Redemption: Supernatural Time-Traveling Romance with Sci-fi and Metaphysics (8 page)

“Wu!” she cries, a final, short
prayer to the Sky God to take care of her son. Then she pushes with all her
weight against the spear, still wet with Bagra’s blood. The point pierces skin
and flesh, plunging deep into her heart. A sharp pain grips her from within,
and as the life drains from Mi’s body, she sees the grimace of anger and
disappointment on Zo’s face.

“You not take Mi!” she whispers.
The sharp pain is like fire in Mi’s chest as her body grows weak and she falls
to the ground. “You not take…”

Chicago, U.S.A. 2045

Chapter Seven

A
nn woke up with a start, her hands pressed against her chest and
the sound of someone crying out in her ears.

“What happened?” she said, her
heart beating fast and her breath coming in short, quick bursts. “Who was that
screaming?”

The psychic didn’t have time to
answer as Nina burst into the room.

“What happened, darling?” she
said, hurrying across to the couch where Ann lay. “Why were you screaming?”

“I wasn’t.” Ann looked in
confusion from her friend to the psychic and back again. “Was I?”

“It’s alright, my dear,” said the
psychic soothingly. She reached out and picked up a box of matches from the
coffee table, slipping one out and using it to light a candle. Immediately it
began to produce a cloud of thick, dark smoke, which Ann half expected to smell
like burning tires. To her surprise the scent was delicate and soothing, unlike
anything she had experienced before. “That’s it, breathe it in gently. You’ve
been on a long journey.”

“I certainly feel like I have,”
said Ann, sitting up and running a hand across her forehead. “And I’m drenched
in sweat. How long was I out for?”

“Oh, an hour or so.”

“What? That can’t be right. I
feel like I’ve been away for months, or weeks at least.”

“It’s true, sweetie,” said Nina,
placing a friendly hand on her shoulder. She quickly removed it again though,
when she felt how damp Ann’s blouse was, and wiped it absent-mindedly on the
back of the couch. “I’ve only been out of the room for just over sixty minutes,
though it felt like a lot longer. You know,” she added, turning to the psychic,
“you really need to put a few glossy magazines in there or maybe an
entertainment enter or something. You don’t want your guests dying of boredom!”

Ann ignored her. “So what exactly
was all that stuff I saw? It felt like I was really there.”

“You
were
really there,” said the psychic with a knowing smile. “You
were experiencing your life elsewhere along the fourth dimension.”

“How exciting!” said Nina,
clapping her hands together. “Did you see your future, darling? Was there a
gorgeously hunky man in it? Oh, please tell me there was.”

“It wasn’t my future,” said Ann,
frowning. “Or at least if it was, things are about to change a lot around here,
and not for the better either. It was… I don’t know… It was like something out
of one of those historical documentaries. One with cavemen and all that sort of
thing. I don’t see how that could have anything to do with
my
life.”

“So what was it then?” Nina asked.

Slowly the two women turned to
look at the psychic, who was still sitting there with her knowing smile. After
a long pause, Ann raised her eyebrows questioningly.

“Yes?” said the psychic, as
though she had no idea what they were staring at her for.

Ann sighed. “Come on, then. What
was all that prehistoric… stuff I saw?”

“Don’t ask me!” said the psychic
with a shrug. “It was your life-stream.”

“So you’re telling me that was
some kind of past life or something?” Ann pulled an “I don’t buy it” face. “I
don’t buy it,” she said. “How is that supposed to work anyway?”

“How my craft works is not your
concern, Ann. All you need to know is that it
does
work.” The psychic looked at her and placed a wizened hand on
Ann’s once again. “Don’t ask me what you saw. Just keep it for when it’s
needed.”

“When it’s needed?” Ann wondered
if the old woman was being deliberately unhelpful. “What do you mean?”

But the psychic simply sat back
in her couch, the knowing smile back on her face. There was a long pause,
during which Ann glared at her, until finally Nina broke the awkward silence.

“So that’s that then!” She stood
up, flicking her hair out of her face with a flourish. “Come on, darling, let’s
go and see if your car’s still there in one piece.”

Without a word, Ann got to her
feet and followed Nina out of the room.

~

“Well that was a waste of time!”
said Ann crossly. “I knew I shouldn’t have bothered trying to find out about
all that spiritual nonsense. I should’ve stuck with the psychical world, which
is exactly what I intend to do from now on, bad dreams or not.”

Nina pointed out of her side
window. “I think that was your turn, sweetie.”

“Damn!” She thumped the steering
wheel. “It’s that wretched woman. She’s messed with my head, Nina. I feel all
over the place. Heaven knows what mind-altering drugs she had wafting around in
that creepy room of hers. I’m surprised I didn’t see anything even more bizarre,
some supposed other life where I’m a dancing, blue pig on ice-skates or
something.”

“Sounds like you need cheering
up, darling,” said Nina. “And I know just the thing.”

“Really?” Ann raised an eyebrow. “I
think I can guess what that will involve…”

“And why not? There’s nothing
better than a new man to take your mind off things, and give you a bit of
energy.” She slapped her hand down on the dashboard and the glove compartment
dropped open, spilling a packet of peppermints into the floor of the car. “Ooh!”
she said, picking them up and unwrapping one. “Mints!” Pausing to pop it into
her mouth, she continued, “Anyway, sweetie, getting yourself a nice guy is so
easy it’s almost embarrassing. You know what I was doing while you were busy
hanging out in the Stone Age? I was in the other room subscribing to a video
singles service.”

“What?” Ann looked at her friend
in astonishment, then quickly had to brake to avoid jumping a red light. “But
what about… what’s his name? Steve?”

“You mean Travis.”

“Of course, yes. Travis. What
about him? You’ve only just started seeing him and already you’re busy looking
for someone else?”

“Come now, darling, you’ve always
got to keep on the lookout.” Nina flicked her hair out of her eye again and, as
Ann pulled away from the lights, she continued. “So, as I was saying, I
subscribed to this service and, within twenty minutes, I met an exceptionally
attractive young gentleman, who just happens to be interested in having a big
family.”

“Huh,” said Ann, unimpressed. “More
like he just happens to be interested in getting you into his bed. These guys
would say anything.”

“Well, what he actually said was
that it’s his personal goal to reproduce himself as many times as possible with
just one woman.”

Ann laughed. “And who says
romance is dead?”

~

Having eventually dropped Nina
outside her apartment building, Ann began to make her way back home, her head
still full of the images she had seen.

What was that exactly,
she wondered,
some kind of trance or something?
Whatever it was, it all felt amazingly real.
I remember the sensation of giving birth, of almost dying in the wilderness, of
the spear piercing my flesh.
She placed a hand on her chest, almost able to
feel once again the sharp pain from pointed wood forcing its way into her body.
She shuddered.
It really was as though I
was actually there, as though I was that woman, Mi. The psychic had said that I
really had been there, experiencing my life elsewhere in the fourth dimension.
But how can that be true? What does this Stone Age vision have to do with me,
with real life here in the twenty-first century?

“You appear to have missed your
turn again, gorgeous.”

Startled out of her daydream, Ann
glanced across at her E-A device, sitting in its holder on the dashboard. Rob
waved to her from the screen, the background image showing a brutal landscape
full of hairy humanoid figures.

“You should’ve taken a right back
there,” he added, helpfully, “if you were hoping to get back to your apartment,
that is.”

“Damn it,” said Ann and sighed
heavily. “Not again.”

“Sounds like you’ve had an
interesting visit, my lady.”

“You heard it all, I suppose?”

“Of course. You didn’t switch me
off, remember? Personally, I find the idea of past lives quite fascinating.
There has been some excellent research on the subject.”

“Really?” Ann was surprised. “I
assumed it was just a load of made-up nonsense to keep people like that
so-called psychic in business.”

“Not at all. According to the
resources at my disposal, which as you know are vast, there have been numerous
accounts of such experiences. For example, there was a man in the nineteen
eighties, called Philip Trent, who related his experiences of a past life, in
the third century BC, when he was one of the pupils of Archimedes.”

“So?”

“Well, it turned out that his
description of the ancient Greek culture and the works of the great polymath
were so accurate that only the foremost experts could verify the details, which
they did!”

“And was Philip Trent one of the
experts himself?” asked Ann, naturally skeptical of such things.

“Not a bit of it,” said Rob, a
broad grin spreading across his face. “He was a gas pump operator from
Arkansas.”

“Really? So you think there’s
something to all this past life, fourth dimension stuff?”

“Sure. But don’t take good old
Mister Trent’s word for it. Why not test it out yourself?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, that banner up ahead might
be of some interest to you.”

Ann looked up through the
windshield and, sure enough, there was a banner stretched across the street. It
read, “Chicago Field Museum Feature Exhibition: The Stone Age. Experience the
Life of Our Ancestors.”

“I don’t believe it!” said Ann in
surprise. “What an amazing coincidence.”

“Coincidence? There are those who
would call it grace, my dear. But either way, it’s an opportunity to see if
your vision bears any resemblance to the way things really were back then. What
have you got to lose?”

Ann considered her options. She
still felt exhausted and drained from her time at the psychic’s, and longed to
go back to her apartment and crash out for a few hours. On the other hand, she was
almost certain that until she had settled this question about the vision she would
not actually be able to sleep.

“Isn’t the Field Museum just up
here on the right?”

“It certainly is.”

“Okay,” said Ann decisively. “Let’s
go and check it out!”

The Field Museum of Natural
History was nothing if not impressive, perched on the shore of Lake Michigan, and
dominating its surroundings. Its expansive wings and vast frontage, adorned
with Ionic columns and sweeping steps, were all designed to make its visitors
feel small, almost insignificant, tiny cogs in the great machine of the
universe that the museum sought to reveal. Ann ignored all of this grandeur,
however, and made her way quickly up the steps and into the enormous central
hall. Without even glancing at the T-Rex towering above her, she followed the
signs towards the Stone Age exhibition, her footsteps ringing loudly on the
marble floor.

As she entered the gallery, the
sight took her breath away. There, in the middle of the hall, surrounded by a
glass barrier, was a hill. It was not the hill itself that had caught her eye
however, but what was on the hill. It didn’t look like much of anything,
really, just a large, dome-like structure covered with animal skins, but Ann
recognized it immediately.
That’s just
like those huts I saw in my trance!

It was so similar that she almost
expected someone to burst out of the entrance carrying a steaming pot or a
bundle of sticks. As she stared at the hut, Ann felt suddenly strange and had
to clutch at a display case behind her to steady herself. Turning to look at
what she was holding on to, she found herself faced with a collection of
chipped and worn stones. Despite the fact Ann had never really been interested
in the Stone Age and knew very little about it beyond the general idea that
people used to live in caves and hunt for mammoths, she did not need to look at
the info screens to know what these stones were for. She recognized them
immediately
—
spear heads and ax blades and flints used for scraping animal
skins. Flints
she
had used for just
that purpose.

Breathing quickly, her heart
beating rapidly in her chest, she hurried over to another display.

These pots
, she thought, gazing at
them in wonder.
They’re just like the one
Bagra showed me how to make. And these bags are identical to the ones I used to
collect water and fruit.
The display contained a number of model people,
some hairy and like the people of Mi’s tribe, others more like those who lived
on the hilltop. But it was their clothes that amazed Ann; the animal skin
loincloths and the garments made from handmade fabric. She could almost feel
the sensation of wearing them on her own skin.

Suddenly she was sure, as certain
as she had ever been about anything, that it really had been her than had used
the flints, her that had made the pots and the antelope skin bags, her that had
worn these ancient forms of clothing, her that had lived in one of those huts
on the hilltop. Ann
was
Mi. And Mi
was Ann. As this certainty struck her, she began to feel dizzy and her body
felt as though she was moving in some sort of dream. A cold sweat had broken out
on her forehead and when she lifted her hand to wipe it away, she noticed that
her skin was deathly pale. Turning to look at her reflection in the glass of a
nearby display, she found herself staring into the face of Zo.