Time Meddlers

by Deborah Jackson

  Chapter 12

  The Unauthorized Visitor

  Friday morning, Sarah walked with Matt to school. They tried to keep a distance between them, so they wouldn’t be jeered as they crossed the schoolyard. Luckily the bell rang before anyone could start harassing them. As they entered the classroom, Madame Leblanc moved to one side of her desk to let them pass. Behind her, between the chalk and brush on the ledge of the board, rested an arrow. Sarah gasped and shook her head. “Matt,” she choked.

  “I see it,” he said.

  She staggered to her desk and clutched it to keep steady. A hoarse snigger came from the desk opposite her. She turned. Chelsea smirked and drew her hands back across a toy bow.

  “Are you going to faint, Sarah?”

  Sarah grabbed for the bow. “You evil witch!”

  Chelsea clung to it, stubbornly, refusing to let go. The two had a tug-o-war until Madame Leblanc marched down the aisle. She wrenched the bow from their hands. “I really think this is quite enough,” she said. “Chelsea, did you bring this into school?”

  “Oui, Madame,” said Chelsea, bowing her head.

  “This was not very nice.”

  “It was only a joke,” said Chelsea.

  “It is something Monsieur Barnes would do.”

  “I would never,” said Matt, protesting a little too loudly. Madame gave him a severe look that stopped him short. “Well, I wouldn’t,” he whispered.

  “I know,” Sarah whispered back.

  “How could you compare me to that . . . that insect?” said Chelsea.

  “How could you be so cruel?” asked Madame.

  “I . . . didn’t . . . mean,” Chelsea whimpered. “I didn’t think. . . .”

  “Indeed you didn’t,” said Madame. “All right, then.” She turned to walk back to the front.

  “That’s it?” Sarah burst out, her face burning. “We get detentions. She gets ‘all right?’”

  Madame Leblanc swung around. “That will be quite enough, Sarah.”

  “But it’s not fair. Something like this should at least get a blackboard full of ‘I’m an idiot in a world full of prodigies.’”

  “You are not the teacher,” said Madame. “Besides, Chelsea is not an idiote.”

  “Could have fooled me,” said Matt.

  “Monsieur Barnes, I did not ask for your opinion. If you don’t keep out of this, you will be heading for—”

  “Detention. I know.”

  Sarah shook her head. “I don’t understand this.”

  “Assois-toi!” said Madame.

  Sarah took a deep breath.

  “Sit down!” Madame repeated.

  Sarah sank into her seat, her mouth clamped shut. At the same instant, the national anthem began to play. The entire class stood at attention except for Sarah. She remained seated, slumped in her chair with her arms crossed, daring the teacher to challenge her again. But Madame Leblanc ignored her. She looked flustered, fingers fluttering over her hair and face, like when she’d argued with Matt, but Sarah felt no pity for her this time. After the anthem finished, Madame immediately began the lesson without reviewing their homework from the previous day as was customary.

  Sarah sat through the hour with her arms crossed, not taking notes, just glowering at her teacher. When she got tired of glowering, and Madame ignoring her, she looked outside. The rain had stopped overnight, the fields and trees had frozen into an eerie kingdom of ice sculptures, and now snow sailed past in a blind sweep with the wind. Drifts were piling up fast over the road and sidewalks. Maybe the students would be sent home early for a snow day. That was her only hope of salvation.

  The wind picked up the snow and hurled it against the glass, periodically erasing Sarah’s view of a nearby spruce tree. Suddenly she saw a shape in front of the tree. It was covered in fur like a bear, but black braids protruded from beneath the hood. It couldn’t be.

  “Matt,” she whispered.

  Madame Leblanc paused in her lecture and frowned.

  “What?” he whispered back, frowning as well, but directly at the teacher.

  “Look out the window,” she said.

  Chelsea smirked across the aisle. Matt glared at her before he looked.

  “Am I seeing things again?” Sarah asked.

  “Lots of snow,” said Matt. He squinted and fed a hand through his hair. “You may be right. But he’s not going to shoot me, so don’t worry.” He patted her shoulder.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because that’s Chief Annawan.”

  “Really?” She studied his shape, distinguishing a tan face and trim body under the skins. He did look familiar.

  Madame Leblanc paused again. “The whispering must stop,” she snapped.

  Sarah turned towards the front. “So should the cruel jokes.”

  Madame’s eyes bulged from their sockets. Sarah thought they might pop out with the slightest whack to her back. “Mademoiselle Sachs is learning lessons from Monsieur Barnes in rude behaviour.”

  Sarah folded her arms in front of her. “Mademoiselle Sachs is only interested in justice.”

  Madame Leblanc shook her head. “This is unacceptable. Totally unacceptable. I will have to—”

  “Chelsea,” said Matt. “Look out the window.”

  Chelsea scowled, but she did look. It would have been impossible not to. Her eyes expanded, like two inflating sticks of bubble gum. Her mouth dropped open; her muscles tensed. The fur-framed face was two centimetres from the glass. “No,” she whispered. “It can’t be.”

  “I don’t think he wants to shoot us,” said Matt. “But I wouldn’t blame him for shooting you.”

  Chelsea jumped off her seat. She stumbled over the seat behind, toppling a couple of desks and sending some students sprawling to the floor. She came to rest on the floor herself, and stayed there, looking petrified.

  “What is happening?” cried Madame Leblanc. She turned to the window. “Oh,” she said. “Who is that?”

  Chief Annawan had pressed his leathery face against the pane as snow swirled around him. Sarah met Matt’s eyes. They couldn’t suppress their giggles.

  “This is not funny,” said Madame Leblanc. “We have a stranger peering in our window. I think I should call the office.”

  “No,” said Sarah. “We know him.”

  “Actually, I think he’s cold,” said Matt. “We should let him in.” He jumped up from his desk and hustled to the door.

  “Monsieur Barnes. Don’t you dare!” said Madame, her face flushed cherry-red.

  Matt was already gone.

  “I don’t believe this,” said the teacher, squeezing out from behind her desk. “It’s not safe to let strangers in. Why will that boy never listen to me?”

  Within seconds Matt returned, towing Chief Annawan with him. The Algonquin entered the chaos of the room with an air of complete calm. He walked over to Sarah, lifted the upended chair across from her and eased his large frame into the small chair without a crack in his dignity. He shrugged the fur coat from his shoulders.

  “Do not be afraid,” he said softly.

  Sarah attempted a smile as the room settled down. “I’m not,” she whispered.

  Chelsea rose from the floor and brushed herself off. “I’m not afraid,” she said. “You’re just a man in a costume.”

  Annawan looked at her. “You should be afraid. I am Algonquin, and you have insulted me and upset my friends with your petty bow and arrow joke.”

  Chelsea stepped back. She sucked in some air.

  “You should show more respect.” His eyes narrowed.

  Chelsea’s lips quivered as she backed up another step. She squeaked like a mouse, then turned and bolted out the door.

  The chief nodded. “Better, Sarah?”

  “Yes, thank you,” she said.

  “The least I could do.”

  Madame Leblanc, who’d remained poised at the front of the room, her face crushed in a frown, hesitantly stepped forward. “I’m sorry to be
abrupt, but guests need to sign in at the office and clear it with me to visit the classroom.”

  Annawan waved his hand at her, still looking fixedly at Sarah. “I’m sure the right honourable Member of Parliament, Mr. Donald Sachs, would be happy to provide you with a reference, but I’d hate to bother him when this will only take a minute.”

  Madame Leblanc huffed, but she settled herself in her chair and held her tongue.

  The chief leaned forward. He clasped Sarah’s hand. “I know the arrow was a shock, but you have nothing to fear.”

  “But Matt?”

  Annawan shifted his gaze to Matt. “Matt looks fine to me.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Oh, but I do. You’ve seen visions. Can you tell me about them?”

  Sarah took a deep breath. “I’ve seen warriors,” she said, “attacking Matt.”

  “Describe them.”

  Sarah described the buckskin-clad warriors with crimson and black war paint who’d fired flint-tipped arrows at her friend.

  Annawan raised his eyebrows. “What about their hair?”

  Sarah paused. Why would he ask that?

  “Were they in braids like mine?” He pulled a tightly wound braid out in front of him.

  “N . . . no. I don’t think so.”

  Annawan stayed quiet, waiting.

  “They had half their heads shaved. They had mohawks.”

  “Exactly,” said Annawan. “They were Mohawks. Part of the Iroquois or the Five Nations, as your most knowledgeable professor has told you.” He pointed at the board where Mr. Fletcher’s history lesson had not yet been erased from the day before. “People of the Flint, as they liked to call themselves. Our warriors did sometimes shave their heads and stiffen their hair with grease so that it spiked up, in times of war, but if these men were on the warpath in this region, they weren’t Algonquin.”

  Sarah chewed on her lower lip. “So the warriors were Mohawk?”

  “Yes.” Annawan smiled.

  Matt met Sarah’s eyes. He cocked his head to one side. “What difference does it make if they were Mohawk or Algonquin?”

  “Nothing anymore. The Mohawk are often on the warpath with the government nowadays—like the Oka crisis when they stood against the desecration of their burial ground with a golf course. But now they use guns, not arrows. And I don’t imagine they’ll bother with you. You have nothing to worry about.” The Chief smiled again.

  “Ah, okay,” said Matt. “They’re Mohawk and that’s that. It explains everything. Except it doesn’t explain anything!”

  Sarah touched his shoulder to calm him. Matt took a deep breath.

  “It doesn’t explain Sarah’s visions. It doesn’t explain the arrows. It doesn’t explain my getting skewered.”

  Annawan sighed. “It’s always so difficult to understand from your scientific viewpoint. Theory and logic must explain everything in this world. Some things you have to accept on faith.

  “Obviously what you saw, my dear, wasn’t real, or at least not currently real. Some people believe that you can connect with a disturbed spirit, or even have visions from residual imprints in the land—spirits of an ancient battle that remain behind—but what you saw were Mohawk or cannibal warriors, if you will. Not the nicest translation, I know. It was just an odd Algonquin name that stuck, when we weren’t too fond of each other. We used to call them dog meat, too, when we were at war.”

  “So you think she was seeing the Mohawk on the warpath years ago?” asked Matt.

  “Possibly. In the past the Mohawk did attack the Algonquin in this region. I thought at first that the arrow was Algonquin, but I was wrong. And it can’t be from modern times, although it is a bit of an enigma. If you saw a vision of a centuries-old battle, triggered by falling on the arrow, then that’s likely all it was. It can’t harm you today.” The chief placed his hand on Sarah’s shoulder.

  “Or Matt?” asked Sarah.

  Annawan laid his other hand on Matt. Then he dropped his hands abruptly and rose from the chair.

  “Wait,” said Sarah, rising too, and touching his sleeve. “Why did I see it and not Matt?”

  Annawan leaned down and whispered, “Perhaps you have a gift.” He paused for a fleeting second. “Or you are one to someone else.” He winked surreptitiously at Matt.

  The Algonquin straightened, smoothed out the ripples in his fur coat and walked briskly towards the door. But he paused at the threshold and swivelled back on the heel of his Kodiak boot. Madame Leblanc watched with wide eyes as he strode to the front of the class. At the blackboard, he pulled down the map that was dangling halfway over the history lesson. It showed the St. Lawrence and Ottawa River region.

  Annawan seized a marker from Madame’s desk. He drew a line through the words Quebec and Ontario. He wrote “Tenakiwin.” For New York State, he added “Kanienke.” He stroked out the word “Algonquin” on the board and inserted “Kichisippirini—The People of the Great River” and “Anishnabe—The Original People.” For “Iroquois,” he wrote “Five Nations” and replaced “Mohawk” with “Kanienkehaka—People of the Flint.” At the section of the Ottawa River below Parliament Hill he spelled “Asticou—Boiling Kettle.” He drew an effigy of a stone-faced giant in the centre and called it “Nana’b’oozoo.”

  “The Algonquin sacred spirit,” he said. He glowered at Madame Leblanc and added in a growl, “Your government has desecrated a holy land.”

  Madame’s hand flew to her breast.

  Annawan swung about, still scowling, and left the room.

  Sarah slumped in her chair. She stared incredulously at Matt. “Did you understand any of that?”

  “Like anything that’s happened since I’ve met you makes sense.”

  Madame Leblanc tried to restore order to a class that was abuzz with excited chatter. She had little luck, so she called an early recess.

  “And you,” she called after Matt and Sarah as they headed for the door. “No more surprise guests!”

  Sarah and Matt burst out laughing. When they ducked out into the hallway, Sarah turned to Matt, the pressure within her subsiding like the slow leak from an inner tube, and leaving behind a spreading warmth. Despite the visions and the sinister laboratory they’d seen, she didn’t feel afraid anymore. Maybe Annawan had been more reassuring than she’d realized.

  “Let’s do it,” she said.

  “Do what?”

  “Find out what’s behind that door.”

  The grin faded from Matt’s face, but it still maintained a faint glow. He grasped her hand and nodded. They both knew what door she was talking about. It wasn’t a school door, or even a steel door to a laboratory. It was a door through time.