The Time Travel Diaries

by Caroline Lawrence

  Today was Wednesday. If I wanted to go, I just had to get through tonight and tomorrow without eating. Then I would be empty enough to go on Friday morning.

  I stopped by the dead Christmas trees near the entrance to our stairwell. Had it really been less than a week since I had been called to the headteacher’s office? It seemed more like a month.

  ‘Who am I kidding?’ I muttered. ‘I won’t last a day in Roman London. Especially if I have to go naked and starving. What was I thinking?’

  I took out my new smartphone. What had Solomon Daisy said?

  If you decide to audition for the gig, then the phone is yours to keep.

  I had passed the audition, so now the phone was most definitely mine.

  ‘Just be happy with this,’ I said out loud. ‘You’ve got a cool new phone, with a year’s prepaid contract, unlimited data and a hundred and twenty-eight gigabytes of storage.’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ said a voice behind me. ‘I do.’

  And as easily as taking candy from a baby, Dinu Balan stole my smartphone.

  12

  Crisp-Mugger

  Dinu Balan was the new boy at our school. I was new too, because I started in September, but he arrived from Romania just before Christmas, so he was officially the newest. And the biggest. For some reason he had chosen me as his favourite target. Maybe because he sat near me. Or maybe because we both get dragged along to the same church every Sunday. It’s the Greek Orthodox church in Battersea, south London. The Church of St Nektarios, patron saint of bees. I bet you’ve never heard of him before.

  Every day at break time he steals my crisps.

  Not Saint Nektarios.

  Dinu.

  You’d think I would learn not to bring a packet of crisps every day, but I love salt-and-vinegar crisps almost more than life itself, and deep down I’m an optimist. I live in hope.

  However, this was the first time he had mugged me for more than crisps. He popped up in front of me with that big dumb grin, plucked the phone out of my startled hand and then scarpered.

  I looked after him in dismay.

  Sure, I could have chased him. But I’m a fast runner. I might have caught up with him. Then what?

  I couldn’t go to the police because then my gran would ask where I got the phone in the first place and I had been sworn to secrecy about my mission.

  That’s what decided it for me.

  ‘I’m going to do it!’ I told myself. ‘I’m going back in time.’

  Then, with the million pounds payable upon successful completion of the mission – five mil if I found the girl – I could buy a hundred thousand smartphones.

  I could also buy my gran a proper house, not just a flat. And I could go to a posh private school with fourteen kids per class instead of thirty-two. And no bullies. A school where I could do drama and Latin and maybe even ancient Greek.

  As I came up the stairs I could smell the wonderful aroma of thyme, tomato and slow-cooked sausage. Gran was cooking one of my favourite dishes: gigantes, also known as giant beans.

  It was pure torture.

  My stomach rumbled but I knew I would have to make up a story about feeling queasy. The sooner I went, the sooner I could get the cash and the sooner Gran and I could move to somewhere better.

  I’m not saying our flat was a dump or anything. But my bedroom was hardly bigger than a cupboard. Also, Gran and I have to share a bathroom. She has all her candles and essential oils in there.

  Gran was a hippy in her younger days and she still loves all that Age of Aquarius stuff. Our flat is decorated with faded Turkish carpets and batik wall hangings and potted ferns with macramé webbing and fringed Paisley scarves hung over lamps to make colourful lights on the wall and ceiling. (I think I’m the only kid at school who knows what ‘batik’, ‘macramé’ and ‘Paisley’ mean.) Gran often burns joss sticks and sometimes she lights all the candles in the house and puts on music by rock groups with strange names like Jefferson Airplane or Canned Heat. Other times she plays Greek pop songs from the sixties and once a month we have to do the Zorba dance.

  But she is a great cook. It took all my will power to tell her I felt a bit off and was going to skip dinner.

  It turned out she wasn’t feeling too well either, so we both went to bed early. But my empty stomach wouldn’t let me sleep. I tried reciting the mantra ‘Five million pounds’ over and over.

  But that didn’t help, so I fired up my laptop, an ancient MacBook Pro. Its software is long out of date, but it can still access the Internet. I did some research on fasting. Most people agreed that the first two days are the hardest and then you get a kind of Zen calm and find you have more energy and clarity of thinking.

  I just needed to last one more day before the Zen calm kicked in.

  Then on Friday morning I could go to the Mithraeum and travel back to the past. Solomon Daisy didn’t want me to stay more that forty-eight hours, so that meant I would be back by Sunday. Trying not to think about Martin’s foot and all the other things that could go wrong, I kept reciting my five-million-pounds mantra.

  At last I fell asleep.

  That night I dreamed I was fighting a man with a bird’s head in a giant sandpit.

  I was pretty sure that wasn’t a good omen.

  And as you will see, I was right.

  13

  Time Bubble

  My gran loves me, which is why every Sunday she takes me hostage. I’m not allowed to go on my computer. If I had a smartphone, I wouldn’t be able to go on that either. She calls it ‘Culture Sunday’.

  We have to go to church in the morning. Like I said, it’s the Church of St Nektarios in Battersea. If there’s a blizzard outside or her back is acting up then we do our own church service at home and play backgammon or cards after lunch. But on her good days the ‘culture’ part comes after church when she drags me to a museum or a play.

  One Sunday afternoon in the summer we went to an art gallery by the River Thames called Tate Modern. We were there to see an exhibition of pop art. I thought it would be boring, but it was actually quite good. One artist had made paintings that looked like of comic-book panels and another – a sculptor – made massive balloon animals out of plastic.

  Anyway, the point of this story is the soap bubbles.

  Outside the museum on the public walkway overlooking the river was a man with a big soap-bubble maker. It was just two sticks with a loop of rope strung between them. He dipped it into an inflatable kiddy pool of soapy water, then lifted the loop using the two sticks. Whenever he waved it, ginormous soap bubbles floated up and along the walkway or away over the water. I’m not sure how he made any money out of his giant soap bubbles. Maybe if you paid him you got to have a go.

  The reason I mention him is because that’s what the time portal looked like. A giant soap-bubble maker. It was a circular ring of plastic covered with a film of shimmering light like a soap bubble.

  It was just before eight o’clock on Friday morning and I was standing in the nave of London Mithraeum with Solomon Daisy and his two tech guys. Miss Okonmah from school was there too, which surprised me. I was wearing nothing but a paper hospital gown and paper slippers. And I was looking at a giant soap bubble.

  Only when I looked closer I saw it wasn’t liquid. It was flame. Like the flames on Gran’s gas hob.

  ‘I have to go through that?’ I said. ‘It looks like magic fire.’

  ‘Non magia, sed scientia,’ said Solomon Daisy. ‘It’s not magic; it’s science. But it is a kind of fire,’ he added. ‘It will burn away some of the external bacteria and parasites.’

  ‘Parasites? You mean like fleas and ticks and worms? I don’t have any of those …’

  ‘Of course you do. Everybody does. Did you know you have tiny mites living in your eyebrows and eyelashes?’

  ‘Yuck,’ I said. And then, ‘Won’t it burn me too?’

  ‘Not if you go through fast. You know that party trick where you pass your finger through the flame of a c
andle?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I do not know of a party trick where you hold your finger in a flame. It sounds stupid.’

  ‘I suppose it is a bit stupid,’ he said. ‘But if you pass your finger through a small flame real quick it doesn’t burn. Well, not too quick. But quick.’

  ‘So I have to go through quick but not too quick?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Your scientific accuracy fills me with confidence,’ I said.

  He ignored my sarcasm. ‘Have you ever been on a roller coaster?’ he said.

  ‘Once. When I was about seven or maybe eight. I hated it.’

  ‘Well, this will be like going through a flame on a roller coaster. Also, prepare for the ground level to be a little lower. So it will be like going down a step.’

  ‘What if I twist my ankle. Or break it?’

  ‘Then come back through the portal immediately. But remember to come back around to the front. It only goes one way, like a revolving door. And if something goes wrong you must come back right away. We turn the portal off after five minutes and will then only turn it on for five minutes every twelve hours. By the way,’ he added, ‘meet my tech guys, Jeff with a J and Geoff with a G.’

  I looked at his technicians. They were two guys in jeans and T-shirts. Jeff with a J was a skinny Asian-looking dude with glasses. Geoff with a G had ginger hair and a little matching beard. They both held portable consoles that looked worryingly like the controls of an Xbox.

  They did not fill me with confidence.

  Suddenly I felt sick, like my stomach was full of flapping pigeons.

  ‘What if I decide not to go through?’

  ‘If you don’t want to do it,’ said Miss Okonmah, ‘then don’t.’

  She looked at Solomon Daisy and raised her eyebrows.

  ‘Of course you don’t have to go through,’ said Solomon Daisy, ‘even though you did sign a contract.’ Then he forced a smile. ‘Don’t worry, Alex. It’s going to be cool and you’re going to be great. You’re going to go back in time! Just repeat the mantra “One million pounds to go back, five if I find the girl with the ivory knife.”’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that too,’ I said. ‘What if the knife wasn’t hers?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Solomon Daisy.

  I looked down at my paper slippers and took a deep breath. ‘When I was nine, my parents were killed in a car crash. My mum was cremated but my gran – my dad’s mum – wanted him buried. My grief counsellor told Gran it would be good for me to see him in his coffin. I put my favourite teddy bear in with him so he wouldn’t be lonely.’ I looked up at Solomon Daisy. ‘What if the knife didn’t belong to the girl with the blue eyes? What if it belonged to somebody else? Like maybe her dad?’

  Solomon Daisy nodded slowly. ‘That’s a very good point,’ he said, ‘but I’m positive the knife is hers.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Remember I told you I was obsessed with her and that I once had a vivid dream about her?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Well, in my dream she was wearing the ivory knife on her belt. I think it’s her lucky talisman.’

  I stared at him.

  Yup, I thought. Solomon Daisy is crazy all right. Crazier than a jar of rainbow-coloured weasels. And I am putting my life in his hands.

  14

  Million-Pound Mantra

  ‘You might think I’m crazy,’ Solomon Daisy went on, ‘but I know the knife is hers. So once again, repeat after me: “Five million pounds if I find the girl with the ivory knife.”’

  I nodded and took a deep breath. ‘Five million pounds,’ I said, ‘if I find the girl with the ivory knife.’ The flapping pigeons in my stomach felt more like butterflies now. ‘Remind me how I get back?’ I asked Solomon Daisy.

  ‘Once you’ve gone through, we’ll wait five minutes or so in case you need to come straight back. But then we have to turn it off to let it recharge. Every twelve hours we’ll turn it on again for five minutes and you can come back then.’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s just gone eight o’clock.’

  ‘Is eight o’clock our time the same as eight o’clock their time?’

  ‘Almost certainly not. But you can calculate. Whatever time it is when you arrive, come back through twelve hours later or twenty-four hours later, or thirty-six, but no more than forty-eight. You get the idea.’

  ‘Why no more than forty-eight?’

  ‘It will take four years off your life expectancy. And you’ll start to feel weak from fasting.’

  ‘And what happens if there are tourists here in the Mithraeum when I come back naked?’

  ‘The Mithraeum is open to the public between ten and five. We turn on the portal for five minutes at eight in the morning and again at eight at night, well outside opening hours.’

  ‘I won’t have a watch. How will I tell what time it is?’

  ‘Our inner time clock is better than you think. Be there ready a little earlier if you’re in doubt.’

  ‘Just remember to enter through the same side as you went out,’ said Jeff the Asian tech guy. ‘It’s counterintuitive.’

  ‘What if someone from the past accidentally comes through?’ I said. ‘Like a priest of Mithras or an enraged bull?’

  ‘Only someone who’s been through can return,’ said Geoff the ginger tech guy.

  ‘We think,’ said Jeff with a J.

  Solomon Daisy said, ‘Anybody else will probably feel strange if they get close to it. It’s likely that they’ll avoid the spot.’

  ‘That’s another reason why we only turn it on for five minutes at a time,’ said Geoff with a G, ‘to reduce the chances of anybody coming through by accident. You’ve got a five-minute time window.’

  ‘It worked before,’ said Solomon Daisy, ‘with Martin.’

  ‘Apart from him losing one of his feet,’ I muttered. The flapping pigeons in my stomach were back, so I mentally chanted my mantra: ‘Five million pounds if I find the girl with the ivory knife.’

  Solomon Daisy clapped his meaty hands and then rubbed them together. ‘I’ve got a good feeling about this, Alex,’ he said. ‘Now, one more time – what are the three rules?’

  I closed my eyes and recited them: ‘Naked I go and naked I return. Drink, don’t eat. As little interaction as possible.’ I felt a bit dizzy and had to sit down on the low wall to the right of the nave.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Daisy said.

  I nodded. ‘Just hungry, I guess.’

  He patted my back. ‘You’ll be fine.’

  I stood up. In just paper slippers and gown, more than my feet were beginning to feel cold. I had goosebumps all over.

  I took a step forward. I was about an arm’s length from the shimmery film of flame when all the little hairs on my arm and neck lifted up.

  ‘I can feel it,’ I said.

  ‘Good,’ said Solomon Daisy. He looked at the technicians. ‘Ready, guys?’

  They looked at their consoles and then each nodded at him.

  ‘All right,’ said Solomon Daisy. ‘The moment has come. Take off your slippers and gown and give them to me.’

  I glanced at Miss Okonmah, the headteacher at my school.

  ‘Don’t worry, Alex,’ she said. ‘I’m here for your protection.’ She smiled. ‘But if you’re feeling shy, I’ll turn around.’

  ‘Yes, please,’ I said. And recited, ‘Five million pounds if I find the girl with the ivory knife.’

  After Miss Okonmah turned around, I stripped off and stood shivering in the murky darkness of London’s Mithraeum, protecting my modesty with my hands.

  ‘Good luck and off you go!’ cried Solomon Daisy.

  I formed a quick prayer in my head and took a deep breath. Then, reminding myself to be quick but not too quick, I stepped through the soap-bubble portal of flame.

  15

  Travel Sic

  Solomon Daisy had told me that going through the portal would be like a roller-coaster ride.

  He wa
s wrong.

  First of all, I had forgotten there would be a step down. When the ground wasn’t where I expected it to be I fell forward, landing hard on my hands and knees. For a long moment I couldn’t breathe. Then at last my lungs remembered what to do and sucked in air. But the air was different. Colder. Damper. With a hint of burnt pine.

  My body was fizzing inside and out. I could hear a high-pitched ringing in my ears. It felt less like a bad roller-coaster ride and more like I imagined ‘the bends’, that thing scuba divers get if they come up too fast.

  As if the tingling on my skin and the squealing in my ears and the damp in my nose weren’t bad enough, my eyes were glued shut like after a long sleep.

  When I managed to prise them open I felt a jolt of panic.

  I was blind.

  They had sent me into the past naked as a newborn and blind as a bat!

  Then I understood. It was dark because I was in a temple with no windows, designed to resemble a cave. As my eyes adjusted, I realised it wasn’t pitch black but dark green, like being deep underwater. Straight ahead I could just make out the statue of a man in a floppy hat sitting on a bull.

  It had worked! Solomon Daisy had sent me back to the Temple of Mithras, presumably in the year 260 AD or thereabouts. The tingling in my arms and legs was calming down and the ringing in my ears was beginning to fade.

  Feeling dizzy, I got slowly to my feet and turned to find the source of the eerie green light. It was the circular portal, with its filmy bubble skin. In a pitch-black setting it actually gave off a faint light.

  Suddenly, the green exploded in a blinding flash as a shape leaped towards me. I jumped back, tripped on a step leading up to the statue and sat down hard.

  The green flash faded, leaving me in darkness again. In my ears, a strange moaning noise overlaid the fading bat-squeal.

  ‘Oh,’ moaned a voice.

  Someone had come through the portal after me!