heron-childs   I feel it is of vital importance that I inform… what is it about? Time-travel! It’s a mystery with no murders where the heroes are time-traveling historians who must save the space-time continuum by ensuring a young lady from the victorian era meet and marry the right man. They’re also trying to find…

flange5: Ahhhh New Connie Willis in October! How did I not knoooooow?

There was a sinister-sounding silence, and then the door opened, and there stood the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen.

Finch had said Nineteenth Century, and I’d expected hoop skirts, but she had on a long, greenish gown that clung to her body as if it were wet. Her auburn hair trailed down her back like water weeds, and the whole effect was that of a Waterhouse nymph, rising like a wraith out of the dark water.

I stood up, gawping as foolishly as the new recruit, and took off my ARP helmet, wishing I had cleaned up when the nurse told me to.

She took hold of her long, trailing sleeve and wrung it out on the carpet. Finch grabbed a fax-mag and spread it under her.

“Oh, good, Ned, you’re here,” Mr. Dunworthy said from the door. “Just the person I wanted to see.”

The nymph looked at me, and her eyes were a dark clear greenish-brown, the color of a forest pool. She narrowed them. “You’re not sending THAT, are you?” she said to Mr. Dunworthy.

“I’m not sending anyone. Or anything, until I’ve thought about it. Now go change out of those wet clothes before you catch cold.”

She gathered up her dripping skirts with one hand, and started out. At the door she turned back, her rosy lips open to impart some final benediction, some last word to me perhaps of love and devotion. “Don’t feed her. She’s had an entire place,” she said, and drifted out the door.

To Say Nothing of the Dog, chapter 2, by Connie Willis