The River of No Return

from knowing about herself. He had lied to her. For her entire life. She had been able to manipulate time all along. Since she was a child. She knew the men sitting around the fire were right; she could feel it in her fingertips, all up her spine, even at the roots of her hair. The knowledge was there, so quick and ready and bright that it must have been with her all along. She was like these men, but she was more powerful, more gifted somehow. She was the Talisman not because she made Grandfather stronger, but because she was so strong herself. And Grandfather had walled her up.
    She hadfrozen time before he died. She had. She knew it now, and it was as if she had always known it, but the knowledge had stayed just beyond her reach, like a dream only just forgotten. It was when she was in a temper or seized by fear. When her emotions got the best of her. She had been the one to freeze Eamon and his team of horses all those years ago when she was four. She had frozen him again, those times they dressed him up and made fun of him. She remembered now, the way he had teased her into a rage, and her sights would narrow on him. Her blood would sing in her ears, and he had seemed to fix in her gaze. He had been locked in a moment of time. But Grandfather had always been there, ready to pretend that it was he who had frozen Eamon, just for fun.
    And then . . . in those last moments of his life. Grandfather had sped time up so that he could die before Eamon arrived. But he hadn’t actually been the one to do it. He was too weak. He was dying. He had incited herto do it. She remembered how he had focused her attention on the dust, how she had felt his power as the dust flew. Except that it hadn’t been his power she had felt. It had been her own. Her power, speeding his death. Hot tears welled up behind her eyelids and oozed out over her cheeks. His very last act had been to use her and then hide the truth from her. He tricked her into killing him. Or used her to kill himself. What was the difference? There was none.
    Grandfather. Julia felt herself tumbling down, down, into a deep well of cold rage, a well encrusted with an icy rime of grief.
    It was unforgivable, like Bertrand said.
    Yet as the tears tracked down her cheeks, their salt, their warmth, restored her to what was real. The flesh and its failures, love and its limits. The ancient barn surrounded her, the huge, rough stones catching the flickering firelight. Julia breathed in the scent of smoke, hay, and chickens, the scent of now. Beneath the present moment she could sense the deep movements of time, the seasons that had been laid away in this barn, year after year. The harvests stretching back and back . . . She sighed, and floated back up to the present. She was in an ancient barn, with Ofan men. In those last moments Grandfather had given her the clues she needed. He had told her to pretend. And he had told her that she would be Ofan after all.
    Maybe he had given her just enough knowledge to protect her, and ultimately to save herself. Maybe trust and clues were more powerful than instructions. He hadn’t told her who she was, he hadn’t provided for her. It was a betrayal. And it was a gift. He hadn’t told her who she was; he hadn’t dictated the terms and limits of her life. He’d left her to do that for herself.
    Julia opened her eyes. Her head felt clearer. The pain was gone.
    “You’re the Alderman, in this era, anyway,” Nick was saying. “Why can’t you just call off the dogs? Tell Arkady and the rest of them to leave Julia alone?”
    “I could do that, and I will,” Bertrand said, “but Julia has to agree, at least in the beginning, to pretend to be nobody. We must train her to be able to withstand the tests. Arkady is on the scent, and Mr. Mibbs could return at any moment, having discovered that Jemison is nothing but a very courageous Natural. For all our sakes Julia must learn to pretend.”
    “Poor Julia,” Nick said. “To be finally told the truth and then immediately told to hide it.”
    Silence fell around the fire. A log settled, and sparks flew. Outside, an owl called.
    Julia spoke. “I am awake,” she said.
    * * *
    And awake she stayed, all night, long after the others had fallen asleep. As the dawn broke, revealing that the roof of the great barn not only had a hole but was half missing, the massive rafters holding up nothing but the pinkening sky, she lay curled in blankets on a bed of straw. The four travelers