History in the Faking

by Andreas Oertel

  “Okay,” I said, picking up a backpack. “Show us where to go.”

  Eric snatched up the other bag and we followed Anna on our still-rubbery legs toward the east. Normally, it would have been an easy hike through open forest, but my chest felt unbearably tight. I suppose traveling through time can be hard on the body.

  Anna stopped every few hundred feet so that Eric and I could catch our breath. I took the time to look around. Something niggled at the back of my mind—this place seemed so familiar, like I had been here before. I shook my head. Time traveling was hard on the senses too, I guess.

  After about fifteen minutes we came to a river and took a longer break. I opened one of the backpacks and distributed some energy bars. We watched as Anna eagerly devoured hers. Since Eric and I weren’t really hungry—plus they actually looked kind of disgusting—we passed her ours too. She ate them almost as quickly as the first one.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  I gave her a water bottle and waited for her to wash down the heavy bars. Eric walked over to the river bank and splashed his face.

  I turned to Anna and introduced myself—in all the rush, we never had a chance to. “I’m Cody Lint, and that’s my best friend, Eric Summers. The girl you saw—Rachel—is Eric’s sister.”

  “I’m so sorry. I tried to save your sister . . . but—”

  Eric returned from the river. “It’s okay. Just tell us what the heck’s going on around here,” he said.

  Anna explained in detail what had happened to her since she vanished. Fighting to control her emotions, she ended her story by describing how she had tried to wake Rachel but couldn’t before they took her.

  “You did the right thing,” I said. “There’s no point in you both being captured.”

  “Yeah,” Eric agreed. “If you weren’t there at the stones today, we’d have no idea what happened to you or Rachel. We wouldn’t even know if we were in the same time as Rachel.”

  “What did these guys look like—the people that grabbed Rachel?” I really wanted to know if were dealing with cavemen, or Mongols, or—

  “Did they look like cannibals?” Eric asked. I guess we were both thinking the same thing.

  Anna raised her eyebrows at Eric. “No, no,” she said. “They were nothing like that. They appeared to be North American natives.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked, though I was relieved to know we wouldn’t be clubbed by cavemen.

  “The ancient native tribes of North America are not really my specialty, but—”

  Eric cut her off in mid-sentence. “Your specialty?” He rolled his eyes. “I thought you were thirteen.”

  “I am,” Anna said, blushing. “But both my parents are archaeologists—and Uncle Rudi too. Every summer I travel with them and help them conduct their research on dig sites. My parents have many books on native North Americans.”

  “And that’s what the people who took Rachel looked like?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Anna nodded, “They look just like the pictures I have seen in my parents’textbooks.”

  Eric smacked a horsefly trying to bite the wet skin on the back of his neck. “What were they wearing?” he asked.

  “They had straight black hair,” she said. “All their clothing looked like it was made of animal hides and furs. I did not see any type of cloth. And they wore moccasins on their feet.”

  “Did they have huge headdresses on their heads?” Eric asked, rubbing the welt from the horsefly bite. “And were their faces painted with war-paint?”

  Anna looked back and forth between Eric and me. Maybe she thought Eric was teasing her. “I think that only happens in Hollywood movies. They seemed peaceful.”

  “Good,” Eric said, “because we got enough problems.”

  Anna tried to swat some black flies that were biting her already chewed-up ankles, but they were too fast.

  I rummaged through my pack for insect repellent and passed it to Anna. “Thanks,” she said. She squirted a big white blob on her hand and rubbed it all over her legs, arms, and face.

  Meanwhile, I found Eric’s GPS and turned it on to confirm what I suspected. The screen came alive and went through its startup sequence, but after two minutes an error message said, NO SATELLITES FOUND. And how could it—there wouldn’t be satellites up there for who-knew-how-long.

  “That’s too bad,” I said, returning the GPS to an inside pocket. “It would have been nice to get a fix on our position.”

  “That’s for sure,” Eric said. “But at least we know we’re in North America—in a boreal forest. And we have a river here, just like in—”

  “—That’s it!” I cried.

  “Huh?” Eric said.

  I had been looking up and down the river, wondering why the walk from the stones seemed familiar. And then it hit me. “Guys—I know exactly where we are.”

  “What is it?” Anna said.

  “This has to be Sultana—from five or six or seven hundred years ago, but still the place where our future Sultana will be.”

  Eric didn’t look convinced. “Just because there’s a river down there doesn’t mean this is Sultana.”

  “No,” I said, “look around, Eric. Think about it. In our time, it takes about ten minutes to walk from the graveyard to the river. Right?”

  Eric nodded. “Yeah . . . ”

  “Well, that distance is exactly the same as what we walked from the stones to here, to the river. That can’t be a coincidence. I think we’re looking at our Kilmeny River.”

  “I don’t know . . . ” Eric said, sounding doubtful. “Wouldn’t all the glaciers during the ice-age have changed everything?”

  “Well, yeah,” I said, “but that’s way before now. Remember what Mrs. Leavesley told us in school—geologically speaking, five hundred years or even a thousand years is like the blink of an eye. It’s no time at all in the Canadian boreal forest.”

  Eric waved his arms through the air. “But what about the trees? They don’t look the same.”

  “Sure, the trees look different—there will probably be a hundred forest fires here in the future—but the rock outcrops, and the shape of the river, and the features of the land are the same.”

  Eric stood up and re-examined our surroundings. I watched as he took in everything, and then slowly began nodding. “Holy smokes! I think you’re right. I think that granite outcrop way back there is where they’ll put the west end of the bridge hundreds of years from now.”

  “I can’t be 100 percent sure,” I said, looking at Anna. “But if that’s the Kilmeny River, the Red River will be just around the corner. And if we walk west for a day or two, we should find the start of the prairie—the Great Plains. We’re probably here long before any Europeans, but I think this is the forest around Sultana, Manitoba.”

  Anna nodded. “Okay, if you say so . . . I don’t know this . . . Sultana—it’s your home?”

  I was relieved she didn’t think we had bashed our heads too hard somewhere in the wormhole.

  Anna looked like she was about to ask something else, but Eric beat her to it. “This could help us find Rachel,” Eric said. “All the houses and streets are missing, but we know this area like the back of our hands.”

  “Well, we used to, anyway,” I said. “I’m sure all our favourite trails and shortcuts are gone, but yeah, the area is the same.”

  “At least Anna’s dad was right about the time travel stuff. That means we shouldn’t have too much trouble getting back,” Eric said. “We just need to find Rachel and get back to the pillars where we arrived.”

  “But others will be searching for us too,” Anna said, nervously looking at the dark forest behind us. She explained that when someone comes through the wormhole it makes an unbelievably loud noise. “They know that I’m here somewhere, and now they know you are here. For two days I have been hiding and trying to avoid the scouting parties that move through the area.”

  “How did you do it?” Eric asked, looking at the forest behind us. Like m
e, he was probably wondering how she could’ve survived on her own without any trouble. “Weren’t you terrified?”

  “Many of the archaeological sites I go to with my parents are in remote locations. We often stay in tents, and spend weeks at a time outside—like camping. I was frightened because of how I got here, but I am not frightened by a forest.”

  “Where did you hide?” I asked.

  “And what did you eat?” Eric said. I rolled my eyes at him—of course he would ask that—and he shrugged.

  “During the day—when I felt it was safe—I ate only wild strawberries. They are small but there are many of them. And at night I made a bed of branches from the cedar tree and covered myself with even more branches. The natives haven’t found me—but I think they know I’m here.”

  “I wonder what they want from you,” I asked. “Or with us, or Rachel, for that matter.”

  “I don’t think they mean us any harm,” Anna said. “Maybe they only want to protect us from danger—from the wild animals. But we can’t be sure. I just want to go home.”

  You’ve got that right, I thought.

  “Have you seen any wildlife?” Eric asked.

  Anna nodded. “Oh, yes. I have seen many deer already—they are everywhere. And early this morning, when I climbed a tree to see the area better, I saw a family of foxes.”

  “But nothing like bears?” Eric asked, trying hard to sound casual. “Or wolves?”

  She shook her head.

  “So if they heard us land here,” I said, getting back to our task, “then their village, or camp, or whatever, can’t be too far away. That may work to our advantage, as long as we don’t get caught first.”

  “Yeah,” Eric said, smearing insect repellent on his own legs, “but we’re from the twenty-first century and we’ve watched thousands of hours of TV. We can outsmart them.”

  I wasn’t entirely sure about Eric’s logic, but he did have a point. The local natives were familiar with the area, but so were we. They would be trying to catch us, but we were on to them. Sure, they were adults and professional hunters, and we were just kids—but we were kids from the future.

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  And in the Morning

  by John Wilson

  JIM HAY IS fifteen, thinks war is a glorious adventure, and cannot wait for his turn to fight. But as his father boldly marches off to battle in August 1914, Jim must be content to record his thoughts and dreams in his journal.

  All too quickly, however, Jim’s simple life begins to unravel. His father is killed in action, his mother suffers a breakdown, and when he does at last join up, it is as much to find refuge as it is to seek glory.

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  New York Public Library selection Best Book for Teens

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  Prairie Pictures

  by Shirlee Smith Matheson

  FOR TWELVE-YEAR-old Sherri, moving has become a way of life—migrating with her wanderlust family from Calgary to Fort McMurray to Regina.

  Now, she’s preparing to start Grade Six in Gardin, an Alberta prairie town that has recently been shaken from its cowboy culture to become an industrial hub. Sherri must once again meet new teachers, adapt to a new curriculum—and try to make friends amidst the cultural conflicts found in this wild country.

  Prairie Pictures is told with compassion and stark realism, and portrays a lifestyle that is becoming increasingly common across North America.

  Canadian Children’s Book Centre Choice

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  No Place for Kids

  by Alison Lohans

  SARAH AND JENNIFER’S happy family life died with their mother. Now their dad only seems interested in drinking. Without a job or even a house, the small family drifts from one place to another. Neglected and always hungry, the girls must cope on their own. Twelve-year-old Jen has a tough attitude. Sarah has doubts about her older sister’s tactics—including stealing and bullying—but she has no choice but to follow along. When one of their dad’s creepy friends starts paying too much attention to them, they can’t stand it anymore.

  With very little money and no clear plan, Sarah and Jen set out across the Prairies. Will they be able to make it to Vancouver, where Aunt Ellen lives?

  Saskatchewan Book Award for Children’s Literature

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  Forthcoming from Wandering Fox Books

  City Pictures

  by Shirlee Smith Matheson

  Stones of Time

  The Shenanigans Series—Book Two

  by Andreas Oertel

  Flames of the Tiger

  A Fields of Conflict Book

  by John Wilson

  If You Live Like Me

  by Lori Weber

  Copyright © 2014 Andreas Oertel

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  Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada

  ISBN 978-1-772030-08-2 (pbk.)

  ISBN 978-1-772030-09-9 (html)

  ISBN 978-1-772030-10-5 (epdf)

  ISBN Previously published in 2010 by Lobster Press under the title of The Archaeolojesters Book I

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