Page 43 of Time for You
“Truly,” Ellie said, breathing hard. “I had to do like,so much math, but I’ve got it.” She thrust a stack of papers at them, all covered in signs and a series of long equations. “It is ley lines, but whether or not the portal works is also dependent on the person. Henry is a Capricorn sun with a Virgo moon, which, whoa dude, no wonder you’re uptight as hell.”
“Is that relevant, El?” Daphne asked.
“It is, in that it’s like, the worst chart I’ve ever seen. His to-do lists have to-do lists.”
“I don’t have any lists?” Henry replied.
“Okay, yeah, that’s not important, really—I just needed to explain myself. But if the moon is in Virgo, like it was the day he arrived, there are spots on the ley lines that allow the veil between time and space to rip slightly, but only for someone who has the right star chart. I did Henry’s,” she said, pointing to one piece of paper, “and then I comparedit to that map in the book he found at Helen’s. There’s a portal between here and Edinburgh that’s the right spacing apart for someone with his chart, so I just had to put everything into this equation.” Ellie pointed at another piece of paper, this one covered in incomprehensible symbols arranged into a long equation.
“What does it say?” Henry asked, squinting.
“First of all, it says I’m incredibly smart and was able to figure out really complicated math involving astrology, so there’s that. But what it says is the portal opens again in ten days, just a little farther down the ley line.”
“How far?”
“That will take some more math to figure out exactly, but not that far—it’ll be close. But it does look like it will be really quick. What I could get from that book is that the portals are unstable and short.”
“Unstablesounds bad,” Daphne said.
“Not unstable as in dangerous. Just like, it’ll show up and then go away right away, so we have to be super precise. But we’re really lucky; there’s two cracks at this. One opens in ten days, like I thought, and then the next one opens on the solstice, so just a few more months away.”
“Both back to Edinburgh?” Henry asked hopefully.
“Edinburgh in 1885 to be precise,” Ellie said with a broad smile. “There’s one more that I could find, but it doesn’t open for seven years.”
“But I could be home in ten days?”
“You could. Or in three months, if—”
“Of course I’ll go at the earliest opportunity,” Henry said. “Do I need to do anything to prepare?”
Daphne’s stomach twisted. “What if it’s unsafe?” she pointed out, quite rationally in her opinion. “Or wrong?”
Ellie looked at her shrewdly. “Daph, when the hell have Ieverbeen wrong?”
“That time you thought you’d look good as a brunette.”
“I mean, wrong about something that involvesmathandbeing smart.”
“Fair enough,” Daphne conceded, but Henry was looking at her with a hard-to-read expression. “What?” she asked him.
“Do you really think she’s wrong?”
“No, I’m just trying to be sure—”
“Because you’ve been very clear since I arrived that I need to get back to my time, and now that there’s a chance I can go back soon, you want, what? To be cautious?”
“That’s not—”
“I’m going back,” he said flatly.
“I didn’t—”
“And I don’t need your permission,” he added, steamrolling right along.
Daphne looked to Ellie for help, but instead of Ellie being appalled at Henry’s behavior, she just looked amused. “El, what do you think?”
“Honestly, I think if Henry’s got a chance to go back, he should take it.”
