The Book That Proves Time Travel Happens

by Henry Clark

  “Quite a coincidence, isn’t it?” replied Tom, in a tone that suggested he didn’t find it a coincidence at all.

  Somebody, at a great distance, shouted. A chorus of shouts replied.

  “People!” said Frankie. “We really don’t want to run into people! That always leads to trouble!”

  “I will investigate,” said Mr. Ganto, getting to his feet.

  “You’re injured!” Frankie protested.

  “I am fine. I will climb that hill and have a look.”

  He stood shakily and started climbing the hill to our right.

  “He’s very articulate for an ape,” said Ishmael.

  “He’s not an ape,” growled Frankie, searching a piece of ground she had already searched.

  “No offense. I may have seen him in a dream a few nights back. The same way I had been seeing the white whale during the early days of the Pequod’s final voyage. I’m pretty sure I’m having the same dream again, right now.”

  “You have the gift of oneiromancy,” Frankie informed him. “Dream prophecy. Only people with a psychic gift can time travel.”

  “Oh. You think my dream will come true? Most often, they don’t.”

  “What was it about?” I asked warily, searching so far from where I had landed that I knew I wasn’t going to find anything.

  “I forget the details. There was the ape—or whatever it is—and this strange place we’re in right now, and I was with a party of three other people. Very young, they were.”

  “And?”

  “And, in the end, we lost one of them.”

  “Find the mouthpiece!” Frankie barked.

  “I’ve looked everywhere!” I snapped back, not wanting to think about what Ishmael had just said.

  “Look again!”

  “The slide horn is important, is it?” asked Ishmael, earnestly searching the lower branches of the nearest tree. “Music can transport one. Can it transport one through time?”

  “Played on the right instrument, it can,” said Frankie. “The Shagbolt—the slide horn—was created by this genius inventor back in the year 1592.” I could tell she was talking to take her mind off other things. She swept her hands back and forth across the ground in front of her so vigorously she raised dust devils. “He was brilliant. His greatest invention was an automaton made out of clay. And, at the time of his death, he was working on a perpetual-motion dreidel that would have solved all the world’s energy problems. But the thing he took the greatest pride in was his Shagbolt. He never fully perfected it, which is why it works only for the psychically gifted. He had hoped to use it to transport his people out of danger in times of crisis, but he did not want to leave any of them behind just because they lacked extrasensory perceptions. He kept tinkering with it, trying to get it right.”

  “How did your family wind up with it?” I asked, and got a flashing glance in reply.

  “One day the inventor welded a new piece to it, and he put it on a windowsill to cool. One of my ancestors came along and borrowed it.”

  “What? The way we borrowed the Katzenjammers’ pies? That’s not borrowing—that’s stealing!”

  “No, it’s not! We borrowed it! It’s a time machine! Eventually, one of us will return it to a time only one minute after my ancestor borrowed it, and its inventor will never know it went missing! Then he and his descendants can go about saving his people from persecution throughout history.”

  “You’ve had it for over four hundred years! When were you planning to return it?”

  “Soon! I’m sure!”

  “And I thought it was just you who was irresponsible! It’s your whole family!”

  “Irresponsible? You’re the one who lost the mouthpiece! If we never return the Shagbolt, it will be your fault!”

  “Maybe this gentleman will help us search,” said Ishmael.

  I looked up. A bony Chinese man with scraggly long hair stood in tattered clothing about twenty feet from us. He darted forward, put something on the ground, then ran back to his original place and fell to his knees, bowing until his forehead touched the earth.

  “Oh no,” said Frankie.

  “Where did he come from?” I asked.

  “Popped out from behind those rocks.” Ishmael pointed to the only available hiding place.

  Tom picked up the object the man had left. It was a balled-up piece of cloth. He opened it and revealed a glob of brown rice.

  “He’s making us an offering,” Tom decided. “This is probably the only food he has.”

  Tom spoke to him in Chinese. The man looked up, and his eyes shifted nervously from side to side.

  “Nope,” said Tom. “Mandarin doesn’t work.”

  Tom tried again, using different words that, I guessed, might have been in the rare dialect his great-grandfather used. This time the man replied, Tom answered, and they spoke back and forth repeatedly.

  “He says his name is Jiang Ziya.” Tom finally went back to English. “He saw us pop out of nowhere. He asked me if we are sorcerers come to free his people.”

  “And what did you tell him?” Frankie asked, sounding alarmed.

  “I didn’t say yes, and I didn’t say no.”

  “This is very dangerous,” said Frankie. “If he winds up believing we’re sorcerers, it could start a brand-new religion. That’s the last thing the world needs.”

  “He says the name of the current king is Di Xin,” Tom continued excitedly, ignoring Frankie’s warning. “Do you realize what that means? Di Xin was the last king of the Shang dynasty, just before the Battle of Muye, when he was overthrown, and the slave-keeping Shangs were replaced by the more enlightened Zhou. We’ve come to one of the most important time periods in Chinese history! Fiduciary! This is so great!”

  “These Shang guys were slave owners?” I asked, appalled that we had gone from one slave society to another.

  “Oh, yeah! The Shangs put the ‘nasty’ in dynasty! King Di Xin and his evil wife, Daji, punished people by having their hearts ripped out and their feet chopped off, not necessarily in that order. They were awful. They’ve enslaved Jiang’s people”—he waved at our new friend, who was still groveling—“because they prefer to wear their jerkins with the seams on the outside rather than on the inside. Queen Daji calls that an abomination, and she says it proves Jiang’s people are inferior, and fair game for slavery.”

  “Wait,” I said, trying to understand. “A jerkin is a—?”

  “Sort of vest.”

  “A piece of clothing? And just because Jiang’s people like to wear them inside out, they’re persecuted? Turned into slaves? Everybody knows if you accidentally put on a shirt inside out, it’s good luck!”

  “Not if you’re living in the Shang dynasty,” said Tom.

  Shouts came from the hill to our left, opposite the direction Mr. Ganto had taken. I looked up and three men with spears were running toward us. I looked to the right, hoping to see Ganto, but there was no sign of him.

  Jiang jumped to his feet and cowered behind Tom, chattering hysterically.

  “He says he’s escaped from the palace, and these guys are palace guards sent to take him back,” Tom translated.

  “So these are the Chinese equivalent of Archie Killbreath and his boys,” I said, watching them approach. “How could we possibly have run into more slave catchers?”

  “Because no age in human history has ever been free of slavery,” Frankie informed us, stepping to my side. The three of us had, without consulting one another, positioned ourselves in front of the terrified Jiang. “The further back you go, the odds actually favor something like this happening.”

  “Aren’t you afraid we’ll change history if we get involved with this?” I asked, surprised at the pride I felt when she stood beside me.

  “Yes. Totally. But I like your idea that it might be changed for the better!”

  Ishmael joined us, standing next to me with his arms folded.

  The three guards halted about ten feet from us and leveled their spe
ars.

  Jiang stuck his head out from behind Tom and jabbered at them. The spears wavered a bit and the men looked confused.

  “What did he say to them?” Frankie asked stonily.

  “He told them we are powerful sorcerers and they should prepare to meet their doom.”

  “Fiduciary!” I said.

  CHAPTER 24

  Hello Goodbye

  I took a mental inventory of all the things we had that might convince the guards we were powerful sorcerers.

  We had two waterlogged, almost definitely not working, cell phones.

  We had a trombone without a mouthpiece that might be forced to make a tweeting noise if somebody blew on it hard enough.

  We had copies of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and If You Have an I-Ching—Scratch! sealed in Ziploc bags.

  That was about it.

  No, I realized, that wasn’t it. We had our looks. Ishmael was a towering white-haired white guy. That had to be a novelty in this time and place. We had Frankie’s olive skin, which had to be equally strange. And then there was Tom and me, wearing tattered and scorched dresses from the far future. To the three guards, we probably looked like demons from hell.

  Our difference was our strength.

  And we had my new attitude. Which was to beat the brown rice out of anybody who was the least bit intolerant.

  I jumped at the guards. I waved my hands over my head and shouted “Hoo-hah!” I landed in front of them, and they jumped an equal distance back.

  I bugged out my eyes and threw them a face, and started chanting lines from my favorite hip-hop artist, Kan Sa$s, because I knew the rhymes and rhythm would sound like magical incantations.

  Nothing is perfect, and that is that;

  I hate three-D movies when the soda is flat—

  I laced my hands together, one up and one down, and did that thing where the two middle fingers wiggle back and forth, up and down, in opposite directions, like they’re joined at the knuckle. This always makes my four-year-old cousin giggle. The guards looked terrified.

  Nothing is perfect, so what can you do?

  I shaved my head to save on shamPOO!

  I said “POO!” explosively and they fell back another foot. Nothing beats an explosive POO.

  I hiked up my dress and did a Michael Jackson moonwalk. They were mesmerized. I parted my legs, grabbed my right knee with my right hand and my left knee with my left hand, then slammed my knees together, crossing my hands so it looked like I had interchangeable kneecaps. I repeated this a few times, until they could see I was no ordinary mortal.

  Nothing is perfect, successes and fails,

  Go together like boogers and fingernails!

  “Your poetry does not scan,” said Ishmael.

  “Get ready,” I said to him as I reached behind the middle guard’s ear and pretended to find a small rock, which I showed to the guards and all three of them went “Ooo!” My uncle Leon found nickels in my ears in the same way, so I knew it was powerful magic.

  “Trombone, please,” I said without turning around, extending my hand behind me. Frankie passed me the Shagbolt.

  I did left shoulder arms with it; I did right shoulder arms with it; I did present arms with it. I twirled it in front of me the way I had seen the Freedom Falls high school precision drill team twirl their fake rifles. I raised it and leveled it, as if I was about to play it, and sighted down its length at the forehead of the guard directly in front of me.

  Nothing is perfect, that’s what I said;

  You can’t save face when you’ve lost your head!

  I shot the slide forward and hit the guard right between the eyes.

  “NOW!” I shouted, knocking the spear out of the stunned guard’s hand with the Shagbolt.

  Ishmael grabbed the spear of the guard closest to him and yanked it from his grip. He used it to parry the spear of the third guard while Tom and Jiang Ziya tackled the one he had just disarmed. I turned and tossed the Shagbolt to Frankie, then I plowed into the guard I had hit with the slide. He fumbled at his belt for a knife.

  I knocked him to the ground, fell on him, and caught his knife hand before he could raise it. Squeezing his wrist with both hands, I beat his hand against the ground until the knife flew from his fingers.

  Then I sat on his chest and pummeled him. I pretended he was Quentin Garlock and Lenny Killbreath and Archie Killbreath, and the man was crying by the time Ishmael pulled me off.

  The man scrambled to his feet and followed his two friends, who were running back up the hill, disarmed and thoroughly beaten.

  Jiang Ziya knelt down in front of me. I patted him on the head.

  “How long before they bring back reinforcements?” asked Frankie.

  Tom spoke quickly to Jiang, then said, “The city walls are about nine lis away. A li is about three hundred and fifty meters, so the city’s about two miles from here. I would guess we’ve got at least half an hour.”

  “Then get busy and find that mouthpiece!” Frankie dropped to her knees and resumed the search.

  “I don’t think it’s here,” I said.

  “And I KNOW it is!” she snapped. “It HAS to be!”

  She stopped raking through the pebbles and looked up at me.

  “You don’t get it, do you?” she said. “It took me a while, but the more I thought about it, the more I think I understand.”

  “What?” I was totally bewildered.

  “The woman who stole my dad’s copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin out of my bedroom? Out of my locked-from-the-inside bedroom? You just assumed she came in through the window. My bedroom doesn’t have a window! When she held her finger to her lips to tell me to be quiet? She was wearing my charm bracelet!”

  “Holy cow!” said Tom. “She stole your bracelet, too?”

  Frankie glared at him.

  “It’s her bracelet, every bit as much as it is mine!” she snapped.

  “You mean”—I took a wild guess—“that woman was your grandmother?”

  “No!” Frankie hit her forehead with the heel of her hand. “She wasn’t my grandmother! I haven’t told you two everything because it would have changed the way you behaved. It would have made you think that nothing could hurt you, and that could have gotten you both killed.”

  “What haven’t you told us?” I asked, still lost.

  “The woman who stole the book had the Shagbolt with her. She used it to get into the room. I’m positive that woman was me. She was my future self! Although I can’t believe I will ever wear that much eyeliner!”

  “Your future self came back through time to steal a book? Why would she do that?”

  “After everything we’ve been through, I can think of only one possible explanation. But, at the moment, it’s not important. What I’m trying to tell you is, I know I use the Shagbolt in the future! So the mouthpiece has to be here somewhere, because the Shagbolt doesn’t stay here! Understand?”

  A loud thud and a groan came from the right. We looked over to see Mr. Ganto sliding to the base of the hill on his butt. Frankie jackknifed to her feet and raced over to him, the rest of us close behind.

  “I am all right,” Ganto assured us sheepishly. “I slipped. Hill was steeper than I thought.”

  “And you’re not as well as you think,” said Frankie. “We have to get you home.”

  “There is an army coming this way,” said Ganto, holding up a dented bronze helmet and handing it to Tom. “Souvenir.”

  Tom showed the helmet to Jiang and asked, “Shang?” and Jiang quickly nodded.

  “They are mustering just beyond the hill,” Ganto continued. “I will guess thirty thousand men. There are horses and chariots. They are organizing for a march, facing east. The trail will bring them around that bend and through this valley. The vanguard is already moving. We are in its path.”

  “Okay,” said Tom breathlessly, staring at the helmet like it was the greatest of treasures. “This is the beginning of the end for the Shangs. This has to be the start of the Battle of Mu
ye. Idiot king Di Xin sends most of his army to fight some minor enemy in the east, leaving the city undefended. Then his real enemy, the Zhou army, shows up and attacks his city. Di Xin arms his slaves, ordering them to defend the city and, big surprise, the slaves turn on him. So do half of his own guards, he’s such a popular guy. The Shang dynasty falls. And we get to see it!”

  “NO WE DO NOT!” said Frankie, rushing back to the riverbed and resuming her search. “If thirty thousand men tramp through here, it will bury the mouthpiece! Then it might take us years to find it! And we might spend those years as captives! I don’t really want to spend another minute here! Mr. Ganto needs medical care! Help me!”

  “It wouldn’t be that bad,” said Tom. “I can speak the language, and we’ve already made a friend. If we just hide out for a while, we’ll survive the battle, and we could live out our lives in the early days of the new dynasty. The Zhous were pretty good.”

  “I don’t care how good they were; we’re not staying here!” said Frankie, glaring at me meaningfully, like she thought maybe I had swallowed the mouthpiece and she was considering drastic measures to get it back.

  I studied our surroundings. Other than the clump of rocks that had hidden Jiang Ziya, I could see nowhere to hide. I didn’t think we had enough time to make it over either hillside. Not if we were going to waste another minute sifting through pebbles.

  “Ask the I-Ching where the mouthpiece is,” I said.

  “What?” Tom looked stricken.

  Frankie stood up like she had been struck by lightning.

  “Yes! Do you still have the book?”

  “Um, yeah, but I’m sure it’s soaked. The pages are probably all stuck together—”

  “You had it in a Ziploc bag,” I reminded him. “Why don’t you look?”

  Tom dug hesitantly in the pocket of his apron. In the far distance, I could hear someone shouting. It sounded like a sergeant drilling his men. I had a feeling the sound was the same no matter what century you were in.

  “Dry as a bone!” declared Frankie, snatching the book from Tom’s hands and breaking the seal on the bag. “Flip your coin! We should all concentrate on the mouthpiece.”