Time Sight

by Lynne Jonell

  But there was a grayness, a sort of blockage, in the way. He tried to beat at it with his mind and it … resisted. It was as if he were pounding at a rubber wall.

  He could almost feel the heat from the fire. Will tried to probe back before the warmth, before the fire had been set, but the faintly shining threads went into the gray blankness and disappeared. He couldn’t follow them.

  How far back in time did the gray part go? Will pushed his focus deeper into the past. He couldn’t exactly tell how long before the fire he was going—days, weeks?—but it felt as if the grayness was lifting slightly. If he pushed just a little bit more—

  “Hurry up, can’t you? What’s the matter?” Nan’s voice was in his ear.

  Will tossed down the book and rubbed his forehead, which had begun to ache. “Something is stopping me. I can’t go back before the fire. It’s all—I don’t know, just gray. Like there’s nothing there.”

  “Try again, okay? Maybe the fire is causing some kind of energy surge or something. Maybe it’s messing up the time window. Go back farther.”

  “I have been! I’m telling you, it won’t let me!”

  “All right, all right, calm down.” Nan picked at a frond of bracken, shredding it between her fingers. “What do you think it means?”

  Will gazed at the castle. It was beautiful in the afternoon sun, warm and golden. “I don’t know. Maybe it means I’m not supposed to go back.”

  “Says who?”

  Will shrugged. “Maybe there are rules to time travel; we just don’t know them yet.”

  Nan let the bracken fragments sift slowly out of her hands. A small willful breeze stirred them up and whirled them away. “What if,” she said slowly, “you can’t live through a time twice?”

  Will’s eyebrows lifted. “But going back in time is living through something that’s already happened.”

  “Right, but it’s happened to other people. What if we can live through any time at all, in the whole history of the world—but we only get to do it once?”

  “Huh.” Will stared out at the castle without seeing it. “But then why couldn’t I just go to the day before we first came to the past? We haven’t lived that time yet.”

  Nan grabbed both sides of her head. “Wait a minute—I’m getting an idea—don’t talk to me yet.” She screwed her eyes shut and wrinkled up her mouth.

  Will rolled his eyes but was obligingly silent.

  “We can’t go back then because we might stay, see?” Nan opened her eyes wide to stare at Will. “We might stay in the time we aren’t supposed to live twice! Don’t you think that’s the reason?”

  Will shrugged again. “If it’s some kind of rule, then maybe when we hit the time we’ve already lived, we just get sent ahead to our own time. Or maybe,” he added slowly, “we just go into the gray bit…”

  “And never come back!” Nan said in a dramatic whisper.

  Will had no intention of getting lost in some gray part of time. And he had thought of something else. “If we did go to a time earlier than we went before,” he said, “then Jamie would still be there. We’d have to convince him to come with us all over again.”

  Nan’s forehead ridged. “But Jamie is still here, in this time. What would happen to our Jamie, if we go back? Would he just … disappear?”

  Will shrugged for the third time, though he did not feel nearly so casual about it as he had before. “I don’t really know.” He ran his hand along the stem of a furze bush, setting its yellow flowers trembling.

  “Well, we can’t do it, then,” said Nan with sudden decision.

  Will tried not to show his relief. “I guess not.”

  “And it’s not as if Sir Robert didn’t already know the Stewarts were dangerous. Probably people had been warning him all along.”

  Will crushed one of the yellow blossoms between his fingers, and a sweet scent wafted up. “Do you think Neil Gointe Stewart would starve them? Sir Robert and that little boy?”

  “No,” said Nan. “Bread and water, that’s what people got in dungeons. And sometimes gruel … that’s watery porridge. Boring food, but it would keep somebody alive, anyway.”

  Will dusted his fingers, and bits of yellow dropped to the ground. “But they might be in chains. Fetters, you know, around their ankles, and slime on the walls, and rats—”

  Nan clapped her hands over her ears. “Stop! We can’t do anything, so it’s no good talking. Anyway, it’s all over now, it happened hundreds of years ago, so there!”

  Will expelled his breath in a long sigh. It was over now. He would just keep telling himself that. It was over. It was over.

  He watched as a blue car drove up to the castle and parked. More tourists, he thought bitterly. They probably thought dungeons were fun.

  A tall man with sandy hair, slightly balding, got out of the car and stretched. He looked familiar, somehow. Will narrowed his eyes. “Who’s that?”

  “Daddy!” Nan jumped up and took off running.

  Will watched as Nan leaped into her father’s arms, and something prickled at the back of his throat. Someday Will’s own father and mother might drive up to the castle, just as suddenly. For a moment he wanted it so strongly he could almost hear the car.

  He followed Nan at a slower pace. “Hello, sir,” he said as Nan introduced them.

  “Call me Cousin Ewen,” said the man. He was tall and lanky, and bent slightly to shake Will’s hand. “I’m glad to meet you, Will. You have a look of your father.”

  Will smiled politely. “And everybody says Jamie looks like Mom.” He squinted up at Cousin Ewen against the sun’s light. The man’s face had strong features, with kind eyes, and he looked—just a little—like Sir Robert.

  Cousin Ewen looked around. “Where is Jamie, then?”

  Will opened his mouth and shut it again. He didn’t want to say that Jamie had run off with Cousin Ewen’s metal detector, not when Cousin Elspeth had made Will promise to be so careful with it. “He’s out digging holes,” he said.

  Cousin Ewen glanced around the castle grounds. “By himself? Where?”

  Will spun slowly on his heel, looking at the trees, the rocks, the hill rising behind him, hoping by some miracle that Jamie would suddenly appear.

  “There he is!” said Nan, pointing.

  Jamie ran toward them, a small frantically waving figure. “Will! Nan! I found buried treasure!” He tore back up the hillside and disappeared in the shadow of the trees.

  Nan and Will ran to catch up with Cousin Ewen, whose long legs were making good time up the hill.

  “It’s probably just more coins,” said Will, panting. “Or a rusty nail.”

  “Once,” said Nan between breaths, “I found a watch someone had dropped. It didn’t work, though.”

  But Jamie seemed to have found something more interesting than coins or a watch. When Nan and Will came upon them at last, Jamie was watching with barely suppressed glee as Cousin Ewen knelt over a hole in the ground, enlarging it carefully with the trowel.

  Will noted with some guilt that the metal detector was lying on the ground a few feet away, but Nan’s father wasn’t paying it any attention. His whole body seemed alert, somehow, and his eyes never left the object in the hole.

  “What did Jamie find, Dad?” Nan squatted next to her father and peered in the hole. “A hunk of scrap iron?”

  Cousin Ewen sat back on his heels and set down the trowel. “Iron, yes—or bronze, maybe—but not scrap. Look here.” He traced with his finger the curving piece of metal, like an upside-down bowl, that showed in the small hole Jamie had dug. “Do you see this? That’s a bit of a design that someone worked on. It’s scalloped along this side, see—like the edge of a wing, maybe.”

  He scraped away some loose dirt with his fingernail, and now Will could see it, too—regular lines on a curved surface. The metal was dark, and pitted, but clearly it had been made by humans a long time ago. “What do you think it is, sir?” he asked.

  “I’m no expert,” said
Cousin Ewen, “but I wonder if that isn’t a Roman helmet. If so, it’s an important find, Jamie.” He grinned. “I won’t even mind that you used my metal detector without permission, as long as you found something like this.”

  “We did have permission,” Will said quickly, “from Cousin Elspeth. But Jamie wasn’t supposed to go off with it by himself.”

  Cousin Ewen chuckled. “Never mind, lads.” He stood, rocking back to stretch his legs, and picked up the metal detector. “I’m going to get some proper tools. With a find this important, I’d better take care digging it up before I bring it over to the museum.”

  “But don’t I get to keep my helmet?” Jamie wailed. “I found it!”

  The tall man shook his head. “It’s not yours, strictly speaking, Jamie—it’s the property of the Crown.”

  Jamie rubbed his forehead. “But I don’t see what King James wants with an old Roman helmet—”

  “It’s not King James anymore!” Will whispered urgently.

  Nan took Jamie’s hand. “Come on, let’s help Dad get the tools. I bet they’ll put your picture in the paper and everything!”

  * * *

  That night Will and Jamie’s father called. Jamie, who had taken an instant liking to Cousin Ewen, seemed unsure about who his father might be. He took the phone in his hand awkwardly, with an uncertain glance at his brother.

  Will’s heart sank. Jamie couldn’t have forgotten his father—could he? But then, it had been a whole year since Jamie had seen him.… “Tell him about your helmet,” Will suggested.

  When it was Will’s turn to talk, he gripped the phone with a hand that felt suddenly sweaty. “How are things going?” he asked.

  “Oh, fine.” His father’s voice came through the line with what sounded like forced cheer. “Things are moving right along.”

  “Are you bringing Mom home?”

  “Not quite yet,” his father answered. “But soon, I’m sure. Don’t you worry, son, that’s my job. Your job is to take care of your little brother, and be sure to obey Cousin Elspeth. I love you—”

  Will clutched the phone a little tighter. “Have you seen Mom yet? Is she okay?”

  “I’m told she’s fine.” Will’s father spoke rapidly. “Now, can you put Ewen on the line, please? I don’t have much time to talk—”

  Cousin Ewen took the phone and listened. Will watched his face grow serious. When he put his hand on the wall, as if to steady himself, Will turned away. Something that felt like ice water seemed to be trickling through his bones, making his legs feel weak. What was his father saying to Cousin Ewen that he wouldn’t tell his son?

  Someone nudged him. “What’s happening?” Nan hissed.

  Will flapped his hand to get her to be quiet. He was trying to listen. Cousin Ewen was saying things he didn’t understand. Something about a consulate, and the American Embassy.

  “Well?” Nan said, a little louder. “What did your dad tell you?”

  Cousin Ewen glanced at them both and turned away, speaking more softly.

  Will glared at her. Couldn’t she take a hint? Now he’d lost his chance to find out more.

  “Oh, sorry,” Nan said, belatedly figuring it out.

  A small hand slid into Will’s, and Jamie looked up into his face. “What was that book you were looking at before?” Jamie asked. “About history?”

  Later, Nan found them sprawled on the floor in Will’s bedroom, their heads bent over the book Will had bought in the gift shop. She lingered in the doorway to listen.

  “See?” Will was saying. “Here’s the time you remember.”

  “That’s King James,” Jamie said, jabbing at the book with a pudgy finger. “James the Fourth. He came to our castle once.”

  “Yep. And if you turn the pages, you can see what happened after that.… And here we are at our time. You can tell because of the cars and planes.”

  Nan, at the door, made a sudden noise like a hiccup. “I’ve got it!”

  “What now?” Will glared up at her. Just as he was getting Jamie to look at the book, Nan had to jump in the middle of everything!

  “I know how to explain it to him! Listen, Jamie.” Nan flopped down on the floor and folded her legs beneath her. “See how we’re at modern times, now, on this page?”

  Jamie nodded.

  “Well, look.” Nan stuck her finger in the book to hold the place and flipped back through the pages. “Here we are at Sir Robert’s time again. Can you see the page for our time now?”

  Jamie shook his head.

  “But it’s still there, right?”

  Jamie stuck out his lower lip a little. “Of course it’s still there. I’m not stupid!”

  “But don’t you see?” Nan leaned over the book. “It’s just like going through the time window. When you were back in Sir Robert’s time, here”—her finger jabbed at the picture of King James IV—“you couldn’t see our time, because you weren’t in it then. You weren’t on that page.”

  “So to speak,” Will said cautiously. Was Jamie going to get angry again? Was Nan going to confuse him more?

  “But it was still there all along,” Nan went on. “When you crawled through the time window to our time, Sir Robert’s time was still going on, only now you weren’t on that page anymore, so you couldn’t see it. Does that make sense?”

  “Sort of.” Jamie frowned and reached for the book. “I want to look at the Romans again.” He paged carefully back until he came to a picture of a soldier with spear and shield, outfitted in shoulder pads and breastplate, with an ornate red-crested helmet on his head. “Nobody could hurt somebody who had all that on, right?”

  “It wouldn’t be easy,” Will agreed.

  There was a muffled sound in the hall, and Will turned to see Cousin Elspeth, wiping at her eyes. She put on a bright smile and came into the room. “Do you like history, then, lads? Why don’t you let Nan take you up to see Saint David’s Well tomorrow? That’s not a long hike, and it’s got a good bit of history to it. It’s a pretty view, too. I’ll pack you a picnic lunch.”

  Jamie looked up. “Was Saint David a Roman?”

  Cousin Ewen appeared in the doorway behind his wife. “No, he was a Menzies. But if you’re interested in Romans, there are going to be some historical reenactors here tomorrow, staging a battle in the field. You could learn a lot!”

  “Um—we’ll go to Saint David’s Well, thanks,” Nan said hurriedly. “Less like school.”

  “What are reenactors?” Jamie wanted to know.

  Nan snorted. “Grown-ups who like to play ‘let’s pretend we live back in the past.’ They get dressed up in costumes and whack each other with swords and things.”

  “Real swords?” said Jamie, looking worried.

  “Yes, but it’s a mock fight—they don’t hurt each other,” Nan’s father assured him. “At least not much, and not on purpose.”

  Will asked, “Were there really Romans here once? I mean at Castle Menzies?”

  Cousin Ewen stroked his chin. “It’s possible. They built a fort only about twenty miles from here, at Inchtuthil. The Romans called it Pinnata Castra—fortress on the wing. You remember, Nan, you went on a field trip there once—”

  Nan glanced at Will and rolled her eyes ever so slightly.

  “And the Romans might have sent riders out from the fort when they were trying to subdue the natives.” Cousin Ewen grinned wickedly. “They didn’t succeed, I might add.”

  Jamie’s face twisted up into worry. “Did the Romans fight people who lived at the castle?”

  “No,” said Cousin Ewen, “because the castle hadn’t been built yet. We’re talking two thousand years ago.”

  “Oh,” said Jamie, his face clearing. “That’s all right, then.”

  8

  SAINT DAVID’S WELL

  THE PATH TO SAINT DAVID’S Well wound up and up through Weem Wood; past Nan’s father, who was pruning trees in the garden; beyond the historical reenactors, who were beginning to pull into the parking lot. Gormlaith
yanked the leash out of Nan’s hand and rocketed off to chase a squirrel (“Don’t worry,” said Nan, “she never catches anything.”) and circled back, panting with her mouth open in a goofy grin, only to take off after a rabbit and disappear again, ears flopping.

  The children passed great slabs of rock, seamed and furred with moss, and jumped over small trickles of water. Bracken crowded the path, thickly green, swishing at their legs as they trudged higher and higher. In the steepest parts flat stones had been set, making a sort of irregular stair.

  Will half expected Jamie to complain that the walk was too long. Certainly the Jamie of just a week ago would have been whining already. But this Jamie trotted up the path with bright eyes, turning his head this way and that, and patting the boulders he passed as if they were old friends. “I know the way to the well,” he announced. “I used to go there all the time. There’s a hermit’s cave there, too, close by.”

  “Where?” Will wiped his forehead with his sleeve.

  “I’ll show you. They say you can follow the cave into the hill for miles!”

  “No, you can’t,” Nan said. “I know that cave. It’s all blocked up with rubble.”

  “How did the old hermit live in it, then?” Jamie fired back.

  But when they came to the cave, Nan was right. Jamie turned back from the choked entrance to the cave with a look of bewilderment. “I was sure this was the place.”

  “This is the place,” said Nan, “but so many years have passed that it’s all different.”

  “It looks like half the ceiling fell in.” Will stepped back. He hoped the old hermit, whoever he was, hadn’t been inside when it happened. “Come on, let’s go up to the well and eat lunch. I’m starving.”

  “What about Gormly?” asked Jamie.

  Nan snorted. “She’ll come when she smells food.”

  Saint David’s Well was made of flat, smooth slabs of stone surrounding a rectangular basin of water, dark in the shadow of the overhanging rock cliff. The pool was coffin shaped, and Will felt a chill between his shoulder blades.

  He turned his back and stepped out onto the wide, grassy wedge of turf, like a terrace, that overlooked the valley below. The sun was bright on the tops of trees; across the valley, the forest fit snugly over the hilltops like a thick green blanket. As clouds moved briskly overhead, the faraway greens changed from bright to dark and then back again, so that the hill seemed to ripple with light.