Page 83 of The Shape of Silence

It was the most impossible explanation imaginable, but it fit every unanswered question she had carried for ten years. The thought struck with such force that she struggled to draw breath. This was not another world but the same one, separated from her parents by seven hundred years. The realization unfolded with terrible clarity. There had been no great catastrophe that had emptied the world. Her parents hadn’t lost her; she hadn’t merely been taken in by some hermit; and there was no possibility that twentieth century civilization existed just over the next hill. Her parents weren’t gone—they simply hadn’t been born yet, and home as she knew it in California had yet to be discovered.

“Avery?” Morggán questioned, his grogginess seemingly gone in an instant, while his fingers curled a bit into the flesh of her hip.

She shook her head, unable to comprehend what she’d just had confirmed, despite having suspected it now for several days.

“Avery.” This time his voice was tainted with quiet insistence.

He sat up and turned her toward him with a hand at her shoulder.

His brow was furrowed, concern written plainly across his face as he searched hers.

“What has happened?”

Tears blurred her vision. Only moments before she’d been so certain he would understand, that together they would somehow unravel the impossible, and now the words lodged painfully in her throat.

“I...” She swallowed hard. “I was born in... nineteen eighty-six.”

“Nineteen eighty-six?” His brows slanted lower over his eyes. “This is a place?”

She shook her head, tears slipping free.

“It's a year—almost seven hundred years in the future.”

He continued looking at her, but something in his expression shifted. The concern remained, yet it was joined now by bewilderment so complete it seemed to rob him of speech. His eyes searched hers, then her face as a whole, as though answers were written there.

“I dinna understand.”

She sat up, keeping the plaid around her breasts, and used one hand to push the hair back from her face. “I'm not from here,” she said, her voice cracking. “Not from... this time. I was born in the future.”

His jaw tightened.

She watched the confusion begin to harden into frustration. It was the same look she had seen from him whenever some problem refused to yield to him, when the world ceased to obey him. His mouth compressed into a thin line, and he held her gaze sharply, as if he would will her into submission.

“What is it ye say?” he demanded, the edge now unmistakable in his voice. “Speak plain, Avery.”

More pitifully, she told him, “I just said it—I don’t belong here. I was born in the future.” She swiped at the tears that fell from her eyes. “That’s what happened to me. I didn’t—”

“Do ye jest?” he snapped.

The words cracked through the little house like a clap of thunder.

Avery flinched.

He swung his legs over the side of the cot and rose so abruptly the narrow mattress lurched beneath her.

“Nay,” he muttered, more to himself than to her. “Nay.”

He snatched up his breeches and hose from the floor and thrust one leg and then the other into them with quick, impatient movements. The wool of his breeches caught on one foot, earning a sharp curse before he yanked it straight.

Avery watched him through blurred eyes, her heart sinking with each angry movement.

“I’ve kent ye these weeks,” he said without looking at her. “I deemed ye sensible, honest. Ye've never spoken foolishness.”

He turned then, his expression drawn tight with bewilderment and mounting anger.

“So why?” he demanded. “Why would ye tell me such a thing?”

He didn’t seem to wait for an answer but collected his tunic and pulled that over his head. His belt followed, buckled with unnecessary force.