Stones of Time

by Andreas Oertel

  In that instant, it dawned on me that they expected us to stay with them forever—to be part of their family. Yikes!

  I bowed politely and then quickly walked back to stand beside Eric. I didn’t want to be cajoled into another tale.

  “That was pretty lame,” Eric said, giggling.

  “It wasn’t lame at all, Handsome Fox,” Rachel said.

  “Huh?” Eric looked puzzled.

  Rachel laughed and looked at her brother. “That story didn’t sound familiar to you, Hungry Fox?”

  “No,” Eric said. “Wait. That was about us?”

  Rachel shook her head.

  “At least you didn’t offend Ghost-Keeper.” Eric indicated the storyteller with his chin. “We need to keep him on our good side.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “maybe we can visit with him first thing in the morning.”

  We told Léon we were exhausted and excused ourselves to go to the tent assigned to us. He looked at us suspiciously, but didn’t stop us. For a guy who said he’d help us, he was trying awfully hard to keep an eye on us.

  Our tent was very cozy. One of the Cree women had lit three homemade candles and placed them on the stones that formed the firepit in the centre. The candles were smelly and the smoke tickled my nose, but the flames gave the inside of the teepee a nice glow. We made ourselves comfortable on the furs that covered the ground.

  Rachel took the paper from her backpack and passed around the sketch Anna had made. There was just enough light to examine the symbols.

  “These symbols look a lot like the ones on the stones in the cemetery,” I said, pointing at the characters. “But I think there’s something different about them as well.”

  “I did not have time to draw all the messages,” Anna said apologetically. “Only the ones Cody found near the bottom.”

  “Too bad the chief had to go and smash Rachel’s camera,” Eric said again. He put a stack of small furs under his head to make a pillow. “I’m pretty sure she took a picture of the other symbols in Sultana.”

  “Yeah, I did,” Rachel said. “It would have been nice to compare the exposed glyphs with these.” She pointed at the sketches Anna was now holding.

  Anna stared at the page for a long time without blinking. “Wait a minute!” she cried. Anna dropped the paper on Eric’s chest, jumped up and ran from the teepee.

  “What’s she up to?” I asked.

  Eric shrugged. “Maybe she has to pee really badly.”

  I sighed and closed my eyes. I was glad we had returned to the camp. I felt safer with the Cree watching over us. With all their bush skills and survival know-how, we were definitely in their Sultana now—on their turf.

  We continued to settle down for the night while we waited for Anna to come back.

  Ten minutes later, we started to worry Anna had gotten lost. But then the tent flap flew open and she stormed inside, huffing and excited.

  “Maybe we can still use this,” Anna said. She sat down and proudly held out the small memory card from the camera. The chief had destroyed Rachel’s birthday present, but the memory card looked intact.

  “No way!” Eric said, sitting up again. “How on earth did you find that?”

  Anna grinned, pleased with her discovery. “It is dark outside, but I remembered where we had left the camera, and I looked through the broken pieces. Do you have a second camera?”

  The three of us shook our heads.

  “Oh,” Anna said, deflated. “Do any of you have a smart phone?”

  Rachel shook her head. But Eric and I didn’t.

  “Yes, we do,” Eric said. “Your dad gave us his.” Eric dug it out of the backpack and passed it to Anna.

  “I am sure Papa’s phone uses a memory card like this,” she said, quickly removing the protective cover and back panel. Seconds later, she proudly held up the phone’s tiny memory card. “It is the same!” She swapped cards, opened the directory with the photographs and passed the phone to Rachel.

  “I sure hope the card’s not damaged,” Rachel said.

  We gathered around the phone and watched as Rachel flipped through the photos.

  Anna sighed. “I am so sorry that Papa got you involved in this … in this mess. But I am still glad you all came to help me.”

  “It’s a lucky thing we broke the law,” Eric said, “otherwise we never would have been in that graveyard, at that time.” He quickly described the fake tablet we had made, and our punishment for that misadventure.

  “Very clever.” Anna said. “And very creative.”

  Rachel continued to flick her way through the pictures until she found the ones from the stones in Sultana.

  “Stop!” I said. “That’s it.” She zoomed in so that the whole message filled the LCD screen.

  Eric twisted the device so that he could see it better. “So if Cody is right, one set of instructions got us here, and the other set of instructions—the one Anna copied—might take us home again.”

  Anna held her piece of paper next to the display. “I believe the difference is in these symbols here.” She tapped the glyphs on the left side.

  “Maybe we can work backwards,” Rachel suggested, “using the information we already know to be true.”

  “Good,” Eric said. “Let’s try that.”

  “All right,” I said. “So here’s what we know. We travelled to this world because we were all standing in a wormhole when it opened. And that happened to coincide with the Perseid meteor shower.”

  Everyone nodded.

  “This symbol here,” Eric said, pointing at the screen, “has to be the symbol they used for the sky.”

  “Yes,” Anna agreed. “See how it has spots coming from it.”

  “For sure,” I said. “Those must represent the meteor shower.”

  “Okay. So now that we know the message,” Rachel said, “the symbols on the stones seem pretty logical. They’ve got everything included here—the pillars, the earth, and the actual meteor shower.”

  “That was the puzzle your dad solved,” I said to Anna.

  Eric poked Anna’s drawing. “But what about this stuff? There are two or three symbols at the base of the pillars that we don’t see in the other message.”

  Anna said, “Both messages originate from the same culture—Native North American—and use the same logic. So it should not be too difficult to interpret their meaning.”

  Two of the candles in our teepee flickered and then burned out. The light was fading fast. We didn’t want to start using the flashlight, so we decided to wait until the morning to decipher the rest of the symbols. Plus, we could barely keep our eyes open.

  “Tomorrow,” I said, “we can ask Ghost-Keeper and the other Elders if they have any ideas about these figures.”

  Anna blew out the last candle, and we all stretched out around the cold firepit in the centre of the tent. We fell asleep to the peaceful night sounds of the wilderness around us.

  Only I didn’t fall asleep right away.

  As I listened to the wind in the trees outside and the call of a distant loon, a thought began to trouble me. I wasn’t sure what my tired brain was getting at, but it was gently trying to help me remember something—something I had seen …

  CHAPTER

  10

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING I was roughly shaken awake.

  I opened my eyes to find Barks-Like-An-Otter shoving me enthusiastically. She tugged on my arm until I sat up—my commitment to her that I wouldn’t go to sleep again. I looked around the tent for the girls, but they were already gone. I rubbed my eyes and watched as Eric received the same wake-up call. She pushed and pulled on his shoulders until he too gave up. When we were both sitting upright, Barks-Like-An-Otter indicated—by pretending to shovel something in her mouth—that we should join her for breakfast.

  “I suppose if I’m not allowed to sleep,” Eric said, “I may as well eat.”

  Summer-Blessing—that’s Barks-Like-An-Otter’s mother—was waiting for us outside the tent. She
waved for us to follow her and join her and the girls for breakfast—fresh bannock with honey and mashed berries. It tasted better than any pancake I’d ever had back home.

  Anna and Rachel had already eaten and were now keenly studying the paper with the sketches. Rachel took the page, passed it to Summer-Blessing, and tapped the glyphs. Summer-Blessing said something in Cree, shook her head and looked around the camp. She spotted Léon speaking with the chief and pointed to him.

  “I guess she can’t help us either,” I said.

  Rachel stood up and took the page to an Elder who was trying to patch one of the birch bark canoes. He stopped dripping pine tar on the crack and smiled at Rachel. I watched closely as the man examined the sketch and then, just like Summer-Blessing, pointed at Léon.

  Rachel took Anna’s drawing to three other Cree and got similar reactions—shrugs, head shakes, and gestures toward Léon.

  This was getting more and more suspicious.

  Rachel joined us again several minutes later. “No one knows anything,” she said, passing Anna the paper.

  “Hmmm,” I said.

  Eric put down the piece of bannock he was just about to pop into his mouth. “What’s up?” he asked.

  “I think they know a lot,” I said. “They just don’t know how to tell us what they know.”

  “What do you mean?” Rachel asked.

  I checked to make sure Léon still had his back to us, then I poked Summer-Blessing on the shoulder to get her attention. When she looked at me, I traced the intricate painted design on her teepee with my finger. Then I pointed at her.

  She understood what I was asking and shook her head. No, I did not paint the teepee.

  I lifted my shoulders and made my eyes big. Who did draw this?

  She looked around the camp and pointed at Léon.

  “Oh!” Eric said.

  “What do you mean, ‘Oh?’” Anna asked.

  “I think that Léon knows what all the symbols mean,” I said, “but he doesn’t want to tell us.”

  “But why would he not tell us what he knows?” Anna asked.

  “Maybe he’s lonely,” Eric suggested.

  “Maybe he misses speaking English and French,” I said, staring at Léon.

  “Or maybe,” Eric rambled on, “he’s afraid that if we leave, we’ll rat on him. Maybe he thinks some voyageur is going to come here and haul him back to his hard life paddling the rivers.”

  “That’s silly,” Rachel said. “Plus, we know adults can’t use the wormhole.”

  “We know that,” Eric said, “but does Léon?”

  Everyone was quiet for a few minutes as we considered Léon’s motivations. He was still chatting with the chief at the far end of the camp, and I was still watching them both. “You know,” I said, “the truth might be even simpler than that.”

  “What are you thinking?” Eric asked.

  “Maybe he just doesn’t want anyone to mess with the Cree—his adoptive family.” I said. “If I were him, I wouldn’t want to risk other people showing up and exploiting the Cree.”

  Anna nodded. “Perhaps he also feels some guilt for the way the fur traders treated the Cree.”

  “The bottom line is,” Eric said, “it’s pretty rotten of him to keep four kids trapped here against their will.”

  “Let’s just forget about Léon for now,” I said, “and get back to the real puzzle—those new symbols on the stones.” I pointed at the paper Anna was holding.

  “We all agree that we can’t trust him—for whatever reason—so let’s just decipher this message and get the heck out of here.”

  “Yeah,” Eric said. “We’re on our own.”

  Anna stared fixedly at the drawing on her lap. “When Rachel showed the other Cree my drawing, they all shook their heads—like they did not know anything. So where do we start?”

  “I think they shook their heads because they can’t speak English,” I said. “But they all pointed to Léon. And that’s either because he speaks English, or because he’s the artist who painted all this stuff.”

  “Maybe … ” Rachel said. “But could he really have learned all their symbols since arriving here?”

  “Hmmm … ” Anna said, contemplating the question. “It is possible. A fast learner could easily memorize the meaning of one or two hundred glyphs.”

  “Bits and pieces of the images we need to interpret have probably been painted on most of these teepees,” I said. “If you look carefully, you’ll find that someone has been using similar symbols and glyphs as artwork for years.” That was what was bothering me last night. Some of the symbols on the pillars were almost identical to the decorations on the tents!

  “We’re getting real close to figuring this thing out,” Eric mumbled, “and I bet he’s getting nervous about it.”

  Our heads automatically turned towards Léon.

  Anna took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “But if we cannot ask Léon for his help, what are we going to do?”

  “We need to keep acting like nothing’s wrong,” Rachel said.

  “Yeah,” Eric agreed, “or else he might really mess up our chance of escaping from this place.”

  I nodded. “But at the same time we have to work quickly to figure out what those unknown symbols mean. I ’d hate to find out tomorrow that whatever event we’re waiting for has already passed.”

  “What could it be?” Anna wondered out loud.

  “Who knows?” I said, looking at Anna’s drawing for the hundredth time. “It could be a comet, an eclipse, a thunderstorm … anything.”

  “I just hope we haven’t missed it,” Eric said. “I don’t mind camping here for a few days, but I sure don’t want to live here forever.”

  “You do live here, silly,” Rachel said, trying to lighten the mood. “Remember, this is Sultana.”

  Eric snorted. “You know what I mean.”

  •

  We helped Summer-Blessing clean up after breakfast, and then lent a hand with some camp chores. After we were done, we put our plan into action. It was simple: Rachel would distract Léon by pretending to want to learn Cree, while Anna, Eric, and I quizzed the Elders and Ghost-Keeper about the symbols.

  Rachel persuaded Léon to go for a walk to the stones. She told him she wanted to learn the Cree words for everything they saw along the way. Once they were on the trail and out of sight, we went to work.

  Anna took her sketch and headed off to find the chief, while Eric and I searched for Ghost-Keeper. We found him making arrowheads behind one of the tents. He looked up at us, smiled and kept working the stone. He finished scratching something onto the arrowhead and handed it to me. I looked at the piece of flint and studied it closely.

  “Look,” I said pointing at the head, “he carved a feather onto the side.”

  “Cool!” Eric said, taking the arrowhead. “Maybe that’s like his stamp or seal, so if anyone finds the arrow they’ll know it’s his.” He tried to pass the arrowhead back, but Ghost-Keeper indicated it was ours to keep.

  We nodded our thanks.

  I showed him a sketch I had made, a drawing on a piece of birch bark with some charcoal. He seemed delighted, probably because he thought I was preparing for my training as his apprentice. That made me feel kind of guilty. He looked at the white bark, said something in Cree and stared at the sky. I thought he might be saying a prayer, but then I realized he was waiting for a cloud to slide away. When the sun finally poked out again, Ghost-Keeper pointed up at it with another slab of flint.

  “So far so good,” Eric said.

  “Now let’s try the other symbols.” I took a blackened stick and drew one of the unknown glyphs. I could have shown him the whole series of images at once, but I was afraid it might be confusing.

  Ghost-Keeper waited patiently for me to finish it. He seemed in no hurry to get back to work. When I was done, he took the birch bark again and examined it.

  He reached over and snapped a two-foot-long branch off a poplar tree. Then he shoved the
stick into the dirt. He drew a circle around the base and pointed at the sliver of a shadow cast by the sun over the stick.

  “I don’t get it,” Eric said.

  I shrugged, letting Ghost-Keeper know how slow we were.

  He held his fist directly over the stick and pointed at the sun.

  “Oh, no!” I groaned.

  “What?” Eric asked.

  My heart began to race. “I think he’s indicating the summer solstice, when the sun is at … at its highest.”

  Eric shook his head. “But that was last month.”

  “It was last month in our world,” I said, “but we arrived here earlier in the summer.”

  Eric didn’t look convinced. “Are you sure about that?”

  I explained my sunset observations from last night.

  Eric began nodding. “Yeah, that makes sense. It does seem like we have more hours of daylight again.”

  I pointed at the stick and the sun high above us. “Today?” I asked. “Now?” I knew Ghost-Keeper didn’t understand English, but I was frantic.

  He nodded.

  “I don’t know … ” Eric said. “He could be saying yes to anything—an egg, a shooting star, a bird.”

  The storyteller smoothed the dirt around the stick and showed me again how short the shadow was.

  “Okay,” Eric admitted, “that does seem like a noontime shadow.”

  Just then, Anna ran around the corner and came hurtling at us. “It is today!” she screamed. “The cosmic event is today!” She paused and tried to catch her breath.

  Ghost-Keeper, startled by Anna’s sudden arrival, dropped the carving tool he had been holding. He ignored the fallen stone and gave Anna a welcoming grin. At least he liked kids.

  “Is it the solstice?” I asked, looking for confirmation.

  “Yes,” she said. “It is the summer solstice.”

  Anna went on to explain that the chief had agreed that the series of symbols represented the summer solstice—the longest day of the year.

  Ghost-Keeper was still watching us with interest, but didn’t say anything. I felt a twinge of regret that I couldn’t stay and be his apprentice. He was a pretty cool guy.