by J A Bouma
Rebekah handed Alexander her device, and he shoved them in the middle of the pile of lakeshore trash. Then he made a quick adjustment to the cap nested on top of his head cloaking the neural core sensory receptor.
Just as a girl throwing up a scream popped out from a narrow wedge in the bushes, followed by a boy offering a menacing roar and some threat in the region’s Koine Greek tongue. Luckily wide smiles, teeth bared with joy and giggles slipping through their wide mouths, indicated all was well, the children not much older than seven or eight.
The girl stopped short when she saw the pair from the future, the boy plowing into her back and sending them both tumbling to the ground.
“Oy!” Rebekah said, reaching down to help. Alexander joined her, helping the boy to his feet while she righted the girl.
“You two alright?” he asked in the region’s tongue, giving Rebekah a sideways glance and catching worry in her eyes. He understood the feeling.
Last time this happened, where someone from the past stumbled upon them, they were nearly marooned by a bloke three sheets to the wind. Luckily, these were only kids, but still. That meant parents, who were probably looking for them. And might have questions about two strangers caught out at a secluded beach in the dawning hours.
Not good…
The boy and girl said nothing, brushing away dirt from their knees and giving each other their own set of sideways glances. At least they didn’t appear frightened, or weren’t asking pesky questions.
Rebekah went to a knee. “Don’t worry. We’re not going to hurt you. Just making sure you’re alright, is all. Do you two have parents?”
Another sideways glance before the pair nodded in silence.
“Brothers and sisters?” Alexander asked.
Another nod, this time their bodies a bit looser.
“And your mum?”
The boy, lean and taller than the girl with a shaggy head of brown, curly hair nodded toward the beach. “Mum’s out at the dock, sorting the load brought in earlier this morning.”
Rebekah stood and smiled. “Perhaps we should get you back to her. I have to imagine she’ll have quite the fright soon enough once she realizes her kids are missing. Come along, let’s go.”
The children hesitated but relented, bowing their heads and pushing back through the opening inside the bushes. They led the way back through while Alexander ensured their time travel devices were well-hidden amidst the lakeshore detritus.
Satisfied, he breathed deeply, then sighed. “That was a close one…”
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” Rebekah mumbled, following after the pair through the overgrown foliage.
“Literally…”
She glanced back and threw him a wry smile, the sight pleasing Alexander as they reached the end and pushed through into the real part of Nicaea.
Alexander whistled, his breath taken by the sight.
A beachhead stretched for quite some distance from the grove until it wrapped around and disappeared through another cluster of foliage, bushes and trees waving in the morning breeze coming off from the lake. A wharf was anchored up the way. A long wooden dock jutted out into the water bearing several of the ships he had spotted earlier anchored on either side. Thick men full of work ethic and cords of muscle were bringing in their haul. A main road of brick butted up against one side of the beach, stretching its length before disappearing around the bend as well. Smaller side streets jutted off between low-slung buildings made of pale stone and mud bricks with thatched roofs of wood and straw, some of tile even. That baking bread and those boiling lentils were stronger now, carried on a warmer breeze gusting down from the town and combining with the fresh fishy catch up the beach.
Alexander resumed his pace again after marveling at the sight, his mouth widening into a giddy grin at the full, weighty realization now hitting him.
They had returned. Back to the past—for the fifth time!
He heaved a breath to settle a sudden case of the jitters that had grabbed hold of him, the full, weighty realization hitting him even harder at the task before them. He picked up his pace to catch up to Rebekah, who was close at the heels of the children—when he caught sight of a dome hovering above the city like a spaceship, vaulted high and shimmering orange in the light of the rising sun.
He stopped again, stumbling to the ground before planting his knees firmly in the packed sand.
His heart skipped a beat at the sight. The basilica marked the location of the Council of Nicaea. He only hoped they hadn’t missed any of the main event.
“Marcus, Julia!” a voice cried out, shrilly and no-nonsense. Like any parent whose children had gone missing in the middle of their work shift just after dawn!
Rebekah turned around, motioning Alexander to catch up. He stood and jogged back to her side.
Reaching her, Alexander took a breath and muttered, “Here we go…”
The children ran to their mother, whose opened arms looked like they were either going to embrace them or bang their heads together. She chose the former.
The time-traveling pair waved a greeting as they walked up to the reunited family. Alexander offered in the native Koine Greek tongue, “Greetings! We caught the two of them scampering in the forest and thought we should return them back to their mum properly.”
The woman twisted up her mouth, then shook her head. “Caught them scampering, did ye? Hope they didn’t cause ye too much bother.”
Rebekah smiled and shook her head. “No trouble at all.”
“What were you two doing in the hideaway?” the little boy asked.
“Kissing?” the girl asked with a grin.
The mother scoffed and smacked both of her children upside the head; they moaned from the blow.
Alexander laughed nervously, glancing at Rebekah while his mouth gawped for an answer. None came.
“Resting,” Rebekah quickly replied.
“Then what were those belts you were stuffing away?” the boy said, arms crossed now and face twisted up with skepticism.
Alarm bells went off in Alexander’s head. He threw Rebekah a sideways glance, wondering how to respond.
A smack intercepted any further interrogation. “Where are ye manners, lad?” the woman said, her boy yelping at the first and second head swat.
“Sorry about that,” she said. “Marcus is a ripe one sometimes.”
“No worries,” Rebekah said with a giggle. “And you probably saw us stuffing away some of our traveling gear, Marcus, believing you to be a bandit come to thieve away our goods.”
She tousled his hair, and they all shared a laugh.
She continued, “We’ve been traveling for quite some distance, you see, and we needed to catch a bit of shuteye early this morning before we attended to our affairs in the city later today.”
Nice save. Alexander breathed more easily now that that was handled.
The woman cocked her head and folded her arms, as if sizing them up now. “Affairs, ye say? Strangers, are ye? And what are those…affairs ye mentioned?”
Alexander knew how to answer this one; they had prepared.
He cleared his throat, answering, “We come from North Africa on business.”
The woman gasped. “Africa, you say?”
Rebekah nodded. “That’s right. From Tripolitania. On business with the Empire.”
Her eyes got big, then she took a step back, wrapping her arms around her children now.
Alarm bells rang again at the sight. He thought invoking Rome would grease the skids for the locals to accept them as strangers, given they had come on imperial business. Apparently he’d misjudged their affinity for the Empire.
“It’s actually more than that,” Alexander said, stepping in. “You see, the Emperor has called for an ecclesiastical council—”
“An ex...clectic...what now?” the woman said, twisting up her face in confusion.
He smiled. “Forgive my tongue. I mean to say a Church council—”
“Church?
” she exclaimed with interruption again. “You both are Christians, then? People of the Way, as they sometimes say it?”
“That we are, miss,” Rebekah acknowledged.
Which seemed to oddly tighten the woman’s hold on her children. Apparently there was no more affinity for Jerusalem as there was for Rome!
“Well, I’m more of an imperialist, meself,” the woman confessed, “keeping to the holy symbols in our household.”
Alexander smiled and nodded, understanding that each Roman home carried a handful of lares familias, as they were known. “Family Guardians” kept in shrines at various parts rooted in the imperial cult to protect the home and ward off the evils of ancient living, even during the time of Emperor Constantine.
He bowed and said, “Of course, and we are not meaning to confront you on that front.”
The woman smiled back, loosening her arms some. “I did hear sumfin ‘bout a gathering of uppity-ups farther in town, at the great domed building at the center of Nicaea. Men from all parts of the Empire arriving for the secret affair. Didn’t pay it much mind. But now that ye mention it, since yesterday a long train of folks were arriving from this way and that.”
Certainly sounded like they had come to the right place. Made it to the right time and place in the past!
“Although if ye are asking me, the blokes I saw weren’t what one would expect at an imperial party!”
Rebekah leaned in closer. “What do you mean, dear woman? How did those you saw look different from what you expected?”
She laughed. “The farthest thing from uppity-ups I could imagine gathering for something arranged by the Emperor. You had blokes missing arms and hands, legs and feet—eyes and pieces of their face even, from what glimpses I could catch in the waning evening sun unloading these here boats. Traded the fine bejeweled silk of the normal imperial dandies ye are seeing in these parts for bloodied bandages and dirty tunics, they did! And not the kind of men ye are typically finding in these parts either. Fair-skinned men from as far away as Britannia, as well as darker-skinned folks such as yourself.”
From what Alexander recalled from learning about the collection of Ichthus leaders from around the Empire, the description fit the bill to a T. Regular men who had survived the persecuting fires of Empire Rome, barely escaping with their lives, had made the journey to Nicaea as bishops with all that remained of their battered bodies.
His throat caught with emotion at the thought, at the recognition that he was to join their ranks as an observer of all that would transpire for the sake of the Church.
“Sounds like just the people we were seeking,” Alexander said, then turned back toward Nicaea. “You mentioned they headed toward the domed building sitting high at the center of town, is that right?”
“That’s right. The whole lot of ‘em.”
He smiled and thanked her, then turned toward Rebekah. “Well, we best be on our way.”
The woman nodded. “May the gods be with ye. And thank ye for looking after me youngins,” she added, slinging her arms around her children’s shoulders.
“Certainly, you’re welcome.”
“By the way,” Rebekah said, “you wouldn’t happen to have a piece of bread or boiled fish, would you? Our journey has been long and tiresome, and we are famished.”
The woman smiled kindly. “Right this way.”
She led them toward the wharf where a sack matching the material they had worn to make the jump back to the past was resting. Fishing around inside, she withdrew a loaf of bread that looked surprisingly fresh and a lump of hard cheese wrapped in cloth.
The pair demurred, saying it was all too much, but the woman insisted. Receiving the gifts with thanksgiving, they thanked her kindly and headed off.
Alexander added a silent prayer for making it to the past unscathed and unhindered.
Next stop, the basilica in Nicaea, to retrieve the Church’s memory for the sake of Ichthus back in the future.
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Also by J. A. Bouma
Nobody should have to read bad religious fiction—whether it’s cheesy plots with pat answers or misrepresentations of the Christian faith and the Bible. So J. A. Bouma tells compelling, propulsive stories that thrill as much as inspire, offering a dose of insight along the way.
Order of Thaddeus Action-Adventure Thriller Series
Holy Shroud • Book 1
The Thirteenth Apostle • Book 2
Hidden Covenant • Book 3
American God • Book 4
Grail of Power • Book 5
Templars Rising • Book 6
Rite of Darkness • Book 7
Gospel Zero • Book 8
The Emperor’s Code • Book 9
Deadly Hope • Book 10
Silas Grey Collection 1 (Books 1-3)
Silas Grey Collection 2 (Books 4-6)
Silas Grey Collection 3 (Books 7-9)
Backstories: Short Story Collection 1
Martyrs Bones: Short Story Collection 2
Ichthus Chronicles Sci-Fi Apocalyptic Series
Apostasy Rising / Season 1, Episode 1
Apostasy Rising / Season 1, Episode 2
Apostasy Rising / Season 1, Episode 3
Apostasy Rising / Season 1, Episode 4
Apostasy Rising / Full Season 1 (Episodes 1 to 4)
Apocalypse Rising / Season 2, Episode 1
Apocalypse Rising / Season 2, Episode 2
Apocalypse Rising / Season 2, Episode 3
Apocalypse Rising / Season 2, Episode 4
Apocalypse Rising / Full Season 2 (Episodes 1 to 4)
Faith Reimagined Spiritual Coming-of-Age Series
A Reimagined Faith • Book 1
A Rediscovered Faith • Book 2
A Ruined Faith • Book 3 (2022)
A Resurrected Faith • Book 4 (2023)
Mill Creek Junction Short Story Series
Get all the latest short stories at: www.millcreekjunction.com
Find all of my latest book releases at: www.jabouma.com
About the Author
J. A. Bouma believes nobody should have to read bad religious fiction--whether it’s cheesy plots with pat answers or misrepresentations of the Christian faith and the Bible. So he wants to do something about it by telling compelling, propulsive stories that thrill as much as inspire, while offering a dose of insight along the way.
As a former congressional staffer and pastor, and award-nominated bestselling author of over forty religious fiction and nonfiction books, he blends a love for ideas and adventure, exploration and discovery, thrill and thought. With graduate degrees in Christian thought and the Bible, and armed with a vor
acious appetite for most mainstream genres, he tells stories you'll read with abandon and recommend with pride—exploring the tension of faith and doubt, spirituality and culture, belief and practice, and the gritty drama that is our pilgrim story.
When not putting fingers to keyboard, he loves vintage jazz vinyl, a glass of Malbec, and an epic read -- preferably together. He lives in Grand Rapids with his wife, two kiddos, and rambunctious boxer-pug-terrier.
www.jabouma.com • [email protected]