I didn’t know then, but redemption was a long wordy contract with a fine print I wasn’t willing to pay.
CHAPTER 28
Time: 14th September 1661
Location: Headed North
The rabbit tasted good if you were wondering - cooked to perfection, moist and juicy - a tad chewy but still amazing.
And Jack... Jack was also amazing – no, no I didn’t eat him. I just meant, in general, he was pretty cool, and not in some weird sexual tasting way. We were doing well with the journey and we hadn’t come to any trouble yet although the threat of being found was overhanging.
I used the time we were travelling wisely, teaching him everything I knew about Time Bending. The most important discussion was of course his ability to prevent Time Bending whenever he travelled into a past life.
“Say it again,” he groaned, shaking his head as if to clear his brain of its cobwebs.
“When you go into the darkness, your Totem takes you back to the Timeline correct?”
He nodded his head slowly as I continued. “But your Totem is taking you from the different timeline in the past you’ve just visited – it’s apart of you now - so when you follow your Totem back to your original Timeline, you need to cut the tie with the timeline you just visited.”
“How do I do that?”
I pursed my lips. “It takes a lot more concentration. You need to go further into the web of timelines and find our Timeline that way.”
“So basically - Time Bending is the shortcut home - and then whatever this is - is the long way home.”
I grimaced and shrugged. “Sure - if it helps you to picture it that way yes.”
“And that will leave that timeline alone to progress with whatever change has happened - but not directly change anything where we come from?”
I nodded my head. “They’ll be two completely different timelines - unless you accidentally visit that timeline again and bend it again. It’s why you need to be so careful that you’re always using timelines you’ve never visited before.”
He nodded his head slowly. “Simples.”
“Well not really - it takes a lot to organise all the timelines so we know what we’re doing-”
“I suppose I’ve shifted some stuff around then?” Jack interrupted.
I pursed my lips. “I’m just curious to know how you knew which timeline you’d be able to find me in 1944. How did you know what my Totem was?”
Jack titled his head to the side and winked at me. “You should really be careful about what you put in your records.”
I narrowed my eyes and scowled at him. “I don’t even know the rest of my friend’s Totems, how do you?”
“I could tell you theirs.” He grinned mischievously. “It was also fun to know that we’d figured out how to follow Totem’s before you did. Not so high and mighty now are you?”
I fought back the urge to scoff. “You didn’t even know what the word Totem actually meant – so no.”
“Guide and Totem are basically the same thing!” he exclaimed. “I didn’t pay attention to any of your fancy names for stuff – just what it was.”
I glared at the back of his head. “How much have you actually read about us?”
“Nothing - my sister in law does all the heavy lifting to be fair. I’ll let her take all the credit – I’m just her little lab rat.”
Sounds familiar. I thought of Vix and all the theories and work he did for us surrounding Time Bending.
“I suppose she’s the one I’ll have to thank when you give me that delicious cure for helping you?” I smiled sweetly.
“Yup.” He popped the word and then groaned. “Can we talk about something more fun now? I’m getting a headache.”
I rolled my eyes and thought to myself for a moment before tightening my arms around him “Favourite life? Go.”
He breathed in sharply and turned his head to look ahead. “My favourite life for sure was in 1870 - I was a cowboy.” I could hear in his voice he was grinning. “I go back to it all the time.”
“You’re weird.” I rolled my eyes.
“I’m mostly a fan of ancient history. Everything before I was a cowboy was pretty awesome. Hell even ancient Rome was pretty sick.”
“Of course you like ancient history,” I replied, rolling my eyes and looking at our surroundings.
“There was one where I was really rich, I don’t remember when… probably sometime around the Tudors but in France, or was it Rome?”
“A merchant or something?”
He laughed loudly. “No… like a historic family kind of wealthy.”
I choked. “Oh wow… well that sounds great.”
“What? Surprised?”
I stumbled over my words. “No. I just thought since you’re… you know in the future, and have been a pirate, a cowboy and a… servant of sorts in this life - I thought the rest of your lives were you know…”
“Nah, my wealth is pretty inconsistent.”
“I’m always…”
“No shit,” he laughed when I didn’t finish my sentence. “Actually, the only thing that’s consistent in most of my lives is me,” he said and I placed a head on his shoulder laughing.
“Oh really?”
“Not like that… I mean I come close to death a lot.”
“Hence the Raven? I always assumed you’d just lost a lot of people,” I said quietly. He turned his head to the side and gave a crooked smile. “Nah, I’m always very sickly – if I’m not killed then I die from an illness. I’ve never lived above forty.”
“Maybe we can prevent that now we have so many more cures,” I suggested hopefully. “Besides you don’t want to see yourself get old. I reached 70 once and it was terrifying going back.”
Jack laughed loudly. “I couldn’t imagine you being any less beautiful than you are now.”
I slapped his arm “Ouch, thanks a lot.” He turned to the side confused before realisation dawned on his face and he scrambled for words. “No! I just meant – I – you know what I meant.”
“I’m not sure I do,” I replied, clutching my heart wounded.
He released an exasperated sigh. “You know you’re beautiful – I also know you’re… beautiful.” He released a long breath.
I chuckled softly, then reached over his shoulder and kissed his cheek. “Thank you,” I mumbled.
“Do you think we could do it?” I asked after a moment of silence.
“Do what?” Jack asked, turning his head to the side to see me better.
“Change the future. Do what you were trying to stop us from doing and what we were afraid of what you were doing.”
He contemplated this for a moment and turned back to face the horizon. “I think it would be a start if we both knew how Prospect came into making. None of you had lives that suggested how? That could change it?”
I held on for a moment as we moved along a bumpy path. “My last life was fifty years before I was born into my present one. I know it pretty well, I’m always there for clients since it has the most impact,” I explained. Jack stayed quiet for a moment clearly disapproving but not wanting to say anything.
“Mine was forty-five years from the present and everything was mostly normal. The only issue was climate change still. I looked into it once, Prospect was being built, completely detached from the rest of the world. That’s why most of the world is still relatively normal.”
I stilled at his last words. “Wait. What do you mean relatively normal? I thought everywhere was like Prospect.”
I could feel Jack stiffen, and he turned his head to the side. “Not really. The old world still exists. You’ve just given it the name ‘Rebellion’. Yeah, sure it’s small. Cities like Prospect that are corrupt pretty much dominate us. But there are others like us. I thought you knew that?”
“Yeah... I always thought it was more like urban versus countryside though.” My cheeks burnt red as embarrassment crept up my spine. “I thought the Rebellion was a break off from Prospect
, not part of the - uh outside.”
Jack sighed irritated. “You realise how that sounds? The outside? You’re trapped in the walls of Prospect. You didn’t even know what was outside those walls.”
I pursed my lips and looked at the side of his face. “I always knew they were keeping us from something outside. But there was never a need to leave... there is now.”
Jack raised an eyebrow with a faint smile, I rolled my eyes and smiled.
Jack’s smile grew even larger. “Are you turning away from the dark side?”
“Alright Sparrow let’s avoid that topic,” I sighed and rolled my eyes at him.
“Raven,” he corrected me.
“Okay Raven,” I emphasised the words sighing and looked over his shoulder. We were travelling through fields now.
“So what about the other Time Benders?” he asked. “Would they know anything from their lives that would suggest how to change it all?”
“Ah now look at you, wanting to join the dark side? Change the future?” I teased.
He rolled his eyes. “I’d be changing it so save thousands from a life of misery.”
I stayed quiet for a moment because I couldn’t tell if he was talking about the rest of the world living in misery or if he thought I lived in misery. I disagreed, but I wasn’t going to start an argument. “The others have lives way before then. I think we’re running out of juice, you know?”
“I don’t know,” he replied bluntly.
“Well, early on our lives came one after the other - well they did for Fynn, Ace and I.” He turned his head back around to watch me. “But now the years between them are stretching out much longer before we come back.”
“Now that you say it yeah... mine are becoming longer.”
“So how many lives do you think you have?” I asked nonchalantly, secretly competitive of whatever his answer is.
“Ah I don’t know, two hundred maybe? I remember a few of them, anything before this life is a blur.”
I smirked, unable to help myself.
“Do you ever miss them?” I asked, jolting slightly.
“Not really. How did this whole Time Bending thing get discovered?”
“Landon mostly, he and Vix were friends and did some experimenting and research. At that point, all they knew was that Landon had appeared in a photo a hundred years ago and he could remember it. He also had dreams about memories he didn’t have in this life. Anyway, they searched for others and my face kept popping up in historic photos. So they brought me in and Vix began trying stuff. I was the first to go back when I was just ten. Of course, it wasn’t revealed to the public - only my clients knew. Then the other five popped up over the years and we were formed.”
My heart had clenched slightly at the thought of Landon. I wondered if they’d pulled the plug on him yet. I wondered if they were about to pull the plug on me... I clenched my jaw - these thoughts did nothing and were useless.
“Where were you before you were discovered?” he asked finally.
That was definitely not a question I was comfortable answering.
I clenched my jaw. “I don’t remember much before I was ten, I was in an accident and suffered from memory loss.”
Jack’s eyebrows raised. Either out of surprise that I didn’t remember much before I was ten or the fact I was ten when it began. Ten was young to be doing this. And I’d been going into the past regularly for years - it was bound to have an effect on my health.
After all, it broke nature - changing things from the past. I was a loophole in existence.
Who knew? O did. Every full sibling I’d ever had knew who I was. Maybe it was just an accident we found out we could go back into our lives? But how did they know how to? And how many reincarnated siblings were there? Jack has had a brother in a bunch of lives and O mentioned me meeting him, but had I already met him? Or would I meet him? In a new life that had already been written - just waiting to start as time rolled closer?
Life was confusing - time was confusing.
Jack hadn’t pushed me to decide whom I would stand with once we got back - maybe he was scared of my answer. We didn’t want to be enemies but it wasn’t so easy for me to just switch sides overnight.
“How did you discover you could bend time?” I asked.
“It was a mistake, I just kind of… fell into a past life. The rest of our information came from books published on it and of course-” he winked, “-from hacking your files.”
“How the hell did they hack us?” I asked genuinely puzzled, we had the strongest system. We had to in order to stop the public from finding out all our dirty secrets and hating us from wiping out generations from existence.
I never said we were the good guys.
“Don’t ask me.”
“So you've got access to all the things we’ve changed - all our research and yet you still didn’t know what a Totem was? Let alone how not to bend the timelines?” I laughed and he shoved his elbow backwards to catch me in the stomach.
He grunted. “Surely by now, you’d know I don’t listen very well - besides, lab rat remember? I don’t need to know everything.”
I rolled my eyes. “And here I was thinking you were smart enough to trap me in the past.”
CHAPTER 29
Time: 14th September 1661
Location: Headed North
I rested my forehead on the back of Jack’s shoulder, avoiding the feather that tickled my cheek and the fact a strong wind was trying to blow my own hat off.
“Nova?” Jack shifted slightly and my head fell forward as I almost slumped off the horse. I’d fallen asleep.
“We need to get to a village - there’s a storm coming.” I nodded my head and looked up to the sky through a canopy of pine trees. Dark foreboding clouds rolled overhead and drops of rain trickled from leaf to branch and settled down the back of my neck.
We rode quickly, even though our horse was beginning to get tired and restless. Magically a village wasn’t that far from us which was surprising because we had been avoiding any kind of path for the last few days in fear of being tracked - if it were possible for them to work that fast.
It was pouring with rain by the time Jack had secured the horse in the stables. I was dripping and shivering as he led me toward a building with a puzzled look.
Jack paused and looked at his surroundings. “Something feels...” He shrugged and continued walking.
“Thomas?” A voice cried from a doorway behind us. Jack continued to walk but I swivelled to face the person. It was a middle-aged man with barely any teeth and a head full of wild white hair. He stumbled down the wooden staircase shocked.
“My boy!” he cried once Jack turned to face him.
“Oh shit,” Jack hissed under his breath, wide-eyed as he looked at the man.
He cleared his throat and forced a fake smile. “Ja... Jim... Jamie?”
“No! It’s Jeremy! Jamie’s inside. What - how - please come inside before you soak to the bone.” He waved us forward with a dirty-toothed smile.
We stood in the mud for a moment before Jack took my arm and led me up the stairs. Jeremy swung open the door to reveal loud laughter that stopped once Jack entered the room. We were in some kind of tavern surrounded by the whole village it seemed.
“Thomas?” A group of men came forward all different sizes and then they grasped onto Jack, crowding around and clapping him - firing questions his way in a loud blur of deep voices.
Jack looked at me panicked and I shrugged. Whilst he tried to answer questions wondering where he’d been I stood outside the bubble waiting for it to be over.
“Who’s he?” A man with a large stomach and red beard pointed to me. Jack broke through to answer but a smaller man stood on the table behind and ripped the hat off.
“It’s a girl!” he shouted. The others exploded into laughter and shifted their attention away from Jack towards me. Then, when everyone seemed to notice my features the room went silent. I didn’t exactly look normal for the
se parts - silver hair, pixie features and the way I held myself made me stick out a lot.
“Someone give the poor girl a cloth,” a woman with grey hair snapped.
“I’ll keep her warm,” a man chimed in to which Jack slammed his foot down on his toe.
“Jamie,” he said to the man who’d spoken before finally breaking into a large grin. He remembered Jamie and that’s all apparently.
Jack’s smile faltered as he seemed to realise another detail. That detail, sure enough, made her presence known when she shoved her way through the crowd of males and ripped Jack’s hat off his head - throwing it in my direction.
She looked like a prostitute, makeup smudged and lipstick smeared down her face from getting too cosy with another man somewhere. Besides, I had every right to judge her when she leapt onto him and smooched his face. I raised my eyebrows as Jack attempted to push her away.
“Tommy!” she cried gasping and pushing him onto the table where she sat on his lap. He looked my way, pale with lipstick smeared across his lips. The men were cheering and clapping his back proud. I watched amused.
“Beatrice.” He turned his lip up into an awkward smile. “Looking as... charming as ever.”
“I’ve waited.” She pouted. “I thought we was gon’ get married.”
“Who told you that?” Jack grimaced and placed a finger on each of her shoulders and pushed her away from his face.
She giggled feverishly. “Tom’s been playing!” cried the men, clapping him on the back. The small man jumped from the table behind me and pushed me into the circle.
“What?” Beatrice stood up, stumbling drunk to face me. “Tommy, who’s this?” she gasped, looking me up and down.
“Umm,” Jack stuttered at a loss for words.
“Hi there.” I smiled sweetly. This was going to be fun. “Sorry you’re a bit late. He’s already married.”
NOVA: The Time Bender Series Book 1 Page 21