Time Sight

by Lynne Jonell

  Breet smacked her palms. “This is the news that will give heart to my father! I must tell him! I must tell all my people!”

  “You do that,” said Nan’s father, grinning.

  * * *

  “All right,” Will said, holding tight to the sides of the chariot as they rolled across the grounds, “now to get you home. Should we go back the way we came?”

  Breet shuddered. “No more dragon chariots. I’ll go the long way around—up the hill, then down into the river valley.”

  “Can you drive uphill? Through the trees?” Will was doubtful.

  Breet laughed. “This is a war chariot! And they are war ponies! They go uphill and down—and fast, too. Besides, look, the old road is still there!” She pointed to the path leading up through Weem Wood.

  “It’s funny,” Will said, “that the path we still use is really an old Pictish road.”

  “What’s really funny,” said Nan, “is that we’re riding across where real Romans are camping, right this minute.”

  Will looked over his shoulder. Cousin Ewen had gone into the castle. “Stop here, will you? I’m going to open a window into the Roman camp. Just to look,” he added as he stepped from the chariot. “I want to see where Gormlaith is.”

  But the time window did not open easily. Will suddenly realized how very tired he was. He had spent many hours back with the Picts; his body probably thought it was way past bedtime. Suddenly he envied Jamie, fast asleep in his cot in the castle.

  Will tried again until he got a shimmer. Then he searched wearily for the right moment in time. It was harder than he had thought it would be. When he’d gone into Pictish time before, he had been touching the ancient Roman pin. He needed a strong connection to Breet’s time—oh, of course. Breet herself. He reached out to grab her hand.

  The late-afternoon sun filtered through the leaves in the woods, lighting the forest floor with a shifting mosaic of greens and soft browns and bright gold. Somewhere above his head, a bird trilled, and Will breathed slowly, deeply. Gently he probed with the strange inner vision he called Time Sight for the telltale tracks that marked the trips they had taken into the past. In this quiet space, with no need to rush, he could see the faint golden threads clearly. Each one had a slightly different—color? No, not color. A different vibration? That wasn’t quite right, either. It was almost as if each one had a different … personality.

  His heart beat a little faster. Why not? Why wouldn’t each person’s track through time be a little bit different? Now that he was looking for it, he could almost tell who was who. That swooping one might be Nan—it had a sort of humming energy that reminded him of her. There were two tracks that looked almost alike, except that one had been traced over again, as if more than one trip had been made—oh, of course, that would be Breet and her father. The bouncy one that almost seemed to fizz had to be Jamie, and he would bet that the wavering, loopy one was Gormlaith. That left—

  “Quickly!” said Breet at his elbow. “My people—we can’t wait too long!”

  Will abandoned his study of the golden threads and pinpointed what felt like the right time. There. He couldn’t go back any farther, or it all turned gray on him.… He opened the window and found himself looking directly into the sneering face of a Roman guard. The man’s fist was drawn back, and he looked as if he were about to—

  “Watch out!” cried Breet.

  11

  ROMANS AND PICTS

  WILL’S HEART GAVE A VIOLENT leap, and he ducked. The window snapped shut.

  “Better try again, farther off,” said Nan.

  “Thank you, Captain Obvious,” Will muttered. His heart raced; his headache had returned. How many times today had he opened a window into a new time? Seven? Eight?

  “Well, excuse me for wanting to keep you from getting punched!” Nan said hotly.

  “Sorry,” Will mumbled, backing up out of Breet’s way. The ponies had shied at the noise; Breet ran to calm them with Pictish endearments. Will glanced up the wooded slope behind him. “Breet, you’d better take the chariot up the hill. Go far enough away that the Romans won’t see you through the trees. I’ll come up and open a window into your time in a little while.”

  “In a while?” Breet’s voice scaled up fiercely. “My people need the news I bring! You know what they will do—kill everyone—”

  “But we have to get Gormlaith,” Nan soothed. “It won’t take a minute.”

  “You’d make my people wait while you rescue a dog?” The color on Breet’s cheeks rose dangerously high.

  “No worries,” Will interrupted hastily. “I can open the time window to almost the moment we left, see? Your people will hardly wait a minute.”

  “Then send me through now and get the dog later!”

  Will leaned his forehead against the trunk of a tree. He didn’t want to climb the hill to send Breet home, then have to come all the way back for Gormlaith.… Besides, it was completely unnecessary.

  “Do as I say!” Breet shrieked. “I am the daughter of a chieftain!”

  “Oh, give it a rest,” Nan snapped. “And don’t you dare!” She knocked aside Breet’s whip, which had begun to rise. “Do you want to go home, or not?”

  The blood drained from Breet’s face; the blue painted spirals stood out weirdly on skin suddenly pale. She lowered her whip.

  Will looked straight into Breet’s gray eyes. “I will get you back in time, I promise.”

  Breet bit her lip. Without a word, she clucked to the horses and led them up the hill.

  Nan turned to Will. “Are you all right?”

  Will shrugged. “It’s harder and harder to keep the window open. My head starts to hurt.… Listen, let’s just get this over with. I want to go home and sleep.”

  He backed up, a good distance from where the angry Roman had been, and let his eyes glaze over as he stared into space. It was surprisingly difficult to relax. He could not forget that Roman fist; what if it was a spear next time?

  The window wasn’t opening. Will took in a breath and let it out. Maybe his eyes were focusing too sharply, watching for danger. He deliberately slackened the tension in his body and tried again.

  The threadlike tracks of his passage through time emerged at last, glimmering faintly at the edges of his vision. There. That one. Will gently pushed the worry to the back of his mind, and opened the window.

  There was a thick tree just ahead. Good—it would block any stray spears. Slowly Will turned until he saw the Roman tents, bright in the high afternoon sun. Some of the men were building a sort of tall fence with sharpened spikes. There was the centurion with his red-crested helmet, drawing in the dirt with a stick while two other soldiers looked on. Battle plans, maybe. Something glinted at his shoulder—a sort of curved pin, holding the folds of his cloak together.

  But where was the guard who had almost put a fist through the time window? Will continued to turn his head slowly to the right. Then he stopped.

  Behind him, Nan gasped. “Why is that guard hitting that poor man?”

  “He must be one of their slaves,” Will said slowly. “Captured in battle, I guess.” He watched, feeling sick, as the spindly man on the ground wiped his bloody nose with the back of his hand and struggled to his feet.

  The angry Roman guard let loose with a string of words Will didn’t understand. Then, amid the babble, he heard clearly the word janitor.

  The slave picked up a bucket at his feet and went trudging off to one of the tents.

  “Janitor?” said Will.

  “Maybe it’s a Latin word,” Nan said. “You know, what the Romans spoke? At school, they told us we still use a lot of Latin words today. Like, uh, gymnasium. And auditorium. And janitor, I suppose, and—”

  “Gormlaith!” said Will.

  “No, Gormlaith isn’t Latin,” Nan corrected.

  “The dog, you dumbwit! Look there, by the corner of the tent the slave just passed.” Will turned the window slightly. There, in a triangular bit of shade, a large crea
my dog lay with her head on her paws.

  Nan’s fingers dug into Will’s shoulder as the angry Roman guard moved toward the dog. “If he hurts Gormly, I swear I’m going to kill him.”

  But the guard only stooped to fondle the dog’s head. Gormlaith scrambled to her feet, pulling against the rope that tied her. The guard disappeared into the tent, laughing.

  Nan made a sound remarkably like a snarl. “Right, that scunner isn’t touching my dog again. Let’s get her.”

  They moved forward slowly, Will concentrating on keeping the picture focused, Nan trying not to step on Will’s heels. They reached the dog and paused, irresolute.

  “I’ll call her,” said Nan. “Then she’ll jump through.”

  “She can’t hear us, remember? The sound and sight only goes in one direction—”

  Nan suddenly stuck her head through the window.

  “No!” Will protested, but Nan couldn’t hear him with her head on the other side.

  “Gormlaith!” Nan reached a hand through and tugged on the rope. “Come!”

  Will tried desperately to keep his focus around Nan’s shifting head and shoulders. He couldn’t let the window shut when her head was hanging out there in another time.

  Gormlaith’s glad snuff at Nan’s voice changed in an instant to a fearful whine. She backed up, pulling at the rope to get as far from the disembodied head as possible. In the distance, Will saw movement as a Roman turned toward the dog—and Nan’s head.

  Sweat from Will’s forehead dripped down onto his lashes and hung there, trembling. He groped for the back of Nan’s collar and yanked hard.

  Her head came back, but her hand was still through the window, gripping the rope. Now Will could hear someone shouting on the other side.

  “Let go!” he urged.

  “Come on, you—Gormless!” Nan tugged at the rope, but the dog tugged harder.

  “Pull—your hand—in now,” Will said through his teeth. He kept focus with a shaking effort; it felt as if an iron band were pressing around his forehead. He couldn’t hold out much longer.

  Desperately Will clamped his hand around Nan’s wrist and used all his strength for a last, violent yank. He fell on his back, and Nan tumbled on top of him.

  “Why did you do that?” she cried. “Gormly was going to come in a minute!”

  Breathless, Will pointed. Four inches of rope still dangled from her fist. The end had been cleanly cut, as if by the sharpest of knives.

  “Oh…,” said Nan.

  “It would have cut your hand right off if I hadn’t pulled.” Will sat up, rubbing his eyes. “Next time, listen, will you? I can’t keep that window open forever!”

  “You don’t have to get stroppy about it.” Nan’s voice was sulky.

  Will glared at her. “Fine. Next time, get yourself cut in two, see if I care!”

  Nan tried to return the glare, but her eyes filled in spite of her. She turned away, sniffling. “It’s just—she’s my dog, and I don’t know how to get her back.”

  Will brushed the dirt off his knees. “Okay,” he said heavily. “I’ll open a window for a few seconds, so we can see what happened to her. Then I’ll close it, and we can think what to do. All right?”

  Nan sniffled again and nodded.

  Will’s head felt like a split melon, but he managed to get the window open again after three attempts. He tried for the moment after the rope had been cut and was just in time to see Gormlaith’s hindquarters as she dodged through the camp and tore off up the hill, the long rope flapping and jouncing behind her. Will shut the window with relief. “No one followed her. She went up the hill—I saw where. Let’s go take care of Breet and then find Gormly and go home. All right?”

  Nan nodded, gulping. “But hurry—we don’t know how fast time is moving, back there. Remember how a year went by for Jamie, while only an afternoon passed for us?”

  “Only because I wasn’t used to opening the window. I didn’t know how to zero in on the time.” Will had a feeling there was more to it than that, but he couldn’t think what.

  He trudged up the hill after Nan. On this very soil, two thousand years in the past, Romans were beating their slaves and preparing for war. But here in the twenty-first century, the woods were quiet and green, and the path was worn smooth by the feet of hikers. Behind him, in the distance, he could hear faint shouts from the reenactors, and the sound of clashing swords mixed with laughter and the happy shrieks of children. Everyone was having a grand time playing Romans and Picts. Will was consumed with longing to stay in this time, his own time, where things were peaceful and battles were pretend …

  Except they weren’t always. Not in the place where his mother was. Not in lots of places.

  Will winced. He was so tired. He didn’t want to think about the world with all its troubles, past and present and yet to come; there was so little he could do about any of it. Nothing at all, really—

  No, that wasn’t right. He had done something. And in spite of the ache that always came at the thought of his mother, the ache that never quite went away, there was a lightness in him, too. Because he had done what his father had asked. He’d taken care of Jamie.

  It was a small thing, maybe, compared to all the problems in the world, but it would not seem small to his mother or his father. And though his parents would never know how difficult it had been, Will knew. And if the old man at the well—Sir David—was right, then God knew, too. Somehow that was a comfort.

  Will glanced over his shoulder. He couldn’t see Castle Menzies through the trees, but it was there all the same, and his little brother was safe inside it, sleeping. Now if only Will could get Breet back to the Picts, and find Gormlaith and bring her home, he would never, ever go back in time again.

  “Don’t step in the hole,” Nan said suddenly.

  Will blinked and came out of his daydream. There, at his feet, was the hole Jamie and Gormlaith had dug, with a trowel stuck beside it in a pile of earth. Next to it was Nan’s satchel where she had dropped it, with a corner of the Magic Eyeball book poking out the top. And still on the ground was the Roman pin—Jamie’s “stabber”—and next to it, the penknife Nan had dropped. No one had disturbed anything.

  “Look, there’s Breet,” said Nan, pointing.

  The brightly painted chariot was screened from the base of the hill, where the Roman camp would be when Breet went back to her own time; she had chosen her spot well. The ponies whickered softly, pawing the ground as if anxious to get going. Breet left the reins looped around a tree and trotted back to grip their hands so they could speak together. “I want to go back to my people now.”

  “I’m going to send you.” Will looked around to get his bearings. “Okay, the Roman camp was just about there.” He pointed down the hill and to the right. “And the last I saw Gormlaith, she was running up here, but more to the left, I think.”

  Breet’s head reared back. “My people come before your dog!”

  “I’m just working everything out in advance,” Will explained. “I don’t want to keep the window open while we figure out what’s next. It hurts my head if it’s open too long, and it’s bad if I accidentally close the window at the wrong time.” Will glanced at Nan.

  “Really bad,” Nan agreed fervently.

  “So here’s my idea. Breet, you stand by the horses’ heads and wait for my signal. When the window opens, lead them through—they’ll go more quietly that way.”

  “Yes,” said Breet.

  Will went on. “I’m going to open a window to a few seconds after Gormlaith’s rope was cut. That’s as early as I can go, and it should be enough time for you to get back and stop your people from—you know.”

  Breet nodded grimly.

  “You won’t see the time window because you won’t be touching me. But I’ll make it big enough for the chariot to go through, like before. When you hear me shout your name, just walk straight ahead. There might be a sort of strange look to the air; go right through it and you’ll be back in you
r own time.”

  “Then drive straight over the hill and down the other side, and back to my village to tell my father all that I have seen!” Breet’s face was triumphant.

  “But what about Gormlaith?” Nan twisted her fingers together.

  “I’m coming to that. As soon as Breet makes it all the way through, I’ll turn the window to face the Roman camp. We should see Gormly running up the hill toward us. You’ll have to call her—”

  “What, stick my head through again?” Nan looked worried. “Are you sure? I don’t want to get beheaded.… Anyway, Gormly didn’t even come the last time I did that. I think she was scared to see my head just floating there.”

  Will hesitated. He did not want to send Nan into danger, but he couldn’t see any way out of it if they wanted to get Gormlaith back. “You’d better go all the way through the window to call her. It won’t take a minute,” he added, hoping it was true. “Even if the Romans hear you, they won’t be able to get up the hill fast enough to do anything.”

  Nan swallowed.

  “Unless you have a better idea?” Will asked hastily.

  “No,” Nan said in a small voice. “I’ll do it.”

  “Ah—you are brave, like my people!” The gap between Breet’s teeth showed as she grinned. “I wish you could come back to my village; I’d paint you with warrior patterns. But I can give you this.” She wriggled off her iron armband with a quick motion and put it into Nan’s hands. “It will bring you protection.”

  “Thanks!” said Nan, pushing it onto her arm.

  “Yeah, thanks,” Will said. “And good luck!”

  Nan traced the curving iron with her finger as Breet trotted off to the ponies. “Will, promise not to leave me there?”

  “Of course I won’t!”

  “I know you wouldn’t do it on purpose. But what if something goes wrong and you can’t keep the window open anymore? Promise you won’t just shut it and come back for me later. Promise me you’ll come through right that minute.”

  Will sighed. Nobody seemed to really understand that he had the time window thing under control now. If something did go wrong, it would actually be better to shut the window, think up a plan, gather any weapons or whatever he needed, and then open it again to the exact second he’d left—