"If only I could do it again," Rose says. "I'd be different this time. More charming. I'd make him [305] fall in love with me and forget everything else."

"It doesn't matter," says Cordelia.

Dawn is lightening the room. Rose gets to her feet and goes over to her father's desk. She rummages through the drawers until she finds what she is looking for, then returns to the window. Looking down, from here she can see the front door, the garden, the meadow, and the [310] forest in the distance.

The dolls clamor around her legs like children, but she ignores them. She waits. She has nothing but time. The sun is high in the sky when the front door opens and Jonah steps out. He is wearing his uniform, patched at the shoulder where she cut it away from him. He is carrying nothing in his hands, taking nothing from her house as he goes. Nothing but her heart, she [315] thinks. He sets off down the path that leads from the front door toward the meadow and to the wider road beyond.

He stops once, a few steps from the house, and looks back and up, squinting into the sun. He raises his hand in a halfhearted wave, but Rose does not respond. This Jonah, this version of him, no longer matters. it doesn't matter where he thinks he's going. It doesn't matter that he [320] doesn't love her. She is going to change all that.

There's a horrified silence. Then Jonah stammers out, "But, Rose, I'm already engaged. My fiancée, her name is Lily — I can show you a chromolithograph — " His hand strays to his throat, [290] where a locket hangs on a chain. But Rose has no interest in this girl, this fiancée with a flower name like her own. She stumbles to her feet and away from him, even as he moves toward her. "l think of you as if you were my own little sister, Rose—"

The rich-proud cost of outworn buried age;

When sometime lofty towers I see down-raz'd,

And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;

[5] When I have seen the kingdom of the shore,

And the firm soil win of the watery main,

Increasing store with loss, and loss with store;

When I have seen such interchange of state,

Or state itself confounded to decay;

[10] Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate—

That Time will come and take my love away...

William Shakespeare, Sonnet LXIV

Time is many things, her father told her. Time is a circle, and time is a great turning gear that cannot be stopped, and time is a river that carries away what you love.

She goes out to the garden in the morning to gather ingredients for the cook. The cook used to [60] make all sorts of things, but now it is broken and it makes only soup — whatever you put in it comes out in a sort of thick gruel. The garden robot follows her—in fact, it does most of the work. It digs long, even furrows and plants the seeds; it crushes bugs and other pests. It uses its calipers to measure the vegetables and fruit for ripeness

"Love, stupid," says Rose, annoyed. "You know what love is, don't you?"

"She doesn't know anything," says Ellen, rattling her teacup with amusement. After a pause, she says, "Neither do l. What do you mean?"

Rose sighs. Love means someone wants to be with you all the time. All they want is to make you happy and give you things. And if you go away from them, they will be miserable forever and ever."

"That sounds terrible," says Cordelia. "l hope it doesn't happen."

 "Don't say that," says Rose. "Or I will slap you."

"Do you love us?" Ellen asks.

The question hangs in the air, and Rose is not sure how to answer it. Finally she says, "Cordelia, you're good with your needle. Come with me. I need you to help me sew up his wound, or it won't heal."

Her father was a big man, with big, capable hands, like a gardener or plowman. In one of them he was holding an object that looked like a telescope—or no, she thought as he sat down beside her, it was a watch, for it had a face with dials, at the far end.But I have [150] never been able to make it take me back more than a week, and by then she had been dead for years." He handed it to her. "You can go back if you like," he said gruffly. "If you turn the dials like so — and so — you can return to the time when your rabbit was still alive."

Rose was delighted. She took the device from him and turned the dials, as he had shown her, to return her to that morning. Then she snapped the device shut. For a terrifying moment it was [155] like falling down a well, everything hurtling upward and away from her. Then she was in her room again, the white rabbit in its cage, and she was no longer holding the time device. Delighted, she ran to the cage and opened it, lifting her rabbit out and cradling it closely against her, squeezing tighter until it went still in her arms. She loosened her grip in disbelief, but the creature was as limp as a rag. She began to sob again, but this time when her father came to [160] see what was wrong, she didn't tell him. He didn't remember having shown her the time device and she was too ashamed to ask for it again.

 He looks startled. "But, Rose, the way back to the Capital is through enemy territory. It's much too dangerous—”

"You can't leave me here," she says.

"No, of course not. I had planned to alert the authorities when I returned, and they would send someone for you. I'm not callous, Rose. I understand what you did for me, but it's too dangerous —” 

"Nothing is too dangerous if we're together," says Rose. She thinks she may have heard someone say this in a novel once.

"That's not true at all." Jonah seems agitated by her refusal to understand. "It will be much easier for me to maneuver without worrying about you, Rose. And you aren't trained for anything like this. It just isn't possible."

"I thought you loved me," says Rose. "l thought we were going to the Capital so we could get married."

There's a horrified silence. Then Jonah stammers out, "But, Rose, I'm already engaged. My fiancée, her name is Lily — I can show you a chromolithograph — " His hand strays to his throat, where a locket hangs on a chain. But Rose has no interest in this girl, this fiancée with a flower name like her own. She stumbles to her feet and away from him, even as he moves toward her. "l think of you as if you were my own little sister, Rose—"

She runs past him, runs up the stairs and into her father's study, slamming the door behind her. She can hear him calling out for her, but after a while, he stops calling, and there is silence. The sun has begun to set outside, and the room is filled with reddish light. She slips to the floor, her head in her hands, and begins to weep. Sobs rack her body. She is aware of the touch of hands on her hair and someone stroking her back. Ellen and Cordelia surround her, petting her as if she were a crying child. She sobs for hours, but they don't tire; it is Rose, finally, who wearies first. Her tears slow and stop, and she stares at the wall, vacantly, gazing into nothingness

 "He was supposed to fall in love with me," she says aloud. "l must have done something wrong."

"Everyone makes mistakes," says Ellen.

"It's all for the best," says Cordelia.

[40] She reached the edge of one great pit and stared down into it. She could see the top of the church spire sticking up, nearly reaching the top of the sinkhole. All around was the smell of decay. She wondered if the townsfolk had taken refuge in the church when the Wyrms came — she'd seen pictures of Wyrm fighters before, enormous, riveted copper tubes covered with incendiary bombs. She decided that her father was right. Towns were dangerous places for [45] young ladies on their own.

It was then that she realized why the grocer’s boy had stopped coming.

 He looks startled. "But, Rose, the way back to the Capital is through enemy territory. It's much too dangerous—”

"You can't leave me here," she says.

"No, of course not. I had planned to alert the authorities when I returned, and they would send someone for you. I'm not callous, Rose. I understand what you did for me, but it's too dangerous [280] —” 

"Nothing is too dangerous if we're together," says Rose. She thinks she may have heard someone say this in a novel once.

"That's not true at all." Jonah seems agitated by her refusal to understand. "It will be much easier for me to maneuver without worrying about you, Rose. And you aren't trained for [285] anything like this. It just isn't possible."

"I thought you loved me," says Rose. "l thought we were going to the Capital so we could get married."

There's a horrified silence. Then Jonah stammers out, "But, Rose, I'm already engaged. My fiancée, her name is Lily."