Days of Future Past - Part 2: Present Tense

by John Van Stry

  We were all pretty quiet the next day, I think all three of us had a lot to think about. As they say the 'honeymoon' was over and we all needed to realize that and start thinking just about what we meant to each other, and understand that commitment.

  I led us off to the northeast, I wanted to get to the foothills and follow them north as quickly as possible. Riding out on the valley floor we'd be a lot easier to spot by any dragons flying overhead, and that didn't seem like a healthy idea.

  We made it to the foothills east of Bakersfield by the time I spotted the dragons off in the distance as they came out to hunt. We set up in a small ravine, out of sight of anything that didn't fly directly overhead, and then we peeked out over the edge of the ravine and watched the dragons after Sarah had finished casting her protective illusion over us to hide us from their sight.

  While Sarah's illusion would protect us from being seen by them, none of us felt like tempting fate, so we stayed in concealment, as much as we could, and watched. Mostly the smaller dragons were hunting in the area around the sea, where most of the herds were, while the older dragon watched from above. I counted ten of them.

  "Is it my imagination, or are there less of them today?" I asked.

  "You are right, there are only ten tonight," Sarah said. "There were seventeen of them last night."

  "Do you think that they're the same ones from last night? How often do dragons need to feed?"

  "I have no idea, but if this is a different crowd that means that you were right, there are a lot more of them than we suspected."

  "Which would explain why they're flying so far south," Heather pointed out, "they can't over hunt the area around their home, or they'll end up starving."

  We continued to watch, they hunted for maybe an hour. They ate their first kill on the ground, but the second one they ate as they flew off. Which they did along the east side of the lake, perhaps flying a thousand feet above the ground.

  "I wonder why they're avoiding the mountains?" Heather asked.

  "Mountain waves most likely." I said.

  "What're those?"

  "When the air hits the mountains, it goes up and over it, just like water over a rock. It can be pretty choppy, and if the wind is strong enough blowing over them, it can even be dangerous. It's harder to fly in, so why bother if you don't have to?"

  "So we need to ride up into the mountains," Sarah observed.

  "Yup," I agreed, "I'd been hoping to follow the remains of highway sixty-five a lot farther to the north before we did that. Now, I guess not."

  "Well hold on a minute," Heather spoke up. "We know that they don't show up until a few hours after noon and I've looked at the map, we've got a long ways to go. I think we should look at our options first, and think about just where the best place is for us to go up into the hills. You may not have been handed a schedule yet, but I'm sure its coming."

  I thought about that as we retreated back down into the ravine.

  "Heather is right," Sarah said after pulling out the map and looking at it. "We may not be able to travel as many hours, but across this ground we'll be traveling in a straight line, over flat terrain. If we start out an hour before sunrise, we can easily get eight hours of travel in, before we have to start looking for a place to make camp."

  I looked at the map as Sarah set it on the ground in front of us, and using a piece of string I made some basic measurements.

  "It's about thirty miles to here," I said and tapped the map; it was a point where the road moved back into the foothills. "So we shouldn't have any problem finding a good place to rest the horses and spend the night.

  "Porterville is about thirty more after that. It was a small town when I grew up here, if it hasn't changed much, we should be able to find some decent ruins to hole up in and spend the night there."

  "Sounds good," Heather nodded.

  "Yes, it looks like a plan," Sarah agreed, and then they both turned and looked at me.

  "What?" I asked.

  "Cook!" They both said, grinning.

  "Talk about your role reversals," I sighed.

  "Hey, I butchered it, you can cook it," Heather nodded towards the deer carcass from earlier today.

  "Fine," I said and got the gear unpacked.

  "I, I wanted to ask you about something," Sarah said much later, after dinner, as we were getting ready to go to sleep. "About Marjeera."

  I sighed, "No, I didn't have sex with her."

  "No, not that," Sarah said looking embarrassed. "What was she? You said she was a genie?"

  "Oh," I nodded, "Yeah, she was a genie and she was under Luvon's control. She'd been imprisoned over a thousand years ago, and he had found her."

  "A thousand years?"

  "At least. Maybe longer."

  "What's a genie?" Heather asked.

  "They were a race of magical people, called djinn or jinni," I made sure to pronounce it properly. "That got bastardized to 'genie' in our culture. Mostly they were myths to us, like elves and magic. I guess when the magic went away, her imprisonment didn't end. So when it came back, she went back to being a slave."

  "What did Luvon use her for?" Sarah asked.

  I shrugged, "What didn't he use her for? Sex, definitely. Sex was what got her in trouble in the first place, and a lot of her magic revolved around it. But she has a lot of other powers too, I'm sure."

  "He had her, and he still wanted me?" Sarah looked bemused.

  "Hey, I had her, and she actually liked me, and I still wanted you!" I laughed and looked at Heather, who was scowling, "You too, of course."

  "You had her?" Heather was still scowling.

  "I stole her from Luvon, that was part of why she was willing to help me, because she was tired of him and wanted a new master."

  Heather's scowl deepened. "Where. Is. She. Now?"

  I smiled, "I released her. I have no idea."

  Heather smiled happily, but now Sarah looked surprised.

  "You released her? Why?" Sarah asked.

  "The idea of keeping someone as a slave bothers me, even without my having been one."

  "But you just said she was powerful, she could have made your task a lot easier."

  "Assuming she wanted to help me with it. Djinn are tricky, and can be deceitful. Just because she was bound to me, it didn't mean she'd follow the intent of my orders. She was able to betray Luvon to me, once she realized that I wasn't going to help her any other way.

  "I didn't want that level of mischief around us."

  Heather chuckled, "Or the distraction I bet!"

  "Still," Sarah said, "I would love to have been able to talk to her. A thousand years old? Perhaps older? The things she must know!"

  "I wonder where she went? If she'd been imprisoned for that long, she couldn't just go back home, right? Not like it would still be there."

  "I wouldn't have any idea," I said and Heather suddenly blushed as she remembered I had that same problem.

  "Sorry!" she said.

  "Eh, that's okay," and I gave her a hug. "Now let's get some sleep. We have a lot of traveling to do tomorrow.

  The next day we ran into our first major problem, water.

  We could see that the seashore was only a couple of miles away, but the river valley that came down out of the mountains was a lot lower than the surrounding terrain and the sea backed up into it quite a ways. So we spent an extra hour looking for a good place to cross, and ended up swimming the horses across the river when we found a slower moving section.

  We then followed the river back west until we got back on the remains of the roads that I'd marked on the map, riding through the remains of some nameless suburban neighborhood that had been reduced to nothing more than foundations and a few small piles of rubble.

  When we finally got onto what had once been highway sixty-five I was pretty surprised by the condition. The pavement was so cracked it was more like cobblestones than macadam, but it was solid and fairly level. We encountered another smaller obstacle when we came ac
ross a washed out bridge, but the creek it went over wasn't flooded, so we were able to ford that without any problems at all. Overall we made good time, even if we ended up a few miles short of our planned stopping point. Traveling across flat open terrain was a lot easier on the horses, they didn't need to be rested as often, and when we had to walk them it was easier on all of us. Once we went up into the mountains, between walking them and resting them, we'd be lucky to make twenty miles a day.

  The next day however, the sea became more and more of a problem as it drew nearer and nearer to the road we were on. It also became obvious that the sea had once been higher than it was now, though perhaps not by much. That made me wonder if it was slowly eroding away at whatever blockage had caused it in the first place.

  Eventually we could see that we'd have to abandon the road we were on as the encroaching sea covered it completely. So we decided to make camp early, in a very small town about ten miles south of Porterville, which I suspected might be underwater now.

  "I wish this map had elevations on it," I sighed. "Then at least we'd know what's underwater."

  "Like it or not, I think we have to go up into the mountains," Sarah said, tracing a route up past Lake Success.

  "I wonder if the dam is still there?"

  "I guess we will find out when we get there?"

  I nodded, I guess we would.

  The dam was no longer there, of course. With no one there to manage it, and being only an earthen one, it has washed out at some point, probably long over a hundred years ago from the looks of things. The remains of the roads were easy to follow however, so for the next three days we followed old mountain roads, coming back down into the valley maybe sixty miles north of where we left it.

  For the next five days we either skirted the sea at the foot of the hills, or detoured up into them to cross a river higher up where it was safe, or to keep undercover and out of sight from the daily dragon patrol, which came a little earlier each day as we headed north. While they flew south along the western edge of the sea, we really didn't want to chance being seen by them, even if the sea was starting to get rather wide now. So we were spending a little less time riding each day.

  "This isn't getting any easier," Heather said as we made camp.

  "No, it isn't. I think we're going to have to head up into the mountains from this point on, and just stay there."

  Sarah got the map out again, "What are you thinking?" she asked.

  "Up this road here, until we hit forty-nine," I said and pointed to the map.

  "And then what?"

  "We follow it until we get to Grass Valley," I told her.

  "Grass Valley, where is that?" Sarah was looking over the map.

  "Up here," I said and pointed to a spot a couple of hundred miles north.

  "That far?"

  "It's a very old road. Was over a hundred years old before I was born," I said and shrugged, "some of the bridges may be out, but if the dams are gone we should be able to ford them easily enough."

  "And if the dams aren't gone?"

  "Then we swim it," I told them. "I've been down the length of the road dozens of times, some parts more than that. I really don't need the map from this point on."

  Heather looked up from the other side of the map. "I wonder if we'll find any settlements up in the mountains?"

  "With all those dragons flying around? I doubt it," Sarah said.

  "They haven't been flying up into the mountains," Heather pointed out, "so they may still be there."

  "Assuming they were there in the first place."

  "There are Indians along this area," I said and pointed to the valley to the east of map, along the corridor that Coyote had told me that Riggs would be taking, all the way up to Lake Tahoe.

  "How do you know that?"

  "Coyote told me. Riggs is going to be taking the army up that way and reclaiming the land that the enemy has been taking."

  "All the more reason for us to take out the dragon's breeding grounds," Sarah sighed and started to fold up the map.

  #

  "Damn," I said looking at the remains of what had once been a bridge across a gorge.

  "I don't think we're going to be going down that," Heather said looking at the sides of the gorge, and the river coursing through the bottom.

  "There's another bridge to the north of here," I said, turning my horse around and walking back along the road.

  "Assuming it's still there."

  "There was a ferry there before there was a bridge. So even if the bridge is gone, I think we can cross the river without any problems."

  "Well the last two weren't that hard, so hopefully this one won't be either."

  "Is it that bad?" Sarah asked as we rode up to where she was keeping watch down the road behind us. We'd actually made pretty good time the last four days, the roads had been in good shape, several of the bridges had still been passable, and other than the native wildlife, we hadn't seen a person, a dragon, or a monster of any kind.

  "Paul says there's a bridge to the north."

  "Well, let us break for lunch, and then continue on."

  We all agreed and took a short break while I looked at the map to get an idea of how many miles this was going to add to our trip.

  "How bad is it?" Sarah asked me.

  "Eh, maybe another ten miles. Less if we just cut across the airport here."

  "There is a town up here?"

  "There was," I said. "I thought we'd avoid it by taking this road here," I pointed to the map. "As it is, we'll skirt most of it."

  "Well, most likely it is just ruins now like everything else."

  "It really is quite lovely up here. It is a shame that no one lives here anymore."

  "I know, but it's like Dianne said, where would they get their supplies?"

  "True," Sarah went back to her horse, and put the map away, then got back up on her horse. "Let's go."

  Heather and I nodded and repacked the few things we'd taken out and mounted up as well.

  I led us back down forty-nine, only this time I followed it back towards the towns I'd bypassed. As it was originally a trade route for miners, it wasn't always the shortest route, so I'd taken what had once been a popular short cut. But with the bridge out, we'd have to go back towards the towns we'd passed and north to another bridge.

  The problem for me was it would be shorter to cut across the airport and take one of the roads up into the hills and cut across to the bridge, but I really wanted to see the town.

  Because I'd gone to college here.

  My parents and a few community leaders, like my sensei and the local judge, had felt it would be a lot better for my development if I didn't go to Sac State, and instead got out of town, away from the many admittedly bad influences in my life. Columbia College had a good two-year program; I had originally been talked into going for an accounting degree, because accountants could always find a job.

  Instead I'd discovered Polysci, or Political Science, and I found it fascinating, because of the interactions I'd seen between the different social groups and even the different gangs in public school. I'd also learned to fly at the local airport when I was again encouraged to spend my summer here after my freshman year.

  My grades had been good enough that I got into Stanford for my four-year degree, and when I discovered the prospect of joining the air force and learning to fly jets, I was all in.

  So I knew this area really well, I'd spent almost two years of my life here and to me, it wasn't all that long ago. Only a few years.

  "You seen to have gotten awfully quiet, Paul," Sarah commented as we came to the road that we'd have to turn down, if we wanted to go around the airport.

  "If we want to cut a couple of miles off our trip, we should go that way," I said and pointed down the road.

  "So why are you hesitating?"

  "I used to live here," I sighed and looked around.

  "I thought you said you lived back there, in Sacramento, under what is now a sea?" S
arah looked at me curiously.

  "I went to college here for two years."

  "How long ago was that?" Heather asked. "For you, that is?"

  "Three years?" I said trying to add it up, "Four?"

  "So longer than the armory."

  I nodded, "Yeah, but I was only there for a couple of months. I lived here."

  "Fine, let us ride through the town then," Sarah said.

  I nodded and led us down Parrotts Ferry Rd. It may have only been a few years for me, but it had been hundreds of years for the town, and it showed. Only the buildings that were made of stone were left, and I only recognized a few of those.

  Of course in the hundred years from when I left and the war came, things had been changed. I wondered briefly what the college looked like. Most of the buildings there were of a more permanent construction, but I wasn't about to lead us that far out of our way.

  "Notice something?" Heather said as we moved further into town.

  I started in the saddle and started to look around at our surroundings, instead of trying to compare them to memories.

  "What?" Sarah asked.

  "The ruined buildings. They're not collapsed piles. They've all been cleaned up."

  We came around a bend then, and I could see the old brick building that used to have a Masonic sign on it when I had lived here. It not only was still standing, but there were two men standing out in front of it, dressed in green, looking down the road at us.

  "Elves," Sarah said.

  "Yup," Heather agreed.

  "Luvon was an elf, wasn't he?" I asked.

  Sarah nodded, "Yes, but he was from a settlement well east of here. Not all elves are as friendly as he was."

  "That was friendly?" I said surprised.

  "Yes, very."

  "Well, let's hope these aren't too hostile."

  "Might as well find out," Sarah said.

  "Just don't point your weapons at them," Heather said in a low voice. "If we can see those two, I'm sure there are another five or six that we can't."

  I nodded and looked at the two men as we rode up to them.

  "What brings you here?" One of them asked, "I don't see any wagons, so I do not believe it's trade."