Page 33 of The Book of Lost Hours

The memories began to flow throw her. Moments that flew by in snippets.

The memories of Elaina’s earlier years were painfully short, but chock-full of the same quiet moments she’d seen in Ernest’s mind.

The flower garden at the grand house. The father and mother who loved and cared for them.

The older brother she adored. Lisavet delighted in seeing the younger version of Ernest, with his copper hair and stubby legs, grow into a fiercely protective young man.

She held her breath, as Elaina did, when he went off to war at sixteen, and held it again when he returned a different person.

It was his sister, Lisavet learned, who had brought him out of the shadows after he came home.

They were close. So close that when Elaina was cast out for the affair and resulting pregnancy, Ernest remained by her side, as steadfast in providing her a lifeline as she had been for him.

Only unlike him, Elaina chose to pull away.

The other memories were short as well. It was too much, the baby, the separation from her family, the rejection of the man who had caused it.

Lisavet watched it all unravel, and when Elaina stood alone on the bridge six months after her baby died, she didn’t look away.

When the memories faded, Elaina was gone.

Lisavet stood alone with tears running down her cheeks.

One hand pressed against her stomach, the other holding the book.

For the first time, she wondered what happened to an infant’s memories when they died.

Did they even have any memories to save?

She had seen plenty of children over the years, had played with them when she herself was still a child, but none of them had been any younger than four or five.

So what about the rest? She didn’t have any memories of her own that reached back that far, so what happened to them?

She was still pondering this when she felt the familiar sensation of being watched creep down the length of her spine.

When she looked up, she saw the Russian timekeeper standing at the end of a row of shelves.

He made no moves toward her. Simply watched curiously, the way Ernest had in the beginning.

She wanted to shout at him but didn’t dare.

She’d learned her lesson about talking to timekeepers.

His gaze trailed down to the swell of her stomach, and he frowned, raising his eyes back to hers, concern etched onto his sharp features. Lisavet hardened her expression and retreated to safety inside of a memory, leaving him and his prying eyes behind.

S PLITTING PAIN pulled Lisavet from the middle of a dream.

She sat up in horror, gripping her stomach.

It wasn’t time yet. She wasn’t ready. She had a blanket.

A set of clothes. But she hadn’t yet found the right place for the birth to happen.

Somewhere with proper supplies for a newborn baby and medicine for her if she needed it.

Another rolling pain in her abdomen told her that, once again, Time didn’t care if she was ready or not. The baby was coming, and it was coming now. She pulled herself out of the memory, fighting not to cry out in agony.

“Azrael!” she called desperately. “Azrael, help!”

He didn’t come. Perhaps he was too far away to hear her, or maybe he was out time walking himself.

Around her, other memories awakened at the sound of her voice, watery phantoms appearing around her.

She heard them whispering among themselves.

Desperately, she began sifting through the books on the shelves.

She was in the Austrian section. That was good.

She could find a hospital close to modern day and watch what the doctors did, the way she’d watched the nurse stitch up a gunshot wound.

The next pain in her stomach was so strong she nearly vomited.

When it subsided, she took another book from the shelf, thumbing through it so quickly she risked tearing the pages.

Lisavet pulled herself into a memory, immediately aware of the bustle of a hospital all around her.

There would be no doing this herself, she realized after another jolt of pain, reaching into her bag for her father’s watch.

She needed help, history be damned. Right now, her baby was the most important thing.

She waited several seconds for the shuddering feeling of Time parting to cease, allowing her to become a part of the memory.

Eyes that previously passed over her suddenly paused on her figure.

She ignored their looks and approached the nearest nurse.

“I need help,” she said in her mother tongue. “Please. I’m having a baby.”

The nurse didn’t question where this strangely dressed young woman had come from, and instead called out for someone to bring her a wheelchair.

It took seven hours. There was blood and pain. Worried looks on the doctors’ faces.

“Complications,” they said to her, offering no other explanation.

They gave her medicine that made her uncommonly dizzy, working quickly to extricate the child from inside of her.

Complications , Lisavet murmured through her haze.

That explained the suddenness of labor. The early birth.

Her heart thudded out the beat of every passing second.

Her mind oscillated between fear and once again wondering where a baby’s thoughts went to when it died.

She thought of Elaina’s baby, the image of the cold dead thing lying still in its cradle seared into her head.

It wouldn’t happen to her, she told herself. It wouldn’t.

When at last, the baby’s cries pierced the air, the other doctors in the room applauded.

“Healthy lungs,” the nurse told her as she lay the screaming bundle on Lisavet’s chest.

“The baby will live?” Lisavet asked in between choked sobs of relief.

“She will be just fine,” the nurse told her with a reassuring smile.

“She?”

“It’s a girl.”

A girl. Lisavet held the baby close as the nurse cleaned her up, refusing to let them take her. The doctors warned her that she had lost a lot of blood. She would need to stay in the hospital until she recovered. Was there anyone they could contact? Where was the baby’s father?

Lisavet didn’t answer them. She was tired, pain numbing her senses to anything else but the baby in her arms. A girl, a daughter.

Ernest’s daughter. She traced one hand over the infant’s tiny head, haloed in a wreath of copper-colored hair.

Ernest’s hair. Deciding her lack of response was likely drug induced, the doctors eventually cleared out of the room, giving her orders to rest. The nurse stayed a bit longer, showing her how to get the baby to latch and feed.

They offered to take the baby to the nursery so that Lisavet could sleep, but she refused.

She didn’t dare let go of her, fearing what could happen if she did.

This was still a memory after all. They couldn’t stay.

Who knew what sort of damage Lisavet had already caused by being here?

She shook the fears away, holding her daughter more tightly in her arms. Complications, the doctor had said.

If she hadn’t come, neither one of them would have survived.

History be damned. When the nurse finally departed, Lisavet kissed her baby’s forehead, whispering softly to her as she slept.

“I’ll take care of you. I won’t let anything happen to you,” she promised her. “I’ll rewrite all of history if I have to.”

As night fell outside the window, Lisavet left the room, carrying her baby down the hall.

Her dress had been taken but she still had her coat.

She exchanged her hospital gown for a nurse’s uniform she found in a supply closet.

Her very bones felt as though they had been stretched and remolded by a careless sculptor.

She was weak from blood loss, but she couldn’t risk staying any longer.

When they returned to the time space, Lisavet found herself staring at the heap of dust and broken wood before her. Not just one book, but an entire row had fallen, dozens of lives altered.

“Lisavet… what happened?”

Azrael had come at last. There was no mistaking the horror in his tone. The baby made a small sleepy noise, drawing his attention to her. “But how did you… Lisavet, what did you do?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Lisavet said, pressing the baby closer. “It was for her.”

Azrael stared down at the pile of dust that had once been memories and said nothing.

I T DIDN ’ T take long before Lisavet realized what was going to happen.

Not even twenty-four hours had passed, no time for healing, no time for sleep, before the sound of the baby’s cries drew the attention of the timekeepers already lying in wait for her.

Twice in one day, she had to run from them, forcing her pain-stricken body into motion.

She took to keeping the gun closer at hand, counting out the number of bullets she had in the chamber.

The number of timekeepers she would kill to protect her child, but only if she had to.

The timekeepers were not the only problem.

In fact, they weren’t even the most pressing.

What was more urgent was the fact that Lisavet didn’t know how to take care of her daughter.

The baby had physical needs as any other child would.

She fed every two hours, a pace Lisavet could not keep up with.

After just two days, her body had begun failing to produce enough milk to satiate her.

It was as if, with the child no longer growing inside of her, her connection to the physical world, the human world, had once again been severed, leaving her unable to produce milk the way most new mothers could.

The baby, however, was all human.

“I don’t understand,” Lisavet lamented. “She shouldn’t need to eat in here. Why is this happening?”