Day Twenty of Advent

Part Four
“That’s not Borden.” I say it with conviction, staring at the cluster of buildings in the distance.
There’s a milestone at my feet telling me it is, but it’s not. It can’t be. And yet… The land’s the same, the hills rolling up to the sky, the river over to my right. The hills are covered with trees, not houses, but they’re familiar in shape.

I sink onto the stone, desperately searching for a way to make this work that doesn’t leave me stranded in the past, so far away from my life, my world, that a full-blown panic attack is the only response I can come up with.

John crouches beside me, concern softening the chill in his eyes that’s been there since I over-shared. “What ails you?”

“What year is it?” I grab at his arms and shake him. “If you don’t want me to run in circles screaming, tell me the truth. What year is this?”

“1753. How can you not know that?”

Oh what the hell. He thinks I’m nuts anyway. “Yesterday, until I got lost in the woods, it was 2016. Don’t ask me how, but I’ve traveled back in time. How many years are we talking about? Every book or movie, it’s usually a nice, neat number, dammit. I can’t do the math.”

“Two hundred and sixty-three,” he says immediately.

“Great. Wonderful. Okay, I have to be careful not to change anything.” I stand, weirdly energized. “Talk to as few people as possible. Not get killed. Don’t tell you what’s going to happen, which is easy because I sucked at history. Canadians don’t have as much of it as other people, if you ask me.”

“Lies blacken the soul.”

“Yeah, yeah. But I’m not.” I pluck at my jacket. “You’ve been avoiding the obvious. For a man who identified a bird flying a mile overhead, you’re blind close up. Look at the material. Ever see anything like it? And the stitching? And here, behind the buttons, look, this is a zipper. They don’t have those around these parts. “

The human capacity to blank out the unwanted amazes me. My dad convinced himself every boy I took upstairs to fuck was a friend, nothing more. John’s a close second. He shrugs, gaze shifting to the side. “You are a foreigner. I knew that already.”

“Foreigner?” I stab his chest with a finger. “Hey, Brit-boy, I was born here, so don’t give me that line of bullshit. Born and bred in Borden.” Overwhelmed by my accidental alliteration, I giggle, close to hysteria, then sobered. “Oh shit. Shit, shit, shit. I’m so far away.”

For a moment, I genuinely think the ground has given way beneath me. Nothing seems real. The world shifts, insubstantial as a soap bubble and yeah, there, a car, a fucking car! I gasp and look around me, wild with elation. It’s early in the morning and the snowy roads haven’t been plowed, but this is my city.

I step forward and I’m back in the past.

“No!” I howl it, kicking at the stone with more emotion than sense. “What the hell is happening? What screwed-up fucking sadist is in charge of this?”

Then I notice John’s expression.

“You vanished,” he said hoarsely. “Where did you go? How did you do that?”

“I flashed back to my time,” I snap, too angry to care if he believes me or not. “Don’t know how, don’t know why it didn’t stick. Was I gone long? It felt like about three, four seconds for me.”

He nods slowly. “It was that long for me.” He swallows, then reaches out and touches my face. Warm fingers. “Are you real? Or some imagining of mine the solitude has created?”

“So if you were dreaming someone up, they’d look like me?”

I expect him to scoff, but he gives me the sweetest bemused smile. “Maybe. Though your mouth would be less inclined to spit out curses.”

“It can do more than that if you let it,” I tell him. Okay, yes, it’s flirting with a guy who made it plain he wasn’t interested, but did he? Or was he scared of admitting what team he played for? There’s no one around for miles. What the hell, I step in close and tilt back my head. “Want to find out for yourself?”

I expect him to hit me or walk away. I don’t expect his mouth to come down on mine with a savage, desperate hunger.