Behind the door, large shadows greeted Kenna. They took on the shapes of dressing tables as her eyes adjusted to the midday light falling through the windows.

Cosmetic items Kenna didn't recognise lay scattered across the tables. This must be the tiring house, or dressing room, as it was called in modern times.

For a moment, Kenna felt like a doll in a large wooden toy box. The sense diminished as she drifted across the room, eyes wide with curiosity. She had only ever seen this sketched in books and set up in museums. Seeing it in reality breathed life into history.

Kenna's eyes roamed the cramped space, sweeping over the dusty floors and low ceiling. It smelt stale, as if it had been kept closed for too long.

Glimpsing a movement at the corner of her eye, Kenna turned sharply, slipping on a sheaf of papers. Catching herself on the edge of a dressing table, she swore under her breath and knelt to gather the stack of parchment. A rat scurried over her hand. She squealed.

There was no greater killer in the time of the Black Death.

When the rodent had disappeared into the shadows, and Kenna's heart rate had returned to normal, she looked down at the script in her hands.

She read the title in a murmur. "The Merchant of Venice."

This must be the play that the Lord Chamberlain's Men were performing this afternoon.

Kenna flipped through it, then rubbed at the front page. In the poor light, she couldn't see whether she had made a footprint. She hoped she hadn't. She'd have to do a better job of keeping a low profile if she didn't want to be exposed as a charlatan.

Gingerly, Kenna set the script down on the nearest dressing table as if the gentleness of the action could undo any other evidence that she had been here, rendering her as invisible as she had intended to be.

Kenna looked into the oval mirror in front of her, hoping that Melpomene had hidden a portal back to her time within it.

All that stared back at her was her pale face, freckled nose, wide green eyes and gently arching eyebrows. Her hair was braided back, already frizzing at the crown.

Kenna had spent her whole life wishing it would darken to a more flattering colour. It had stayed as it was, more orange than auburn, more fire than autumn leaves.

Too soon, Kenna passed the mirror, and there was nothing to face but the facts.

Melpomene meant what she said. Kenna couldn't go back to her time until she had learnt the Muse's lesson. If she only knew what it was, she could be done with this century, with the language that ran circles around her mind and the job she had committed to with no idea of what it meant.

Being a maid was self-explanatory, just not in a theatre in a different era with no one to show Kenna the ropes. There was no sign of the three other maids, and Shakespeare and Aelric clearly had more important work to do than babysit Kenna.

Kenna treaded softly up the wooden stairs. She passed through a door on the left side of the landing and found herself in a small room.

Clothes hung from lines spanning between the walls, all different sizes, colours and fabrics. This must be wardrobe.

Kenna ran her hand over a dark velvet dress as she wandered past, then marvelled at the stiffness of a starched ruff. She never understood how people could wear those things around their necks. They looked rather suffocating, and every Elizabethan portrait Kenna had ever seen seemed to agree.

She brushed her fingers over a handheld fan constructed out of exotic shimmering blue feathers, then picked it up to examine the wooden handle engraved with fake jewels that sparkled like they were real when she heard footsteps.

Kenna might've stayed where she was, maybe introduced herself and asked for help if they had been a certain kind of footsteps, but they weren't.

They sounded like a bull charging a red flag.

Dropping the fan with a soft wooden clunk, Kenna pushed past the lines of clothes. She dived behind the wall of long, heavy coats hanging on the far side of the tiny room. She huddled in the corner and held her breath, not daring to move.

The footsteps stopped near the front of the room. Something thudded against the wooden wall with a whimper. It sounded awfully like flesh and bone.

"I have told thee the script ne'er leaves William's sight! Ink ceases not its flow from his quill, the spring of his ingenuity seems not to run dry–"

"Then thou must think up some other plan, must thou not?"

The coats brushed against Kenna's face as she leaned forward to hear better. She kept herself hidden, her breathing quiet, and her ears at attention.

The second voice spoke again. "My patience may strain the bounds of infinity, but my time does not. Thou hadst made me a promise to have the script upon the morrow!"

It was a woman, and she was angry, but more than that, Kenna couldn't tell.

She peered between the coats to catch a glimpse of the woman, but the other clothes obscured her from view as they did Kenna from hers. Kenna kept listening, her heart thudding almost loudly enough to drown out the words being said.

"Aye, that I did." The first voice spoke again, trembling. It was that of a man. "I had not known William would bear it onto stage today."

"Hold thy tongue!" hissed the woman. "I tire of thine excuses. Is it much I ask? Dost thou not know the meaning of the words 'Romeo and Juliet'?"

"Nay–"

"Then do what it is I have asked. Remember, it is not I whom thou must fear."

The last words sent shivers through Kenna. This woman was demanding the play from the man, but someone else must be commanding her.

Someone fearsome enough to use as a threat.

"Aye." With that, the man scampered away, his footfalls as frantic as that of a rabbit fleeing a fox's claws.

The woman sighed. "What a bloody dimwit."

Kenna pressed her hand against her mouth to stifle her gasp.

She knew that language. People hurled such insults at each other on the streets of modern London.

Kenna's mind raced at the implication.

If she was correct, this woman was from the 21st century, just like she was.

What was she doing in this time? And did it have anything to do with Kenna?

Melpomene, what do you want from me?

This had to be part of the goddess's plan.

In a quiet room that magnified every little sound, the slightest movement risked discovery, and Kenna didn't know how far this woman would go to ensure her plan stayed a secret.

Kenna dared not breathe until she heard an exasperated huff and the thudding of impatient footsteps leaving the room. She waited until they faded to nothing before standing to shake some feeling back into her legs.

Someone was trying to get her hands on Romeo and Juliet, an act that was either bold or mad.

Kenna frowned. The play had never been lost. It still existed in the 21st century.

Maybe someone else had stopped this woman before... but if her way of speaking was any indication, she was a fellow time-traveller. What if she and her scheme hadn't existed in the original timeline? What if Kenna was the only person who knew about the plot?

What if she was the only person who could stop it?

No, she was overthinking again. All she had to do was find a way to appease Melpomene and then she could return to her old life. There was no sense in making this 16th century sojourn more complicated than it already was.

All Kenna had to do was tell Shakespeare what she had overheard.

With a sinking sensation, she realised why that wouldn't work. The playwright had met her only once, and certainly not long enough to be able to judge her character. Why would he believe that she was telling the truth? What if he thought she was involved in the plot?

There was nobody Kenna could tell. Shakespeare and Aelric were the only people she had met in this time. Even if they believed her, which was unlikely, the thieves might overhear her spilling their plan. If they did, they might silence her to keep her from talking about it ever again.

That was how it ended for the informants in every mystery Kenna had ever watched or read, but she wouldn't let it become her fate. She couldn't.

Kenna's mind conjured up a world without Romeo and Juliet.

There would be no discourse about fate and free will, no iconic lines to send to the person she loved, no hours spent laughing and crying with Gloria as the star-crossed lovers wooed and then met their ends.

Kenna pushed her blue-grey sleeve up to her elbow and gazed at the words inked on the inside of her forearm.

If there was no Romeo and Juliet, there would be none of these lessons to help her through life.

It wasn't a psychological study like Hamlet or a cautionary tale about hunger for power like Macbeth, but its impact on Kenna's life was impossible to put into words.

As much as she had made a habit of shouting at Romeo and Juliet through the screen, trying in frustration to give them the happy ending she had never known, she couldn't let them be erased from theatre.

Their story had gotten her through the previous night, one of the coldest and darkest she had ever known. It hadn't ended well, but it could've gone worse.

Kenna could've tracked down Tim and keyed his car. She could've guzzled herself to death on chocolate or drunk herself into a coma, all of which were worse things than being sent back to a time that had always fascinated her.

Kenna pulled her sleeve back down. She didn't know what this woman wanted with the play, but it couldn't be good.

Something hot coursed through Kenna's veins, making her decision for her. There was only one thing to do with this feeling, this fire she had forgotten she possessed.

Kenna had to thwart the plan she had overheard.

Maybe that was the lesson Melpomene had wanted to teach Kenna, that although Romeo and Juliet was a tragedy, it was a play she loved and a story so powerful that people would talk about it for centuries to come. There would be countless performances, retellings, derivative works...

But only if I can protect it, Kenna reminded herself.

Those words cut her work out for her, making this daring undertaking more real.

An unwelcome thought crossed Kenna's mind. What if it wasn't the lesson that was important to Melpomene but the task itself? That wasn't what she had said, but Kenna had read enough Greek myths to know the gods often veiled the true meanings of their words.

It couldn't be a coincidence that the goddess had sent Kenna to this exact day. The plot sounded well underway from the argument she had overheard. It couldn't have slipped Melpomene's notice that someone was threatening the most famous tragic play of all time.

Goddesses weren't allowed to meddle in human affairs, but they could send mortals to do it for them.

Kenna must've drawn Melpomene's attention to her at the wrong time. Given her past luck, that wasn't hard to believe.

All the same, everything was almost too strange to be real, even for someone who lived in others' stories more than she did in her own. Kenna did what she should've done right at the beginning when she woke up inside a thundercloud.

She pinched herself and flinched at the flash of pain. It left a red mark on the back of her hand, confirmation that this was indeed happening.

Had Melpomene meant for Kenna to stumble upon the plot and rescue the play to earn her way back to the 21st century?

Whether or not that was the case, Kenna knew what she had to do.

Leaning back against the wall, she sat silently. Her musings kept her company while she listened to the voice of the theatre—the distant rise and fall of dialogue exploding with expression and wooden creaks as people moved around backstage.

When the sounds surrendered to silence, Kenna knew the play was done and the audience must have left the theatre.

Setting her mouth in a resolute line, Kenna slipped past the coats and weaved her way through the clothes.

She had a play to save, a goddess to prove herself to and a time to return to.

***

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