Guardians of Time

by Sarah Woodbury

  “We need to get Shane to a hospital,” David said. “That’s our first priority. Then we can see about what Mom needs.”

  “Mom has a strong need for Italian food, maybe some coffee, and definitely chocolate,” Mom said, speaking of herself in the third person.

  “We need to bring some doughnuts home for Bronwen,” Anna said.

  Having come with David to Wales in 1285—2013 by Avalon reckoning—Bronwen was the first of the time travelers outside of the family to choose to stay in the Middle Ages. She’d married Ieuan, David’s former captain, who’d remained David’s right-hand man even after David had taken the throne of England. Bronwen was pregnant with her second child, which was why she hadn’t come with them to Avalon. In fact, until David talked to her about the possibility of traveling with him, Bronwen hadn’t told anyone but Ieuan about this baby.

  Bronwen had experienced multiple miscarriages since giving birth to Catrin four years ago. Now, however, she was already four months pregnant, so there was real hope that she could keep the baby this time.

  David looked around at the members of this small group who’d come on the journey with him: Math and Anna, Mom and Dad, Darren and Rachel, Callum and Cassie, and Mark Jones. His throat thickened with emotion just looking at them—at how much he loved and trusted them, and the amazing fact that the love and trust was returned.

  Sensing what he was feeling—like he had ever been good at hiding from her what was going on inside him—Mom gave him a smile. “We’re good, David. Let’s get to work.”

  Callum shifted in his seat in order to plug in his cell phone and jack, and then all those who hadn’t yet done so followed suit. David shared a rueful look with Dad, who didn’t have a cell phone either. Even Anna and Mom had them, thanks to the purchases made by Cassie and Callum last year.

  “Do you have any extra?” David said to Callum.

  “No, but we’ll get you one.” Callum grinned as he jerked his head towards the Tesco, which proclaimed itself to be a superstore. Then he turned on his phone. “This’ll be interesting if someone has my number on a watch list.”

  “If we’re discovered, it’ll be my fault more than yours.” Mark Jones was rapidly scrolling through a series of screens David couldn’t see from where he was standing. “It’s harder to hide my presence from my phone. I’d use my laptop, but I can’t reach Tesco’s wifi from here.”

  “Er, David?” Brian, one of the bus passengers, had come up the stairs at the back of the bus, and he stood on the top step, shifting nervously from foot-to-foot.

  “What’s up?” David glanced outside the window. Most—if not all—of the bus passengers who’d left the bus in such a hurry were still mingling in the parking lot. David checked the time on Anna’s phone. It had been only a few minutes since they’d left, though it seemed like a lot longer than that to David.

  The passengers had had time to make some more calls, stomp around in the snow a bit, and discover where they were, the same as David’s family and friends.

  And maybe have second thoughts about their abrupt departure.

  “Er … well … my sister isn’t answering her mobile … and … well … I don’t really have any place to go. A bunch of us don’t, you know … I mean …” His voice trailed off into inarticulateness.

  Darla, appeared behind Brian. She was one of the bus passengers who’d spent the whole year at Caerphilly grousing about how much she hated the Middle Ages and refusing, to the best of her ability, to participate. Along with her husband and teenage daughter, Darla had responded to David’s decision to take everyone back to Avalon with it’s about time! In David’s conversations with his mother, he hadn’t listed fear as one of the reasons to return. Yet for one of the bus passengers to take matters into his or her own hands and attempt to force Anna or Mom—or David himself—to time travel had remained a genuine possibility. Lee had done it, as had Marty a few years before him.

  “My brother isn’t answering either.” She turned her cell phone screen outward so David could see it. “The mobile lines are busy or not working.”

  “It’s Wales on Christmas Eve,” Mark Jones said. “They’re over-subscribed.”

  Darla shot him a sour look for interrupting. “All of our credit cards are probably cancelled, and it isn’t like we have enough cash for a hotel.” She glared at David. “I hate Wales. It was the worst mistake we ever made deciding to visit Cardiff on the weekend.”

  “So you’ve said,” Mom said in a low voice as she gazed at her shoes, “about a thousand times. If not more.”

  Dad’s lips twitched, and David wanted to kick his mother for almost making him laugh.

  “How can I help with that?” David said. “I don’t even own a cell phone myself—nor do I have any British pounds.”

  Darla’s face twisted into a parody of innocence—eyebrows raised, eyes wide, and a fixed smile. “You have gems and coins. I know you do.” The last sentence came out with an edge. She’d managed to hide her underlying anger and resentment for approximately three seconds.

  “You want money too?” Anna said.

  David didn’t share Anna’s surprise at Darla’s audacity. He was beginning to think that taking the whole lot of them back to Avalon would have been the best idea ever even if he’d died in the process. They didn’t deserve to stay if they couldn’t see what medieval Wales had to offer.

  “It isn’t like any of this is our fault.” Darla kept up the stare.

  Callum dropped his phone into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and headed down the aisle towards the exit. “I’ll deal with this.”

  David decided not to stop him. “Thanks, Callum.”

  The bus passengers had always respected Callum more than David, regardless of what station David held in the Middle Ages. Callum was British himself, an MI-5 agent, and spoke with authority. Many of them had never been able to see David as anything more than a punk kid.

  “Is he going to use his own money?” Jane asked.

  “Yes, but it’s all right,” Cassie said. “Callum and I figured this might happen. We have an account that won’t be cancelled and has plenty of money in it. We can pay to put everyone up.” She looked at David. “They’re used to relying on you, even as they resent you. We can’t just cut them loose.”

  “I had no intention of cutting them loose,” David said, exasperated. “They were the ones who left the bus as fast as their feet would take them off it.”

  “That was before they discovered they were in Caernarfon instead of Cardiff,” Mom said dryly.

  “Why Caernarfon, do you think?” Anna said.

  “It’s closer to Aber.” Dad turned in his seat to look out the window, though the bright lights from Tesco’s parking lot prevented anyone from getting a good look at the landscape.

  Dad wasn’t the only one who was pleased at the news of their location. David knew north Wales better than south, in large part because his early years in Wales had been spent here. At that time, Gwynedd had been all that his father controlled.

  Plus, as they’d come in, he’d spied a McDonalds on the other side of the highway, and his mouth watered at the thought of a double cheeseburger, milk shake, and fries. Not that eating French fries was such a big deal anymore. Mom and Anna had brought more than the bus back to the Middle Ages a year ago. The first crop of potatoes had been harvested, and although the vast majority were being saved for seed for next year to really get the crop going and he wasn’t the potato lover Callum was, he’d been afforded a few bites.

  “Why does there have to be a reason?” Shane’s dad, Carl, said. “We made it. That’s what matters.”

  “Yes, but in the past we’ve ended up in a place where—” Mom paused, frowning at how to explain it to someone who might not share her faith.

  “Where we were meant to be,” Anna said, and when Carl opened his mouth to protest again, she hurried on, “I know that sounds stupid because where we end up has to be where we were meant to be, but it’s more that it’s the pla
ce where we make a difference. Or where things work out in an unexpected, but good, way.”

  Carl looked almost offended. “It seems like you’re asking a lot.”

  David couldn’t argue with that, since it was asking a lot. He would have preferred not to have come through on the wrong side of the highway, but if nobody had died as a result, he could handle things being a bit hairy for a few minutes.

  Mom took up the explanation. “Last time, Anna and I ended up in the middle-of-nowhere Oregon, which would have been very disconcerting if Cassie and Callum hadn’t been only a few miles away, spending Thanksgiving with Cassie’s grandfather.”

  “Oh.” Carl started to nod. “I get it now. That makes sense.”

  “Often—maybe even usually—we don’t know about that good thing until we’ve been there a while,” Mom continued. “Anna and I had to walk quite a way through the woods in the dark and cadge a ride from a total stranger before we found Cassie and Callum out looking for us.”

  Mark raised a hand. “MI-5’s sensors should have detected us when came in. I suggest that we have sat here too long.”

  “I don’t disagree.” David bent to look for Callum out the window. He was glad Jane had turned off the lights, though the lights in the parking lot were bright enough that anyone looking could be wondering why a Cardiff bus was sitting in the middle of the Caernarfon Tesco’s parking lot with a crowd of people outside of it.

  “I know why we’re here.” Rachel said, copying Mark by raising her hand as if she was in school. “It’s because of my dad. He’s a physician with an office near Bangor. While he isn’t an oncologist, he has the equipment and the skill to take care of Meg up to and including performing a biopsy.”

  Darren looked like he was the only one to whom that was not news.

  “He has his own full-service women’s clinic,” Rachel added. “His name is Abraham Wolff.”

  “How will he feel about helping us out on Christmas Eve?” Jane said from the driver’s seat.

  Shane had crawled into her lap and was now curled into her, fast asleep. The initial signs of childhood leukemia were somewhat nonspecific, and included fatigue, fever, loss of appetite, weight loss, and night sweats. Shane’s symptoms had progressed to swollen lymph nodes, bruising for no reason, nosebleeds, joint pain, and occasional trouble breathing. It was the speed at which he’d moved from the first collection of symptoms to the second that had prompted David to act today. A child could die of leukemia in months if untreated. Shane no longer had months.

  “We’re Jewish,” Rachel said. “Hanukkah ended on the eighteenth.”

  “And what about your mother?” Jane glanced down at her son’s sleeping form.

  “My mother divorced him when I was little.”

  Jane released a burst of air that was almost a laugh. “Understood.”

  That was good enough for David too. “Do you want simply to show up on his doorstep, or do you want to call him first?”

  Rachel looked at Darren, who spread his hands wide and said, “How many bombshells do you want to drop on your father all at once?”

  “You mean, which will get the worst reaction—the fact that I spent the last year in the Middle Ages, or the fact that I’m in love with a black man?”

  Darren shrugged, apparently finding the question amusing, though another man might not have. “Your call.”

  “I’ll ring him,” Rachel said. “He’ll need to meet us at his clinic anyway, so it’ll save time if we go straight there after we leave Shane and his family at the hospital.”

  Darren stood up and held out his hand to Rachel, who took it to rise to her feet. He looked back at the others. “Give us a minute.”

  David lifted a hand, giving permission, though since Darren wasn’t his subordinate here, it wasn’t his to give. As far as David was concerned, they could take all the time they needed. He didn’t doubt that his mother would be in good hands with Rachel’s father. David, of course, had known that Rachel’s father was a doctor with a clinic near Bangor, but he hadn’t mentioned it to anyone else because the odds of appearing in his vicinity had seemed infinitesimal to David. He should have known better.

  Then Callum reboarded the bus. Snow dusted his coat and hair, and he brushed it off in the shelter of the doorway before coming all the way up the steps and making his way down the aisle towards the others.

  David lifted his chin. “Are we good?”

  Callum released a little snort of laughter. “One of the local inns, the Black Boar, had a block of cancellations due to a wedding that’s been called off. They were desperate, and I didn’t tell them that I was too, so we got a great deal on rooms and meals for three days for everyone who wanted them.”

  “Do I need to drive them there?” Jane said.

  “Buses have been known to drive through the streets of Caernarfon, though it isn’t recommended. Regardless, the passengers decided to walk. First breaths of freedom and all that.” Callum gave a slight tsk. “It is my impression that they want to get as far away from us and the bus as possible on the off chance that time traveling happens again. They don’t want to be caught up in it.”

  Cassie put her nose up to the window, her hands cupped around her eyes so she could see better. “They’re really gone? Just like that?”

  “Just like that,” Callum said.

  Chapter Four

  Meg

  Callum shrugged out of his coat and hung it over the back of a chair to dry, giving something of a self-deprecating smile as he did so. “I gave them my mobile number. We may hear from some of them again.”

  “Yeah, you can bet we will,” Meg said, not in an undertone this time and still unforgiving.

  David laughed.

  Jane stood, Shane cradled in her arms. “He needs the loo. We’ll be right back.”

  “Okay,” David said.

  They left the bus, heading for the Tesco, just as Rachel and Darren re-entered and sat opposite Meg.

  “Everything’s okay,” Rachel said. “Dad will meet us within the hour at his clinic.”

  “I’m grateful that your father will see me on Christmas Eve.” Meg leaned across the aisle. “But what happens after that? What if it really is cancer?” She could hardly believe she’d only thought to discuss this now, after they’d already come to Avalon.

  Rachel had been sitting sideways in her seat, but she turned to face Meg. “That’s what I came along for, among other things. Between my father and me, we can perform tests and navigate around any hospital. The rest we’ll have to figure out once we have the test results in hand.”

  “And if I need treatment?” Meg said. “David can’t stay more than a few days. England needs him.”

  “I know,” David said, proving he was listening, though he’d been staring out the window at the falling snow as if he wasn’t paying attention.

  “But I can and will,” Llywelyn said, “and Rachel too, for as long as you need her.”

  Meg slowly nodded. “Oh, I get it. When the treatment is over, I can take everyone back myself.” She hesitated. “Unless I can’t. Unless I’m dead.” She stared stolidly ahead, across the aisle and out the window, though there wasn’t much to see since the breath of so many people had steamed up the glass. While Meg watched, Cassie reached out a finger and drew a heart.

  “That’s only one of many reasons I’m here too, Mom,” Anna said.

  “And Lili stayed behind at Dinas Bran to take care of all the kids,” David said, “though she’s plenty mad at me about that fact.”

  Llywelyn pulled Meg to him and kissed her temple. “I know this isn’t easy, cariad. I also know that you’re far more afraid of losing Anna or Dafydd than you are of dying yourself. But we’re here, against all odds, and now isn’t the time for worry. If there is one time I agree with Dafydd even when he’s being obstinate and righteous, it’s now. Shane had to come to Avalon. You did too. We accept the fate we are given.”

  As had most of the time travelers, Llywelyn had taken to calling th
e modern world by its medieval name, Avalon, and Meg had become resigned to the fact that, while in medieval Wales, it was best not to refer to the twenty-first century as anything other than the realm of Arthurian legend. Time traveling—or rather, universe hopping, which was a more accurate description of what they did—wasn’t something the medieval mind could accept. It wasn’t something the modern mind could accept either, but at least in Avalon, people from novelists to physicists had played around with the idea for centuries.

  In addition, because what they were doing was shifting universes rather than actual time traveling, they didn’t have to worry about changing the future in the place they were going. David could scatter as much medieval gold around the modern world as he wanted to, or take as much of whatever he wanted from Avalon back to the Middle Ages. Each future had its own trajectory, and what happened in one world had no effect on the other.

  As far as they knew, anyway.

  Of course, they still didn’t know why the traveling happened, or how. Meg had learned to live with the uncertainty. Refusing to believe in magic, David shrugged off all questions, saying he didn’t know the mechanism and, until he did, he wasn’t going to make any declarations at all. It was what it was, and words like magic, science, or God’s Will were merely filler until they knew the truth.

  Which they probably never would.

  Even Anna, despite fighting tooth and nail against it at first, had come to accept that Avalon was as good a name as any for the twenty-first century. Since many people in the Middle Ages thought David was the return of King Arthur anyway, it was one of the few ways of talking about who they were and what they did that made sense and wouldn’t get them labeled as heretics or witches.

  Meg put her chin in her hand, watching the falling snow being flicked away by the wipers, which Jane had left on low while she was gone. Anna and Math got up to stretch their legs, so David took Anna’s vacant seat beside her, his clipboard back in his hand and sucking on the end of his pen—one clearly borrowed from a bus passenger since it was a standard blue ball point.