Carnelian (18 page)

She smiled as if she heard my thoughts, and
looked back over to Seth.

“As I told Seth when he came here, nothing
is set in stone. The past and the future are ever changing. I know
the paths you might take on your journey from here, but I am never
sure which you will choose. You future is truly your own. You have
free will to make your own choices, and to live by the
consequences. I told Seth that if he chose to come here, he might
find his answer and he might not. That was all depended on what you
chose to do. Now he has found you, but that does not even mean the
future I see with you two together will occur. There will be
hardships and choices, but if you want, you can have a future
together.” She was looking back at Seth, answering his silent
question along with mine.

“I brought Seth to you, and you brought
yourself to Seth. Your paths were always meant to cross, that much
was determined, but how has always been up to you two. In every
future I ever saw, I saw you together, whether by choice or not,
but you did not always belong to each other. Even the future from
here on out can change.” The goddess almost floated in place as she
looked between us.

“Why?” I asked. I needed to know more.

“Why are you meant to be together?” she
asked with a knowing smile. That was the why I was asking. “Because
you were always meant to love each other. I don’t make those
feelings appear. That was always fate.” She watched me blush. Even
if I did have feelings toward him, no way I was going to admit how
I felt to Seth now. He was a man from another time, of which he
planned to go back to. “Or, why are you a child of time?” I nodded
again. That was my other question. How did I end up in the mess
after all?

“I have the ability to take people from one
time to another. I take someone to a new time for days, week, or
years, however long they need to achieve their goal. That is my
role. But sometimes there are children born from two times.” I
shook my head. That made no sense whatsoever to me. “The one rule
in traveling between times is that you have to go back to the time
you come from to die. Seth’s ability to heal comes from the fact he
cannot die in this time. He has to go back to his time to die. If
Seth stayed here and got married, the children he had would be from
two different times, yours and his. Where would that child belong?
Eventually Seth has to go back to the past, but your child does
not. Children like that are rare, and you are one of them.”

“You’re saying I’m born of two times?” I
asked. “Is my father from the past?”

“I cannot give you any answers. Those are
for you to find. My job is to guide you on your journey,” the
goddess shimmered between us as she formed her reply to give us
both the same answer.

“Then what am I to do?” I complained.

“That’s all I can tell you for now. I am
always here and always listening. If you are in danger or need
help, I will come to you, child of mine. Follow your heart and your
journey will be yours.” The goddess shimmered some more as she
leaned down and kissed my forehead. She smiled one last time as she
vanished into thin air without giving me more details. A pile of
sparkling dust coated the floor where she had been.

Seth stood slowly and walked over to me
sitting on the bed, still staring at the floor where the goddess
had just been. Without all the dust left behind, I might have
imagined it all. Seth’s feet left a trail in the sparkle as he
neared and sat down on the bed beside me. The bottoms of his feet
had to be sparkling from the dust.

“Something was different about you, but I
didn’t expect you to be a child of time. I would have warned you
more about the goddess if I had. I know it’s a bit shocking the
first time you see her. Heck, it’s shocking the second and third
times, too. I’m very sorry I didn’t say more before she arrived.”
Seth looked to me, pleading for forgiveness with his eyes. I slowly
nodded as everything the goddess said swirled in my head.

I was a child of time, whatever that really
meant. No wonder my mother never mentioned who my father was. Maybe
she didn’t know. Maybe she did know and knew he would never be
coming home. She always told me that he was gone and could never
come back. I bet she knew. She had kept that from me all these
years. I always thought something bad had gone down between my
parents, and one day I would find something with his name on it.
Then I could track him down and get to know my real father. But
that would never be now. My father was truly gone, like she always
said, because he was only here for a short time.

“Can we please just start over?” Seth asked
hopefully. His voice broke my thoughts. My hands were resting in
his, and I felt the buzz through my arms. “We can pretend that it’s
last weekend, after CRUSH, when I brought you here. Please give me
a chance to start over and do this how I should have.” I nodded
slowly, still partially lost in my own thoughts.

Seth smiled widely. He pulled my hands to
make me stand and led me over to the bedroom door. “Welcome to the
Sangre house.” He smiled again while wiggling his eyebrows. He
spread his arms wide, like he was showing off the place to someone
who planned to buy it. He meant to start over right at that moment.
“Is this everything you imagined a college guy and his brothers
should have?” He really wanted to start all over. I smiled and
shook my head.

“When you come from that family, it seems a
bit small,” I replied, playing along like we had just arrived here.
In a family worth millions, a couple-thousand-square-foot house was
a bit small. I’d would need time to process everything Seth and the
goddess told me, but for now, this would be a relief to pretend to
start over.

“Hmm, I suppose so. But this is all we
needed. Not like we came from much,” Seth replied, ushering me into
the room and the window seat.

“And where would that be?” I asked
innocently.

“Well, crazy you’d ask that,” Seth continued
to grin. He sat down and took my hands in his own. “Seems I come
from the past. Don’t ask me where or when as I don’t know. But I do
know that it was long ago. This world is completely strange and
foreign to me.”

“Really?” I asked, feigning shock. “What is
different? No people where you come from, just dinosaurs?”

Seth smiled. “I’m not that ancient. No
dinosaurs. There were people, just no electricity and gadgets. Our
technology wouldn’t even be considered technology.”

“Come on. Even the Egyptians and their
pyramids are amazing technology, and they are thousands of years
old. Researchers still debated how they were made, and the
workforce that was used.” I nudged his shoulder.

“Yes, the pyramids are amazing, but they
don’t compare to even the simplest things you take for granted,”
Seth replied.

“What do I take for granted?” I asked,
pretending to be appalled.

“Cars, for starters. Do you know how amazing
it is that people can hop in a metal box on wheels and travel
thousands of miles? How about the Internet? People from points all
over the world connected to instant responses and news? Just the
simple telephone, for that matter. Your world is amazing compared
to where I came from.” Seth dropped the act and was serious. I
never thought of it that way, but he was correct. This would have
had to not just be foreign in location, but everything about it had
to be strange.

“Then why are you here—to see the amazing
wonders?” While I was teasing him, it was still a legitimate
question I needed to know the answer to. Why was Seth here?

“I don’t know why I’m here. I asked the
goddess to help my country, and she sent me here to you.” Seth
shrugged. He obviously didn’t know any more than I did. It didn’t
seem like he was leaving out any details.

“Maybe she wanted you here to change the
past somehow. You know, use all that technology to find out what
you needed to know to change the fate of something important,” I
suggested. If the technology was amazing, maybe he was meant to see
something.

“Like what?”

“You said that you were in the military,” I
started.

“I haven’t mentioned that
in our start-over session yet. I was just going to get to that,” he
complained. I had jumped ahead.
Ooops.

I smiled at Seth. “Just let me cheat for a
moment,” I begged. Seth nodded. “Maybe there’s some battle that you
need to know the outcome of.” Seth nodded along. He liked the sound
of that. “All I need to do is use that fancy Internet and find out
who and where you come from. Then we can help your people.”

I stood and walked over to his computer,
turning it on as he walk over to join me.

“I’ll warn you that I’ve tried many times to
find out information this way, and it never worked.” Seth smiled
from across the computer as he watched me.

“You’re technologically challenged. That’s
why I need to do it. Weren’t you sent here to find me? Maybe it is
some rule that you are not allowed to look at your past, but
someone else can,” I suggested as I opened the browser. “We need
some search term to find your time period first. What is the name
of your country?”

“I don’t know,” Seth answered.

“How about the name of the country you are
fighting with?” I suggested. Not all histories were written down by
the actual country, sometimes the only record came from other
countries writing.

“I don’t know those either,” Seth replied.
“See the problem? I have a very selective memory and translation
between the two worlds.”

“Then what were you trying to find all the
time when the computer wouldn’t work?” I’d have to try his search
first.

“I was looking for the king of my country,”
Seth admitted with defeat in his voice.

“Okay, let’s try that. What was his name?” I
asked. At least it was a starting point. It would get us the time
period, and we could go from there.

“Horemheb,” Seth said, moving to stand
beside me as I typed it into the historical search engine I had
pulled up.

A page flickered on the screen briefly
before the power in the house flickered and the computer went dead.
It was quick, but I had seen enough of which time period we needed
to look to. It was going to be hard. It was a vast time period that
lasted many centuries, and I wouldn’t be able to know exactly which
one until I could read more.

“You’re ancient Egyptian,” I said in awe,
looking back at the dark red-haired man standing behind me. To me
Egyptians were all an olive, dark-haired race, nothing like the man
behind me. He stood silently looking at the computer screen. He had
seen the flicker also.

“That was him,” he whispered. He had
likewise seen the picture before the computer shut down on us.

I turned around and stood to face him.
Seth’s face was a picture of awe and pain. He had been in my time
for three years, and just got a glimpse of home. He had to miss
it.

“How long ago was this country, Egypt?” Seth
didn’t look at me, but still stared at the blank computer
screen.

“Egypt still exists today, but the ones you
are looking for with a Pharaoh as the ruler?” I added. Seth nodded.
“Pharaohs rule from 2500 BC until almost the beginning of AD. The
ancient Egyptians disappeared over 2,000 years ago.” Seth nodded,
still staring at the blank computer screen.

“I’m really from the past,” Seth said,
moving back to his bed and sitting down.

“What do you mean?” I asked as I stood and
joined him. I took his hands in mine to get his attention as he was
clearly somewhere else mentally.

“I have all these memories of growing up,
but it feels more like a dream. The present right now feels more
real than what I remember. I was beginning to think maybe it was
all a dream. What I remember just seems impossible compared to now.
Every time I tried to find out about the past, I never got a
detail. I just thought…” Seth paused. “Maybe it wasn’t real.”

“I can understand that. I think I might have
done the same. Three years is a long time. How did it work?” I
asked curiously. He needed a distraction, and I needed some
answers. “Did you show up here and have to learn English?”

“No, we already knew the language and even
some things like reading, writing, and math. Everything we needed
to get on in our place as high school and college students. We knew
it automatically.” Seth fell back into his pillows and threw his
arms over his head. “This is real, isn’t it?”

I lay down beside him and watched him as he
wrestled with his denial.

“Horemheb was real,” I said quietly. “I
don’t know how or why, but I think the goddess is real too.”

“And you’re real,” Seth added just as
softly, turning to face me and touching my cheek. “Is the tingly
feeling real?” I nodded at his touch. “You feel it, too?” he asked,
surprised by my admission.

“Yes,” I whispered. As unbelievable as it
all was, it was real. Time travel was real. Seth was real.

“And I’ll have to leave you some day?” Seth
asked the question that stung badly now. I didn’t want to like Seth
in the first place. I truly didn’t want to like him now that he
would break my heart, but it seemed like I couldn’t stop liking him
even if I wanted to.

“What if I don’t want to find out why I need
to know you? What if I don’t want to go back? What if I just want
to stay like this?” Seth wrapped his arms around me and pulled me
closer. “What if I want to stay with you?”

My heart melted. Seth wanted the same future
as me. I smiled sadly at him. There was no answer to his questions,
but the goddess had been sure to mention that Seth had to go home.
I had no clue what was supposed to happen, but I knew what I wanted
to happen right at that moment. I tipped my head up to meet his
lips with mine. The future was not really the future now, and I
planned to live in the present. Seth sighed as he ended the kiss
and pulled me into a hug. I fit perfectly in his arms right under
his chin.