The week Lida left the orphanage, she acquired an inheritance that felt more like a riddle than a gift: a squat, sagging house at the far edge of nowhere, bequeathed by a grandmother long since gone. The place sat by itself at the forest’s hem, half-collapsed and half-forgotten, as if time had walked past and never looked back.
No one waited for her. Nothing tethered her to the life behind her. She decided that was enough—enough to begin again. Modestly. Quietly. On her own terms.
By the third day, after hours of scrubbing walls and sweeping mouse droppings from corners, she wandered into the trees to clear her head and hunt mushrooms. She kept going, deeper than she planned, until she stepped into a clearing laid with velvet moss. There, as if an iron seed had sprouted in the soil decades ago, sat an airplane—old, nearly intact, its skin rust-bitten and its fuselage cinched by roots. It looked like a machine the forest had decided to adopt.
Curiosity beat out caution. Lida hauled herself up into the cockpit—and screamed. In the pilot’s chair, a skeleton in uniform sat buckled in, paused forever in the act of living. Around its neck hung a medallion, the metal dulled and pitted, her own name carved neatly into its face.
From that instant, her quiet restart shifted into a plunge: missing crews, sealed orders, family threads knotted to a war she had only read about—and something larger, older, and stranger than she knew how to name.
She clutched the rim of the cockpit. The air was thick and stale—rust, mold, the bitter breath of neglect. The skull’s empty sockets seemed to regard her, waiting. She forced herself to look away, lifted the chain, and eased the medallion free with trembling fingers.
The inscription on the back read:
“To Lida. When you grow up—find me.”
Her mouth went dry. Her heart pounded high in her throat.
“What… nonsense?” she whispered, fingertips turning cold.
The uniform—astonishingly—had held together, as if time had agreed to leave this one life undisturbed. On the instrument panel lay a handful of crumpled notes in English. She couldn’t read the language, but one line was clear enough:
“Mission 13. Northern Sector. Classified.”
Thirteen. An unlucky number.
By the time she climbed down, the sun had dropped low. The forest felt thicker, the air heavier. Rustles rose from every direction. She hurried back, mushrooms forgotten, the medallion hot in her palm.
At dawn she felt the tug again—not fear, exactly, but a pressure, as though something had cleared its throat and expected an answer.
Before she could step out, the attic groaned. The house held its breath. Lida climbed the narrow stairs and found an old suitcase brimming with letters. One was addressed in a firm hand:
For my granddaughter Lida. If you return.
She opened it.
If you are reading this, you have found the plane. Tell no one. It is not from our time. And perhaps, it came for you.
The words raised needles along her arms. Questions crowded in until they pressed against her skull: If the pilot knew her name—who was he? How could he have known she would exist?
That night she woke with a certainty that someone had called her name in her sleep. Thoughts gnawed: Why me? Who sits in that chair? What did Grandmother know—and how?
Stubbornness outlasted fear. She dressed warm, took a flashlight, and pushed into the trees. Branches closed behind her like curtains. Overhead, the canopy whispered.
She reached the clearing—and stopped.
The airplane was gone.
No dented fuselage. No twined roots. Only young grass, soft moss, and a silence that seemed to lean in. Somewhere distant, a woodpecker tapped like a metronome.
A twig snapped.
She spun. A shadow slid between trunks—tall, indistinct. Her heart stopped. The shadow did too. A beat later, it thinned and was gone.
But the feeling remained: something had watched her. Maybe had been watching all along.
That night the house breathed damp and old wood. Boards ticked and sighed. Lida could swear the window glass held its own pulse. She read Grandmother’s letter again:
The plane will return if you remember. You are not just an orphan, Lida. Your blood remembers more than you think.
Cold moved through her.
Sitting on the floor with the medallion in her fist, she felt the air quiver. The room shivered, as though the space itself loosened. The wall blurred—watered—and the cockpit’s outline pressed through, dim and gray. The pilot was there. And his eyes were alive.
“Lida…” The voice reached her as if from underwater.
The medallion scorched her palm.
“Who are you? Why are you calling me?” she cried.
He didn’t move. His lips shaped a whisper:
“Remember the coordinates.”
The room snapped back. Air settled. Silence returned.
A note lay on the floor, as if mailed from a different century. On it, in a tight hand:
Latitude 62.001. Longitude 47.744. 12:13 — don’t be late.
She shook. But the shaking crystallized into something like resolve.
Morning brought wind. The forest fretted. Something gathered itself.
At 12:12 she stepped into the clearing. She held a watch. She held her breath. Her heart kept the count.
12:13.
Heat bloomed in the medallion. The air twisted into a funnel and, as if unspooled from the first day, the airplane resolved in front of her—matter, not mirage.
This time, the cockpit door stood open.
She climbed in. The pilot’s seat was empty. A fresh sheet of paper waited on the panel. She lifted it: a child’s drawing—a girl holding the hand of a man in uniform. In block letters below:
“Dad and me. Lida, 4 years old.”
Her stomach dropped.
“Dad?” she breathed.
A branch cracked in the trees.
She gripped the drawing. Questions flashed and collided. Dad—but how? Why in this plane? Why now?
The medallion thrummed against her chest.
Behind her, a breath of sound. She turned. Something moved at the clearing’s edge. At first—just shadow. Then a face rose from the gloom: pale, ash-pale, mouthless. Eyes human, and yet not.
It did not step toward her. It didn’t need to. Lida knew: if she ran, it would simply be there, again and again.
She backed toward the plane. The door gaped. Inside, on the pilot’s seat, lay another medallion—twin to hers.
She picked it up.
“They are coming,” said a voice—not heard so much as received. “You have to make it, Lida. Only you can close the cycle.”
“What cycle? What is any of this?” her mind shouted back.
At the tree line, the figure slid forward—smooth, patient, unhurried. It didn’t chase. It knew time would do the work.
Lida ducked into the cockpit and slammed the door.
The instruments woke like embers catching. One by one, small lights winked on. The panel glowed faintly—no cables, no power source. A single button pulsed, labeled: START.
Outside, the world held its breath.
She pressed her palm to the metal. Drew a breath. Pressed.
The cabin lurched. Gray light filled the glass, as if time itself tore along a seam. The forest fell away.
An airfield spread below—hard, cold, the past laid out like a map. Planes. Signal flags. Uniforms. And in the middle of it—
Him.
The pilot. Her father. Alive.
He lifted his head and found her through the glass.
“You made it,” he said. “Now choose: stay here… or go back.”
Words failed her.
Behind lay solitude—the orphanage, the silent house. Here stood a man who should have been impossible and yet had been waiting.
“Decide,” he said softly. “Know that much turns on what you choose.”
Beyond him, scenes spilled and looped—the same clearing, the same plane, the same girl stepping into a story already written. The cycle.
“Why me?” she asked at last. “Why you?”
He winced, a flicker of grief.
“Because you are not only my daughter—you are the consequence of a decision. I flew knowing I wouldn’t return. The mission crossed a rift in time. We were to pass coordinates forward—to those who would come after. Something failed. I was caught between seconds, like an insect in amber.
“Your grandmother knew. She was warned. But the rift opens once every fifty years. You found me because you’re seventeen—the hour when it begins again.”
A low thud traveled the fuselage.
“He’s here,” her father whispered.
“Who?”
“The Keeper. He doesn’t speak. He isn’t an enemy. He guards the boundary. He searches for those who try to unmake it.”
The figure stepped from the plane’s shadow, less monster than mirror—something ancient, nearly familiar.
“He… was me?” she asked, barely sound.
Her father didn’t answer.
The creature reached—not to her, but to the medallion at her throat.
And Lida understood.
Stay, and she would have her father—outside time, outside consequence.
Leave, and she could carry the warning forward, break the circle, do what the mission meant to do.
But leaving would erase him.
The medallion warmed. A voice she somehow knew—gentle, steady—rose from the metal:
“You are stronger than you think. You are the link. Choose with your heart, and time will listen.”
Lida stepped between her father and the Keeper.
“I won’t lose you both,” she said. “But if I stay, it all repeats. No one is saved.”
She closed her eyes. “Forgive me.”
She held out the medallion to the Keeper.
The plane shuddered. Light split. Time fractured and fell away like glass.
“Lida!” her father called through the break. “Thank you. For everything.”
Then—silence.
Epilogue
She woke on the floorboards of the little house. Dust turned in the sun like slow snow. Everything was as it had been. Almost.
By her hand lay a scorched scrap of paper, words spared by fire:
The cycle is complete.
Pass it on.
Your blood remembers.
Lida stood and went to the window. The same trees breathed at the edge of the same forest. But now she knew what they held—and what they no longer did.
The shadow was gone.