The Messenger: Mortal Beloved Time Travel Romance, #1

by Pamela DuMond

  “I do not—” he said.

  “Right. You don’t get it. You don’t understand. Because whoever you are, in wherever I’m at? You’re incredibly rude and downright mean to make fun of my situation.” I tried to squirm from his grasp. But his arm was like a vise and I couldn’t break free. “What is wrong with you?” I asked, beyond frustrated.

  “What is wrong with me?” he asked. “You were the only person rescued after a vicious attack by King Philip’s warriors on the Endicott settlement. Everyone in that outpost died horrible, bloody deaths, except for you. Your friends and family traveled for hours, and risked their own lives with the smallest hopes that they would find you still breathing.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “You are right. I do not. After your family and friends picked through the mutilated bodies and found you alive, they carried you back to the garrison, tended to your wounds and stayed awake for days to make sure you would survive your injuries and awaken on the living side of God’s creation. Now you repay them with hostility and arrogance. Yet you ask what is wrong with me.”

  I felt a flash of anger and pride that burnt my cheeks and my neck. Then I felt shame, because in a way, this guy was right. If I put aside the absurdity of my situation, I could see that these characters in their odd clothes with their strange way of speaking were trying to help me. Perhaps if they were real, this guy would have a valid point.

  But his very muscular arm clasped across me that prevented me from running away couldn’t be real. And I wasn’t about to let some guy in a nightmare make me feel any worse than I felt when I was awake in my real life.

  I shook my head. “That’s not true. What happened on that field with those dead people, what’s happening right now, it’s—”

  “What?” he asked, his breath warm and moist against the skin of my neck.

  I felt his firm grip across my chest loosen. “What’s happening right now is not real.”

  Let him be angry with me. Let this entire crew of helpful, loving, creepy people wearing terrible outfits, living in a totally strange, imaginary world get pissed off at me. At least I was—for the most part—honest and told the truth.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “I’ve been through this before. I went to psychotherapy for this. I must be crazy for even sharing this with you, but I will, because you are the guy who is not willing to let me go.”

  “I would be thrilled to let you go. However I promised Elizabeth I would help her.”

  “Head’s up, dude. Elizabeth is an illusion. It’s been confirmed by over five shrinks that whatever we’re sharing right now, is either a nightmare, or delusion that my brain is creating.” I felt his hair graze against my cheek. “And for the most part, I can’t control these nightmares.”

  But, I had to admit the combination of his strong arms and warm breath on my skin felt a little hot. Fine. Apparently I was having a typical, teenage, hormonal nightmare.

  “I have known you and Elizabeth since I was a boy. I spent enough time around here to know you are both flesh and blood. Although, I would not mind if she was real, and you were simply a nightmare,” he said.

  Excuse me? This guy was in my face about Abigail—why? “Listen to me,” I said. “Apparently my brain tries to escape when I’m stressed. It creates fancy, imaginary situations and exotic people that are technically called delusions.”

  “My brain does not make delusions,” he said.

  Yeah, ’cause you’re perfect. Calm down, Madeline, I told myself. Getting angry with people in dreams never gets you anywhere. “The docs think it’s partially my heredity and my anxiety disorder thing.” I wondered why I’d never had a prior delusion where any guy held me this tight. “So, basically, this whole thing isn’t your fault, and you’re off the hook.”

  “I know where I come from, I know whom I like and who does not like me,” he said. “I do this to help Elizabeth. Not you.”

  “Congrats. You’re practically a boy scout. And lifetimes ahead of me in the good karma and mental health department.”

  “You complain that you are kidnapped,” he said. “You insist this is a dream. But I tell you I have never dreamt of holding a woman, who did not want to be held.”

  I could feel in my gut that this guy was angry. He dropped his arm from my chest, and I felt him step away from me. My entire body swayed for a few seconds.

  “I will not do this anymore, Abigail. I will not try and protect you,” he said. “Even to help Elizabeth. You are free. Go and do whatever you wish.”

  I stopped wobbling, sucked in my core muscles, and stood up straight. “Thank you.” I stretched my neck from side to side. “I don’t need yours, or anyone else’s protection. I’ll wake up in an hour or even minutes and be back the next day at my school. Maybe I’ll even Google this whole dream and see your face in a movie I watched, or a .com site I follow.” I twisted my neck and managed to crack it. “Yes, that feels better.”

  “Google?” the guy asked.

  Time to get out of here. But in order to leave my dream I still needed to thank him face to face. “Elizabeth called you Samuel. That’s your name, right?” I turned and stared up into his face. And all the adrenaline that raged through my body abandoned me in one, long heartbeat.

  Because the young man I had to say goodbye to, was the same beautiful guy with the hazel eyes and the long, black hair that curled around his shoulders. The guy who acknowledged me before he disappeared into the woods, while dead, mangled bodies lay behind him, littered in his path. Oh, no.

  I felt dizzy and everything spun around me. I jammed the palm of my hand onto my forehead, and winced as that tore into the gash on my head. “Oh thank you,” I said to Samuel, who was not only a rebel, but quite possibly a killer. “Must go now.” I stumbled away from him, completely freaked.

  A short, older woman with a face etched with enough lines to fill a road map and an impossibly thick, long, silver braid of hair that hung down her back stepped out of the hut and nabbed my hand.

  “Welcome, Abigail,” she said. “I am so excited you are here. Would you like to come inside my home? You could tell me all about your dreams while I tend to your forehead.”

  I saw Elizabeth and Daniel pointing in different directions, not sure which way to hunt for me. Samuel glared. This woman’s hand felt soothing just like the earth I touched next to this hut. “Okay,” I said. “That sounds great.” I let her lead me away but I felt Samuel’s hazel eyes on me: confused, angry, and judgmental.

  Apparently she did, too. “Thank you for your help, Samuel,” she said. “It is time for you to leave.”

  He frowned and kicked the earth. A young man called out, “Samuel! Hurry up. Leave that poor, Abigail girl alone.” Samuel glanced at the guy then back at me.

  “Go. Have fun. But no matter what Tobias says—do not stay out with him after dark,” the silver haired woman said, and led me inside her hut.

  Chapter 10

  The inside of this tiny dwelling was proportioned like a field huddle of Chicago Bears’ football players on game day: round, compact, and incredibly dense. Every inch of the dark space was packed. Drying plants hung from the ceiling. Fur pelts covered low benches. Rough metal and clay bowls and pots sat next to a small, open fire pit dug into the earth in the hut’s center. There was actually a hole built into the roof above it, and smoke drifted out.

  Oddly enough, this woman’s home still looked and felt comfortable as well as friendly. Not like your neighborhood’s crazy-hoarder-lady’s place; more like your favorite great auntie who thought the stack of newspapers printed the day Diana married Prince Charles, as well as the newspapers on the day she died, might be valuable in the future. Which is why she saved them for you.

  We sat next to each other on mats on the ground. She filled a small, sturdy, ceramic bowl with leaves and berries. “All the gossip-starved tongues in this garrison are wagging about you,” she said and poured liquid from a flask into the bowl. “How luc
ky Abigail was to escape the massacre at the Endicott settlement.”

  She ground the concoction together with a pestle and mortar-like utensils. Then she handed the bowl to me along with the instruments. “Mix that for me, please.”

  I had never used a mortar and pestle before, but I did what she asked. Could it be all that different from stirring a bowl of cookie dough?

  She stood, reached for some herbs hanging from the ceiling of her hut, pinched off some leaves and crumpled them between her fingers. “Show me,” she said.

  “Show you what?” I edged away from her, worried she’d turn into another weirdo from whatever dream I was in.

  “The contents of that bowl, silly.”

  “Oh,” I said, relieved, and held it out to her.

  She dipped her index finger into it and swirled it around. She pulled out a dab and rubbed it on her wrist on top of a big jagged scar. She nodded. “Good.” She sprinkled more pinches of this and that into the concoction. “More mixing please.”

  So I did.

  “Do you remember the last time you were here?” she asked. “Answer truthfully.”

  “No.” Why did she look so familiar? In all honestly, I didn’t have a clue where I would know her—especially not as Abigail. “What’s your name, Ma’am?” I asked.

  “The English call me Angeni,” she said, took the bowl and placed it on the ground. She reached her hand toward my chin and cradled it. Leaned in, she tilted my head up and down.

  I don’t know why I didn’t see it before now, maybe because my heart was racing from my escape attempt, or ’cause the hut was so dark. Her eyes were a bluish color with strange white patches across them. I realized that Angeni was, for the most part, blind.

  She put her fingers from one hand on my face and traced my chin, my lips, my cheeks, and my nose. She felt my forehead, the bandage, and ran a finger through my hair. “Hmm,” she said. “You have beautiful hair.”

  “Everyone says I have my mama’s nose and my dad’s hair. I mean, his is brown, and mine is dirty blonde, but we both have hair that’s super thick. Like, no one in my family will being needing Rogaine any time soon,” I babbled.

  Oh jeez, I sounded like a moron, but Angeni smiled. I didn’t want to stare at her but the past couple of days had been strange. But I didn’t think she could see me all that clearly. Fine, call me terrible.

  Angeni had high cheekbones and deep-set eyes. She was tiny, lean, and fit. She could have been in her sixties, or even in her seventies. I couldn’t tell. That’s when she pulled the gauze bandage off my forehead and poked at my wound.

  “Ow.” I flinched.

  “This is nothing: a flesh wound that’s getting better, and a small knock to your brain. I can fix that. If you are to be a warrior one day, you must first learn to become a Messenger. And if you are to be a Messenger, you must gain knowledge of the differences between pains that steal lives, and those that are merely irritating.”

  Why did Angeni think I would want to be a warrior one day? The only warriors I’d be doing would be yoga poses. The only messengers I knew were those people who earned twenty bucks an hour plus tips, weaving their bicycles through the Loop’s traffic to deliver documents, fruit baskets, or bad news. No way I’d ever be a messenger.

  “I know for a fact you have been through far worse than this, Abigail,” Angeni said. She dipped her fingers into the crock filled with her concoction, and smoothed it on my cut.

  It stung and I cringed.

  “This will help you heal,” she said. “You will have a small scar, but every Messenger needs a marking. Otherwise, how would other Messengers recognize her?” She smiled.

  My heart had calmed down, and my head did feel better. “I don’t think I’m a messenger. I don’t think I’m supposed to be here,” I confided. “My name’s not Abigail. I don’t even know who she is.”

  “Fascinating. You and Abigail look so much alike, that you could be sisters,” Angeni said. “Tell me more.”

  “I haven’t met anyone from here until a couple of days ago,” I said. “And no one will even tell me where I am.”

  She frowned. “You look like Abigail. But you do not talk or act like her. Share with me your real name and where you are from.”

  Angeni got it. Someone in my dream got it. I felt so relieved. “My name is Madeline Blackford and I’m from Chicago, Illinois,” I said.

  “How old are you?”

  “I’m sixteen.”

  “Just like Abigail,” she said. “Maybe you are long lost relatives. You lived miles away and never met.”

  “The problem is, Angeni, I’m from Chicago, probably hundreds of years after this time.” Whenever this time was, I wondered. “We don’t wear the kinds of clothes people wear here. We don’t live in little huts, or houses with wooden forts around them,” I said. “And we don’t wake up to find everyone around us bloody and dead, unless we are in the military, or there’s been a terrible, natural disaster or a terrorist attack.”

  I stood up and paced, agitated, around her hut, all twelve feet of it. “Which, thankfully, doesn’t happen all that often, and has never happened to me before,” I said. “Until now.”

  “This never happened to you before?”

  “No. I’ve had my share of bad dreams, but nothing like this. Everyone’s treating me like I’m an idiot,” I said. “They think I just hit my head, or that some Reverend needs to pray over me.”

  “Hmm. There is a metal rod on the ground close to you. Find it and stir the fire for me, please.”

  “Sure.” I’d stirred fires before. Like, well, some time in my life. I found the rod, picked it up, and poked the fire.

  “The fire is not your enemy. You do not need to attack it,” Angeni said. “Just move the wood a little so the fire can find the driest parts of the branches, and burn them more easily.”

  “Okay,” I grumbled and swooshed the rod around the branches and logs a little less violently.

  “Do you want me to call you Abigail, or Madeline?” she asked.

  “Call me Madeline!” I said, thrilled. “Would you tell me where I am?”

  She sighed. “You are in a province in the Americas called Rhode Island. You were rescued from the Endicott settlement that was brutally attacked during a war. You do not remember any of this, Madeline?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “I live in the United States of America. We have fifty states and one’s called Rhode Island, but I’ve never been there.” Think, I said to myself. Colonial outfits. A War. People who talk funny. “Am I in the Revolutionary War?”

  Angeni shook her head. “No. You live in King Philip’s War. People on both sides are very upset and have old angers, fears, and grudges.”

  The fire sparked under the kindling I had shifted and the flames started licking their way upward.

  “There are so many hateful feelings that I do not believe this bloodbath ends any time soon.”

  How many wars had happened that I’d never heard of. Hundreds? Thousands? Good for me this was just a dream. Bad for Angeni that she believed she was living during a brutal war. But—“Who is King Philip?”

  “The son of the great Wampanoag sachem Massasoit.”

  “A Native American chief?” I asked.

  “The great Indian chief who welcomed the colonists to these shores, and helped them so at least some survived the first winter,” she replied.

  “But now they’re at war?” I racked my brain to say the right thing. “I’m so sorry. Everyone here must be very scared.” I was thrilled this was simply a dream.

  Angeni took my hand and squeezed it. “Whether they admit it or not, everyone in this war is terrified. But you are not dreaming, Madeline. You left behind your life in Chicago in future years when you traveled here. You are living, just like the rest of us, in the year 1675 during King Philip’s War. A conflict I fear, many of us will not survive.”

  Did she just say what I thought she said?

  “Are you telling me that I traveled over
300 plus years back in time—for real?”

  She looked up. The dim light from the fire made the white patches covering her blue eyes look like morning mist.

  “Yes,” she said. “For real. Elizabeth is here. It’s time for you to stop running, and help her.”

  There was a thumping and shaking of the skins covering the entrance to Angeni’s hut. “Abigail!” Elizabeth hollered.

  I jumped and looked at Angeni. “How’d you know?”

  “Come visit me again.” She covered the top of the medicine bowl in fabric and tied some twine around it. “Messengers need to learn the art of communication. Be nice to Elizabeth.” She handed me the bowl. “No matter how many times she calls you Abigail, she still cares about you.”

  She kissed me on my cheek, turned, and opened the flap of her door.

  Elizabeth stood there with Daniel and she didn’t look very happy.

  “I made some healing balm for Abigail’s wound,” Angeni said as we stepped outside her hut.

  “Thank you, Angeni.” Elizabeth grabbed my arm and marched me away from her hut.

  By the time I swiveled and looked back, Angeni had already vanished inside her tiny home.

  Chapter 11

  Me, a time traveler? Me, with the anxiety who couldn’t move through a crowded room without breaking out into a sweat, was supposed to be a Messenger? Me, who could barely cross bridges or climb a ladder? Did this sound like someone who catapulted through years, and careened through lifetimes?

  Someone had a screw loose here, and that description usually applied to me. But this time I was going to sit back and see how this whole scenario played out, because this just couldn’t be true.

  Even though I was apparently living in the middle of a war, the next week was filled with the most awful to-do list of tedious, boring chores. Elizabeth let me sleep in until a little after dawn. Each morning I woke up to the sounds of a few roosters, hens, and animal noises instead of city buses and the TV news. My breakfast consisted of tasteless, blechy gruel.