The blades whirled. His own weapon clashed against them.
Chang! Chang!
His wrist snapped one way, then the other as the blades battered his sword. For a moment, he wondered if he should pull his arm in so that the first hot cut would be the last he knew. Otherwise, he would watch his hand go first, then his arm, fed slowly into the ancient Roman version of a blender.
Something rumbled. The sounds of the crowd were returning to him. Their feet stomped in anticipation. As his right hand swung the sword, his left counterbalanced the weight. Held out from his side and back just a little, his fingers pressed the hewn stone of the arena wall.
The spinning blades ripped his sword from his grip. It flipped away. Something clamped around his left wrist. He was yanked into the wall, then through the threshold of one of the big wooden doors. He plunged into shadow, as the door rumbled closed. A latch snapped shut. From the other side, swords
thunked
against the wood.
Hands grabbed his shoulders, breathânot rancid, but smelling of toothpasteâblew over him.
“Are you all right?” someone screamed.
His legs felt weak. Emotion, like adrenaline, hit his heart, rushed into his face. He said, “Dad?”
“It's okay, Son. Hold on.”
SATURDAY, 1:32 A.M.
As soon as Xander and his father crossed the threshold, the door slammed shut. Xander's face was pressed into his father's chest. Dad's arms around him had never felt so good. Xander opened one eye. He saw the bench and shelf in the small room. David stood a few feet away. He was shaking and sniffing. His eyes were puffy and red, still leaking. He had been crying, hard and long. Xander tried to smile at him. He squeezed even closer to his father, trying, for just a moment, to get lost in the man's warmth and smell, his very being. He hitched in a stuttering breath. Then he wept. It started gently, then grew into ragged sobs. Too many emotions to hold in. Relief swirled with the residue of intense fear. His
soul
felt abused and tired.
A month before school had let out, Mitch Dawson had been goofing off in his new ride, a '74 Firebird Formula. He had been ripping donuts in the school parking lot. Mitch had lost control, nailed a car, then a light pole. The Firebird had jumped the curb and rolled down the concrete embankment of a runoff canal. The whole school had run out to see. When Xander got there, Mitch was bawling like a baby. Everyone had assumed he was grieving for his totaled car, but later he had confessed to Xander that as the car was rolling, he had been completely and utterly convinced he was going to die. Through an embarrassed smile, he had said, “I stared death in the face and got another chance.” Xander had nodded, but had not truly understood. Now he did.
Dad let him cry it out. He stroked Xander's hair and whispered over and over, “You're here now.”
When the worst of it was over, he felt David hug him from behind. The boy slid around to include their father in the embrace.
They stayed like that a long while. When Xander raised his head, David released them and Xander took a step back. He wiped at his cheeks and ran the underside of his nose over his forearm. He sniffed back what hadn't already come out. He said, “I'm sorry.”
Dad squeezed his shoulder. “I am so glad you're here.”
Xander glanced at David, back to Dad. “But how . . .”
“Your brother came and got me.” He offered David a tight, I'm-proud-of-you smile.
Xander turned to David. He couldn't help it. He had to hug him.
David returned the squeeze, but said, “Are we a bunch of girls or what?”
“Shut up.”
When Xander released him, David didn't let go. “Man, I thought you were gone forever.”
“So did I. I couldn't find the . . . Dad, how did you follow me?” Then he noticed the animal pelt tied around his father's waist over his pajama bottoms. The sword Dae had been holding was in the scabbard, slung around Dad's neck, hanging under his arm. Xander had a faint memory of feeling it as he embraced his father, but he had been too lost in his emotions to care what it was.
“I couldn't get the door open,” David explained. “It locked me out. Dad put those things on and opened it.”
Xander said, “How did you know to do that?”
“David told me how the door opened after you put on the chain mail and helmet.” He shrugged. “Not difficult to figure out.”
“But why didn't you end up where I did, in the middle of the arena?”
Dad's eyebrows went up. “You can add that to my long list of questions, Xander.”
“Where
did
you appear?”
“In the bleachers, on the other side of where I got you.
I went through, and suddenly I was standing in the middle of a crowd that was chanting for someone's death. I almost croaked myself when I saw it was you.”
Xander squinted at him. “They were chanting
sign
-something. You know it?”
“
Sine missione
. It means âto the death.' Romans used to say it to encourage the winning gladiators to take down their opponents.”
“Dad, we were in the
Colosseum
!”
“I recognized it.”
“Like in Rome?” David said, catching the excitement.
“But it was
new
,” Xander told his father. “Like it was twenty centuries ago.”
“History is my subject, Son. Good thing I studied the Colosseum. I knew there were tunnels under the arena. When I saw where you were heading, I used them to reach the door closest to you.”
“Just in time,” Xander said and felt his eyes tear up again.
“Just in time?” David said. “What happened?”
Xander opened his mouth to answer but simply couldn't.
He didn't know where to start, how much to say . . . “Was that real?” he asked his father.
“Felt real to
me
. And . . .” Dad poked Xander's arm.
Xander flinched away. “Ahhh.”
A long swath of skin had been flayed from his bicep. It was glistening red. Blood had trickled down to his elbow.
“Ow!” David said for him.
Dad said, “Talk about a close call. You almost lost your arm.” “Arms,” Xander corrected. “And legs and head.”
“
What
?” David squealed. “How? What happened?”
“I'll tell you later, okay?”
David had moved beyond the terrible panic he must have felt at Xander's disappearance. Now he was fired up. But out of respect for his brother's condition, he nodded. He could wait . . . barely.
Dad untied the pelt and hung it from a hook. He slipped the sword and scabbard off his shoulder, hung it on the next hook. “These things,” he said. “I'm not sure how, but I think they helped us get back.” He studied them, hanging on the hooks, swinging gently back and forth. “When I got to your side of the Colosseum, they got . . . I don't know,
heavier
. I realized they hadn't gained pounds, but they were pulling away from me, like they were trying to go somewhere. When I grabbed you, I kind of went with them, let them tug me where they wanted to.”
“Tug?” David said. “That pelt and sword were tugging
you
?” Dad nodded. “That's what it was, a tug. When I gave into it, we fell back and landed here.”
“So the items are what get you there and bring you back?” Xander said.
“I don't know if they bring you back or simply show you the way. Maybe we were close to the portal anyway, and they led us to it.” He eyed Xander funny. “David said you had chain mail.”
“And a helmet,” Xander said. “I left them back in the arena. Now that you say it, the chain mail did get heavy; that's why I dropped it. Maybe it was tugging me toward the portal.” His face paled. “If I needed them to get back . . . and I lost them . . . I could have been stuck there.”
His eyes welled with tears again. “If you hadn't come for me . . .”
Dad gripped his shoulder. “It's okay. We're here now, that's all that matters.”
“Except for not helping me get back,” Xander said, “is it bad I lost them? Nothing bad will happen because I didn't bring them back, will it?”
Dad shook his head. “No more questions, Xander.” He lifted his foot onto the bench, leaned an arm over his knee.
“I have a question for the two of you, though.”
Here it comes
, Xander thought.
The lecture, the scolding.
He and David exchanged a look.
Their dad said, “Chocolate or vanilla?”
If he had suddenly slapped David, he could not have elicited a more stunned expression on the boy's face.
Xander stumbled over his words. “But . . . what . . . uh . . .
Don't you want to talk to us about . . . all of
this
?” He swept his hands in a wide arc trying to encompass this room, all the rooms, the hidden stairway and corridor.
Dad scrunched his brow. “We'll get to that. But let's get some sleep first. And, of course, ice cream.”
“Since you put it that way,” Xander said, “chocolate.”
SATURDAY, 10:13 A.M.
It was only a dream
, Xander thought. He blinked against the sun coming through the bedroom windows.
Then he rolled over, and the wound on his arm flared with white-hot pain.
“Aaahhh!”
David stirred under his covers. He turned to face Xander.
“Hurt?”
“No, I always wake up screaming.” He turned the clock radio toward him. 10:13. Yow. Dad must have asked Mom to let them sleep in. She was usually all over them if they weren't up “before the sun got hot.” He said, “I thought I'd dreamed the whole thing, fighting a gladiator in the Roman Colosseum.”
David shook his head. “It wasn't a dream. I was there when you went . . . and when Dad brought you back.”
Xander closed his eyes. Thinking about it made his stomach sour. All those bodies. His own close shave with death.
Even the simple fact that life's rulesâespecially the ones dealing with time and space, little things like theseâwere not carved in stone, as he had been taught. All of it made him feel disoriented, like a kite broken from its string, whipping around in the wind. He'd just woken up, and already he was getting a headache.
“Xander, what happened over there? You said Dad got there just in time.”
He didn't open his eyes.
“Are you going to tell me?”
“David, it wasn't good. Trust me, you don't want to know.”
“I want to try it.”
Xander's lids flipped open. “It?”
“Going someplace. Through the door.”
“No, you don't want to try it. Don't say that.”
“Dad did it and came right back. He wasn't in any danger.”
“David, I almost died.”
“But you
didn't
.” His eyes sparkled with excitement.
“I didn't know you were so stupid.”
David's smile faltered. Xander reminded himself that Dae had saved his life last night. If he hadn't fetched their father, Xander would have been slaughtered by that barbarian. In fact, he would have been in his grave for about two thousand years by now. That was something to think about.
Xander blinked slowly. “Sorry. I'm just saying I don't know why you would even be thinking this way, when you saw what happened to me.”
“I didn't
see
. That's just it.”
“Well, I'm telling you, okay? I almost died, and it was the most horrible experience of my life.”
David considered this. After a time, he said, “I'm not talking about going where you went. Just
somewhere
.”
Xander threw his legs out from under the covers and sat up. He thought of David and the situation he had been in, under the shield as the sword came down on it. He wouldn't have had the physical strength to survive. Nothing against him, just his age. And all those bodies . . . Xander wasn't sure how well
he
was going to handle it over time. He got up and sat on David's bed. “I know it sounds exciting; I would think that too. But it's not worth it.”
David looked like he had been told Christmas had been called off. He said, “You and Dad got to do it.”
“If we'd been in a car accident, would you want to do that too?”
“That's different.”
“It's
not
different, David. That's what I'm trying to tell you.
It's just as scary and potentially deadly. When Dad brought me back, the first thing I thought of was a friend who'd been in a car accident. I'm telling you, that's what it was like.”
David's face reflected his disappointment. Xander could tell he wasn't totally convinced.
Xander said, “Promise me you won't sneak off and do it.”
David said nothing.
“
Promise
me.”
David's lips grew tight. The bottom one rolled out a little.
His stubborn face.
“If you don't promise, I'm gonna follow you every second of every day. Even to the bathroom. I'll be like a bad smell you can't wash away.”
Slowly, a smile found David's face. He said, “I promise.”
“Okay.” Xander pushed him playfully on the chest. He stood. He snatched his jeans off a post at the foot of the bed and pulled them on. He had showered the night before, which was really earlier that morning. He could not believe how much grime and dirt and blood the water had sluiced off him to swirl down the drain. His father had stayed with him, leaning against the sink, talking quietly. Xander knew Dad was worried about him. He had seen some of what Xander had gone through. He had also commented that he hoped the jaunt itself, to another time and place, did not have lasting consequences on their physical bodies or mental state. Xander should have reminded David of that, but he had gotten him to promise and that was all that mattered right then. Dad had said they would decide what to do about the rooms upstairs another time. For now, they were off-limits. He had also asked the boys to not tell Mom or Toria. He was afraid they would panic and want to leave without carefully considering the situation, and since the corridor was behind a secret wall, there was no need to stir up trouble.