Seeds of Time (15 page)

“That's just great, Brodie. Now she's going to choke to death.” Darrell rolled her over onto her side and patted Kate on the back. Kate caught her breath and then opened her eyes wide.

“What's going on? Why do I feel so sick? Hey ...” she gasped and choked again on her mint. She coughed violently for several minutes while Brodie and Darrell pounded her on the back. When she finally got her breath, she was able to finish her thought.

“LOOK AT YOU TWO!” she shrieked. Glancing down, she added, “LOOK AT ME!”

Darrell glanced over at Brodie and saw he was wearing a crude shirt made out of wool over a dirty under-shirt of some softer material. He wore rough trousers that only came to just below his knees. His shoes, like the one she had on her earlier journey, had wooden bottoms and leather uppers, and were ripped and worn. Darrell was surprised to see that her style of dress had substantially changed from the previous visit. She wore a long dress and over-skirt and a fine wool shawl. Kate's outfit mirrored Darrell's, but her skirt was made of a
coarser cloth and she had a rough wool sweater for warmth instead of the shawl.

“Keep your voice down, Kate,” whispered Darrell. “Do you want anyone to hear us before we figure out what we're doing?”

Brodie sat back on his heels and ran his hand across the stone wall. “It feels real,” he muttered, “but it's not the same rock.” He scraped the rock with his fingernail. “Definitely limestone. Not anything like the granite cave near the school.”

“Brodie!” said Kate, furiously. “What are you mumbling about? Who cares what rock the cave is made of? This is serious!”

Darrell shook her head as if to clear it and looked at Brodie and Kate in wry disbelief. Now that she could see that Kate and Brodie were both okay, she felt seized with a sense of exultation.
They'll have to believe me now!
she thought triumphantly.

“What are you grinning at?” Kate crawled on her hands and knees across the sand and thrust her nose into Darrell's face. Kate's skin had gone from pale to bright red with remarkable speed. She looked as though she didn't know whether to hit Darrell or cry. Her wool skirt was rucked up around her knees, and her face reflected complete confusion.

Darrell's insides felt clenched. Her relief at being proved right washed away at the sight of Kate's misery.
“Look,” she said, “I don't know what happened back there. I didn't intend for you guys to end up here with me.” She shrugged and looked around. “I didn't intend to end up here myself ...” Her voice trailed off and she looked up at Brodie, still standing by the glowing glyph on the wall of the cave. It was becoming harder to see as the blood red light began to recede.

“You're right, Brodie. This is not our cave by the school. The problem is, when that glyph fades away, we are going to be in pitch darkness. We need to get closer to the mouth of the cave before we can decide what we're going to do.”

“Darrell,” Kate's voice was filled with fear, “if you have some idea of what is going on here, I want to hear about it
right now
!”

Darrell stood up and realized with a sigh that she had to balance again on a wooden peg instead of her prosthesis. She reached down and grabbed Kate by the hand. “I'll tell you all about it when we get a bit closer to the entrance, okay? C'mon. I know the way.” She nodded her head at Brodie. “Better grab his hand, Kate. We need to stick together.”

The last of the red light faded back into the rock like a candle puffed out, and Kate gave a little cry of despair. “What are we going to do, Darrell?”

Darrell clenched her teeth and reached out to touch the face of the rock wall in the dark. The rock was chill
and a little damp under her fingers. She squeezed Kate's hand. “It's going to be okay. Let's just get to where the light's a bit better, then we'll figure out what to do.”

Darrell led the way toward the mouth of the cave, her left hand tightly clenched by Kate. Her right traced their way along the cave wall, to avoid scrapes from the broken old barnacles that lined the rock surfaces. After a few long moments, she could see the glow of the entrance in the distance, and she sighed to herself with relief. Soon the three were seated on the damp sandy floor near the mouth of the cave, looking curiously at the strange clothes they were wearing.

Darrell rubbed the crease between her eyebrows and sighed.

“I'm ... I'm not sure what happened back there ...” she began.

Kate's lips began to tremble and her eyes filled with tears. She looked pleadingly from Darrell to Brodie. “This can't be happening. Please tell me this is something you've cooked up just to tease me, Darrell.”

“Kate, try to stay calm.” Darrell looked from Kate to Brodie. “This is a bit of a long story,” she whispered, “but I'll try to give you the short version.” She picked up a broken fragment of shell from the cave floor, took a deep breath, and began. In a rush of words, she told them about her discovery of the cave and about the strange series of experiences that followed. As she
talked, of Luke and his mother, of the journey and the plague, she kept her eyes downcast so as not to see the disbelief she knew would be on their faces. She related as much as she could remember of the strange and remarkable journey she had taken. “And that's why I didn't want you to touch the symbols, Brodie.”

Darrell paused and somehow found the courage to look up at her friends. “I know how I would feel if someone had told me a crazy story like this,” she said evenly. “The truth is, I thought I was crazy, too, or maybe I just had a bad dream or something. But seeing the black tree glyph today has made things a bit clearer to me.”

“Why's that?” said Brodie, with a tremor in his voice.

“Because that tree represents the mystical rowan tree in Arisaig that Luke told me about,” Darrell replied. “And where we are now proves it. Somehow that glyph on the wall has pulled us all back in time.”

Kate clutched Darrell's arms, her face a palette of emotions as she stared wildly from Darrell's eyes to the strange clothes they all wore. After a moment, she curled into a ball on the sand, tucked her face into the folds of her voluminous skirt, and sobbed.

Brodie knelt beside her on the cave floor and patted her back awkwardly. “It's going to be okay, Katie. Try not to cry.” He looked at Darrell sharply as he struggled to find the right words. “Think about your tae kwon do training, Kate. You told me your instructor
taught you to concentrate only on what's in front of you and to hold your opponent in the highest respect. Just think of this situation as a really tough opponent.”

Kate lifted her tear-stained face out of her hands. Brodie pulled a linen rag from his pocket. He gave it a strange look and then handed it to Kate. She wiped her eyes and nose and tried to hand it back.

“You keep it,” Brodie said hastily. “It used to be a Kleenex tissue, and I wouldn't have wanted that back, either.”

“Just a minute,” said Darrell, slowly. “Look at this.” She pulled something out from behind her ear. It was a long thin piece of black material, hard with rounded edges.

“What's that?” said Kate in a troubled voice.

“It's charcoal,” said Darrell. “But what's more important is what it's
not
.”

“Okay, Darrell, now you've really lost me,” said Kate, her face red from crying. “This is so weird! First we go through some kind of whirlwind storm, and we're all knocked out cold. Then, when we finally recover from that, all these strange things have happened to our clothes and our possessions ... and you!” She turned in fury to Darrell. “You brought us here. You need to get us back!”

“Wait a minute, Kate,” Darrell said. “Stay with me a minute, here. When I said it's more important what this thing is not ... I meant it. When we went into the
cave, I had a few things in my pockets. I brought a package of breath mints, and I stuck a pencil behind my ear. And this is what I have now.”

They all looked down at the black object. It was the same length as a pencil and roughly the same diameter, but there any resemblance ended. Kate snatched the object up out of Darrell's hand. She turned round to the rock wall and began to rub it along a flat portion of the rough surface. It left dark, unmistakable marks. Darrell cleared her throat.

“I think it
is
a pencil, Kate. It's a pencil from before there were such things. This looks like the charcoal I sketch with, sometimes. I think it's what pencils looked like at this time ...
when
ever we are.”

Brodie looked at Darrell. “Your breath mints look more like old-fashioned peppermint candy. And what
was
my tissue seems to be an old piece of rag.”

Darrell nodded. “And then there's this.” She pulled up the hem of her skirt and showed them the wooden peg that replaced the elaborate prosthesis she had been wearing moments before.

More than anything, this sight seemed to have the largest impact on Brodie and Kate.

Kate looked at Darrell, aghast. “How are you going to walk on that thing?”

Darrell shrugged. “I did it the last time. It just takes a little practice and it hurts a bit more to walk.” She
paused and smiled ruefully at Brodie. “It also means I won't be winning too many foot races with you.”

Brodie laughed, but looking at Kate's tear-stained face, he sobered quickly. He stood up and walked to the wall of the cave. “We have to decide what to do now.” He turned to Darrell. “I know all about caves and fossils, but I have no experience with whatever's happened here. You're the expert now, Darrell. What do we do next?”

Both sets of eyes turned in the grey light toward Darrell. She swallowed. The magnitude of what had happened hit her like a blow. She had brought her friends through some kind of hole in the fabric of time. Whether she meant to or not didn't matter. They were here. Now what was she going to do?

The sound of a bark startled them and they all jumped. In the dim light of the cave, a dog ran in with something in his mouth. He dashed up to the group, spun in a tight circle, and dropped what he was carrying. He began licking Darrell's face.

“Delaney! Am I ever glad to see you! Good boy. Lie down.” The dog lay obediently at Darrell's feet. He wriggled in place and put his head down on his paws, content. Brodie shook his head.

“Ah — Darrell, that's not Delaney. Delaney is a golden retriever. This dog, well — I don't have a clue
what
this dog is. Maybe he's a really dirty Lab. But he's not Delaney.”

Darrell ruffled the dog's fur. “I'm sorry, Brodie, but you're wrong. When I went by myself through the cave the first time, Delaney was with me. When I got to this cave, I realized he looked different ... but inside, he was the same dog. He belonged to Luke's aunt from Arisaig. But he's still Delaney. Watch this.”

She turned to Delaney and showed how he would sit, roll over, and shake a paw just as she had taught him over the summer. Finally, she gave him one of the peppermints to sniff and held her hands behind her back. She brought her two closed fists in front of Delaney and he gravely placed his paw on her right hand. She opened her palm and he licked the candy once before lying down in the sand, tail wagging gently.

“Dara! Are ye in here, lass?” A voiced echoed through the grey cave. The colour completely drained out of Kate's face. Brodie put a finger to his lips. Too late, Darrell reached to place a warning hand on Delaney's head. He barked joyfully and sat up.

The voice came again. It sounded relieved. “God be praised!”

The sound of armour echoed off the walls of the cave. Delaney jumped to his feet and ran to the figure who strode inside.

Darrell looked at Brodie and Kate, who stared back at her mutely. “It will be all right,” she whispered and turned to the man who had joined them. She stiffened,
and her stomach clenched at the sight of a uniformed soldier in the cave.

“Praise be to God,” he said. “When the dog appeared again, I knew he must be bringing ye safely back to us.”

Suddenly, Darrell recognized the soldier, and relief flooded through her.

“Luke!” she cried, and threw her arms around him. “You're all right! I thought you were one of the soldiers who chased me ...”

His blue eyes gleamed. “I am a soldier of the Laird's personal guard, Dara. Much has happened in the year since I have last seen ye.”

Darrell gaped. A year! She did some rapid calculations in her mind, but came up blank. Time seemed to have a strange way of compressing here in the past. It had been two weeks since she had returned to Eagle Glen from her visit with Luke. Enough time for at least a year to have passed here in the fourteenth century.

Darrell felt a surge of panic. “How are Maggie and Rose? What has happened to them?”

Luke smiled sadly. “They are alive, but ...”

From the shadows of the cave came the sound of a muffled gasp. In one smooth motion, Luke pushed Darrell behind him and drew the small sword he wore in his belt.

“What is yer business here?” he spat.

Darrell stepped forward with a grin and squeezed his arm. “It's all right, Luke. I ... I have brought two
friends to meet you this time.”

Luke looked in confusion at Darrell. “I'm ... terribly sorry,” he said. He pulled his back ramrod straight and turned to face Brodie and Kate as they stepped out of the shadows. “I offer ye my most profound apologies.”

Kate's mouth hung open slightly and she appeared unable to speak.

“No offence taken,” Brodie said quietly.

Darrell spoke up again. “I want to hear everything that has happened, Luke, every detail. But first you must meet my friends. Brodie and Kate, this is Luke.”

Brodie put his arm around Kate's shoulders and steered her forward. He nodded toward Luke and even managed a nervous smile when Luke sheathed his sword.