Children are magic.
I never realized it, though, until my future self knocked on my front door.
“I’ll trade you,” she says when I answer, “for a week.” She peers over my shoulder at the screaming baby whose heels seem bent on turning his tantrum into dents in the floor. A fond smile softens her face.
She looks maybe twenty years older than I am, hair starting to thread with grey.
“Someone invented time travel?” I ask, surprised. So far, we haven’t even managed viable nuclear fusion.
She tips her hand back and forth in a “so-so” gesture. “Turns out it was there all along. The trouble was people kept trying to find a way to do something dramatic. Go back and assassinate Hitler, that kind of thing.” She shakes her head. “That’s why it never worked.”
Questions pile up behind my tongue, but I hesitate. I’ve read too many stories not to know how dangerous this could be.
“What can you tell me?” I ask at last.
“You, nothing.” She peers past my shoulder again, wiggling her fingers at the child whose screams have turned to sniffling wails. “Him on the other hand…”
“Come in.” I step aside and wave her in. I ought to feel a twinge of anxiety as she reaches him, but I don’t. On some level, I know who she is.
Kiddo does, too. She drops crosslegged onto the floor, and he flings himself into her lap, sobs muffled against her shoulder. Her arms curl around him, and her eyes close. A soft smile spreads across her face.
I settle tentatively on the floor next to them. I could never manage that. Not with the last half hour of screaming still reverberating in my ear. I study her peaceful expression more closely. She looks careworn. A little sad, even, under the smile. One hand moves on the child’s back in a gentle caress.
I swallow around a lump in my throat. Twenty years. That sadness could be no more than an empty nest. It doesn’t have mean… anything.
“You mentioned a trade?” I venture. “Would I… take your place?”
She shifts him away from her shoulder, her eyes opening. I search her face, looking for some sign of what I might find if I did. Do I want to know what’s coming?
“At a week long silent writer’s retreat. It’s in the forest in the middle of nowhere. No electronics, no communication with the outside world. Back to writing by hand, if you can believe it.” She takes a moment to look me in the eye. “That was what they discovered about time travel. You can trade places with yourself, but only as long as the experience feels utterly mundane.”
The baby’s sobs have stopped. She holds him up on front of her, his chubby feet braced against her legs.
Mundane… and precious. Three weeks alone with the baby while my husband is incommunicado at his archeology dig, and I can only see the preciousness through her eyes. My husband will be back in a week. I’ve been telling myself I’ll make it.
“What do you think?” she asks. “Trade?”
I went. It was marvelous.
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