Hopscotching

Ella's adventures in time

Photo by Anton Ivanov

Hopscotching is the sequel to my story, Hopscotch, about Ella, the time traveler. Thank you, everyone, who requested this expanded story.

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I stood in the kitchen doorway and asked my wife, “Did you buy Ella an hourglass?”

“She has an hourglass?” Mia continued to stir whatever she was cooking and shrugged. “It’s not my doing.”

“I’m not sure a glass object is the best toy for a nine-year-old because if it breaks, we’ll be cleaning up sand and glass forever. And you know how she breaks things.” 

“I’m neutral on this one, Josh. Whatever you decide is fine with me. I think she’s outgrown her clumsy phase.” 

“Alright. I’ll think about it. Dinner smells delicious.”

I navigated past our cat, Persia, who was napping on the second step, climbed the stairs, and knocked on Ella’s door.

“Enter.”

The foot-tall hourglass rested on her bed between her crossed legs. Three wooden columns carved with creatures framed the glass bulbs. A lion with jaws wide open, teeth bared, stared from one post. On the adjacent column, a beast with a hawk's body and cobra's head glared, its concave wooden eyes seeming to track me as I entered Ella’s room. Luminescent turquoise sand flowed from one bulb to the other, sounding like distant wind chimes in a breeze.

“Are you timing something?” I asked. 

Ella studied the timepiece as she ran her fingers along the glass. “Nope. I mean, yup. I’m watching the sand, Daddy. Isn't it pretty?” She held the hourglass to her ear.  “It sounds like sparkles." 

“What are you timing exactly?”

She lifted the hourglass level with her eyes. Sunlight passed through the glass and prismed on her face. “It’s almost time. Maybe another three minutes.”

“Where did you get it?” 

“Magda gave it to me.” Ella’s gaze fused with the hourglass. 

“Who’s Magda?” I thought I knew all of Ella’s friends, as well as all her classmates. Then it dawned on me. "Is Magda a new kid in your grade?"

“She's my hopscotch friend.”

I sat alongside Ella on her bed, ready to play twenty questions. “Is Magda a new neighbor or somebody from the park?”

“Nope.” Ella looked at me, her lips rising into a smile. “I have a playdate with Magda soon.” She opened her eyes wide and offered me her puppy dog expression. “Can I go outside and play hopscotch, please?” 

I looked out the window. Ella’s hopscotch board, a quilt of red, yellow, purple, green, and orange chalk lines forming squares with the numbers one to ten inside, occupied the pavement in front of our house. She drew it on Sunday and had been meticulously rechalking the lines wherever they faded from wind, sun, or footsteps. 

It was time to do my parental due diligence and learn more about Magda. “Where does your friend live?”

“Herstmonceux Castle.” Ella beamed. “Yay, I said that right. I’ve been practicing!”

“I see.” I leaned toward her. “And where is Herstox Castle?”

“It’s Herstmonceux, Daddy. It’s a brand-new castle, so you may not have heard about it.”

“Herstmonceux.” 

Ella nodded. “It’s in East Sussex, where Magda lives.”

Who can defeat a child’s indefatigable logic, whimsy, and imagination? Why would a parent even want to? Santa, Jack in the Beanstalk, fairies, wizards—they're all real. It’s not a bad way to be either, living inside one’s imagination, years to go before the blunt realities of adulthood take over. 

I’ll just keep an eye on her while they play hopscotch. 

“When is Magda arriving?”

“She doesn’t come to me, Daddy. I go to her. If Magda and I jump on the same hopscotch squares at the same time, I beam to her castle. That’s why she gave me the hourglass, so we can hopscotch together. The first trip was by accident, but now I know how. Her castle is amazing, Daddy! There’s a moat with a drawbridge, turrets, farm animals like goats and sheeps, jousting, colorful flags, and everything. And guess what? Magda’s older brother is a knight!” 

She held the hourglass with the now-empty upper bulb to the ceiling fixture. “I have to go.” 

An imaginary friend. I had one, too. 

“Okay, have fun.” Ella reached the bottom of the stairs before I had a chance to shout, “Hold the railing!”

I watched Ella from the window. She waved to me, her broad grin making the afternoon feel even warmer, and then jumped through several squares as if she were riding a cushion of air, her pink and white sneakers seeming to never touch the pavement. 

Ella landed on the ten and vanished. One moment she was casting a long shadow across the hopscotch board, and the next, she was gone. 

I froze as the moment replayed in my mind’s eye. My heart stopped and my arms quaked. I blinked several times, but my eyes weren’t the problem. 

I vaulted down the stairs two at a time while screaming “Mia, Ella’s gone!” so loudly that the pictures on our walls vibrated. I bolted outside. Mia’s voice trailed behind me, “What happened? Should I call 911?”

I circled the hopscotch board, careful not to step on the lines. Instinctively, I sensed it was important to preserve everything. The board wasn’t a crime scene—it was something else, and whatever that was, it shouldn’t be disturbed.

Mia pressed her hand against my shoulder. “Where’s Ella?”

I panted, trying to force the words through my vocal cords. When I was able to talk, I said, “Wait. I need to see something. Can I borrow your phone?”

I summoned Wikipedia. Mia’s phone almost slipped out of my sweaty hands. After a moment, I tapped to the right page. 

Herstmonceux Castle’s construction began in 1441…

No! It’s not possible. This can’t be happening, not to our little girl. And yet I had no doubt about what I saw. Ella vanished before my eyes. Here and gone, and the only place I could imagine she had gone was 1441. Impossible, yet also the sole explanation.

I cradled my head in my palms and tried to retrieve a memory that didn’t exist. What squares did Ella jump on and in what sequence? Think, Josh! 

“Oh my god.” I grabbed Mia’s hand, pulling her back into the house. “Come with me.”

Mia grounded herself like an anchor. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me. Where. Is. Ella? What happened to our little girl?” 

I shook my head. 

“I’m going to call the police. Every minute matters with an abducted child,” Mia said, her voice scratched with terror. 

“She’s not abducted.” She's six hundred years in the past. “Come with me.”

“No. Explain here and now.” The veins in Mia’s neck throbbed. 

I repeated Ella’s story about her now not-so-imaginary friend, Magda, about the hourglass that Magda gave her, about Ella’s description of Herstmonceux Castle, and how in a little less than sixty seconds, I went from grounded in reality to shaken by a different reality.

“I’ll show you the hourglass. It looks like it’s from another era,” I said. 

“I want to watch the security video.”

I had forgotten we keep a camera pointed at the sidewalk in front of our house. We installed it soon after moving in, but in the eleven years we’d lived here, we’d never looked at a recording. 

Mia snatched her laptop from her bag in the front hall, dropped it onto the dining room table, moused over to the security service’s website, logged in, and summoned the video of our sidewalk. She scrolled to the moment when Ella started hopscotching. We watched it a dozen times. With each loop of the video, more acid bubbled in my belly. 

Mia and I regarded each other, mouths open and slack-jaw, our pupils wide with fear and amazement. The video didn’t lie: Ella vanished in a poof. 

I planted both hands on the desk, my rigid arms barely keeping me from collapsing onto the floor. Beads of sweat pounded on the oak table like tumultuous rain against a window.

"I can see some of the numbers Ella landed on," Mia said. She tapped the laptop screen and then brought her nose to within an inch of it. "Look, Josh. A two, four, five...but I can't make out the rest of the squares." She spoke in despondent notes, her voice sounding like it was calling from the wilderness.

I sunk into the dining room chair. 

Mia dropped onto the chair beside me. Neither of us breathed for almost a minute. If Mia hadn't spoken, I'm not sure I would have breathed again. “Her birthday. She hopscotched her birthday! All that's missing is the last two digits for her year.”

A flare ignited in my brain. “Let's go!” My chair toppled over as I stood.

“Go where?”

“To Ella in 1441.”

“I thought you said two people had to be playing hopscotch together for this to work.”

“It's only been a few minutes. Maybe they're still playing back at Herstmonceux Castle. Perhaps time passes at a different rate in the past. Maybe Ella misinterpreted the rules. I don't know, but what I do know is the longer we wait, the less chance we have of finding Ella.” I gave Mia a millisecond kiss. “You stay in case she returns.”

“Go, go, go!” 

I ran out of the house, but stopped short of the hopscotch board. I cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted to Mia, who was still inside, “Am I supposed to do this on one leg, two, alternate, or what?”

“Just jump!”

I skipped to the sequence of Ella’s birthday on one leg. When I reached the ten, I wobbled, having lost the stabilization that forward motion provides. With my eyes focused on the square, I landed on my other foot. Once I was sure I wouldn’t fall, I looked up.

“Where did Glædwine go?” Ella stood in front of me, her hands on her hips, her face knotted in a scowl. “Magda and I were showing him how to play special hopscotch, and then he was gone.” 

An enormous lump filled my throat. “I’m so happy I found you, sweetie. Your mom and I were in a panic. But who’s Glædwine?”

She harrumphed. “Glædwine is Magda’s brother, the one I told you about, who’s a knight. He’s thirteen.” Ella turned toward the girl standing next to her and rested her hand on her shoulder. “Glædwine’s probably in 2023 now. But don’t worry, we’ll get him back.”

“Glædwine has his sword, and he’s a great knight, so he’ll be alright,” Magda said. “He's fierce. I’m not worried, Ella.”

My senses kicked into overdrive. Wheelbarrows of vegetables lined the far side of the courtyard filling the air with the scent of autumn harvest, though an aroma of pumpkin, apple, and squash tinged with a barnyard smell. Goats, horses, and sheep wandered around us. 

“Daddy, can you get off the ten? The chalk might smudge.” 

Unlike Ella’s multicolored hopscotch board, this game board was monochrome white. 

Magda wore a copper skirt with a floral pattern weaved in pink, green, and yellow. Thick golden yarn crisscrossed in a diamond pattern in front of her red shirt. She was about Ella’s height and age. 

We stood dead center in the castle’s half-grass, half-dirt courtyard, a bustling expanse filled with clangs of sparring swords, mooing cows, and the cackle of vendors selling meats, vegetables, and who-knows-what. Gelastic voices echoed off the castle walls like the background sounds of a modern cocktail party. On the far side, bleating sheep thinned as shepherds sheared them with long, thick scissors, and behind me, two men fished in the moat—more like a large pond—that rimmed the castle on three sides. The massive castle door was open.

A hawk with a blue ribbon tied to one leg circled above, darting from castle wall to castle wall. Two archers operated each of Herstmonceux's seven towers, their gaze extending to the surrounding woods. 

“Daddy, can I stay awhile longer and play with Magda? She wants to show me the piglets.”

This is 1441. The momentousness of having traveled in time felt small. What mattered was that I found Ella, that she was safe. Ella was not only no worse for having traversed centuries, but her body language and smile said she was enjoying her adventure. She made a friend in 1441, and despite the twilight zone chills that filled me, everything was okay. Doubly okay because I already knew that time travel worked in both directions. Ella and I could return home. Just click your heels three times. 

As for whether we’d allow Ella to travel again into the past, by herself or with one of us—that was something Mia, Ella, and I would discuss in 2023. We hadn’t yet allowed Ella to cross the street alone.

I knelt on the ground so I was level with Ella. “Mommy’s worried about you. I need you to go back home now.”

“I want to stay longer and play with Magda.” Ella took Magda’s hand and swung it. “Please, can I stay longer? Pretty please?”

“What’s Glædwine doing now?” I asked. 

Magda said, “He knows how this peculiar hopscotch game works, and because he doesn’t have an hourglass, he’ll continue skipping until Ella or somebody swaps places with him. I’m sorry, El. Next time my brother will take a glass so you can stay longer. But I think your father is right.”

“So you see, Ella, you need to leave now.”

“Can I come back after dinner? Pretty please.” 

“Ask your mom when you get home.”  I can’t believe I said that, the ultimate dad cop-out. But as the first father and daughter to time travel, I no longer felt bound by my 2023 self-imposed parenting rules. 

Ella glared at me. 

“You can have a pint of banana peanut butter chip Haggen Daz when you get home.” Was I piling a blatant bribe on top of my argument? I thought so, but I didn’t want to create a scene in the Middle Ages while surrounded by archers and swordsmen. Who knew how people in the fifteenth century reacted to public quarrels between parents and children? “Deal?”

Through tight lips, Ella replied, “Fine.” She horse-stomped over to the number one square of the hopscotch board, skipped her time-traveling birthday number sequence, and disappeared.

A blond boy materialized on the ten square. He appeared to be two years older than Ella, standing a head taller than her in his sandaled feet, white tunic, chaplet of branches, and fresh, green leaves. His tan spoke of somebody who spent most of the day in sunshine.  He tilted his head back, tossed a grape into the air, and caught it in his mouth. 

“Jason!” Magda said. “Πώς είσαι?”

The boy smiled, stepped out of the ten square, hugged Magda, and offered her a grape. 

“Who’s that? Where’s Glædwine?” I asked. 

“Jason is my friend from Athens.” Magda popped her hand over her mouth. “Oh! I don’t think El is back with her mother. I think she and Jason traded times.”

A tremor passed through my bones, though not nearly as frightful as the one I felt when I watched Ella disappear the first time. I nodded to Magda and Jason, wished I had brought suntan lotion, and skipped across the hopscotch board.

I should have realized it was a bad idea to show a photograph to people who lived 2,500 years ago. Granted, I didn’t say, “Have you seen my time-traveling daughter?” I simply asked two toga-wearing passersby, “Have you seen my daughter?” But the color image of Ella, along with my twenty-first-century clothing and quiffed hair, convinced them I was a demon. 

They yelled, “Typhon!”

My New Balance sneakers gave me an advantage over my sandal-clad pursuers. Dust scattered behind me. I bolted up a dozen stone stairs into an expansive plaza. To the plaza’s far side, the direction I was running, were two white buildings, a two-story column-clad marble structure and a one-story columned building. Gold statues stood between some of the columns. 

A few dozen men and women wearing togas of all colors—green, red, blue, gold, orange, and white—milled around the plaza. Some sat on stone stools reading scrolls, some gathered in small groups, and others tossed balls back and forth. 

I skidded to a sudden stop and turned right, figuring that my abrupt change of direction would be difficult for my pursuers to emulate in their wobbly footgear. Then, I headed toward a narrow dirt path to the left of a circular building. The trail followed a hill, and about halfway up, I turned to see how close this pair was, but they had stopped chasing me and were instead standing in the plaza, along with a dozen other people, listening to an orator in a red and silver, plumed hoplite helmet.

Sweat stung my eyes. The rectangular building at the top of the hill offered shade, so I headed that way. 

The building looked familiar, too familiar. Oh my god, the Parthenon!

A shadow of an enormous bird passed overhead. I looked up, but it wasn’t a bird. 

Ella was aloft, her arms attached to wings made of blue and yellow feathers that extended twice her height. With each beat, the air thrummed. 

A boy about her age soared next to her. 

I jumped and shouted Ella’s name. When I got no reaction, I ran to the Parthenon, shoved a barrel against one of the columns, and scrambled to the roof, almost falling twice. “Ella! Ella, come down!”

She looked to the left and tilted. Her wings folded, and she spun like a maple copter toward the Earth. 

The boy grabbed her and glided Ella safely to the ground.

“Sorry, I scared you, Daddy, but I knew Icarus would catch me if I fell from the sky. He’s a great bird, but I’m still only a baby bird.” Ella chuckled and brushed the dirt off her arms and legs. “Do you want to try? Icarus’ dad has a pair of grown-up’s wings that you can borrow.”

Icarus nodded. “Yes, sir. Daedalus would be happy to loan you his wings. According to Anaxagoras, tomorrow’s weather will be cloudless, so we can soar all the way to the sun.”

Icarus and Daedalus. This is unbelievable.

I held Ella’s hand firmly to ensure she wouldn’t become airborne again. “Listen carefully, Icarus. Tell your dad it’s okay to fly, but don’t get too close to the sun.” 

“Why not?”

“Your wings will melt, and you’ll fall to your death.”

“Oh!” Icarus paled. He ran his fingers along his wings, scooping bits of wax under his nails. “I’ll tell him.”

Lightning snapped out of the bright blue sky, striking the column nearest us. I was momentarily blinded, and my skin stung as the electric tendrils shocked me. I jumped back, as did Ella and Icarus.

“Zeus,” Icarus said. “He’s angry.”

I turned to my daughter and whispered. “It’s time to return home.”

“You don’t have to whisper. Icarus knows we’re from the future.” 

Icarus smiled. “Ella promised me a trip to 2023. She explained all about hopscotch.”

“I want you to meet my friend, Magda, and her brother, Glædwine. They’re from 1441, but Glædwine’s in my time right now.”

I inhaled a deep breath of salty, Mediterranean air and rubbed my temples. How do we simultaneously bring Ella and me forward and Glædwine back in time? Must two boards be in play at the exact moment? 

“And we need to bring Jason back to Greece….” Icarus said. 

My brain hurt. I felt like a parent hosting a birthday party and having to drive all the kids home without knowing their addresses. Four of us had to return to our respective times, two to 2023, one to 1441, and one to…what year was this? 

As if reading my mind, Icarus continued, “...to the year sixteen Olympiads.”

“What?”

“It’s been sixteen games since the first Olympics. That’s our when.”

Did I ever know that the ancient Greeks used the Olympics as their calendar? Maybe I could find willow bark for my splitting headache.

“Okay. I’m going to assume that Jason and Glædwine can hopscotch back to their respective times on their own—somehow—because the universe wants to be in balance.”

I looked at Ella. 

She frowned. 

“Are you ready to go home?”

“No.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

Ella stomped.  

I picked up a fallen apple tree limb and drew a hopscotch board in the dirt. Not pretty, but it would do. 

“We’ll fly together again soon,” Ella said. 

“Don’t forget what I said about the sun,” I reminded Icarus. 

Ella skipped her special sequence of squares and when she reached the ten, vanished.

The moment before I hit the ten square, I realized I should have asked Icarus to erase the board, but it was too late. I was back in our time.

I looked around, my chest growing tighter by the second. If this was 2023, where were the cars? 

A carpet of shadows passed overhead. That’s why there were no cars. Everyone had wings.

What do we do now?

“I want a Haagen Daz,” Ella said. She shoved her hands in her pockets.

“You want an ice cream? Don’t you see what’s happened? Look around. There are no cars, no Toyotas, no beemers, no Fords—instead, people fly. The world’s changed because of us.”

“I see that, which is why I need a Haagen Daz. Mommy taught me that Haagen Daz fixes you when you’re upset. And I know what you’re going to say next, making me want an ice cream even more.” Her lips curled downward, and a sheen of wet coated her eyes.

“What am I going to say?”

“That we have to go back and fix history.” She choked on “fix history.”

“Let’s discuss this with your mom.” 

I took my daughter's hand and walked toward our house, but Ella froze in place, refusing to budge, like a leashed puppy at the door confronting a sky of thunder and lightning. She shook her head. 

“Come on, let’s see your mother and talk with her about this.” 

Ella shook her head more vigorously. “What if mom isn’t there?”

I shivered. My blood chilled. I hadn’t thought about that. If we changed one future—cars—what’s to say we didn’t change more? I scanned our neighborhood, but everything else looked like it should. Even Skipper, the beagle next door who liked to lounge on our neighbor’s front porch, was there. Nothing else was amiss. I was sure of it. 

“Mom will be there.”

After a minute, Ella unstuck her feet from the pavement, and we walked to the door. I tried to put my key in the keyhole, but it didn’t fit. 

The door whooshed open, and standing in the transom was Mia and another man, about my height, with the same facial structure, but blond instead of black hair, and exceedingly muscular. 

“Were you just trying to break into our house?” Mia asked. There was a prominent bulge under her sweater. Wings!

“Of course not,” I stuttered. “My daughter and I are thinking about moving to this neighborhood, and we wanted to ask a resident some questions about schools, the area, and stuff like that.”

“Well, it sure looks like you were trying to break in.” Mia held a phone, showing a video of me fiddling with her lock. “And nobody looks for a place to live. The government assigns you a dwelling.” She turned to the man and shouted, “Grab him! I’ll call the police!” 

We ran across the lawn and onto the street. A woman soaring fifty feet above tilted her wings and glided toward us. I couldn’t tell if she was descending to get a closer look or if, in addition to wings, people in this timeline had sharp, eagle-like talons, and she was about to attack us. 

The muscular man, who I assumed was Mia’s husband, was fast, too. Although we had a head start, in another two seconds that would vanish. “I’m going to try to draw his attention,” I told Ella, my words bracketed by sharp breaths. “When he grabs me, you run like crazy, find chalk, draw a hopscotch board and get out of here.”

“I have chalk.”

“Okay, good.”

“What about her?” Ella pointed to the sky. “And him?” 

A second winged man joined in the approach. There were three people after us, two above and one on the ground. 

I felt the crush of air as the avians flew closer, but the man chasing us was the most immediate danger. 

The beagle from the porch dashed between us and our pursuer, seemingly wanting to play, causing him to trip. 

Our lucky break!

The sky was our only worry now. I pulled Ella toward the narrow space between two houses on the opposite side of the street. “This way. They won’t be able to land in that small space.” Between the two houses was pavement. If we had enough time, Ella could draw a hopscotch board, and if somebody in the past was hopscotching, which always seemed to be the case, we’d be out of here.

I was right. Our aerial pursuers could not follow us into the narrow area between houses. They flew toward the open street where they had room to land. But we had scant time. 

“Ella, hurry!”

She pulled out a thumb-sized piece of purple chalk. “Daddy, does this mean we have to let Icarus fly to the sun and—?”

There was no time to discuss the imperative to save the future, but I didn’t want to hide the truth from Ella. “Icarus wasn’t supposed to live. And now your mom isn’t your mom. We must fix the timeline—”

“I understand.” Ella kneeled and drew the squares with numbers in them. She wept but was careful not to cry onto the chalk. 

I counted a dozen sky-people about to land on the street. “Quickly! They’re coming!”

As Ella completed the last square, the throng invaded the alley from both sides. 

Close up, I saw that the thick, brown, and magenta owl-like wings grew out of people’s torsos, as if humans had evolved into bird-like creatures. But evolution takes millions of years, not thousands.

“Done!” 

“You go first,” I said, nudging her forward. 

Before she could jump, a man and woman grabbed Ella’s arms. 

I tried to help, but two others pinned me in place. The more I struggled against my captors, the more forcefully they held me.

“Oh my Icarus!” shouted one of the avians. He pointed to the ground. “They’ve drawn the sacred Hopscotch.” 

Several people covered their eyes with their wings, while others shook like a cold wind had overpowered them. 

A tall, blond man in black Nikes pointed his wing’s tip at me. “Who are you?”

“Nevis,” said one of twelve people surrounding us. “It doesn’t matter who they are. They’ve drawn the holy Hopscotch board. Icarus and Icarus alone must deal with them.” He flashed angry eyes at us. “And you won’t like what Icarus does to you. Only Icarus may draw the Hopscotch, and he hasn’t drawn it in two thousand years.”

“Wait!” Ella wriggled free of the two women holding her; such was the advantage of being small. “Icarus is alive? How is that possible? Icarus was born two millennia ago. ”

“Icarus is the son of the son of the descendants of the original Icarus,” one of the women said. “Don’t you know anything? You are in more trouble than you can imagine.” She shook her head and shoved me with her wing hard into the side of the building. My head bled. 

The air swirled above. For a moment, I thought a storm was about to turn day into night, but instead, six police officers about one hundred feet in altitude were flying our way in tight v-formation. They wore bright, yellow uniforms that stood out against the blue sky. The last winged police officer trailed a cage on a rope behind them. A cage that would be our transportation to jail—or worse. 

“Look, it’s Icarus,” I shouted, pointing to the police. 

As I hoped, all eyes turned skyward, except for Ella’s. I wrapped my arm around her waist and hoisted her off the ground. My leg muscles strained, and my knees creaked as I jumped the ten hopscotch squares. I wobbled on five and almost toppled over on nine, but my diversion worked long enough for us to reach ten.

I looked up again. The police were gone, but one winged human soared above us. Had we somehow transported one of the people from the future into the past? Were we even in the past? I shuddered. Where in time were we? 

I resumed breathing when Herstmonceux Castle came into focus. Somehow that calmed me. “Ella, we’re back in 1441.”

Ella stood on her toes and shouted to the sky, “Icarus! What are you doing here?”

“Ella!” Icarus glided to the ground, landing on his feet with a gentle thump. He slipped off his wings and gave my daughter a hug. “I’m happy to see you.” Turning to me, he continued, “I stayed away from the sun like you said. But you didn’t say I shouldn’t hopscotch to the future.”

A figure ran toward us from the other side of the courtyard. 

“Magda!” Ella jumped up and down. “You’re here, too! I was worried you might have gone somewhere in the far past without me.”

Ella and Magda held hands, leaned back, and spun around, kicking up dirt, twirling so fast they spawned a dust devil between them. Ella said, “I have so much to tell you. But first, where’s Glædwine?”

“My brother swapped times with Icarus. He loves adventures. When he’s back, he’ll tell us all about them, and if that time sounds fun, we can travel there, too.”

We’d been traveling through so many centuries so fast that I hadn’t had time to consider the mechanics of time travel. Two people hopscotching at the same moment seemed part of the equation, but at any given moment in every era, tens of thousands of kids were playing hopscotch. Why weren’t there more time travelers? Did thinking about what year to which you wanted to travel tilt you toward that time? Is it something in our genes; only some people can travel in time? Why hopscotch? What was unique about this game? I needed to know more. 

“Where I come from is fun,” Icarus said, his cheeks aglow.

“Ella, I need to talk with you in private.”

“You can tell me here, Dad.”

“I can’t.”

“Then I’ll tell you. Did you notice? Icarus’ wings aren’t attached to his body like the bird people. Whatever happened to the future wasn’t Icarus’ fault.” She grabbed my arm, pulled me down so our heads were the same height, and whispered, “Icarus doesn’t have to die.”

“I don’t what?” Icarus said. “Who said I have to die?”

“Nobody said you have to die.” I took in a deep breath of medieval air. “But we have a problem. Somehow we changed the future. In the time Ella and I are from, people now have wings. Not waxed feathers strapped to their arms like yours, but wings that are part of their bodies, half-human, half-bird.”

Icarus blushed. “I suppose that’s my fault. Or will be my fault. Tonight, I was going to ask the King’s sorcerer if he could cast a spell that would permanently attach wings to us. But I see that’s a bad idea, so I won’t ask.”

Magda said, “The future changed because of something Icarus hadn’t even done.”

“But he was going to,” I replied.

Ella grimaced. 

“But I won’t,” Icarus said.

Ella laughed, which made Icarus laugh. Then Magda and I laughed, and we heard the birds, foxes, squirrels, and bears in the forest laugh, too. 

When I finally stopped laughing, I asked, “What’s so funny?”

“I don’t know. Maybe everything.”

Ella asked Magda and Icarus, “What do you want to do now?” Without waiting for an answer, Ella snapped her fingers. “I know! Something you guys haven’t had that’s delicious.” She turned to me and asked, “Dad, when was ice cream invented?”

“In the sixteenth century.” As soon as I said that, I wanted to recall the words. “There’s good ice cream back home. Haagen Daz, your favorite. How about home?”

Ella smiled. “The past will be fine, Dad. Let’s go to the sixteenth century.”

Sure, it will be fine. Nothing ever goes wrong when time traveling. 

I tried to convince Ella that the world’s first ice cream wouldn’t be the best. The first of many inventions were poor, and it usually took two or three iterations before a product was good.

I fished my vintage Nokia out of my pocket—I’m old school when it comes to personal tech—and said, “If you can figure out how my phone works, I'll vote for getting ice cream in Italy the year it was invented. 

Not that time travel destinations should be subject to a vote, I thought. Since when has a family ever been a democracy? Since we started time traveling, a second voice in my head replied. 

Ella scrutinized the blue phone with its physical keyboard, small monochrome screen, and stubby antenna. “How do I play music?”

“You don’t.”

“How do I watch Netflix?”

“Sorry, not possible on this phone.”

“What does it do?”

“This phone makes calls and texts.”

“Uh-huh.” Ella slid her fingers along the keyboard’s buttons. She pressed the 1/abc and 2/def buttons. “Ooo! I like the clicky feel. But how do you text without a keyboard?”

I explained about pressing keys multiple times to display the desired letter. A sentence such as “Meet you at 6” took forty presses, and that’s only if, in haste, I didn't scroll past the letter I wanted into the realm of non-English characters, such as ç and ë. 

“Huh?”

“Each key can create about a half dozen different characters.”

“I mean, what’s a cedilla?”

“You know what? Nevermind. Let’s get the first ice cream.”

Ella’s cheeks brightened. She turned to Magda and Icarus and said, “You’ll love ice cream.”

Ella drew perfect squares on the sidewalk with four different day-glow caulk colors, pink, green, yellow, and blue. The board was a rainbow window. 

We lined up, and then one, two, three, four: Ella skipped, then Magda, Icarus, and me. 

A powerful aroma encased us, an overlapping cacophony of pastas, meats, and sauces. We had traveled back in time to Italy and judging from cobblestone streets, baroque buildings, turreted castles, and donkeys carrying payloads of hay, I estimated the early 1600s. But where in Italy? 

Three women wearing long, velvety dresses that came within a fraction of an inch of the street and two men wrapped in white tights and burgundy jackets stood nearby. 

I gasped. 

“What is it, Daddy?”

I pointed a shaky finger toward the eight-story, white-marble building to our left, the building with the pronounced tilt. On its top floor stood a man with a tall brow and long, scraggly beard, holding a large sphere in his right hand and a small one in his left. 

“That’s…Galileo. He’s about to drop two balls of different weights off the Leaning Tower of Pisa to prove his theory that objects of different masses fall at the same speed. We’re about to witness one of the most significant events in human history.”

“Ice cream?”

“Later. Shh. Watch.”

“Aristotle says the speed of falling objects is proportional to their weights,” Icarus said.

“You’re about to see Aristotle proved wrong.”

“This is better than ice cream,” Icarus said.

“Not,” Ella replied. “Wait till you try ice cream, and you’ll understand. What do you think, Magda?”

“Shh,” I said again. 

The sun dipped below the top of the Tower, surrounding it with a crimson halo. Galileo dropped the balls. A moment later, they simultaneously thunked on the ground, and Galileo beamed.

A tall, gangly man wearing a long coat stepped from behind a column, a shadow shrouded in a darker shadow. He dropped a handful of coins into Galileo’s outstretched hand. 

Ha! That’s something the history books missed. Galileo placed a wager over his theory. Good for him! Science should be rewarded. 

“Oh,” Icarus said, rubbing his chin. “Aristotle is wrong. I wonder what else he was wrong about.”

“How about we discuss that while we get ice cream? The first ice cream. Can we go now, Daddy, before it melts or something?”

As if sentient, history guided us through two narrow alleys bordered by squat, stone buildings, turned us left at a fruit, meat, and vegetable store, then left again at a horse stable, and finally along a broad avenue to the ice cream shop. A wooden sign with the word “Gelato” painted in white letters hung above the entrance.

Six people crowded inside the small shop, while another eight waited outside in line. The last person in line was Galileo. 

“Look, it’s—”

I clamped my hand over Ella’s mouth and whispered, “Don’t say anything. We don’t want to draw his attention. We’ll wait until he gets his ice cream and then line up. Galileo has much scientific work ahead of him, and we can’t risk interfering with history. Remember what happened last time we meddled with history?”

People had wings and flew like birds. 

“Okay,” she mumbled through my fingers.

Galileo spooned vanilla ice cream into his mouth as he wandered back toward the tower. His brimming smile revealed a man who had just proven a major scientific theory and earned significant coin. 

A pair of noisy roosters followed Galileo, pecking at fallen dollops of ice cream that trailed behind the scientist. 

As we approached the ice cream shop, the owner’s hands shot through the open window, grabbed the shutters, and slammed them shut. A second later, the door closed, and the distinctive click of a bolt lock sliding into place echoed off the buildings. 

“Nooooo!” Ella screamed. “We’re too late!”

“Does this mean no ice cream?” Magda asked.

Ella glared at me, her scolding eyes burning a hole into my heart. “It’s your fault we didn’t get the first ice cream.” 

“I’m sorry. I promise we’ll come back. History isn’t going anywhere.” 

Ella's angry face did not fade: narrow eyes, ears drawn back, teeth bared through narrow lips, like a cat suddenly transformed from your best friend to a creature that wants to tear you to shreds. 

“I promise.”

“You’d better.”

“I have an idea. How about we get pizza-to-go and have a pizza party with you, me, Icarus, Magda, and mom back in 2023? I bet the pizza here is amazing.”

“All right.” Ella forced a half-smile. 

Our noses led us to a baker three blocks away. Using pantomime, I explained what I wanted. I instinctively reached for my wallet but instantly realized that my US dollars wouldn’t work. 

Magda fished out a gold coin from her pocket—universal currency, viable in any century—and gave it to the baker, who touched the metal to his tongue, nodded, and handed us the pizza.

“Let’s hurry. I want to get home while the pizza’s still hot.”

Ella, Magda, and Icarus drew a board together, a hopscotch team, completing it in less than ten seconds. Icarus jumped the sequence first. When he landed on the ten-square, nothing happened.

After Magda tried, Ella jumped. I tried to hop back to 2023, too. Nothing. We were still in the 1600s. 

Sweat dripped down my neck, and goosebumps grew on my arms. Blood thrummed in my ears. I had a terrible feeling. 

“What’s wrong, Daddy? Why can’t we jump back to our time?”

Before I could reply, there was a pop, like a balloon exploding, and a blue flash. The air chilled twenty degrees, and Mia appeared. 

Ella ran toward Mia and wrapped her arms around her. “Mommy! You were hopscotching! It’s a good thing, too, because our board didn’t work. Otherwise, we would have missed each other in time.”

Mia gaped. This was her first trip to the past. 

I took her hand and said, “Take a moment to let it soak in. Welcome to the seventeenth century.”

“No,” Mia replied.

“Yes, you traveled over four hundred years into the past.”

“I mean, I wasn’t hopscotching. I was playing tic-tac-toe with Aunt Emily. I was O and won. Aunt Emily isn’t good. As soon as I placed my winning O, the tic-tac-toe board shimmered like it was covered in gold, silver, red and blue glitter illuminated by a bright spotlight. The next thing, there was a firecracker sound, and I was here.”

Uh oh, I thought.

A number I’d heard years ago pinged my neurons: 255,168. That’s how many possible games there are in tic-tac-toe—and only one of them opened the door to time travel. 

I looked into Mia’s eyes and said, “I hope you remember the order in which you played the game.” 

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If you enjoyed Hopscotching, I think you’ll like my time travel story, The Ferris Wheel.