An Alex Hawk Time Travel Adventure (Book 1): A Door Into Time

by Inmon, Shawn

  Monda-ak held his grip and shook his head violently, snapping the creature’s neck and finally silencing it.

  Alex whistled the command to release the badger and Monda-ak dropped it but still growled suspiciously.

  Alex and Sekun-ak had come out of the conflict unscathed, but Alex pulled Monda-ak to the better light at the mouth of the cave. Sekun-ak pulled Alex’s spear out and explored back into the cave in case there were more predators to be found.

  He returned shortly. “That was all that was here.”

  “Unless it had a family, I don’t think anything else could have survived in here with it,” Alex said, examining Monda-ak’s wound. The badger hadn’t been able to sink its teeth into him, but its sharp claws had exposed the flesh above the right shoulder.

  “I’ll clean this as best I can. I don’t think it’s too serious.” Alex put his arms around the neck of Monda-ak and said, “Your first war wound, buddy. Thank you. I am not sure we could have handled him without you here.”

  Monda-ak whined an acknowledgment.

  Alex stood and looked outside, where the blizzard had only increased.

  “We can’t go anywhere until this lets up.”

  “But,” Sekun-ak said, holding up his leaf-bag, “the snow will keep genta-ta edible for a few days longer.”

  “A silver lining in every cloud,” Alex agreed. “Do you think we could build a fire here in the opening? It would keep us warm and keep other animals from joining us.”

  “It’s possible,” Sekun-ak said. “If you can go find us some dry wood, I will try. Look for dead limbs that are hidden from the snow. I’ll get everything else we need.”

  As soon as Alex took ten steps away from the cave, he shouted, “Don’t lose the cave,” then continued on to a stand of trees. Alex searched through the trees until he found what Sekun-ak had asked for—limbs that had died for one reason or another but were not exposed to the wet snow.

  He gathered an armful and turned back to the cave. When he got to the cliff, the cave was not there.

  Must have gotten off course.

  Keeping the cliff to his immediate right, Alex stepped carefully along, searching for the opening. After a hundred yards, he realized he must have been off course the other direction. He counted his steps back, then turned so the cliff was to his left.

  After twenty yards, he found the cave. Monda-ak laid on his uninjured side, playing up his wound for all he was worth, showing Alex sad, mournful eyes.

  “I know, buddy. Why did he do that to you? You were only going to snap his neck, right?”

  Monda-ak’s tail thumped against the cave floor as if to say, Glad you understand.

  Alex dropped his armful of wood and decided to go for another load. He made it to the copse of trees and back in a direct line this time, but when he returned, Sekun-ak had still not returned.

  Alex stood at the mouth of the cave, cupped his hands over his mouth and called for him. The raging wind carried his voice away before it traveled more than a few yards.

  Alex had no way of judging the passage of time. He couldn’t see the sky, let alone the sun. Still, he judged that Sekun-ak had been gone too long.

  What can I do about it, though? Go looking for him? I got lost only going to the trees and back. If I go back out looking for him, it will just mean that we are both lost and separated.

  Alex looked at Monda-ak, sleeping now, a round mound of dog.

  Could I send you out? Would you do better than me?

  Alex was still considering his options when Sekun-ak appeared from out of the storm like a ghost.

  “I thought you were lost!” Alex shouted over the wind.

  Sekun-ak looked puzzled. “Why would I lose myself?”

  Alex shook his head. “Never mind. I brought wood.”

  Sekun-ak picked through the pile of branches Alex had brought back, picking out the thinnest and driest of the bunch. He stripped the needles off those dry branches, then showed Alex what he had brought back. He opened his hands to show small dark balls of sticky material.

  “Pitch! Of course.”

  Sekun-ak also had a piece of dry, flat wood he had found somewhere in his travels, a short, straight branch no thicker than two of his fingers, and some of the vine he had used to make their leaf bags.

  Alex sat back and watched as Sekun-ak built a friction bow out of the small limb, then heaped the dried needles, some dead leaves, and several balls of pitch on top of the flat board. Slowly, he moved the bow back and forth, turning the limb against the flat wood.

  It wasn’t quick, but after fifteen minutes, a wisp of smoke curled up. Sekun-ak blew on the tinder gently and a small flame was created. He dropped more of the tinder and pitch around the flame and a fire bloomed.

  Alex had built a small pile of twigs up near the front of the cave and Sekun-ak moved the fire there. In just a few minutes, they had the best fire they had seen in many weeks. Alex looked at the pile of dry sticks he had brought back and judged that it wasn’t enough, so they left Monda-ak and ventured out together to find more wood.

  On the return trip, Alex watched Sekun-ak. He tread confidently back toward the cave as if he had a compass built into his head, even through the blinding snow.

  That’s a handy talent to have.

  They made two more trips and felt like they had stripped the immediate area of easily burnable wood, but they had a stack that might burn for a few days.

  On the last trip, Sekun-ak found another limb that could replace the spear he had broken off in the badger.

  Back in the cave, they built up the fire to chase away a little of the chill and gloom. They stashed most of their fish just outside the cave, under the snow. Before they did, they hacked off a large hunk for each of them, including Monda-ak.

  They spitted two of the chunks and tossed the raw piece to the dog.

  It grew dark early that afternoon as the snow piled up outside their cave.

  The two men and a dog sat quietly, enjoying the warmth and glow of the fire and the feeling of food in their bellies.

  They felt better than they had since they had left Winten-ah.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  A Leap of Faith

  The storm lasted two more days. They finished the rest of the genta-ta the second day, but they weren’t too concerned. They’d eaten enough to restore their strength and prepare for the next leg of their journey.

  During their days waiting out the weather in the cave, Sekun-ak put his time to good use. He used a burning branch as a torch and was able to explore the rest of the cave. He found several rocks that he was able to turn into tools to shape other rocks. By the second day, he was able to build them better spears and hammers than they’d had.

  Alex asked Sekun-ak if they could eat the badger.

  “Yes, but it has to be prepared correctly. We would need to put it in a fast-running river for several days before we could cook it. Farda-ta”—the Winten-ah name for the badger—“eats anything. If you don’t wash it properly, it can make you very sick.”

  “How about Monda-ak?”

  “Him? He is a walking stomach. He can eat anything.”

  So, while Sekun-ak worked on weapons, Alex used a sharpened rock to gut and clean farda-ta. Monda-ak, who had been on a forced diet, devoured as much of the thing as Alex would give him. He never showed any ill effects, aside from noisier and smellier flatulence than usual.

  After one such impressive display, Alex said, “That’s it. No more farda-ta for you!”

  On the morning of their third day in the cave, water dripped down from the mouth of the cave and onto their fire, causing a small sizzle. The snow had stopped, but there were still drifts as high as their chest—Alex’s chest, at least—and walking would be nearly impossible.

  They decided to stay one more day.

  While they waited, Sekun-ak continued to fashion more tools for them—a stone ax for each of them. Not as good as they had in the armory back in Winten-ah, but more than good enough
for the journey.

  While Alex paid attention and tried to learn the art of building weapons from nothing, he broached a question.

  “Do you ever get lost?”

  “That is the second time you have asked me that. Why would I lose myself?”

  “No, that’s not what I mean. Do you ever get so turned around somewhere that you do not know where you are?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “So you do get lost.”

  “No.”

  “I don’t understand what the difference is.”

  “There are times that I have not known where I was, because I have never been there before, but I am not lost.”

  “Do you know which direction Winten-ah is?”

  Without hesitation, Sekun-ak lifted his arm and pointed.

  “No doubt about it?”

  “I like you, Manta-ak, but sometimes you ask such odd questions.”

  “You just know. Always.”

  “Of course. Don’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Ah.” A look of intense sympathy crossed Sekun-ak’s face. The look of the class genius on meeting the guy who flunked out of first grade. “I did not know it was possible to not know the way home.”

  They’re like carrier pigeons. A sense so natural they aren’t aware of it.

  “Then we don’t need to go back to the river to find our way home.”

  “Of course not. Is that what we have been doing?”

  Alex felt a little embarrassed, but said, “Yes.”

  “There are good things about following the river. A clean water source. There is often food to be found near water.”

  “Yes, but if the terrain is easier away from the river...”

  “We should take the easier path.” Sekun-ak pointed outside. “It is already winter. More storms will come. We need to return to Winten-ah quickly. Every day we are away, Denta-ah is preparing for war, while we are not.”

  “From now on, you point us in the right direction. I’ll follow.”

  “That is as it should be, now that I know you are trunti.”

  ‘Trunti’ is a difficult word to translate from the Winten-ah. It means ‘stupid,’ but in a special way. Someone who is trunti is stupid but was born that way and it cannot be changed. To Sekun-ak, Alex was now trunti.

  Alex knew that whatever reputation he had built during his three years at Winten-ah would take a blow when they returned home. But the thought of the cliffside, with its comfort, friendly faces and warm fires, was enough that a little humiliation was a small price to pay.

  They set out before dawn the next day. The snow wasn’t completely melted, but in places where the sun didn’t reach in winter, it could be months before that happened.

  Where the snow had melted, the ground was now mucky, and mud caked their moccasins before they were a quarter mile from the cave. Soon, that muck spread up their ankles and calves, until they looked like they had walked through a mud river.

  They had been fortunate to find a cave in their hour of need but knew that was not likely to happen with regularity, and they were right.

  Because of the stated advantages, they often turned back toward the river and followed it for a time, but freely abandoned it when terrain turned rough.

  Then they ran into a dead end.

  It was on their fourth day out of the cave and they were exhausted and once again hungry. Sekun-ak had tried each day to spear another genta-ta but had failed. Only Monda-ak, who managed to supply his own food, was eating well.

  They saw a range of tall hills ahead and Alex wondered if this was the same range they had climbed over in their first day out of Winten-ah. His excitement grew until they drew nearer and saw the truth of the situation.

  The river flowed through a neat valley it had cut between two of the hills, but there was nothing but a steep drop-off where the river briefly became a waterfall. Alex and Monda-ak climbed a few hundred feet up the hill and peered down to see the river splashing into a lake far below. The hills themselves were built on top of the cliff, so even if they climbed it, they would need to make a leap of faith into the water far below.

  Alex scrambled back down the hill to where Sekun-ak waited for him.

  “There is a drop on the other side of the hill. I can’t see all along the ridge, but it looks like it’s the same everywhere. Which way is Winten-ah?”

  Like the needle on a compass, Sekun-ak’s arm pointed directly at the opening between the two hills, where the river dropped off.

  “Of course it is. We have two choices then. We either need to hike along this range of hills until we find a place where we can find a way down, or we go over the waterfall.”

  Sekun-ak nodded. “That is an easy choice. Let’s go.” He turned and walked north.

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Alex called after him. “I don’t think that’s the right answer. It could take us days to walk to the end of this ridge and we’ll be farther away from home than we are now.”

  “Yes, but that plan does not include jumping off a waterfall. It is a better plan.”

  “Listen, I know last time we jumped into water, you ended up dead for a little while, but I won’t let that happen to you again.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Well, I can’t. But I’ll try to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

  “We will lose our weapons, my sharpening rocks.”

  “No, we’ll just hold on to them when we go over.” Alex had started to say when we jump but realized they would not actually be able to jump. The river’s current was swift and would simply sweep them away as soon as they stepped into it.

  “I will not do it.”

  “Yes, you will, because you won’t leave me alone down there.” Alex put on his most confident grin and stepped out into the river. He waded to the middle, so he wouldn’t hit the rocks on the side as he went over, then whistled. Monda-ak waded into the water after him.

  On the shore, Sekun-ak folded his arms across his chest, the picture of defiance.

  Alex let his legs sweep out from under him and float in the fast-running current. He knew that Monda-ak would follow him. He was hopeful Sekun-ak would, too.

  Alex’s toes scraped against the river bottom, then in an instant it wasn’t there. His stomach flip-flopped like he was on a rollercoaster. He had meant to point his toes and hit the water below like an arrow. Instead, he tumbled around and around in the rush of water as he fell—a pinwheel out of control.

  He smashed into the water with his left shoulder and the side of his face absorbing most of the impact. He went deep into the lake but did not touch the bottom. When he finally surfaced, he looked around to see Monda-ak paddling toward him.

  Sekun-ak was nowhere in sight.

  A piercing war cry came from the top of the waterfall, then a body surged over the edge, tumbling just like Alex had.

  Sekun-ak hit the water in an awkward pose, landing on the back of his neck. Alex swam quickly to the spot where he entered the water. By the time he arrived, Sekun-ak poked his head up, gasping and spitting water. He glared at Alex.

  “Next time I will just leave you to die.”

  For some reason, that struck Alex as hilarious and he laughed, which made Sekun-ak glare at him even more, until his face split into a wide grin, too.

  “You are still trunti.”

  Alex laughed some more, but said, “Hold on to Monda-ak. He will help you to shore.”

  Minutes later, they made it to safety. Alex had managed to hold on to his hammer, but lost his spear, which was now at the bottom of the deep lake. Sekun-ak had done the opposite.

  They were soaked through, the temperature was dropping, and they had no idea how far it was to Winten-ah. They were fortunate to have survived to make it this far.

  Both men stripped naked in the biting wind and wrung out their clothes as best they could. Monda-ak simply shook himself, starting at his nose and ending at the tip of his tail.

  “Let’s move. Get our blood ci
rculating,” Alex said.

  Sekun-ak held up his hand. “Wait. Look.”

  Alex followed Sekun-ak’s pointing finger but didn’t see anything. A flat stretch of open land, some trees that gently climbed toward more hills.

  “That is Gakan Gate.”

  “You know this place?”

  “I know Gakan Gate. It is the spot where two hills come together to form a valley that dips down and surrounds a small lake.”

  “How far is it from Winten-ah?”

  “Gakan Gate is only a day’s walk. There is a path from there to home.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Tidings of War

  Sekun-ak led the way as they emerged from the familiar forest and looked at the cliffside caves of Winten-ah.

  It was dusk and the field was empty. Orange fires glowed and shadows danced from every cave.

  Alex thought it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Only seeing Amy could have been a more welcome sight to him.

  Balta-ak, who had once placed a giant rattlesnake on a rock to thwart Alex, was the first to greet them.

  All three of them—even Monda-ak—had lost a tremendous amount of weight. They were bruised, battered, scraped, and cut. Alex’s left eye was swollen shut from where he impacted the lake. Sekun-ak still had wounds that hadn’t healed from his first ordeal in the river.

  Monda-ak limped on the right foreleg where the badger had clawed him.

  Alex looked at him with amusement. “Knock it off, you big faker. You haven’t been limping in days.”

  Monda-ak pointedly ignored him and limped on.

  “We thought you were lost,” Balta-ak said. “We’d nearly given up hope.”

  “We never doubted we would return,” Sekun-ak said, “Correct, Manta-ak?”

  Alex realized that Sekun-ak would never tell anyone that he was trunti. It didn’t matter in any meaningful way, but it was the final element of the brotherhood they had developed on the journey.

  “Come, eat, rest,” Balta-ak said.

  “We want to report to Ganku-eh. We have news we need to share.”