prologue
    Nova Martin was the daughter of two scientists. She never saw herself as normal. Her birthday was February 29th, her hair a natural blonde, a dimple on her left cheek when she smiled and her eyes a piercing green, hidden by her rectangular glasses. She hated her eyes. Around the pupil was a yellow ring, and according to old folklore, it foretold of a violent death. Her brother mocked her about it before he died in a car accident when she was six.
    Her parents studied the sky. They were astronomers. Both of them. Nova was pretty sure that that was how they met, but she never asked them and they never told her. She didn’t like speaking to them. They were always too occupied with their work to pay much attention to her, so she was rarely home. Every summer, when she was a teenager, Nova would ship out of the country as an exchange student, all over the world, trying to find where she belonged.
    She never found it.
    France felt strangely comfortable to her, but it was so crowded, so busy, she just could never live there. Too many cars. One could never see the stars at night, and it was never silent.
    Nova had long ago grown into a beautiful woman. She had a job working for the New York Times as a journalist, and starting at the bottom of the food chain, had finally worked her way up to headline reporter.
    She was now on her way to France again to write an article about a new, mysterious invention built down in Lyon.             Before leaving, she had told her boyfriend, Mark, that she would call as soon as she landed in Orly Aerport.
chapter 1
    She felt the plane rev beneath her body, come alive with energy. She sat back, ready for the long voyage to Paris.
    Nova had only been there once. It seemed like a friendly enough place, Paris. Swarming with smokers, but shops filled with interesting knick-knacks on every corner and the aerport could almost compare to that of Denver, Colorado, a little place she like to call home. But Paris was almost nine hours away, so she closed her eyes, pulled the complimentary eye-mask over her face and slept.
    “The current temperature is 20°C, about 68°F. Local time is 4:31 PM. We hope you’ve enjoyed flying with us today and enjoy your stay here in Paris. Thank you for flying British Airways.”
    The captain’s voice clicked off and Nova got up, slinging her backpack over her shoulder.
    Here we go, she thought.
    It wasn’t in her nature to cry, but after having just been dumped by her ten month boyfriend, she just could not help but to let the tears run wild. She walked in a random direction in the aerport wearing her borsalino hat tilted over her eyes so the tears weren’t visible, starring at the ground. But as Nova walked, something green on the floor caught her eye. She stopped and starred down at it for a while.
    A four-leaf clover.
    A small smile crept onto Nova’s face. She and her best friend, Lily, had an ongoing joke that the first of the two to find a four-leaf clover would win, and the reward would be meeting the One. It had been so long, however, Nova couldn’t remember how the quarry had started, but neither of them had ever found a four-leaf clover.
    Nova bent over to pick it up, her matchmaker, and she tucked it safely away into one of her coat pockets. When she got to the hotel room, she would laminate it at the nearest French equivalent of a Kinko’s.
    The hotel bed was lumpy, the wake up call fifteen minutes late, and the breakfast consisted of dry sausages with ham omelet, which really didn’t suit Nova, who was a vegetarian. She came bustling into the conference room, late, loudly shuffling the papers that had fallen out of her briefcase. As soon as she had taken her seat, the eyes that had turned towards her when she entered the room were focused back to the professional woman speaking at the podium. Nova was uncomfortably aware that news cameras were rolling and journalists were recording every sound and sight in the room, and all translators were eyeing her distastefully. She felt her cheeks burn and took a deep, shaky breath to calm down.
    It didn’t work.
    Instead, she became more anxious as the woman in the front spoke. Most of her words entered one ear and exited the other, like a group of six year olds holding hands chain style on a boring museum trip on an exhibit of the Little Ice Age.
    Her recorder was humming slightly as it taped every word, and she tried to console herself knowing that she would be able to listen to the conference later, perhaps when her brain was more well rested, or maybe when she had food in her stomach other than half a protein bar, but that didn’t work either.
    Nova hardly even noticed when the woman up top had finished her introduction and was rudely pulled back down to earth when lights from every reporter began flashing. Hands shot up in the air, screaming, “Miss Evans! Miss Evans, please! Over here, Miss Evans!”
    Evans pointed at a scrawny reporter in the front row. “You there.”
    “Miss Evans, John Trujillo from Times magazine. When will you be offering trials to test the invention, if at all planning to do so?”
    “We are not yet confident enough to try to send bystanders through until we have eliminated all possible dangers. Once we have done so with trained and professional scientists from our facility, however, we may make it open to the public after training sessions have been held.” She nodded at another reporter with his hand up.
    Nova wished she knew what they were talking about.
    “Miss Evans, I’m Danielle Smith from the Washington Post. Just wondering, are there any limits for the machine?”
    “Limits?”
    “Yes, as in, it can go to any time?”
    Any time? Thought Nova. What does that mean?
    “Only the past. Not the future as of yet.”
    Nova’s heart skipped. What had she missed? She was going to hear it from her boss when she got home.
    Don’t worry, she told herself constantly. You have it on tape. Tape is better than memory.
    “Miss Evans, Jack Benny from People. Can we get a glimpse of this new invention?”
    Evans smiled mysteriously from her high throne behind the podium, her pearly white teeth glimmering seductively. “We’ll show you in a jiffy. We have a slide show ready for you all in a few moments. If you’ll excuse us, we’ll have to hold all further questions until after the lunch break. We thank you all for coming,” she said, raising her voice as murmur broke out and reporters started filling out of the room. “You can find refreshments at the back table and the restaurant should be open!”
    Evans was escorted out of the room through a back door on the stage by some bulky looking cronies. Nova pushed her way through the crowd, making her progress towards the stage slowly but surely, until she finally reached it, crawled up on top of it, and followed Evans through the gray door, quietly, avoiding the suspicious eyes of her fellow reporters.
    She found herself in a conference room where a small posse of people were surrounding Evans and talking in hushed tones.
    Nova cleared her throat and straitened her clearance badge that hung on her necklace. The murmuring stopped and they all turned to look at her, expectantly, hiding their surprise.
    “I’m sorry, ma’am, but you’re not permitted to be back here,” said one of the cronies.
    “I know that, sir, please, if I could just speak with Miss Evans…”
    “Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to—”
    A petite hand emerged from the group and set itself lightly on the crony’s chest.  “Pete, it’s OK. What can I do for you?”
    Nova cleared her throat, nervous, suddenly aware that everyone’s eyes were on her and strangely conscious of her tongue. “I’m Nova Martin, I work for—”
    “The New York Times, I’m aware.”
    Nova opened her mouth and closed it a few times, stunned.
    Evans laughed.
    “Your boss called me last night before you landed and forewarned me that you would be late.”
    Nova frowned. “I’m so sorry.”
    “Don’t worry. I hope you don’t mind that I explain to you what you missed as we walk, however? I must be somewhere.”
    Nova half nodded, half shook her head and hastily followed Evans, fumbling for her pad and pen, her recorder still unknowingly running.
chapter 2
    They thought she was a witch.
    They wanted to kill her.
    She was only a woman.
    France’s laws in 1604 against witchcraft were of the most severe consequences. Elaine would be burned at the stake, and there was nothing in her power that she could do about it. She was in God’s hands, now. God’s unmerciful hands.
    Elaine was running in the only direction she knew: towards the church. They would not be able to pry her from the grips of the sanctuary of her Lord and perhaps the priest would house her there.
    She didn’t know what she would do after that.
    All she was doing was prolonging her shortened life. Postponing the moment when the fiery flames would engulf her, twist around her body, licking her skin and bubbling it off of her as her helpless screams of agony triggered melodious sounds in the ears of her murderers.
    She had heard the screams of other women. Others who were thought to be witches. She could hear their piercing screams as the orange arms devoured them and they still haunted her. Her mother had been among the victims. Her father had brought around the accusation and once accused, a woman was not likely of escaping. He had caught Elaine’s mother with another man – who it was, was irrelevant, because it didn’t matter if he was a man – and out of rage, her father had stricken her mother and thrown her on the cobbled streets with such force, he had broken her wrist. The next day, he had announced that his wife was a witch and his proof was his own accounting of seeing her fornicate with the devil in their very own bed.
    The shame of having married one was not so great as the shame of being accused of being a witch, and Elaine’s mother had been tied to a wooden poll, stripped naked, and burned at the stake, flaming up like a doll thrown into a bonfire.
    Elaine knew it was all she could do before the same thing happened to her. King Henry’s guards would be following her and somehow drive her away from the church.
    At least, Elaine comforted herself in thinking. At least I’m not under the rule of James I. Henry IV was much more lenient when it came to witchcraft. James I had been known to brutally torture and use severe means of questioning to get the accused to admit to the witchcraft before mutilating the women by tearing their bodies with red-hot irons and, in some cases, the cutting off of her hand before burning her and throwing her ashes into the nearest flowing water.
    There was the church.
    Elaine could see it, the friendly cross peeking barely over the horizon. It was not until then that Elaine realized how tired she was. She had been running away from the authorities since morning and the sun was now passing the middle of the sky. She had not eaten all day, and her stomach gurgled unpleasantly as she used the last of her energy to push forward the last short mile to the church…
chapter 3
    “So what is this invention?” asked Nova, hastily following Evans at a sideways run, made very difficult by her two-inch Versaci heels.
    “Would you like the short explanation or the longer one, first?”
    “Let’s start with shorter.”
    “It’s a time machine.”
    This piece of information hit Nova so hard, she stopped walking and stared blankly at the wall across from her as Evans continued making her way down the corridor.
    A time machine.
    This wasn’t some science fiction novel, this was reality.
    A real time machine, one that could transport people through time.
    Everything suddenly made sense, now. Regaining her senses, Nova rushed up to join Evans. “Does it work?”
    “Oh yes,” said Evans, obviously pleased with Nova’s reaction, but unwilling to let her joy falter her step. “It’s quite functional.”
    “Now let’s have the longer story.”
    “For ten years now, our scientists have been tirelessly working on this project, avoiding any other requests from facilities globally until they have completed it. They finally have.”
    “And you said it can only work to travel to the past?”
    “Yes. We have decided to release this version before working on one to travel to the future. We’ve also had some complaints about morality. Knowing the future, to a lot of people, is considered to be a crime. Witchcraft. Altering the true course of destiny, in a sense. They call themselves the ‘Destiny-Defenders’. They’re in short supply, the few who know about this project, but their strong enough to hold us back from building a future-traveling machine. We just call them the ‘Fate Fools’.” The sour look on Evans’s face showed pure disgust and disagreement towards the Destiny-Defenders.
    “What is this machine called?” asked Nova, trying to steer the conversation away from disagreeable subjects.
    “Eratosthenes IX.”
    Nova frowned. “Bless you.”
    “No, no,” said Evans with a small smile. “Eratosthenes was a man who lived in Egypt during the time of the Alexandrian library. He noticed the differences of shadows of sticks at the same time in different places and hypothesized that the world was round. He tested his hypothesis and was proved right, in addition to finding the diameter of the Earth with astonishingly precise calculations, considering when and where he lived and what tools he had at his disposal.”
    “I thought it was Columbus who discovered the world was round.”
    “Common misconception.”
    “So, why did you choose to name this experiment after him?”
    “Because he made a breakthrough so great for his time, we thought it appropriate to name such a breakthrough for our time after the master.”
    Nova nodded, though she still felt unclear about it all. “So, I presume you’ve already tested it?”
    “Oh, yes. We’ve successfully sent three scientists into the time of the witch-hunts of France on a timer. To be safe, they were only there for a total of about six microseconds, but we are positive it worked.”
    “Six microseconds?”
    “We couldn’t risk interference.”
    “So what’s the point of having made a time machine if not to use it? Why don’t you try to prevent World War II or something?”
    Evans stopped walking, as did all the cronies with her, causing Nova and her slow reaction time to ram into a tall, bulky man dressed in black. “Miss Martin, the seriousness of this machine is beyond your comprehension. Preventing anything, even something bad, could cause traumatic events, maybe even more wars, more death.”
    Nova blinked.
    “Then- what’ll you do with it?”
    Evans raised a skeptical eyebrow and continued walking. “Observe. Take notes. Historians will never have an easier job.”
    “So you said,” said Nova, trying to regain a “confident” journalist air. “That in order to come back, it has to have been previously decided how long you will be there?”
    “Yes. There were no time machines in the past, and you do not bring it with you when you travel. The time machine, when it transports you, latches on to your bio signs and holds onto you until you get back.”
    “There’s no way to trigger a return from the past?”
    “Not yet.”
    Nova hesitated before asking the next question. “Can I try it?” she said, half-jokingly.
    Once again, Evans stopped walking and looked over at Nova, a small smile playing on her lips. “Your boss is rich, isn’t he?” Nova frowned. “Where do you think we’re going, now? The bathroom?”
chapter 4
    Four men had to drag her from the church, screaming, kicking, hysterical. Her frantic screeches haunted the priest that night. He had let another woman be burned for sins, for the fornication with the Devil, Satan himself. The King’s men would get a confession out of her.
    They always did.
    The Priest never thought, however, that he would be a witness to it. Among her screaming, words were only barely understandable.
    “Yes! Burn me!” she screamed. “Burn me! Ha ha ha! I’m a witch! Take me away and burn me to prove you’re a man! A man who doesn’t care! I curse you!” And she laughed hysterically, throwing her head back, the cackles emitted from her mouth a maniacal shout for help. Still she struggled against the arms of the men, the four strong men pulling her along, like she was a struggling rag doll. “Tell the King I send the worst curse of Lucifer upon him! Ha! I’m a witch! Burn me! Burn me like a pig! Ha ha ha!”
    That night, when the quarter moon was only visible as a faint ghost on the horizon and the sun was sinking low, opposite it in the sky, Elaine was burned. She had been tied to a long post, much like a hunting party’s prize and great bails of hay had been thrown hastily all around the post by scared citizens, frightened by the cackling witch.
    All the time, even as the flame was thrown onto the dry hay, she was screaming, laughing, “I’m a witch!” And she would laugh, her head thrown back and exulting in such a loud fashion none of the spectators would soon forget this witch’s burning.
    It was not until the fiery arms engulfed her, eating at her legs that her laughing turned to screaming, agony and pleas for help.
    The people watching ignored her, convinced that this woman was a witch and they were only doing what was supposed to be done.
    The screaming finally ceased after what seemed like hours, and all that remained was the sound of the crackling fire, the strong stench of charred flesh and the charred body hanging limp in the flames like the silhouette of the devil.
chapter 5
    “My boss actually paid you to give me a ride?”
    “If you want to put it bluntly…”
    “But- why? Why- wh- why would he do that?”
    “He didn’t say. You’ll have to ask him when you get back.”
    Nova was once again strangely aware of her tongue as she began following Evans down the concrete corridor. There were so many questions that she wanted to ask – where and when she was going, how long, what she would do, what she would wear – but not only did it not seem to be the time, but Nova’s throat was closed rendering it impossible for her to speak. Then, like a switch being triggered in her head, she remembered the words of Evans in response to a question asked at the conference.
    We are not yet confident enough to try to send bystanders through until we have eliminated all possible dangers.
    “Um… is it safe?” she asked, sounding more aggressive than she had meant.
    “Our scientists went over the budget. You pay money, we don’t ask questions.”
    “That’s not a very moral motto.”
    “You pay money, we don’t care, either.” Nova raised her eyebrows and turned to jot something down when Evans looked over at her and said, “You can take that off the record.”
    “You pay money, the record is gone,” said Nova with a smirk.
    The time machine, Eratosthenes IX, was the biggest contraption Nova had ever seen. It didn’t look anything like a time machine, either.
    There was a big, pale green platform in the middle of the gray room, around which stood many long boards of a blindingly white metal. They looked about two inches thick each, and all of them had a plethora of wires protruding from them and entering them. It looked strangely as if it were about to fall apart, rather than send her to the past, and almost as if it were made in the early 1980s.
    “You’re sure it works?” she asked, skeptically.
    Evans glowered in her direction and assured her of its capability to transport her to the past, her French accent plummeting its way through her well trained tongue. “It has been tested multiple times, Miss Martin. A simple journalist such as yourself could never see the hidden beauty in such a contraption.” She looked fondly at Eratosthenes IX, much like a mother would survey her newborn. “Well, Mr Medaris will show you your dressing room and instruct you in proper conduct.”
    Nova’s stomach started flitting uncomfortably with butterflies. The idea that she was going to travel through time had sunk in long ago. The realization was just beginning to seep through the surface.
    Mr Medaris came up behind her, lightly setting his hand on her shoulder. She jumped slightly at the touch only to find a friendly face smiling down at her from behind a pair of rectangular glasses.
    “Don’t worry, Miss Martin,” he said. Nova didn’t ask how he knew her name. “Everything has been tested and it’s all working fine.”
    Nova smiled weakly. “You American?”
    “Am I that obvious?”
    “Well, it’s just, your accent isn’t French.” Medaris smiled comfortingly and there was an awkward silence as he led her to the dressing room. “When am I going?”
    “In about ten minutes.”
    “No, I mean, what time period?”
    “Oh!” Medaris laughed at himself. “We were thinking around the time of the French witch trials.”
    “Isn’t that … dangerous?”
    “Oh no, not at all. Besides, you won’t be going for more than a few seconds.”
    Nova paused. “But even the scientists didn’t get to go for more than one!”
    “You’re a reporter, Miss Martin. You have the clearance and … the money … to go long enough to get some firsthand glimpses of the time.”
    “But what about historians? Haven’t some paid to go?”
    “Oh yes, they’re next in line. One is actually going to travel with you.”
    Nova took a deep breath. This was the strangest thing that had ever happened to her. She had just woken up this morning with no food in her stomach and now she was about to travel through time. “How long have you been working on the project?”
    “I haven’t. I’m a historian. In fact…” Medaris looked down at Nova over the rim of his glasses, his brown eyes twinkling seductively. “I’m the one going with you.”
    Nova stopped short as Medaris continued walking in front of her, strutting casually to two doors in the walls with the words “DRESSING ROOM” in bold print above the two.
    Medaris continued speaking to Nova over his shoulder. “We’ll not be dressing as upper class citizens, much too uncomfortable.”
    “Why are we dressing at all?” asked Nova, catching up.
    “Although it is unlikely, someone could spot us, seeing as how we’ll be there for several seconds.”
    “Ooh!” said Nova, in mock fright. “Several seconds.”
    “In addition,” added Medaris, raising his voice. “There is the offhand chance that the machine could malfunction. We wouldn’t want to be caught in 1604 with modern day clothing, now, would we?”
    “Why 1604?” asked Nova, the reporter in her shining through.
    “The scientists find it easier to man the machine if the number of years through which we will be traveling is a nice even number, like 400 years, for example.”
    “Listen, Mr Medaris, it all—”
    “Please,” he said, holding up a hand, cutting her off. “Call me David.”
    “OK, listen, David, it all doesn’t make sense.”
    “What doesn’t?”
    “When we’re going. I mean, why choose such a complicated time when you could just travel to yesterday?”
    David stopped and looked Nova in the eye, his hands on her shoulders a good foot below his own. “They didn’t want me telling you this. In fact, they didn’t even want me to know, I just overheard them, so don’t publish this. I know you’re a reporter, but use some self-restraint.”
    “What’s going on?”
    “The machine can only—it can only travel to 1604.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “They tried going to just yesterday or a week ago, even a year, but they only got to 1604. For some reason, the machine can only work in intervals of 400 years and going to 1204 … they thought only 400 years instead of 800 would be easier for us to handle.”
    “Handle?”
    David looked hesitant. “It puts a great stress on your body to travel through time. I mean, they’re messing with the whole continuum thing, here, and, well—” He trailed off.
    “Well what? What? Well what!”
    “It’s supposed to painful.”
    “Oh. Oh, don’t tell me that.”
    A head poked out of one of the dressing rooms. “Well?” said the woman to whom the head belonged. “You coming?”
Nova and David looked at each other and he gestured for her to go first.
    “Rosy is waiting for you in the other room, love,” said the woman to David. He smiled and disappeared through the second door. “Hello, dear,” said the woman. She was plump with a red face. She had curly black hair on her head and a small pair of spectacles resting on her nose attached to a thin, gold chain around her neck. “I’m Daisy, you must be a historian?”
    “Reporter.”
    Daisy nodded. “Your newspaper must have a lot of money.”
    Nova laughed nervously.
    “Well go on, dear. The clothes aren’t going to just jump onto you.”
    Nova emerged from the dressing room in a simple brown and white dress with a dirty white handkerchief on her head. She felt very strange standing amongst the scientists who were all dressed normally. Looking at herself in a nearby mirror, she tried to push down the little folds in the handkerchief on either side of her head making it look like she had sad-dog ears. She jumped when David’s voice sounded behind her.
    “Don’t,” he said. “That was how they wore it.”
    Nova lowered her arms and looked at him in the mirror. He looked stranger than she did. His clothes were also poorly simple. He had a white collar that hung limp around his brown vest which lined the ivory-white chemise underneath. His brown Capri’s fell to his knees where white tights took over and met the worn slipper-shoes at his feet.
    “You look nice,” said Nova, trying to hide a smirk.
    “Thank you,” he said. “You too.”
    Nova laughed. “Uh huh.”
    “No! Really—”
    “Hey!” Evans’s voice called through the awkward space between David and Nova. “You two coming?”
    When Nova and David reached Eratosthenes IX,  they were shoved onto the platform unceremoniously by two bodyguards as Evans fiddled absentmindedly with the controls of the machine. She began speaking, still looking down at what she was doing, and it took Nova several seconds before she realized Evans was speaking to them.
    “You will be gone for approximately two point one five eight seconds during which you will get a small glimpse of the world around you. You are not to move, you are not to make any hand gestures, or speak. You are to be invisible. Is that understood?”
    Nova nodded and David muttered a small, “Yes.”
    “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear that,” said Evans, finally looking up.
    “Yes, ma’am,” said the reporter and the historian in perfect unison.
    “Good,” she said, returning to the controls before her. “You’ll be leaving in T minus sixty seconds.”
    Nova’s heart leapt. “A minute?” she cried in disbelief. “Wait! I’m not ready!” But it was too late. The long, unsteady-looking, white boards started trembling and moving, the wires stretching and creaking as they pulled against each other. The last Nova saw of the people outside of the room was Evans, smiling confidently.
    And, with a finalizing rumble, the boards closed and locked, shutting Nova and David inside the machine, blinded by the whiteness of the metal surrounding them. Taken over by the fear and complete lack of control that had swept over Nova with such sudden force, her hand groped in the air for something on which to hold onto, and the first thing she found was David’s. Her fingers latched onto his and she squeezed his hand, his warm touch comforting her. He gave her a reassuring squeeze and said, “It’ll only be for two seconds. Don’t worry.”
    That was when it happened.
    A loud, high pitched whistle grew until it was the only noise in the contraption, piercing their eardrums. Nova and David’s hands went shooting to their ears and they collapsed on their knees, eyes screwed up as if the noise was penetrating through their sight. There was an accumulating pressure in the machine and a dizzying sensation as the walls around them seemed to spin when, all of a sudden, it all stopped.
    Nova and David looked around and froze, holding their breaths.
    They weren’t in Eratosthenes IX anymore.
chapter 6
    Nova and David found themselves on a cobbled street with people milling around, talking, running, playing. A distinct cold wind was sweeping through Nova’s clothes, but she made no movement to cover herself up. Two seconds passed in what seemed like a minute and neither of them moved, neither of them breathed nor spoke nor shivered. It was as if they had been carved out of stone.
    “Wait a minute,” whispered Nova, her breath rising in an icy mist before her.
    “Shut up!” said David, frantically.
    “No, I mean, how long has it been?” Slowly, Nova and David lowered their hands from their ears and stood up. “Oh god!” said Nova, panicking. “Oh god, we haven’t gone back! Oh god, what do we do?”
    “Um, well, OK, don’t panic.” David took a deep breath, looking around him at the people starting to give Nova strange looks. “Just—calm down, OK, I’m sure there’s a perfectly logical explanation—”
    “A perfectly logical explanation!” screamed Nova. “Oh sure! There’s always a perfectly fucking logical explanation to you damn scientists! I’ll give you a perfectly logical explanation: we’re fucking stuck here, that’s what!”
    “Nova, please, calm down! We can’t bring attention to ourselves!” It was true that many people had stopped doing what they were doing to admire the frantic man and the angry woman with him.
    Nova stopped screaming and started breathing very heavily. “Oh my god,” she breathed. “What are we going to do?”
    David didn’t say anything. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, the same chaos that Nova was experiencing running through his own mind. His glasses had been removed and tucked into a pocket in his pants, making him look much older, somehow. “OK,” he said. A few more seconds of silence and then he began speaking again with the tone of a man who no longer had the energy in him to cope with such mental stress. “Perhaps,” he continued, slowly. “Maybe they think it’s two seconds to them but it’s longer to us.”
    “What?”
    “I mean, they programmed two seconds, so we could be here for a couple of minutes and they wouldn’t know it, because we would just be sent to two seconds after they sent us.” He paused. “Does that make any sense?”
    “No,” said Nova. “If that were true, the other scientists who had been sent through would have known.”
    From the look on his face, David had obviously not thought of that. “We need new names.”
    “What?”
    “Nova and David aren’t very seventeenth century French names. We need new ones.”
    “I like my name, thank you!”
    “I like your name, too, Nova,” said David, as if explaining to a tantrum-dangerous five year old that one plus one was two. “But people here will get suspicious if our names are strange and unheard of.”
    Nova crossed her arms, stubbornly. “I’m not the historian here, you name me.”
    David thought a moment and said, “How’s Clothilde?”
    “Clothilde?”
    “Clothilde.”
    “Nothing better up there?”
    “Nope.”
    “OK. What about you?”
    “I was thinking Jacques for me.”
    Nova sighed. “Jacques and Clothilde. How nice.”
    “You speak French?”
    “A little…”
    “Good.”
    “You?”
    “Not a word.”
    “Great.”
    "Uh, Nova?”
    “I thought I was Clothilde…”
    “Then, Clothilde?”
    “Yes, Jacques?”
    David pointed with a trembling finger at a man who was starring at the two of them. He was closer to Nova and David than the rest of the crowd around them and his eyes were as wide as dinner plates. Slowly, very slowly, the man raised his hand and pointed at Nova, frightened.
    “Sorcière…” he said, his voice trembling. “Vous êtes une sorcière!”
    “Oh no,” said Nova.
    “What is it?”
    “He’s accusing me of being a witch.”
    “Why?”
    “Tous les deux!” the man shouted again.
    “He’s accusing both of us of being witches.” Nova looked at David. “I thought only women were burned.”
    “Well, a lot of people think that, but men were burned, too. Granted, only about one fourth of the victims were men, but those cases still existed. It was their idea of … leveling out the sexism expressed against women, specifically spinsters and widows.”
    “Now’s not the time for a history lesson.” Nova turned back to the man and bit her lower lip, thinking. “Monsieur, nous ne sommes pas des sorcières… nous sommes, uh, gentil! Pourquoi pensez-vous ceci?” “Sir, we are not witches… we are, uh, nice! Why do you think this?”
    “Votre langue!” “Your language!”
    “C’est juste de l’Anglais.” “It’s only English.”
    “Ne me parler pas! Vous allez me maudire avec votre langue de diable!” “Don’t speak to me! You’ll curse me with your devil language!” And with that, the man turned and ran away, breaking through the crowd. The rest of the people gathered around the two started backing up.
    “Well!” said Nova, clapping her hands together. “This trip will be fun. Everyone thinks we’re witches because we speak English.”
    “What was that all about?”
    “Oh, nothing. I’m sure it will all just pass over.”
    King Henry IV looked down at Nova Martin and David Medaris below him, his heavy lidded eyes observing the two accused in a bored fashion. He was dressed in black armour, obviously caught before he was to go to a portrait painting or parade around the streets of his country. He had a white beard and pale, graying hair, making him look like something out of a black and white film because of the complete lack of colour. Underneath his arm, he carried a black helmet with a white feather to match his colourless armour.
    “Witches,” he said. “Two of them, a man and a woman.”
    The man who had earlier accused Nova and David of being witches agreed humbly from the shadows where two guards held him. “I caught them speaking the language of the devil.”
    David looked over at Nova, who, apparently could understand every word being spoken by the two French men. He was very uncomfortable. His arms were pinned behind his back by a strong guard with one hand and the other was placed between his shoulder blades pushing him forward in a sort of awkward bow. Nova was in the same position and bowing her head, listening intently. David hurriedly followed her lead and bowed to the King of Bourbon France.
    “Your word is not enough proof to throw away two lives of my people.”
    The man began babbling in fright.
    Henry IV held up a hand, silencing the man, and slowly began his descent from his throne down the carpeted stairs to David and Nova below him. David lowered his eyes and watched the floor when Henry’s magnificent booted feet appeared in his line of sight.
    There was a paused in which he held his breath, frightened of what was going to happen, when the two guards holding him and Nova released the two.
    Neither of them moved.
    “Stand up,” said Henry.
    Nova, understanding the King, stood up and David hastily followed her lead.
    “What are your names?”
    “Clothilde,” said Nova. She looked over at David with wide eyes, trying to send him a message with no words.
    “Uh, Jacques,” he said. He could feel Nova relax beside him.
    “I assume you deny these accusations?”
    “Yes.”
    Henry IV nodded and signaled with two fingers for the guards to come search them. David saw Nova close her eyes in dread. He had no time to wonder why, because immediately after, a guard held up a little black contraption.
    “Oh no,” said David.
    Nova turned to look at him and smiled apologetically. The King cautiously picked up the recorder and admired it in the palm of his hand. The longest train of swear words were making their way through David’s head as he imagined all the troubles this little recorder could do. Henry slowly raised his hand and pressed one of the buttons on the machine.
    David saw it all happen as if it were in slow motion.
    Nova closed her eyes taking deep breaths as the conversation previously had by the King and her began replaying, the crackly sound issuing from the speakers in the machine.
    “Oh no,” David said again.
    Henry looked on in disbelief and horror. “You—you’re a witch…” He took a deep breath, looking away from Nova, trying to regain his calm, his heavy eyelids closed over his eyes. “A witch… witch…”
    One of the guards asked the King something and he absentmindedly waved her off and said, “Yes, yes of course. Take her away.”
    “What? No! No! Please! Stop! Please, don’t … no …” Nova screamed all the way out the door and David watched her, helpless, unable to follow because of the hands holding him back.
chapter 7
    The next morning, at the break of dawn, David could see Nova’s outline in the hazy mist. It was cold. Piercing cold, but he didn’t notice it. All he saw was the hunched woman being pushed away by angry citizens, their shouts of anger and fear rising in white clouds above their heads.
    “Nova,” he whispered. David began pushing his way through the crowd, but there were so many of them. “Nova!” he shouted. “Clothilde!”
    Her head shot up and looked behind her until her red eyes met with David’s. He tried to assure her with his gaze that everything was going to be alright, but she looked away, tears streaming down her face, freezing on her cheeks.
    They would not be frozen for long.
    “Oh no,” said David. He was beginning to feel like it was his new catchphrase. He did not notice all the hullabaloo around him; he was too busy trying to make his way to Nova. He had no idea what he would do when he reached her, but it would not make a difference.
    She would burn before he got to her.
    He was only a few feet away when the straw around her caught fire.
    Nova began screaming, her words inaudible over the crackling of the fire and the cheering of the mob, but David thought he had a good idea of what she was saying.
    David watched helplessly from the street as the flames devoured Nova, her screaming echoing in the morning. The cold was somewhat less noticeable as the fire heated the crowd, burning their eyes and throats.
    What happened next all happened so fast, David wasn’t even sure it had even happened at all. His head began to spin and a loud, high pitched whistle grew until it was the only noise he could here. He clamped his hands over his ears and closed his eyes, the pressure accumulating around him unbearable.
    Then, as soon as it had started, it stopped.
    David opened his eyes and found himself on a big, pale green platform in the middle of a gray room. Long boards of blinding white metal were clicking into place around him. Scientists began rushing towards him, looking concerned.
    Where was the reporter? Why did the historian come back alone?
    “What the hell happened?” asked Evans. “You were only gone for five seconds! Where’s Miss Martin?”
    David panted, trying to regain sensation in his cold limbs. “Five seconds?” he said, looking around him at Eratosthenes IX. “Five seconds…”
    And he fainted.

prologue
    His mother had hated and feared him. He spent the first three years of his life knowing only the immense loathing she felt for him, for his abhorred face. On the eve of his fifth birthday, a traveling circus of gypsies, passed through town. His mother had brought him, her face covered by a shawl, his hat pulled low over his eyes so he couldn’t see where he was going. His mother had set him down on a bench and whispered in his ear for him to keep his head down so no one could see his face, and that she would be right back.
    The boy sat, waiting, but the person who approached him soon after was not his mother. It was a rough man. He said his name was Abastado. At first, the boy struggled against Abastado’s grip as he led the boy away, the cobbled streets racing through his mind beneath his small feet. Abastado’s hands were coarse, and he made no effort to be gentle with the boy. All the boy saw was the brown hand covered in black paint and the street, the bumpy, slippery street below him. He had no idea where he was going. He didn’t care. Nor did he care that his mother was not there. Perhaps his life was going somewhere new, exciting.
    A few of the people visiting the circus bumped into the boy, throwing his shoulder back and knocking the pale hat off his jet black hair. His hands shot from Abastado’s grip and covered his face, smothering his scar with trembling hands. Some people nearby gasped and screamed at the fleeting glimpse of the boy’s disfigured face. He stood in the middle of the crowded street, a small clearing created around him as he shivered with fright, his hands grasping the right side of his face. His matted black hair was falling in sweaty knots, intertwining with his fingers.
    Abastado had stopped walking when he felt the boy’s hand slip from his grasp and turned to look at the sobbing creature. He took a few cautious steps forward and knelt down to eye-level with the crying boy. Slowly, he wrapped his spindly fingers around the boy’s wrists and pulled gently away from his face. His eyes scanned the distorted face with worried eyes, when his mouth curled into a malicious, evil grin that frightened the boy. Abastado stood up so fast, the boy rocked and would have fallen over was his arm not firmly clasped in the man’s hand.
    Abastado was laughing maniacally, brandishing the boy’s arm in the air.
    “Ladies and gentlemen,” he had said to the crowd, most of them covering their mouths in horror. “Ladies and gentlemen! I present to you … the Devil’s Child.”
electra
    The scarred boy said good-bye to home the next day when the gypsies packed and left in giant caravans pulled by monstrous horses. He followed Abastado like a dog, since he was the only familiar face. Many people glared at him while others smiled wickedly and greedily at him. Whispers tailed his back everywhere he went. It wasn’t until what seemed like forever that Abastado concocted a mask for the boy. It was a small, coarse potato bag with rabbit’s-ear knots in the corners from which two small holes had been cut out for the boy to see through.
    He slipped the bag on over his head and the fabric began to itch him like a hoard of mosquitoes. He adjusted it so he could see through the two small holes, the rough strings tugging at his hair. He could hardly see through the holes. The world was two small openings before him through which the edges were blurred and only a small pinprick in focus.
    The boy sniffed.
    The cart in which he and Abastado were traveling was smelly and coated in hay. A few other gypsies were littered around the edges and one caught the boy’s eyes, his limited vision taking in every detail of the gypsy.
    She was watching him with dark eyes, outlined with thick black lines. Her dark green-brown eyes drilled a hole through his mind, a piercing gaze breaking his layer.
    The boy began to cry as she watched him, thankful that he finally had something with which to hide his face. He looked down at his hands which were clutching each other like lovers, snot dribbling down his face, tears streaming down his cheeks.
    He was still silent.
    An inaudible sound brought his attention back to the lady-gypsy. He lifted his head the fraction of an inch until a blurry outline of the girl was detectable. Her lips were moving. In curiosity, the boy looked directly at her, so his focused prick of vision was placed upon her. He could tell that the movements her lips were making created words, but he somehow felt incapable of telling what they were.
    The boy looked over at Abastado, who had fallen asleep and was snoring loud enough to be heard over the rattling of the caravans. He looked back at the girl and got down on his hands and knees and crawled over to her, the tears leaving dried paths of salt on his cheeks. She got down from her spot on the benches and sat down on the hay-strewn floor in front of him just as he reached her. He sat down and cradled his knees, wrapping his arms around them.
    “What’s your name?” she whispered, her voice hardly making it’s way to the boy’s ears through the racket of wheels.
    He did not reply at once. He just let her stare at his eyes through the holes.
    “What’s your name?” she said again, louder this time.
    “…” he mumbled.
    “I can’t hear you through the bag,” she said, smiling slightly, her white teeth contrasting dangerously with her dark skin. Her dark, dirty, ringed fingers slowly lifted and clasped the bottom of the bag. There was a split second where she hesitated, not sure it she wanted to reveal his face. She had obviously never seen him before.
    Then, without warning whatsoever, she whisked the bag off his head and dropped it to the floor. The laughter in her eyes disappeared with the sight of his face.
    “Erik,” he said.
    The girl did not say anything.
    Erik had a beautiful face, on the left side. The right side of his face was coated in what looked like a severe pink mask, contrasting with his tan skin. His eye was pulled down in a drooping gaze, like a sad puppy. The ridges and bones on his face were sharply and grotesquely emphasized by distortions. It looked rather like a large third degree burn had devoured half of his face, chewed it and spit it back onto his scalp again.
    The girl lifted a trembling hand to touch his face, but he shied away, hiding his face with his hand and she promptly retracted her hand.
    “Erik,” she repeated matter-of-factly. “That’s a wonderful name. It’s very … final.”
    “Final?” he asked, not looking her in the eye, his hands still covering his face, his left eye roaming the floor of the caravan.
    “Yes. That’s a good thing.”
    Erik nodded. “Where are you from?” he asked.
    The gypsy laughed. “When you move around as much as we do, you aren’t from anywhere. But my name is Electra.” She smiled sheepishly. “My father was Greek. It means ‘the shining one’.”
    “Electra,” Erik repeated.
    “Very good. What does your name mean?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Are you joining us?”
    “I don’t know.”
    Electra grabbed Erik’s wrists and pulled them gently away from his face. She lifted his chin with her finger and turned his head to look at her.
    “Don’t hide your face, Erik. People will think you’re ashamed.”
    “I am ashamed.” Erik buried his face in his hands once more and Electra pulled the small boy towards her, embracing him in a comforting hug.
    “Don’t ever be ashamed of who you are.”
    Erik pushed himself away from her and started screaming, awakening a few gypsies nearby. “This is not who I am! I am not a monster! I AM NOT A MONSTER!” He slammed the bag over his head and stood, pathetically, trembling and his body shaking from the sobs which involuntarily escaped, his arms glued to his side. The sad eyes stared down at Electra who looked at him from the floor, at the sniffling boy.
    He was just a boy, still a child.
lyon
    Erik did not know why he was traveling with the gypsy troupe. All he knew was that he must not have been very important because he slept in a cage. Where he was locked up for most of the time was a small box made of metal bars and coated in dirty hay, with a sturdy rope tying the door shut. He felt like an animal, a locked up animal on display. What he did not comprehend, however, was that most animals people looked at were beautiful. The picks of the litter. Erik knew that he was not the pick of this litter, not the most beautiful of the gypsies. Perhaps that was why…
    Electra was shadowing the fortune-teller, finding out all the secrets of the talent, the path to the Inner-Eye. Erik did not know why she did it, because she was always complaining to him. He often did not understand a lot of it. She was angry, and he let her rant, let her words flow to him and over him then continue to swirl behind him in a scary flash of memories.
    She knew, of course, that he could not understand what she was talking about, but it helped, she said.
    “It’s nice to know that someone is always there so you can talk. Even if they’re not listening.”
    Erik was not sure he understood that either, but when she told him “You can tell me anything”, that, he understood and for the first time in his life, Erik did not feel alone.
    The two of them often ate together. Sometimes, Electra had to run off with her master and inspect a strange materialization in the crystal ball, or an interesting pattern in the tarot cards. When that happened, Erik would just eat from his wooden plate in a corner, slipping his fingers under his mask to eat the food.
    His mask had become a face. He hardly ever took it off. On occasion, when he was alone with Electra, but never when other people were around. He hated the stares. He was frightened of what would happen when the traveling fair reached their next destination, frightened of what Abastado would do. If he would rip the mask off his head and hold him up for the entire world to see the Devil’s Child, just like he had when his mother abandoned him.
    One day, when Electra had snuck off from her cabin where she slept with the fortune-teller to spend the night with Erik, as she had done so many times before, she had told him something he had never heard before. His mask was sitting beside him and he was clutching the bars, his head pressed up between them like a child gazing with relish at a candy store just out of reach. His wretched pink face was smiling contentedly as he spoke with Electra.
    She was not wearing any makeup and her appearance was much less frightening, less threatening. She did not look as much like a gypsy.
    Electra had stopped speaking and was just looking at Erik. There was no smile on her face, no hidden joy in her eyes, she just looked at him, her fierce eyes peering through his thick, disfigured mask.
    “You really are beautiful,” she had said. “You really, truly are beautiful.”
    Erik had not known what to say. He just starred right back at her, his mouth somewhat open.
    Electra smiled, flashing her pearly whites, turning her gaze to her bare feet, seemingly embarrassed. “If only you were five years older.” And she laughed again. He nodded, not sure what he was agreeing to. “What is it you like, Erik?” she said.
    “I like cheese,” he said, unsure, once again, of what she meant.
    Electra laughed. “No, I mean, what is it you like doing?”
    “My mother would sometimes sing in the room next to mine.”
    “You like singing?”
    “I like how it sounds.”
    “What does it sound like?”
    “Music,” he said shyly.
    “Have you spoken to Kalidas?”
    “No.”
    “He sings.”
    “I’d like to meet him.”
    “Maybe he could give you lessons.”
    “Lessons?”
    “You know,” said Electra. “Teach you to sing.”
    “Me?”
    “Why not?”
    “I didn’t know I could sing.”
    “Everyone can sing … I mean, isn’t it talking, but moving your voice up and down a bit?”
    Erik looked down at his dirty fingers. His black hair had grown a significant amount and was shadowing his eyes so he could not see the girl in front of him. But he could feel that she had lain down and was preparing to go to sleep on the dirty ground next to him.
    “Good night, Erik.”
    “Good night, Electra.”
    They had reached Lyon, their destination. A big city, full of people ready to watch simple gypsies do simple tricks.
    Erik had never felt so unprepared in his life.
    Abastado had continued to assure him that everything would be alright, but whenever Erik spoke to Electra, asking her what would happen, she would frown slightly and smooth down his mask with her long, spindly fingers. He hated it when she would do that. The itchy mask would rub uncomfortably against his distorted face, but he never said anything.
    People were starting to enter the traveling fair, already set up. The caravans had created a circle with an entry for visitors. Erik had his own compartment. It made him feel safer.
    Abastado hurried him into his cage and said, “This won’t be me, kid. You understand?”
    Not liking the feeling of stupidity which so often plagued him recently, Erik nodded.
    “Good.”
    Abastado left the caravan and started shouting outside, words that Erik could not understand.
    And then, the crowd entered and surrounded his cage…
faces
    Faces…
    Erik remembered faces…
    All those ugly, laughing faces, pressed up against the bars, their dirty fingers wrapping themselves around his prison, throwing things at him, money for the tamer of the Devil’s Child and trash to spoil the Child, laughing…
    Laughing faces…
    One girl had brown hair that was tied back in a pretty bun. She had been laughing.
    A man was eating a piece of beef. He had been laughing, too.
    There had been a woman holding a little boy’s hand. She was shielding the boy’s eyes with her hands from Erik’s face.     Both were laughing.
    Shrieks of fear and delight at his protuberant face.
    All those beautiful people.
    Laughing.
    They had not been so beautiful in Erik’s eyes, and he was almost sure that Electra would have found them as hideous as he had.
    But all those faces, those laughing faces. Not once did they abandon him that night as he lay, alone, in his hay strewn cage, a few cold coins Abastado had missed still hidden amongst the rubbish.
    Electra did not come that night. Erik did not know why.
    Perhaps she’s still working, he told himself. Perhaps her master kept her to clean up. Yes, that must be it… But Erik didn’t believe himself. All night, the faces jumped around in his head, the loneliness pressing in on him. It wouldn’t have bothered him so much – he was used to the laughing – but Electra’s face was among those laughing. Her face, her beautiful face, was jeering along with all the others.
    Maybe she did not think he was that beautiful. Maybe she had only been lying to him, all those times when she had hugged him like a mother would, all those times she slept with her back to his cage, her comforting warmth seeping through the bars.
    Maybe…
    Maybe she was just one of them…
    No! Erik thought. No! That’s not true! He squinted his eyes and tried to blur out the image of her face, but it only pressed in closer against his brain. The more he pressed his eyes into his head, the harder she laughed, her bright, shining, laughing face imprinted on the inside of his black eyelids. And those eyes.  Those fierce eyes piercing his mind.
    But the little evil voice in his head – the one who said he was ugly, the one who said he was wretched – was much louder than the voice that defended Electra.
    “Are you OK, Erik?”
    “Mm.”
    “Are you sure? You’re being awfully quiet…”
    “I’m fine.”
    “OK.” There was an awkward pause between Erik and Electra. “Do you want to play a game before the Visitors come?” “The Visitors” had become a name Erik and Electra created for the people who came and gawked. It gave them a less humanistic appeal, and it helped Erik feel less like an animal in a zoo.
    “Electra?”
    “Yes?”
    Erik paused, looking down at his dirty fingernails. “Do you— do you love me?”
    Shocked, Electra stared at Erik in amusement. “Do I love you?”
    “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want,” remedied Erik hurriedly. “It’s just—”
    “Erik.” Electra cut him off. He looked up shyly from his hands, his distorted face twisted in fear, curiosity, so many emotions Electra could not count. She enveloped him in an enormous hug. “Of course I do.”
    Erik’s arms were hung limply at his side, but after a few seconds, he slowly lifted them and wrapped his thin, skeletal arms around Electra. She was more like a mother to him than anyone else he had ever known.
    That evil voice in his head – the one that slandered Electra – that voice had been silenced by the love of a mother.
    Late one night, Erik had unlocked his cage and crept over the sleeping form of Electra. He had not forgotten what she had said about Kalidas … the music man. His obsession with song had grown since he had been a part of the traveling fair. He heard some gypsies sing sometimes at dinner. When she was in a good mood, Electra would join them as well. Erik loved her voice, the soft way it entwined with the air around him, the smooth way it had to flow over his ears, through his head, intoxicating his senses and his mind.
    Tonight, he would find Kalidas. He wanted to learn to sing.
    The only problem was that there were many caravans in the Traveling Fair and he had no way of knowing which one was Kalidas’.
    Erik tried to be as silent as possible when opening each door and looking inside, searching for any signs or hints that pertained to music. He had never been away from his own cart in a long time, and he found everything very interesting. He passed through a caravan with animals all sleeping in cages, just like him, he found what must have been Electra’s caravan, full of cards and carpets and jewels and a crystal ball on a round table in the middle of the room. He explored this one longer than the others, but the strong perfumed smell that Electra sometimes carried in a diluted form drove him away.
    He found what he was looking for in the next caravan.
    A piano.
    An enormous musical instrument. It called Erik to it like a moth to a beautiful flame. He climbed up on the seat in front of it, with some difficulty – being barely three and a half feet tall – and let his fingers caress the ivory keys. They didn’t move under his soft touch, but rather enticed him. Enchanted him so fully he had completely forgotten what he had been looking for. Completely forgotten the barely sleeping Kalidas in the hammock behind him.
    His ignorance and love for this instrument at his fingers clouding his judgement, Erik took a deep breath and started playing notes on the piano, discovering how each one sounded, how each one sounded with the other and imprinting it onto his memory…
    “OI!”
    Erik leapt from the piano seat and fell onto the floor as the giant form of a man approached him in the darkness.