For fans of The Ministry of Time and The Midnight Library, a sweeping, unforgettable novel following two remarkable women moving between postwar and Cold War-era America and the mysterious time space, a library filled with books containing the memories of those who bore witness to history.
Enter the time space, a soaring library filled with books containing the memories of those have passed and accessed only by specially made watches once passed from father to son—but mostly now in government hands. This is where eleven-year-old Lisavet Levy finds herself trapped in 1938, waiting for her watchmaker father to return for her. When he doesn’t, she grows up among the books and specters, able to see the world only by sifting through the memories of those who came before her. As she realizes that government agents are entering the time space to destroy books and maintain their preferred version of history, she sets about saving these scraps in her own volume of memories. Until the appearance of an American spy named Ernest Duquesne in 1949 offers her a glimpse of the world she left behind, setting her on a course to change history and possibly the time space itself.
In 1965, sixteen-year-old Amelia Duquesne is mourning the disappearance of her uncle Ernest when an enigmatic CIA agent approaches her to enlist her help in tracking down a book of memories her uncle had once sought. But when Amelia visits the time space for the first time, she realizes that the past—and the truth—might not be as linear as she’d like to believe.
Perfect for fans of The Midnight Library and The Ministry of Time, The Book of Lost Hours explores time, memory, and what we sacrifice to protect those we love.
For fans of The Ministry of Time and The Midnight Library, a sweeping, unforgettable novel following two remarkable women moving between postwar and Cold War-era America and the mysterious time space, a library filled with books containing the memories of those who bore witness to history.
Enter the time space, a soaring library filled with books containing the memories of those have passed and accessed only by specially made watches once passed from father to son—but mostly now in government hands. This is where eleven-year-old Lisavet Levy finds herself trapped in 1938, waiting for her watchmaker father to return for her. When he doesn’t, she grows up among the books and specters, able to see the world only by sifting through the memories of those who came before her. As she realizes that government agents are entering the time space to destroy books and maintain their preferred version of history, she sets about saving these scraps in her own volume of memories. Until the appearance of an American spy named Ernest Duquesne in 1949 offers her a glimpse of the world she left behind, setting her on a course to change history and possibly the time space itself.
In 1965, sixteen-year-old Amelia Duquesne is mourning the disappearance of her uncle Ernest when an enigmatic CIA agent approaches her to enlist her help in tracking down a book of memories her uncle had once sought. But when Amelia visits the time space for the first time, she realizes that the past—and the truth—might not be as linear as she’d like to believe.
Perfect for fans of The Midnight Library and The Ministry of Time, The Book of Lost Hours explores time, memory, and what we sacrifice to protect those we love.
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Overview
This is the kind of book that will hold on to your heartstrings. Time-travel, romance and shadows of history are bundled into one sweeping tale of memory and identity.
For fans of The Ministry of Time and The Midnight Library, a sweeping, unforgettable novel following two remarkable women moving between postwar and Cold War-era America and the mysterious time space, a library filled with books containing the memories of those who bore witness to history.
Enter the time space, a soaring library filled with books containing the memories of those have passed and accessed only by specially made watches once passed from father to son—but mostly now in government hands. This is where eleven-year-old Lisavet Levy finds herself trapped in 1938, waiting for her watchmaker father to return for her. When he doesn’t, she grows up among the books and specters, able to see the world only by sifting through the memories of those who came before her. As she realizes that government agents are entering the time space to destroy books and maintain their preferred version of history, she sets about saving these scraps in her own volume of memories. Until the appearance of an American spy named Ernest Duquesne in 1949 offers her a glimpse of the world she left behind, setting her on a course to change history and possibly the time space itself.
In 1965, sixteen-year-old Amelia Duquesne is mourning the disappearance of her uncle Ernest when an enigmatic CIA agent approaches her to enlist her help in tracking down a book of memories her uncle had once sought. But when Amelia visits the time space for the first time, she realizes that the past—and the truth—might not be as linear as she’d like to believe.
Perfect for fans of The Midnight Library and The Ministry of Time, The Book of Lost Hours explores time, memory, and what we sacrifice to protect those we love.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781668076361 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Atria Books |
| Publication date: | 08/26/2025 |
| Sold by: | SIMON & SCHUSTER |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 400 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Chapter 1 1
1938, Nuremberg, Germany
IN THE CITY OF Nuremberg in 1938, a man told his daughter a bedtime story. The man was a clockmaker, the son in a long line of clockmakers who lived in the city’s Jewish neighborhood. Keeping time as his ancestors had for two centuries.
“Time for bed, Lisavet. You’ve had enough stories for tonight,” the clockmaker said when his daughter asked him, for the third time that night, for another story.
Out the window, the streets had long since gone dark and chill with November winds. The clockmaker’s mind was on the work he had to finish downstairs in the shop. And more specifically on the letter from America that sat on his desk, delivered earlier that morning.
“I’m not tired,” Lisavet pouted. “I want to stay up until Klaus comes home.”
“Your brother won’t be home until late,” the clockmaker scolded.
The smile on his face foiled his attempts at discipline. He ran a hand through her hair, already knowing that she would wear him down. His daughter was his late wife reborn, with golden hair and caramel brown eyes.
When she was alive, his wife had often teased that they had replicated themselves into two miniature versions, him in their son and her in their daughter. It was true in the physical sense but beyond that, Ezekiel Levy and his son, Klaus, could not be more different. Klaus was like his mother with his high society taste and dreams of attending school in the capital. It was Lisavet who was most like Ezekiel. She could often be found perched on the stool beside him in his workshop, watching him coax the gears and springs of old broken watches until they shuddered back into life. She was the one who wound the clocks in the front of the shop each morning, watching with quiet reverence as the wood and metal masterpieces sang to the tune of time. And she was the one who would one day inherit his shop and the family secrets that came with it.
“Tell me about the magic watch again,” Lisavet said, clutching his wrist tightly as he tried to stand.
At eleven years old, Lisavet was almost too old for bedtime stories at all, and the clockmaker knew it wouldn’t be long before she stopped asking. He settled himself on the edge of the bed.
“Once upon a time in Germany, a clockmaker named Ezekiel lived with his two children in their happy little home above the shop that his family had owned for generations,” he began in a deep voice that crackled like flames in a hearth. “The family were world-renowned for the magnificent clocks that they sold in their store, made from the finest materials. Gold and gems and carved wood that gleamed in the candlelight by which they did their work. Large grandfather clocks, small table clocks, and everything in between. But among all these wondrous masterpieces was the most precious timepiece of all. A simple brass pocket watch, passed from father to son for over a hundred years. That watch was not special because it was laden with silver or gold, but because—” He broke off, bushy eyebrows raised, waiting for his daughter to finish the line. It was a game they played with all his stories, but especially this one.
“Because it let them talk to Time itself,” Lisavet said in a hushed voice.
“That’s right.” Ezekiel smiled and tapped her on the nose. “Time is the axis on which the world spins. Humans count their lives in months and weeks, as if calculating the cumulative measure of their existence will somehow earn them more of it. Accidents occur in three clicks of the second hand. Hearts stop in a moment of time. But there are things that happen in the space between seconds. Worlds are built. Planets burn. Souls fade into the space between one instant and the next and memories fall to depths, lost to the silence and flames.”
He dropped his voice lower, hissing like the shadows. Lisavet’s eyes went wide.
“It was not always this way. Centuries ago, the things that fell from our world and into the silence were hidden. Closed off to humanity. Unwitnessed. Unknown. The most devoted sensed something more, seeking it in meditations, brushing against it in dreams, never fully grasping what it was they were reaching for. As Time became more tangible, more precious, so did the shadows. With the invention of sundials came the ability to count the hours, and with clocks, the seconds. What can be counted can be mastered, and soon the veil between our world and what falls beyond it became thinner. Those who learned the language of Time called themselves timekeepers.”
The clockmaker whispered the word timekeeper with a devotee’s reverence. Outside the window, the winds began to blow.
“Like Ezekiel,” Lisavet said, right on cue. “He was a timekeeper.”
“That’s right. It was a secret that the family had carried for decades. Until one day, things started to change...”
“A storm was coming,” Lisavet prompted.
Ezekiel furrowed his brow, his tone deepening. “A storm was coming. The world began to grow darker and in crept a cold fierce enough to blow out every hearth. People stopped coming to buy clocks from their shop. Ezekiel could feel the darkness lurking out on the streets, advancing. The men who brought the storm were ruthless, full of hate and fire. Some came to Ezekiel’s shop one evening in the summer and asked him about his secret. They wanted the power for themselves. They demanded that he give them the watch that let him speak to Time.”
“But Ezekiel tricked them,” Lisavet said, full of pride.
“Yes, he did. It was his job to protect the secret, so he gave them a fake. They left his shop alone then, but Ezekiel knew that they would be back as soon as they discovered his deception. Time was in danger, and so was the clockmaker’s family. So he wrote a letter to an old friend. Another timekeeper who might be able to help him.”
“Why didn’t they just leave?” Lisavet asked, frowning slightly.
He bit his lip, thinking. “Because the men who had brought the storm might catch them. So Ezekiel asked his friends to help his family escape by other means. You see, the timekeepers knew of a place hidden in the folds of Time where they could disappear. A place where his family could hide, and with the help of another timekeeper, where they could escape into other lands far away from the storm.”
“And did it work? Did they help him?” Lisavet asked with a sleepy yawn.
Every other time he’d told this story, Ezekiel had ended it with a promise to tell the rest of the story another night. But tonight, there was a letter on his desk from his friend in America. Tonight, he kissed Lisavet on the forehead and smiled.
“Yes, they did. His friends wrote back and promised him help. Ezekiel and his family waited for the right moment. They talked to their closest friends and neighbors about the dangers of the coming darkness and brought as many of them with them as they could. It took some convincing. Not everyone believed in this tunnel through Time, and many were afraid of it. Still others didn’t want to leave home no matter how strong the winds got. Those who would come settled on a day: the first night of Hanukkah when they would all be together with their families.” Here the clockmaker paused. Lisavet had begun to close her eyes. The last part of his story came in a whisper. “So by the light of the full moon in December, they escaped through the shadows and into freedom.”
As soon as he said it, two dozen grandfather clocks in the shop below all chimed eleven o’clock. Ezekiel fell silent, listening. As the chimes faded, echoing deep into the night, another sound met his ears. Shouting out on the streets, followed by the crash of breaking glass.
“What was that?” Lisavet asked, eyes wide open once more.
He went to the window, pulling aside the curtains. On the cobblestones below, coming up the street like a gale, a mob of angry faces was blowing in with the wind. Shattering glass drew his attention to another shop down the street and he watched in horror as his neighbors rushed out of their apartments, the children barefoot in their nightgowns.
“Papa, what’s happening?” Lisavet said. She was climbing out of bed.
“Put on your shoes, Lisavet,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
He ignored her cries for him to stay and bolted down the stairs to his shop. The crowd was drawing nearer. He could hear the pounding of their hands against the doors. The crunch of glass underfoot. He had seen such sights and heard such sounds carried in the memories of the dead. He knew what happened next. First came the shouting, the breaking, the anger. Then came the fire, the fighting, the killing.
The last clock in the shop let out a final chime, sounding like a name. Klaus. Ezekiel’s heart rose to his throat as he thought of his son down at the synagogue. He stood frozen on the last step, panicked.
“Papa?” Lisavet’s voice came from the top of the stairs.
“Stay up there!”
They were coming. The first of them was at his shop, beating on the door. They locked eyes through the window, steel gray and ice cold. Coming for the watch. Then the knocking became kicking, and the shouting became jeering. Ezekiel rushed for the letter on the desk. He stuffed it into his pocket and emptied the drawer below of other letters. Letters that spoke of the timekeepers and those complicit in his attempts to escape. He threw them into the bucket of water he used to mop up, the soap and lye expediting their disintegration. Without bothering to shut the drawer, he reached for his coat. He had barely pulled it on when the first rock struck the window frame. Lisavet was halfway down the stairs when he returned to her, stumbling on the too-long hem of her nightgown.
“Papa!”
“Upstairs, Lisavet,” he said, reaching into his coat for the pocket watch. The old familiar brass was slick in his palm.
His fingers fumbled over the crown until it clicked into place, and he flung open the door. What had once been their cozy, two-room apartment was instead a silent cavern of shadows. Lisavet clutched his arm at the sight of what lay beyond. Ezekiel gripped his daughter’s shoulders tight, kneeling down to look her in the eye.
“Listen to me, Lisavet. I’m going to find your brother, okay? I want you to wait in there. Stay right there by this door. Do not move from that spot. I promise as soon as I get Klaus, we will come and find you. All right?”
“But, Papa, what is that?”
A second rock struck the shop. This one found its mark, shattering the glass on impact. “This is the tunnel through Time that I told you about,” he said frantically. “The one that will take us somewhere far away.”
“But that was just a story!” Lisavet exclaimed, shaking her head as he propelled her forward. On the other side of the door, she could see nothing but shadows and darkness.
“It wasn’t just a story, Lisavet. Go inside. I’ll be right back for you, I promise.”
She dug her heels in, and he picked her up as he had when she was younger, tossing her over one shoulder. He deposited her on the other side of the door and stopped for just a moment longer to kiss her head and drape his brown coat around her tiny shoulders. It pooled on the ground at her feet.
“Be brave,” he said, his words muffled against her hair.
“Papa?” she said, her voice echoing.
He pressed a finger to his lips and left her, slipping back over the threshold.
The door closed behind him and never opened again.
FOR HOURS, Lisavet waited. Everything was deathly quiet and impossibly still. She counted the seconds. At the top of every hour, she longed to hear the music of the clocks from the shop in which she’d grown up, but instead heard only silence. A silence so all-encompassing that it seemed alive, like a solid thing you could touch. Shadows obscured her vision and prevented her from seeing more than fifty feet ahead of her, but what she could see was strangely familiar.
Bookshelves. Towering on both sides and lined with leather-bound volumes of all sizes and shapes. Like a library. Lisavet took a single tentative step forward, her eyes slowly adjusting. Library wasn’t quite the right word. Indeed there were books, their leather spines packed in neat, even rows. Sweeping archways and Roman pillars stood at intervals between the endless rows of shelves, and Lisavet’s eyes followed the path of one of them all the way up. Where she expected to find a ceiling, she instead saw an inky sky filled with watery images, as though Michelangelo had painted the Sistine Chapel into the very stars themselves, each image swirling into the next like clouds drifting in the wind.
She wanted to walk among the shelves, but her father’s words echoed in her head. Stay right by the door. Do not move from this spot. When she turned around to face the door once more, it had changed. Now it appeared blurry, like a watery reflection of a door more than the door itself. It began fading away, familiar planks of wood consumed by darkness. Lisavet lunged for the doorknob, but it evaporated beneath her touch, taking any chance of returning to her father away with it. Lisavet sank to the ground where she stayed huddled on the floor, sobs racking her body.
The whispering started from somewhere within the darkness. A gentle, curious jingle as the shadows sought the source of a sound they had never heard before. Lisavet dried her eyes on the back of her hand, heart thudding. She did not know it yet, but this was Time itself, that long cherished friend of her ancestors, learning to speak to her, and she, uncertain and afraid, spoke back to it.
“H-hello?” she called as loudly as she dared.
Hello, the whispers repeated, echoing her own voice back to her.
Lisavet stood up. “Who’s there?” she asked.
The whispers sounded again, closer now.
Lisavet’s breathing came fast and shallow. She took a few steps in the direction of the darkness, away from the place her father had left her.
“Stay right there,” she said. “I’m coming to find you.”
Stay, stay, stay, the whispers echoed.
Lisavet stepped farther into the shadows and darkness in search of Time.
NO ONE was coming.
Lisavet had been trapped for two weeks and in that time, she had learned three very important things.
The first was that the laws of nature didn’t seem to apply here. She never got hungry. She never got thirsty or needed to use the bathroom. Sleep was unnecessary in the traditional sense. She could sleep, and sometimes did just to pass the time, but before long she began prolonging the time she spent awake, just to see how long she could go.
Second, there were no other doors hidden away in this place, confirmed by several days of searching. No way out.
And third, Time did not live here as her father’s story had suggested. Or if it did, it would offer her no help.
No one was coming. Perhaps no one even knew she was here.
The sky inside the quiet place was the most beautiful thing Lisavet had ever seen. Filled with swirling colors that moved and shifted like aqueous stars. For what must have been days, she lay on the floor between two bookshelves, staring up at it. She relied on it, its immensity and its mystery, to remind herself that she was alive. As she lay on the floor, she sometimes thought she saw her father’s face conjured in the swirling colors overhead but as soon as she focused her eyes on it, the picture vanished.
When she wasn’t hiding away among the shelves, she wandered up and down the stacks, singing in hopes that the sound might reach back through the disappearing door to her father, or that Time might finally take heed and come for her. One day she took to screaming her way up and down the shelves. Louder and louder, hoping someone would hear. Eventually, someone did. Or rather, something did.
“Why in heaven are you screaming like that?” a voice said, sharp and irritated.
Lisavet spun around to see the ill-rendered figure of a man emerging from the bookshelves. His image dragged through the air before joining with the rest of him, like ink dragging through water, distorted and semitransparent. He wore a white powdered wig, a set of purple tails, and spoke in strangely accented German.
“I-I’m looking for my father,” Lisavet stuttered, too shocked by his sudden appearance to be afraid.
“Can’t you see he’s not here, girl? Good thing too. You should consider yourself lucky.”
“Lucky?”
“Most of the people here are dead. Only the dead live in this godforsaken place.”
“But I’m not dead. And I’m here.”
The man looked her up and down, assessing her claims. “So you are. Are you a timekeeper?”
“A what?”
“A timekeeper,” the man repeated impatiently.
“N-no,” Lisavet said tentatively.
“If you aren’t a timekeeper, who are you?”
“My name is Lisavet Levy,” she told him.
The man didn’t respond. He was listening intently to something in the distance.
“Shhh!” he pressed a finger to his lips. “Hear that?”
Lisavet listened. The soft sound of whispers met her ears. “Time!” she exclaimed. “It’s back!”
“Time?” The gentleman raised an eyebrow at her foolishness. “Is that what you call that demon thing? Well, I suppose that’s as good an explanation for it as any. Time is the beast that makes mortals of all one way or another. It takes everything, heedless of wealth or status.” The man curled his lip bitterly as he said this, and Lisavet got the impression that he had once had both wealth and status before Time took them away. “If you’re not careful, it will take you, too, before you’re ready.”
“Take me where?”
That was what she wanted after all. Perhaps it would take her out of this place. To America, like in the story.
But the man shook his head. “Nowhere you want to go. Believe me.”
Lisavet’s eyes grew wide as the gentleman’s image ebbed away into nothing. The whispers became louder, calling out in formless echoes, hissing like water on hot coals. Lisavet ran from it, though she wasn’t sure exactly what she was running from. She took refuge in a particularly dark corner where the books on the shelves were dustiest. No more singing. Only silence.
SOON LISAVET went off in search of the ghost again. This time, instead of screaming, she whispered, walking slowly down each row of books.
“Hello?” she said quietly, careful not to wake the sounds from before.
No answer. She remembered that the man had seemed to come from out of the books on the shelves. As her fingers brushed one of the dusty leather spines, another voice spoke.
“Be careful doing that,” it said.
Lisavet drew her hand back in alarm. “Who said that?”
“This section is for medieval England,” the voice said. “You’re far too young for that.”
On her left, a watery image shifted into focus. Fragments of light and color pulled together to take the form of a man. This one was younger than the last, wearing robes of coarse gray fabric. He had a hand pressed to his chin, contemplating.
“You’d be better off avoiding all of medieval Europe if I’m being honest. Though there are a few things that might be all right. Royals perhaps, or...” His eyes flicked in her direction. “Maybe you’d prefer the Romantic period instead. Do you like poetry?”
Lisavet mumbled something incoherent.
“You’re a bit young for love poems, I suppose. Tell me, are you set on England or are you open to somewhere else? Italy perhaps? Oh, Italy in summer. The Renaissance period. You would love it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The memories.”
“Memories?”
“Yes. Memories in the books. Normally I don’t care what you timekeepers start with, but...” He turned to face her, his watery image shifting as he did so. “You’re just so young. I would hate for you to encounter something dreadful on your first go at it.”
“I’m not a timekeeper,” Lisavet protested.
“You’re not? Oh. How disappointing. And here I thought they were finally being progressive and appointing a girl. It really is a shame, you know... but I suppose it can’t be helped.” He seemed not to notice her growing alarm as he lamented her existence. “What are you doing here then?”
“I’m trapped. My father left me here and now I can’t find my way back out.”
“I see,” the man said, looking concerned but offering no other help or solution.
“Well... is there?” Lisavet prompted.
“Is there what?”
“A way out? A door or a...”
“Oh. No. ’Fraid not.”
Lisavet felt her whole body deflate. “Then can you at least tell me what this place is?”
“It isn’t a place. It’s more... a concept. You are in the space between the past and present. Everywhere and nowhere at all. This is the place where Time ends. The place where consciousness drifts when bodies die. It exists in the space between the fabric of tangible things, one moment to the next. Here, all things that happened on Earth linger in the form of memories.”
“So you’re a memory?” Lisavet asked, frowning.
“Unfortunately yes.”
“Am I... dead?” She didn’t know if she wanted the answer.
“People are always so worried about death. As if it is the end.”
Lisavet could only stare at him.
He sighed. “No, you are not dead.”
“Am I dreaming?”
“Not dreaming either. I assure you this is all very real.”
“But you just said that you’re a memory. You can’t be real.”
“Why not? Memories are the realest thing any of us have, Lisavet.”
Lisavet took a step back. “You know my name?”
“Yes, of course,” the man said with a slight smirk. “I found it in your memories. You know. Those things you insist aren’t real.”
Lisavet bit her lip sheepishly. “What’s your name?”
“Me? Oh, I don’t have one. Well. Not anymore anyway. It’s been Forgotten.” He gave a small shudder at the word.
“Forgotten?” Lisavet repeated.
He flinched again. “Yes, by a timekeeper who didn’t want the world to remember me.”
“I don’t understand,” Lisavet said.
The man turned toward the books again, a wistful expression on his inky face. “These books hold the memories of every person who has ever lived or died. Before the timekeepers they used to just hang around here in the time space, unattended. Not like it is now, all neat and tidy, filed away in books.”
Lisavet thought of her father. His bedtime story. Noticing her confused expression, the memory of the man offered her a blurry hand, his features fixed in a kind smile.
“If you’d like, I can show you Italy now. It’s really quite lovely, and I know the perfect memory to take you to.”
SOUND ERUPTED the moment they settled into the memory. It came from all over. The earth, the buildings, the streets, the very sky. After so much silence, the sudden cacophony was more than just a flood, it was a hurricane, enveloping every inch of Lisavet’s body. The warm sun shone on her face, a breeze lifted her hair. Warmth! Movement! They were standing on the edge of a parapet, watching a festival down below. People laughing and singing. Lisavet almost cried at the sight of it. It felt almost real... almost.
“How do you know how to do this?” Lisavet asked.
Beside her, the memory of the man was smiling, watching her reaction. “I was a timekeeper,” he said.
“You were?”
“The very first. Before the Romans conquered my people, I had found the time space through sundials and meditations. I am the one they stole the secrets from.”
He took her down from the parapet, pointing out the young girl whose memory they were walking in. She looked to be about Lisavet’s age, sitting above the crowd in a dress of fine silk.
“One of the Medici daughters,” the man told her. “Very wealthy and important.”
Lisavet didn’t know much about the Medicis and their supposed wealth. To her, the girl just looked bored, like she wanted to join the festival but couldn’t. As they walked through the crowd, Lisavet started to understand how she felt. She, too, was there, but not really there. She wanted to taste the delicacies sold from carts. Wanted to play with the other children darting through the crowd. Everything she touched passed through her hands. Eyes passed over her, seeing only blank space where she stood.
Lisavet turned her attention to the one person she could talk to. “Can I ask a question?”
“If you’d like.”
“If you’ve been... Forgotten...” Lisavet said this as delicately as she could, but he still flinched. “... why can I still see you?”
“Oh, they didn’t erase me completely. If they did that, they’d be erasing their own knowledge of the time space. And so what little of my memory that remains stays as it is. In the time space.”
“That’s confusing.”
“It is, isn’t it?” He frowned, looking just as puzzled as she felt. “Even so I’m glad for it. It allows me to provide assistance to other timekeepers when they need it. I show them how things work if they’re struggling.”
“If you don’t have a name, what should I call you?”
The memory shrugged. “Whatever you like, I suppose.”
Lisavet considered him. She had never named anything before. Aside from her dolls, but that was different. He was a person. Or at least he had been once. She couldn’t quite tell where he was from. His skin was neither particularly pale nor particularly dark but a warm olive color. Maybe he was Italian? That would explain his love of Italy. His head was shaven. The robes he wore offered no hints, either. They were plain and old, like something worn by a monk, but having never met a monk before, she couldn’t be certain.
“Azrael,” she said after a moment.
The man looked amused. “Azrael? The Judeo-Christian angel of death? Bit on the nose, isn’t it?”
Lisavet blushed. “Or we can pick something else.”
“No, no. Azrael is fine.” He said the name aloud a few times as if trying it on. “I rather think it suits me.”
They stayed a little longer, listening to the music, until the edges of the world started to fade, crinkling and rippling like water. Lisavet looked up at Azrael in alarm. He shook his head.
“Worry not. The memory is ending.” He pointed back up at the parapet where the girl was being led away by her nurse. “Let’s return to the time space for now.” He held out a hand.
“I don’t want to go back there.”
Azrael frowned slightly. “You don’t have to stay for long. Now that you know how to time walk, you can go wherever you’d like. But...” He tilted his head, squinting at her. “Do be careful. There is more evil in the world than you’ve been yet made aware of.”
Lisavet promised she would, mind racing with possibility. She thought about all the things she’d learned about history in school. Ancient Egypt. Germany before it was Germany. The Great War her father had so often talked about. All of it at her fingertips. She slipped her hand into Azrael’s, and they left the memory. Silence hit her like a wall the moment they returned. Gone was the sun. Gone was the breeze and the music and the smells. They had returned to the unmoving darkness. Lisavet was surprised to feel a small sense of relief at the absence of so much stimulus.
“Do you think you could show me your book next?” she asked, pointing up at the shelves.
Azrael winced slightly. “I would if I could; however, I don’t have a book myself. Any specter you see in the time space has not been ‘collected,’ so to speak, by a timekeeper. Meaning we have no book of memories to confine us.”
“Oh. I didn’t realize that—”
Azrael held up a hand, pressing a finger to his lips. His eyes were fixed on something down the row of shelves. Lisavet followed his gaze and saw the figure of a man passing between the rows. His shadow did not drag the way Azrael’s did. This was a real person, not a memory.
“A timekeeper,” Azrael murmured.
Lisavet’s eyes widened. A timekeeper? Perhaps he could help her leave! But Azrael shook his head.
“I don’t think this one would want to help you.”
“Why not?”
Azrael shushed her again and beckoned her to follow him. They followed the timekeeper at a distance until they saw him slip between a row of shelves up ahead.
“That section is Germany,” Azrael said quietly. “Rather close to modern day.”
Lisavet sensed the change in his tone. Germany? Her Germany? Ignoring his warning, she stole past him and ran for the row of shelves that the man had gone down. She didn’t stop until she’d reached the edge of the shelf. Breathing hard, she peered around the side. The man was standing in the center of the row. He had pulled one of the books down from the shelves, hand tracing over the closed cover. His blond hair was cropped close in the military style and when he turned with the book in hand, Lisavet got a better look at his clothes. From the side, his black uniform was indistinguishable, but from the front she could clearly see the many silver pins and insignias. The bright red armband fixed around his bicep. A Nazi.
She watched in horror as the soldier opened the book and withdrew a pack of matches from his pocket. He held the flame to one of the pages until it caught fire. As the flames grew, he dropped the book to the ground, cover face up, spine bent.
“Timekeepers destroy the memories they don’t want the world to remember.”
Lisavet jumped. Azrael had caught up to her and was watching the scene over her shoulder, his expression grave.
“But why?” she asked.
Azrael shrugged. “To uphold their ideology. The past is a mirror of us. It tells us who we’ve been and what we have become. Some people don’t like what they see in their reflection, so they change it by erasing memories from the face of the earth. By erasing people from existence.”
“Erasing people?” Lisavet repeated, horror raising the pitch of her voice.
The soldier’s head snapped up. “Wer ist da?” he demanded, reaching for his belt.
Lisavet ducked around the corner, heart thudding. Azrael stayed where he was. The soldier shouted a few angry words at him, cursing Azrael for startling him. The Nazi took something from his pocket and Lisavet squinted at it to get a better look. The glass crystal of a pocket watch caught the light of the flames, glinting at her with unmistakable familiarity. Its bronze case was worn with age, its patina a reflection of the many hands who held it before. From father to son, now soldier. Her whole body went cold with recognition.
The soldier fiddled with the watch until a door opened six feet away from him. He disappeared through it, casting one last glance at the burning heap of paper on the ground. The minute the door sealed behind him, Lisavet rushed forward. She collapsed onto her knees in front of the burning book and reached both hands into the flames to pull what remained of the leather-bound volume free. The cover was burnt at the edges. Most of the remaining pages were charred to ash that crumbled under her feet as she stamped the fire out. But a few of them, the ones closest to the beginning, remained intact. They whispered to her as she swept the soot from them with careful, flame-stung fingers. Telling her their story in a deep, crackling voice. Her father’s story. Her father’s voice.
Her breath came in ragged gasps and tears stung her eyes. She had forgotten Azrael was there until he spoke.
“The watch...” he said quietly.
Lisavet only cried harder. She didn’t want to think about what it meant, even though she knew there was only one way her father would have given up his pocket watch to a Nazi soldier. Azrael said nothing but stayed by her side as she cradled what remained of her father’s memories.
No one was coming.