Time's Tragedies- The Books Of Beginning [2]

67. Bells

"Up here," Eternity directed, pointing to the flat roof of a grocers a few blocks away from the magical quarter marketplace. Lili nodded, and brushed the snow from the fire escape, before climbing up the slippery ladder to the frozen rooftop. Eternity followed quickly, both girls wanting to stay out of sight when they so clearly didn't fit in this time. 

"Don't fall off the roof," Lili warned, moving slowly to keep from sliding on the snow covered roof. 

Eternity rolled her eyes, "dang, that puts a stop to my plans to go jumping off buildings."

"Glad to see you've haven't had your sarcasm frozen out of you," Lili said.

"Nope, just all feeling in my toes," Eternity exclaimed cheerfully, brushing away the snow to clear a spot on the edge of the roof for the two girls to sit. Lili joined her without hesitation. 

"Here, let me help," Lili said, allowing her now partially replenished magic to seep through their bond, warming Eternity. "Is that better?"

Eternity smiled gratefully, "yeah, thanks."

They sat in comfortable silence, snowflakes falling upon them like cold kisses against skin and hair and fabric. Across the city, there were torches and lanterns being lit, whoops and shouts filling the air. How many of those torches were setting fire to children's home, kill a wonderful witch, Lili wondered. How many of those shouts were not joy, but anger and prejudice?

There was something overwhelming about this city, something that even the giant skyscrapers of the modern world could not replicate. It was the mix of humans and magicians, of people with roots from all across the world crowded into the urbanization of one place. It was the revelries and the horror, the different languages melting together to form a song, the smell of snow and food being sold in the streets. It was the tension of oncoming change hanging in the air like electricity, with new inventions and new conflicts, with the separation of two worlds and the turn of a century on the horizon. The clock was ticking and New York felt every pulse. 

"This moment is so cataclysmic and no one even realizes. This is one of a kind, E. There will never be this moment again," Lili mused softly.

Eternity smiled slightly, "and yet we're here, experiencing it, which should be impossible."

"Yeah," Lili agreed, "by now we should be used to it."

Eternity giggled, and Lili leaned her head against the taller teenager's shoulder. She whispered, "I'm glad I have you with me."

"Same," Eternity said, "there's no one I'd rather be breaking the laws of physics with. Or doing anything else, for that matter."

There was a dull warmth that spread through Lili at the sentimental words declared in such a flippant way, the trademark of Eternity's affection. Usually such a sentence would have her heart pounding, her stomach doing backflips, but now she just felt warm, warm and tired and numb. Had the cold gotten to her? No, history had. 

Which of those lights across the city was actually an inferno, a church, a sanctuary not for the religious but the young and desperate with power in their veins, set on fire by hateful men? Which of the buildings lining narrow streets had her grandmother lived in, made a living in, played violin in, loved a son in? Which of the apartments had her grandmother died in? Lili had tried her damn hardest not to think of it all, while she was in Ling's room, but now that she was looking over this city in the night, she could not ignore her own mind anymore. Not when this very place and time, despite being a century buried under new construction and new stories, ran through her veins, passed down from her father. 

How many of the children that her father had raised as best as he could, pieced together a life for with the help of Henrietta Burke and Scruggs, were alive in the present (future? Time travel was something else)? Lili knew that Scruggs was already dead by now. Was her namesake, the woman that her parents spoke so highly of? Probably; there wasn't much longer until midnight.