An Alex Hawk Time Travel Adventure | Book 3 | Return from Kragdon-Ah

by Inmon, Shawn

  “This place stinks of death,” Senta-eh said, sticking her head farther in. She meant figuratively, not literally, as there was no smell in the cave aside from dust and dirt.

  Senta-eh climbed down from the hole much more sensibly than Alex and Monda-ak had. She laid her hand on Alex’s shoulder. “Lanta-eh has told you. I do not need to be saved. I am on exactly the path I need to be on. Our child will be healthy and beautiful. She will play an important role in the future of Winten-ah and all of Kragdon-ah. If I lived to be as old as Drana-eh, I couldn’t ask for a better life than that.”

  Alex laid his head against her and finally recognized the truth of what she said.

  “I don’t like it here. There’s nothing that will benefit us.” He paused at that and remembered the glint of actual steel from the blade of the knife. “Wait. Maybe there is.” Alex stepped across to the picnic table—one of many anachronisms in the dusty cave—and reached around the corpse for the knife. When he did, he saw the small rectangle he had noticed from above. He first picked up the knife, appreciating the balance and the heft of the thing. He slipped it into his belt and saw that the other object was a book.

  He opened the cover and saw it was not really a book, but a diary.

  Written in English, the first line read, The Diary and Final Thoughts of Zachary Moorcock.

  Alex closed the cover, then noticed there was an arc of dark stains across it. He rubbed a finger across the stain, but he already knew what it was.

  Blood.

  Alex tucked it into his belt as well, then turned back to Senta-eh and said, “There’s nothing else here for us. I’m sorry.”

  “Why be sorry? We had a wonderful ride across endless miles of scenery that looked exactly alike. We found water that smells like Monda-ak’s farts. What’s to be sorry about?”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The Diary of Zachary Moorcock

  The trip home seemed even longer than the trip to the cave had been. Alex felt deflated, as his last best hope of saving Senta-eh had slipped through his fingers.

  His spirits were buoyed when they turned off the forest trail and saw the familiar outline of the cliffside. Senta-eh’s young archers were practicing without her, but abandoned that and ran to them shouting her name as soon as they saw her.

  To most in the tribe, Lanta-eh and Alex were heroes. The young archers only had eyes for Senta-eh.

  Sekun-ak met them at the base of the cliffs. Alex did not wait for him to ask, but simply said, “No. There was nothing to help.”

  Alex remembered the knife and book he had carried back and handed them both to Sekun-ak.

  Sekun-ak held the diary briefly and handed it back to Alex, completely uninterested. He spent more time on the knife. He ran his finger along the still-sharp edge of the blade, held it up so it glinted in the afternoon sun, weighed it in his hand.

  “Is it stama?” Alex asked.

  “No,” Sekun-ak said. “But maybe I am getting soft-headed in my old age.” He handed the knife back to Alex.

  Alex turned the horses over to a young boy who was dancing with eagerness to help Manta-ak.

  He retreated to the cool comfort of their little cabin and sat at their table while Senta-eh reclined on the bed.

  “What is that?” she asked.

  “It’s a story. It’s just like what we do when we tell our stories around the fire, but it is put in this form so that the same story will be told exactly the same way tomorrow and the day after.”

  “I think I like our way better. A hunter’s kill grows every time he tells the tale.”

  Alex laughed. “That is true. Do you want me to read it to you?”

  She considered. “No. I did not like what I felt in that cave. I do not think I want to know any more of that story.”

  “You are a smart woman,” Alex said, then opened the book.

  My name is Zachary Moorcock. This is how we came to be in this strange land.

  Alex riffled through the pages and saw that most of them were blank.

  I have come to regret the moment I found the black door in the forest. I regret even more that I ever stepped through it. I have killed us all.

  It was a hard winter, food was scarce, and I was in the forest hunting for anything to add to our pot. That was when I first saw it. It looked so out of place that I first fled from it. Something pulled me back, as though I was Johnny spying a train set in a shop window.

  No matter what direction I turned, my own feet betrayed me and brought me back to it again and again. It was freezing cold that day and maybe that’s why I stepped through the door. Hoping, perhaps, to just find a spot of warmth.

  I don’t know who, if anyone, will ever find these words. If they were from the time we left behind, they would never believe it. They would think me mad or trying to write a story as has never before been written.

  If there is anyone in this new place, I have not discovered them. If I did, I doubt they would be able to read these scratchings I leave behind. Still, it is what we all desire. To be heard, to be remembered.

  When I stepped through the door, I was rewarded with sunshine and warmth like I had not known in many months. I turned in panic, for fear that my entrance to this incredible bounty might have disappeared as I passed through it. I needn’t have feared, though. It remained, as out of place here as it was in the woods behind our house.

  I admit I stood there and warmed myself for a time before I felt guilty and stepped back through. Just like that, I was back in the harsh Oregon winter. It was as though I had dreamed what was on the other side of the door.

  In fact, that’s exactly what I thought.

  I hurried back to the house and made Annie and the kids dress up warm and follow me into the woods. They thought I had gone crazy. I could tell. But they came with me.

  When we all walked through the door, it was like Christmas had come again. Johnny and Alice threw their winter coats off and spun ‘round and ‘round. Annie took off her winter hat and turned her face up to the warm sunshine like it was a gift.

  I got a bad feeling, though, and made us all bundle up and go back home. It was a harsh reality to step from that warmth to the snowy cold again. We walked back home, but all of us kept looking over our shoulders at that dark door.

  The rest of that day, it felt like I couldn’t make our little house warm, no matter how much wood I put in the stove. I knew right then I’d made a mistake. I never should have stepped through the door, and I damned sure shouldn’t have brought my family through.

  I apologize for my language. There is no call for that.

  The next morning, it felt like we were each other’s warden. We kept a keen eye on each other to make sure none of us slipped off to warm ourselves in that sunshine.

  As much as I hate to say, it was me that first said, “Maybe we should just go through and spend a day there. Just a little break from the cold. That’s all we need.”

  I regret those words more than anything else because that’s exactly what we did. We packed ourselves what little food we had in the cupboard and walked through the door. We spent the day in the sunshine. While Annie and I watched the kids playing, we hatched the plan that would kill us all.

  Before we found the door, we could pretend like we were doing okay, even though we weren’t. Annie and I made sure the kids always had something in their stomach before they went to bed, but I had to make a few new holes in my belt and I noticed that Annie’s dress was hanging on her like it hadn’t before.

  We didn’t know what was here, other than warm sunshine. In an Oregon January where the cold, snow, and freezing rain was constant, that seemed like enough.

  Once we had the thought that maybe we should move here for a spell, the idea took hold like a fever. We sold everything we didn’t want to take with us and turned that money into what we needed to survive here.

  No, that’s not right. We turned that money into what we thought we needed to survive here.

  We bought the little car
t and piled it high with food. I knew there had to be better hunting here than I had found in the middle of the winter back home, where even the squirrels were hiding. So, I brought my rifle and as many boxes of ammunition as I thought we could carry.

  I was perturbed when I took the cart up to the door. This is another one of those things I don’t expect anyone to ever believe. The cart was wider than the door. I should have thought to measure, but I didn’t. I got frustrated, just like Annie says I always do, and I pushed the cart into the door anyway, and in we went. It didn’t fit, but it went right through like shit through a goose.

  Again, pardon my language.

  It was pretty good for a while. Mostly, we were just glad to be out of the rain that seems to stretch forever some winters. At first, we thought maybe there was eternal sunshine here, but eventually it rained on us here, too. It was a warm rain that soon went away, though, so we didn’t mind so much. In fact, the kids stripped down to their skivvies and ran through it. Annie were tempted to do the same, but didn’t. I wish we had.

  I thought I would build us a little cabin to stay in. We kept saying that if we didn’t like it, we could just go back. But we didn’t have a map. By the time we decided we needed to go back or die, it was too late. For the life of us we couldn’t find that damn door. And I do mean for the life of us.

  I brought the gun because I thought the hunting would be good. I never thought the hunting might be good and we would be what was being hunted, but that’s what happened.

  On the second day we were here, we saw a grizzly bear, but it wasn’t like any bear I’ve ever seen. It was bigger than our house we left behind. We hid behind the rocks and it never came close to us, but laws! Just seeing it walk by was enough to loosen your bowels.

  We kept wandering, looking for the perfect place to settle down, but the more we walked, the more we ran into the most incredible animals and birds. Problem was, they all wanted to eat us more than we wanted to eat them.

  Finally, we found this cave. I thought that was our salvation, but it just meant the inevitable was a little slower coming. One of us had to stand watch in the mouth of the cave every minute or they would come right in and drag us out. I don’t know what we would have done if that giant bear had decided we were living in his cave. Our rifle wouldn’t have been so much as a peashooter to that great beast.

  At first, I thought Annie and I could take turns on watch. Two people trying to stay sharp twenty-four hours a day wears you out pretty fast. After a few days, I had to break down and have Jimmy watch for a few hours.

  Then Alice wanted a turn. I should have known. That’s the way kids are.

  Before I’d let her stand guard, I made sure she was trained. To remember that every gun is a loaded gun. To never point it at anything she didn’t mean to shoot. How to clean it. That sort of thing. She picked it all up real fast and I thought she was ready.

  She wasn’t ready.

  Her very first watch, we all stood around and watched her, too. Everything was fine until one of those wolves came running at her.

  They did it all the time. Testing us. Didn’t take them long to figure out what the range of the gun was, then they just tried to get us to waste our ammo.

  Alice didn’t know that. When it came running at her, it scared her, of course. She was just a little girl. I must have lost my mind to ask her to do what I did.

  It’s hard for me to even write this, but it’s important that I get this all down before I finish what needs to be done.

  Alice gave a little scream, turned to run, and tripped. When she fell, she pulled the trigger. It all happened so slow, it was like I could watch that bullet heading for Johnny’s head, but I was frozen in place.

  Annie didn’t handle losing Johnny very well. He was always her favorite.

  For a long time, she held his body and rocked him back and forth while Alice cried and cried.

  Before I knew what was happening, Annie picked up the gun, shot Alice, then herself.

  I didn’t think she’d be able to reach the trigger with the barrel under her chin like that.

  She found a way.

  That she didn’t shoot me first showed how much she hated me by then.

  I wish I’d never seen that Goddamned door.

  Excuse my language.

  The final page was signed, Zachary Moorcock.

  Alex hadn’t realized he had been holding his breath as he read the last page, but now it blew out in one long exhale.

  Senta-eh swung her legs over the edge of the bed and sat beside Alex.

  “Do you want to tell me about it?”

  Alex looked at her, a haunted expression in his eyes.

  “No.”

  She never asked him about it again.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Sanda-eh

  Over the next few months, Alex did his best to put the inevitable out of his mind. It was not quite like living with someone with a terminal illness. That person was just heading toward the end of their life’s road. Senta-eh was doing the same, but she was carrying another life with her as she did.

  The few disagreements Alex and Senta-eh had during this time were when he tried to take on too much for her.

  Alex insisted on bringing every meal to her. As soon as she was done eating, Alex would snatch her plate away and take it to where it would be washed.

  Finally, she would say, “I am with child. I am not an invalid. If you want to take care of someone, go up into the cave and take care of the magdas up there. They like it. I do not.”

  Alex would agree and remember for a few hours or a few days, but he always slipped back into taking care of her.

  Senta-eh spent the days of early fall in the field with the young girls, showing them how to be an archer.

  “Men are sometimes stronger than us, but they are rarely smarter,” she would say to her young charges. “In battle, it is best to deal with them from a distance.”

  Then she would line them up and have them shoot at targets from an ever-growing distance. She would never know, but that dozen young girls would eventually go on to be known as Senta-eh’s army. It was only one of the gifts to the tribe she would leave behind.

  By the time winter solstice arrived, her stomach was distended, but she was so active that she didn’t gain weight anywhere else. Alex commented that she looked like a rope with a knot tied in it.

  “As it should be,” she said.

  The Winten-ah kept track of time by cycles of the moon and the distance between solstices. In a deep part of Alex’s brain, though, he still kept track of the days using the calendar he had been brought up with. Using that calendar and what Niten-eh told him about when Senta-eh was likely to deliver, he realized that her due date was right around Valentine’s Day.

  As each day passed, Alex felt a greater sense of dread. He and Senta-eh took to sleeping less and less. It was winter and there was very little work to be done anyway, so they didn’t need the rest as much. Much more, though, Alex wanted to spend every minute talking, laughing, holding her close.

  Making more of those thousand and more memories Senta-eh had spoken of.

  Their favorite topic was the child she carried. There was no way to know for sure, but Lanta-eh had told him that she was carrying a daughter. That being the case, she had specific instructions for Alex as to how their daughter should be raised.

  She forbade him to be as solicitous of the baby as he had been of her since their binding ceremony.

  “You will make her soft. She will not be strong enough to survive our world. You must let her run and fall on her own. Let her fight her own battles; choose her own direction. I know you,” she said, holding a steady gaze. “You will look at her and see me, and you will want to honor my memory. The best way you can do that will be to do as I ask.”

  Alex sighed, then promised he would.

  “And, I know her name.”

  That hit Alex like a thunderbolt. He hadn’t even bothered to consider that.

&nb
sp; Better to know what she desires, though, than to guess on my own.

  “Sanda-eh.”

  Alex closed his eyes and felt a lump in his throat.

  Sanda was the Winten-ah word for strong.

  “That is perfect. With you as her mother, how could she be anything but strong?”

  “That is the truth,” Senta-eh agreed, and there was no need to discuss it further.

  A few weeks later, the time came. Until the very end, Alex cast about for a solution, a cure.

  There was none to be found.

  Alex, Lanta-eh, and Niten-eh were in the cabin with Senta-eh as she labored.

  It tore at Alex that in what seemed to be the last hours of her life, Senta-eh would know nothing but pain. Niten-eh offered her herbs to chew that would lessen the pain, but she refused them.

  “I want to feel what there is to feel,” she said simply.

  Her labor started before dawn and went on well past sunset. Alex did not know where she found her limitless reserve of strength. He only knew he could not have endured what she did.

  Finally, while the stars burned brightly outside, the baby came.

  Senta-eh greedily reached her arms out to hold her, pressing her cheek with the baby’s in the traditional Winten-ah birth-greeting.

  “Sanda-eh,” she said, touching the baby’s dark hair and smiling at the small, wrinkled face. “You are perfect.”

  Alex sat on the bedside, breathless with fear. He did not know what to do with his hands. With his eyes, he devoured Senta-eh.

  Senta-eh cradled Sanda-eh in her right arm and reached for Alex with her other. “Thank you, my husband. You made my life so much better.”

  Her hand fell limp.

  Her spirit left her body.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Three Years Later