Word Hunters

by Nick Earls

  ‘Hastings was a totally serious battle.’ Al tried not to sound annoyed. ‘It was a massacre. Pretty much the whole English army dies, and you’re in it. Eight thousand men. Maybe ten. All on one hillside.’

  Will nodded. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you. I don’t think any battle’s easy. It’s always nice to get a word that doesn’t have one. And there are plenty. Lots of words come from plays and printing errors. And unreasonable things people said in the 17th century about the Dutch.’

  It was a relief to hear that. Lexi wanted more of those words. As she saw people crossing the street at the lights on their way to the El Dorado for a movie, she wanted that life back. She wanted Sundays to be simple and safe, and to have hours that weren’t spent working through past battles or their next move into the past.

  Among the group bunching up to cross the road, she noticed a girl in an orange hat. Not a towelling hat like her grandfather’s in the photos, but it was enough. She thought of Grandad Al and the fish, Grandad Al on sports day, Grandad Al lost and with all kinds of mean and strange theories about it, and only she and Al could save him.

  She hadn’t fought Montezuma, but she had fought. She knew what it felt like when cavalry charged, when archers filled the sky with arrows, when a mace bit into your flesh. She wouldn’t ever be the same again. She couldn’t forget it. She watched the moviegoers on this summer Sunday and knew she could go, but she couldn’t be one of them anymore. And she didn’t want to be.

  There were only three people in the world who understood her. One was a librarian over 3,000 years old, another was a skater dude closing in on a 110, and the third was her irritating but essential brother. A month ago she’d been cool, and staying cool had been all she’d needed to worry about. Life wasn’t like that now.

  ‘There’s one more thing,’ Will said when they were almost back at the bus stop. ‘I really want to ask Caractacus this one. Have you noticed that, sometimes, if you go back more than a few hundred years, it’s as if someone’s watching you, maybe even hunting you?’

  Al started to say no, but Lexi interrupted him. ‘Teutoburg Forest. We’d almost got away from the battle when these two guys came out of nowhere. It really seemed like they were out to get us. And they didn’t look like the Romans or the local people.’

  Will nodded. ‘Were they wearing grey robes?’

  ‘Yes.’ She stopped walking. ‘How did you know that?’

  Will was staying in a dorm room at a youth hostel when the next word mission came through. It was the kind of place his family would have completely freaked out about in 1918, and he was loving it. Everyone seemed to get on with each other and, any time he was near the pool, German and Scandinavian female backpackers seemed to need him to rub sunscreen on their backs.

  He kept promising the manager that he would find his ID to register properly, but Mursili was still working on that. Will could get an express copy of his birth certificate from London within days, but it’d take a credit card he didn’t have and it’d say 1903, which wouldn’t help his case.

  He told the manager he’d been robbed once when he was sleeping in a park, and he’d lost everything. He didn’t say it had happened in the northern summer of 1836.

  Music had come a long way since 1918, and was now played all night and loud. From the music videos in the bar in the hostel basement, it seemed that all black American people were now rich and highly desirable. He wanted to tell the backpackers how great this was – so much better than in the early 19th century and even the 20th – but he thought they wouldn’t get it. They hardly seemed to see colour at all. Everyone danced with everyone. If it was all like this, he totally loved the 21st century, even if he still missed home.

  Then he got the text from Lexi saying that the dictionary had gone off again and the word was ‘dollar’.

  He texted back, ‘Not one I’ve done. C U soon.’ He finished his coffee and checked that he had his Go Card in his pocket. If the buses worked out right, he could just make it back to the hostel before the end of dollar pizza – it was three dollars a slice after six. His backpack was ready in his room.

  Mursili was with Lexi and Al in the park when he arrived. Al was holding the dictionary.

  ‘It went off when we were at school.’ He showed Will the open page. ‘I don’t know how long it’s been going for.’

  ‘We’ve got a while.’ Will took the dictionary and read the definition. ‘They last for a while.’

  ‘I’ve looked it up,’ Mursili said. ‘It should take you back no more than 500 years. That’ll be in Europe. German-speaking Europe. I can’t say for sure where you’ll go between now and then. It should be relatively battle-free, though.’

  For a moment no one spoke. They watched the ‘& more’ button blinking and braced themselves for the fall and whatever might follow it.

  ‘I’ll step back, then,’ Mursili said. ‘See you in a minute.’

  Will turned the dictionary Lexi’s way. ‘Ladies first. As we said in 1918.’

  She blushed and reached for the button.

  They shuddered over the grammar-manual bumps of the past century and a half and then veered sideways. Lexi noticed that, while Al still tumbled and she did her best not to, Will flew easily and the wind blew his hair back as he fell. She’d seen a picture of a girl called Dagmar on his phone, and wondered if Dagmar was his girlfriend.

  As the air cleared, she hadn’t expected to see New York again quite so soon. But it wasn’t 19th century New York or the New York of Hudson’s Half Moon voyage. It was somewhere in-between: a town on the southern part of Manhattan. There were fields and empty blocks and damaged buildings. And a crowd.

  Will angled his flight to steer clear of the people on the street and the others followed. They landed at the next corner.

  The crowd had gathered around an impressive stone building with columns at the front and a red roof.

  ‘Oh, great. Buckles.’ Al took a look at his shoes. ‘At least Will and I’ve both got them. And are these leggings or—’

  ‘Breeches, I think.’ Will had a mustard-coloured suit, with a thigh-length waistcoat and breeches ending at white stockings from the knee down. He wasn’t going to mock anyone for what they were wearing.

  ‘And yet again I’m not supposed to move.’ Lexi’s dress had fitted sleeves and a narrow waist, but puffed out below there in numerous petticoats. Her backpack was now a wicker basket, while Al and Will had matching black satchels over their shoulders. ‘I can’t believe I’ve got to carry all this in my hand.’

  They had left the 21st century with loaded backpacks. That had been Will’s idea. They had ropes, muesli bars, whistles, matches – the list went on, and was an updated version of what Will had learnt to pack in 1918. Each of them also had a photo of Grandad Al. The key badges might help any lost word hunter find them, but this way they could also ask if people had seen him.

  The one thing they’d ruled out taking was weapons. Will had tried it with hunting knives and an air pistol and they had all vanished. So Lexi and Al’s knife going missing hadn’t been a one-off. Will had his own list of questions for Caractacus and the missing weapons were on it.

  Al checked the pegs. ‘Four this time.’ He showed the others the one that had activated.

  Doug blinked up at the rectangle of daylight. He smelt stale sweat, perfume, occasional horse poo. And someone was roasting nuts.

  ‘The War of Independence is over, then.’ Will looked down the street into the distance. ‘Two years ago. Do you think it’s what wrecked those buildings? There’s been a fire. The one at the end of the street looks like it was a church.’ He focused his attention on the crowd and the building across the road. A banner hung from the balcony and it read ‘Congress of the Confederation’. ‘That looks like the spot for us. “Dollar.” What’s it going to be?’

  Al had expected a team decisi
on, but Will was already on his way. Just because the building was the obvious place to start didn’t mean it was right. History didn’t always happen in big buildings. But he had to catch Will to tell him that, and Will had already made his move. He and Lexi were checking the pillars below the balcony for word-hunter initials when Al reached them.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ an usher said. ‘We have only a few more seats.’ He directed them towards the door. ‘They’re debating currency.’

  Al kept his complaint to himself. He would have picked the building too, after a quick look around.

  At least ‘dollar’ looked easy so far. They took their seats in the back row. At the front of the chamber, the representatives were sitting on wooden seats arranged in rows on a platform. They all sat side-on to the audience. Some rows of seats were on the left of the temporary stage, some on the right, and all the representatives faced the middle. One man sat on a raised chair against the back wall.

  He tapped something against the arm of the chair and the crowd went quiet, waiting for him to speak.

  He nodded to acknowledge their silence. ‘Our final speaker before a short recess shall be the United States Minister to France and former congressman for Virginia,

  Mr Thomas Jefferson, happily back among us for this sitting.’

  Thomas Jefferson stood up. ‘Thank you, Mr Speaker.’ His hair was starting to grey and it curled under at the ends. He cleared his throat and checked his notes. ‘My views shall come as no surprise to those who know me.’ Some of the others were nodding as if they were on his side already. ‘For those who do not, I refer to my written proposal of 1782. The matter of our currency is one of both practical and symbolic importance. We are independent from Britain, and should demonstrate that at every opportunity. There are still pounds in circulation in our country, but so is the Spanish eight-real piece, which we have come to know as the Spanish dollar, and so is the Maria Theresa thaler of our friends in Continental Europe.’

  At the mention of the Spanish dollar, Lexi, Al and Will all looked around, but there was no sign of a portal yet. Al straightened his breeches and sat back in the wooden chair. He told himself it was good there were three of them now. He and Lexi no longer had to make every decision themselves, find every portal themselves, fight every battle without a clue about how to do it. Will might have ideas about being in charge, but Al felt less responsible and, if he was honest, less scared. That counted for something. Will had experience and looked fit and in control. When they had first met him in the coach house in Plymouth he looked hungry and almost frightened. Perhaps he’d been afraid of being wrong, getting his hopes up and then staying stuck in 1839.

  Thomas Jefferson was holding paper money in one hand. ‘I know that some would favour “Continental” as the name, and the Continental served us well in time of war. But the future is not its time. Inflation has rendered it worthless, and these Continentals I hold are printed in three different currencies, including the British pound. We cannot use the British pound, even on our own notes. I therefore propose that the unit of currency of these United States be, across the nation, called the dollar. The dollar is a known coin, and the most familiar of all to the mind of the people. It is already adopted from south to north. It is the recommendation of

  Mr Howell’s grand committee. I have a proposer and a seconder.’ He nodded towards two of the seated men. ‘And I ask you, after this recess, to give their resolution your full support.’

  There was applause from the congressmen before he sat down, and the audience joined in, first simply because applause had started and then because they knew what it meant. It was a further step towards independence, another block on which to build a nation, and that was something to celebrate.

  The woman next to Al stood, still applauding, and the basket on her arm bumped Al’s elbow. There was a loaf of bread sticking out of it, with a chunk missing at the end. Doug was poking out of Al’s coat pocket, gnawing away at it. Al shook his coat and Doug fell back down out of sight. Even when history was being made, a rat would ignore it if there was bread on offer.

  The Speaker called for order and asked for the wording of the resolution to be circulated during the recess.

  The congressmen stood and the crowd followed. Suddenly everyone was talking at once.

  ‘I’ll get to where they’re sitting and check for a portal,’ Will said. ‘You two get your pictures out.’

  For the next half-hour they made their way through the audience and most of the congressmen, but no one knew Grandad Al. Quite a few commented on the quality of the image, and Lexi and Al put it down to a new engraving technique. No one noticed their key badges. By the time the Speaker called the house to order again, they were sure there were no word hunters there.

  If they could find the portal, they could leave with it and search the streets, travel even further. But they had no leads. This wasn’t Nantucket. America went on and on beyond the Hudson River and 1785 was only one year in the long history of English. They would search systematically each time, but then they would go. That was the deal.

  ‘Nothing,’ Will said as they sat down again. ‘If it’s gone off I couldn’t find it. Not even any initials, but I put some on a column down at the front.’

  No Grandad Al, no lost word hunters, no portal. Not yet.

  ‘The resolution proposed by the congressmen is a simple one,’ the Speaker said. He had a single sheet of paper in his hand. ‘That the money unit of the United States of America be one dollar. All in favour please say “aye”.’ All the congressmen seemed to say it, loudly and clearly. One banged his walking stick against the floor. ‘All against, please say “nay”.’ There was silence. ‘Let it be recorded that it was passed on the voices that the money unit of the United States of America be one dollar.’

  Applause broke out again, this time beginning in the audience and spreading to the stage. The Speaker made no move to stop it. It was history being made and a roomful of people who knew it. It was times like this that Al most wanted to tell people about – America could have gone for the Continental or something else, but the dollar was chosen in a particular place and at a particular moment and he had been there to see it.

  The Speaker made a note on the copy of the resolution in his hand, and passed it to a clerk. It was then that it started to glow.

  The word hunters left their seats as the clerk stepped from the platform and made his way down the side of the chamber towards a table with documents on it.

  ‘You two distract him,’ Will said. ‘I’ll get behind him and take the resolution.’

  It felt as though Will was doing the hard part of the job, until Al realised there was no plan for distracting the clerk. He thought back through Thomas Jefferson’s speech.

  ‘Got it,’ he said. ‘Leave it to me, Lex.’

  They reached the clerk as he was setting the resolution on the table. Will looked ahead into the crowd, pretended to see someone he knew and waved. He took a step past the clerk.

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’ Al said. ‘I have a question.’

  ‘Of course you do.’ The clerk sounded less than interested. ‘Everyone has a question at these open sessions. That’s the idea.’

  ‘If the Spanish call their eight-real piece eight reales, why do we call it the Spanish dollar?’

  The man rolled his eyes as if Al was clueless. ‘Why? Because it’s not Dutch.’

  Will had the resolution in his hand and he ducked behind a column. Al thanked the clerk – though he didn’t know what he had to thank him for – and waved at the same spot in the crowd as Will had. The clerk muttered something about open sessions, checked his table and wondered where he’d put the resolution.

  As the others reached him, Will touched the ‘& more’ button glowing from the ‘o’ of the word ‘dollar’.

  ‘Why can’t it always be this easy?’ he said, as Al d
rove the peg into the portal.

  They dropped straight down, quickly at first and then more slowly. As the air cleared and the pressure left his chest, Al started to wonder just how English the English language was. They were falling towards Manhattan for the fifth time in just one-and-a-half words.

  This time, most of the island was forest or grassland or farms, but the bottom tip had a wall across it, marking the edge of a town. So it was after Hudson, after 1609. There were streets of white houses with canals cut between them, a windmill and a star-shaped fortress. The gardens had trees in neat rows and paths marking the lawns and beds into diamonds.

  There were ships docked in the harbour and four more approaching from the sea, sailing together. A crowd was gathering on the docks and the word hunters angled into a glide that would drop them nearby.

  Will was the first to steady himself on his feet. ‘They’re all going to be Dutch, aren’t they?’ He glanced at the crowd and then checked his own clothes. He had a big black hat with a buckle on it that matched the buckles on his shoes. His black coat reached most of the way to the ground, or at least all the way to his pale blue knee-high stockings. ‘This is going to be New Amsterdam.’

  ‘Eight reales was the Spanish dollar because it wasn’t Dutch.’ Al was beginning to think the clerk’s comment mightn’t be irrelevant after all. ‘Are there Dutch dollars here? Is this when they arrive or—’

  ‘Yeah, great,’ Lexi said. ‘Any chance we could stop loving the history for a second and take a look at the peg?’

  ‘Only once we’ve finished talking about your hat.’ This time Al was dressed like a pirate, while Lexi wore a lacy version of the hairnets worn by the deli staff in Coles, a lacy collar and more than likely several petticoats.