Trail of Bones (12 page)

If this ability should grow, I may well go
mad.

And as mother might have observed, going mad
will not help me think clearly about my situation.

The slave cabins are opposite the extensive,
and apparently experimental, gardens that Jefferson keeps. Orange
light from a setting sun plays over the flowers, trees, and vines
there. Looking at them, smelling them, I could almost imagine
myself back in the gardens in Alexandria.

Almost.

We’re back at the front entrance to the
house quickly enough. “Come with me, girl,” Sally says, and takes
me upstairs.

I noticed she didn’t look too closely at the
slaves on Mulberry Row, either. She doesn’t quite belong there, but
she doesn’t quite belong here, in Jefferson’s house, as a full
family member.

Like me, she is caught between worlds.

Two of Jefferson’s granddaughters run by,
giggling as they see me. Jefferson’s grown daughter, Patsy, is here
with her family — I don’t think I’ve counted all the young ones
yet. There are around six or so. I don’t know how they can move so
fast in such garments, though, with all the bows and sashes around
their waists.

Even the men, those who aren’t slaves, seem
to wear numerous layers of clothing.

But to be a child is to move fast, no matter
what your clothing, so off the children go, perhaps to look at some
of the antlers on the wall. This is a busy house, which also
reminds me of Alexandria and the library. Something was always
happening there. Guests were forever arriving. Back when
I
was a child.

And if I’m not quite a child now, but not
yet grown into the sort of woman Mother was… then what am I? Who am
I?

Honoré stomps by on his way to the kitchen,
holding a basket full of peas he’s brought in from outside. “And I
still have to make ice cream for
tout les petits
Jeffersons!” he yells to no one in particular.

“We’ll go up here and wait in the cabinet
room.”

I follow Sally up the stairs, into what must
be Jefferson’s study.

Like Mother’s, it is strewn with papers and
scientific implements of every sort. There is a kind of paddle
hanging on the wall. There is a plate of oranges on his desk. The
scented fruit reminds me of home. I wonder if he has any
lemons.

There’s an apparatus on his desk that seems
designed for making scrolls. There are sheets of parchment in it,
but I’m not sure how it works. Most peculiar of all, though, are
several large bones set out on tables, trails of dirt and debris
around them.

I believe these may be some of the bones
Jefferson brought back from the trip where we found Eli.

Where I found him, only to lose

Miss.

—him again.

Who said
miss
?

“Jefferson has an active mind,” Sally tells
me. I realize I have been staring at the large animal bones.
“Mostly that’s a good thing. It keeps him busy, keeps all that
sadness of his at bay.” She shakes her head. “But sometimes it
keeps him from paying attention to the things that are right in
front of him. To the life he’s leading right now.”

“Sally, you say the worst things about me.
It’s scarcely fair.”

“Yes, Jefferson, it’s scarcely fair.”

Jefferson has entered through a side door.
He holds a large, musty volume in his hands, a “book” as scrolls
are now called.

Even in this quick exchange, I can tell
there’s a bond between these two, but I can’t make sense of it.

“If I believed in Providence, I would say
that my continued delay in getting back to Washington is a penalty
for having indulged secret travels in the first place. Except that
I don’t mind the delay at all. However, I expect my political
enemies in the Whig Party will not let it be forgotten.”

I nod toward Jefferson, just to be
agreeable.

“Do you speak much English?” he asks me.

“Some bit,” I tell him. I’m surprised to
hear myself say it.

“You appeared to understand it in the
stables. You’ve taxed all the Greek and Latin out of me, though I
enjoy the practice. It may save time if I can proceed in the common
tongue. Is that all right?”

I nod again. I can’t tell him about the
lingo-spot.

And then it occurs to me that by using
English, he’s including Sally in the conversation, too.

He’s trusting her.

“I am always trying to save time. There
never seems to be enough.” He pauses at the parchment machine. “For
instance, this polygraph I invented. It allows a duplicate to be
made of every letter I write. It works by putting a pen in a brace
that copies every stroke I make with my own hand.”

The scribes in Alexandria could have used
that. We would have had extra copies of all our scrolls and perhaps
wouldn’t have lost them all in the fire.

“These bones,” Jefferson says, coming up to
the table. “They save no time whatsoever, but I am fascinated by
them. I cannot help but wonder what sorts of mighty creatures lived
here in America before us. I believe there may have been
giants.”

He looks at me…

Tell me.

…to see what I know. He suspects something.
“These bones, for example, come from a creature I’ve been calling
the
incognitum
because I have yet to ascertain what species
it is. Though, lately, I wonder if it might not be some kind of
elephant. I recalled reading that Alexander the Great used
elephants for military purposes, then went to find a volume about
him that I had procured in Europe. It was richly illustrated, and I
hoped the engravings might give me a basis to make a few renderings
of our own prehistoric elephants.

“Alexander, of course, founded the great
city of Alexandria. The original one, in Egypt. Our smaller,
humbler settlement of the same name, here in Virginia, hopes to
draw inspiration from its source and someday serve as a seat of
learning.”

He is still looking at me.

Tell me.

“Jefferson, for this poor girl’s sake, come
to your point.”

“Here is the section of the book on
Alexandria.” He lets the volume fall open. I see a series of
accurate engravings of the great legends of my city: Alexander’s
arrival, its transformation to a great shipping port, the building
of the library, the museum, and Pharos — the great lighthouse. That
was the last place I saw my mother alive.

They’re all there in Jefferson’s book.

“And then there is this brief section about
the great fire in Alexandria, and the destruction of its golden
age.”

He flips the large, moldering pages.

In the engravings, I see the fire taking the
library. I see the animals fleeing the zoo on the palace grounds,
just as I remember them. I see K’lion.

“I noticed this lizard man in the
illustration,” Jefferson says, tapping his finger on the pages.
“And I do not recall ever seeing him there before. But there was an
even bigger surprise waiting for me on the next page.”

He takes the bound parchment to reveal
another engraving on the next page.

The mathematician and scholar Hypatia

stood accused of consorting with demons and

demigods, and this may have led to her

downfall.

The caption is the Gaul language, French,
and Jefferson reads it in the original.

“Do you need me to—”

“No,” I tell him. I don’t need him to
translate.

He just shakes his head.

The picture is of Mother. Mother talking to
K’lion.

It never happened, but somehow the author of
this book thinks it did. Somehow, a version of our story has made
its way down through the ages.

“You mentioned Hypatia’s name during your
restless sleep . You called her ‘Mother.’”

“Jefferson, this child’s clearly upset,
she’s still weak. What are you—”

“I am beginning to wonder, Sally, if I’ve
made a serious mistake letting that boy join the Corps of Discovery
to capture the lizard man. I am beginning to wonder if the West may
hold such mysteries that the entire country may come undone. And I
certainly wonder how a bound and printed book is able to alter its
very illustrations.”

Sally is getting upset.

“You need to leave this girl be, Tom!”

Jefferson’s eyes widen.

“Not everything that passes in front of your
eyes is something to be used in an experiment or examined like some
bug!”

Silence envelops the room. Even the
transforming lingo-spot doesn’t try to fill it. Somehow, it
understands that the silence is the very thing being said.

“Sally, my wife and four of my children are
dead. Of my original family, only two daughters have survived. I do
not need to be reminded of what things in life are authentic, and
which are passing distractions. I do
not
need to be lectured
on whether I am in some kind of flight —“

—
from grief.

Jefferson doesn’t finish his sentence. But I
know. He pauses again, and smoothes out his long coat.

“I am sorry, Sally.”

“I’m sorry, too, Tom.”

“You really shouldn’t call me Tom.”
Jefferson turns back to me and puts his hand on the leather box
next to the excavated bones.

He flips the box open, and I see Eli’s cap
inside.

“I need to know how this fits in to the
puzzle. I need to know what the link is between you and the boy and
the lizard man. I need to understand if there is an immediate
danger confronting us. I am beginning to suspect that you are not
this ‘Brassy’ who belongs to Governor Claiborne. But I’d like to
know who else you might be.”

I don’t know enough about the history of
Eli’s country — the United State, I believe it’s called — to know
what is supposed to happen next in the years between the presiding
of Jefferson and the invention of time displacement by Eli’s
parents. I do not know how things turn out— if there are wars or
not, whether the slaves stage a rebellion, and whether the leaders
of this United State are always wise and just.

I do not know; but if I did, it wouldn’t
matter.

It would appear that because Eli, K’lion and
I have been loosed upon history, history itself is no longer quite
fixed. Or to put it another way, since we can now travel into the
past, the past therefore becomes as unpredictable… as the
future.

“I am taking this cap with me to Washington
tomorrow. I wish Ben Franklin were still here to look at it, to
offer us theories about its electric properties. But I intend to
have it examined, so its true nature may be discovered.” The look
on his face softens. “I wish you no harm. No harm at all, Miss
Whoever-You-Are. But what else is
incognitum
in America that
I’m not being told about?”

Sally watches Jefferson and me. She’s
waiting for an answer, too.

It never comes.

The door to the study bursts open, and
Honoré is there with Patsy. They’re having an argument.

“Sir!
Monsieur
!
S’il vous
plait
! Will you tell your daughter that macaroni and cheese do
not belong together! That you regret having ever asked me to
combine —”

“Father, I’m sorry for the interruption. I
asked Honoré to make the dish the children are so fond of.”

“Honoré — Patsy and I felt that putting
macaroni and cheese together makes a simple, satisfactory American
dish, and I would ask that you keep experimenting with the
different cheeses to find the best possible combination. Any dish
that all of my grandchildren like equally well without complaint
should command our respect. Now, is there some other reason you
have chosen to violate the strict edicts about my not being
interr—”

But the word
interrupted
is itself
interrupted.

I have reached into the leather box and
pulled out Eli’s cap. I can feel the tingle in my hands
already.

There’s no other way. If the cap disappears,
so does Eli’s ability to move through time with it. None of us
might ever get back.

We would be stuck here, unmaking
history.

“What—”

“I’m sorry,” I say, as Jefferson lunges for
me.

As he fades from view, the world around me
goes gray, then blue, then explodes in a frenzy of color, fog, and
light.

If this is the Fifth Dimension now, it’s
different.

Or maybe I am.

And then I realize, I have no idea where I’m
headed.

Chapter Thirteen

Eli: Fort Mandan

December 1804

There’s one hour of warmth today — and I
want to use it all. Of course “warmth” means anything less than
about a million degrees below zero. It’s anything that lets you
step outside for a few minutes without worrying that if your finger
touches your cheek, it’ll be frozen there.

Not that your finger actually can touch your
cheek, because cheeks and faces are bundled up in strips of cloth
and your hands are usually wrapped up in these big smelly leather
gloves that remind me more of baseball mitts.

I look like one of the zombie characters in
a Barnstormers game now. Like a bundle of old clothes that suddenly
came to life.

But which life? I really don’t want to think
about Barnstormers, or anything that reminds me of how
my
life was before.

Round and round our little fort I go,
walking to keep warm, to keep distracted.

Since I’ve become tangled up in time, this
place, this journey — this “now” — is the longest I’ve stayed in
one spot. Or time. It’s been half a year now, traveling with the
Corps of Discovery.

I cover myself with stinky buffalo hides. I
eat meat and jerky and nuts and fish. And I live with a bunch of
guys who think that if I took a sip of whiskey every once in
awhile, it might help my growth.

They’re good men, and they’re brave, pretty
much. Sometimes they’re silly and weird. But I don’t know how much
longer I can keep traveling with them.