Just in Time Part 4 of 6

The Palace of Versailles, July 1778

Before them was a fountain, jets of water bursting forth from the mouths of sculpted frogs. Beyond this was a canal, an endless silver strip of water edged by lush linden trees. The palace of Versailles was pristine and calm. Julianne and Mida stood in awe, watching the morning mist rolling across the green expanse of the garden.

“It doesn’t even feel like the past,” Julianne said. “It feels like it’s been this way forever.”

Mida glanced behind her where two guards stood by a door not too far off. “I wonder how we’ll get in there….”

Julianne brazenly approached the men, speaking to them in quick, insistent French. They watched her with awe and nodded hesitantly. One scurried off into the palace without another word, and with that, Julianne scuttled back to Mida’s side with a nonplussed look.

“What did you tell them?” she hissed.

“That we needed to see the queen and that it is of utmost importance,” she said proudly. Mida could hardly believe that such a thing worked so easily–then again, many impossible thing occured today.

They stood on the terrace, enjoying the view as they waited.

“I hope Marie Antoinette won’t send us away,” Julianne remarked.

“Why?” asked Mida. “Because if she does we won’t get the next item on our list?”

“Well… no, not really. I just wanted to be able to meet her.” She tucked her red hair behind her ear with a weak smile. “I’m kind of a history nerd, really. I want to know what Marie’s really like. She’s painted as vain and shallow, but I’ve always related to her in some ways. I don’t know, she’s just seemed like… more than all of that.”

Mida stood in silence, furrowing her brow slightly. “I didn’t know you were so interested in history…”

Julianne shrugged with a small, embarrassed smile. “It’s one of the reasons I was so excited to do this. To be a part of all of these things that happened….”

“It doesn’t upset you that we’re disrupting everything, too?” Mida asked coldly. “We’re tampering with history, not helping it, not even observing it. Doesn’t that bother you?”

The younger woman ran her fingers across the fresh piece of sheet music she held. “I suppose Mozart will be missing this.”

“To be fair, he hasn’t even written it yet. We’re even further in the past now,” Mida reminded her companion, walking carefully around the terrace, examining the orange trees in the garden below.

“And you? Do you regret being here?” Julianne asked softly.

“In principle. On the other hand”–she stooped down, touching the fine gravel beneath her feet, letting it sift through her fingers–“it is a privilege to be an explorer… after all, what we’re doing has been considered impossible. And I’ve never been a part of something so great.” She wiped the dust off of her hands and smiled at her companion with tired eyes. “Back home, I’m just a tutor on the weekends, and I work at a bank the rest of the week. My life isn’t quite this thrilling, and certainly not so elegant.” She lightly twisted the band of the watch on her wrist. “If I could, perhaps I’d stay here.”

“You wouldn’t want to,” Julianne cut in. “In a few years, everyone here will be in danger. They’ll be exiled, imprisoned, beaten, beheaded….” She folded her arms and averted her gaze, her eyes glassy with tears, as if she intimately knew those who would die. “I’m sorry, it’s just… I don’t know. I always wanted to save some of these people. I wanted to save someone. People on TItanic, the Romanov family, even Marie Antoinette… they were victims of circumstance, I truly believe that. And the idea that we couldn’t do anything at all….”

Mida watched Julianne, surprised at her compassion and at her knowledge, but also grew wary of the scheming look slowly coming across the girl’s face. “We can’t do anything, Julianne, we still can’t. We can’t change the past.”

Realization continued to light up Julianne’s eyes. She held up the sheet music, saying, “But we already have, Mida, look! Why can’t we do something more than just some little theft!”

“Because we don’t know what will happen if we change things,” she insisted. “If we disrupt one thing, a chain of events we could never predict will take place–one sheet of music is not equal to a life! We can’t rescue someone–”

Just then, the guards opened the tall, white doors of the palace, and out of them emerged a woman in a full, rose-colored gown, her hair delicately coiffed and powdered, her skin the color of that of the marble statues in the garden, and an impish smile upon her red lips. Behind her were several women with the same appearance, her relatives and ladies-in-waiting. Julianne began with a clumsy little curtsy, and Mida woodenly did the same. The woman before them giggled and said something in French.

“What did she say?” Mida asked Julianne, who was now blushing.

“She said she had heard there were two women in strange dresses,” she whispered, “and apparently we did not fail to please.”

Mida smiled, staring self-consciously at the sleek, red dress she had previously found to be modern and fashionable–now too modern, she realized.

“Merci?” she replied awkwardly.

The queen giggled again, fanning herself with a wide grin. “Where are you from? I have never seen clothes like that before!”

“She wants to know where we’re from,” Julianne translated in a soft, panicked voice to Mida.

“Say ‘the American Colonies,’” she replied hastily.

Julianne translated the answer, and Marie Antoinette raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Oh! Why, we’ve just declared ourselves allies with the Colonies. What brings you to Versailles?”

Mida glanced to Julianne, who acted as the translator for this meeting. But Julianne appeared to be just as lost, turning with wide eyes to her companion. “We… we have something to request of you, Your Majesty, if it is not too bold.”

“Anything for our allies, certainly,” the queen of france replied, apprehension evident in her tone.

Julianne blushed as she remembered the item they had traveled to acquire. She wrung her hands together and fumbled with her french for a moment before sputtering out, “We need a shoe of yours, Majesty.”

The queen’s smile faded and she held her fan tight in her hands. The women glanced at one another anxiously before she simply asked, “Why?”

The two women hesitated, staring wide-eyed at one another for answers. “Say it’s an American custom,” Mida hissed.

“I don’t want to lie to her!”

“You must. What else can we do? We cannot tell her where we’re really from,” she insisted.

Julianne timidly faced the queen, wringing her hands as she answered in soft French. The queen paused and then laughed after a moment, waving her hand at the women at her side. They took a step back and she drew closer to Mida and Julianne with a snicker.

“It’s for a game, you say? What kind of game?” the queen asked Julianne.

“A–a hunt of sorts,” she explained. “My friends and I are collecting things around the world… it is a bit silly, in some ways…”

“There’s nothing wrong with a game, I think,” the queen said with a smile. She stooped down and pulled back the hem of her pink skirts, carefully slipping the white shoe off of her stockinged foot. Mida stared wide-eyed at Marie Antoinette as the woman placed the beautiful shoe in her hand.

“I would like one of yours in exchange,” Her Majesty requested. Julianne snickered and passed on the message to Mida, who blushed and then hesitantly slipped the high-heeled shoe off of her foot. The queen tried on the shoe and then covered her feet with the skirts of her gown, an impish grin upon her face.

“I hope you win your game then, mademoiselles,” she smiled.

The two women curtsied, and with that, the queen and her ladies-in-waiting left, the door shutting behind them with a gentle click. Mida and Julianne gaped at the shoe still in Mida’s hand.

“She–she didn’t even mind that we were here,” Mida remarked.

“I didn’t get the chance to say anything. I just got to ask for a shoe,” Julianne muttered, glancing behind her at the vast, empty gardens. “I could have helped her….”

“Perhaps it was for the best,” Mida offered.

The other woman was silent, standing on the terrace with her arms folded. After a while, Mida tucked the shoe under her arm and began to twist the face of the device on her wrist. Julianne turned at the clicking and squeaking sounds.

“Again?” she asked breathlessly. “Where do we have to go now?”

Mida stopped, looking at the redheaded woman with a serious look. “We don’t have to go anywhere. We could stop this game, if you want. We could go home.” She stood at Julianne’s side and surveyed the gardens, more beautiful than any place they’d known. “…Or we could stay.”

Julianne whipped her head to her, her eyes wide and glassy. “What if we did, though? What’s the worst that could happen?”

“We… we would be erased from the present,” assumed Mida. “And we’d lose our families, our friends, everything–”

“But we could be a part of history. And we could change something. We could mean something.” She pointed towards the palace, saying, “She was so innocent! So kind! She didn’t mean any harm towards anyone–”

“I don’t think we should play God,” Mida pushed back quietly. “But… but if we were both willing, we could remain here for a while longer, not disturbing anyone–”

“…I’d never see anyone again? I’d be here forever?”

“Unless we used the watch again, of course.”

Julianne snickered, observing the device on Mida’s wrist. “Time is such a strange thing–we could stay here a few years and jump to the present and no one would know….”

There was a loud popping sound, and blue sparks burst from the watch. Julianne shrieked, and blue light flared; the world around them swirled and spun and then suddenly vanished all at once. At the spectacle, the two guards beside the door raced towards the spot on the terrace where the two women had disappeared–there was a scorched spot in the gravel, but nothing more.