In 1944 inside the time space, Lisavet Levy has spent nearly six years growing up by time-walking through other eras and places. Azrael, a dead guide and her closest companion, protects her from Nazi timekeepers, teaches her to hide in memory-pages, and helps her learn languages. He warns her away from the near-present, saying that knowing Time’s course brings torment, but Lisavet still shadows timekeepers to rescue what they try to destroy.

Lisavet repeatedly salvages scorched remnants after timekeepers burn memory-books, hiding the saved pages inside what remains of her father Ezekiel’s book. She learns memories can change when people are erased—faces, names, and whole events vanish and history rewrites itself around the gaps—what Azrael calls being “Forgotten.” Azrael also explains that imperialism has thinned non-European timekeepers, leaving the time space dominated by uniformed white men, including increasing numbers of Russians and Americans.

Lisavet notices an American timekeeper do the unexpected: after a German burns a book, the American stamps out the flames and hides the rescued memory. Azrael then reveals it is February 1944 and Lisavet is already sixteen, and he abruptly forces her to time-walk alone. In a moonlit field memory, Lisavet witnesses a young couple’s escalating intimacy, awakening a longing to be seen and loved by someone real rather than by echoes of the past.

Driven by that desire, Lisavet seeks more memories of love, but in a French salon she accidentally knocks over a glass cup of brushes—physically affecting the memory for the first time. Shocked that her touch is becoming solid, she falls back into the time space and tells Azrael, who offers no explanation; they agree she should stop solo time-walking for a while. Alone at night, Lisavet fears she may be dying or becoming trapped like Azrael, and mourns the possibility of never experiencing love in her own life.

By autumn 1946, Lisavet—now nineteen without realizing—sees fewer Nazis but more burnings by Russians and Americans. She grows bolder, resumes time-walking, and begins taking small items from memories, including gloves to extinguish fires and a dress to replace her nightgown, while her salvaged pages outgrow her makeshift book. After a Russian timekeeper discards a blue leather cover and burns a thick volume, Lisavet saves the pages; the copper-haired American reappears, introduces himself as Ernest Duquesne, and briefly holds her hand, startling them both with her strange status in the time space. Ernest demands a trade, then suddenly snatches the pages and disappears, leaving the empty cover as payment; when Azrael warns that Americans are dangerous, Lisavet privately thrills at Ernest’s living presence and realizes that “danger” may be another word for being alive.