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neck with every breath. It’s
not comfortable, but I’ll get used to it.
    I
lie awake with my eyes closed until Yosiah falls asleep. Then I
carefully turn around to watch him. If I can convince myself that
this is real and he didn’t die in the underground tunnels,
that I didn’t die
in the tunnels and everything since has been some kind of afterlife
dream, I’ll be able to sleep easier.
    My eyes swallow
everything, crossing off some subconscious tick list. Skin that’s a
dark gold in the grey light. Veins that cover fragile eyelids. An
almost-healed scrape on his cheek from the jump in the Underground.
An age old dip in his chin. A groove bitten into his bottom lip. A
hooked scar on his jaw from a bar fight he lost a year ago. New
grazes on his neck and collarbone that I’ve not seen before.
    A fake Yosiah would
never have this much detail. This could never be a dream.
    I breathe him in,
matching his musky scent with days spent close to my best friend.
Everything about this Yosiah is the same as my Yosiah. I finally
allow myself to believe that it’s him. Something in the back of my
head argues that I must have believed it all along or I wouldn’t
have let him this close to me or Tom or Livy. I shrug off all my
inner voices, finally feeling tired again.
    Careful not to disturb
Yosiah, I lie back. In this room in a lost town I start to feel
dangerously content.
    Yosiah shifts in his
sleep until he’s flat on his back. I watch him a minute longer,
just to make sure he’s definitely asleep, before I curl up against
his side. This close he smells rank, days of sweat from walking and
limping and staggering layered on his skin. I press my face against
him, the last strings of tension releasing me. He smells like
nights spent dozing on the streets of Forgotten London, when I
discovered that a home is more than a thousand bricks stacked
together in a square, when I made Yosiah my home.
     
    ***
     
    Branwell
     
    08:04. 12.10.2040. The
Free Lands, Southlands, Harwich.
     
     
    Honour and I spend the
morning ransacking the sage-green house for anything that could be
useful. Being antiques of an abandoned world, everything is
predictably out of date, but some things are salvageable.
Everything we can make use of is thrown into Honour’s backpack and
my satchel—something Alba only returned to me two days ago when she
decided I was to be trusted. A half-used bar of soap wrapped in a
sheet of newspaper is nestled beside the bracelet that brought me
to this time, my father’s journals, and the Cure.
    I wrap a shard of
glass from a broken photo frame in an orange scarf. We may have
reached this part of England without trouble but I expect it will
catch up with us at some point. There will be no such thing as too
many weapons when that time comes. I take everything I can imagine
doing damage and hope that preparation will save my life.
    I reach for a metal
hip flask but Honour gives me a misshapen clear bottle instead,
saying it will hold more. He hands me another bottle and drops
three more into his own bag. No matter what the next part of our
journey throws at us, I’m glad we won’t have to keep scooping water
from rivers at least.
    In the kitchen I find
a box of tools in a cluttered cupboard; I take four of them—the
only tools I recognise—because the future could hurl any number of
unknown tasks at me. A screwdriver never goes amiss. Honour
unearths a first aid kit and a dozen dull knives. He saves the
knives to give to the others.
    With
my satchel stocked with improvised weapons, hygiene products,
shirtsleeves that look to be about my size, and a tattered copy
of A Midsummer Night’s
Dream , I collapse into the arm chair in
the sitting room, wishing this house was bigger so I’d have more to
occupy myself with. I’m fine when I have something to keep my mind
busy but as soon as I have time to think, all my troubles and
terrors return to drown me.
    Bennet is dead.
    I have acknowledged
that now but it’s