Page 44 of Never Tear Us Apart
It hasn’t happened yet. I don’t deserve to die. Not yet. The girl I will one day kill isn’t born and won’t be for decades. It hasn’t happened yet. Maybe it never will – maybe the future can change.
Throwing myself through the unlocked door, I race through the hallway as the cloud of planes blots out the sunlight streaming through the broken building. The gate to the shelter is propped open, waiting for me.
‘Maia?’ Sal shouts above the din as I clang the gate shut behind me.
‘I’m here,’ I say, almost falling down the steps into the small shelter. ‘I’m safe.’
Sal nods. ‘Your meeting with Miss Strickland?’
‘Yes, she will give me a by-line if I uncover the right story. Now I just have to find one.’
‘Excellent.’
It’s remarkable how my body has already learnt to tolerate the noise of the raid, recalibrating and reassessing the new normal. Taking a second chair that Sal must have brought down here, I join him in the near-dark, and we listen, our gazes directed upwards as each pounding explosion releases another wave of fine dust to rain down on us. We brace our bodies against the noise and fear, and we wait for the raid to pass.
The noise recedes in slight increments until we can tell the worst is over. I wonder about the bright blue sky above, nowfilmed with the grit of battle. I wonder if Danny has made it back in one piece.
And finally, right here in the shelter, on my fourth day as an accidental time traveller, I accept it all. The relief of not fighting to make sense of it is profound. It just is this: this life and the other one. If you think about it, I’m lucky. How many people get to experience two lives? Perhaps I am meant to be here, perhaps there is a hidden purpose to all of this, or maybe the ancient universe got her wires crossed. It doesn’t matter, not in this now. This is the only now I have.
The all-clear sounds, breaking me from my thoughts, and Sal gets up at once, dusting himself down. ‘I must go to the church – the children will soon be waiting for me to teach them mathematics.’
‘You really have made a life here,’ I say with admiration. ‘After you were ripped away from everything, you started again and made it work; people love you.’
‘Eventually, there was no other choice.’ Sal shrugs, a brief shadow of sadness passing over his face. ‘Oh, I had word that your papers are ready earlier than expected. We will fetch them tonight.’
‘No need to come with me,’ I say, seeing an opportunity. ‘I know where to go now. I’ll get the bus this afternoon and pick them up.’
Sal frowns. ‘I’m not sure. Elias is not a good man . . .’
‘Exactly,’ I say. ‘I’m looking for stories, remember? He is a good story.’
Sal’s frown deepens. ‘The Mafia are here on the island, Maia. Perhaps for now, the war has stopped some of their business. But Elias . . . he is dangerous.’
‘And I am used to danger,’ I tell him. ‘I can take care of myself.’
‘Can you?’ He twists his hands with worry. ‘You are coping with a lot. And . . . forgive me – I know little of your life before – but you said you had some problems with your . . . mental well-being.’
‘Well, yes,’ I reply, not wanting to discuss how broken I was before I ever arrived on this island. ‘But it was my job to work in war zones and seek out stories, even when I was in danger. Don’t worry – I’m tough enough.’
‘And if you fall out of this time, while you are on the bus or in the catacombs? You will be undefended and vulnerable.’
‘You’re right.’ I nod. ‘But I can’t sit still. You’ve had more than thirty years to try to find out what has happened to us, and now it’s my turn to take up the mantle. I’m not embedded in this time yet, so we need to be ready for if – or when – I go back to my time, so that I can show someone what’s happening and get some answers. You want that, too, don’t you?’
‘I do,’ he concedes. ‘Though it’s too late for me, I’d rather not die without knowing.’
‘Then trust me.’ I offer him a smile that’s braver than I feel. ‘Now, go and make your poor kids learn maths in the middle of a war.’
* * *
You’d think I’d rush out into the sunlight. Instead, I sit in the dark for a while, letting the minutes wash over me. Am I a different version of me, or the same me in a different universe? Or the same me in the same universe? I don’t see how it can be the last, because I have a body here and a body there – and perhaps in a thousand other times. And yet I don’t think it can be a parallel universe either: everything that happens here seems to have an impact there. Eitherway, perhaps there are millions, maybe billions more of me reprinted throughout the universe. And perhaps, out of all those versions, one is living in perfect happiness. I smile for her, whoever she is and whatever she’s doing. Suddenly, I have infinite sisters.
When I get upstairs and into the house, I find a covered pitcher of fresh goat’s milk on the table and a small loaf of bread.
Drink milk quickly, a pencil-scrawled note on a page torn from Sal’s notebook tells me,before it turns.
Hungry, I do as I’m told.
‘Hello? Anyone home?’ I hear Christina’s voice calling in the hallway.
