Stones of Time

by Andreas Oertel

  “What the heck’s going on?” Eric whispered.

  “Yes,” Anna said, “is something wrong?”

  I quickly explained what her dad had said on the phone. “So because he didn’t tell anyone about the wormhole,” I concluded, “we can’t either—”

  “But why would Papa lie?” Anna interrupted. “We are his proof. The world will now see that he is not crazy. Humans have time-travelled using the petroforms.”

  “And we can use this as proof,” Eric said proudly. He was holding the arrowhead Ghost-Keeper had made for us. “See this little feather he carved onto the side? That’s like his signature.”

  Rachel shook her head. “I agree with Cody. If Anna’s dad is keeping quiet about the wormhole, we should too. We have to.”

  I nodded. “And if he’s keeping quiet about the secret of the stones, he must have a very good reason.”

  “But this will put Sultana in the spotlight forever,” Eric said, turning the arrowhead over and over. “Imagine the money tourists would pay to travel back in time.”

  “Maybe Anna’s dad imagined exactly that,” Rachel said.

  “Huh?” Eric said.

  Anna frowned, and then said, “Perhaps Cody and Rachel are both right. My father is a good man. He has spent his life pondering the puzzle of the stones. Now that he has solved the mystery, I do not think he would want to see the petroform exploited, or to see modern man interfering with past civilizations.”

  Suddenly we could hear people shouting and heading toward us from the direction of the graveyard.

  “They’ll find us soon,” I whispered.

  “Okay,” Eric said, “here’s what happened. Anna wandered off and got lost. Dr. Wassler happened to find us and asked for our help. The three of us (being awesome and helpful kids) ran home, grabbed some gear and headed into the forest to search for her. Right?”

  We all nodded.

  “Then we got disoriented and became lost ourselves,” Eric continued. “But eventually we found Anna near … near where?”

  “Shoe Lake?” Rachel suggested.

  “Perfect,” I said. “That’s a reasonable distance.”

  “And then,” Eric finished, “we all hiked back here from Shoe Lake.”

  “Okay,” Anna said.

  “Nice,” I agreed.

  “I hope this works,” Rachel said.

  “Can I still show people the arrowhead?” Eric asked.

  CHAPTER

  12

  “WHY DIDN’T YOU follow your daughter into the forest?” a CBC reporter asked Bruno.

  He cleared his throat, and the four of us waited to hear what lie he would tell the media next.

  “I … I felt it was important for me to remain in the cemetery,” he said, “in case Anna should return. Plus, the children assured me that they knew the local trails better than I did.”

  “But why didn’t you go with the kids,” another reporter asked, “and help them in the search?”

  That question seemed to stump Bruno, and the hall fell silent. Eric rescued him by blurting, “I told him we didn’t want him along. He’s really old and he would have only slowed us down.”

  Everyone accepted that and laughed at Eric’s cheekiness.

  The last three hours are kind of a blur, but I’ll try to explain what happened. After being rescued at the cemetery, we were all shuttled over to the community club (that’s where we were now). The big hall was the command centre for the police and for the volunteers searching for us. And it was also the gathering place for reporters and TV crews who swarmed Sultana to cover the story of a lost girl and the three kids who were attempting to find her.

  Anyway, after the paramedics checked us over, and after the search parties were radioed and told the good news that we were alive, we all had to sit at a long table in front of the media and face a barrage of questions.

  The reporters who didn’t know about our fake tablet seemed to be impressed with our selfless venture into the Canadian wilderness to rescue a young girl. However, some reporters recognized us. They knew we were the same three kids who had fooled the world with a fake Egyptian artifact weeks earlier. And those reporters asked tricky questions, like the ones they were firing at Bruno. But even if they suspected something weird was going on, I didn’t think they could figure out what it was. After all, our story made sense, and we had a world-famous researcher (Dr. Wassler) backing us all the way.

  “Okay,” the police officer in charge said. “I think these kids have been through enough. Let’s end the press conference with that question. And please give the families a week before you contact them for follow-up interviews.”

  Bruno wiped the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief and then thanked the police and volunteers again.

  “Thank goodness that’s over,” Eric whispered to me.

  “Yeah, for a minute there I thought we were busted.”

  “The sniffer dogs?” Eric said.

  I nodded.

  One of the reporters had asked the police why the sniffer dog hadn’t picked up our scent when we went after Anna. But before the police could respond, the volunteer dog handler jumped in and explained. He told the reporter that his dog had tracked us in the cemetery and on the trail to Eric’s house. But, he explained, the dog was getting old and was probably distracted by all the other smells on the forest trails.

  Anyway, the media seemed satisfied with our version of events, and the hall cleared quickly. Bottom line, we were heroes for finding Anna and bringing her back safely. Eric said that was fitting and appropriate (although not entirely true), because we really did bring her back safe and sound. We hadn’t gone into the woods, of course, but we did go into a wormhole, on a much more dangerous rescue mission.

  •

  “Everything’s exactly how we left it,” Eric said, staring at the lawn mowers in the graveyard.

  “Well, what did you expect?” Rachel asked.

  “I’m not sure,” he said shrugging.

  “Do you think they should have cut the grass for you,” Anna suggested, “before they sent the search party to look for you?”

  Eric laughed. “I suppose not. But it’s kind of weird that we time-travelled through a wormhole and … and nothing changed here. And now we’re just supposed to carry on mowing the stupid grass and trimming around the stupid graves.”

  I grabbed a shovel from the wheelbarrow and continued on to the three pillars.

  It was the next day now—three days since we vanished—and everything was almost back to normal. Bruno had to file some police reports at the station in Milner’s Corner, leaving Anna to spend the morning with us.

  Don’t get me wrong, everyone believed our story at the press conference, and he wasn’t in any trouble. He was a respected scientist, after all. It’s just that the search and rescue efforts to find us cost a ton of money, and I guess everything had to be properly documented.

  Anyway, when we arrived at the pillars, I started digging around the base of one of the stones. When I got down a foot I stopped, and we examined the surface.

  Anna brushed away the dry earth and said, “Just as you predicted, Cody. More and more of the symbols were buried as the years went by.”

  “But they’re definitely the same,” Eric said, getting on his knees and examining the surface. “Hey, wait a minute!”

  “What is it?” Rachel asked.

  “Look,” Eric said. “Look right here, in the corner.”

  So I did. “Is that … what I think it is?” I said.

  Eric laughed. “That’s exactly what you think it is. It’s a feather. Just like the one Ghost-Keeper scratched on our arrowhead.”

  “We never noticed it because it’s so small,” Eric said, “but I bet it was there all along.”

  Anna scratched her head. “So if Ghost-Keeper wrote those instructions on the pillars, he may also have time-travelled as a teenager.”

  “Cool!” Eric said.

  I got goosebumps on my arms, but said no
thing.

  “You know,” Rachel said, “I’m happy to be back in our Sultana, but if we had to stay with the Cree forever, I don’t think it would have been so bad.”

  I nodded. “You’re right about that.” I had been thinking the same thing for days. The Cree were super-friendly, they liked to laugh and tell stories, and they took good care of each other. Sure, we had visited them hundreds of years in the past, but in a lot of ways they were just like us. And even if they didn’t have computers and other modern stuff, they were happy. “I could have been Ghost-Keeper’s assistant storyteller,” I added.

  “And I could have been the camp chef,” Eric said.

  “And I would have liked to be a healer,” Anna said. “An expert in natural medicines.”

  “Heck, if they had TVs and pizza, I wouldn’t even have bothered coming back with you guys.”

  “Wouldn’t it be neat to go back and visit them some time?” I said.

  “Well,” Eric said, “that shouldn’t be a problem. We know the secret now to go back and visit the Cree. We just have to wait for the right time and stand in the right spot.”

  “Are you nuts?” Rachel cried. “You can’t keep interacting with the past. I thought we settled that already.”

  “Yes,” Anna said, “my father was right. People from the twenty-first century can never use the wormhole again. It must be forgotten.”

  “We know, we know,” Eric said. “We only meant it might be neat to visit them again—like for a holiday. We weren’t serious. We were joking.”

  Rachel mumbled, “Sure, sure.”

  Anna said, “I suspect you two were only half-joking.”

  Rachel headed to the edge of the cemetery and began searching the forest floor. “Come on, you guys!” she yelled. “I want to show you something else.”

  We followed her patiently as she weaved a path around trees and shrubs.

  “If we go any farther,” Anna cautioned, “we may really get lost.”

  “Ah ha!” Rachel said, pointing at the ground. “I thought I recognized his name.”

  I looked down at the grass where a small boulder was half-buried. The rough etching on the exposed surface said:

  L. LEBLANC

  –1782–

  LOST

  “I think this might be the very first gravestone in the cemetery,” Rachel said.

  “I guess his fellow voyageurs assumed he was lost for good,” I said.

  Eric leaned over and brushed some pine needles from Léon’s headstone. “Well, he actually was lost for good, from this world,” Eric reminded us.

  “The funny thing is,” Rachel said, “we found him hundreds of years later, still living happily with the Cree.”

  I looked at my friends. “Except Léon didn’t want to come home,” I said, “and we’re happy to be home.”

  Very happy.

  AUTHOR Q & A

  Q: In Book One of the Shenanigans series, Cody, Eric, and Rachel create a fake ancient Egyptian tablet to bring much-needed attention to their sleepy town. In Book Two, they stumble upon a real archaeological discovery that has the potential to bring even more fame and attention to Sultana and change their lives forever. How did the kids’ experience in the first book influence their actions in the second book?

  A: In the first book, Cody, Eric, and Rachel learned the importance of owning up and taking responsibility for one’s actions. Specifically, their fake ancient Egyptian tablet created havoc and spun out of control, so they confessed their involvement and faced the consequences. In Book Two, after the kids returned from their time travels to the past, they were presented with an even greater dilemma. If they told the world about the stones, they would be famous and Sultana would remain in the spotlight forever. But because of their recent awareness of consequences, they realized that in spite of the perceived benefits (fame and fortune), past civilizations could suffer greatly from time travellers.

  Q: How did you decide to explore the idea of time travel in this book? Are the stone pillars that Cody, Eric, Rachel, and Anna use to travel through time based on real artifacts? And if so, are there people who believe that such artifacts are connected to time travel?

  A: I’ve always been intrigued with the concept of time travel, because if time travel is possible, then any adventure we imagine is also possible. For example, we could go back in time and help build the Great Wall of China. Or we could travel the West Indies with Christopher Columbus. Or we could watch dinosaurs … I get inspired just thinking about all the possibilities.

  The pillars in Stones of Time are loosely based on the great monoliths found scattered across Europe. I’m not sure if any those are arranged in a triangular pattern like those in this book, or if anyone believes those pillars are linked to time travel. That’s just the fictional device I used to mark the wormhole.

  Q: You could have sent the characters to any time period or any place in the world. Why did you choose to send them back to the site of their own town, before there ever was a town? What did you want them to see and learn from this experience?

  A: Yes, they could have travelled back in time anywhere, but I didn’t want the kids to be overwhelmed. I thought if they could be grounded in their home town, they would only need to concentrate on the problem of returning to their own time. I also wanted Cody and his friends to experience the Cree culture and to see that people who we think are different are really not different at all.

  Q: What would you say to kids who are studying Canadian history in school and finding it boring or hard to connect to?

  A: Sure, memorizing dates is kind of dull, but if you can imagine yourself there, in the exciting stories that make up our history, you’d find our past is anything but boring. And don’t forget to ask your librarian for middle-grade historical fiction involving the subject/time period you’re studying.

  Q: What’s next for Rachel, Cody, and Eric? Will we see more of Anna and Bruno Wassler in the next book?

  A: Cody, Eric, and Rachel have to solve a mystery on their own in Book Three, but Anna and her father will make a reappearance in Book Four.

  QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

  Do you believe that time travel is possible? Why or why not? If you had the choice to visit either the past or the future, which would you choose and why?

  How would you describe Anna’s character? How would you describe Dr. Bruno Wassler?

  Cody tells us that the graveyard creeped out him and his friends at first, but then they got used to being there. How would working in a cemetery make you feel? Would you find it peaceful? Sad? Scary? Why?

  If a stranger approached you and said he found a way to time-travel, would you believe him? What if he had proof? What kind of proof would you need?

  Cody and Eric race home and quickly gather supplies for their rescue mission. Did they forget to take something you would have taken? Brainstorm a list of things would you want to take with you if you had to travel back in time. But remember, you can only fill two backpacks.

  If you had a choice and could travel back in time to anywhere, what would you want to see or do?

  Léon Leblanc, the voyageur, accidentally travelled back in time and decided to stay with the Cree. What do you think of his decision?

  After spying on the camp where Rachel is held, Cody and Eric hatch a rescue plan. Try and think of a rescue plan that is different from theirs.

  After successfully escaping and making it home again, Cody and his friends decide they cannot tell anyone that they time-travelled. Do you agree with their decision? Why or why not?

  Communication is an important theme in this story. The symbols on the pillars send a message to anyone who can decipher them. When the kids go back in time, they have to learn how to communicate with the Cree, even though they do not speak the same language. Somehow, the characters in the book figure out how to understand things that are completely outside of their normal, everyday experience. Pretend that you have just arrived in a strange place and time, and you
have to communicate with the people you meet. How would you do this?

  QUESTIONS FOR READING COMPREHENSION

  In the prologue, we see a girl (Anna) lost in a forest. What clues did Anna find to help her figure out where (and when) she was?

  Why are Cody, Eric, and Rachel cutting the grass in the Sultana cemetery?

  Dr. Bruno Wassler finds the kids and asks for their help. Why does he have such a hard time explaining what happened? And why do Cody, Eric, and Rachel have a hard time believing him?

  Based on Cody and Anna’s description of the stones, draw a picture of the petroform site.

  Where was Rachel standing when she vanished? Why is that spot significant?

  Why can’t Bruno go back in time and rescue the girls?

  If phones don’t work in the past, why do Cody and Eric ask Bruno for a phone?

  What is the name of the astronomical event that will open the wormhole?

  Why does Bruno tell the boys not to linger in the past? What are the consequences of hanging out with a past civilization?

  What does Bruno warn the boys about just before they disappear in the wormhole?

  After Anna finds Cody and Eric, Cody realizes they are actually still in Sultana. What makes him think that?

  How do the kids lose the Cree trackers that are searching for them?

  Where does Anna say she is from? Where does she go to school?

  Why do they decide that Cody should investigate the Cree camp alone? Do you agree with their decision? Why or why not?

  How does Cody disguise himself when he goes to spy on the Cree?

  Based on Cody’s observations, try to draw a picture or a map of the Cree camp.

  What clues make Cody think the tall “Native” man is a voyageur?

  Plan A is to trick the Cree into releasing Rachel using a “talking” tree. What was their back-up scheme—their Plan B?

  Why does Eric try to change his voice when he talks to Red Hat/Léon Leblanc?

  Why is Rachel more upset than the others when they learn Léon can actually speak English?