by Lynne Jonell
“Hurry!” Nan’s whisper was hoarse in his ear.
“I can’t find the right time.” Will searched frantically for the shimmering golden threads, the feeling that said “now,” the sense that he had homed in on the moment he wanted, but something—something strong—seemed to be tugging him in another direction.
“It doesn’t have to be the perfect time—just get us out of here!” Nan’s fingers clutched his shoulder.
The air shimmered faintly. The window came into focus—faded out—came in again. There were no golden threads there, yet something dragged at him like strong hands, pulling in spite of his resistance.
“Now!” Nan squeaked as a Roman appeared at the head of the path.
Will gave in, and the window opened. Nan sprang through it. Will dived after her, rolling on the ground, and lay there, panting.
The sky above him was a dark slate-gray, with a glimmer of pink in the east, and the earth beneath was cold and prickly with early-morning frost. He sat up and rubbed his arms, already covered with goose bumps.
And there was a boy, dressed in skins with a rough fiber torc around his neck, staring at them with his back to a tree.
12
CRAY-TEE AND POUN-KA
THE BOY’S EYES WERE WIDE, and his face pale beneath his shaggy hair, but he stayed pressed against the tree, as if too terrified to move.
Will raised himself cautiously and gave Nan a silent jerk of his chin in the direction of the path. If they could just get to a place without any people around, where he could have quiet for a minute, he could get them back home—
Tap. Tap. Tap.
The sound came from behind them. Will whirled to see a man crouched over the cup-marked stone, his back to the children. His hard-muscled arm jerked in time with the taps; he seemed to be using a rock to hammer at the stone. A leather pouch hung at his side, and the knife in his belt was the color of a new penny.
Beyond the man, a small group of people swayed back and forth, their eyes closed. They chanted three notes in a minor key, over and over, and their voices rose and fell weirdly, with a sound like wind blowing through a hollow pipe. Standing before them was a woman with a pelt of white fur about her shoulders. Her head was thrown back, and her arms were lifted toward the faint pink tint at the edge of the sky.
Will exchanged a glance with Nan, put a finger to his lips, and took a silent step toward the path—then another. He and Nan were almost past the shaggy-haired boy. With any luck, the boy would keep still—
But Nan stopped dead, as if she had suddenly grown roots.
Come on! Will mouthed the words in furious silence.
Nan shook her head. She pointed to the fiber torc around the boy’s neck.
Will rolled his eyes in a fury of impatience. What did it matter if the torc was made of rope? Maybe the kid wasn’t important enough to have a better one!
Then, all at once, Will saw. Knotted around the boy’s neck, the rope led tautly down his back behind the tree, ending in a knot around the boy’s wrists. The rope necklace wasn’t a torc at all. It was a noose that both choked him and tied him to the tree.
Nan pulled her penknife out of her pocket and flicked it open.
The boy’s eyes dilated in horror. He leaned away, and the rope tightened about his neck. A sound gurgled deep in his throat.
The crouching man turned, suddenly alert. The chanting stopped.
“Hurry!” Will whispered.
Nan cut the rope from the boy’s wrists with two jerks of her knife and turned to run.
The man caught up to them before they had gone four yards. Will felt a powerful hand clamp around his neck, and then his head was smacked together with Nan’s. Dazed, he struggled to get away, but the fingers around his neck tightened and his vision clouded. He felt himself being dragged.
When next he could see, he was kneeling next to Nan, his arms pinned behind his back. Voices were speaking a language he had never learned. Nearby, the boy Nan had tried to rescue sat chafing his wrists; the long end of the rope still dangled from his neck.
The headman examined Nan’s penknife with great interest.
“That’s mine,” said Nan, but her voice trembled.
“They can’t understand you.” Will’s throat ached where the man had squeezed it, and he felt a great weariness. They had barely escaped a battle, only to be taken captive. Was it never going to end?
“I don’t care,” Nan said wildly. “My dad gave me that knife!”
The crowd murmured. It was a threatening sound.
“Don’t make them mad,” Will whispered.
But Nan could not seem to calm down. “It’s horrible here! They tie kids up, and bash their heads, and I’m cold, and I want to go home!” She shivered, rubbing her arms up and down. Her hand bumped the strange beast head on Breet’s armband, and she turned the coiled metal ring so that the elongated snout faced outward, away from her fingers.
The richly dressed woman moistened her lips with her tongue. Then she fingered the copper clasp at her throat that held her fur together, setting a fringe of black-tipped ermine tails swinging. “Cray-tee,” she murmured.
“What’s she staring at me for?” Nan flung her hair back, scowling.
“Take it easy,” Will whispered. “I think she’s a high priest or something.”
“They called them druids.” Nan wiped her nose on her sleeve and glared at the muscular man who had captured them. “And I suppose he’s the headman. I don’t like either one of them.”
The headman and the druid conferred in low voices, glancing from Nan to the sky. They looked nervous, Will realized suddenly.
“Why are they pointing at me?” Nan shifted her weight uneasily.
The people were pointing at Nan. They were talking excitedly, repeating the word cray-tee, jostling to get a better view. They didn’t seem nearly as interested in Will. Then suddenly he realized why. “They’re pointing at Breet’s armband!”
The richly dressed druid moved closer. A smell rose from her like burning leaves. She leaned in, tapped the armband with her finger, and tried to pull it off.
“Stop that!” said Nan. The woman put up her hands in a placating manner. The crowd grew silent, watching.
“I think they’re afraid of it,” Will whispered.
“What, like it has some sort of power?” Nan slid her eyes sideways.
Will nodded. “Remember Breet said the armband would protect us?”
“Yeah, but Breet was a Pict, in the Iron Age, right? That’s way later than these people here. Pictish beliefs can’t possibly affect anyone in this time.”
Will frowned slightly. “Maybe we’ve got it backward. Maybe these people believed in—whatever it is—and then handed their beliefs down to the next people, and the next, until it got all the way to the Picts.”
Nan chewed her bottom lip. “Could be, I suppose.”
“Why don’t you pretend to use it? See if you can get them to go away.”
“I’ll try.” Nan frowned. “What was the word that leader said—cray something?”
“Cray-tee,” Will murmured.
Nan pointed at the iron armband with a dramatic gesture. “Cray-tee!” she shouted. The crowd backed away; a sound like a low moan swept over them. The druid’s eyes widened, and the headman dropped Nan’s knife. It skidded on the frosty ground to her feet.
“That’s right,” said Nan firmly, “and now you can just all cray-tee away. Go on, shoo, leave us alone! Cray-tee, I say!”
The crowd seemed to be talking this over. Their breath made little clouds in the cold air.
Nan took a cautious step forward and snatched up her penknife. “Can you tell what they’re saying yet?” she muttered.
Will shook his head. He could hear the word cray-tee, but now another word was repeated as well. “They keep saying poun-ka, but I don’t have a clue what it means.”
The druid was addressing the crowd now; heads began to nod. Then the boy with the rope around his neck was pushe
d forward to stand before Will and Nan. The loose end of the rope, with great ceremony, was placed in Nan’s hand.
Nan’s mouth fell open. “Huh?”
Will stared at the boy. His hair was shaggy, his face pale and smudged. He had a badly scarred arm—a burn, it looked like—and a twisted hand. He looked about nine years old and scared to death.
Will said slowly, “I think they’re giving him to you. As a slave.”
“A what?” Nan’s eyes narrowed. She lifted her knife and slid the blade between the boy’s neck and the rope. It was a small knife, but very sharp, and the cut rope fell, looping around the boy’s ankles like a discarded snakeskin. “He’s not going to be my slave,” Nan said, breathing hard.
“They don’t understand you,” Will reminded her.
“Cray-tee, then!” She grabbed Will’s shoulder, shouted, “Poun-ka,” for good measure, and spoke low in his ear. “Get us out of here,” she whispered. “Can’t you open a window in a hurry?”
But something seemed to be happening to the crowd. Their faces, which had been so sober, erupted into glee. The druid, sweeping her fur over her shoulder with an almost royal gesture, took Nan by the shoulders and pressed her forehead against the girl’s. The headman grunted an order; someone picked up the rope and coiled it.
Will, too, was surrounded by beaming faces. He was patted, not once, but many times, on the head or on the ear, as someone might touch a rabbit’s foot for luck. The shaggy-haired boy stood close to Will, and his face was the happiest of all.
“Wow,” Will said to Nan. “I think you just freed him or something!”
But now the druid raised her arms and began to chant. The crowd hummed with her, swaying, and the eastern sky glowed pink. Suddenly a bright sliver of light shone over the horizon. The druid’s voice rose to a piercing shriek.
The headman grabbed Will’s wrist with one hand and Nan’s with the other.
“POUN-KA!” the druid shouted, and the headman raised Will’s arm high. Then came a torrent of more words, and the headman raised Nan’s arm high.
“CRAY-TEE!” cried the crowd all together.
“I think they like us now,” Nan said under cover of the noise.
The crowd quieted, watching motionless as the sun slowly heaved itself up into the sky. When the glowing ball had completely cleared the horizon, they relaxed, breaking up and chattering among themselves. The druid came to Nan, making emphatic gestures.
Nan grinned over her shoulder as the druid urged her forward, down the path. “Want to go with them? I bet they’ll feed us and get us warm, anyway.”
“I don’t think we have a choice,” said Will as the headman gripped his arm with fingers like iron clamps. The man propelled him along the path after Nan, and everyone else crowded behind.
They began to trot, a shambling sort of half run that ate up ground quickly. Will stumbled more than once, but the headman hauled him back to his feet each time.
How long had he been awake? Will’s head felt strangely light and odd. He shivered violently; the headman grunted an order, and someone threw a hairy pelt from some kind of animal over his shoulders. It smelled like rancid fat, but Will was beyond caring. His calf muscles burned, and his breath came hard and fast by the time they stopped at the river’s edge, where several long boats like hollow logs were drawn up on shore.
Will was thrust into one of the log boats and Nan into another. He sat on a wooden seat and gripped the edges as the boat was launched into the water. Paddles dipped strongly, and the log boats moved upriver, staying near the shore on the outside bends and traversing across when the river bent the other way. He supposed it had something to do with the fact that they were paddling against the current.
The journey went on and endlessly on. Will shivered as a cold gust slipped across the water and, with it, a few flakes of snow.
He couldn’t help but notice that the people around him weren’t dressed all that warmly, yet they didn’t seem to feel the cold. Maybe he was too soft for the Copper Age, or whatever this was. These people were tough. Will sat in huddled misery and steeled himself to endure. After a long while, the river widened into a vast gray lake; on all sides rounded peaks rose, dusted at the tops with snow.
“It’s Loch Tay!” Nan’s voice came from across the water. “And that’s a crannog!” She frowned slightly. “It doesn’t look exactly like the Crannog Centre, though.”
Before them, a narrow causeway of stone extended out into the water, and at its end was a small, round island. Taking up most of the island was a large hut. Its roof was thatch, its walls looked like a mixture of mud and sticks, and sharp wooden stakes surrounded it, standing on end.
But Will was happiest to see the faint wisps of smoke rising from the huts on shore. Where there was smoke, there was fire; where there was fire, he might get warm.
The boats scraped bottom and paddlers leaped out to pull them farther ashore. Will got out unsteadily, the boat wobbling beneath him. One boat over, the ermine-clad druid got out with fluid dignity and waited as Nan struggled out. Then, with a sweep of her arm and a half bow, she motioned for Nan to step onto the causeway.
Nan grinned at Will. She made a royal gesture of her own, flinging her arm around until her hand was on Will’s shoulder. “Cray-tee!” she shouted. “Poun-ka!”
“Poun-ka,” everyone agreed, nodding.
Will snorted. “Ham it up, why don’t you?”
“Why not?” Nan’s dimple deepened, and it had its usual effect—everyone in the crowd smiled back at her. “Come on—maybe they’ll feed us. I’m starving!” She ran along the causeway toward the crannog and disappeared into the hut, followed by the druid.
But Will was not allowed to go with Nan. Before he could protest, two paddlers steered him toward a huddle of huts on the shore. He was thrust through a low entrance into a room lit by a small, smoky fire in the center. Someone pushed him down onto a pile of furs.
Will was too tired to wonder why he and Nan had been separated, or even to care. The furs were soft and warm, and he was exhausted. He slept.
When he woke up, there was a rope around his neck.
* * *
Time went by. How much time, Will did not know, for the small room had no windows to let in daylight, and the door was covered with a deerskin. People came and went, but always there was the shaggy-haired boy nearby, watching him. The first time Will’s fingers went to the knotted rope to try to untie it, the boy said something sharply and pushed his hands away.
Will tried again when the boy was looking the other way. But others must have been watching from the dark corners of the hut, for in a moment he felt his wrists yanked around behind him, and the rough end of the rope being looped around them.
“No!” Will cried, struggling. Instantly he was surrounded. Someone threw him onto the pile of furs; someone else put a knee on his chest to hold him down; the hands at his back continued to work busily.
The shaggy-haired boy jumped to his feet, pouring out a torrent of words. It was not in a language Will knew, but the tone of pleading was unmistakable.
The hands at Will’s ankle paused. The knee on his chest was removed. But the people around him did not move away. The shaggy-haired boy shook his finger at Will. “NA!” he said. “NA!”
Will sat up slowly. “All right. I won’t try to untie it anymore.”
The boy looked blank.
Will spread his hands wide, as far from the rope as he could get them, and shook his head. “NA,” he repeated with emphasis. “Na, na, na.”
His captors walked away, but not before each one slapped the side of his face—a last message, clear in any language. Will watched them go, his cheeks stinging. Fine, then. He would escape some other way. He was strongly tempted to open a time window for himself and step through into freedom, but it was tricky with so many people around. Besides, he had promised Nan that he would never leave her alone in the past.
Had they put a rope around Nan’s neck? Somehow he doubted it
. Nan had the armband; they seemed to fear it too much to make her a slave. He hoped she would come looking for him soon, wave the armband around a few times, and get them to set him free. The rope rasped the skin of his neck, and in spite of the warmth from the fire, he shivered.
Only, was he a slave? No one was making him do any work. He was given food—a hard, flat piece of bread, fish stew in a wooden bowl—and there was a clay jar of water within arm’s reach. But there was no sign of Nan. And although he listened carefully to the conversations he could overhear, he still couldn’t understand. He heard the word poun-ka now and then, as people glanced at him, and he guessed it was their name for a special kind of slave. But he didn’t know for sure.
Why was it taking so long for Time Hearing to kick in? Were they back so far in the past that it wouldn’t work anymore? He must have been here for hours and hours already.
Will hugged his knees to his chest. He didn’t have much chance of finding Nan if he couldn’t figure out what they were saying. He glanced anxiously at the door.
The shaggy-haired boy, squatting nearby, watched Will out of the corners of his eyes. He moved a little closer. “Nurth,” he said, patting his chest. Then he tapped Will’s chest and raised his eyebrows.
“Will. My name is Will.”
Nurth reached inside his belted shirt, pulled out something small, and dangled it in front of the fire. It was something small and round, on some sort of string.…
Will laughed. So they played conkers in the Copper Age, too, did they?
Nurth took out another cobnut and handed it to Will. It was not on a string, as he had first thought, but a thin, twisted cord of some sinewy material.
Conkers was a good game to pass the time when there was nothing else to do. It took Will’s mind off his troubles to aim the conker and flick it out, trying to hit Nurth’s and break it. After a while the two boys were laughing, and Will had almost forgotten the rope around his neck. But Will’s conker broke first.
Nurth started to raise his fist in triumph, but stopped midmotion, as if remembering something. He shrugged an apology. Then he put his conker in Will’s hand.