by Claire Davon
“You are here because we sent for you.” There was no mistaking the emphasis, and Fiona looked at the woman without comprehension. They couldn’t be time travelers, if she was the only one. Perhaps they heard the strange Voice as well. She didn’t understand how they could speak English. She didn’t know was when and where she was. This seemed most important to understand and the thing she understood the least.
The younger woman, the one fresh with youthful dew, her hair plaited in complex strands wound around her face, also spoke.
“You are here because we have no other way to explain.”
#
As a line, it was a doozy, Fiona thought later. She was reclining on a couch, a plate of grapes and cheese near her, observing the two women and a man. They were still in the building, which Fiona had learned was a small temple of sorts, to worship the harvest. After the woman had spoken, Fiona could no longer stand. They bore her to this couch and pushed her onto it, and then the older one had sent the younger to summon food, and the man. She must have fallen asleep for a brief time. At least her mind was clearer and her body didn’t ache as much as it did when she got there.
He had on a short skirt like piece of clothing, and a multi colored tunic. His hair was also peppered with grey, and Fiona wondered if he was somehow with the older woman. Or the younger one. Both. Neither.
“Why am I here?” she asked, breaking into their low conversation.
The woman whirled, speaking in that same language Fiona didn’t understand, but was familiar. She knew a little Greek, but this was an ancient tongue that was perplexing. She wished they would go back to English, although she didn’t understand how it was possible they could know the language.
Minoans, if they were to be believed, hadn’t existed since the eruption of Santorini, in thousands of years before her in times they now called B.C., or BCE, if you preferred. Fiona knew that much, even if her Greek history was woefully lacking. She doubted they marked their time backwards and from the woman’s shrug she didn’t know if they dealt with time at all. It had been no coincidence that she had been guided there. For some reason she had needed to come. Fiona didn’t understand why the Voice needed to get her there. She had been yanked back from the Event by a power other than hers. If the Voice had wanted her to see the Minoans, it should have just plucked her out of the hotel and sent her there.
Fiona no longer knew if she had any free will. There had to be a reason for why this was happening this way but she didn’t know what she was supposed to learn. In that moment, she realized how much she had been wasting her time. Fiona vowed if she got back to her present, she was going to learn about life, and history, instead of the various ways to cheat a lottery or learn Sonder’s body. That had been a pleasant task, but she’d been stalling, focusing on the immediate when she should have been planning for the future.
Fiona rose from the couch, and began pacing.
An image of Sonder’s muscled body, naked and hard for her, swam into view and Fiona shuddered. She hoped that she would have the chance to see him again. At the end of the day, she was a human and she had craved the kind of contact and connection that she’d found with Sonder. For now, she had to try and focus. There was just one reason for her to have time shifted back to the Minoan civilization that far back in history, to a thriving culture way in the past that no longer existed, and had few remnants in the modern world.
“You called me Fiona. How did you know my name?”
The man studied her, his expression sad. “We cannot speak to you in other forms. We wanted to show you this, where it all began. We have taken on the bodies of those who will soon be gone in order to communicate with you. We are part of the Voice, as you call us.”
Fiona gaped, and felt faint. “Who are you?”
“We would not answer that question if we could, but we cannot. We can tell you why you are here. It is for the volcano.”
“Santorini,” she began, and stopped. “Am I that far back in time? Thera is still intact? Is it time for the volcano to erupt?”
The man nodded. “It is, Traveler. That is why you are here. Thera’s volcano is smoking, and ash has been coating the villages for days. Many have gone to Egypt, in the hopes that they will be accepted into that culture. It is a risk, but they have good relations with that culture. All will not be lost.” He shrugged. “We were waiting for you.”
“Why?”
She knew what was going to happen, the devastation that the volcano was going to wreak on Santorini and the islands around it. Even with her shaky history, she’d seen the ruins in Akrotiri. Thera was going to be destroyed and the civilization on it wiped out. She knew that from the point of the eruption, there was little mention of the Minoans. They were going to vanish as if they never existed, until recent excavations unearthed a powerful, thriving, complex civilization that may have sparked the legend of Atlantis. The society had fascinated Sonder. Fiona wished she’d paid more attention to what he was saying and learning, rather than drinking Santorini wine and laying by the infinity pool. In retrospect, her actions were shallow, and unworthy of the great gift she’d been given.
No wonder she’d felt queasy about going to Akrotiri. Somewhere deep inside she had known. Her present self had felt the echo of this visit and tried to push it off until inaction became intolerable. Of course, on this end of history delays had no meaning. Wrapping her head around that idea still took some doing. She had so much to learn and she should have been learning while she had the chance. They’d been clear of Guardians and Liberators, and it would have been smarter to take the time to learn whatever she could, in preparation for her destiny.
“Why, what, Traveler?” The man looked at her as if he didn’t understand the question.
The man whose body was being inhabited had been dead for thirty five hundred years, she thought, dead and lost to time. All three of the people she was talking to had been destroyed, and their civilization taken with them. History said that there was little known about the Minoan civilization, but scholars agreed it had been a culture ahead of its time. When she got back, she wanted to learn more about these people. If she got back, that was.
Perhaps there was a way to change the fate of this island, and stop the volcano from erupting. Did she have that kind of power? Something must have shown on her face, because the woman blinked as the man frowned.
“These three do not survive the explosion. We utilized them to tell you. To warn you. The volcano will explode within a few moon turns, and we’ve been waiting for you.”
Why echoed in her brain again, but she was beginning to sound like a parrot, and clamped her lips shut.
To cover her rolling emotions, Fiona took a few grapes from the plate and savored the strong, rich red wine. It was in a cup that tasted of iron and other elements, and she wondered what it had been made with. She coughed, the wine coating her tongue with something bitter and she spat it back into the cup, uncaring how it looked. She placed the cup on the floor.
“Who are you?”
His shrug and shift of eyes would have been sneaky if it wasn’t accompanied by a loud exhalation of breath from the woman.
“It is too soon for you to know, Traveler. There is much for you to learn. Time may be elastic, but it is not infinite.”
“Learn what?”
Again, he shifted his eyes away. The woman opened her mouth but the younger one jumped in first.
“You have to study the disasters,” she said, her voice high and almost hysterical. “You have to find them through time and understand them. They are important.”
“What about you? Them?” She gestured to the people, realizing how schizoid it sounded, but not knowing how else to convey her meaning.
The man spoke this time. “No, they cannot leave. It is their fate.”
Study the disasters, they said. Find them through time. It made no sense to Fiona. There were so many cataclysms and she didn’t know which ones she would need to focus on.
Still, they’
d shifted her back to this time to show her something. Whoever they were, whatever all this meant. She remembered the voice echoing in her head when she was yanked back from the Event and thrust into a momentary amnesia. It had been so powerful, and so familiar but unfamiliar. Fiona had pushed the memory of that small slice of time out of her mind as she enjoyed the warmth of Santorini’s sun and Sonder’s embrace.
“I don’t know how I’ll get back,” she admitted. “This happened by accident. I touched a fresco.”
“Ah,” he said, and his voice held sorrow, and dismay. “It was not an accident. I am sorry that Akrotiri will be lost.” He gestured to a covered wall. Moving to it, he uncovered it to show a new fresco, but a brightly colored, brand new one. Fiona started, and looked at it in shock. It showed current Santorini, in its familiar crescent shaped form.
“When the time stream shudders, these anomalies manifest, on the earth and other places. You must learn, and control them, or all will be lost.” It was again a rote speech, this time given by the older woman.
Fiona looked at the fresco of the familiar island. “This…isn’t it dangerous to have this here? It’s going to take a long time, but this civilization will be uncovered.”
“We have time. You must leave, and then we will obliterate it. We are the only ones who know it is here. We painted it to show you that we speak the truth.”
“Come with me,” Fiona said. “I’ll take you out of here, save them. It won’t be easy, but they’d be alive.” She had no idea if she could or not. She knew she could transport one person, but didn’t know if she could do three, especially thousands of years in the future. That might be beyond the extent of her powers. She may be the Traveler, but there were limits.
The older woman shook her head. There was sorrow lining her body, but also a strong resolve that Fiona envied.
“We knew you might suggest that. We must stay. We inhabit their bodies, but those will soon be gone, as will we. It is their destiny and cannot be changed. We risk much if it is. They were not meant to leave.”
“Couldn’t you have told me all this in Santorini…Thera? In my time?”
Finally, the man smiled. “Would you have listened? We thought showing you would impress the truth of these words on you.”
Fiona looked out the window, and saw in the distance the plumes of smoke that signaled the active volcano. The island was different, looking more like ringed circles than the five separate islands it now was. She wondered what they were thinking in the other parts of Thera. The man, whose name she didn’t know, had said many of the people had already left. The ones that remained behind would be wiped out along with all traces of their culture. It was a catastrophe and Fiona ached to make it right. If the Minoan civilization were preserved, how many things would be different? This seemed, from the little she had seen, to be a civilization much more advanced than she would have anticipated for a time so far back.
For the first time, Fiona began to understand that her power was great, and the burden greater. She knew about the so-called Butterfly Effect. She’d read the chilling Ray Bradbury story about the man who had stepped on a bug in pre-history and altered the future so that pigs were the dominant species. If she changed this, if there were a way to change it, everything she knew would be wiped out. Her mind spun with the paradox. It made her want to flee back to Brookline, and somehow explain her disappearance. She could take up an ordinary life, and never use her time travel powers again. The Event was two hundred years off from her time. It was far enough away that she wouldn’t have to worry about it.
She could find a good life with Sonder. It would be weird in Brookline since she had just vanished, but she could pick through it, find a way, and re-start things. Sonder might still be with her if she did that, but she wasn’t sure. He was a Guardian, by nature, and a warrior. It was why he had decided to join the time traveling group rather than die in the accident. She had thought that that was an easy choice. She didn’t know if Sonder would stay if she turned coward.
Fiona realized that Sonder had been patient with her, in a way that was probably uncharacteristic of him. She was sure that he had been eager to figure out the puzzle of the Event, and stop it. That was his nature. It was why he’d been immersed in history, studying patterns, trying to find parallels, even while she lounged. He was getting ready. Part of him must have known they were in the calm before the storm.
She could run, but she would likely lose him if she did. There was no escaping the power inside her. She had a gift, and she had to use it better than she had been. Fiona looked at the three people who had helped her. It was frustrating, knowing they were part of the Voice and yet being so unable to get answers from them. They had picked out people who were doomed, and used them to relay information back to Fiona. It suggested a cold-blooded ruthlessness that made her shiver. But that was no different than the choice the Guardians and Liberators gave to those who were going to die. The chance to join the individual groups saved their lives, but changed them forever.
“Is this Atlantis?” She had heard the story that Santorini, or maybe Crete, had been Atlantis, ripped apart by the volcano and giving rise to the tale told by Plato. That much she knew in her shaky grasp of history. Couldn’t hurt to ask.
By the looks on their faces she knew they weren’t going to tell her even before the man spread his hands in a helpless gesture.
“I am sorry, we can’t answer that.”
Rats, Fiona thought. It would have been fun to know, to be able to grasp a little secret knowledge to her body like a favorite piece of jewelry.
“Who are you? What are you? Please, I want to know.”
The man shook his head and the women had mournful looks, whether because they couldn’t or wouldn’t answer her question, Fiona wasn’t sure.
“Some things are not meant for you to know yet. In time. This was to be a brief stop. You need to go where the energy surfaces. Go to these places. Go, and follow the time ruptures. Then, once you learn, you will have the knowledge to stop the Event. It gathers power with each breach, before it erupts into the ultimate destruction.”
Fiona swallowed, the overwhelming task in front of her making her mouth dry and her body shake. She felt so unequal to what they told her she had to do, and clueless on how to do it.
“Once you understand, touch the painting.”
Fiona eyed the fresco. It looked harmless enough, just a scene from the top of Oia, showing the caldera and the volcano in it, and the current shape of the exploded island that was about to destroy this civilization.
There were figures on the fresco, painted in the Minoan fashion, but she thought they were there to represent her and Sonder. There was no way to be sure, except to touch it and accept her fate.
“How long?”
The woman didn’t pretend to misunderstand the question. “Imminently. Life here is over.”
“Okay.” She looked at the cup of wine she couldn’t drink and looked first at the people, and then the fresco.
“Ready or not, here I come.”
Fiona studied the fresco again. Up close it was blurred, the paint had been done hastily and was a little thick. She traced the line of the shattered landscape without touching the frieze and then looked at the trio one more time.
“I just touch this?”
The man nodded.
“Thank you. I wish there were a way this could be different.”
He shrugged and she thought she saw a hint of later Greek or Roman body language in him.
“Man dies. If they lived with honor there will be the possibility of immortality in death. That is what they believe. Life will never be the same once the volcano explodes. It is time, Traveler. Time on your end is flexible, time here is not.”
It was the opposite of what she had thought earlier, but he was right. She was in this time and now had the option to jump forward, with the right coordinates, to a time and place of her choosing. She had no idea what the rules were this far away. Guardians and
Liberators would have faded long before this. Fiona wondered if that was a built in limitation of the devices the time travelling groups had to jump, or something innate in humans, except for her.
So many questions. So few answers. She swallowed, and nodded. It was time to do what was necessary.
“Thank you,” she said again, feeling inadequate. “I won’t forget this.”
The woman smiled. “You must not.” She pointed with her chin to the painting. “Go, Traveler.”
Fiona straightened her fingers and placed them on the fresco.
Chapter 5
She felt a jolt and a jarring sensation, like she had been picked up and flung into a gyroscope. She was spinning, colors and landscapes whirling around her. This wasn’t the formidable blackness of the shift between times, this was something new. It was bright and almost too shiny, dazzling her with streamers of jewel-toned shades reminiscent of the interlude in time when the traveling group landed and before time started. Fiona discovered she could see, she could feel, but she couldn’t move. Everything shifted and turned, tumbling over one another until she was dizzy. The Akrotiri buildings retreated, pulling away as if sucked into a whirlpool. The Theran volcano loomed right in front of her, filling her vision. It was all happening in fast motion. She saw the plumes of smoke get thicker and bigger, angry dark clouds dotting the sky, shot through with red. Boats were everywhere in the ocean, clearly trying to flee to the mainland, but it was too late. Fiona wasn’t sure how far away people had to be to survive the massive blast, but she knew that these ones wouldn’t make it. She felt something else, too, an odd shift, like a ripple in atmosphere. It felt as if there had been something warping time, pulling things out of alignment, and it had landed here, at the volcano on Thera. There was a subtle wrongness wrong about the landscape around her. She could sense the disturbance, just a tiny anomaly, but rippling out, ripping a hole in the fabric of this dimension. She couldn’t figure out what the discrepancy was, but she knew that that was what she had been flung back to experience. This was the part of the events that culminated in The Event, the disaster that destroyed all of humankind and all life on Earth. Her task now was to put all the pieces together. This was the job she had been given to do.