The sun glittered brightly in the wake of the canoes.  With the natives’ backs turned, Mackenzie could finally snap a photo of them, with the Mission of the Blessed Sacrament in the distance.

          The floodwater had receded a few feet, so she had to climb up the slippery, slimy grass to reach the oak grove.  She held her skirt up high, because there would be no fire to dry it, this time.  She felt damp enough from the tule boat.  At least the orange and yellow blanket around her shoulders tempered the coolness of the air.  Father Sanchez had let her keep it.

          Sean held out his hand to help her up the last few steps.  “Sleep okay?” he asked. 

          The padre had sent a meal of bread and coffee to their rooms at the crack of dawn, way too early for her taste.  “I guess.  You?”

          “I had a few naps, in between Nik clearing his throat.”

          Nik looked up from the computer tablet.  “I seem to recall a lot of snoring from your side of the room.  Besides, I think I figured out how to rewire the console.”  He coughed.  “Dang, that smoke inhalation is still bugging me.”  He fished his albuterol inhaler from the side pocket and used it.

          Mackenzie looked over his shoulder and studied the tablet.  “How does that work, anyway?” 

          “Let me finish some adjustments, and I’ll show you.”  He typed some code on the keyboard screen.

          “Say, why did you stop me from questioning Father Sanchez last night?  I had so much more I wanted to ask him, like why they keep the girls locked in the dorm at night.”

          “Because it doesn’t matter.” 

          “Doesn’t matter?”  Sean sounded just as puzzled as she felt.  “I thought Mac was on a roll.” 

          Nik looked up from his work.  “Since the sainthood of Junípero Serra was confirmed a few years ago – our time – it’s the most debated question of the 21st century.  Both sides are entrenched, even the native tribes.  Some love him.  Some hate him, or at least the missions he started in California.  It all comes down to whether you think it’s appropriate for missionaries to take people away from their native cultures, and you won’t convince Father Sanchez that it’s not.”

          He went back to programming the tablet, and Sean drifted to the other side of the grove.  Mac leaned against a lichen-covered tree trunk and chewed a strand of hair, thinking of all the times her mom tried to convince her to come to church with her.  Mom wasn’t even a Catholic like Abuela.  There was something about religion that people just kept sharing.  Even her Buddhist and Muslim friends had tried to convert her. 

          She pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders and sighed.  “I guess I should just keep focused on the issue of racism and slavery.  After all, that’s what we’ve been trying to root out with our protests.”

          “It’s more than that,” Nik said, coming up behind her.  “It’s the whole American capitalist system.  It allows corporations to keep all its workers in slavery.  I think I have the machine dialed in.  Ready?”

          “Sean!”  she called, pushing away from the tree.

          “Coming!”  He crashed through some underbrush.  “Did you know there’s a fort on the next island over?  Out that way!”  He pointed.

          “That would be Sutter’s.”  Nik cleared his throat and stepped into the sleigh.  “Let’s see if this works now.”

*  *  *

Dateline:  Fall, 1881, Boston, MA

          Once again, they landed in the middle of a dusty road.  This one had deep wagon grooves in it, so it must be well traveled.  They hid the time machine in a thicket, and Mackenzie folded the blanket to stow under the seat.

          “It’s hot, and I hope those vines weren’t more poison ivy.”  She brushed her sweaty hands on her skirt.  A fly buzzed her ear, and she flicked it away. 

          “Honeysuckle, more like.”  Nik pointed to the hanging pink trumpets on the vines.  “It’s native to the East Coast, so my calibrations are still way off.  My tablet says we’re near Boston, but that’s not where I was aiming.  Not by a long shot.”

          Sean pointed at the green herbal smear on her arm.  “You haven’t been scratching today; that’s good.”

          She smiled.  “Yeah, the padre’s salve worked so well I was afraid to wash it off this morning.”

          Something metallic jingled, and hooves thudded the ground.  A wagon bumped over a rut and came to a halt a few feet from them.  The horse shook its head and snuffled.

          “Ho!” the driver called, setting the hand brake and jumping down.  His companion climbed over the wheel on the other side, and the two approached them together.  Both were sturdy men of medium height and dark brown hair.  Behind her, Mackenzie felt Nik inch away, and she stepped back as well. She wondered if he would get the rifle, before she remembered there were no bullets.  Nik had fired every round of his ammunition at George Washington.  Now, their defense would be up to her.

          “What have we here?” the driver menaced.  “Runaways?  Where are your papers?”

          “I wasn’t aware that British citizens needed papers,” Mackenzie blustered, remembering just in time not to say ‘American.’

          “What century are you in?  In 1881, everyone needs papers!” he fired back.

          “I’ll bet he’s one of them escaped Irish felons,” the passenger added, pointing at Sean.  “Dirty Catholic scum!  They overpowered their guards at the docks when the ship brought them in.”

          The driver leered at Mackenzie.  “Don’t she look like Judge Eastman’s runaway house maid?  The newspaper said she was light-skinned, with brown hair.”

          “You leave my children alone!” Nik exclaimed from some distance behind Mackenzie. 

          Sean pulled her sleeve as he backed away.  She shook him off, not taking her eyes away from the men.  When they made a move, she wanted to be ready with a response.  She didn’t have long to wait.

          “Get ‘em!” shouted the driver, lunging toward her. 

          Mackenzie met his nose with a palm heel, as hard as she could.  Combined with his momentum, the force of her blow whipped his head back.  She grabbed his arms and toppled him in the path of his buddy, tripping the second one.  She hiked her skirt up and threw a downward side kick to the second man’s hip as he fell toward her.  Then she leaned over them and delivered a hammer strike to each skull.

          She stepped back, shaking with adrenaline, and nursed her hand.  Heads were harder than the boards she broke for her black belt. 

          “Oh my god,” Sean screamed.  “You killed them!”

          The horse whinnied and shook its head.

          “No, I just gave them a concussion.  Now, if I targeted their temples, they’d be dead.  But the side of their skull is seamless, so they’ll wake up with a bad headache.  At least, that’s what my martial arts instructor taught us.”  She had to stop herself from babbling.

          Nik knelt to feel for pulses.  “She’s right, they’ll be okay.  Let’s load them onto their cart and send the horse on its way.  We should be gone before a posse comes back looking for us.”

          Loading unconscious bodies into the cart was awkward business.  The men probably incurred extra bruises along the way.  Eventually it was done, and Nik disengaged the hand brake.  Then he slapped the horse’s rear to send it down the lane.

          He slapped his dusty hands on his knickers.  “Boston, 1881.  That’s all I need to program the computer.  We’ll be out of here in a minute.”

          “Before we go, tell me how there is still slavery in Boston, this long after the Civil War,” Mackenzie demanded.  “And how is England still sending prisoners here as indentured servants?”

          Nik shrugged.  “No telling how much history has changed. Let’s go.”

*  *  *

Dateline:  July, 1928, Petrograd, Russia

          Directly overhead came an ear-piercing chime of bells.  Mackenzie covered her ears until it stopped.  Panels of bells ringed the room where the time machine had landed, and they all seemed to be ringing at once.

          “Where are we this time, in a church steeple?”  Sean hopped down and went to a window.

          “Shh!” Nik warned, waving them to the side of the room.  Footsteps came down the spiral stairs, and a boy in a choir robe flitted past without a glance to the side.  A door slammed below, and Mackenzie breathed again.

          “I guess we have another hour before he comes up again,” she said.

          “Don’t be too sure.”  Nik joined Sean at the window.  “Some churches play the carillon every fifteen minutes.  Not sure what the bell boy was doing with the bigger bells upstairs, though.  The carillonist keyboard should be on the floor below us.”

          “Come look at this, Mac,” Sean said.  “This whole place is shaped like a star, and it’s built right into the river.”

          There was no room at their window.  She went to the next one around the square and plastered her face against the pane so she could see past the corner.  Beyond the red-roofed buildings was an outer wall with corners shaped like diamonds.  The two she could see were pointing into different branches of the same river, with some sort of tree-lined peninsula between.  Wherever they landed next, Mackenzie wanted to remember this.  She pulled out her phone and took a photo, wishing she had gotten a snapshot of Boston.

          “This is the Peter and Paul Fortress.”  Nik forgot to whisper.  “That means we’re in the cathedral in the heart of Leningrad!  You two stay here, and I’ll go find a newspaper or something.”  He barreled down the spiral staircase like an excited teenager.

          “You’d think we landed in a candy store,” she whispered.  “I hope he remembers to be careful!”

          “It depends on what year it is, but this is where socialism became a real thing,” Sean replied.  “I can see why he’s happy.”

          “Um, what do you remember about the Russian Revolution?”  She had to tutor Sean through World History last semester.  She paced to another window in the small, square room.  This one faced another point in the star-shaped fortress. 

          “Just that some peasants overthrew the government and started the USSR.  Equality for all and that stuff.  Socialists the world over looked up to them – Bernie even honeymooned here!”

          “I know.  That made Bernie Sanders my dad’s least favorite choice in the last election.  But you’re kind of skipping over the dangerous part.  You know, where they killed anyone they thought was a spy?” 

          Viewing the fortress from all four sides of the tiny room, she counted six points to the star, which extended across the entire island.  The fortress itself was oblong, connected to the city with bridges at each end of the structure.

          “Oh, lighten up, Mac.”

          They fell into an uneasy silence.  Mackenzie skirted the central staircase to the time machine and sat down in front of the tablet.  Searching the encyclopedia did nothing to allay her fears: especially the article, “Mass killings under communist regimes.”  Every single estimate ended with the words, millions dead. 

          A door below them swooshed open and shut.  As quietly as possible, Mackenzie levered herself out of the sleigh and into a position to defend herself.  Fortunately, it was Nik instead of the bell ringer.

          The effort of climbing sent him into a coughing fit.  He leaned against the wall while Mackenzie found his inhaler in the time machine.  It took two puffs, a couple minutes apart, for him to catch his breath.

          “I found a church bulletin, but I’m even more confused,” he wheezed, waving a printed page weakly.  “The date is 1928, four years after Lenin died and the city was renamed for him.  But the bulletin says ‘Petrograd,’ and it announces that Tsarina Anastasia will attend the next Divine Liturgy.”

          “Good thing you speak Russian, too,” Sean said with admiration.  He squinted at the bulletin’s Cyrillic script.  “I can’t even make out the alphabet, much less words.”

          “Tsarina Anastasia?”  Mackenzie frowned.  “I thought she was killed with her family in the Revolution.” 

          “Obviously something has gone very wrong,” Nik said, coughing.  “Let me do some quick calculations.   We have to leave before the bell ringer comes back.”

Disclaimer for social media: This is historical fiction for entertainment only. Any resemblance to living persons is accidental. Resemblance to current events is pure imagination. Interaction with actual history is sheer conjecture. (The rest of us already knew this, right?)

Did something pique your curiousity? Author’s notes for chapter 7 can be found here.

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Copyright © 2020 by Carolyn Van Gorkom

All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author, except as provided by USA copyright law.

Cover illustration: cropped flag from a larger oil painting by Ferris, Jean Leon Gerome, Artist. Betsy Ross,/ J.L.G. Ferris. , ca. 1932. Cleveland, Ohio: The Foundation Press, Inc., July 28. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2002719536/.  Public domain.  No known restrictions on publication. No renewal in Copyright office, 11/91.