the hut, and it was shiny with sweat. He pulled it to a halt and jumped to the ground, slapping its neck affectionately.
'Phew!' he said. 'It's a good pony, this. He's never dropped below a gallop all the way. Whereabouts is the mirror?'
'I'm not exactly sure. It should be around here, because I was standing on that track over there-near the rock-and I threw it away like this ...' She demonstrated.
Kleon mentally followed the arc that the mirror must have described, and traced it to a large gorse-bush.
'Perhaps it's in there,' he suggested. 'I'll have a look.'
He pulled the prickly stems aside and suddenly gave a shout of triumph.
There it is! I'll just get it out-'
'No!' shouted Karen. 'Don't you remember? No one else must have touched it, or it won't work.'
Then she thought of something else. What about her shorts and T-shirt that she'd been dressed in before? She couldn't really go back to the twentieth century in a Roman slave-girl's dress. Besides, it was filthy and ragged with creases all over, since it had come all the way across Gaul without being ironed, although it had been washed once in a stream. Her own clothes were with Cordella at the fort, however, and Karen could see no way of getting them back. For one thing they would probably refuse her entry, and for another, she wasn't even sure that Cordella was still there. She explained this to Kleon.
'She might have thrown them away,' he pointed out. 'If so, they would be on the rubbish-dump, wouldn't they? Let's go and look.'
'Kleon, you are a genius! I don't know where I should be without you. The rubbish-dump's at the bottom of the cliffs on the far side of the fort.'
The dump was situated on a very small beach of pebbles. The air was thick with flies in a noisy buzzing cloud, for the uneaten food from the soldiers' mess was regularly thrown out to be washed out to sea when the tide came far enough in, which it rarely did.
Karen avoided the thrown-out food and rummaged through a pile of moth-eaten blankets that didn't appear to have been there long. There were some old tunics as well, and right at the bottom she unearthed her shorts and shirt.
She couldn't resist shouting, 'Yippee!' and clapping Kleon on the back, but her enthusiasm waned a little when she saw how dirty they were. Feeling that she just couldn't put them on without giving them a good salt-water rinse first, she washed them thoroughly in the sea and left them to dry on a rock, though they were still quite damp when she emerged in them an hour later, from the shelter of a large boulder.
Kleon stared. 'Is that how you dress in the twentieth century?' he said incredulously, 'I don't think I shall-' He stopped himself just in time.
Fortunately Karen had not noticed. 'Only on holiday,' she said. 'Don't you approve?'
'I don't know; you don't look bad. But they're old clothes. Now you're ready.' He said it gently and a little sadly.
His tone of voice brought it back to Karen. So far she had managed to stop herself thinking about leaving, and only about going home, but now the awful moment had actually come she could hardly stop herself crying.
'Oh, Kleon, I don't want to leave you. How can I be in love with someone who's been dead nearly two thousand years?'
He squeezed her hand. 'Don't be too sad about it,' he said, 'because you're not really leaving me. I fixed something with the old man; I can't tell you more than that.'
'You don't mean-'
'It all depends. 'Leave it at that. Come on, let's get that mirror. Dry your eyes.'
Karen wiped them with the back of her arm and scrambled up the cliffs. When she finally stood on the spot where she had first found herself in Roman Britain, with the mirror in her hand, she felt a curious mixture of emotions. Would the mirror work? And what had Kleon been hinting at? He'd told her not to worry about him.
She turned to him and sniffed miserably.
'Goodbye…' she said.
He took her in his arms and kissed her tenderly, which only made it worse. 'Now, don't worry,' he said, 'I'm sure we'll meet again, if only in dreams.'
Karen nearly laughed. How romantic! 'Oh, well,' she said, 'I suppose I'd better get on with it.' She gave his hand a last squeeze, then dropped it reluctantly and looked into the mirror with some trepidation.
The rhythmic sound of the waves rolling on to the sands was the first thing she was properly aware of. Then she opened her eyes and saw a cloudy grey sky. The world was nothing but sky, and a little strip of land around the edge of her vision.She sat up. She was resting in a wet puddle, so she rose hastily to her feet and looked around. She was on the sand-island again, with the little green mirror in her hand. So it had worked! She was very relieved. Now there was the mirror to deal with.
Deciding that the best thing would be to bury it again, she scooped a deep hole in the sand and pushed the mirror in; then she covered it deep and said aloud: 'That's you fixed. Now you can't cause any more trouble, unless you whip any sandworms back to the time of your maker.'
Gratefully, she saw that the village was where it should be, and the houses looked the same as she remembered them. At least she was somewhere near the right time, then. She'd have had a job explaining to the Normans where she'd come from, if she hadn't managed to get right forward to her own century again!
Quickly she ran across the island, scaring away groups of herring gulls as she went. It was easier returning across the channel because she found a shallower place. Then she raced along the main beach, splashing through the watery pools, and finally reached the village.
She wondered anxiously if the mirror had brought her back a year later, for she had spent roughly that amount of time in the first century. She looked at the church clock; it said twelve mid-day, which told her nothing.
She went into the hotel to get some drier clothes because her shorts were still damp, and walked boldly in by the front door. Nobody challenged her. Going up the stairs she met one of the maids, a friend of hers.
The maid grinned. 'Your ma's been lookin' for you,' she announced. 'She said to tell you she was lunchin' at the Beach Cafe at twelve-thirty, and she wasn't waitin' for you if you didn't show up!'
'Thanks, Jan,' said Karen. Better and better! She didn't seem to have got back much later than she'd left- a few hours, only. She could say she had been down on the beach for that length of time.
She changed into a check dress and a cardigan, and hurried outside. As she was passing the church, she saw a young man in jeans and a shirt examining the carvings over the doorway. She was just level with him when he turned round, and she saw that he had tangly dark hair, wide-set brown eyes, and a straight nose. She couldn't believe her eyes. She went over to him and touched his arm, about to start with the 'Haven't I seen you somewhere before?' gambit, but then she was sure it couldn't be anyone else, so she just said: 'Kleon!'
He winked at her.
They strolled down to the cafe together.
'It was very complicated,' he was saying. 'I don't know how Math-What’s-his-name did it, but he's managed to fit me somehow into your world, and I've apparently just got a job in a garage. I've emigrated from Athens or something, so I'm here legally. Funny, isn't it? I understand the language and I understand those cars too. I can't work out how.'
'It's very odd,' said Karen. 'But I'm glad it worked. Have you got the afternoon off?'
It's my lunch break.'
'Oh, good. You must come and have it with us. Mum'll be sure to like you. I can say I met you- oh, I know! On our holiday last year. We stayed in Rome!'
The Beach Cafe was a small, cosy place with a serve-yourself counter. In a corner sat Anne and Karen's mother, sipping Coca-Cola and coffee respectively.
'Hullo, Mum,' said Karen. 'This is Kleon. I met him on our holiday last year. Can he have lunch with us?'
Her mother looked him up and down and smiled. 'Certainly,' she said. 'What will you have? The salad dinner's supposed to be very nice.'
She turned to Karen. 'Where have you been? Your hai
r looks longer. We must have it cut.' Then, returning to the original question, she added, 'I suppose you were on the beach all morning?'
Karen drew breath to tell her mother about the mirror and the fort and Rome and the journey back, but she realized in time that she would never be believed or understood. It didn't seem real to herself now, although she had Lucius' whip-scar and she was- or felt- inches slimmer. She'd have to take the belt of her dress in.
'Yes,' she said, 'I was on the beach all morning.'
Lynne Ellison's The Green Bronze Mirror Page 19