Shana Abe - The Time Weaver

But now they were gone. And there were, she reckoned, at least a dozen people pressed against the other side of the wooden door that led back to the main hall, holding their breaths, quiet as mice. She didn't know how much they'd heard or how much they might have guessed, but it wouldn't do to leave them unprepared. Their lives were changing soon, certain as the rising moon. Someone had to tell them.

She tightened the belt of the robe, picked up her valise, and walked to the door.

With her every step, she was bathed in yellow sun. And it felt good.

February 1789

Four Months Later

The ocean lapped at her dreams.

It was soft and ticklish, because the waves that hit the cove had to break through a long, bony reef of white and pink coral first, and the coral absorbed most of their force. By the time the waves broached the sugared shore they were little more than playful curls of foam, and bubbles left to swell and pop along the tide line at their retreat.

Beneath the waves would drift the sea turtles, peaceful in their rest, massive and silent and dark. "What a smile," whispered her husband in her ear, his breath also a tickle.

Lia opened her eyes. She saw first the section of oak timber crossbeam supporting the ceiling above her, a thick shadow against the paler plaster, all of it tinted pearly blue with Caribbean moonlight. Then Zane lifted up to one elbow. His hair fell across his face, and he shook it back without looking away from her.

"You were dreaming," he said.

She rubbed a hand across her lids, languorous and warm. "Yes."

"The future?"

"Yes."

"And ...?" he prompted, a single eyebrow arching, the word a deliberate stretch of sound. She reached up to capture a lock of his hair, twirling it around her finger. "It's happy," Lia said.

He rolled atop her, trim and muscled, bunching the sheets between them. The tickle of his next words transformed into a slower, more sensuous caress against her lips.

"My dearest heart," her true love murmured, smiling his rakish thief's smile. "I could have told you that." New York City, 1898

Paola and Lucy worked together at the shirtwaist factory, and had for the past nine years. Same shift, their machines bolted side by side, their heads bent at identical angles from seven in the morning until eight o'clock in the evening, scarred fingers shaping the stabbing course of the needle, Mondays through Saturdays and a half-day Sunday too, with only a single precious forty-minute break at three. They even pumped their floor pedals in mechanical unison, thump -thump -ta-thump, twenty-two shirts per girl per shift, or else.

There were times Paola feared she'd never be able to massage away the hot stony pain that yoked her shoulders. Still, they had it better than the girls on the night shift, who had to finish the same amount of work by the meager gas jets above the machines, set too high to be any sort of genuine help.

But the break:

Three o'clock, heads up, necks cracked, chairs shoved back. Three-oh-three, at the main door; a wait while the foreman sticks his fat fingers into their pocketbooks, rifling through their kerchiefs and pennies for any stolen scraps of lace. Three-fourteen, and if they had hurried they were at the edge of the park, moving at a brisk clip to their favorite bench, which was nearly always unoccupied because a prickly hedge had sprouted wild next to it and appeared to drape over its slats, discouraging all but the most determined of loungers.

Paola and Lucy were very careful to redrape the branches of the hedge back over the bench each afternoon before they left. The thorns were formidable, but not any worse than the sewing machine needles that would pierce clean through a hand in a blink.

And there they'd sit, eating the mashed brown bread and treacle from their luncheon tins, savoring the cigarettes Lucy stole from her father and smuggled to work in her bodice, which burned so harshly in Paola's throat it left her with a cough every time.

A good cough, because it meant she was outside, under the sun, even if only for these treasured few minutes. Out of the enclosed stench of the factory.

Even in the rain, even in sleet, they sat outside and smoked.

But today was merely damp, with late spring clouds puffing up dark over the edges of the trees, too far away still to soak this afternoon's break.

"Look." Lucy nudged her hard in the ribs with an elbow. "There she is." Paola narrowed her eyes through the pall of blue smoke.

She walked alone, slowly down the park path, not seeming to mind the patches of wet and mud that pocked the sparse gravel, only stepping over them absentmindedly, like she missed them all without even trying. She was dressed well—she was always dressed very well, in garments much finer than anything the factory had ever produced. It had been clear from the instant they'd first noticed her, months past, that she was rich. Massively rich, society rich, the sort of rich that meant no holes in her stockings and no treacle for lunch, ever. Her complexion was unblemished, her hair such a bright, glinting red-gold it looked like actual strands of polished copper wound up in a fashionable puff beneath her hat.

Today she wore nearly all cream: a cream wool coat with black piping and pearled buttons from collar to hem; a cream felt hat with a wide, smart brim and the scarf hanging loose to wind around her neck. Cream gloves. Not a spot to be seen.

Paola nearly sighed with envy. Cream. The worst color on earth for practical wear.

Her coat was nearly shapeless, but it was clear anyway that the woman was heavy with child. She kept her hands in her pockets or else cupping her belly, emphasizing its roundness.

In Paola's village back in Sicily, a woman so clearly close to her time would have been confined to her home, wealthy or no. It would have been shocking indeed to see her out strolling through town by herself; people would wonder if she'd been hexed.

But this was not Sicily. This was America, it was the rolling acres of Washington Square Park, and although the woman had the sort of blazing, unreasonable beauty Paola had only ever seen in printed fashion plates, they'd never once witnessed anyone in the park bother her.

"And there," muttered Lucy, with another nudge, and jerked her chin toward a different path.

No, no one ever pestered the woman, and Paola suspected that this was the reason why ... and the reason why she and Lucy took such pains to make it to the park each day by this time.

Because of him .

Like clockwork they would meet, the man and the woman, each drifting in from different directions, she with her daydreamy, pregnant grace, and he with a pace that was far more .

Paola frowned and drew at her cigarette, trying to think of just the right word.

Sleek. His pace was sleek, like the panther she'd ogled once at a traveling circus her grandfather had taken her to when she was a child, a fearsome trapped thing walking circles behind the bars of its pen.

The man moved like that panther might have, had it ever had the freedom of space, swiftly, fluidly, as if the soles of his shoes barely scuffed the earth.

She glanced down at his spats, instantly curious. Also spotless.

Beyond his sleekness, beyond the excellent cut of his trousers and coat—for he was surely the source of all that wealth—and the peculiar but oddly fascinating way he wore his hair—long like a girl's, tied back into a tail—was simply the overwhelming fact of his beauty. He was every bit the equal toher .

A true gentleman's pale skin, shining dark hair, his firm jaw and his wintry gaze that had caught Paola's once, had held her suspended and breathless and had seemed to cut through her more sharply than even the needles at work—