Regretfully Yours, Miss O’Reilly

By Katie Hanna

I knew I would regret taking Cuthbert Devereaux’s navigation advice.

When my old nemesis butted into my mission in Nazi Germany, he brought nothing but trouble. It’s entirely his fault we landed in colonial Australia. Now we’re trussed like roasted chickens and propped against a pile of dusty saddlebags in an outlaw camp.

According to my chronometer, we’ve arrived in the 1830s, but the bleak, bronze grassland could be a scene from the dawn of time… or even its twilight. Some apocalyptic plain, vast and featureless.

Our time machine breaks the monotony, its little blue dome turning violet in the dusk. An outlaw guards the door, rifle at the ready.

“I told you this would happen,” I mutter in Mr. Devereaux’s ear. “We should’ve stayed in the time vortex instead of landing with insufficient radar data.”

“You told me we would crash in feudal Japan and be decapitated by samurai.” Mr. Devereaux raises his bound wrists to blow a speck of dust from his sleeve. “Your dire predictions have hardly been fulfilled to the letter, Miss O’Reilly.”

“Blitzkrieg!” Cuthbert the parrot pecks a beetle crawling across my skirt.

“You would agree with him, wouldn’t you,” I hiss, clumsily shooing bird and insect away with my tied hands.

“Of course he would,” the old man says serenely. “He’s my namesake.”

“Don’t make me regret that, too.”

Mr. Devereaux shoots me a keen glance. His shoulder presses into mine, lean and bony under his tailored suit. The outlaws could have left a little more space between us.

The tension is broken by two figures approaching, a young woman and a boy. I spot a wicked-looking shotgun in the girl’s hands.

The black-haired lad thrusts his hands in his pockets, the gesture of boys the world over. But his words have nothing boyish or playful about them. “Sorcha says you killed our da.” Though his accent marks him as Irish, his outrageous claim leaves little warmth in my heart for a fellow child of St. Patrick.

“Are you mad?” I splutter, but he’s not looking at me. His eyes rest squarely on my companion. His sister trains her gun on Mr. Devereaux, finger locked over the trigger.

“Hanged our da for stealing sheep, you did.” Hatred smolders in Sorcha’s gaze. “Da never stole any of your bloody woolly beasts.”

“My dear young lady, there must be some mistake,” Mr. Devereaux says slowly. “I am no sheep farmer, and I never knew your father.”

“Will you listen to that, Jem?” The girl laughs bitterly. “High and mighty as an English duke.”

“Not so mighty now,” Jem grunts, kicking Mr. Devereaux with his grimy bare foot.

My brain scrambles for a solution. These Irish urchins have mistaken Mr. Devereaux, with his expensive clothes and aristocratic speech, for a landowner they have a grudge against. Surely there must be some way to convince them otherwise.

“This sheep farmer of yours,” I break in. “What’s his name?”

“You know his name,” Sorcha hisses. “John Annesley.”

“Have you ever seen Mr. Annesley? Either of you?”

“Before today, you mean?” Jem glares at Mr. Devereaux. “Not on a sheep station as big as his. He’d not be caught mingling with the likes of us!”

Mr. Devereaux raises an eyebrow. “Then how can you be sure I am John Annesley?”

“Your suit, of course,” Sorcha snaps. “No other man in these parts could afford such fine wool!”

“This is my only wool suit!” Mr. Devereaux protests. “I haven’t bought a new one in twenty years.”

“You mean since I last saw you, you’ve been wearing the exact same… oh, never mind,” I groan. “Does your Mr. Annesley travel in a vessel like that, Sorcha?”

The brother and sister scrutinize our sleek blue ship. Jem breaks the silence, his tone doubtful. “I never saw one to match it.”

“That’s because it won’t be invented for approximately six hundred years,” Mr. Devereaux explains. “It’s designed to travel through time.”

“Travel through time? Sure, you’re having a laugh with us!” For the first time, the true boy awakens in Jem’s eyes, the spirit of mischief. “I’ve got to see this!”

Jem dashes up the slope to the ship. He gesticulates to the guard, who shrugs and lets him enter.

“You blistering idiot!” I scream, struggling against the cords binding my limbs. I never should have called attention to the machine in the first place. “Get out of there!”

“Why?” Sorcha sticks the gun directly in my face, a show of bravado that doesn’t mask the uneasiness in her voice. “Something wrong with your ship?”

“Only that it travels through time!” Mr. Devereaux snaps. “For the Lord’s sake, get the boy out of there!”

Horror dawns in Sorcha’s eyes as Jem’s voice floats down the hill. “What’s this bloody great big handle for?”

For once in our lives, Cuthbert Devereaux and I react as one.

“Don’t touch that!”

It’s too late. The machine vanishes like a snuffed-out candle. I picture it hurtling through the time vortex with a helpless boy inside.

Sorcha’s scream shatters the silence. “They’ve stolen Jem!”

The gun clutched in her shaking fingers isn’t the only weapon we need to worry about anymore. From every corner of the camp, outlaws pour toward us. Rifles bristle in their hands.

“If this is my last mission,” Mr. Devereaux says grimly, “it was an honor to spend it with you, Imelda.”

Heat floods my cheeks, but I don’t have time for such foolishness. I raise my voice to a hoarse shout. “We’re the only ones with any hope of tracking that ship, and you know it!”

The mob advances menacingly, faces dark with fury.

Taking a deep breath, I project my words to the farthest edges of the crowd. “If you kill us now, you’ll never see Jem again!”

A few men halt instantly. Others press forward. The rest waver, a churning, rumbling sea of indecision.

“Show me,” Sorcha snarls, her eyes blazing. “Show me how to travel through time.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Katie Hanna is a writer in her spare time and a dreamer all the time. She has a Master’s degree in history from the University of Memphis, and puts it to work writing historical fiction and historical fantasy.  Katie likes strong women in her adventure stories and Oreos in her ice cream.  You can find her work in Havok’s Casting Call and Animal Kingdom anthologies, as well as The Depths We’ll Go To and The Heights We’ll Fly To.

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