#jennybee

She huffed and shoved the floor brush back into the pail of soapy water and swished it around before pulling it out and scrubbing the floorboards nearest the metal tub, gritting her teeth to avoid grumbling audibly. She'd made that mistake a few times too many and had been scolded by the innkeeper for being ungrateful after all he'd done to help a “poor, confused young woman” like herself.

And it was true, she had to admit. She'd awoken on a stiff examination bed at the Valentine doctor's office to the worried looks of two men and an older woman, and was quickly urged to lay back down and breathe deeply and slowly. One of the two men was the town doctor, and he'd offered her a glass of what smelled to be a strong alcohol. She'd declined and covered her face with her hands, desperately trying to catch her bearings.

“Where am I?” she had asked, hoping someone of this group in front of her would disprove the outrageous conclusion she had come to.

“Valentine, Miss,” the doctor had replied, gently pushing her hands aside and leaning in to check her eyes. “You appear to have fainted in the street, and Mr Williams here was quick enough to catch you before you fell fully into the mud.”

She'd glanced to the second man, younger than the doctor and sporting much less facial hair. “Thank you, Mr Williams. I'm sorry for the trouble.”

He'd looked down at his feet, twisting his cap between his dirty hands and mumbled, “'S no trouble at all, Miss.” He'd seemed shy, and out of place, as though he wanted to go but felt he shouldn't.

“She will be just fine, Mr Williams,” the woman had said, patting his shoulder and gently ushering him out the door. “You've done a great thing by helping her, and the Good Lord will reward you for your kind deed, I'm sure of it.” He'd glanced back at Ginny over his shoulder before the door closed behind him and hesitated for a moment on the porch, then ambled back onto the main street.

“I'm Mrs Arden,” the woman said as she approached Ginny and perched at the foot of the examination bed. “I happened to be visiting with Doctor Calloway when you were brought in. Are you well, dear? Mr Williams said you'd looked quite frightened before you fell.”

“W-well, I... I'm not sure,” Ginny began, glancing to the doctor to find his eyes fixated on her intently as she spoke. If this really was nineteenth-century Valentine, then she didn't think these kind strangers would take very well to the idea of a time-traveling girl from the future. She'd learned enough of what was done to women who were considered insane in this time, and she didn't want to find out firsthand precisely how bad it could be. No one would believe her, and she'd be locked up or lobotomized or worse, and she'd never be able to find her way back home.

Mrs Arden had put a soft, wrinkled hand on Ginny's shin, and fixed a kind gaze on her face. “You're safe here, dear. What is it?”

If she had time-traveled – and that was a big if – then that could mean that the cryptic entries her great-grandfather had written in his journal about falling into a different time might hold some degree of truth. And if that were the case, then perhaps...

“I'm looking for a relative of mine, actually,” Ginny said suddenly, “Francis Sinclair? I'm not from around here, and I was, um... I was overwhelmed by everything when I walked into town.”

Mrs Alden had looked to Doctor Calloway with questioning eyes, and Ginny looked up to see that the doctor appeared just as unfamiliar with the name she'd given them. It was worth a shot, she'd thought, and waited anxiously to see what was in store for her. In reality, she was completely at the mercy of these two strangers.

What had happened next was a whirlwind series of events that culminated in Ginny being introduced to one of the Valentine innkeepers, Gerald French, who'd offered her room and board in exchange for housekeeping services. Mrs Alden had tutted and fussed over Ginny's clothing, calling the jeans and flannel she wore “unbecoming” and “hardly appropriate,” and how on earth had her uncle Francis not informed her of his recent move, or set up accommodations for her stay in Valentine? And he hadn't even bothered to send for an escort for his niece! The nerve! She'd then generously offered to give Ginny a few outfits that had belonged to her granddaughter that she suspected would fit comfortably, if not perfectly.

Ginny learned quickly how to properly layer her new clothing... and very quickly learned to hate whoever it was in history that had invented the corset. Her modern clothes were stashed away, along with her backpack and her great-grandfather's journal, in the bottom of the trunk at the foot of her bed.

Mr French, the innkeeper, was more than generous in his offers, and Ginny suspected that Mrs Alden had a hand in that, as well. He didn't believe in going easy on her, though, and despite the menial – and often dirty – work that she was expected to push through, Ginny had to admit that she respected his refusal to coddle her. She needed the grunt work in order to focus and reorder her thoughts around this whole... time-travel thing. It felt strange to think the words still, and she wondered if it would ever not feel strange.

In her spare time, she'd read and re-read as much as she could decipher from her great-grandfather's journal, trying to figure out where – and when – he would be. She and her mother had noted early on how he'd stopped writing the years when he'd dated his entries, and that his ramblings became more convoluted and almost cryptic, as though he had been hiding information from someone else. He'd spoken of falling – much like Ginny herself had experienced – and then a long journey, a “new, yet old home” by a lake, and finally, this entry, which she had memorized:

In her sophomore year of high school, Ginny had painstakingly completed a heritage project for her health class, tracing ancestry back up to four generations on both sides of her family tree. She'd built – with her father's help – a three-dimensional grapevine, with each leaf representing a member of her family. The leaves displayed the person's name, their birth and death dates (where applicable), and known medical conditions to trace the line of hereditary illnesses or unique conditions which appeared in her family. It had been an interesting project, and her mother had especially enjoyed helping her with the genealogical aspect of it, being herself a fan of history.

From that project, random information had seemingly become permanently stuck in Ginny's memory. Great-aunt Maria Romano on her mother's side had diabetes and died at a young age from complications with her kidneys. Uncle Fred, her father's brother, is allergic to shellfish and nearly died from eating fried clams – that was how he'd found out. And great-grandpa Francis Sinclair, who had married later in life, fathered three sons, and died in his sleep in 1987 of heart failure, was born in 1899.

One of the first things Ginny had done when she'd settled into the inn was check a newspaper to get an idea of when exactly she had landed. It was May, of 1899. Which meant, if she was interpreting his final entry correctly, that she had very little time to try to find him before he either managed to return to whatever year he'd fallen from, or he committed suicide.

That wouldn't be possible, though, would it? she thought to herself, pausing mid-scrub and staring at the water soaking into the wide grain of the wood floor at her knees. Because if he died now, then he wouldn't go on to get married and have kids, which means Grandpa Joe wouldn't have been born, and then Dad wouldn't have been born... and then I wouldn't have been born? Would I just... stop existing?

A knock at the door jolted her out of her musings, and Mr French's voice echoed into the small, sparsely furnished washroom. “A guest has arrived, Miss Sinclair.”

That was her cue to finish up and make herself scarce. She didn't want to be asked to assist any of these stinking sheep farmers in their bathing, as if they were infants and unable to wash themselves. She'd made it quite clear to her employer – when she'd learned what a “deluxe bath” entailed – that she would be willing to do anything he asked of her, except that. One mild argument later, Mr French had conceded that it wouldn't be proper to expect a “virgin” to be in the bathing room with naked men. She knew he doubted that she'd been telling the truth about her supposed chastity, judging by the apathetic stare he'd leveled at her, but he wouldn't put himself in a situation where his good name could be smeared, and so he'd let it go.

She wiped her hands dry on the work apron she wore over her long gray skirt and picked up the metal pail, dumping it out the window that opened to the back of the building. She then went about filling the tub and arranging a few towels and toiletries in easy reaching distance before finishing up and leaving the room for the guest.

She heard a deep, gruff male voice as she made her way up the stairs to her next task, and vaguely thought it sounded familiar. When she peeked toward the front desk from around the railing at the top of the stairs, she only saw the innkeeper. She dismissed the thought and continued about her day.

She took a swig from her water bottle and soldiered on, huffing and grumbling under her breath as the climb continued to grow steeper. She did have to admit, though, that the scenery really was something else. Especially once she made it to the top of the great hill and saw what had to be most of the state laid open in front of her. The Dakota River snaked between high cliff faces and rushed south, towards the small city of Valentine. Mountains reached for the clouds in the distance, the tallest of which were still coated in snow, even in the unseasonable warmth that had been covering the state and much of this part of the country since about mid-March.

The drive north from Valentine had been quiet first thing in the morning, once she got out of the city proper. Her aunt Ellen lived in a small apartment above what had – at one point in history – been a doctor's office in the city center. Now it was a humble four story, narrow brick apartment complex undergoing renovations to install some more “modern” amenities, likely in an effort to draw in the younger folks – or so her aunt says. Ginny had learned as she had gotten older that her aunt Ellen was one of those people: the townies who complain about change like it's their job, particularly when it comes to “historic landmarks” being repurposed or torn down to make room for a modern upgrade. As much as Ginny could understand the need to preserve history, she also rather enjoyed updated indoor plumbing, and really, would a private pool be that bad?

She'd visited with her aunt many times growing up, but never without her mother traveling with her. She had been hoping to share this little exploration with her mom, especially after learning that her mother had a shared interest in the strange rock carvings and other odd discoveries highlighted in the musty old journal they had found in Ginny's grandmother's belongings that had been left in storage since her passing. Many of the fading ramblings in the journal had made little sense, but learning that the journal had in fact belonged to Ginny's great-grandfather had made the sketches and wild theories seem so much more adventurous. So Ginny and her mom had tried mapping out a couple of the locations from what had been written in the journal, and planned to visit the two closest to where her mom's sister, Ellen, was living in Valentine. They were to fly from Portland, Maine down to the small airport near Valentine, rent a car, and then spend the next few days with her aunt as they saw the sights and tried to locate the old carvings.

At least, that had been the plan. And then her mom's boss had scheduled some important mandatory meeting that she couldn't miss without risking her job security, and Ginny was left scheduling the trip alone. As much as she wished it could have played out differently, it really hadn't been much of a surprise. Many mother-daughter plans had been put on hold over the years as her mom moved up the corporate ladder, and Ginny understood the need to maintain momentum and curry favor with higher-ups.

Still, she thought as she surveyed the panoramic view before her, it would have been nice to have shared all of this adventuring with her mom.

In studying the journal, her great-grandfather had mentioned a path between two pines near the cliff before her. She looked around carefully for several long moments, and tried to imagine the flora surrounding her as it would have appeared nearly ninety years ago. She walked carefully along the edge of the drop-off and glanced down every now and then for a possible path.

She was about to give up and turn back to hike down to the rental when she turned and saw two huge pines and a weed-choked path between them. It seemed promising, and she carefully passed between the trees and down a small decline to a lower section of the cliff face. “It said to turn left immediately,” she muttered aloud. She turned to her left, and sure enough, there was a wide enough pass for her to easily walk along the wall of rock and exposed roots.

It quickly grew quite hazardous, but Ginny – possibly very stupidly... okay, she'd admit, definitely stupidly – channeled her inner Indiana Jones and tackled it with determination and no small amount of luck. There was no way she flew over fifteen-hundred miles just to chicken out when the journey called for a little bit of rock climbing over what would surely be a fall to her death if she slipped up. Easy as pie, no big deal. Twenty-five wasn't a terrible age to go, anyways, she joked inwardly. Though, it would've been cool to at least make it into the twenty-seven club...

A few heart-pounding minutes later, she made it. The Flying Man, as her great-grandfather had called it, a larger-than-life image of a man with what appeared to be wings flared out from his back roughly carved into the stone just above her head. What a strange spot for such a work of art, she mused, wiping away the sheen of sweat that had gathered at her brow.

She pulled out her phone and captured a few photos to attach to a text message to her mom.

“Made it! It's huuuuuge, Ma. Bigger than me, though I guess that doesn't say much. Alsooo probably a good thing you couldn't make it. The path was maybe just a little bit dangerous...”

She hit send and paused, typing out one more message.

“I'm safe, though. Don't worry. Love you.”

She turned to take one more photo, this one a selfie with a big grin on her face as she faced the drop-off with the carving at her back. Tucking her phone away into her backpack, Ginny paused to admire the carving one last time.

It was strange here, the atmosphere. Maybe it was because she was standing in the exact spot one of her ancestors stood, likely one of only a handful of people over the centuries. Maybe it was because the carving was ancient and shrouded in mystery. Whatever it was, the air felt charged with... something. It felt all at once anticipatory and foreboding, and it pulled her in like a moth to the flame. It felt compelling, beckoning, almost hypnotizing. She drew closer to the carving, the thick tread of her hiking boots catching on small bits of rubble and debris as her feet scuffed against the rock beneath her.

The pockmarks and discolorations in the stone of the carving drew into intense focus, almost seeming hyper-realistic, too sharp for reality. Ants skirted the border of the carving, avoiding the carving itself as they marched single-file up towards the trees and bushes above. Moss had grown in a few spots, dark and plush and standing out in stark relief beside the deep border of the carving. Mint-green lichen coated irregular areas bigger than her hand all over the rock-face, but not anywhere near the Flying Man. Nothing living touched it, she realized distantly, but didn't examine the thought any closer.

What would happen, she wondered? What would happen if she touched it?

The logical part of her brain – the part that seemed to be speaking from far away, through a steadily-increasing fog – said that nothing should happen, and what kind of nonsensical thought was that? It's a rock. Rocks don't do anything.

And yet, as she reached out, fingers grazing the rough stone, something shifted. Time seemed to hold its breath, and the sounds around her – the birds up above her, the river down below, and the wind brushing past – suddenly stopped. It felt like that tiniest of moments just before the pin breaks the surface tension of a balloon, drawn out into a handful of seconds.

And then it popped. And she was falling. And she was screaming. And then there was nothing.