by Jane Stain
Amber let go and Kelsey hugged Jaelle too.
“Has the same amount of time passed there as here, eight hours?”
Jaelle pulled back from Kelsey’s hug and wrinkled her brow at her old friends to show her puzzlement.
“Okay, either this is the most realistic dream I’ve ever had, or you guys are really here with me. But I know I’m dreaming, so that’s not it. But you don’t seem at all puzzled, so spill. What’s going on?”
Amber made a ‘this is a big deal’ face and looked at their other friend.
“She had better tell you. It’s mostly her story. I don’t know all the details.”
Kelsey covered her mouth with her hand for a moment, smiling at Jaelle with embarrassment.
“Oh I’m so sorry. You don’t know about my ability, do you.”
Jaelle raised her eyebrows.
“Uh, no, I guess I don’t.”
Kelsey gestured at some odd straw mats on the dirt floor and shrugged a question at her and Amber, causing all three of them to sit down and try out the odd furniture. Kelsey made a funny face at how uncomfortable it was.
“Well, it’s kind of a long story, but you aren’t going anywhere until I let you.”
It was foolish to do so in a dream, but Jaelle lunged at Kelsey then, determined to remind her friend that unlike some people, Jaelle hadn’t quit fighter practice.
Kelsey raised her hands up in front of her in defense for a second, and then broke into laughter.
“Okay, okay! Sorry, bad joke. So here goes. While you spent almost seven happy years with John, I had no idea if Tavish was even alive—”
Jaelle frowned at Kelsey, half in true sorrow for her friend’s loss of those seven years she might have been with Tavish, and half in frustration with her for bringing John’s name up. Okay, a third of each of those, and a third with indignation at being complained to about it.
“Yeah, that was awful for you, I know. I know I’m lucky I did have those six and a half years with John, but you have Tavish back now, and I think I’ve lost John forever to another woman, so—”
Kelsey reached out and hugged Jaelle again, shaking her head quickly.
“No, no, no, don’t worry about it. That’s not where I was going. Just bear with me. I told you this was a long story, and that was just the introduction.”
Jaelle gave Kelsey a squeeze and then let her go gently.
“Sorry. Okay, I won’t interrupt anymore. Go ahead. I’m dying to hear this.”
Kelsey played with a silver ring on her right ring finger. Now that Jaelle looked at it, she noticed the ring was one big Celtic knot made from several thin silver strands. The thing was gorgeous and intricate.
Her friend continued to play with it as she spoke.
“So while I was missing Tavish so much, you know I went to Celtic University. But the part that even I didn’t know was the place is run by druids. The same druids who give Tavish his marching orders because of the curse that was put on the MacGregor family generations ago. The curse that made Tavish and Tomas and John’s brothers leave me, Amber, Sarah, Lauren, and Ashley for those seven years.”
Through John, Jaelle already knew about the curse. He was under it as well, being part of the same MacGregor family as Tavish. It was what allowed him to time travel, and it had made it possible for him to meet the other woman he ran off with, into the past.
But the curse came from an evil sept of druids which had generations ago enslaved the MacGregor family.
And Kelsey was saying she had discovered only recently that the university where she had spent the past seven years studying for a doctorate was run by this evil sept.
How horrible for her.
Jaelle took Kelsey’s hand and squeezed it with what she hoped was reassurance.
Kelsey squeezed Jaelle’s hand in return and held it, giving her a grateful and sad smile that was close to tears.
“Yeah, but Tavish and I have made our peace with the curse now. Time travel is adequate ― well, not so much compensation for the curse as… Well, I guess time travel is our compensation for having to serve the druids.” She looked all around them at the broch in awe and wonder some more. “And you have to admit, time travel is pretty diverting. Downright fun, even.”
The two of them met eyes.
Jaelle nodded, raising her eyebrows and tossing her eyes in a ‘who could pass this up?’ way.
“I have to admit, a small part of my disappointment when John broke up with me was over the loss of the time traveling life I thought we would share. But look, I’m time traveling without him. Who knew?”
Kelsey gave her a knowing nod, raising one eyebrow to say ‘exactly.’
“Well, I’ll cut the story short after all.” She held up her right hand, spinning her silver ring with her thumb. “This is my graduation ring from Celtic University. Amber has told you some of the story of how Tavish accidentally took me time traveling and then how we brought her into it, right?”
Jaelle looked at Amber and smiled an apology for getting crabby with her on the phone earlier.
Amber acknowledged it with a nod and by scrunching up her nose playfully.
Jaelle turned back to Kelsey.
“Right, she has. I didn’t want to hear it amid all her talk of being back together with Tomas, but she did try to tell me about your adventures together.”
Looking amused, Kelsey moved around on the thin straw mat that sat on the cold stone floor. Trying to make herself comfortable and failing, she looked at Jaelle and laughed some more.
“Yeah, well a fourteenth century druid named Brian saw my ring and called me ‘Priestess.’ That was my first clue the druids were involved with Celtic University. But they’re more than just involved. They trained me in all of their ways without my realizing it by making it about folklore end mythology and all the old stories that explained the old artwork and architecture. They guided me into…”
Kelsey sighed heavily.
“There is no easy way to say this, so I’m just gonna blurt it out and hope you don’t hate me.”
Jaelle’s friend choked up, and tears fell down her face, but she struggled through it and kept talking anyway.
“Unbeknownst to me, what I was really doing at Celtic University was… becoming a druid myself—”
Jaelle and Amber both gently caressed Kelsey’s back while she cried and kept talking to them. She paused from time to time, taking several deep breaths every few moments to calm her sobbing, but she continued on.
“Being a druid priestess isn’t all bad, though. I get to time travel with Tavish, because they think I can handle it. If I didn’t have this ability, they probably wouldn’t allow it. That would be much less bearable. And the second good thing I’ve gotten from becoming a druid myself is this ability. As you have probably figured out by now, this isn’t just a dream. Amber and I are really here with you, in the dream world. You’ll remember all of this when you wake up, and so will we. I can come into the dreams of anyone I’ve ever touched in real life. I can either share the time with the dreamer— which I always do when I enter a friend’s dream—or, I can search through the dreamer’s memories while they dream, unaware of me. It’s a powerful ability, and I’m so used to having it now that I’m not sure I would give it up in order to not be involved with the druids anymore. But we especially don’t think we could ever give up time travel voluntarily, not unless it meant that all the children in our family would be free from serving the druids through time travel for evermore. Maybe then we could give it up. Maybe.”
Jaelle waited to see if Kelsey was going to tell more of her fascinating story, but her friend had clammed up. Giving her a sympathetic look, Jaelle gestured up at the broch they had just explored.
“I understand. I can’t make myself leave now that I’ve tasted what it’s like to actually live history instead of just reading history. It’s dangerous here, and I know I should just put the helmet back on and come home. But now that Breth knows I’m from the future a
nd is no longer afraid I’m spying on him for the Gaels, he’s excited to have me here and wants to show me all kinds of things, and—”
Kelsey had woken up out of her funk and was looking at Jaelle with amused eyes.
Jaelle looked over at Amber.
Her other friend was just as amused, and gave her a funny look and three quick raises of her eyebrows.
Jaelle sat up from leaning back on her arms.
“What?”
Amber lightly pushed Jaelle’s shoulder.
“Breth, huh?”
Jaelle blushed and looked down. She had been caught crushing on a guy in the middle of this serious discussion about druidic curses on the MacGregor family. When was she going to learn to think before she spoke?
Kelsey tapped Jaelle’s knee.
“Mind if I give us a look at your Breth through your memories of your day?”
Jaelle blushed even deeper.
“Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Kelsey gave Jaelle a confused look as the broch dissolved and left them all three standing in the woods where Jaelle had first seen Breth.
And there he was in all his… splendor.
Amber gasped and grabbed both of Jaelle’s arms. Without taking her eyes off Breth.
“Oh, I so wouldn’t be coming back home.”
Jaelle couldn’t take her eyes off Breth herself. Miles of pale skin, taut muscles, and woad animal decorations which leapt and ran and even winked when he moved. And blue eyes to match that did just as much whenever they met hers.
But Jaelle heard Kelsey’s voice off to the side, and it sounded distracted enough to show that her other friend was also drooling over Breth.
“You have a bad deal in that helmet, with time passing at home while you’re here… Did that wolf just wink? …Was it always like that for John? When you were together, would he be gone for long periods of time while he was in the past? Oh my gosh, that waterfall on his chest is flowing! And those blue eyes, whoa! Anyway, no time at all passes for me in the present while Tavish is in the past without me. And I only time travel along with him, never by myself, so when I get back home, it’s the same instant I left. That’s how I can keep my job.”
Jaelle took her concentration off of her memory in order to answer her friend.
To her surprise, the memory sped up, just playing highlights of her and Breth’s day.
Amber and Kelsey both squealed in delight at the part where Breth moved all of his muscles and deliberately made the woad illustrations animate for Jaelle’s amusement.
Jaelle couldn’t bring herself to answer Kelsey’s question until all the highlights of the whole day had played out and the three of them are once more seated inside the broch — this time at the fourth floor table where she and Breth and Deoord had eaten their fish salads.
“Having just turned twenty five, John was only starting to time travel when we broke up. And no, he wasn’t gone for long periods of time, only a few hours each time. But obviously on the other end he was gone for months. Long enough to meet another woman. And fall in love with her. And choose her over me.”
Amber and Kelsey scooted their chairs down the table on either side of Jaelle and put their arms around her, hugging her tight while she cried.
In record time she remembered this was a dream, though, and pulled herself together.
There was something else she remembered.
“Amber, will you do me a big favor?”
Her friend nodded quickly.
“You know I will.”
Jaelle recalled — and so Kelsey replayed — how earnest Deoord had looked when he said she would be a help to them because of her knowledge of history. And how disappointed he had looked when she disavowed him of that idea.
She looked pleadingly at Amber.
“I don’t know what you have going on in the morning, but I hope you can get online wherever you are. Because I want you to look up the few brochs whose remains are close to Hadrian’s Wall and tell me everything you can find out about any battles which took place near them while the wall was still being built.”
Ten
Marcus sat comfortably at the table in his quarters with his four generals, talking over his rough map of the local area. He had managed to cobble it together based on the reports of all the scouts they had sent out these past few years. Four scouts had reported in just this morning, and he expected one more.
Female slaves refilled Marcus and the generals’ wine goblets, took away their empty breakfast plates, and placed before them new plates with fruit and cheese.
Finally, the last scout was ushered in and prostrated himself face down on the dirt floor at Marcus’s feet.
Marcus snapped off a sprig full of grapes from the plate nearest him and concentrated on finding the best ones while he spoke to the scout. He hated it when he popped a sour grape in his mouth, or a wrinkled one. Couldn’t be too careful.
“Go on then, give us your report. Don’t just dawdle there.”
The scout’s voice came out high-pitched, which wasn’t surprising, seeing as how he was only nine years old.
Marcus used to send out grown men as scouts, but he had decided that was wasteful. Far too many of them never returned. Child scouts were much more successful — either because they were so small and innocent that the enemy ignored them and they didn’t die while scouting, or because they missed their mothers and were more motivated to return. Marcus didn’t really care which it was, so long as they kept returning. And reporting.
The child piped up in his squeaky voice.
“As you requested, I went as far north as I could in one day. I went by the rock hill and over six more hills, but I didn’t find any more rock hills full of savages. In the one hill of rocks there are sixty seven savages, best as I could count in the time I was there. Thirty six of these are grown men, twenty three are grown women, and the rest are children my size and smaller. During the day they practice warfare and at night they all sleep inside the rock hill.”
Marcus licked the grape juice off his fingers, dipped them in a fingerbowl, and dried them with a cloth napkin that had his name embroidered on it before he turned his attention to the cheese tray. Oh good, there was still some of that great Camembert left.
He spoke to the scout out of the corner of his mouth while he gobbled it, looking over the rest of the cheese selection and swirling his wine in his goblet.
“This is unacceptable. There must be another rock hill closer inland. You just aren’t finding it. If I have explained it to you once, I have explained it a thousand times. The rock hills line the coast almost impenetrably to the north, so why should it be any different here along our wall? You will go back immediately. Comb back and forth more carefully this time along the hillsides. Climb the mountain beyond and see what sort of view it can give you of the area. You will find the next rock hill before you come back here.”
The child started sobbing.
“I want to see my mother first. I haven’t seen her in three days, and I’m all scratched up from the branches.”
It was on the tip of Marcus’s tongue to tell the boy to leave at once and not see her, but if seeing his mother was what brought him back here, then that wouldn’t be prudent.
He took a deep sigh and rolled his eyes at his generals.
“Very well. You may stay here one night with your mother, but then you must leave first thing tomorrow morning. You are dismissed.”
The boy got up and ran out the door.
“Thank you!”
Marcus turned a pleased eye toward his generals as he updated the map with the scout’s information.
“The chances of our success at taking out their southernmost defenses look better and better. It is as we suspected. They defend the coastline against our ships, but they are overconfident that we will stay here behind our wall and won’t invade them on land, the way they raid against us. We’ll slaughter these barbarians.”
The Romans all smiled and laughed
eagerly, discussing the details for a few hours ― with one break to go out in the courtyard at noon and listen to the bagpiper.
A few hours before the slave girls would bring him his supper, Marcus signaled for his generals to leave his quarters and for his slave girls to give him another bath. He had just been dried off and dressed again in fresh clothes when the guard at his door ushered in one of the lower ranking members of the squadron he’d sent out yesterday to chase after the leader of the barbarians who inhabited the nearest rock hill, who had been found spying on them and defacing their wall.
This man also prostrated himself on the dirt floor.
Marcus signaled for two of the slave girls to give him a manicure and pedicure while he spoke to this man. It satisfied him to see them rushing about to get what they needed and hurrying up to get started.
He leaned back in his chair and watched them while speaking to the soldier.
“Report. And tell me why your captain isn’t doing so, and why the report is so late. You should have been here last night.”
The man drew in a ragged breath before he spoke, and when he did, he was sobbing almost as much as the boy had been. Well, not really. But he was sobbing. Trying to cover it up, but sobbing nonetheless. It was impossible to get good help these days.
“Captain Terentius is wounded and being tended to, along with Rufus, Cato, and Tertius. It took the rest of us all night to carry them here, up and down the hills and through the thistles.”
Marcus took a bit more interest in the report.
“Oh? Wounded how? And where?”
“Captain Terentius took sword wounds to his right arm and right leg—”
Losing his temper, Marcus stood up suddenly, throwing the two slave girls to the hard stone floor.
“I couldn’t care less where on the captain’s body the wound was, you dolt!” Marcus grabbed the soldier’s hair and used it to hoist the man up where he could see the table. “Where on this map did the battle occur?”
The soldier studied the map with a surprising amount of intelligence in his eyes, considering how inept he had proven thus far. After a few moments, he calmly pointed to the forest about midway between Marcus’s fort and the nearest rock hill.