Page 23 of The Book of Lost Hours
To fill in the gaps in his knowledge, Ernest attended lectures at universities.
He spent hours in the Library of Congress, pulling books on the newly emerging science.
Quantum theory in particular caught his attention; the idea that things—particles and atoms and such—could affect each other even though they existed very far away from one another.
They could become entangled. Connected despite the fact that they existed on separate planes, such as the time space and the observable plane of existence they knew as “reality.” All of it made his head spin, and then he came across a paper which suggested that the conscious mind and the physical body were two entirely separate things.
That acts of learning, remembering, processing, or imagining were all distinct acts of consciousness, untethered from physical actions.
Here was the missing piece. The two theories together suggested that memory and body could live on two separate planes, one in the time space and one outside of it.
But when both converged on the same location…
when Lisavet’s physical body joined with her conscious thoughts, not just for a short time the way his did, but for years…
it triggered some kind of anomaly that allowed her to move through memories like one who was really there.
The physical and the mental combined into the fourth dimension known as Time.
It began to occur to him that what had happened to Lisavet, after so many years in the time space, was something entirely new.
Something he referred to in his head as “temporal departure.” A severance of Lisavet’s physical form from the dimension of Time.
A body and consciousness untethered from her own time and set adrift.
What did this mean for the Lisavet of the present day who lived in the time space?
And furthermore, what did it mean for her in the future?
Was it even possible to remove her as Jack had insinuated they should?
Or in doing so, would they be condemning her to a fate worse than death?
A separation of body and mind so abrupt that both suffered as a result?
Ernest thought about this each time he submitted a false report to Jack about his progress in obtaining the book. How many more times could he report failure before Jack insisted on bringing her out? The department saw Lisavet Levy as a threat, and Ernest as a means of neutralizing it.
“H OW OFTEN do you see that boy now?”
Lisavet opened her eyes to find Azrael hanging over her while she rested on the floor of the time space. He wore a crease in his brow.
“Not that often,” Lisavet lied.
“Lisavet,” Azrael said sternly. “I’m dead. Not blind.”
She sat up, sighing. “Then why did you ask me? I’m being careful. That’s all that matters. You don’t have to worry.”
“I know you think you’re being careful. That’s why I worry so much. You don’t know him very well.”
“He won’t hurt me,” Lisavet said.
“My dear girl, have you learned nothing from your time in the past? Somebody always gets hurt in love.”
Lisavet snorted derisively. “Good thing we’re not in love then.” She pushed herself to her feet and began walking down the row of shelves.
Azrael followed. “You know, in addition to my ability to see, I am also not an idiot.”
“We’re not in love.”
“Well, of course you’re not. You’re in denial. It will pass. He , however,… well, he is entirely smitten with you.”
Lisavet could feel herself blushing. “He is not. I’d be able to tell if he was. I’ve seen so many people in love by now. I know what it looks like.”
“You think you do. In other people. But seeing it and experiencing it firsthand are two very different things. Believe me.”
“Hmm.” Lisavet turned away from him and shrugged. “Well. Sorry to ruin it for you. But Ernest Duquesne is not in love with me. I’m certain of it.”
He looked so worried that if Lisavet could have kissed his cheek to reassure him, she would.
She and Ernest had been seeing quite a lot of each other.
She couldn’t help it. He was the first person she’d had contact with in years.
The first person who knew her name. And he was kind to her.
Curious about her life, before and after she’d entered the time space.
She wanted to show it to him. All the parts of history she’d walked through, all the memories she’d seen so many times that they felt like her own.
She showed him Paris in the ’20s, Renaissance Italy, the mountains of China.
She loved watching his face each time she took him someplace new.
The way his eyes glowed with wonder, reaching out to touch something only to remember that he couldn’t.
That light in his eyes, the same one she’d seen in so many people in love, had never once been directed at her.
It annoyed her that it bothered her, so she told herself it didn’t.
“Have you ever thought about trying to leave?” Ernest asked her one day.
They were in Munich in 1860, where Lisavet and her brother would visit with their grandparents over half a century later. The year outside the time space had lurched onward into 1949, but Lisavet was scarcely aware of it.
“I used to,” Lisavet said, leaning back to look up at the autumn leaves over their heads. “But when I first got stuck in the time space, I couldn’t be sure which timekeepers were Nazis and which ones weren’t.”
“Well, there are no Nazis anymore,” Ernest pointed out. “And you have me. I could help you leave.”
Lisavet’s stomach did a little flip at the thought of leaving the time space with Ernest Duquesne.
She shook her head. “There’s nothing out there for me.
Both of my parents are gone. I wouldn’t even know where to begin to look for my brother.
And besides, if I leave, who will stop the timekeepers from changing the past? ”
“They still are changing the past,” Ernest reminded her. “Even with you trying to stop them.”
“That doesn’t mean I should stop trying,” Lisavet said, a bit indignantly. She gestured to the book on the ground beside her. “If I leave, who is going to remember them? And who will be here to stop my memories from being erased one day? Or yours.”
Ernest made that face he so often used whenever she said something that contradicted his own outlook on the world. As if he’d never considered that someone might try to erase him one day, as he had done to so many others.
Lisavet shook her head. “Besides, this is my home,” she said, gesturing around them. “It’s enough.”
“Is it, though? I mean, as beautiful as all of this is… it isn’t real. It’s just a memory.”
Lisavet frowned at him. “It is real. Just as real as anything else.”
“But don’t you want memories of your own? Ones that don’t belong to someone else?”
Lisavet sat up, pulling her knees into her chest. His words bothered her. They reminded her of things that she hadn’t thought about in years. Of living and what that really meant. If what she was doing even counted. She was silent for a while until she felt Ernest’s hand on her arm.
“Hey,” he said gently. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I was just…”
“You didn’t upset me.”
“No, I did. I don’t mean to say that this isn’t real. I guess I just… to me a life like that feels unbearable. Like that poem by Robert Frost, ‘Acquainted with the Night.’ Like walking in the middle of a beautiful city but still being completely alone.”
“Poem?” Lisavet asked.
Ernest nodded a bit sheepishly and began reciting the poem.
Lisavet watched him, the smile growing on her face. “I’ve never heard that before,” she said. “Can you recite a lot of poems like that?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” Ernest said, rubbing the back of his head and refusing to look at her. “It’s one of my less masculine talents I’m afraid.”
Lisavet giggled at him. “Tell me another one.”
Ernest obliged, with a nod. “As you wish, milady.”
The next poem he recited was a love poem.
He took up an affected Scottish accent, singing about “A Red, Red Rose,” emphasizing each word in an effort to make her laugh.
Toward the end, he tilted his head back and began speaking to the sky and Lisavet found herself wishing he would look at her instead.
That he would recite such words, about love and all that came along with it, to her.
She realized then, watching him recite love poems to the sky, that Azrael was right.
That she was in love with Ernest Duquesne.
The next time they met, Ernest brought her a book of poetry, handing it to her with uncharacteristic shyness.
“I thought you might like these,” he said, looking at the green-covered book with particular fondness. “Some of them, they, uh,… well, they kind of remind me of you.”
The thought made Lisavet’s heart beat faster.
She spent the next three days before she saw him again reading each and every one, scanning them for hidden clues.
Her own feelings clouded her perception and she looked for herself in every love poem, wondering if it might be the one he meant.
After a few weeks of agonizing, she made the decision to do something about it.
She planned to take him to the most romantic memory she knew, the one of the couple in the field, and see if it had the same effect on him as it had her.