TIME MEDDLERS
Deborah Jackson
Time Meddlers
Published by
Deborah Jackson
First published in the United States by
LBF Books
Copyright Deborah Jackson 2006
Second Edition Copyright Deborah Jackson 2012
Cover Design by Matthew Birtch
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
For Jessica and Liam
treasured characters who inspire
lively and compassionate characters.
Also Available From This Author:
Time Meddlers Undercover
Time Meddlers on the Nile
Mosaic
Ice Tomb
Sinkhole
Map of Anishnabe Territory
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1: The Walking Corpse
Chapter 2: Conversation with the Corpse
Chapter 3: Truce
Chapter 4: The Infamous Dr. Barnes
Chapter 5: The Mission
Chapter 6: The Lab
Chapter 7: Verse
Chapter 8: The Bat Cave
Chapter 9: Stalactites and Spears
Chapter 10: More Visions
Chapter 11: What Really Happened
Chapter 12: The Unauthorized Visitor
Chapter 13: Caught in the Mousetrap
Chapter 14: Where the Deer and the Bear Roam
Chapter 15: An Aboriginal Encounter
Chapter 16: Hiding
Chapter 17: Matt and Sarah’s Totem
Chapter 18: Enemies All Around
Chapter 19: The Mohawk
Chapter 20: Ashes to Ashes
Chapter 21: Pain and Glory
Chapter 22: Odawa
Chapter 23: The Battle for Peace
Chapter 24: Just Short of Death
Chapter 25: Dr. Barnes’s Failsafe
Chapter 26: Our Home and Native Land
Glossary of Terms
Reading Group Questions for Discussion
Activities
Acknowledgements
Preview of Time Meddlers Undercover
The Silent Gene Series
About the Author
Chapter 1
The Walking Corpse
“I don’t want to go to school here,” Sarah yelled at her father. “You dragged me away from all my friends and plunked me down in this wilderness.”
Sarah’s dad, Donald Sachs, tried his best not to smile. “Ottawa isn’t a wilderness, darling. It’s a rather large city.”
Sarah scowled and tossed back a tangle of curls. “You call this a city. We’re out in the sticks. Look around. There’s only trees and mounds of snow.”
“Most kids like trees.” Her dad swept his hand through his raven-black hair and peered out the window of their new two-story house. Sarah followed his gaze.
They were on the last row of a new construction of the suburb, and their backyard opened up on a field. Corn stubble, laced with frost, extended between pockets of wooded land. The landscape shimmered like nothing ever did in slushy metropolitan Toronto.
Sarah blinked as the light seared her eyes. She still preferred the slush.
“Well, I don’t,” she said. “I hate it here.” She stamped so hard on the solid tiles in the foyer that pain jolted up her leg. Tears crowded the corners of her eyes.
“Like it or not, dear, we’re here for good.”
“I want to live with Mom.”
“Mom doesn’t . . .” He gritted his teeth. “Your mom is too busy right now, darling. I know it’s hard to move in the middle of the year, but we’ll just have to make a go of it, okay? You’ll make new friends and eventually you might come to like this place.”
Sarah swiped at her eyes. “Yeah, sure,” she said.
“Now you know you have to go to school.”
Sarah wanted to protest again, but it wouldn’t make any difference. She pulled on her snow pants, wrenched on her coat, zipped it over her chin, jammed on a hat, laced up some oversized boots, and yanked on her mittens. “I feel like a polar bear,” she growled.
“You look like one, too,” he said.
She slammed out the door.
“Watch for cars,” her father called after her.
Sarah trudged through the deep snow, anger heavy as a bear on her shoulders. Her eyelashes were soon dusted with feathery flakes. The frigid blast of winter numbed her face in an instant. What a place to live. As she rubbed her mitts together to try to restore circulation to her hands, other kids emerged from the houses in the sprawling subdivision. They dashed past her, tossing snowballs at each other and rolling in the snow. If only she were back home, with her friends—Keith and Jamie, the basketball stars. Even the bully Bob would be a welcome sight compared to these strangers. How could they be having fun in this Arctic wilderness? She clutched her coat around her like a shield from the laughter that filled the air.
She could have tolerated this—the cold, the strangers—if only Mom had come with them. If only Mom hadn’t insisted on staying within the shadow of the monstrous highrise where she worked, and Dad hadn’t walked out on her. Sarah could have endured living in a cabin in the backwoods of Northern Ontario if they were all still together—a family.
It hadn’t worked out that way, though. Dad, as a politician, had to travel back and forth to Ottawa, and spend most of his time in this city. Mom, who was a successful fashion designer, wasn’t willing to sacrifice her own career for Dad’s convenience. She’d heard the arguments over and over. No one had asked Sarah what she wanted to do. Or where she wanted to live. So here she was, walking through a blizzard to get to a school in the middle of nowhere.
As Sarah walked, stewing over her miserable life, a flicker of movement across the street caught her eye. A boy was walking parallel to her with hunched shoulders and a twisted grimace on his face. He was kicking snow and punching shadows. He seemed oblivious to the frolicking kids, or to her. His eyes focused on the snow like it was an enemy.
Sarah looked away from him, but every now and then she’d look up and find they were keeping pace with each other. The boy seemed typical of kids from this northern town—bulky parka, Maple Leaf toque and a cold-flushed face under the snowflakes—yet he was different. He was distant from the others—an outsider, like her. She couldn’t stop watching him.
Finally they reached an intersection and he turned in her direction. It looked like he was about to cross the street. Yet he didn’t look up, didn’t pay attention to the traffic lights, didn’t even glance down the street; he just kept walking.
Sarah saw the red Explorer racing down the icy street. She cried, “Hey, kid. Look out!” Her stomach clenched and dropped as if weighted by heavy ball bearings. The SUV jammed its brakes, skidded from side to side on the slick asphalt and went right through the kid. The boy kept walking, untouched.
Sarah stood there in shock, immobile. The boy walked past her, meeting her eyes for a split second.
“Wh-who-what are you?” she asked.
He shrugged, smiled and kept walking.
Sarah sank down in the snow bank and watched him continue up the street and into the yard of the red brick school. She shook her head. Had she really seen what she had just seen? The Explorer slammed to a stop, twisted halfway across the road, and the driver jumped out of the car. He looked back at the intersection, one hand poised in midair and the
other scratching his head.
“He should be dead,” he muttered. “Thank goodness, thank goodness.”
Sarah blinked. Snowflakes whipped into her face and pasted to her eyelashes.
“I must have missed him, hadn’t I?” he called over to her.
She nodded, but as she turned away from the driver she whispered, “You hit him dead on.”
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