Page 16 of The Book of Lost Hours
Ernest thought about the German girl all night that night, staying up late to pace the hall of his DC apartment.
He couldn’t sleep, thinking about what it would be like to be stuck in a place like the time space.
He himself couldn’t stand more than a few hours at most without contracting a splitting headache and an acute case of claustrophobia.
The silence and stillness, not to mention the close quarters, were positively maddening.
How had she not gone crazy with loneliness?
For all he knew, she was lying about all of it.
She could be a Russian agent. Or a German spy who had been forgotten when the war ended.
He wanted to believe it, but deep down he knew it wasn’t true.
She looked about his age, twenty-two, or maybe a little younger, which wouldn’t make her old enough to have gotten wrapped up in something like that.
Restless from pacing, he went to the kitchen to brew himself a cup of coffee.
He stood by the sink as the coffee bubbled on the stove, staring vacantly at the brick wall opposite.
The apartment he lived in while he was in DC was the same kind his fellow agents stayed in.
An old building, furnished with simple furniture.
Nothing particularly upscale or impressive.
His mother had visited it once and then never again, lamenting to him that he could do better.
They certainly had the money to fix him up someplace nicer, she told him.
He should buy a house if he insisted on staying in DC so much.
But Ernest didn’t want that. If the agents from Brooklyn and Chicago could manage without such luxuries, then so could he.
His family did have money. A great deal of it in fact.
They were the descendants of Swiss watchmakers who had made their fortune selling luxury timepieces in Europe before emigrating to the United States.
His father had sold that business when he founded the TRP, and Ernest still missed the sound of watches ticking away in the workshop while an army of watchmakers worked magic to bring them to life.
When the coffee was finished, he poured himself a cup and sat down at the table.
He couldn’t get the girl’s face out of his head.
She was haunting him like a ghost. Like a memory.
He pictured her as he’d seen her most often; from a distance, hunched over on the ground, tending to burned pages with gentle hands, a loving glow radiating in her eyes.
He didn’t think a spy of any nationality would look at the pages like that.
To the timekeepers who doubled as agents, memories were just another part of the job.
Another piece in the political game they were all forced to play for and against each other.
She wasn’t like them. There was real conviction in her voice when she spoke about the memories that wouldn’t be there if she was simply carrying out an order.
A part of him wished he had never told Jack about her. He should have waited. Jack was too quick to take action.
“Always better to be the one shooting rather than the one getting shot,” he said.
As a solider, Ernest was usually inclined to agree. The problem was that, when it came to the German girl, the idea of shooting at her, or of her shooting at him for that matter, did strange things to his stomach.
T HE NEXT time Lisavet saw Ernest, something was different.
He followed her from a distance, as he had been lately, but the way he watched her had changed.
Curiosity replaced by the kind of look Lisavet saw in the eyes of all the hunters throughout history.
She was being tracked. Observed. Hunted.
Instead of terrifying her, this realization made her angry.
Who was he to try and stop her? She wasn’t like him; sometimes she wasn’t even sure she was human.
She was composed of all the memories she had seen, all the eras she had walked through.
She was oceans and mountains and endless skies.
And what was he? A man self-contained into a single strand of a life.
She was eons. Light-years. He was a passing age, nothing more. Why should she be afraid of him?
Instead of running from him, she let him get closer as she lay in wait to salvage another set of memories.
She shot him a glare before homing her attention in on the middle-aged Russian timekeeper in front of her.
The man was taking his time, and Lisavet could sense Ernest moving in her periphery.
Preparing, not to grab the burning memories before she could reach them, but to capture her .
As the timekeeper struck a match and tore off the cover of the book, she crouched low, holding her breath, waiting for him to drop it.
The instant the Russian started to leave, she lurched out from behind the shelves and sprinted.
Behind her, Ernest cursed under his breath.
The sound of her footsteps made the Russian timekeeper stop.
He turned back. Saw her coming. He shouted something as she scooped the burning book off the floor with one gloved hand and turned on her heel, running back down the row.
A loud bang went off behind her. A bullet whizzed over her head, so close she felt the wind brush against her hair.
Another bang and then something large and solid struck her hard from behind.
Lisavet crashed to the ground, landing on the smoldering book.
Something, or rather someone, landed on top of her.
She twisted around, expecting to see the Russian, but instead found herself trapped beneath Ernest’s body, his arms creating a cage around her.
He reached for his belt and pulled out a gun, raising himself up enough to return three shots at the Russian.
The timekeeper retreated, disappearing through a door.
Lisavet let out a gasp. Ernest lowered his gun, slumping against her.
“You okay?” he asked through gritted teeth. “He didn’t get you, did he?”
Lisavet shook her head, speechless.
Ernest’s face was pale, drained of all color. He rolled off her, an action that seemed to require incredible effort. He pressed one hand against his side and came away with blood.
“You’ve been shot!” Lisavet exclaimed.
“Seems that way.” He let out a ragged breath and tried to reach for his watch.
“What are you doing?”
“Have to get back.” He tried to stand, wincing and gasping, but collapsed back onto the ground.
“Don’t move, you’ll bleed to death,” Lisavet said, feeling a little nauseous.
“If I stay here, I’ll bleed to death anyway,” Ernest protested, reaching for the nearest shelf to try and gain some leverage.
Lisavet’s eyes fell on the books near his bloody hand. An idea struck her, and she reached for one of them, flipping through the pages.
“Oh sure. Now seems like a good time to read,” Ernest said.
Lisavet ignored him. She shoved the book back on the shelf and picked up another.
This time, she found what she was looking for.
She turned back to Ernest, book in hand, and ducked underneath his uninjured side to help him stand.
He was heavy. Keeping him steady was a challenge, but hopefully she wouldn’t have to for long.
She let the book fall open to the page she needed.
“Hold on to me,” she said.
“What are you doing?”
“Just trust me.”
Ernest conceded, letting go of the shelf and leaning more heavily against her shoulder. Lisavet focused on the echoes of the book and shut her eyes.
They found themselves amid more gunfire. The sudden sound of it in the distance made them both flinch. Ernest let out an agonized groan.
“Stop moving,” Lisavet said, struggling to keep her hold on him.
“Where the hell are we?”
Lisavet didn’t answer. She scanned the scene for the girl whose memory she knew this was. A war nurse. She found her at the edge of the medical tent, looking out at the battle raging on the horizon as the carts brought wounded soldiers her way.
“Where… are we?” Ernest asked again through heavy gasps.
“Inside a memory. I need you to walk. Just a little bit.”
“Inside a… what are you talking about?”
“We’re time walking. I’ll explain later.”
It took five long minutes to get Ernest into the tent.
Lisavet had to fight not to gag on the stench of sweat and rotting flesh.
Ernest seemed not to have the same problem, and she remembered that he’d been in a uniform the first time she’d seen him.
Maybe he’d experienced things like this before.
All around they could hear the moans of the injured intermingling with the sounds of foreign shouting.
She lowered him down onto the ground in the corner, uncertain whether he would fall right through a cot.
The thought gave her pause. What if everything passed through him?
She could touch things inside of a memory, but that didn’t mean he could.
“What now?” Ernest asked, sensing her hesitation.
Lisavet knelt down beside him. “This is the Ukrainian war of independence, 1918. They have medical supplies here. Bandages. Medicine. I’m going to take care of your wound.”
“You’ve done this before?”
“No. I brought us here so I could watch them do it first.” She gestured to a man lying on a bed a few yards away, groaning loudly as doctors cleaned blood from a gunshot to his leg. Behind him, a nurse prepared a needle and thread.
“Oh, no,” Ernest said, his face a sickly green color. “No, no, no. We’re not doing that.”
Lisavet ignored him and began undoing the buttons of his shirt. The entire left side was already soaked clean through with blood.
Ernest caught hold of her wrist. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I need to take off your shirt so I can see the wound.”