In the mid-1870s, a London medical magazine, The Lancet, reported the strange case of an English girl, jilted by her lover, who went insane and lost all account of time; each day she stood at her window awaiting her beloved. In 1873, when she was seventy-four years old, some American travelers guessed her age as "under twenty."

But what if Elizabeth Wells, misunderstood by her contemporaries, was not insane, but brilliant—aware that age and time are illusions?

Further, suppose her lover had not abandoned her, but had been prevented from coming to her side by an act of skullduggery?

And Elizabeth had determined not to desert her post, certain when she broke the illusion of time—in the Twelfth of Never—they would be reunited.