Guardians of Time

by Sarah Woodbury

  “My father’s clinic is just down the road,” Rachel said. “How about we go there, and while my father sees to Meg, the rest of you buy what we need. I’ll ask my father if it’s okay to borrow some of his equipment to take back with us. That’s probably easier than trying to buy it.”

  Cassie laughed. “Borrow permanently, you mean.”

  Dafydd nodded. “That works. We’ll leave Mom, Dad, Anna, Math, and Rachel at Rachel’s dad’s clinic.”

  “Who’s going to drive? I’m afraid that won’t be my contribution to this endeavor,” Math said dryly.

  “I’ll do it.” Cassie moved around Dafydd and plopped herself in the driver’s seat. “What does this thing run on, anyway?”

  “Petrol,” Callum said, “but it takes a special nozzle. We can’t simply fill it at any station.”

  “Good thing Wales is a small country, then.” Cassie buckled the seat belt and shifted gears. “Left hand manual drive is always fun.” She glanced back at Rachel. “Point me in the right direction?”

  Dafydd moved aside and sat down in Cassie’s vacated seat, while Rachel took his place behind Cassie’s chair in order to direct her to Abraham Wolff’s clinic. Dafydd looked past Anna to Math. “I’m really glad you’re here, Math, because I’m counting on you and Dad to keep Anna and Mom safe.”

  “I don’t know what good I’m going to be,” Math said. “I don’t understand this world at all.”

  “There are forces that could be working against us—powerful forces that include governments and mercenaries,” Dafydd said. “Not to belabor the point, but every time I come to the modern world, I’m reminded of my ninth grade education and relatively young age. All anyone sees when they look at me in an overgrown kid. The King of England? Don’t make me laugh. I have no more authority than you do. If we’re going to leave you and Dad at the clinic with Mom and Anna, you need to keep your eyes open. Act as if we’ve taken an enemy position, and we don’t know what their next move is or the resources they have to counter us.”

  Math nodded, surprised and also pleased at what Dafydd was asking of him. “I will not fail you.”

  “You never have.” Dafydd sat back in his seat and closed his eyes for a moment.

  When Math had made the impulsive decision to board the bus, he’d assumed he would be an appendage to Anna—useless, really—and good only for holding her hand. But he still wore his sword, and he knew how to use it. He had no qualms about using it.

  Anna nudged Dafydd, who still had his eyes closed. “We’re here, aren’t we?”

  Dafydd opened his eyes to look at his sister. “We are. It was the right thing to do.”

  “Exactly,” Anna said. “Don’t worry so much. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  Math thought Anna was being just a wee bit optimistic, but he had to admit that so far things had gone more smoothly than they had any right to expect. The drive to the clinic from the hospital was short—not so much in distance, but because the road was so smooth and the bus could go so fast that what would have taken an hour in his world took minutes here.

  Math deliberately hadn’t paid attention to the scenery passing outside the bus because he became nauseated every time he looked out the window. Then Cassie slowed the bus and turned into yet another parking lot. She killed the engine and doused the lights, and then everyone exited the bus.

  As Math stepped off the bottom step and helped Anna down, even though she didn’t need his help, he looked around with interest. He even went so far as to bend to the road, sweeping away the layer of snow to get at the hard black stone beneath. It was so smooth it explained instantly why the bus could maintain the speed it had without jarring the passengers’ teeth out of their heads.

  They stood next to a two-story building. Lights shone all around it—not torches, he understood, but light glowing from within glass bowls and powered by electricity—an endless source of energy upon which everything in this world depended.

  Cassie had parked the bus alongside the stone walkway that surrounded the building. Low cut grass, covered today in snow like everything else, filled the space between the walkway and the side of the building.

  Math looked up into the sky and blinked his lashes against the snow that continued to fall. It was the only thing in the scene that was in the least familiar to him, and it was comforting to know that it still snowed in this world.

  Anna squeezed his hand. “You’ll be able to see the landscape tomorrow. The mountains and the sea will look the same, even if nothing else does.”

  Then a vehicle many times smaller than the bus—even smaller than the ‘car’ in which Bronwen had driven David and Ieuan into Wales—turned off the road and parked beside the bus. A man of small stature with hair and beard shot with gray opened the door. He stood half-in and half-out of the vehicle, gazing at Rachel, who took several steps towards him.

  The man then closed the car door with a clunk and stepped onto the sidewalk in time to catch Rachel in his arms as she threw herself at him. “Dad!”

  Abraham Wolff rocked back and forth, holding his daughter and crying himself while she sobbed into his shoulder. Some of the others looked away, studying the trees surrounding the clinic, as if by watching they would be interfering with the reunion, but Math observed them closely. He’d known, from Anna, that the love between a parent and a child in Avalon was no different than Math’s love for his sons, but he was interested to see it for himself.

  After a minute, Rachel collected herself and relinquished her tight hold on her father. She wiped at her eyes with her fingers, while holding out the other hand to Darren. “This is my friend Darren, Dad.” And then she introduced everybody else.

  Abraham Wolff eyed Darren, and Math didn’t think Rachel’s father was confused for a single heartbeat about who Darren was to his daughter. Still, he greeted him cordially enough, with a firm handshake.

  “Let’s get inside.” Abraham walked towards the front door of the building, a white square held in his hand.

  As he swept the square across a black box beside the door, a high-pitched wail sounded in the distance, like a donkey screaming but far higher and more piercing. Math spun around, his hand on the hilt of his sword. “What is that?”

  “Sirens,” Dafydd said.

  Abraham held the door open. “Are they for you?”

  “Could be.” Dafydd tipped his head at Math. “Get them inside and let Dr. Wolff work. We’ll take care of this.”

  Llywelyn gripped his son’s upper arm. “What are you going to do?”

  Dafydd glanced over at the others, who remained outside the building. “I’m pretty sure we’re about to lie through our teeth.”

  Chapter Eight

  David

  Everyone gathered around Callum to await his instructions, which David found both amusing and interesting. He was glad he had a big enough ego to withstand what he could have perceived as a slight. In the Middle Ages, he was the focus of any conference, but in the twenty-first century, Callum was their leader—and David was completely happy with that fact.

  “What are we going to tell them?” Cassie said.

  Mark Jones held up his phone to get their attention. “I’m already seeing talk in some of the chat rooms of the more fringy conspiracy groups. The Welsh Nationalist site is going crazy.”

  “What are they saying?” Callum said.

  “They use a lot of code, but there’s a definite reference to him.”

  “And who might that be?” Darren said.

  “The man who is the return of King Arthur,” Mark said, with an eye on David, “who will unite Wales against the Saxons. Who else?”

  “Nobody is going to take such a claim seriously,” David said.

  Mark made a maybe motion with his head. “Regular citizens aren’t likely to give credence to something like that, but there are people in the Security Service who actually know what’s going on. They know about you and your father.” The Security Service was the official name for MI-5. Sometimes Callu
m and the others also referred to it by its in-house name, Box 500.

  The sirens came closer and resolved themselves into a single echoing screech emanating from one car. It came around the corner from the direction Abraham Wolff had driven, turned into the parking lot, and braked to a halt sideways across the back of the bus. The driver seemed to be under the illusion that the placement of his minnow of a car would stop the whale of a bus from going wherever it wanted to go.

  Two officers got out of the police car. One was a short, stocky gray-haired man in his fifties, not dissimilar in appearance to Abraham, though without the beard. He headed towards the front door of the clinic where David and his friends waited. His partner, who’d been driving, was closer in age to David, and he walked around the far side of the bus, disappearing for a moment from David’s view.

  Callum held his MI-5 badge in readiness and, instead of waiting for the older policeman to reach him, stepped out in front of the others and held it up.

  In the United States, Callum would have said federal agents! but here the appropriate words were, “We’re with the Security Service.”

  Darren, Mark, and Cassie flashed their badges too, while David tried to look inconspicuous, staying in the shadow of the shelter over the front door of the clinic. It was still snowing, and he was cold in his sweater, woolen or not. He wanted a parka like Anna had.

  His attempt to hide was unsuccessful, however, since the patrol officer latched immediately onto him, nodding his head in David’s direction. “Who’s he?”

  “A consultant,” Callum said, lying boldly as David had predicted.

  The man’s eyes narrowed. “He’s awfully young.”

  “He gets that a lot.” Callum held out a hand to David to indicate that he should come forward. “This is Dr. David Llywelyn, our profiler.”

  Under the principle that a guilty person would never be so bold, David stuck out his hand to the police officer, who shook it warily and said, “Pleasure to meet you.”

  David nodded a greeting, deciding at the last minute that he wasn’t going to try for an English accent, and it was better to say nothing at all. Likely, these two cops had never even seen one MI-5 agent before, much less four. However this turned out, both of them would be bug-eyed at the dinner table tonight, telling family and friends about the presence of the Security Service in Gwynedd. So much for keeping a low profile.

  It was taken as a given by all who lived in Wales that the country was the most neglected region of the United Kingdom. This wasn’t just in terms of infrastructure, social services, and resources either. London saw places like Caernarfon as remote and inaccessible, which was why in the Middle Ages the Gwynedd kings and princes had managed to stay independent for so long.

  Compared to a country the size of the United States, calling Caernarfon ‘remote’ was laughable, but the whole of Britain, including Scotland, was the size of Oregon, so people thought on a smaller scale. Likely, the people who lived in Orkney thought they were treated the same way, but they couldn’t drive to London in four hours either.

  The patrolman jerked his head towards the bus. “We got a report of a bus driving the wrong way down the motorway. The caller said the bus was orange and green, from Cardiff, and until I saw the bus sitting here, I didn’t believe him.”

  “This is, of course, why we’re here too,” Callum said.

  “Since when do the Security Service get involved in traffic violations?” the policeman said.

  “May I see your badge?” Darren pulled a notebook and pen from the inside pocket of his trench coat.

  The policeman cleared his throat. “Yes, sir.” He held it out to Darren, who made a note of the name and number.

  Callum nodded. “A person of interest was last seen on this bus.”

  The younger officer had finished his inspection of the exterior of the bus, and now he stood near the front door with his hand on the top of his head, just looking at it. “This really is a Cardiff bus. What’s it doing here?”

  A sinking sensation overtook David’s stomach. He could practically see the gears turning in the man’s brain.

  “Never you mind,” the older officer said. He’d been semi-hostile up until now, like a commoner might feel about the gentry, but his young partner seemed to annoy him more than Callum did.

  The younger officer’s brow remained furrowed. “Remember last year when a bus disappeared into thin air during the bombing of city hall in Cardiff? They played that clip over and over again. You know, this bus looks just like—” His eyes widened as he turned to the MI-5 agents.

  The older officer scoffed. “What are you going on about?”

  But Callum was already holding his badge in the young man’s face, and when he spoke, his voice was lower and sterner than David had ever heard him. “This is a matter of national security. You two need to get back in your vehicle and drive away. Leave this to us.”

  The younger officer looked like he was going to protest. Callum swung around to get confirmation from the partner, and the older man responded as expected, jerking his head and saying, “Let’s go.”

  The younger man obeyed, but his face shone with excitement as he walked back to the car.

  Before they got in, Callum said, “Happy Christmas to you.”

  The older patrolman lifted a hand in greeting. Then his partner started the car, backed it up, and drove away.

  Cassie let out a burst of air. “The cat’s pretty much out of the bag now, isn’t it?”

  “I’d say so,” Callum said.

  “Sorry,” David said.

  “Why are you sorry?” Darren said. “You’re the last person whose fault this is.” He turned to Mark. “Can you shut this down?”

  “From Cardiff I could. I can’t from this laptop, not without the right passwords to get past security.” He pointed with his chin to where the police car was now driving away. “You can bet they’re on the radio, talking to central command. You know they are.”

  “This just means we need to work more quickly than we hoped,” Callum said.

  “It was still a good idea to come here on Christmas Eve, David,” Cassie said.

  “How can you say that, given that we’ve already been discovered?” David said.

  “They didn’t write down our names,” she said. “They’ve got a skeleton staff on duty, and all anybody working right now wants to do is to go home or down to the pub. It’ll be all over Bangor tonight that the bus is here—and even more that MI-5 is here—but it might not go beyond Gwynedd just yet.”

  “She’s right,” Darren said. “Maybe this hasn’t gone as pear-shaped as we think. Even if the officer had written down our names and badge numbers and called them in, most likely he wouldn’t have reached a desk with a live person at it.”

  “We can’t assume we’re safe, though.” Callum pulled out his phone and handed it to David. “Ring Anna and let her know what’s happened. Math and your father need to keep a watch in case those bobbies return.”

  “Okay,” David said, knowing that ‘bobby’ was British slang for police officer.

  Callum continued talking. “We need to hide the bus right now, and find ourselves more subtle transportation. What do you have for me, Mark?”

  “Preferably a van that seats ten.” Cassie swung through the door of the bus and plopped into the driver’s seat.

  “It’ll be tough to find that on Christmas Eve.” Darren sat in a seat near the front of the bus.

  Anna picked up on the second ring. “What is it?”

  “How’s Mom first?” David said.

  “She’s fine. Just getting underway here,” Anna said. “The sirens stopped.”

  David related their conversation with the police officers, and he could hear Anna taking in a breath of disappointment that they’d been discovered so quickly.

  “I’ll send Math and Papa down to watch the door,” she said.

  “We’ll keep in touch. Call if anything happens. This is Callum’s phone, but we’re on our way
to acquire one for me and replacements for everybody else.” David hung up.

  “The internet is our friend.” Mark had his computer open on his lap again. “I’m working on a vehicle first.”

  Cassie started the bus and drove it out of the parking lot.

  “Do you mind if I ask you about a couple of things?” David said to Callum. “I don’t want to sidetrack us but—”

  “Are you really asking me if it’s okay for you to talk?” Callum said.

  “I don’t want to distract you with stupid questions about how MI-5 works.”

  “Until Mark finds us a vehicle, we’ve got nothing but time. Ask away,” Callum said.

  “What kind of equipment does Mark need in order to find out if anyone back in your old office is paying attention? And can we get it or get to it? I want to know if the time travel initiative exists in any form anymore. Obviously, just from what that police officer said, they have your disappearance from Cardiff on video. If they played that over and over again all across the world, somebody somewhere should have started asking questions I’d rather they weren’t asking.”

  “I’ve been sifting through news articles from last November,” Mark said. “The government left a great deal out. Reading between the lines, after our disappearance, the time travel initiative didn’t die entirely. The Security Service will know we’re here and where we are from the flash as we came in.”

  “Does the bus have a GPS?” David said. “I can’t believe this is the first time I thought to ask that.”

  “We disabled it,” Callum said. “You don’t have to think of everything.”

  “Can it be turned on remotely?” David said.

  Callum laughed and cleared his throat at the same time. “I misspoke. I should have said that we ripped it out.”

  “Then there’s Lee,” David said, above the general laughter at Callum’s response. “I would very much like to find out what became of him, if anything.”

  “I would too,” Callum said, “but, sire, concerns about Lee have to be secondary to the greater mission.”