Chapter Three
The world’s most recognisable monument had vanished before my eyes. I had watched it fade away in seconds, taking with it everything I expected to see around me: fences, highways, signs. I was alone in a world that was not mine, surrounded by nothing familiar, nothing as it should be. Even the moonlight and the starry sky had gone, replaced by a damp and gloomy afternoon.
What had happened to me? Where was I? How was I going to get back? And what about my mom? What would she do if I just disappeared without trace? She's lost my dad, she needs me, and boy, I certainly need her.
A slight movement in some scrubby grass caught my eye. I turned to face it, panic driving me to scan the tangled scrub. Something moved, something round and bulky. Unbelievably, it was a bear cub. I suppose my reaction was entirely automatic, I felt relieved and immediately warmed to it. I took a cautious step towards it. A fearsome, snarling roar came from behind me. I spun about to see a huge brown bear charging at me, teeth and claws ready to tear me apart. Again my reaction was unplanned, I fled, running blindly. My feet were flying, my heart racing, but I had no idea what to do. I could not believe what was happening. Nothing made sense. My life was threatened and I was running on "auto-panic". I had no idea how to cope, no plan for survival. I needed smarts to survive, but terror had wiped my mind. I couldn’t think. My head was a smarts free zone.
Over my shoulder, I saw the massive creature slow and veer towards its cub. For a moment, I thought I might be safe. I looked around for a better escape route. Unfortunately, once it had satisfied itself that its offspring was unhurt, the bear renewed its pursuit and was soon gaining on me. I was weakening, slowing with every step as I blundered through the tangled scrubby heath. Thorns and brambles clawed at my legs trying to trip me. Only fear pushed me on. I heard a weird screaming sound. It stopped when I realised it was coming from me. Tears blurred my vision, my stomach churned. I wanted to pee myself. In mad panic I glared at the silver device clutched in my hand. Had this thing brought me here? I shook it and stabbed at it trying to make it work, willing it to carry me back to safety.
The bear was almost on me. I was just about to hurl the useless light sabre thing at its head when a man appeared, dancing into view across the bear’s path. He waved a long stick and shouted at the animal. Startled, the bear slowed and reared up on its hind legs before veering away from him. Then, seeming to gather its thoughts, it turned again and charged back at the man. Instead of fleeing, the stranger stood his ground. He swiped the beast on its nose with his stick. I realised it was a spear, not a stick. It had a flint blade.
Crikey! It had a flint blade! Where the hell was I? And when?
The man darted under the bear’s great claws and jabbed it in its stomach with the spear’s butt end. The creature gave a strangely feeble yelp and folded painfully over the blow. It turned away sharply and ran off, glancing back over its great shoulders. The man chased after it for a few metres, shouting and throwing rocks. The bear escaped, suffering little more than injured pride.
Laughing and shouting triumphantly, the man turned to me, waving and shaking his spear. He threw back his head and began a strange, birdlike dance, chanting and howling at the grey sky.
I watched, rooted to the spot. He was about my age, but not so tall. His wiry arms were muscled and as taut as ships’ cables. He had an extraordinary animal alertness and agility. Smiling, he showed me fine teeth and bright blue eyes from his weirdly painted face. He wore a short cloak of brown fur over a tabard of shorter, grey fur. His feet and muscular legs were naked and filthy with mud. Beneath his furs, he had on some sort of buckskin shirt or tunic, almost to his knees. He strutted cockily towards me laughing and chattering, but not in any language I could understand.
Clearly, he found me hilarious. Skipping around me as lightly as a dancer, his long fingers pecked at my clothes, rucksack and shoes. He stroked my hair and my wristwatch, giggling at everything about me.
‘You saved my life,’ I told him, somewhat superfluously. ‘Boy, I thought I was a goner. Where am I?’ I felt uncomfortable under his invasive scrutiny and backed away flapping my hands. It didn’t stop him. He sniffed my wristwatch, and touched it with his tongue. ‘My name is Jack,’ I yelled, as if he was deaf.
He studied me closely, nostrils flaring as he sniffed me like an animal. It felt as if he was seeing inside me, opening me up, heart, lungs and backbone revealed. ‘Jack, Jack,’ I repeated, patting my chest and giving him a questioning look, inviting his response.
He glared at me as though I was an idiot, and started trying to remove my jeans’ belt. I shoved him away truculently. He stepped back laughing, evidently approving of my reaction.
A sudden alertness seized him. Glancing about wolf-like, he crouched, sifting the air for sound and smell. His grimy hand grabbed my wrist. He pulled me away at a jog, leaving the she-bear and her cub behind. Jabbering in urgent, hushed tones as we went, he kept glancing at me as though he expected me to understand him. Like smoke over the ground, he moved with flowing strides, hardly disturbing the vegetation. I stumbled along with him, my wrist locked in his iron grip. Suddenly, he stopped and pressed me down to the ground, clamping a hand over my mouth. I struggled to free myself, but he shoved my hands aside and pinned me as easily as one might a baby. His voice was a husky whisper. I gathered we were hiding and I stopped struggling. Releasing me, he pointed, signalling with his fingers that we must be quiet and keep low. Following his lead, I peeked cautiously over the long grass. A group of about ten men, dressed and armed as he was, had surrounded the bear and her cub.
I slid down into cover and rolled on to my side to discreetly study my rescuer. He had the look of a leopard eyeing its prey. Tension and focus showed in every line of his face. The veins on his muscles stood out, throbbing to his steady pulse. Narrow-eyed he flared his nostrils, sniffing the air. His head twitched as he cocked his ears for every sound.
The men were shouting excitedly above the snarl of the bear. I carefully looked out again. The bear was down, fatally wounded, several spears in her great bulk. They flopped about grotesquely as she writhed, breathing her last. Some of the men relaxed and watched idly, waiting for her to die, others were tumbling about, laughing as they struggled to hog-tie the terrified cub. My rescuer watched them, his wiry body tense, ready to spring into action at the first sign of danger.
After a few moments the hunters began skinning the bear. A fire sprang up. Men cut and lashed hazel stakes together; I don’t know why, perhaps for a shelter, or for a frame for scraping the bear’s skin. I saw crows gathering in the bushes to watch the bloody ritual. Several red kites flapped in even closer, boldly dodging the hunters’ kicks and cudgels as they tried to steal flesh from the corpse. The chilling sense that I was watching normality, the commonplace of this world, took hold of me. What was this place? Where was I? What was happening to me? I reached into my rucksack and fiddled with the silver thing, again trying to make it work. Nothing happened. Even the LED was dead.
I thought of my mom. What would she do? How would she cope? She’d never got over my dad, and what about my little brother? I had to get back to them, somehow, but how? Keep plugging away, my dad used to say. He never let anything stop him – until – you know ...
The sky was growing dark; the approach of storm clouds rather than the onset of evening. My saviour watched it with a fearful expression, and then started to wriggle back across the heath like a snake on video rewind. I followed him keeping as close to the ground as I could. At a hazel thicket, we hid to watch the hunters. It was a perfect vantage.
A cry rose up from the group. Something was happening. The men began milling about excitedly, shouting and pointing. I grubbed around in my rucksack for my binoculars and focused in on the group. One of the men was holding something, turning it over in his hands. He had a puzzled frown on his face. The others pressed around him, jostling to see what he had. He held it proudly aloft to show them. It was my torch. I must have dropped it in
all the excitement. He had not figured out how to switch it on, but was mightily proud of it nonetheless.
The leader of the group stepped up and sweeping the others aside like corn sticks, tried to snatch the torch for himself. Its finder resisted and the pair squabbled noisily, grabbing and wrestling back and forth, fuelling the general commotion. Through the binoculars, I watched their spat degenerate into a serious, even deadly fight. The leader had drawn a large flint knife, which he slashed about with fierce determination. A bloody gash appeared across the other man’s forearm. The leader pressed his attack as his opponent spun away, nursing his injury. A lightning pass of the flint knife opened a wound from the man’s chin to his armpit and he toppled forward. The leader kicked him and ripped the torch from his bloody grip. Stepping back, he snatched a spear from a bystander and rammed it into the injured man’s face.
The torch was now his. He held it aloft, shrieking in triumph, as his defeated opponent squirmed at his feet. The rest of the group bent their heads, cowed and hunched. They milled about, some nervously eyeing their leader’s strange prize, others watching their dying comrade. The spear’s owner made as if to recover it, but the leader snatched it away and plunged it into the heart of the prostrate figure. Then waving the shiny chrome torch above his head, he pushed everyone back, making it clear that the spear would remain where it was, no doubt to mark his triumph.
Inevitably, the leader’s exploring fingers found the ON switch. A beam of light burst forth, scattering the hunters like frightened children. Shrieking with astonishment, the leader swung the beam around beneath the darkening sky.
My rescuer was amazed too. He even forgot to hide and stood up gaping as the beam was swung around. I yanked his wolf skin tabard and pulled him back into the cover of the trees. He shot me a curiously apologetic glance and shrank back into cover.
I had never seen anyone killed. I stared at the hunters and saw how matter-of-factly they all accepted it. Their comrade was dead. His corpse lay where it had fallen. The fight had lasted barely a minute. The torch had cost me under two quid. But now it was bestowing great power on a harsh and ruthless leader. Of course, the battery would soon run down. What then? What would that do for his power – his magic?
My rescuer gently took my binoculars from my hand and examined them. He looked into them, but not properly. Lightning, flashing in the south-western sky, distracted him. He tossed them back disdainfully, more interested in the rumbling thunder rolling across the downs.
‘Tharanu!’ he said, pointing to the sky. ‘Tharanu doth.’
I guessed this was his lingo for thunder. Another stuttering flash lit the black clouds. Thunder rumbled, closer, louder. ‘Tharanu?’ I queried.
‘Tharanu,’ he confirmed, looking fearfully at the sky.
It was our first conversation. As long as we had an electrical storm every day, I told myself, we’d always have something to chat about. I tried him on Jack again. ‘Jack. Me Jack.’ I was grinning and patting my chest.
‘Vart,’ he replied, vaguely.
Vart or Fart? I wasn’t sure. Common sense warned that when somebody, armed to the teeth, tells you he’s called Fart or Vart, it’s just as well to be sure which it is. ‘Fart?’ I queried, suppressing the urge to giggle.
Casting me a pitying look, he enunciated slowly, ‘Vaaart.’ Clearly he thought I was stupid, and I think he also felt I showed a lack of respect for his name. He set off into the woods without a backward glance, mumbling sourly. I followed, trying to catch up. I needed him. He was all I had.
Miserably, I reviewed this desolate fact as we jogged and jinked through trackless woods. I felt overcome by sickening despair and could have sobbed like a baby. The awful realisation of my predicament, the sheer hopelessness of it all, bore down on me like a concrete duvet.
Barely three hours earlier I had been at the Stonehenge campsite, sitting with Tori and the others around a campfire. We were all laughing, eating burgers and listening to one of the Bristol University scientists talking about time travel. He was a really funny old guy with some great stories. For an archaeologist he seemed to know a hell of a lot about quantum physics and stuff. He had had us all hanging on every word. Crazy as it seems, when I thought of the mess I was in now, the idea that maybe I had somehow travelled in time began bubbling up in my brain. I knew it was stupid, but I couldn't stop myself. What else could explain it? Was I in a dream - a nightmare? Had I cracked my head open when I tripped in the middle of the stone circle? Had I lost my mind? Or had I really travelled in time?
Whatever it was, I knew for certain that I really had seen a wild bear and a bunch of stone-age men. I'd even seen one of them get killed. Now you tell me how that could happen in the normal world? I couldn't explain it. And what about the guy with me? He's wearing skins and has a flint spear, for God’s sake.
He's a stone-age guy! Any fool can see that!
Maybe I really was in some sort of freak time slip or something. But where was I? And, if I had travelled in time, how far back, or forwards, had I gone? What era was this? Prehistory is vague at best. It makes the Dark Ages look like Las Vegas, but from what I had seen so far, I guessed that I could be in the late Mesolithic. What good it did for me knowing that, I don’t know. I suppose it made my metal penknife a bit special.
My friend Vart had no metal tools or equipment. His spear was tipped with flint. The hunters had been similarly armed. So far, I hadn’t seen any woven fabric. Vart was clothed in animal skins. He had a flint axe tucked into his leather belt. Strung across his body was a wooden bow, three fur pouches and a quiver of arrows. Compared to my jeans, combat jacket, and rucksack, everything he wore, or carried was rudimentary and unrefined. But, unlike me, he was the master of his environment. He knew how to survive here, how to prosper even. I did not. I couldn’t feed myself. I had no idea what dangers I faced, let alone how to deal with them. I was helpless - me, the one with the Nikes, the wristwatch and the labels in my clothes. Without Vart, I would be dead in days, if not hours. No, wrong - I would be dead already.
Time Rocks Page 9