by Mara Amberly
Eric sighed. She was smart and perceptive; he had to give her that. He was going to lie, but he already suspected she’d see right through it, so he shrugged.
“If I tell you, you have to promise not to tell anyone else,” he said. “It’s of the utmost importance.”
Cora smiled. Then she made a gesture like she was locking her lips and throwing away the key.
“Right. There’s a dangerous animal in the area. I’m going out after it at dawn, and I’m hoping to control the situation before anyone’s hurt.”
“What kind of animal?” she asked.
“The exotic kind,” he answered in an offhand way.
Eric had no intention of explaining just how exotic it was.
“I see,” she replied a little curtly, as she seemed to turn the idea over in her mind.
There was an awkward moment as he gazed at her and she looked back, before she stretched lazily.
“I’ll just have to come with you.”
Even while he was trying to give her the brush off, he was more or less convinced that she was the woman who’d helped him out back at Tintagel Castle. Did that mean he shouldn’t push her away? Should he let her go with him?
“Don’t you have a chaperone?” he asked her.
It might be hard for her to get away.
“Yes, but she isn’t with me all the time. She doesn’t walk well anymore so she often waits for me while I carry out errands.”
“It will be dangerous,” he said, trying to dissuade her.
“Oh wonderful,” she said, rubbing her hands together. “So tell me about this animal. It should be known that I like animals better than most people, but threats are threats after all.”
“It’s… different,” he said, completely at a loss how to describe it.
“So what aren’t you telling me?” she asked him, narrowing her eyes.
It elicited a sigh from Eric. There was quite a lot, and telling her she’d just have to see it for herself wasn’t going to work either, because the bugger was invisible.
She followed that up with a grin that suggested ‘come on then’.
Why did he feel he’d come to regret this? An idea dawned on him. He could make her the bait. Eric didn’t really mean that, but for a moment there…
“The creature feeds like any other animal, but it has unique attributes that cause an increase in entropy.”
“So what you’re saying is this animal speeds up ageing?”
He wanted to say no, but there was no way around it without lying outright. It only occurred to him after that perhaps she had greater scientific knowledge than he’d realised.
“It’s a defence mechanism; quite an effective one.”
“My father didn’t put you up to this, did he? Ever since I played that trick on him with the goat…”
“What? No. A goat, really?”
“Oh yes,” she replied with a giggle. “I’ll have to tell you about it sometime. I should be going as it’s rather bold of me to be here.”
Eric grinned at that. “I’ll be leaving at first light. I would feel better if you were safe here, but the truth is the animal could be anywhere in the town right now. My only hope of dealing with it is luring it away from a populated area.”
Eric wasn’t sure Cora’s father would be overly impressed if he endangered her, but she didn’t seem concerned.
“I’ll see you in the morning then,” she said, as she left the room.
Eric stared after her for a moment, until she’d closed the door, then he shook his head and settled in for the night.
Chapter 3
March 1724 – Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England
Eric set out about an hour after dawn, a little later than he’d planned. He walked on ahead, leaving Cora to speak with her father, who would likely send for her chaperone. Eric didn’t want Doctor Farroway to keep him there and he wasn’t sure what explanation Cora would give her father.
Eric waited near a copse of trees at the end of the road, and less than twenty minutes later, Cora caught up with him.
“See, it didn’t take me long. That was interesting,” she said, blushing slightly. “I told father there were some compounds and ingredients I needed in town. He sent for my chaperone, but it’s likely to be a couple of hours before she arrives. I told him I would be studying until she did and that I might spend some time in the garden. I don’t think he suspected anything; especially not our hunting expedition,” she said with an adventurous smile. “It’s early and I doubt he’s motivated enough to question it.”
Eric scratched his head, bemused. “You’re not concerned about being caught?” He wondered how likely it was he’d get in trouble as well.
“A little, but I’m sure I can justify leaving if I need to.”
Eric nodded. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that, but he had no intention of disrespecting the lady’s honour; not that her father knew.
“What’s that?” she asked, indicating the device on his wrist.
He forgot that he’d covered it the night before, but in light of the fact he’d need to use it today, it probably wouldn’t matter if Cora knew. He’d just have to be careful about how knowledge of the future stacked up for her.
“It’s how I’m going to lure and trap the creature,” he said, “as well as return it to where it should be.”
With a shake of her head, it was clear Cora had no idea how that was even possible.
“Let me take care of that side of things. Can you suggest a good place where some uh lightning isn’t going to draw attention?” he asked.
“In a word: no,” she replied, with a grin forming. “You mentioned wanting to be away from people, so my suggestion is we walk down to the woods. You’re always going to have some people around, but nowhere near as many as there will be in town once they’re up and moving.”
Eric knew it might be better for Cora if she wasn’t seen publicly with him as well.
“It’s a shame we don’t have some way to track the creature.”
“Listen,” she said, nodding toward the larger buildings in the distance.
There were dogs barking, and now that Eric thought about it, they had been for a while. “Don’t they do that all the time?”
Cora gave him a strange look. “Sometimes yes, but there’s usually a reason. It might be the reason we’re looking for.”
They walked on together, following the sound. It was still early enough that the streets were quiet. Eric knew he could try to lure the creature any time he wanted using the device, but he’d rather be ready and waiting for it, and away from people’s homes; he didn’t want any witnesses or anyone injured.
They passed many houses as they walked along the road and Eric soon noticed a lightly-wooded area not far away. It was uncleared land by the look of it.
He committed its location to memory but kept walking as the sound of barking grew. It wasn’t just one dog; there were at least three or four sources of barking, some the yapping kind and others deeper. Eric imagined it somehow belonging to a dog built like an Irish wolfhound.
“Oh that poor thing,” Cora gasped, as she ran forward to where a small animal lay unmoving beneath a tree.
Eric’s heart ached at the sight. It was the husk of a dog. The time creature was obviously hunting animals, and for all Eric knew, it mightn’t stop there.
Eric looked around, but he saw nothing else out of the ordinary.
“How long ago would you say this happened?” Cora asked.
He reached down a hand toward the small dog. He hesitated for a moment before his hand made contact.
“It’s cold. It could’ve happened last night. It’s hard to say.”
As he saw the sadness and resolve in Cora’s eyes, he knew she agreed with his decision to stop it. Of course, Eric had no intention of killing the time creature if he could help it. He wanted to put it back through the rift.
“This isn’t all that far from my house,” Cora said, as she left the dog be. “You don�
�t think it could be following you, could it?”
Eric shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.” At least he certainly hoped not.
He gestured back to the trees he’d seen. “I think there will be good enough. Let’s get this done before more people are up and active.”
Cora nodded and followed him toward the trees.
“I think I’ll come back later. I’ll bury the dog and read the funerary rites. It shouldn’t be left like that.”
Eric gave her a comforting smile, and when they reached the trees, he tried to find a place with a good view of the road. It wasn’t ideal and the trees weren’t the type you could climb. It probably wouldn’t be necessary, but he told himself that if he had to climb a tree, the fight was probably already lost.
“Did you bring a weapon of any kind?” Eric asked.
Cora shook her head. “What do you have?”
“A few options,” he replied somewhat mysteriously. He noticed Cora’s soft sigh but didn’t acknowledge it. After all, it was probably justified.
“You might want to glance away and keep an eye out for the creature for a minute,” Eric said.
Cora folded her arms, obviously growing impatient with his secrets.
He turned his back to her and activated the display on his TSAI. It brought up a holographic screen projected from the device on his wrist, and he keyed in the frequency with his free hand. He could’ve used the far smaller screen on the device itself, but it was tiny and finicky.
As soon as he had it active, he dismissed the hologram and turned back around to face Cora.
She stood in the shadow of one of the larger trees. Unbeknownst to Eric, she avoided the branches because she didn’t want to damage her gown.
“I wish I had an explanation for what you just did, but I don’t. It makes me wonder about things like magic.”
“I don’t believe in it,” Eric said, despite how his hologram might’ve looked. “Magic is just science that no one’s put a name to yet. Science is rational and magic’s superstition.”
She made a sound almost like a snuffle and then turned toward the road.
“Do you hear that?” he asked her.
Cora immediately nodded. “Yes, screams.”
This time it was a woman, and she wasn’t far away. Cora took off after her.
“No, wait… the creature’s coming, Cora.”
He noticed the faintest crackling of energy nearby. It might never have been far away. He quickened the formation of the rift.
Cora stopped all of a sudden and turned; Eric wasn’t sure if it was because he’d called her or if she saw something. She brought her hand up to gesture beside him and that’s when he knew it was there.
Lightning played over the otherwise invisible features of the animal. It had a broad nose like a lion and its eyes seemed to glow with a light that seemed almost unholy.
Eric didn’t react to the sight, but Cora visibly paled before it.
“What are you?” she asked it, an edge of fear to her voice.
She was speaking to the creature, but Eric answered her.
“An animal that won’t understand you,” he said. Eric beckoned quickly, “get behind me.”
Cora hesitated but she moved as a rift began to form nearby, glowing brightly even in the day. It was just in the nick of time, as something huge smashed into the glowing, crackling patch of air. It fractured like glass, cracks spreading in all directions around the glow, with a gash near the centre where Eric hoped the beast had smashed through.
He activated his wrist device and focused its beam on the fractures, sealing them as quickly as he could. Lightning danced off the surface of the portal, rather than grounding to the earth, as real lightning might’ve done. No, this was temporal energy. He focused on healing the worst of the damage first, and then slowly but surely the smaller fractures were mended until the glow receded.
Other than some singeing on the grass and trees, soon their surroundings appeared as they had been before.
Cora glanced at Eric and his device with awe, but she quickly regained her wits and ran off to check on the woman who’d screamed.
She was an older woman, gripping her right hand. The skin looked weathered and shrivelled, while her other hand was perfectly normal.
Cora comforted her as best she could, but despite her offer to get her father, the woman declined. She was accompanied back to the house by an older man.
Eric approached Cora, who still looked taken aback about it.
“It should return to normal with time. The natural state of the body can balance itself out again provided most of the body is unaffected.”
“I’m not sure if I should feel uneasy that you know that,” Cora replied.
“I know how it must seem, but there’s a very good reason you don’t know the full story.”
“Oh, what’s that?” she asked, obviously hurt by his secrecy.
It was as though there was a side of life that had been kept a secret from her and she’d only begun to realise just how much she didn’t know.
“I’m not from your time… or place,” Eric explained.
“You don’t say,” she replied, before shaking her head.
Eric knew that if she told anyone, no one would believe her. He still wasn’t sure she believed him, but there weren’t a lot of other explanations for what she’d seen. He thought she could handle this given time. He’d just turned her perspective of the world upside down, so he decided he ought to go easy on her for a while.
“So what are you going to do now? Where are you going to stay?”
“I’m still working that out,” Eric replied. “There’s somewhere I have to be in two days’ time, so I was thinking of following through on my earlier idea and renting a room at the tavern. That’s assuming, of course, there is one with rooms available.”
“Or somewhere like an inn?” she asked. “You shouldn’t have any trouble.”
Cora studied him and the device on his wrist. “Can I have a closer look at it?” she asked, edging closer.
“No you may not,” he said, eyeing her cautiously.
“I’m a scientist, you know? Oh, the people of this town wouldn’t acknowledge it; a female expert in the sciences, but it’s true. I find that thing on your wrist particularly interesting.”
“Is that the scientific name for it?” he asked, growing a little frustrated.
“It is now. If you won’t let me look at it, then at least let me come with you. I feel like there’s a great deal I could learn from you, and perhaps there are some things you could learn from me.”
“You don’t want to go where I’m going,” Eric said, as they walked back toward her home.
“Oh, why’s that?” she asked. Cora seemed fairly sure she did want to go.
“I should know better now than to tell you it’s dangerous, but it is, and I’m not sure I’ll be coming back.”
Cora paled at his comment. “You mean you expect to die?”
“What? No, I don’t intend to return to Shrewsbury.”
Her laughter was musical, and he found it endearing, even as he tried to convince himself it was annoying. In truth, it wasn’t. She was beautiful, vivacious and troublesome. It was a tempting combination.
“I’m still interested. I was bound to outgrow this town sooner or later and father knows that. I’ve told him enough times.”
“If you came with me,” he said, “I’m not sure when we’d be back this way. It could be a long time and other trouble out there would need to take priority. I think you’d likely come to regret it,” he said.
Eric didn’t quite believe the last part, and the truth was if he got his space-time ship back, he could bring her back to a point not long after they’d left, but there were a lot of ifs in his plan that he wasn’t sure about. If he didn’t succeed at his mission, then chances were it wouldn’t matter anyway. It was why altering the timeline a little wasn’t such a large concern as succeeding in the first place. His people might di
sagree but they weren’t here.
“It sounds like you’ve already made up your mind then,” she said. “Good day.”
Cora walked away, forcing Eric to either let her go or hurry to keep up.
He started to walk after her and then he stopped. No, just no. It was obviously better if she didn’t go with him.
With a sigh, Eric let her go and walked on at a more sedate pace toward his arrival point in Shrewsbury. His style of clothing was different from that of the locals, but not so different that it drew many looks. He knew enough of Earth history to know the currency had almost certainly changed between his last time frame and his current one, but perhaps he could find somewhere to change the money he had. It was just one reason he would’ve preferred returning for his other possessions before he left. He didn’t even have a change of clothes yet.
Several hours later, Eric had changed his currency and found somewhere to stay. It was a small guest house on the north side of town, which was a little closer to his destination. Eric hadn’t jumped blindly to this time frame. He’d made a snap decision to leave, but he’d selected a time days before his intended date in case a journey became necessary. He just hadn’t ended up quite where he’d bargained on.
He sat at a small wooden table covered by a pristine white cloth. One chair was tucked under the table and he sat on the other, as he carefully tinkered with his Holographic Matrix Projector. A number of screwdrivers and tools were laid out across the table, along with a small mirror.
Try as he might, Eric couldn’t get it to work. The connector was intact and power was flowing from its energy core, but it wasn’t powering the matrix.
There was no sand or debris, nor signs of rust, but the outer shell of the Projector looked like it had taken a beating over the years. It must have been thrown free when he ejected from the ship, which meant hundreds of years of the timeline had probably passed since then. It was no wonder it didn’t work, but he had no way of getting replacement parts without jumping into the far future. Knowing the likely damage to time and space, he highly suspected the future wouldn’t be there if he jumped straight to that point.