Текст книги "Return Once More"
Автор книги: Trisha Leigh
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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 19 страниц)
“That gives me hope.”
“For what?” Our breath mingled, our faces hovering inches apart, begging to connect. My skin prickled, hairs standing on end as though reaching for him. Heat swam through my blood, simmering closer to a boil.
“That I’ll get to kiss you again.”
I had fallen so far into his gaze that the sight of a young girl running through the reeds, panic twisting her dark features, seemed at first as out of place as me. Then Caesarion flew to his feet at her frantic words, deciphering the local dialect and taking off with a warning shout.
His guards dropped what they were doing and followed Caesarion through the reeds. I raced after them, responding to the girl’s desperate plea for help, and skidded to a halt at the horrible scene fifty or sixty yards down the riverbank. A woman lay on the shore, her arm torn off at the elbow and her blood pumping into the matted, wet grass. A little boy floundered in the water, choking and sputtering, trying desperately to get to the opposite bank as a crocodile stalked his every move, water sluicing around its ugly snout. The woman sobbed weakly, her eyes on the child even as the light inside her dimmed.
Caesarion barked orders at one of the guards, who dropped to his knees beside the woman and tied a scarf tight around her bicep. The data flashing in front of my eyes said it wouldn’t be enough, that she’d lost too much blood. Others gathered, faces drawn with concern, as my True splashed into the water toward the crocodile.
He had the advantage of taking the animal by surprise, but it didn’t stop my heart from lurching sideways at the sight of its teeth. My hand grasped the locket at my neck, air burning in my lungs as Caesarion raised a sword and drove it straight down through the reptile’s head.
It thrashed and rolled, smacking Caesarion hard with its powerful tail. He flew sideways and went under, but the wound he’d inflicted seemed to confuse or frighten the croc enough that it floated away, ribbons of red trailing over the frothing water in its path. Caesarion righted himself and reached for the tiny child, who clung to his neck as they waded back toward the bank.
I looked down to see that the woman had died, but the girl who had run for help embraced the boy. They both looked up at my True with eyes filled with gratitude and a hero’s worship.
Pride swished through me. Underneath it ran a certainty, a knowledge, that filled me with sorrow, but in the midst of this wonderful day, I couldn’t figure out why.
Chapter Thirteen
“I have to leave, Caesarion,” I whispered over the racket in the inn where we’d stopped for supper.
He turned around in his wooden chair, confusion and something akin to panic tightening his cheeks. “No. It’s late. Where will you go?”
My fingers itched to reach out and touch him, but this time I let the bio-tat have its way with propriety. The pain meds had worn off, and if Caesarion and I had the chance to really be alone again it was going to inflict a horrible headache. Not horrible enough to stop me, but still.
“Would you come outside with me? I need to speak with you privately before I go.”
The request in itself raised eyebrows up and down the table, and the round-faced, too loud innkeeper even shut his trap to stare. Caesarion’s guards kept their gazes averted, perhaps grown accustomed to the strange rhythm of our relationship, perhaps just accustomed to Pharaoh doing what he liked.
The largest guard radiated distrust and anger. He did not like me here, and if it mattered in the grand scheme of things, he would have scared me. Maybe he should frighten me more—there were no rules, physical or otherwise, that prevented a Historian from dying within the past. I was fully here, and vulnerable. At the mercy of this world, not mine.
I cast the burly man a wary glance while Caesarion unfolded his lanky frame from the short table. He gave his manservant a small shake of the head before taking my hand and pulling me outside. I didn’t stop on the other side of the door, but took the lead, tugging him into the sagging barn to the left of the main building.
A few lanterns lit the interior of the rickety wooden building. It smelled of animals and hay, of spicy earth and manure. Between the lanterns, the last beams of setting sun pierced the cracks in the ancient wood, combining with the warmth spilling through my body and casting the whole moment in a surreal glow.
“Why must you leave, Kaia? We don’t have long. I had hoped we would spend these days together. I promise to behave.” His voice was soft, coaxing.
In another lifetime, another past or present or future, I would have done anything he’d asked. And I wouldn’t have wanted him to behave.
“Do you think I’m insane? Not right?” I tapped my head, unsure if the translation came through correctly when a Greek word that wouldn’t quite fit into English fell from my lips.
He frowned and reached out, setting his hands on my hips. His long fingers wound around my back, pressing lightly through the thin fabric and weakening my knees. This molecular compatibility thing wreaked havoc on my basic motor function. And with keeping down dinner.
“I do not know what to think of you, Kaia. You are clearly something different. The things you say, they do not seem possible. And yet …”
“And yet?” I pressed.
“And yet they feel not only possible, but true. If a man cannot trust one’s heart, then what can he trust?”
My chest filled with happiness and I grinned up at him, struggling to breathe. “Your heart says you can trust me?”
“My heart seems to know you, even if I do not. Yet.”
I nodded, pulling back a little to try to clear my head. Nerves trembled in my hands and I closed a fist around my ancient locket, determined to draw on my family’s courage.
A deep breath steadied me. We weren’t supposed to speak to people in the past, never mind tell them about the future. Caesarion was different, though. He not only accepted the inevitability of his death, but understood that things happened the way they were meant to. My lifelong loyalty to the Historians warred with my instinctual faith in this ancient king. I knew that I should stop, let him go on believing I was an oracle—something he understood.
But he trusted me. I wanted to show him that I trusted him, too.
Not to mention, I had to disappear in a minute. There wasn’t a way to explain that he would understand, and the last thing I needed was him freaking out and telling everyone in ancient Egypt about flighty, disappearing girls who wore black pants under their dresses.
A deep breath didn’t help, but three more started to work. In through the nose, out through the mouth. “I’m not an oracle. I know what’s going to happen because I’m not from a distant land, Caesarion, I’m from a distant time.”
Pain slammed into my brain in a fruitless effort to snatch back words already spoken. I tried to keep the effects of it from my face, making a mental note to bring more painkillers next time.
Breath caught in my chest. Would there be a next time?
Caesarion said nothing, just stared at me, looking a little dumbfounded. I tried to step away, assuming he had changed his mind about my craziness, but his fingers tightened on my waist.
“A moment, please, Kaia. You do not need to run. I need … a moment, is all.”
“I can’t stay in the past longer than twenty-four hours, and the longer I stay, the bigger chance that I will be missed.”
“You are not supposed to be here with me?” he asked after another lengthy pause. The expression in his eyes conveyed the curiosity I had grown used to, along with a befuddled confusion and the tiniest sprinkle of disbelief.
“No.” A hysterical giggle escaped. “Definitely not. And I’m not supposed to be touching you or talking to you at all, never mind telling you who I really am.”
“Why, then?”
“I told you the truth before—we’re supposed to be together. I wanted to know you.”
He pulled me toward him almost unconsciously, sinewy arms gathering me close until only the smallest sliver of light could wriggle between our loose clothing. “If what you say is true, and we do not exist in the same time and place, how is it that we are supposed to be together?”
“Our sciences are very advanced. We can predict ultimate compatibility based on a number of genetic factors.” Frustration thickened my tongue. He wouldn’t understand any of those concepts. “Honestly, I’ve never understood it until you told me of your gods earlier today.”
“What do you mean?”
“That our lives are a single breath in an infinite lifetime. Perhaps your time and mine seem aligned to their faraway eyes.”
“But you do not believe in my gods.”
“I believe the universes are infinite, and mysterious, and harbor a great many secrets.”
He pulled me closer still, raising a hand to my jaw. His thumb swept over my lips. Our gazes locked, and everything except the million feelings crashing over me faded away. His hands on my skin. His eyes lighting a fire deep, deep inside me. The sense of perfect rightness cloaking us as surely as the creeping twilight.
That he would die. That I should let him.
The kiss felt different this time. Familiar instead of strange, with both our bodies desperate to touch the other. His lips were soft, like petals falling against my mouth, and it felt as though my body cracked open. As my hands found their way to his chest and slid up his neck, he pressed me flush against him. The moment changed, growing demanding as his tongue slipped against mine for the briefest of moments before he eased back.
Shock dimmed the pleasure in his eyes. “Apologies, Kaia.”
The bio-tat admonished me with facts about proper courting behavior for ladies of class during this time and heat rose to my cheeks. “Don’t, please. I’m not upset.”
“We’re not … I’m not …”
He looked so helpless and flustered that I couldn’t help but laugh, standing on my tiptoes and pressing my hands to his cheeks, then planting another kiss on his mouth. “Caesarion. This is not a normal situation. We’re breaking so many rules, you kissing me in a barn is hardly worth getting upset over.”
“I’ve never felt this way before, it’s … different.”
I felt my eyebrows shoot up, a self-conscious tug clenching my gut. “Different bad?”
“No, definitely not. It is good, but only … After the way we began in the gardens, I worry. I don’t wish to have you because I am Pharaoh and you must submit to my wishes.” He closed his eyes and blew out a breath. “I’m saying this wrong.”
I bit my lip to suppress the laugh this time, giving him as serious a look as I could muster. “You’re doing fine. That was a misunderstanding.”
“Not to you. I made you feel less than the lady you are, and I cannot fix it.”
The edge of sorrow in his words sliced through my heart. “We come from different times and places and cultures. But I promise that I kissed you just now because I have never wanted anything more, and I sincerely hope to do it again.”
He bent forward at my words, passion burning in his eyes, and our mouths connected. This time he kissed me without fear and I tasted him, drank him in like he was lifesaving water on that first, scorching trip to Central America. Every bit of me responded, melting into him as I memorized the softness of his mouth, the heat of his tongue as it played with mine, the gentle nip of his teeth along my jaw.
Caesarion eased back too soon, breathing hard. “Please say you’ll return.”
“I’ll try.”
I had kissed boys before—Oz had been my first kiss, strangely enough, during a game of Seven Minutes in the Air Lock our third year at the Academy—but nothing like this. Nothing that had come close to making me feel completely lost, transported, confused at what present and past and future meant anymore. What my entire life meant.
“I do not need to remind you that my time is running out.” Tears gathered in my eyes at the sorrow in his words. One slipped away. He brushed it with a thumb. “No, don’t cry. Say you’ll return before that day.”
“I promise. This isn’t good-bye.”
He pulled me against his chest, crushing me in a tight hug that was probably almost as inappropriate as a kiss, then set me away. “Very well. Then go,” he said gruffly.
Neither of us moved. I tipped my head, unsure of the new rules. Maybe there weren’t any. “Um. Are you going to watch?”
“I want to know everything about you.”
“Caesarion, I’m trusting you with a great secret. History—this planet, these people—they’re much more fragile than they might seem to you. If anything significant is upset, we may never see each other again. I might disappear altogether.”
“And that is reason enough for me to keep silent, though I would not have thought to betray your confidence. Your trust is evident, and it means a great deal that you’ve given it to me after such a short time. At any rate, this lonely, discarded Pharaoh has not a soul to tell.”
Loneliness spilled out of his every pore, tingeing the air with regret. It squeezed my heart into a pancake. The truth of his words pounded in the base of my skull harder than the stupid bio-tat had when he’d kissed me. He had no one. His family was gone, his city abandoned to Octavian and Rome, with only a few loyal guards willing to risk their lives to save his.
In a few short weeks, he would die alone.
“See you,” I whispered.
The cuff fell down to my wrist with a sturdy shake. A couple of quick punches and one whispered word marked my return trip, and the blue field spread around me. It usually comforted me, the knowledge that the strange and often horrific events of my day had concluded, but now, it put impossible miles between me and this boy I could have loved, leaving me cold.
Lost.
The last thing I saw before the final light switched to green was Caesarion’s wide, sad eyes watching me go.
Chapter Fourteen
Sanchi, Amalgam of Genesis–50 NE (New Era)
“Kaia, what in the System are you still doing in the Archives? You’ve been in here all day! And why aren’t you answering my wrist comms?”
Analeigh’s voice made me jump three feet into the air, and I hadn’t even been doing anything wrong. At least not at the moment. Mostly I’d been trying to deal with my guilt over betraying the Historians, even if it was to my True.
“You scared the space trash out of me.”
“That usually happens when you’re doing something wrong, but this just looks like a reflection on …” She peered over my shoulder at the archive I had pulled to the front of the screen. “The destruction of the Temple? Why are you bothering with that?”
Analeigh swiped her finger a few times, enlarging the recording data, but that it marked the beginning of my ancestral line didn’t register.
I rolled my eyes at her and elbowed her away. “I guess I’m feeling nostalgic. Family and love. Broken hearts.” Analeigh wrinkled her pixie nose. “What for?”
“I don’t know. Just curious, I guess.” I paused, wishing she could understand. Knowing she couldn’t. “I think they were Trues. Her and Titus.”
She got it then, and flopped onto the waist-high stool next to mine with a sigh. “Are you being sappy again? Is this because of your Companion card? I knew you shouldn’t have looked. You’ve always had too many romantic illusions, and now you’re all moony because Caesarion died a long time ago.”
“Maybe it’s not that he died so long ago, A.L., but that he didn’t have to die so young. It’s not that I had any expectations that I would get an Oz of my own—”
“Thank the stars. Who would wish for that?” she interrupted with a frown. “I mean, I know it’s cool that they’re, like, instantly in love or whatever, but how is that even possible? That they’ve known each other for five years, then she gets a card and suddenly, boom, feelings?”
Boom, feelings pretty much described my past couple of days, but she had a point. I had felt the undeniable draw to Caesarion from the moment I’d laid eyes on him. Sarah had always been kinder to Oz than the rest of us, more understanding of his awkward silences. Quick to defend him, protesting that he was shy, not weird. It had made a strange kind of sense when her card had come out with his name on it, but still … now that I had experienced it, I had a hard time believing they hadn’t felt it.
Then again, people were different. It stood to reason that love would be, too.
“Maybe they did have feelings for each other but never acted on them. I mean, it’s not like Oz has ever been super into girls or dating or anything.” I shrugged.
“Right? I think you’re the only girl he ever kissed before Sarah.”
“Don’t remind me.” I needed to change the subject before she remembered I hadn’t answered about where I’d been all day. “So, you know Jonah confirmed he saved that girl. Rosie.”
Analeigh’s expression grew wary. “Right, but he didn’t say much else.”
“Well, he must have warned her ahead of time since she never left the building that day. I still can’t believe he was so irresponsible. He could have killed us all.”
“You’re being dramatic. It was just one girl.”
“Nobody’s just one girl, Kaia. What if it had somehow affected the invention of the atmosphere that supports human life in Genesis? Would the terraforming just have dissolved?”
She gave an extreme example, but those kinds of unknowns existed. The Historians had mapped most of Earth Before’s major events over the past fifty years and had flagged specific people and happenings that were essential to our ability to survive, but there were simply too many outside influences to draw every single event backward and forward through history—to know for sure what could make them disappear or change their course.
One of our first lessons with Minnie Gatling had been trying to trace the influences on Hitler. We researched every moment from his birth to death, but being sure what could have happened if a single outside influence had been removed—the father who abused him, the ancestor who passed down a genetic proclivity toward mental illness—those lines grew blurry fast.
Which was the reason for the hard and fast never interfere rule. Even if it meant letting a madman murder six million people for no reason at all, because what if the alternative turned out to be even worse? With all of our advances, everything we knew, we couldn’t predict the future.
“You want to get out of here? It’s Pey’s birthday, and she left passes for us in case we wanted to meet everyone at Stars in My Pies.” Analeigh looked hopeful—whether because she wanted to go out or wanted the two of us to get back to normal was hard to say. Maybe both.
I stood, stretching my muscles, still sore from riding that bloody horse. I had changed out of my ancient Egyptian garb, and the decontamination shower had washed the sand and dirt out of random places on my body. “Sure. Is Sarah there?”
“Probably. She and Oz went with his dad to dinner, but if she had anything to say about it, I’m sure they’re free now.”
The mention of Oz’s dad twisted my lips in a grimace. Yet another reason to be happy he hadn’t been my True. His father was a Historian and an Elder, and as stern as they came. The man saw everything with these beady black eyes. Like some kind of hawk or vulture.
“I could go for some pie.” It wasn’t real pie, like the kind we’d seen in diners on observations, because we only had synthetic milk, but it was good enough.
Analeigh frowned. “You should shower first, because you smell weird.”
I froze. “Weird like what?”
“Like … livestock?” She narrowed her eyes at me. “Where were you really, Kaia? There are no cows in the Archives. Or on Sanchi. Or in Genesis.”
So much for the decontamination shower. I should have used the shampoo instead of forgoing a hair wash.
I wandered away from the table comp, touching several dots with a slippered toe until I found Oz’s. I poked it, trying to bide my time before answering Analeigh’s question, but also curious. Instead of recording him in Stars in My Pies, as expected, the bio data claimed he’d been in early eighteenth-century London for the past twenty minutes.
Nothing significant came to mind, as far as events of that time and place, but we were all off duty today. He shouldn’t have been anywhere, except with Sarah.
With my own transgressions hogging my head space, I almost pushed Oz’s weird travels aside. But something stopped me. Jonah had known saving Rosie Shapiro wouldn’t change anything significant, but if there was a way to track history forward as well as back, no one had told me. My brother warned me that everyone at the Academy couldn’t be trusted—that the Historians had a secret.
And Oz’s dad was an Elder.
Jonah had traveled alone, and I’d caught Oz doing the same thing. My brother and I shared a double dose of stubborn, so maybe Oz presented a better alternative for finding out whether it might be possible to predict the consequences of saving Caesarion’s life.
When I closed Oz’s dot and turned, Analeigh stared at me with her eyebrows raised, arms crossed over her chest. All of the secrets felt heavy on my shoulders. To unburden myself meant weighing down my best friend and that felt selfish.
“I want to tell you, Analeigh, but it’s better if I don’t. You’re a terrible liar and this isn’t your problem.”
I tried moving around her but she blocked my path.
“Kaia. I am freaking out. You found your brother’s cuff and the first thing you did was break major policy to go see him. Jonah ran off without a word, never said good-bye to anyone, and now you’re disappearing, and keeping secrets, and …” Tears filled her big green eyes. “I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want you to leave. I want us to take our certifications and stay here. Together.”
My throat tightened. “I don’t want that, either. I’ll tell you everything, I promise. Just not right now. Give me a few days to try to figure it out.”
Her eyes were serious as they lingered on mine. It was the look Sarah and I jokingly referred to as her “mom” expression. “Promise me, Kaia.”
“I promise.”
I flashed her a wobbly grin that reflected none of the ache gnawing me open from the inside and fled the room, heading for the safe solitude of the shower.
I didn’t want to end up like my brother, living outside established rules, an outcast from the System—not at all. True Companion or not, Caesarion lived in the past. Even if he could be saved, he could never be mine forever. I wanted to fall in love with a boy and get married, have children of my own, and continue my work at the Academy, and there wasn’t anything I believed in more than the calling of the Historians. It was important and, more than that, I loved it.
But I wanted to know Caesarion, too. And I wanted to be a good daughter and a good friend. And to make sure future generations of humans had a healthy society to grow up in. And yes, fine, I wanted to save the ancient boy I was meant to love from the unfairness of his world.
Jonah’s cuff and his chip allowed me to be both selfish and remain at the Academy, at least for now. Hopefully, my luck would hold until I could figure out whether I could alter Caesarion’s fate without upsetting the fate of the universe.
Or until Octavian killed him.
*
“Are you sure you don’t want to come?”
“Yeah. I’m kind of tired. I might be coming down with something.” I avoided Analeigh’s gaze by snuggling into my bed and rolling toward the wall. I’d shoved the chip back in my wrist while I’d been in the bathroom, the sound of running water covering my muffled groan.
I needed to grab some clear, adhesive bandages from the infirmary so the wound wouldn’t get infected in between travels. Some healing salve wouldn’t hurt, either.
Analeigh paused for a moment in my bedroom doorway, looking torn between giving me space and being terrified I’d disappear like Jonah had if she let me out of her sight. Finally, she sighed softly and flipped the lights off on her way out of the suite.
The shower had given me time to think and for the first time in days, a boy other than Caesarion filled my thoughts. My mind turned over Oz’s secret comings and goings, and no rational explanation came to mind. If Oz had gone rogue, traveling alone and observing without authorization, someone had to stop him. Someone should stop me, too, because I didn’t have the willpower to cease and desist on my own, but since no one had, that left me free to follow Oz.
The halves of me—the one in love with my calling as a Historian, and the one connected to Caesarion—were at war, but if Oz was taking chances that could affect us all, the Elders needed to know.
First, I needed proof. The suspicions I had, based on his bio info reflecting odd times and places, wouldn’t be enough. He would claim a system error, and I could end up drawing attention where it would be potentially disastrous—onto myself. His father being an Elder, they would believe Oz in a game of He Said, She Said between the two of us.
With everyone out at Stars for the next hour or two, I could travel back and follow him to England earlier tonight. Try to get answers. Traveling alone twice in the same day counted as reckless, but I had to know what he was up to. If he could help me.
I didn’t want to waste time figuring out clothes, so I ran to the wardrobe closet and grabbed a generic black trench coat that fell to my knees, knotting it securely around my waist. My leggings and black flats showed, but with my glasses and hair twisted into a knot under a kerchief, no one in 1714 England would spare me a second glance.
The air lock registered a different certified Historian’s name this time when I swiped my wrist. The tech must have been programmed to switch it up, which eased my anxiety further.
The laws of physics prevented Historians from crossing paths on different trips in the same past—like, we didn’t see the previous groups of apprentices observing Caesar’s death or the Triangle Fire. There was some intricate set of principles that made it impossible, but I didn’t need to understand them to work as a Historian. Those worries belonged to the Science Academy. Essentially, the only way to watch Oz was to go with him, so I’d have to travel back in Sanchi to when he’d left, then leave from there. I set the dials on Jonah’s travel cuff for ten minutes before Oz’s departure, then whispered “Air lock, Historian Academy, Sanchi,” into the tiny speaker.
I disappeared and reappeared in the same place, just about an hour and a half ago. I reset the dials and requested a trip to “Norwich, England, Outskirts,” hoping the vague instructions worked.
*
Norwich , England , Earth Before–1714 CE (Common Era)
The soft landing in the middle of nowhere pleased me. Beautiful, rugged coastline stretched out for miles, all green and browns, trees giving way to waist-high grasses before easing into sand and rock that took a beating from the crashing surf. There wasn’t time to admire it, and a quick request for the route into town brought up a map on the lenses in front of my eyes. The hike into town took the better part of an hour and sweat trickled down my back, partly from the exercise and partly fear that I would miss Oz’s arrival.
The town of Norwich yawned in front of me, paved with quaint cobblestone streets and pretty, sturdily crafted storefronts, row houses, and churches. A gazebo sat in the middle of the town square. The market bustled with people out shopping for bread or cheese or new clothes for the squalling children they towed through the streets behind them. There were women in full skirts chattering around a round marble fountain that burbled and twinkled in the morning sun, and men in suits walked with purpose into money changers’ offices or held heated discussions, pipes dangling from their lips.
The brain stem tat returned Oz’s location in response to my query, but his wardrobe blended so well it almost fooled me. The fact that he looked super handsome caused me to do a double take. He strode purposefully down the main street, clad in expensive gray silk, knee-length breeches and a matching waistcoat, paired with off-white stockings and a linen shirt. A darker gray frock coat and a bicorn hat on his head finished off the look, though if my bio-tat hadn’t been working overtime spewing information, the details would have escaped me.
It all fit him perfectly, stretched across his broad shoulders and accentuating things on the rear end of Oz I’d never considered assets before today. I must be off my nut, checking out Oz’s ass in broad daylight.
My idle admirations screeched to a halt, every muscle in my body tensing, when I noticed the Gavreau strapped in the belt at his waist. The sight dropped a leaden ball into my stomach.
There was no good reason to bring a sonic waver on an observation.
Oz whipped around, as though sensing my eyes or my steps dogging his. I turned my face away at the same moment I registered how the gray coat brought out his eyes, and ducked behind a group of women waiting in line to buy fresh bread. The smell of it cooking filled the air, and brought back the sharp memory of sharing a snack with Caesarion. My heart pounded so hard my ribs hurt.
When I peeked again after counting to thirty, Oz had continued down the street.
The cobblestones made my steps unsteady, tripped me more than once before he turned down a less crowded alley, then onto a different street. A man stood on the stoop of a legal office, and Oz headed toward him. When my eyes focused, the glasses followed my gaze, analyzing the time, date, and place, and running facial recognition on the man before displaying details in my peripheral vision.
James Puckle. Lawyer. Three years hence, inventor of the world’s first machine gun technology. Married twice. Children with the first wife, Mary (decd), none with the second, Elizabeth, wed two months hence.
None of it meant anything to me. The glasses and my bio-tat gave no indication that today would be special, not in Norwich, not for James Puckle. He had impacted the world with his technology, but not yet.
Not yet.
My mouth went dry at the thought, recalling the sonic waver nestled against Oz’s hip. At the memory of Booth’s random comment about changing the past, at the realization that I now knew that it had been done before—by my brother. The chance that he was the only one seemed remote now, watching Oz move with such purpose.
