Prologue: Anne through the portal
“To tequila and marshmallows!” Izzy toasted the stars and took another drink.
“To rum and hamburgers!” I tossed one back and coughed on the flash burn of the alcohol. That was my one drink for the night. One. I was a lightweight and needed my wits about me to sail. I didn’t need the alcohol. Izzy was having a great time, and I was delighted to warm myself off the edges of her joy.
“To bacon and wine!” She drank again.
“To whiskey and tacos!” I shouted back. We whooped with laughter as a wave came up and rocked the ship with an unexpected swell from the east, spilling our drinks. We poured another round and continued toasting the sea, the stars, the moon, and delicious plastic-wrapped snack cakes. I continued tossing my drinks overboard, she tossed hers back like a pro. The stars were brilliant tonight. We were far from any land and light pollution and you could see the arms of the Milky Way. I raised my glass to them.
The constellations had been my most constant and steadfast companions on my journeys. It was my habit and prerogative to always travel alone on my ship. In fact, it was among my top rules that no one stepped aboard this boat while I was sailing – this rule applied doubly to men. In my younger days I would occasionally take others out on the boat, like when I had taken my mother and Izzy sailing on little day trips around the bay when Izzy was home from school. But for a long time now it had been just me and the sky.
Now that Izzy was with me I wasn’t planning to sail alone until it was time to bring her back home. I had this one summer with her, and after that it would be back to loneliness, back to me and the stars. One day, maybe Izzy would look up at those stars and remember tonight and remember me. My sister knocked back another drink…maybe I’d take a picture of tonight just to be safe.
The way she was drinking she wasn’t going to remember shit.
I smiled as she stumbled her way across the boards and piled her plate with the gourmet boat snacks she insisted I stock in the galley. I watched her sway and rock with the sea as she stuffed her face with some tomato-mozzarella mixture and thought to myself that, at most, there was a 60/40-percent chance she’d kill me. Maybe 70/30. Okay, fine. I had, at the very least, a 25-percent chance of surviving the moment when she figured out what I had done – which was kidnap her a little bit.
Izzy had stepped foot on this ship for one reason and one reason only: I’d begged her. Actually, I had done much more than beg. I had bribed, groveled, guilted, and connived her into getting on the boat. I had also lied my ass off. As far as she knew, we were on a fun, sisterly cruise, our destinations being every bar, beach, and cabana in the Caribbean. One slight wrinkle...we weren’t doing any of that at all.
We were going a-time-traveling.
Izzy and I were the last descendants of an indescribably wealthy, old-money family. For generations upon generations my family tree had enjoyed wealth beyond measure until complacency and self-importance had driven the family patriarchs into making terrible financial decisions that bankrupted us. The extended family had pilfered and squirreled away what little we had remaining.
My father left us before Izzy and I could get into PG-13 movies. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Moving on, never looking back. My mother, the esteemed blonde dynamo in heels and designer suits, Vivienne Nicole St. Germaine, spent our childhoods pulling the family fortunes up by their bootstraps. She leveraged every inch of land, every scrap of luxury, every brittle connection she could drum up to keep the St. Germaine name relevant in society. Don’t be fooled, she did it for herself. I’d have been happy with peanut butter sandwiches and canvas shoes, but oh, no. “You are a St. Germaine, Anne, whether you want to be or not. Now go get yourself presentable. Mrs. High-Falutin-So-And-So’s tea begins in twenty minutes, and you will be perfect.”
She turned our house and land into Heron’s Landing, a boutique resort with a picturesque natural landscape complete with glorious bay views perfect for your wedding, bat mitzvah, or next corporate event. I’d grown up in a sea of fancy dresses, wedding veils, dance floors, and strangers in my house. Our family was relegated to a smaller closed off wing, away from the muzak filled lounges, the tea room, and event space C. Therefore, every Saturday evening I enjoyed resort guests singing and shouting, conga-ing and electric sliding, and toasting their way across the lawn outside my bedroom window.
The only brilliant thing to happen to our family was Izzy. My parents adopted her, and she brightened my life like a shooting star in the dead of night. Though I’d never forgive my parents for my childhood, I’ll always be thankful to them for her.
I left home soon after turning eighteen.
I did not pack my last name into my suitcase. Diane “Anne” Collette St. Germaine was packed into boxes piled high with old trophies and art projects in the attic of that house, and there she would remain. Out here, I was Captain, and that was the only name I needed.
There was exactly one piece of inheritance left to Izzy and me that was worth a damn: a dusty series of journals, 400 years old, where on the first entry was written a description of something only a desperate soul would or should attempt: time travel. Enter me. Desperation is the cornerstone of my being.
As far as I know, I am the only member in our entire family tree who was bored and lonely enough to crack open the trunk with the collection of old pages and ledgers and attempt to read them for instructions. It was incredibly dull reading. Even the museums hadn’t wanted to purchase them – and believe me, my mother had tried her best to sell them.
Yada yada yada. Some stuff happened. The rest is history.
“All I’m saying is we better hit land soon because I did not go full Brazilian for you and some mangy seagulls. Also, I’m going to need to restock on batteries soon unless you are looking to make a MAJOR lifestyle change,” Izzy said as she sat down next to me with her plate of snacks. She had worn less and less as the days at sea stretched out, as if she was playing strip poker with the waves.
I’m not sure who was losing. Probably me. I was on sunscreen duty to keep her flawless skin even more flawless (“Even people with melanin need sunscreen, Anne”), and I kept having to dive in after her discarded clothes.
“We’ll get there sometime tomorrow if the wind is with us.” We better. I’d do almost anything for my sister, but I was not going to go down that road with her. I had a stash of batteries she could use if she didn’t burn the motor out of her vibrator first.
The sky was clear tonight. What the sky and sea might look like four hundred years in the past remained to be seen. I handed her my special flask. She took a sip and spewed it out.
“Is that water??” She threw the container back at me like I was trying to poison her.
“Sorry, wrong flask,” I said, and handed her the whiskey one. She drank it down and soon was snoozing, rocked to sleep by the whiskey and waves. Perfect.
Showtime.
I muscled her drunk ass downstairs and into her cabin, shutting the door tight for good measure. She’d had enough booze to tranquilize a horse. She would sleep soundly through the portal and my first little stop, and then I’d wake her when we were on our way to Portugal. I rested my hand for a moment on her cabin door and sent up a silent prayer that, one, we’d make it through the portal’s time current just fine and, two, that she wouldn’t kill me. I had at least a twenty-percent chance of living through this.
Don’t look back, Anne, I told myself, never look back.
Up on top I stood in my familiar spot at the helm. The waves stretched out for leagues, and in that moment I felt that I was the only living, breathing soul in the history of the world. We were close to the portal, I could feel it. It was a combination of fresh salt air, impatience, and promise, all rolled into one massive invisible current. I took a bearing on the stars and tacked in close, riding the edge till I found an opening.
I looked back at the doors leading to Izzy’s cabin and steeled myself for what might come.
“Second star to the right.” I grinned. “And straight on till morning.” The wind caught the sails and stretched them taut as I steered us into the portal. Away we went from everything my sister knew and loved and onwards towards immense possibility.
