“One moment,” came the voice from the other side.
They heard the sounds of someone hurriedly putting something away before footsteps approached the door. A moment later, it opened.
“Ah, it is you.”
Madeleine smiled when she saw Jon and Karyn standing outside.
“Who did you think it was?” Jon asked.
“It could have been anyone. This is a very busy theatre, you know,” Madeleine replied.
“So how are you able to help us so much?” Karyn asked.
“I have deputies who can do some of the work tonight,” Madeleine replied, leaving unspoken the words for once that had crossed her mind.
“Did you find out anything?” Jon asked.
“Yes. It is as I thought. Henri believes that you are one of his employees.”
“That can't be right. I've never even met the man,” Karyn replied firmly.
“He believes you have. Not that it matters at the moment.”
“It matters to me.”
“Of course it matters.” Madeleine smiled apologetically. “Sometimes I choose the wrong words in English. What I mean is that it will not matter once we have solved your problem. Now, come and sit down. It will be much easier to talk now that you have changed out of that stage costume.”
“You're right about that, now that I've got rid of all those feathers.”
Jon smiled quietly behind Karyn, hoping that, if she happened to notice him, she might smile too.
“Now, where was I?” Madeleine murmured as she reached towards the shelves on her right and carefully removed one of the well-worn journals.
“They didn't help earlier,” Jon observed, recognising it as one of the journals Madeleine had inherited from her teacher—or was it her friend? He still was not entirely sure which description was more accurate.
“What is that?” Karyn asked, having not been present during the earlier discussion.
“This is one of many journals left to me by my old friend. I suppose you would probably call her my teacher. She taught me so much about the Pauses over the years before she left.”
“Oh.”
“I have only some of the journals from across the years, not all of them. There are simply too many. That may be why they did not contain the information you were looking for earlier, young man.”
Madeleine looked across towards Jon, who had resumed the chair he had occupied before. Karyn took the chair beside Madeleine's desk.
“Do you think they'll have what we're looking for?” Karyn asked hopefully.
“I am certain of it.”
“Well, don't leave us hanging,” Jon urged. “Tell us what you found.”
“While you were looking for Simone earlier, I discovered that my old friend had also come through one of the strange Doors many years ago, together with her husband. It was something she never told me herself.”
“What!”
“It is true. I already knew she was English, of course. After all, I taught her to speak proper French. But she always told me she had been born in 1888. That now appears not to have been true.”
“If she lied to you about that, how can you trust what she wrote about the Pauses?” Jon asked.
“Yes, she did lie to me about some things,” Madeleine admitted. “Before the war, however, she also told me there were certain things she simply could not tell me. She said that one day I would discover the truth for myself and then I would understand why she had kept those secrets.”
“And do you?”
“Yes.” Madeleine nodded slowly. “There were things she knew that could not be changed, and the war must have been one of them. Had I known she already knew about it before it began, I do not think I could ever have forgiven her for not trying to stop it.”
“Fixed points in time,” Jon said quietly.
“Jon, if you're talking about science fiction again...” Karyn sighed, turning to look at him.
“Sorry, Karyn, but it does explain why she couldn't say anything. Some things have always happened and always have to happen.”
“I swear, when we get back, I'm cancelling your Sci-Fi Channel subscription.”
A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth despite herself.
“I believe your friend may be right,” Madeleine said, “even if I did not understand everything he just said.”
“Oh, not you as well,” Karyn groaned.
“No. It explains what she meant when she wrote this.”
Madeleine opened the journal and read aloud.
“I wish I could warn them, but I can't. Who knows what problems it might cause meddling with something that important?”
She gently closed the journal again.
“She wrote those words in May 1938, more than two years before the Germans invaded.”
“But if she knew about the Second World War that early,” Karyn asked, “why did she stay in France? Why didn't she leave?”
“Because she promised her husband she would remain here to help others like yourselves who came through the Doors after he was gone.”
Madeleine's voice softened as she finished speaking.
Neither Jon nor Karyn knew how to respond.
For several long moments, silence filled the office.
Madeleine looked from one young face to the other before speaking again, deliberately steering the conversation away from the sombre subject of her old friend's husband.
“While you were away just now, I was reading the journal for early 1939, as I had already brought it here. I had not yet taken the 1938 journal home.”
“Anything in there?” Jon asked, grateful to move the conversation on.
“I did find this.”
Madeleine opened the worn journal once more and began translating as she read aloud.
“22 April 1939
I had better start coding some of my entries, just in case these journals are ever found. Not that whoever found them would understand what I was talking about anyway. If I hadn't experienced the Pauses for myself—Pauses, I suppose the name has simply stuck—I would never have believed any of it either.
Madeleine believes me now. It took her seeing one of the Pauses with her own eyes. Somehow she always seemed to be off duty whenever they happened, but last night she was here because of an emergency.
She settled down after the second Pause that night. I think she finally trusts me and knows I haven't been making up stories all this past year.
I'd better write down what that young woman told me before I forget it. What was it again?
Oh yes...
What is carried means little until the threshold has been crossed.
Beyond it, the faithful companion remembers the shore from which it came.
Keep traveller and companion together, and both may yet find home.
Leave one behind in a borrowed age, and the borrowed age may claim it.
Then the road home may remember two endings.
She said she had learned that a few Doors ago. I don't like writing riddles in here, but I have to be careful.”
Madeleine slowly closed the journal and rested one hand upon its worn leather cover.
Then she quietly repeated the passage.
“What is carried means little until the threshold has been crossed.
Beyond it, the faithful companion remembers the shore from which it came.
Keep traveller and companion together, and both may yet find home.
Leave one behind in a borrowed age, and the borrowed age may claim it.
Then the road home may remember two endings.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Karyn asked.
“I do not know,” Madeleine admitted. “But she clearly believed it was important enough to write down.”
Jon sat silently, his mind turning over every line of the strange riddle.
It felt important.
He simply had no idea why.
“Anything else in that journal?” he finally asked.
“Not in this one.” Madeleine gently shook her head. “But I do remember reading in one of the journals from 1926 that there are three Pauses whenever they occur. If I remember correctly, they happen only on the second night of the full moon.”
“And if we miss that one?” Karyn asked quietly, voicing the question both she and Jon had been thinking ever since Madeleine had mentioned the journals.
Madeleine looked at them sympathetically.
“Then you must wait until the next full moon. It is another month before the Pauses happen again.”
The words hung heavily in the room.
Neither Jon nor Karyn spoke.
For the first time since arriving at the theatre, the true possibility settled over both of them.
If they failed...
They might be trapped in 1956 for another month.
