Clara Martin had always been the practical one.
When Jude got lost in his books and Flynn got lost in his video games, Clara was the one who remembered to feed the dog, who set reminders for homework assignments, who made sure everyone had their lunch boxes before the bus came. Being the middle child didn’t mean being the least responsible—at least not in the Martin family.
But nothing in twelve years of practical experience had prepared her for waking up in the middle of the nineteenth century.
She’d been alone when she came to, lying in a field of tall grass with the sun beating down on her face and the sound of distant explosions rattling her teeth. It had taken her twenty minutes to find the road, another hour to find the farm, and every second of that time she’d spent fighting down the panic that threatened to swallow her whole.
Flynn and Jude are out there somewhere, she’d told herself over and over. You’ll find them. You just have to stay calm.
Easier said than done when cannons were firing in the distance and soldiers in blue were streaming past in organized chaos, some of them staring at her jeans and sneakers like she’d dropped down from the moon.
Now she sat on an overturned crate in the Weikert barn, wrapping bandages around the arm of a young Union private who couldn’t have been more than seventeen. His name was James, and he kept apologizing for the blood he was getting on her hands.
“It’s fine,” Clara said for the fourth time. “Really. It doesn’t bother me.”
This was a lie. It bothered her a lot. But what was she supposed to do—refuse to help?
“Where’d you say you were from again?” James asked, wincing as she tied off the bandage.
“Pennsylvania.” At least that part was true. “Near… Harrisburg.”
“City girl, huh?” James tried to smile, but it came out more like a grimace. “Never been there myself. Always wanted to, though. Hear they’ve got theaters and everything.”
Clara was trying to formulate a response when the barn door swung open and a figure rushed in, silhouetted against the bright afternoon sun.
“Clara!”
She knew that voice. She’d know it anywhere.
“Flynn!” She was off the crate and running before she could think, throwing her arms around her brother so hard she nearly knocked him over. “Oh my Goodness, Flynn, I thought—I didn’t know if—”
“I’m okay.” Flynn hugged her back just as fiercely. “I’m okay. Are you hurt? What happened? Where’s Jude?”
Clara pulled back, shaking her head. “I don’t know. I woke up alone in a field. I haven’t seen him. I haven’t seen anyone except—” She stopped. “Wait. Have you seen Jude?”
“No.” Flynn’s face was pale under the dirt and scratches. “I woke up near the battle. Found what’s left of the time machine. It’s destroyed, Clara. Completely destroyed.”
The practical part of Clara’s brain filed that information away for later panic. Right now, they had more immediate problems.
“Mrs. Weikert told me something weird,” Flynn continued, lowering his voice even though James and the other wounded soldiers were too far away to hear. “About a letter. She said you had a letter?”
Clara had almost forgotten about the letter.
She reached into the pocket of her jacket—her favorite denim jacket, now covered in grass stains and splashes of blood that weren’t hers—and pulled out the folded document. The paper was old, brownish at the edges, and part of one corner had been burned away. But the writing was still legible: elegant, looping script that Clara couldn’t read no matter how hard she squinted.
“I found it in my pocket when I woke up,” she said. “I don’t know where it came from. I don’t remember picking it up.”
Flynn took the letter, unfolding it carefully. His eyes scanned the text, and Clara watched his face go from confused to shocked to something close to afraid.
“This is dated July 4th, 1863,” he said slowly. “Three days from now.”
“How is that possible? We just got here.”
“I don’t know. But Clara—” Flynn looked up at her. “This letter is warning President Lincoln about an assassination attempt. Here, at Gettysburg. On Independence Day.”
Clara’s stomach dropped. “But Lincoln wasn’t assassinated at Gettysburg. Everyone knows that. He was killed at Ford’s Theatre in 1865.”
“Exactly.” Flynn folded the letter and handed it back to her. “So either this letter is a fake, or…”
“Or something changed,” Clara finished. “Something changed the timeline.”
They stared at each other, the weight of that possibility hanging between them.
“We need to find Jude,” Flynn said finally. “And we need to figure out where this letter came from. But first, we need to—”
“Children.”
They both jumped. Mrs. Weikert stood in the barn doorway, her face grim. Beside her was a man Clara hadn’t seen before: tall, broad-shouldered, wearing a Union officer’s uniform with a general’s stars on his shoulders. His hair was dark, his beard neatly trimmed, and his eyes held an intelligence that made Clara want to stand up straighter.
“Allow me to introduce General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain,” Mrs. Weikert said. “He commands the 20th Maine. And he would very much like to speak with you about that letter.”
General Chamberlain led them away from the barn, to a small tent pitched at the edge of the Weikert property. Inside, a camp table held maps and papers, a lantern providing light even though the sun was still up.
“Please, sit.” Chamberlain gestured to two folding stools. “I apologize for the accommodations. It’s been a… challenging few days.”
Clara had read about Chamberlain in school. The hero of Little Round Top, whose bayonet charge had saved the Union left flank on the second day of Gettysburg. Looking at him now—tired, dusty, with a bandage wrapped around his left foot—it was hard to reconcile the legend with the man.
“I’m going to be direct with you,” Chamberlain said, settling into his own chair with a wince. “You’re clearly not from around here. Your clothes, your manner of speech, the technology Corporal Whitfield reported seeing in the woods—none of it belongs in 1863. So I’m going to ask you once, and I expect an honest answer: Where are you from?”
Flynn and Clara exchanged a glance.
“The future,” Flynn said. “2025. We’re from 2025.”
Chamberlain’s expression didn’t change. “I see. And how did you come to be here, in the middle of the Battle of Gettysburg?”
“Our grandfather built a time machine,” Clara said. “We were helping him test it. Something went wrong. We woke up here.”
“Separately,” Flynn added. “Our brother Jude is still missing.”
“The time machine,” Chamberlain said slowly. “I assume that’s what Whitfield found mangled in the woods?”
Flynn nodded. “Most of it. I have some of the pieces, but… it’s not enough to get us home.”
Chamberlain was silent for a long moment, his fingers steepled beneath his chin. Clara wondered what he was thinking. Was he going to call them liars? Have them arrested as spies?
“I fought at Antietam,” Chamberlain said finally. “Before that, I was a professor of rhetoric at Bowdoin College. I’ve read Homer, Virgil, Dante. I’ve studied the great mysteries of history and philosophy. I like to think I have an open mind.” He leaned forward. “So when Mrs. Weikert tells me that two children appeared out of nowhere, dressed in impossible clothes, carrying a letter that warns of an assassination that hasn’t happened… I’m inclined to listen.”
“You believe us?” Clara couldn’t hide her surprise.
“I believe something extraordinary is happening. Whether your explanation is the correct one…” Chamberlain shrugged. “That remains to be seen. But the letter is real. I’ve examined it myself. The paper is old—older than you are, certainly. The handwriting matches that of someone I know. And the warning it contains is too specific to be dismissed.”
“Who?” Flynn leaned forward. “Whose handwriting is it?”
Chamberlain’s eyes met his. “Mine.”
The word hung in the air like a thunderclap.
“The letter is in my handwriting,” Chamberlain continued. “Dated three days from now. Warning President Lincoln of an assassination plot during his visit to commemorate our victory—a victory we haven’t yet achieved. But I didn’t write it. I haven’t written it. And yet, there it is.”
Clara’s mind was racing. “That means… in some version of events, you will write it. Something’s going to happen in the next three days that makes you write that letter.”
“So it would appear.”
“But we don’t know what,” Flynn said. “We don’t know who’s planning the assassination, or how they’re going to do it, or why.”
“No,” Chamberlain agreed. “We don’t. But I intend to find out.” He stood, wincing again as weight settled on his injured foot. “Tomorrow, the battle will resume. Lee’s forces will attack our center, at Cemetery Ridge. It will be a slaughter—for them, not for us. By this time the day after tomorrow, the Confederate army will be in retreat, and the tide of this war will have turned.”
“Pickett’s Charge,” Flynn breathed. “We learned about it in school.”
“I don’t know what history calls it in your time, but yes—a massed infantry assault across open ground against fortified positions. Thousands will die.” Chamberlain’s voice was heavy. “And three days after that, President Lincoln will come to honor the dead. And if that letter is to be believed, someone will try to kill him.”
“We have to stop it,” Clara said.
“Yes. We do.” Chamberlain looked at each of them in turn. “But first, we need to understand how this letter came to exist. And that means finding out what happens between now and July 4th that causes me to write it.” He paused. “Or perhaps… that causes someone to forge it in my hand.”
“You think it might be a forgery?” Flynn asked.
“I think nothing is certain. I think you two have arrived here with knowledge of events that haven’t happened yet, carrying a letter that shouldn’t exist, missing a brother who could be anywhere in this chaos.” Chamberlain picked up his hat from the table. “I think we’re dealing with forces beyond my understanding. And I think our only hope of unraveling this mystery is to work together.”
He walked to the tent flap, then paused. “Get some rest tonight. Tomorrow, the battle continues. But when it’s over, I’ll need your help—your knowledge of the future, your connection to this letter. Whatever’s happening here, you two are at the center of it.”
“Wait,” Clara called. “What about our brother? Jude is still out there somewhere.”
Chamberlain’s face softened. “I’ll put the word out to my men. A fourteen-year-old boy in strange clothes shouldn’t be hard to spot. If he’s within our lines, we’ll find him.”
“And if he’s not?” Flynn’s voice was tight.
Chamberlain didn’t answer. He just put on his hat and walked out into the fading afternoon light.
Clara and Flynn sat in silence for a long moment after he left.
“What are we going to do?” Clara finally asked.
“I don’t know.” Flynn pulled Papa’s journal from his pocket, thumbing through the water-damaged pages. “I’ve been trying to read Papa’s notes, but half of them are ruined. The parts I can make out talk about temporal displacement theory, caesium oscillation frequencies, stuff I don’t understand.”
“Let me see.”
Clara took the journal and began scanning the pages, her practical mind searching for anything useful. Most of it was beyond her—equations and diagrams that meant nothing to an eleven-year-old, even a smart one. But then she found something, near the back of the book, written in Papa’s cramped handwriting:
WARNING: The Thornton Paradox must be considered. If any traveler creates a causal loop—an event that causes itself—the loop becomes a fixed point in time. It CANNOT be undone without destroying the timeline itself.
“Flynn.” Clara grabbed her brother’s arm. “Look at this.”
Flynn read the passage, his face growing paler with each word. “A causal loop. Something that causes itself.”
“Like a letter written to warn about an assassination that only happens because the letter exists,” Clara said slowly.
They looked at each other, understanding dawning.
“We didn’t just land in the middle of history,” Flynn said. “We landed in the middle of a time paradox.”
“And if we don’t solve it—”
“The whole timeline could unravel.”
Outside, thunder rumbled. But the sky, Clara knew, was perfectly clear.
The cannon fire was getting closer.
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