Seeing that she’s not going to explain what she just did—or how she can see me at all—I try another question. “Where are we?”

Louisa answers without looking at me. “Not far from my home in the other memory. The better question is when, girl.”

I stand up. “When are we?”

“Fifty years from my time, when my grandmother was young.”

“1815. Why did you bring me here?”

Louisa regards me with shrewd eyes. “Because you need to see this.”

“Where is Patricia?”

“So many questions!” Louisa snorts. “My descendant is back in her time. You’ll return when we’re done. Come.” She grips me hard around the elbow and pulls without care that I’m stumbling behind her. The closer we get, the stronger the hot, copper smell of blood grows.

And then, the loud wail of a newborn.

Three women in long dresses kneel around a fourth, who has just given birth. The mother—a young girl who’s maybe eighteen or nineteen—is propped up on blood-soaked blankets wrapped around a lumpy collection of straw and grass. Her skirts are bunched around her waist, her hands wrapped like vises around her bent knees. She’s panting, exhausted, and sweaty, but the fierce determination on her warm golden-brown face makes her… striking. Gorgeous.

“It’s Pearl that’s just had the baby,” Louisa says. She jerks her chin at the other three women, the youngest of whom looks Pearl’s age and the others in their late twenties. “Cecilia, Betty, and Katherine.”

“You know them?”

Louisa smirks and points out the youngest woman. “That’s my mother’s mother. She brought us here.”

Cecilia wipes at Pearl’s forehead while Betty works at the afterbirth. It’s Katherine who holds the crying baby out of sight, wiping it down, I think, with one of the wet rags hanging over a pail of water. My eyes are drawn to a bloody blade on a wooden board beside her. It’s hard to not think of the risks here—germs, infection, dirty water—even though I know women have done this for centuries with the same or less. “Why did she bring me here?”

Louisa tilts her head. “I don’t know.”

Katherine hisses, a sharp intake of air that turns everyone’s heads. Pearl, a new mother on high alert, reaches for her child. “What is it, Kath? Is he all right?” Katherine turns around, and for the first time I can see the baby wrapped in her arms. He’s still stained with blood, wrinkled and wet. His cries have gone quiet, replaced now with whimpers. Betty moves closer, and she and Katherine exchange glances. Pearl notices this too. “Betty? Something wrong?” Pearl asks cautiously, her eyes darting between the two other women. “Am I still bleeding bad?”

Betty shakes her head. “Seen worse. The bleeding’s not the problem.”

Pearl is frantic now. “Then give him to me!”