A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO TIME TRAVEL

A NaNoWriMo Challenge--Part 3 Chapter 8

Photo by Fredrik Öhlander on Unsplash

    Part 3

    8

We set off West, by raft. I was wearing my doeskin pants and shirt, while the furs Jaleen made for me were laying in the bottom of the raft, a small puddle of water washing up against them no matter how often I kicked them to the side. Finally, I picked them up and laid them across the gunnels, thinking the sun would dry them.

I’d rigged up a make-shift steering oar and managed to somehow keep a steady course in the middle of the river, which slowly seeped out to a more comfortable width. I didn’t like the idea of  hugging the shore. There were reeds and bullrushes and frightful beasts that lived in the shallows of the marshes.

It wasn’t much longer after that though, when the marshy shallows receded, the forests retreated, and the land opened up long, green, and infinite. The Vandals rose up in the distance, their crowns smothered in snow, their peaks high and craggy, looking a light blue in the distance. I could see it wouldn’t be long until the mountains took on the colour of a setting sun.

I could see a cloud of dust along the horizon, looking no different from the distant haze that lined the horizon. But I’ve lived at the foothills of the Vandals my entire life, riding the plains and forests, hunting. I know the dust cloud left by a herd of thousands. The Slaver army would have to stop for the night, and now that I’d spotted them, I felt better.

“We’ll have to stop and make camp,” I said.

“But it’s not even dark?”

“And you think I want to make camp in the dark? Or did you want to sleep under the stars? Well, I’m not. We’re going to make a camp.”

“Is it safe?”

“From what?”

“Predators. I heard they come out at night.”

“That’s why we’re going to pull the raft out of the water, flip it upside down, and I’m going to sleep under it. You can sit out beside the fire if you want. But you’ll want to keep it big, because it gets cold, and, well, you didn’t dry those clothes properly, so you’ll be cold. And it’ll keep the bigger predators out. They don’t like big fires.”

“Wait. What?”

I managed to steer the raft over to the right bank. It wasn’t too steep, and the trees lining the shore weren’t too big. There was a gentle slope that had a small patch of dry grass; the copse of trees across a small clearing looked promising.

“We’re pulling the raft out here,” I said, making my decision. “We’ll use the raft as a cover. I have lots rope, so we can hoist it up against the trees and use it as a windbreak. After, I drop it down, lash it to the trees, crawl back under and go to sleep.”

“And I’m where?” she said.

“Out by the fire where you said you wanted to be.”

“That was before I knew about the predators.”

“So you’ll want to sleep under the raft?”

“Yes.”

“Then when you help me carry this thing out of the water you can go look for firewood while I get things ready here. You can take my sword. Don’t try to chop a tree down with it, it won’t. But it will cut branches off trees, or break old rotten stumps.”

“And where am I supposed to find these?”

I stood up and looked at her just before I grabbed the rope and pulled the from end of the raft out of the water. I turned and looked at the trees, and then looked at her once again.

“Are you seriously asking me where you’re supposed to find firewood in the middle of a forest?”

“I thought maybe you meant I had to go somewhere else.”

“That’s always an option can discuss later,” I said, “but for right now, I want you in eyesight. At all times. Do you understand? It might look peaceful and calm, but there’s lots of wildlife, and not all of it is happy to see us. And some will always see us as food. Now get out of there and help me.”

She helped me drag the raft on to the grass where I took the sword out of her hands and cut a series of poles I could use for lashing the raft to. I told her to pick up an end and we carried it back to the little camp. She held the poles in place, afterward helping me tie the poles together and lash the raft to them at an angle. All I’d have to do was pull on a length of rope and the raft would fall down and cover us. I picked up my bow, gave her the sword again.

“I’ll try and find us some game while you get firewood. Don’t get something that’s so big you can’t carry it, but get enough that we can cook something.”

“What am I supposed to carry it with?”

“You can run it back to the camp when you think you can’t carry any more, then come back and get some more.”

“You have an answer for everything, don’t you?”

“That’s why they pay me the big bucks,” I said.

    *

She stopped, and turned to look at me.

“Ricky?”

“Who are you?” I asked. I didn’t know who she was, but she looked pretty hot with that red hair cut, and what a red. It was vibrant. Scarlet. And short. She had a serious GI Jane look about her.

“Are you back? Can you help me?”

“What do you mean, am I back? And help you how?” I asked.

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

We were standing in the middle of a field, but I couldn’t figure out how I got there. I was dressed in buckskins, too, like I was a young Daniel Boone, and bare chested as well. I had several scars I didn’t recognize, and wondered what that was all about. I felt like I was playing at a game—a hunting game where they give you a bow and a certain amount of arrows—and you have to shoot targets.

No animals were hurt in the course of this game.

I remembered I saw Jen. She was holding Jimmy’s wrist and pulling him though a hole in the wall, but everything just kind of spiralled out of control after that.

“Jen? Jen and Jimmy?”

“What else?”

“Why am I carrying a bow?” I asked.

“I’ll explain later,” she said. “What else do you remember?”

“I was with that cop. Helen. I liked her. Where’d she go?”

“She made it through. We just lost her for a bit.”

“What does that mean? Lost her?

“Okay. You were with Helen, and there was that hole in the wall.”

“It was Jen. She’s the one that made the hole in the wall; she was dragging Jimmy through it. Then there was a second hole, on the other wall. That’s when Jen told us if we wanted to live, we’d better follow her. But Helen pulled her gun and shot the two whatever they were, not even asking what was going on.”

“Do you know what’s going on?” she asked.

“Just that both holes disappeared.”

“Is that when you put the bracelet on?”

I looked at it shimmering on my wrist and remembered when I saw it shimmering on Dad’s nightstand.

“I may have.”

“What happened next?”

“They were coming through the wall again. I remember Helen raised her gun again, and I pointed at the wall. I made a hole this time! I made it! We jumped through—”

“And then?” she said, and I was wondering what that was all about. She looked like she was expecting an answer, and it was more important than collecting firewood.

“What?” I asked, looking at her. “I said you could run it back and forth to the camp a few times. There’s plenty of it. We only need three or four arms full.”

She looked at me and didn’t say a word. Was she expecting me to say something different? All the same, I felt like I’d let her down somehow. Maybe a big rabbit would help, and no sooner did I think it, than a massive hopper jumped out of a small hedge.

I pulled the bow back without even thinking about it, releasing the arrow like a reflex.

  *

  She was quiet for most of the night. I didn’t know if it was watching me cleaning the rabbit at the water’s edge that put her off, but she seemed different for some reason. I laid the largest, flattest, rocks I could find close to the fire and dropped the rabbit on it. I told her not to let it burn, or we wouldn’t be having anything to eat for the night.

Then I told her about Janeel and how it was a task she was always happy to do. She enjoyed preparing rabbit, I said. She’d usually made a stew of it, I explained, but we’d lost all the pots and pans in the fire. There was always herbs, mushrooms, and tubers she could find to stuff a rabbit with, or at least make some sort of a rub with, but I didn’t know enough about outdoor cooking to do it any justice. She’d use the vitals, too—the heart, liver, and kidneys—and sometimes set them off to the side of the fire in a small bowl as a treat before we all bit into the rabbit itself.

I knew I was just talking for the sake of talking, but I thought that whatever it was that had put her in her off mood, maybe hearing me talk about Jaleen would bring her out of it. When she answered, it wasn’t very inspiring.

“I don’t know the first thing about cooking rabbit,” she said.

“It’s never too late to learn.”

“I’m not interested in learning.”

“No, you’re not, are you?”

“Does that bother you?”

“No. I just don’t understand it. In this place, if you can’t feed yourself, you’ll die. I suppose it must be different in the future?”

“We’re civilized.”

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“No. I want to know what it all of this means.”

“What all of what means?”

“This. You say that man you came with is my brother, in another life that I’m living in the past? Is that about right? That this body…is it the real me, Whit, or this other fellow?”

“You’re a little of both.”

“So someone else is somehow trapped in my body?”

“Yes.”

“What happened to him? If he came through this hole you keep talking about, where is he now? And who came with him? You said he wasn’t alone. If I’m not me, or a part of him is inside of me, then what about Jaleen? Who is she?”

“The woman he was with is with her.”

“Inside of her, like he is with me? So why do I still feel like Whit? How come I don’t feel like I’m this other man?”

“When Ricky opened the time vortex, the bracelet he was wearing wasn’t a part of him. It shouldn’t even have worked—but it did. When he pointed it at the wall, nothing should have happened; but it did.”

“Why?”

“I’m thinking it might be because it was his father’s bracelet—” she said, but didn’t finish her thought.

I held my hand up, cutting her off, my head cocked to the left, listening.

I slowly picked my sword up off the ground, drawing it out of its scabbard real slow. I could hear them in the woods, about a hundred paces away. They’d been upwind, but the wind had changed and I caught their scent, slight, acrid—the scent of fresh kill still on their breaths—and I picked up my bow and lay it beside me.

“What is it?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper. “Is it an animal?”

“Worse,” I said. “Scavengers. Don’t move.”

An arrow came out of the night. I heard it, sensed it, and snatched it out of the air before it hit her. I picked my bow up and drew the arrow back, letting it slice through the night where I heard it impact; the man under it quickly falling to the ground.

“Get under the raft,” I said.

As she slid to the ground I sliced the rope and the raft fell with a silent whisper. I picked up my sword and snatched five arrows, dropping my quiver and making for the darkness. My leg screamed in pain at the sudden movement, but I forced myself into the brush, away from the fire’s light. They were coming at a run. There was no pretence of stealth on their part anymore, and I could smell them as much as I could hear them. I held an arrow and stabbed it into the soft loam in front of me, lining up three more arrows as I drew the fifth, letting it out into the night. I heard a voice cry out with the second arrow’s impact.

Two.

I picked up the four remaining arrows and ran with a heavy limp to my left, using a large tree for cover as I notched the fourth arrow back. I could see three bodies silhouetted against the light of the horizon, and let another arrow loose. One of the shadows fell. I ran to my right another forty paces, counting the steps in my head. I slid on one knee and fought back the pain. I rose to one knee—the only knee I could bend it seemed—and let another arrow fly. I could hear it hitting flesh. The sound is unmistakable.

I had three arrows left; I also had three crossbow bolts in my wrist quiver. I’d use them if I had to, but I felt confident I had their numbers right. I tried to keep the fire between us now that I had the range of them. I could hear them, even as they tried to be silent. I could smell them, only this time there was something different about their scent.

It was fear.

I could hear the branches breaking with every step they took; it seemed as if the grass cried out with every step they took, as well. Scavengers are not very adept when it comes to tracking, or hunting prey. They rely on fear, as well as numbers. They usually come in after a battle and take what they can, sometimes picking up survivors and selling them to Slavers.

Perhaps it was something I could use, I told myself. I made certain the last three Scavengers would survive.