Chapter Two: The Man Who Stayed Put (Eliza)

Mercy Hale did not walk quickly.

This was the first rule of her, though I did not understand it as a rule yet. She moved through the forest with deliberate economy, neither rushing nor hesitating, as if speed were a negotiation she had already concluded and found unnecessary. Branches bent out of her way. Roots revealed themselves just in time. I stumbled less when I followed her than when I tried to watch where I was going.

Behind us, the field roared.

Ahead of us, the woods pretended not to notice.

“You’re going to get me killed,” I said, because panic looks for prophecy when it can’t find logic.

Mercy did not turn around. “No,” she said calmly. “You’re already alive. That’s the complication.”

That answer lodged somewhere uncomfortable.

We moved deeper into the trees, the light thinning as the canopy thickened. Smoke drifted in low ribbons, clinging to the bark, settling into my hair and clothes until I smelled like a place I had never meant to be. My heart refused to slow, as if it suspected this calm was conditional.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Away from the version of you that dies quickly,” Mercy replied.

I opened my mouth to ask a dozen questions and shut it again. The forest rewarded my restraint with silence.

We did not get far.

The shouting changed pitch.

I felt it before I understood it, a sharp rise that cut through the background noise and turned it into something directional. Mercy stopped abruptly and raised a hand.

“Listen,” she said.

I did.

Footsteps. Organized this time. Not running. Advancing.

Men emerged from between the trees ahead of us, weapons raised but not firing. Their uniforms were worn, mismatched, lived in. Continental soldiers, then. Close enough to safety to be dangerous.

One of them stopped short when he saw us.

His reaction was wrong.

Not hostile. Not startled. He did not even raise his musket. He simply looked at me as if the world had introduced an unexpected variable and he was adjusting accordingly.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said.

It was not accusation. It was concern, immediate and unadorned.

“I know,” I said, because something in his voice made honesty feel safer than explanation.

He stepped closer, lowering his weapon fully now. I noticed his hands again, steady despite the chaos, scarred in the way of someone who had learned things the hard way and retained them. He looked younger than I expected and older than he should have.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

“No.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

He nodded once, accepting this as fact rather than reassurance. That felt important, though I could not yet explain why.

Mercy watched him closely, her expression unreadable. Not wary. Not approving. Calculating, softened by familiarity.

“You always find them,” she said quietly.

The man glanced at her. “Find who?”

“Men who stay,” she replied.

He frowned slightly. “Stay where?”

“Exactly.”

His attention returned to me, sharper now. “Thomas Reed,” he said. “My name.”

It landed with weight, as if names were still contracts here.

“Eliza,” I replied. I almost added my last name and stopped myself, uncertain which century it belonged to.

A cannon sounded somewhere beyond the trees, low and furious, the kind of sound that rearranges priorities. Thomas swore under his breath.

“British patrol’s moving through from the east,” he said. “We need to relocate. Now.”

He did not ask us if we could keep up. He assumed we would. Mercy inclined her head slightly, the smallest signal of assent.

Thomas turned to me and offered his hand.

I hesitated.

Touch felt like commitment, and I was already too deep in something I did not understand. Still, I took it.

His grip was warm. Solid. Real.

Time did not shift.

I noticed that immediately. The pressure behind my eyes remained steady, contained. The forest did not blur or pull. The moment held.

We moved together, Thomas leading now, Mercy falling slightly behind us. He navigated the terrain with practiced ease, pausing when the forest demanded it, adjusting his pace when I faltered. He did not hover. He did not rush me. He trusted my footing without knowing why.

That trust settled into me like ballast.

“Where are you from?” he asked quietly as we walked.

I considered several lies and discarded them all. “Somewhere far.”

He accepted this. “That tracks.”

Mercy snorted softly behind us.

We reached a shallow ravine where the sound of the battle dulled again, swallowed by earth and leaves. Thomas motioned us down, scanning the ridgeline with a focus that suggested he had survived this before.

I realized then that he was not merely calm.

He was consistent.

The world had changed violently around us, but he had not adjusted his center to match it. He moved as if the rules still applied, even when evidence suggested otherwise.

That consistency tugged at something inside me.

“Eliza,” Mercy said quietly.

I turned. She was watching me now, not Thomas, her gaze sharp and measuring.

“Yes?”

“Do not pull,” she warned.

“I don’t know how.”

“That’s when it’s most dangerous.”

Before I could ask what she meant, a musket fired nearby. The sound cracked through the ravine, close enough to feel. Thomas reacted instantly, pulling me down as he dropped.

Leaves slapped my face. Dirt filled my mouth. My heart lurched.

“Stay with me,” he said, and I could not tell if he meant physically or temporally.

I stayed.

The ground shuddered as another cannon fired. Time pressed in, curious, alert.

I waited for the pull.

It did not come.

I realized then, with a clarity that frightened me, that time behaved differently around him.

As if it were watching him too.

As if it were deciding something.

When the moment passed and we moved again, Thomas did not look at me differently. Mercy did.

Her mouth tightened just enough to betray concern.

“You’re trouble,” she said to me later, when Thomas was out of earshot.

“I didn’t mean to be.”

“No one ever does.”

Ahead of us, Thomas waited, patient and unassuming, a fixed point in a landscape that refused to be stable.

I felt time watching us all.

And for the first time, I wondered who it would decide to keep.