Harry shook his head, nodding, then said, “And you want me to ensure he doesn’t, right?”
John Timothy raised an eyebrow, stopped walking, and turned toward Harry. “No, Harry, not at all; just the opposite, really. Hitler was—is—an egomaniac. He can turn a phrase and inspire fanatical zeal, but he is not a military strategist. His many decisions, like halting the panzers at Dunkirk, invading Russia, his emphasis on superweapons, and sadly his persecution of the Jewish population, and therefore the Jewish atomic scientists, combined with many other egocentric decisions, were instrumental in the Germans losing the war. Had another more stable, more competent individual been in charge, well, our grandchildren might all speak German.”
“So, if I am not here to stop Hitler’s rise to power, why am I here?”
John Timothy gestured to a set of comfortable chairs and offered Harry a drink, which he declined. As he sat down, John Timothy crossed his legs, looked at Harry, and continued, “This is what we know. Someone we have not been able to identify has begun to manipulate the Nazi party. They are subtle, brilliant, and hidden in the shadows. Apparently, they know power is more important than recognition and have slowly, perhaps more slowly than we can imagine, spent the time to build a network. How did Sir Conan Doyle describe Moriarty? He was the mastermind of evil, the schemer of crime and all that is undetected sitting motionless, a spider in its web, a web with hundreds of strands, orchestrating the great plan.”
“So, if you cannot identify him, how do you know such an individual exists?” Harry asked.
John Timothy stared back at Harry and answered, “Because history has already changed, Harry.”
Harry frowned. “I admit I am not a physicist or even a smart man, but I seem to recall reading or hearing somewhere that if history changed, we would never know it because it would then be as though it always was.”
“Absolutely correct,” John Timothy answered. “Unless there was some kind of unchangeable energy, force, entity, or something acting like an irrevocable true north of time, or, in this case, true time. If such an energy existed, and if a group had access to it and could comprehend it, then when there was a deviation it would be observable, knowable, if you will.”
Harry sat back in the large chair and wished he had taken John Timothy up on his drink offer. “You have such a north star of time?”
“Yes, we do. I don’t like the term ‘we have’ because that is nowhere near the truth, but yes, there is an unchangeable, immovable, irrevocable true time standard.”
Harry was quiet a moment and then realized John Timothy had not volunteered any more information. He leaned forward and stared intently at the man. “You care to enlighten me as to what that is?”
“Didn’t you have an experience in the cave, when you went to rescue the princess, where you met a powerful being? And if I were to guess, the best word for it would be: where you were commissioned?”
Harry’s heartbeat quickened, his mouth grew dry, and he closed his eyes and remembered the moment when he met the King of the dragon riders, or hunters, as the group in this time called themselves. He opened his eyes and looked at John Timothy. “You’re talking about the King! You are saying the unchangeable, immovable, irrevocable true standard of time is… the King?”
John Timothy nodded and smiled. “Yes, I am.”
“Do you… can you… how do I say this?” Harry stood up, paced three steps away, and turned back. “John Timothy, we are talking about an individual with the ability to… to do anything he wants to anytime he wants to do it?”
“Yeah, so?”
“Well, doesn’t that sound kind of, I mean, you know?”
“Say it, Harry.”
“Well, hell, John Timothy. It sounds a whole lot like a god.”
“Well, I wouldn’t use the indefinite pronoun a, and I would use a big G. Sounds like God, who controls time, has a standard of true time, which implies purpose. He manifests himself as human and also appears to intervene and employ humans and others to combat any deviation of that true time. We have been watching this for a very long time, and it has been our observation that time always snaps back to its original course, much like a huge river can create oxbows, but eventually the course of the river will straighten out and settle in its original path.”
Harry scratched his chin. “But, John Timothy, if time always snaps back, why bother to mess with it? Why attempt to set it back into its original course if it will snap back anyway?”
“Well, if you meet him again, why don’t you ask him? All I know is my arms are just barely long enough to paddle the boat I have been given.”
“Hmmph!” Harry grumbled. “Fine for now, but later on we will pursue this line of thought and see where it takes us.”
“Yes, you will, Harry. That is exactly why you are here. You are going to find out what happened and who caused it. I am not sure how you will manage all that, but I know you will.”
Harry stared back at John Timothy, sat back in his chair, and exhaled. “Well, I am glad you feel that way. At least one of us knows why I am here.”
****
Lizzy stopped and looked at her watch. “I’m sorry, but it’s time for your parents to pick you up. We will have to stop the story here and take it up next time.”
“But wait! You can’t do that! We don’t know what happened to Sarah!”
“Neither do I, guys. She is not mentioned in my dad’s diaries. I have no idea where Sarah was.”
“Where is Sarah now?” a little girl on the front row asked. She looked toward the vacant seat next to her, which had deliberately been left vacant, in the hope that Sarah, the queen of story time, would one day walk through the door and take up where she had left off.
Lizzy sighed sadly. “I don’t know the answer to that question either. I just hope that wherever she is, she is with my dad.”
Chapter Five
The music to the old, classic rock-and-roll song slipped faintly away. Sarah finally lifted her swollen eyes and realized she had shifted back into her dragon form. “Sword, are you still here?” she asked.
“Most of the time, Sarah, all you have to do is think. You don’t have to speak.”
“I know, but thoughts are confusing, and it’s just easier, at least for now, for me to voice them rather than think them. I’m exhausted. If it’s all right with you, I am going for a swim. The waters are refreshing and cold, and I might even catch a fish or two for dinner before you send me wherever it is that I have to go.”
“Enjoy your swim, Sarah, and when you finish, you can leave here and begin your training.”
“Where are you sending me, Speaker?”
“Not so much a where, Sarah, as a who. I am sending you to a man called Kusaila. He is a great teacher and also the leader of his people. He lived… lives in North Africa and is of a race of people called the Berbers. They also call him the Leopard, and you will see why when you meet him. You need to do your best to learn from him, Sarah. But also remember that he is not a man of your time. He may seem exacting, but if he comes across that way, understand it is because you have to master what he is teaching you… if you are going to survive.”
Sarah’s stomach tensed. She had no desire to do anything but be with Harry and change back into a person. Well, a human person at least. She didn’t want to be trained. She didn’t want to meet anyone new. Truth be known, what she really wanted was to sit in her grandfather’s lap and listen as he read Narnia stories while her grandmother snuggled next to them.
She bit her trembling lip and waded into the cold, pure waters of the stream. She was careful not to move too far into it for fear of being caught up into some time current and hurled Lord only knows where, and anyway, it wasn’t good to think like that. It only made matters worse. Besides, she was a dragon… a mean, lean fighting machine… Well, maybe not real mean, and certainly not very lean… anymore. Well shoot! She was a princess, and princesses did not allow themselves to wallow in pity. But hey, she was also a littl
e kid, a six-year-old who had not even been given a chance to grow up before being orphaned, and then torn away from an ancient love. Good grief! No matter how she viewed herself, she was miserable. She dove beneath the cold waters and shivered as the clear water caressed her sides. Dragons, she had discovered much to her pleasure, were as much at home in water as in the air. The stream was deep where she swam, and as long as she avoided the middle, she would be fine.
A large fish darted out from its hiding place, and she sped after it. Two strokes of her mighty claws and she was on it. The fish was tasty, like a sushi dish her grandmother made. Marvelous! Then she thought, Terrible time to think about this now, but if this is a gateway between worlds, are these fish special? Like you don’t eat these fish, kinda special? If so, I am in trouble. Gosh, I wish I had— Her train of thought was disrupted by a bright light that caught her attention like a mirror flashing. She swam toward it, and as she drew close, the light seemed to grow. A current pulled her in the light’s direction. She pushed back against it but it was too strong. It picked up speed, and in seconds she felt the air in her lungs squeezed out. Right as she was about to panic, she broke through a transparent barrier holding back the cold stream.
She blinked, confused. She was sitting on the floor of her grandparents’ house. Her dolls, which she had totally forgotten since she had shifted into a dragon, were scattered all about the floor. She heard footsteps and looked up and there was her grandmother! She leaped up, threw her hands around her grandmother—immediately realizing she was no longer a dragon—and wept. Her grandma hugged her close.
“Hey now… hey now, princess,” she whispered as she patted Sarah’s back. She swept Sarah up into her arms and walked over to the couch. “I’m here, I’m here, and so is your grandfather.”
Sarah lifted her head and tried to stop sobbing, only managing to gasp out, “I missed you… so bad. I have tried to be good, and then I got stuck… as a dragon…”
“Oh, baby, we know… we know.” Sarah’s grandpa had joined his wife as she held Sarah, and he stroked her hair and offered his long-sleeve shirt for her nose.
She laughed as she rubbed her eyes and blubbery snot off on his gleaming sleeves. She leaned into him, trying to talk but crying so hard she couldn’t. “Don’t… teelllll… Grandma… I rubbed my snot on your sleeve,” she laughed.
The fire marshal whispered in her ear, “Never, baby!”
“I heard that,” Sarah’s grandma said.
As they laughed, Sarah’s sobs became sniffles. And then her curiosity kicked in. “How are you here? Can you stay? I am so lonely… Harry is gone and I might not see him for a year and I have to go to a new place and—”
“Sarah… Sarah,” her grandmother whispered. “God is gracious. And sometimes He grants special visions and dreams to His people. We are here to love on you and encourage you and remind you. You are never alone, Sarah. Your best and most wonderful days are ahead of you. You are going to make new friends. And the speaker sword will also be available. Don’t you remember you can contact Harry using the sword?”
“It’s just been hard. And seeing you again…” Sarah cried harder.
“Oh, honey, we miss you too, but time is so short… even when it seems like forever, I have seen… Well, we are not allowed to tell folks about that… because if we do… Well, you won’t be happy where you are. And Sarah.” Her grandmother’s voice took on the tone that meant she was serious and that Sarah needed to listen closely. “Honey, you are where you need to be… exactly where you need to be. You are just now going to learn how special you are and how powerful. Who would have thought my own granddaughter is a princess dragon! Partner to a dragon rider, and by the way, Sarah, don’t worry about those spurs; they are like a very potent energy drink! And they don’t hurt.”
Sarah laughed. “Grandma, I haven’t thought twice about those spurs!” she lied, and then thought, Oh, I shouldn’t have said that.
Her grandfather must have been privy to her thoughts because he leaned over and whispered, “I won’t tell if you don’t, honey.”
They can hear my thoughts! flashed through Sarah’s mind.
Her grandmother got that squinched pretending frown look, but only for a half second before grinning. Sarah sighed and added, “What am I going to do? I don’t know what you know and what you don’t, but I love Harry so much. We could never be together as an old man and a kindergartener, and neither as a dragon and a hunk of a man dragon rider.”
Her grandmother’s eyebrow shot up at the word hunk. Sarah caught the look and blushed. Her grandmother laughed, shook her head, and said, “Go on, honey.”
“Oh… Grandma, after the barn blew up, we wound up in a… but you know all this, don’t you?” Sarah paused, frowning.
“It’s not what we need to know, Sarah, it’s what you need to say. So keep talking… we’re listening.”
Sarah nodded and motored on. “And then the speaker sword informs us that Harry has a daughter. And he didn’t even know it. And it’s not what you think…”
“Oh, Sarah, don’t worry about what we think. We have a different frame of reference now… we see things and know things. From… How can I explain this?”
Sarah’s fire marshal grandfather took over. “We see things from hindsight, Sarah. From a finished point of view. You don’t know what the future holds; we see the future as though it has already happened. When you live alongside a river, you can look upriver and downriver and know where the river came from and where it is going. And if you get high enough above the river, you can see both the beginning and the end as though they were one.”
Sarah’s grandmother nodded and added, “Harry is a very good man, and at this point in time he does not understand just how good and significant a man he really is. And he is a faithful man, and the adventures and battles and even hard times you two will have—well, I can’t say any more, except that I am so very proud of you, honey!”
The images of her grandparents started to fade. Sarah screamed, “No! We aren’t done yet… will I ever see you again?” Her tears started again as their faces were swept away, evaporating like frost beneath a bright sun.
A whisper responded, “Time is short… Sarah, we love you!” Then they were gone. Before Sarah could take another breath, cold water covered her, and she was back in the stream. Her lungs were bursting, so she swam to the surface with large dragon strokes. If she had not been holding her breath she would have sighed as she realized she was back in dragon form. Her head broke the surface, and she gasped in pure lungfuls of… salty air. The stream floor had become sand, and as she touched bottom and moved toward what had been a bank, she realized it was now a beach and she was walking onto a long coastline stretching as far as she could see in any direction.
Chapter Six
Lizzy ambled up the steps to her wood frame house. The house was almost as old as the little community in which she lived. It was built sometime around 1928. She knew because when she and her dad had been remodeling it for her to move into it, they moved an interior wall to enlarge a bathroom and discovered beneath the wallpaper, stuck onto the wall, an old newspaper with the date October 2, 1928. It was an amazing find. She read some yellowed classifieds and even an article and was surprised that some things never change.
The house was wrapped halfway around with a large front porch she had hoped she and her soon-to-be husband would appreciate. She looked around the porch as she stood at the front door and remembered her hopes and dreams for the house. Now both men she wanted to share those dreams with were gone. Even though standing there letting her memories take her where they wished was not good for her heart, it was also all she had left, so she indulged and remembered—dreams. Dreams where she and her husband would enjoy chilly winter nights, drinking hot chocolate and swinging on the porch swing, listening to the night sounds of a country town. But her fiancé had to be a war hero and get himself killed! Her anger at him, undeserved as it was, still sparked almost every time she let hers
elf remember old dreams.
The letter she had received from the then-president of the United States had said something about great sacrifice for his country, but Lizzy didn’t care. At the time she received the letter, she only knew he was gone and had taken a large part of her heart with him. That had been four years ago. She had tried to date a few guys since, but Moab, Texas, was not noted for its crop of prime young men with her level of sophistication.
She didn’t think she was better than everyone else. Just different, and truth be told she compared every would-be new suitor to her dead fiancé, who had been a West Point graduate and Delta Force operator. She had once asked him if he had ever been in combat or wounded. His response was to take off his shirt and give her a grand tour. As a result, she knew what a wound from a 9mm looked like, what stab wounds looked like, what a claw wound looked like—he wouldn’t go into detail on how he got that—what shrapnel from a mortar looked like, and last but not least what a laser burn looked like. She was a little freaked out by the number of wounds he sported and thought he must have been in the hospital longer than he was deployed.
He laughed when she asked him about that and answered cryptically, “There is more to heaven and earth, Lizzy, than are dreamt of in your philosophies.” She knew that would be the end of that discussion, but it also reminded her of her father. She had rarely seen him with his shirt off. But once when she had been a little girl and drinking hot cocoa in his lap, she’d spilt it all over him, and he had quickly divested himself of his soaking hot shirt, giving her the eye-opening experience of seeing how many scars her father had. She asked him what had happened. Most of his looked like her fiancé’s claw marks. She asked if he had gotten in a fight with a bear or some wild animal, and he laughed and said, “Once or twice and yes,” then shut the door to the bathroom and changed his clothes.
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