It didn’t feel right, but they all agreed. Coru consulted his SPD and motioned in the direction they needed to go. They moved out, the mood no longer just focused sadness. Now all of Wren’s senses prickled with danger, the enveloping darkness bringing with it a cloak of evil.
After a time, they were forced to don night vision gear. The difference was immediate, their progress quicker. A dry branch snapped. Wren swung toward it, her bow set, stopping when she saw a beautiful buck standing in a clearing, a majestic set of antlers on its proud head. Caught by its beauty, she lowered her bow and stared at the animal when he made no move to leave, their gazes locked in a surreal moment, a moment where she couldn’t help feeling there was a message in this sighting she needed to understand. Then the buck broke eye contact, and without seeming to move, was gone, no branch disturbed, no sound made. She stared after it for a long moment, willing the meaning of this to come to her — it was important.
Then she broke out of her spell, saw she had fallen behind and hurried after the others.
They were standing in a small clearing, staring straight ahead. She stumbled to Mattea’s side. “That was weird.”
“What?”
“I just had the strangest exchange with a buck in the woods. Didn’t you see it? It was as plain as day, it made a sound. It was there, looking at me, and I felt as if I should know it, recognize it. Then after a minute, it was simply gone and I felt… I don’t know. Lost, but full of love. Like I’d just been part of something amazing.”
Mattea took off his night vision gear and looked at her strangely.
She took hers off as well. “What?”
“You have been visited by spirit, Wren. The buck is the spirit of someone you love, someone who just passed from this plane of existence. Their soul sought you out to touch you, to tell you they love you, to bid you goodbye. Wren, you have been greatly blessed.”
Tears flooded her eyes as he spoke, recognizing the truth in his words. She knew whose spirit had reached out to her. Bill, wonderful, loving, “I have an herb for that”, “Inquiring minds want to know” Bill, was gone. She felt weak, needed to sit down, lay down, let these emotions wash through her unresisting body as they must.
Coru was at her side, taking her hand. His tablet, now inside his T-shirt pocket was glowing through the light fabric, pulsing a signal with light.
She wanted to wail, “No! Stop, I’m not ready.” but said nothing. She’d never be ready.
He murmured against her hair, “It’s here, Wren.”
She turned to where he’d motioned, still reeling from Bill’s message, and searched the darkness for the invisible Bore that would take Coru from her as well. After a moment, she saw it, a barely detectable wave, a tiny mistake in her vision, something moving that shouldn’t be there. “I see it,” she whispered.
Coru cupped her face with both his hands, looked at her with love, breaking her heart with his eyes. “My time here with you is over, Wren. I don’t know what’s in my future, I don’t know if I have a future, but I know being with you, being your friend has been the best year of my life. I want you to know I don’t regret a moment with you, and I hope one day, you’ll feel the same way.”
She dragged in a ragged sobbing breath and traced the crushed, ruined side of his dear face with trembling fingers. “I’ll never forget you Coru. You’re in my heart forever.” She raised up on her toes and kissed him softly on the mouth.
Coru stepped back, his chin trembling and reached out for Deklin, hugging him fiercely. “You’re my hero,” he told the boy. “You saved me and possibly every human in the future. Take care of Wren for me.”
When he released Deklin, the boy swiped away his tears with his sleeve and handed Coru his drawing book. “Wren is wrong. You are not a Poophead.”
Coru burst out in a surprised laugh, wiping his damp eyes. “Good to know.”
Wren looked for Mattea, but he was nowhere to be seen.
She asked Deklin, “Where’d Mattea go?”
“He said he had unfinished business and to wait for him at Beastette.”
She swung back to face Coru. “I’m sure he meant —.”
Coru stopped her. “Mattea and I have already said our goodbyes.”
She nodded, knowing they would have done this in private. Coru and Mattea loved one another like brothers. They had a connection, an understanding. Still, Mattea could not stay and watch his brother disappear inside the Bore.
Coru looked at her longingly, then turned away to face the entrance of the Bore. She covered her mouth with her hands and watched him step away from her. He took another step then broke into a run, leapt and disappeared without a sound, erased as if he’d never been here, disappearing into the ether.
She fell to her knees on the soft loam of the forest floor, her chest carved open, her beating heart torn away, leaving an empty shell. She had no tears. She had no words.
It was so quiet here. Not peaceful, not dangerous. Lifeless.
It was as if all the joy of the world had been snuffed out, leaving this dead place.
Deklin’s hand reached for hers. “I don’t like this place.” His voice was wobbly with dread.
I don’t like this place either.
She took his hand and got to her feet. There was Deklin. There was Mattea. There were reasons for her to move, to put one foot in front of the other. If not for herself, then for them.
She led Deklin away, stumbling between the claustrophobic trees, taking strength from his touch, making their way back to Beastette. Mattea was nowhere in sight. Probably taking a moment for himself. If she still had her ability, she’d know this, now she had to guess.
She and Deklin climbed into Beastette, turned her around and waited. Some amount of time passed, how much she wasn’t certain, before Mattea reappeared, his expression grim. He climbed into the Beast without a word and led them out of the woods. This was good since she had no words. She simply focused on the back of the Beast, driving on auto-pilot, her brain blessedly blank.
She blinked, and was surprised to find they were driving along the highway now. How long had they been here? She must have checked out for a while; she had no recollection of emerging from the forest. That was okay. It was smoother now, they were eating up the miles, leaving that dead place far behind.
Out here on the dark highway, the weather had changed, bringing with it a surreal atmosphere, a curious mist so like what often rose from the Peace River and crept across her fields some nights. It made D.O.A. seem magical and she welcomed it like a secret friend.
Here it felt ominous, full of secrets, and not the kind you wanted to know. It made her clothes, her hair, damp, made her shiver. She saw that Deklin was huddled in his seat, shivering as well. She reached behind and pulled a wool blanket into the front and told him to wrap himself up in it. He nodded and did, arranging the blanket so they shared its cover, then closed his eyes, maybe trying to sleep, trying to forget they had left behind someone they both loved.
Fighting the need to sleep herself, she continued driving through the swirling mist with no headlights. Stealth through mist, focused solely on the Beast’s dim reflectors.
Mattea had come back and led her out. Came back from where?
“Wait at Beastette,” Mattea had told them and they had waited.
Did that already happen? She was so very, very tired.
The Beast stopped on the highway ahead of her, mist swirling around it, eating it up.
She brought Beastette to a stop and waited for Mattea to come explain himself.
Mattea did not come to explain.
Was it the POE? Had they found a way to somehow be out here ahead of them?
Her spirit stirred sluggishly. She shoved at it, punched it listlessly inside her head. Come on! This was important. Get your act together. If it was the POE, she needed to protect Deklin; Mattea couldn’t do it alone.
She released her belt, reached around and fumbled for her bow, waking Deklin as she did. She slipped her
quiver across her back, finding her fingers numb, slow to act as she intended.
“Deklin. Stay here ‘til I say different.”
She climbed from Beastette, gripping her bow more tightly now, her strength returning to her, reluctantly it seemed, but loyal still. Alert, she set an arrow, ghosted past the Beast, joining Mattea on the highway, aiming at…
She stared ahead. This was …
What was this?
A tall figure stepped out of the mist, hands raised in surrender.
Her bow clattered to the pavement and she was running, running toward him, hitting him hard when she reached him, forcing him to take her weight, to stagger back with a grunt.
“Coru! Coru!” she sobbed, clutching him, touching, kissing him, pressing her face against him, absorbing his scent. He was saying something, but she could not hear him. He was real. He was solid. He was here, in her arms, alive. Here.
He held her tight, pressed her to his body. It should hurt, he held her so hard, but she welcomed it. Welcomed the pain, the sensation of real. Of hard. Of solid. Of feeling the air rushing in and out of his body, the same air that rushed in and out of hers. No words. There were no words.
Squeezing her eyes closed, she poured her heart, her being, her essence into holding this man to her.
“Wren.” He pawed her hair away and covered her face with kisses. “Wren.” It wasn’t enough, not nearly enough. She wanted to crawl inside his skin, surround herself with his smell, touch only him, taste only him, hear only him.
“Why? How… Please say you’ll never leave me. Please say you’re here for always.”
“Wren. I never left you. I’ve been here all along.”
It took a moment for his words to filter through. She opened her eyes and looked at him. “But, I saw you disappear into the Bore. You were there and then you weren’t there. How did you get here? What are you saying?”
“You did see me go into the Bore, back to my own world, back to WEN 2341, as I had promised my father. I came back here, to WEN 2047; I had to return. I’ve been back for weeks.”
“What?” she slipped from his embrace, “What are you saying?”
Mattea and Deklin were beside them now, their faces incredulous.
“I don’t understand.”
“I’ve been back in WEN 2047 for weeks, but my first self was still here. I had to stay in the fringes to avoid a paradox.” He was smiling at her broadly, “This time through the Bore, I could choose.”
Mattea and Deklin were both nodding. What did they get that she didn’t get? She came to herself, registering the two, no, three trannies in the middle of the road, the mist swirling around them. “The POE. We’ll have to move.”
Mattea shook his head. “No need. They won’t be bothering anyone.”
It took a moment, but she got there. “Ah.” Mattea’s unfinished business.
Mattea said, “I couldn’t leave them there to kill innocent people, when I had a chance to stop them.” He nodded toward Coru. “Tell us your story, brother.”
Coru wrapped his arms around Wren, snugging her more firmly to his side. “Just try to get away from me now,” he said, kissing her temple, her cheek, her jaw, her lips, his eyes hungry. “I returned to my time. WEN 2341 was there, but was greatly changed.”
“Payton?”
He shook his head. “No. Payton hadn’t returned. There’s so much to tell you and we have the rest of our lives together for me to explain it.” She so loved hearing these words. “Short version—I was meant to stay in this time; my name is now recorded in the histories, in this time. Though the council had voted to destroy the Bore, they allowed me to return to your time, which is also my time.”
She pressed her face against him, absorbing the sensation of having him here, in her arms, speaking to her, telling her this was his time, his home.
Mattea asked, “Are you saying there have been two Corus with us these many weeks?”
“Yes. Exactly. I had to return here, and I had one trip, one last chance to affect a narrow window of the past.”
Wren gasped, everything dropping into place, all the tiny fragments, all the times she’d stopped, been momentarily puzzled and had swept her confusion away. She twisted toward Mattea. “Coru arriving twice at Bear Lake!”
Mattea’s eyes lit up. “Coru everywhere at the Road Lords battle — everywhere at once.”
She gripped Coru’s shirt and shook him. “It was you behind us tonight!”
“Yes, and you almost saw me. I had to back off, way off, though I was so close to being back, to telling you all the truth, it killed me. It’s been torture staying away.”
“You showed me how to stop the man from hurting my friend.” Deklin said, his voice small, his eyes large. Mattea and Wren looked at him. “I was afraid of the taser. And you helped people by the lake, when everyone was so sad. You listened to their stories.”
“So, you are superman, only you cheated — there were two of you.” She laughed, happiness spilling from her in waves. “But why? Why come back and stay away? Why hide?”
“If you were me, and you could choose when to travel back in time, and knew you could save someone’s life, would you do it?”
They all looked at him in confusion. Wren said, “Y-yes?”
He gazed down at her. “There was only a few weeks of elasticity to my range.”
“Time is elastic?” She crowed, “You are brilliant; you were right!”
“To some degree. It can repair some things. Restore order if not torn too badly.”
“When did you arrive?”
“Weeks ago. I came back to D.O.A.. When you were sick, Wren.” His gaze held such love and caring, it was overwhelming. “I came back the day before the Outlanders attacked, erasing that battle. You experienced it still, as a dream.” He looked significantly at Deklin and back at her.
Her legs threatened to fail her now. It had been real. It had all been real — she’d lost half her family. “Y-you came b-back and you c-changed it?” She could barely say the words.
Coru had given her back her heart, her life, her reason to go on. He’d given her everything. She began to cry uncontrollably, pressing her face into his chest, sobbing out her grief and her gratitude. Mattea and Deklin would never know what Coru had done.
He rubbed her back and let her cry, though she heard laughter rumble inside his chest. “It never happened, Wren.” Only she knew it had. “Open your eyes. You can see for yourself, it never happened.” She turned to look at Deklin, then seized him and cried all over him as well, until she was laughing.
Laughing with her, Coru said, “Better!”
Mattea grinned at the whole scene. “So, you’ve been hanging round, watching me work, ya bum.”
Coru grinned back. “Something like that.”
Mattea interjected, “Let me get this straight. You’ve been here in WEN 2047 for weeks, and you’ve been hiding because you didn’t want to cause a paradox? Paradoxes are real?”
“Paradoxes are real. I followed you. Stayed out of sight. Helped when I could, without changing the timeline.”
“How did you eat?”
“Catherine was mighty confused for a few days there. I’ll have to apologize to her.
“Double dipping.” Mattea was grinning broadly now.
Wren looked closely at Coru’s face. “Your face? It’s all better. It’s as if you were never hurt.”
“We do some cool things in medicine in WEN 2341. Mom insisted, before I returned.”
“Mom? I thought you called her Moira.”
“Not anymore; she wouldn’t have it. You wouldn’t know her. WEN 2341 is a different world and she’s a different person.”
Wren wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her cheek against his chest, taking in the solid thump, thump, thump of his heart against her ear, a sound she’d thought she’d never hear again. “We can all go home now, together.”
He pulled back, holding her away so she’d look at him. He glanced at both M
attea and Deklin, his expression serious. “No, we can’t. Now we go to New Pacifica to find my brother. We have to stop him.”
THE END
Look for
Earth Survives, Book Two: Cursed Apprentice
at your favorite book outlet.
EXCERPT: CURSED APPRENTICE
Propelled from darkness into blinding light and a flashing vision of an alleyway, Payton tumbled hard onto cracked blacktop, skinning his outstretched palms, his entire body skidding across crumbling asphalt, his brain still reverberating from the beating he’d taken inside the Time Bore. It felt as if he was a kid’s toy, flung back into the toy box, hard. The pain — he’d never experienced so much pain, throughout his entire body. He was going to vomit.
Panting hard, he lay where he landed for a long moment, his teeth clenched, waiting for the pain to subside, for his head to stop spinning, for the urge to upchuck the contents of his stomach to pass. Wave after wave of nausea swept through him forcing him to dry-heave, his stomach muscles bunching to rigid, again and again, rocking his whole body until he spattered the pavement with chucks. Pressing his forehead against the ground, he groaned in his effort to stem the carnage.
After a few moments, the nausea subsided, leaving him limp and spent. He’d never eat Texas Rolls again.
As his sickness passed, a dim understanding of his new surroundings trickled into the edges of his consciousness. For one: It was suffocatingly hot here. He wanted to unzip his jacket, pull it away from his body, let in cool air brush his sweaty skin, but he couldn’t bring himself to move. Not yet.
Beyond the unforgiving ground on which he lay, he first registered the gawd-awful smell of rotting meat… and gasoline and exhaust, and a snatch of briny ocean? The sound of traffic passing by this hollow place filtered in, further grounding his location.
What did all this add up to?
His brain was slow to assemble the clues. A city, a big one, near an ocean—Seattle, Vancouver, maybe? This was good. It seemed they’d at least made their target.
Lost Sentinel: Post-Apocalyptic Time Travel Adventure (Earth Survives Series Book 1) Page 47