Free Time's Echo by Pamela Hartshorne

arrived in York.
    In one corner Lucy had laid a cloth over a round table, and set it with two tall candles. A pewter goblet was placed carefully between them, with a carved wooden wand and a ritual knife on
either side. Crystals were laid in a circle around the edge.
    It was an altar, I realized with distaste, and I remembered what Sophie had told me about Lucy being a witch. I studied the table while I nibbled at my thumbnail. It’s a bad habit of mine
when I’m unsure of myself. Outside, in the bright morning air, the notion of witchcraft had seemed just one more of Lucy’s mad ideas, but here in this oppressive room it was harder to
roll my eyes at the image of her dabbling in the occult. It felt more real, more dangerous, and I found myself thinking about the apple that I had found on the mantelpiece the night before and
thrown away. The apple there was no sign of in the bin.
    All at once my pulse was thudding in my ears, and I realized that I was crouched in front of the fire, holding myself tense and still like an animal deciding whether or not to flee. My eyes were
bulging with exhaustion.
    Jet lag catching up on me, I told myself firmly. All I needed was a nap.

I lay down on the sofa and closed my eyes, but I couldn’t relax. My mind careened between Lucy and the nightmare that had wrenched me out of sleep in the early hours of
the morning.
    I could pass that off as a dream, but what about those other experiences? I didn’t even know what to call them. Hallucinations? They weren’t dreams, that was for sure. They had been
too consistent for that. Besides, who fell asleep walking along a street?
    I abandoned my efforts to ignore what had happened and deliberately opened my mind to the memories. Surely I could look at them rationally? In each, I had been Hawise, and I could see some
parallels with myself. I was small-boned and dark-haired, and I had the same silvery-grey eyes.
    There were other similarities too. I was curious and restless, just like Hawise. That feeling of not belonging, of always being an outsider, was familiar to me, but unlike Hawise, I welcomed it.
It meant I never had to get too close to anyone, and that suited me fine. It was easier that way.
    Hawise had to be some kind of projection, I decided, although why I had chosen to project myself as a servant in Elizabethan York was a mystery to me.
    The alternative was too bizarre to contemplate.
    I didn’t believe in reincarnation or ghosts or past lives, I reminded myself. I wasn’t like Lucy. I didn’t look for another world. I’d told Drew Dyer that I wasn’t
interested in the past, and I’d meant it. I liked the here and the now. I liked the surface of things, tastes and textures. I entwined my fingers in the chain of my pendant. Things like that
– things I could touch, things that were real. I wanted to make sense of things, not marvel at the mystery of them.
    So there had to be an explanation. There was nothing wrong with this house, nothing wrong with Lucy’s death. Nothing wrong with
me
.
    The explanation was simple: I was overtired and getting things out of proportion, and that meant it was time to get a grip. No more letting my imagination run away with me. No more freaking
myself out.
    I still couldn’t relax enough to fall asleep, though, and in the end I gave up. Remembering the envelope with Lucy’s things, I sat back by the fire and shook the contents into my
palm. Two rings fell out, along with a silver pentacle pendant on a leather cord. I held it up, half-mesmerized as it swung gently, the reflected flames from the fire shifting over its shiny
surface. It wasn’t really my kind of thing, and besides I already had the jade pendant that I wore all the time. I wondered if Sophie would like it. She had known Lucy better than I had.
    I tried on the rings instead. One was a narrow silver band engraved with some kind of writing – runes? – while the other was engraved with Celtic knots. They looked pretty