Rescued Read Online Free Page B

corrected himself. “In July. The day I . . . left.”
    The scene on the wall changed. The palace drawing room disappeared; a cramped, dirty hovel appeared in its place.
    It took Leonid a moment to recognize Clothilde. She wore a ragged dress now, her hair held back with a tattered ribbon. She stood by a pot hung over an open flame, and even without being able to see into the pot, Leonid was pretty sure it would contain nothing but watery soup. Clothilde was so thin Leonid could see the outline of her ribs through her dress when she bent over the pot. She had hollows in her cheeks that seemed deep enough to drink from.
    Quick death by gunfire or slow death by starvation . . . were those the only choices for the tsar’s servants after the tsar lost power? Leonid wondered.
    No—there was also what had happened to Leonid.
    *    *    *
    It turned out it was possible to talk with Alexei and the other injured boy, Jonah, even though they were recovering from their bullet wounds in a hospital in the far-distant future, and Leonid and the others were outside of time entirely.
    Everyone crowded together in front of the center section of the wall, where they were going to see the two boys. The three girls jostled their way closest to the screen; Chip and Leonid held back.
    â€œThey’re all concerned about their brothers,” Chip said with a shrug. At Leonid’s blank look, he added, “Oh—didn’t you know that Katherine is Jonah’s sister?”
    â€œNo,” Leonid said, clipping off the word more than he meant to. “Nobody told me that.”
    Chip shook his head and rolled his eyes a little.
    â€œI guess there wasn’t really time when we first met you to say things like, ‘Hello, my name is Chip Winston. I’m thirteen years old, and I live in Liston, Ohio. Who are you?’” he said.
    Leonid had not known that Chip had a last name. Liston, Ohio, sounded like a disease to Leonid, but he guessed it was probably the name of a place in America.
    â€œAnd it’s like there’s too much time in a time hollow,” Chip went on. “You think of things you should say or do, but then you’re like, Eh, I can do that later. What’s it going to matter? Now, later, it’s all the same .”
    Leonid had had that problem too. He’d thought it was just because he had seen people die, just because he had lost his homeland and his home time.
    â€œDo you have any brothers or sisters?” Leonid asked Chip.
    A shadow crossed Chip’s face.
    â€œI grew up thinking I was an only child in the twenty-first century,” he said. “Then when I went back in time, I met my brother and five sisters. My brother, Alex, was rescued with me, and I talk to him every day. I never knew my sisters very well, but . . . I miss them. They would have loved the twenty-first century. There was so much that wasn’t possible for them in the 1400s. . . .”
    Leonid braced himself for Chip to say, What about you? Leonid planned to say, It was just me and my uncle , because it would not do to talk about the happy little family he’d been part of at the palace: not just his uncle, but his aunt Manya and the three little cousins as well.
    But before Chip could say anything else, Alexei and Jonah appeared on the wall. It looked like they were just on the other side of a window—an open window. Maria reached out as if she planned to touch Alexei’s face; she jumped back when her fingers brushed only solid wall.
    â€œIt’s so good to see all of you!” Alexei exclaimed.
    â€œWe’re not going to get you out of trouble if you’ve been misbehaving,” Maria said. She seemed to be trying hard to sound like a stern, reproving older sister, even as she gazed adoringly at her brother.
    Alexei lifted his hand like he was taking a pledge.
    â€œGod’s honest truth,” he said. “I’m so grateful just to