Es regnete fürchterlich. Ich hätte besser nicht nur den Regenmantel, sondern auch Gummistiefel angezogen. Mein Lieblings-Magnolienbaum an der Ecke ließ traurif sein Blüten hängen. Brevor ich ihn erreicht hatte, war ich schon dreimal in eine Pfütze getreten. Als ich gerade eine vierte umgehen wollte, riss es mich vollkommen ohne Vorwarnung von den Beinen. Mein magen fuhr Achterbahn und die Straße verschwamm vor meinen Augen zu einem grauen Fluss.

Rubinrot, Begabt mit der Magie des Raben, Schließt G-Dur den Kreis, Den zwölf gebildet haben.

Had she somehow crucially alterted her own present by changing Alice’s future? The thought that she might have started some terrible chain of events that she could not possibly have foreseen, nor known about, worried her more and more. It was only in the small hours of Wednesday night that an answer came to her that seemed to make sense. The present that she knew, the way things were in her time, could only have come about if she had traveled back to the past. Her finding the chatelaine, her answering Alice’s call for help, those things were necessary to shape the past and bring about the future as it was. She had to believe this. It did work. She was a part of how things had turned out, not an alternative version, but the one she was meant to live in. If she hadn’t gone back, hadn’t taken the decision to help Alice, well, that wouldhave resulted in a different future from the one she knew.