girl, why do you use stepping through to rob widows, and not to do good? Don’t tell me you’ve never tried changing anything. Find a door to the Ford Theater and take John Wilkes Booth’s gun.”

“It never works. You know that.”

“But history doesn’t notice when an old woman’s diamond disappears. So – what do you use the money you steal for? Do you give it to the war effort? The Red Cross? The Catholic Church? Do you have a poor family stashed away somewhere that you play fairy godmother to?”

She tried to pull away, but the beat of the music and the steps of the dance carried her on.

The song changed to something relentless and manic. She tried to break out of his grasp, to spin and hop like everyone else was doing, but he tightened his grip and kept her cheek to cheek.

“You don’t do any of those things,” she said.

“How do you know?”

He was right, of course. She only had his word for it when he said he was a rogue.

“What are you trying to say?”

He brought his lips close to her ear and purred. “You were never a good girl, Madeline.”

She slapped him, a nice crack across the cheek. He seemed genuinely stunned – he stopped cold in the middle of the dance and touched his face. A few bystanders laughed. Madeline turned, shoving her way off the dance floor, dodging feet and elbows.

She went all the way to the front doors before looking back. Ned wasn’t following her. She couldn’t see him at all, through the mob.

In the women’s room she found her doorway to Madrid 1880 where she’d stashed a gown and danced flamenco, then to a taverna in Havana 1902, and from there to her room. He wouldn’t possibly be able to follow that path.

*   *   *

Unbelievable, how out of a few thousand years of history available to them and countless millions of locations around the world, they kept running into each other.

Ned wore black. He had to, really, because they were at the dawn of the age of the tuxedo, and all the men wore black suits: black pressed trousers, jackets with tails, waistcoats, white cravats. Madeline rather liked the trend, because the women, in a hundred shades of rippling silk and shining jewels, glittered against the monotone backdrop.

Gowns here didn’t require the elaborate architecture they had during the previous three centuries. She wore a corset, but her skirt was not so wide as to prevent walking through doorways. The fabric, pleated and gathered in back, draped around her in slimming lines. She glided tall and elegant, as a Greek statue.