A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO TIME TRAVEL
A NaNoWriMo Challenge chapter 7
7
“It’s not a big waterfall,” she said.
“No? Tell me what you mean by it being, ‘not big’?” I said.
“Well, do you see the top of those rocks?”
“No, I can’t see the top of those rocks,” I said, “because we’re below them!” I was getting angry. The raft wasn’t turning, even though I was leaning over the steering oar as far as I could. The current was too strong and there wasn’t enough weight in the raft. I had to somehow get it over to the rocks, which made no sense at all, but it was the only place I could put it.
“Where’s your friend?” I called over the noise.
“He’s not my friend, he’s your brother.”
“I don’t have a brother!” I reminded her. “Just tell me why he isn’t here?”
“He said he was afraid of going over the waterfall.”
“By the One True God, I swear, I’ll throw you out of this raft if you don’t get him over here—however you do it!”
“I can’t just make him appear out of thin air,” she said.
I lashed the steering oar to the right and ran to the front of the raft, looking for the rope I used for tying the raft down for the night. I tied one end to the raft, rolled it up, then made a quick loop, throwing it out toward the rocks; I was hoping I might lash on to something. All I got was air.
I pulled it in and tried again.
We hit an eddy, and the raft tipped into a trough. I fell to the left as water started filling in on the right side. I saw my longbow and quiver floating away, reached out and lashed them under the gunnel before standing up and throwing the rope out again as we hit hidden rocks and bounced toward the shore. I was thrown off balance again, this time dropping the rope. The steering oar broke loose and I jumped to the back end of the raft, reaching out for it, only to have it slip out of my grip.
I could hear the roar of water ahead, stood up and turned to look. I saw light mist hanging over the edge of the water, and realized it was the end; we were about to go over the falls. I grabbed the rope again, tying it around myself, tossing her whatever length was left, and telling her to do the same.
“What’s the point in that?” she asked.
“Because if we get thrown out, at least we won’t lose the raft.”
“And if it sinks under the falls and drags us down?” she asked.
“It won’t sink; I made it, remember? I put tusker bladder under the hide. It won’t puncture no matter what—I mean, how many tree stumps have we hit? But what’s more important is it won’t sink. Just hang on to the raft and don’t forget to hold your breath!”
She was right about one thing, it wasn’t a big waterfall, but still, it was bigger than I would’ve liked. I looked down and saw another length of the rope floating in the bottom of the raft. I wrapped it around my foot. I knew our best chance of survival was with the raft; I didn’t care if she believed me, or not. I’d heard of people who fell into rivers and were swept out over waterfalls; they never came back up. I don’t know if it was the weight of the water forcing them down, but I didn’t want to find out. I just hoped we didn’t hit rocks on the bottom.
I sat on the gunnels as we went over; she was lashed in and sitting on the floor of the raft. I needed to see what we were falling into; I needed to see if the bottom was full of rocks, or perhaps tangled up with tree roots; I needed to ask her what her name was.
I could feel myself rising up as the front end of the raft went over the falls. It almost felt as if we were floating for a moment, as if the raft had hesitated before falling, perhaps somehow reluctant to commit itself to its course before it fell. I felt myself giving into the fear of the fall, fell off the gunnel and into the bosom of the raft, sliding forward. I reached out, grabbing the pack and bracing myself as my right leg hit the tusker bladders. I was grateful we didn’t hit rocks when we hit the shallow pool.
The raft all but buckled in half, folding over on itself and tipping over on its side before flipping over completely. Everything seemed to slow down. I looked around for the woman, and saw her bright scarlet hair as she was pulled underwater. I grabbed onto the rope as I found myself slipping under the water as well. I felt the rope tightening around my waist and hoped she’d remembered to take a deep breath. I pulled on the rope’s length and saw her limp body, bubbles of air escaping as she opened her eyes, and panicked. I reached out and grabbed her arm, pulling her with me as I reached up for the raft.
I pulled the rope tight and felt the raft moving above me. We were under the falls, and as much as I tried to kick my way up to the surface, there was nothing. The water might as well have been an invisible hand holding me down. I pulled on the rope as hard as I could and felt myself moving upwards. My lungs were about to burst, and I looked down at the woman, wondering if she was still alive, or if I was dragging a corpse.
We came up under the raft and I gasped, sucking in huge gulps of air. I pulled the woman up above the surface, punching her back severely and squeezing her from behind; I was trying to force a breath into her anyway I could think of—either that, or forcing water out of her. Suddenly, I felt myself being pulled down and thought perhaps the rope I’d tangled around my foot had somehow caught something and now I was being dragged down. I let go of the woman, and the raft, and then took another deep breath and began following the rope down as far as I could go.
The rope had somehow wrapped itself around the pack. I pulled, finally taking my sivic out of its sheath and cutting the straps of the pack, pulling it, and myself, back up to the surface again. I came up sputtering and gasping for air, staring at the woman who was coughing and puking up water. I managed to wrap a portion of the rope around the pack, and began kicking my legs. I could feel the pain in my swollen knee and tried ignoring it, but it hurt. The water was cold, my body was freezing, and my teeth were chattering.
“You have to kick your legs!” I screamed at her.
We were still under the falls. The only thing saving us was the fact that the raft was upside down and the water was pushing down on it, instead of on us. We were making some progress, but not much. It felt like I was kicking my legs in the air, instead of swimming. I think the only thing that saved us was the waterfall battering on the bottom of the raft, forcing the front up and creating an air pocket. The weight of the water was pushing the raft forward—propelling us—and before I knew what was happening, I could feel us moving.
“Keep kicking!” I yelled again.
Finally, I felt giant rocks under me and found a purchase where I could stop and get my bearings sorted out. I peered out from under the raft. We were in a large pool, the mist from the falls hanging over the water like a veil. I crawled along the rocky bottom until I was able to stand up, then pulled on the rope, bringing the woman and the raft with it.
“Well, that was fun, wasn’t it?” I laughed.
“Fun?” she said.
“I’ve been through worse.”
The current was strong, and I wrapped the rope around my arm, pulling on the raft, straining against the current, as I looped the rope on the upside-down raft. The rope was weighed down with the pack, and I happily picked it up and laid it on the rocks.
“We have to flip the raft,” I said.
“Will it float?”
“It’s floating now, isn’t it?”
It took an effort, but we were able to flip the raft over on our third attempt.
*
I took a quick inventory of our supplies. Pretty well everything in the pack was ruined, which seemed like a waste considering the effort I’d put into saving it; I salvaged what I could from it though, tossing what I didn’t need into the shallow pool of the waterfall. My longbow and quiver had somehow remained secured under the gunnel, and I was grateful for that. It would make hunting game a lot easier than having to rely on my small crossbow—of which I’d lost more than half of my bolts. My sword was still in its scabbard, but I’d lost my sivic during my attempt to free the pack.
Not what I would call a good trade off, I told myself.
Everything was soaking wet. My furs were weighing me down, so I took them off, stripping naked and wringing them out as I sat on the rocks taking at our surroundings. At least we were on the valley floor, I told myself, which would make tracking the Slavers easier. The camp they’d invaded was a distant smudge on the horizon, we’d come down that far. But I could see there were carrion birds circling in the air, huge raptors and vultures, ravens, and endless crows. The only reason they’d be up there was because something on the ground was a threat.
Wolves, I thought. Wild dogs? Perhaps feral pigs?
There were endless possibilities, but it didn’t matter, I told myself. I wasn’t about to go back to examine the camps so I could figure out which way the Slavers went. If I couldn’t find an army walking across a wide plain, I didn’t deserve to call myself a Huntsman.
The sun broke through the clouds and I was grateful for the warmth it brought. It was better than yesterday’s rain. I laid my furs on the rocks to dry, and laying on the rocks beside them, looking at the Vandals looming in the distance. It was a shame, I thought, that no one would know about the path we’d followed through the mountains using the Star Charts.
Who is there to tell, I thought?
And then I remembered the woman.
She was sitting on the rocks across from me, shivering, her arms wrapped around her knees, which were pulled up to her chest. I turned away from her and smiled to myself.
Outsiders are like that, I reminded myself.
“If you don’t take those clothes off and let them dry, you’ll never get warm,” I said, speaking to the clouds.
“I’ll manage.”
“Suit yourself,” I said. “But once we start moving, and if you’re still wet, you’ll never get dry. You’ll just get sick, and that would slow me down. Do you expect me to wait for you?”
“What makes you think I’m going to follow you?”
“Where’s your friend?”
“Friend? What friend? Oh…do you mean your brother?”
“I don’t have a brother,” I said, and I turned to look at her.
She looked directly at me.
“You don’t have a wife either.”
“A what?”
“Qiza. You don’t have a qiza.”
“Who do you think I’m following?” I smiled.
“Whit’s qiza. Your wife? Your wife is Ricky Baxter’s wife—quite a different person altogether. In fact, yours is a whole different situation. Not Whit’s, but yours. Ricky Baxter. That’s why I’m here. I’m trying to fix it.”
“Fix what? How? You don’t even have your bracelet anymore,” I pointed out to her.
She looked at her wrist; realizing the bracelet was gone, she seemed to sink into herself. She put her head down on her knees and I watched her for a moment, not knowing what to think. I looked down and saw the bracelet I was wearing was still there. I still couldn’t remember where it came from, which only made things worse for me, didn’t it? What if what she was telling me is true?
I thought about offering the bracelet to her, but somehow I knew she’d refuse it. I remembered that he’d said something earlier about how the bracelet was a part of me, or something like that; I couldn’t for the life of me quite remember. As a Time Guide, or Time Guard—I couldn’t remember which one of them she was either—did losing her bracelet mean she was stuck in this time?
“So how bad is it?” I asked.
“How bad is what?”
“Losing the bracelet?”
“About as bad as it can get,” she said, trying to smile, but failing miserably.
“What about your friend?”
“You mean your brother? He’s just as lost as you are. He thinks he knows what he’s doing, but he doesn’t know the first thing about Travelling.”
“He doesn’t?”
“No. It’ll take more presence of mind than he has to find us.”
“What does that mean for you? What time do you belong to?”
“I told you, I’m from the future.”
“You did, but you meant the future of the person you’re trying to help. Your friend’s brother. I’m not that person. So are you from his future, or mine?”
She looked at me for a moment, and then smiled.
“What a strange question. Why would you think that?”
“Because I don’t think you’re from the other guy’s future, but my future—Whit’s,” I said.
“And why do you think that?” she asked.
“Well, your clothes for one thing.”
“My clothes? What’s wrong with my clothes?
“Because nobody in this time, wears what you’re wearing.”
“Maybe this is what they wore in the past?”
“Maybe, but I doubt it.”
“Why?”
“All that stuff you told me earlier, about what happened, how long ago was that?”
“Years.”
“Years…Do you expect me to know what that is? Everything you’re telling me, everything you say, you’re telling me as if you expect me to understand. You see, it’s little slip ups like that, that make me question things. It makes me wonder how much of what you’re telling me is the truth—or how much you’re telling me at all.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“I don’t trust anybody.”
“That’s a good way to be.”
“It’s kept me alive,” I said.
“So what do you want to know?”
“Well, you could tell me what a year is? That seems as good a place as any to start.”
“A year? It’s a measurement of Time,” she said. Rather short-sighted on her part, I thought.
“And why do you feel you need to measure time? Time isn’t something that can be measured, or controlled.”
“There’s lots of reasons,” she said, and sat silent for a moment, probably thinking, or trying to reason things out. Maybe think of a good lie? “Look, the sun rises in the morning, and sets in the evening; do you agree with me on that?”
I nodded.
“You eat, you sleep, you hunt, you make love…you do all of these things, at moments in time—during that period of time between that moment when the sun rises, and then it goes down. It’s a moment in time. A memory. ‘Do you remember that time when…’ Do you see what I mean? In the past, in the ancient past, the day was divided into two parts. That being: when the sun was up, and when it wasn’t. They did this to keep track of seasons. That way, they knew when to plant their crops. The did it to appease their gods.”
“There’s only the One True God,” I reminded her.
“There’s always only been the one true god,” she said, and I shook my head at her blatant blasphemy, because I could hear the mockery in her voice.
“And what do you mean by that?” I said.
“I’m a Time Guardian—”
“Which tells me nothing.”
“You asked me to explain what time was.”
“And that’s how you explain it? With blasphemy?”
“I made it as simple as I could.”
“And blasphemed the One True God.”
“I did no such thing.”
“Then why are you guarding it?”
“Guarding what?”
“Why does your world think it needs to guard mine from Time?”
“Do you think I’m going to answer a question like that?” she asked.
She stood up, looking down at me. I was still naked on the rocks, but with my hands behind my head. She turned herself away the moment I opened my eyes and looked at her.
“Does my nakedness offend you?”
“What? No, I mean, I find it…strange behaviour.”
“The only one who is strange here, is you…I don’t even know what your name is. See? How strange is that?”