That was why they shared the same name. She had to escape. She had to run away from their house and never come back. She still had the claganmeter. If only she could reach the shed before he caught up with her.
Mr. Russing set a cup of tea in front of her, and before she could reconsider, Josephine threw the hot liquid at him and went sprinting out the back door. She could hear him scream, “Josephine! Wait!”
She crossed the yard in seconds and flung open the shed door. She fumbled in her pocket for the claganmeter and finally managed to grasp it. She waved it around the shed frantically but couldn’t see any difference in the two clocks. She needed to move it slower but she didn’t have time. Her father’s voice was getting closer.
“Josephine! Stop! Let me explain!” he bellowed.
One of the clock hands seemed to jump a little bit and Josephine knew she’d found the right spot. But her mind was blank. She couldn’t think of where she wanted to go. She was frozen.
Suddenly, her father’s large hand reached around her waist and lifted her up. She struggled against his grip as he carried her, kicking and screaming, out of the shed.
She kicked and spat and clawed at him, determined to get free. He tightened his grip and dragged her back toward the house.
This is it, she thought. Now that I know his secret, he can’t let me live. Josephine looked down, grabbed his gloved hand, and bit as hard as she could. He howled in pain and loosened his grip. It was just enough for Josephine to wrestle free.
As she hit the ground, she jumped away from him and then whirled around, seething with anger. “It’s you! You’re the Master! You hurt all those children and now you’re going to hurt me!”
“No, no!” her father cried. “You don’t understand.”
“I understand that you’re a MONSTER!” she shrieked. She shook her fist at him and realized she was holding his silk glove. She looked at him. He was no longer trying to grab her, but was nursing his hand where she had bit it. Josephine realized she was looking, for the first time in her life, at Leopold Russing’s bare hand.
It took her several seconds to register what she was looking at. His left hand was hideously burned.
Josephine didn’t understand what she was seeing. “Your hand! But it’s just like . . .” She looked up at his face, which was full of desperation. “Fargus’s hand.”
He nodded meekly. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
The world began to spin and Josephine felt the blood pounding in her ears. What did this mean? Did he . . . was he . . . ? Her brain seemed to short-circuit and pop, and she collapsed into a heap on the grass.
It was several minutes later when she came to, and she was propped up in the armchair next to the shed. Her father was hovering over her with a glass of water. “Josephine . . . are you all right? Josephine?”
She could barely speak and her mind was reeling. He held the glass toward her and forced a sip of water between her lips. “Drink this. It will make you feel better.”
She felt the cold liquid run down her throat and then began to remember what had been happening before she’d fainted. She gaped at her father. “You . . . were trying to tell me . . . something.”
He knelt next to her and took a deep breath. “Yes. I was trying to say that my real name is Fargus Dudson, and . . . I was born in Gulm.” He paused, letting it all sink in.
Josephine shook her head and pushed the water glass away. “No. It’s impossible. I don’t believe you!” She felt ready to run from him again.
Her father sighed, not sure what to do next. “How else could I have known where to wait for you?”
Josephine looked down at the armchair her father had dragged from the living room out to the shed.
He continued, “As a boy, I found my way to you through this shed, and I hoped that was how you would find your way back to me now. I’ve been sleeping here, eating here, waiting for you to come home.”
She studied his features as if for the first time—the thin lips, small chin, and little cowlick at the back of his head. She looked deep into his hard brown eyes, and suddenly, as if hit by a mallet, she knew he was telling the truth.
But how was it possible? “Fargus is younger than I am!”
“Yes, I was. But that was fifty years ago.”
Fifty years? She had gone back in time fifty years? “You mean, the shed took me to another world and another time?” This time/space continuum thing was proving to be even more complex than Morgan had told her.
“Brokhun’s Cracks remain a mystery, but I believe they take you wherever you need to go.”
“Need to go? But why did I need to go there?”
“To save us, of course—me and Ida.” He stood. “Why don’t you come with me back to the kitchen. I’ll make you some new tea.”
Josephine blanched. “The tea! I threw it at you!”
“Luckily you’ve got bad aim.” He offered her his hand, which was once again covered with his gray glove, and she allowed him to help her up.
Moments later the two of them were sitting face-to-face at the kitchen table. Her father looked her straight in the eye, something she was unaccustomed to. He had agreed to answer any questions she asked. She was so full of them, she thought she’d explode.
“If you knew I was going to go to Gulm, why didn’t you warn me?”
“I didn’t know. For me, it’s been a lifetime since I left you standing in front of the Master’s manor. I didn’t understand the truth until after you went missing. You weren’t in the house and you’d skipped school. So I searched your room, and I found the brown case with that old photograph inside, and I finally understood that you were the girl who had come to the Institute to rescue me and Ida.”
“But . . . why didn’t you come to help me? The Brothers almost got me, the Master almost stabbed me . . . I could’ve died!”
“But that wasn’t what happened—it wasn’t meant to be. You saved us.”
Josephine’s heart sank. He hadn’t really been worried about her at all. He’d just been worried about his own skin. She whispered, “So you were just worried about you and Ida.”
“No! I was afraid if I interfered at all with the past that I’d put you in danger. My presence might have thrown everything off course.” The concern and anxiety in his voice were genuine. “I’ve been worried sick, waiting for you to get back. Can you forgive me for being so ignorant?”
Josephine was torn between distrusting the stern man who had ignored her all these years and believing her sweet friend Fargus who had never lied to her. She decided to trust her friend and nodded her head.
