TIME TORN
THE LOST DAYS SAGA
ILSE V RENSBURG
Copyright © 2019 Ilse V Rensburg
Copyright © 2019 Sera Blue
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-6399837-8-3
ISBN eBook: 978-0-6399837-7-6
Also by Ilse V Rensburg
The Lost Days Saga
Time Torn
Watch for more at Ilse V Rensburg’s site.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Also By Ilse V Rensburg
Dedication
Time Torn (The Lost Days Saga, #1)
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
About the Publisher
For my parents who have done their best to give me the world. I only hope that I can one day do the same for you because ‘thank you’ will never express my gratitude.
I will love you, always
First published by Sera Blue in 2019
A South African Publishing company
Operating from offices in Midrand
www.serablue.com
ISBN 978-0-6399837-8-3
Copyright ©2019 Sera Blue
Copyright ©2019 Ilse V Rensburg
The right of Ilse V Rensburg to be identified as the author of her own work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright Act, 1978
Use of this work by persons without prior permission from the publisher is liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages
A CIP catalogue of this book is available at the
Pretoria National Library – South Africa
This book was printed and bound by SA Paperback,
a South African company
This book was edited by Sera Blue
Cover art was done by Althea Botha
The views expressed in this book do not represent the writer,
the publishing house or associated organisations.
Its intended purpose is for entertainment only.
Any character or aspect of a character similar to persons
alive or deceased is purely coincidental.
For more information such as the latest book releases, author interviews and news, please go to www.facebook.com/serabluepublishing
Review Books to Help Authors
For my parents who have done their best
to give me the world. I only hope that I can
one day do the same for you because ‘thank you’
will never express my gratitude.
I will love you, always
“V Rensburg has created an intriguing world with colourful and entertaining characters, illustrating the blurred and unique divide between good and evil.”
– Ashleigh Hattingh Macfie, author: Clockwork Renegades
CHAPTER ONE
Pain.
Mind numbing, throbbing pain - The kind that can blind the sightless.
My breath heaves from my chest, an invisible hand wringing around my heart as my ribs spasm and cramp. My head spins, a sharp ringing assaulting my ears, pounding its way from one to the other. The urge to curl up into the fetal position overwhelms me. I have never experienced agony like this before. My fingers act on instinct, attempting to coil themselves into tight fists, only I cannot move them. I can’t move anything.
I struggle, trying to wiggle a toe or stretch out my leg but my limbs, once so malleable are now nothing but dead weight. Finally, I have to admit to myself that I’m suffering from something much more than a purpling bruise or a broken bone.
Had some sort of animal attacked me?
A pack of beasts that had chosen to fight over my seemingly dead carcass by ripping my body apart, piece by piece? Because that’s what it fucking feels like.
My skin is too tight, made worse by the sting of a heavy saline wind whipping against my wounds. I grit my teeth with the new wave of torture. Even if I could open my eyes. I don’t know if I would still want too. I have a terrible feeling that my skin has been flayed off.
Cemented together, my lips are dry and cracked. The inside of my mouth tasting of ash and vinegar. I no longer have the strength to function, much less swallow down the rancid bile. My mom’s soft voice comes back to me. Whispering stories of heroines from my homeland - from the girl who’d stumbled for miles, bleeding from a slash across her neck after a serial killer attempted to slit her throat, to the woman who fought and killed the kidnappers who’d shot her and tied her up in her trunk. They’d both found the strength to fight until help came. They’d saved themselves.
I’d been promised heroism in return for my sacrifice, and heroes don’t give up. I’ll find a way to survive because I want to live. I never wanted to be a sacrifice, to begin with.
The thought gives me the gumption I need to split my lips from one another, whimpering despite my resolve to be stronger.
My eyelids flicker but refuse to open. It is as if they have been super glued shut. If I could move my arms, I’d tear my lashes apart. Even if it means ripping them out. Desperately I struggle. Unable to move. Unable to be the heroine I need to be.
Eventually, I still, concentrating first on my eyes. I can literally feel the pulsing of the swollen and tender flesh around my eyelids. I suck in a shallow breath. Trying not to focus on the furious beating of my pulse as it bounces between my temples, even though the eurythmic beat is the only reason I can be sure I’m still alive.
It gives me hope.
Hope that somehow, I’ve survived the bomb. I’ve survived the blinding white light of what came after and it gives me hope that I’ve found a way to evade death....
CHAPTER TWO
Yet, here I lie acutely aware that if I don’t find someone to rescue me, I’ll meet my forever death this time around.
Somehow my little heart keeps pumping and I keep breathing. I strain my ears. My mom will find me. Maybe I’ll hear my sister Mia calling for me? If I just remain still and listen. They will come. Jesse will come.
The thought of my friend with his long dark hair and kaleidoscopic eyes has my chest tightening. I may have survived, but he had been part of the sacrifice. The two of us, we’d had to die. It was us or the rest of the world. So where is he now if I’m still alive?
I expect to hear the cacophony of the after-effects of war but all I can hear is the gentle lapping of water, the ante-headache mash-up of hooting, sirens and the various yells and screams of a riot in the far distance.
I have no idea what the lapping belongs to.
My first guess is a harbour, but that is ridiculous. Johannesburg doesn’t have a harbour. There has to be another explanation.
A boom shakes the ground beneath me. I freeze. My heart is a crushing weight in my chest. If I'm not mistaken it’s the sound of a ship signalling another ship! Where in the hell am I and how did I get here?
The pain in my skull is a jackhammer. Maybe death had found me after all and I’m actually stuck in the liminal? The place between life and death. I sigh. No wonder no one wants to die. The light at the end of the tunnel and all that talk of a better, shinier
place is just a lie - Death is turning out to be an eternity of pain and it’s not like I’d gone into sacrificing my life blind.
I knew I’d end up dead, but whether I’d stopped to think about what happens after... Well, I guess I’d been too scared. Scared of the unknown. Scared of this.
My hope flickers out. My eyes itch with fresh tears and I don’t think I can handle one more ache. My heart might actually give out.
The crunching of gravel alerts me to approaching footsteps. Heavy and quick.
“Mom?” I want to call out, but my tongue remains immobile.
Warm fingertips press into my neck.
“Aye. Captain, this lass here’s alive.” A young man calls out, his voice is high, his accent strange and garbled with just a pinch of an Irish twang.
Even heavier footfalls follow his. “Ye see. I told ye it was ta big ta be a bird lad.” A grumbling voice replies.
“Aye, Captain. What shall we do with her? We can’t leave her like this.”
“I got her.” He murmurs.
I have no time to prepare myself. Lights and stars erupt behind my eyelids as the Captain, I presume, lifts me into his sturdy arms. My wounds crackle and snap, exposing me to a new wave of agony. Dizziness envelops me. The Captain pulls me tight to his chest. The hardness of his muscles constricting beneath me.
I am sure I’m on the verge of losing consciousness but I can’t. It would be like allowing fate to have her way with me. I’d already been dealt a shitty card from the bitch and I’m not about to let her screw me over again.
The callous smell of sea salt scalds my nostrils, and yet, somehow my nose remains congested. My ears tense, listening to the tireless licking of water against concrete and the creak of aged wood as a sticky waft of wind plays tag against my raw skin.
I want so badly to give up. It would be so much easier to just give up.
I swallow back a lump in my throat recalling the moment I died. The way it started; it could have been mistaken for a skyrocket firework. The intense white light that engulfed the sky was so innocent at first and then the fireball followed, surrounded by a halo-shaped ring.
A mushroom cloud burst from where Jesse and I stood engulfing us in a swirl of red, black and gold. I didn’t feel anything at first. Only Jesse’s sweaty palm clasped around mine and the wet trail my tears had left on my cheeks. And then... Then I’d been ripped apart by a blinding light.
The thick hairs of the Captain’s arms brush against where they support my back and knees pulling me from my memories. To anyone else, the brush of his body hair would go virtually unnoticed, but for me, it feels as if I'm in some sort of acupuncture nightmare.
I flick my eyelids but all I get for my effort is a blast of white-hot pain. They remain stuck shut as if devious little brownies had knotted my lashes together as I slept.
Close to my shoulder a seagull squawks. I'd cringe if I could. My mind lags at coming up with a logical reason for anything that has happened since the white light levitated me into the air, and spat bits and pieces of me out into the atmosphere.
My nose seizes up with the impregnation of a sneeze as something tiny and soft lands on its tip, but instead of a sneeze, my wounds react with an infectious burning sensation throughout my body. I tense. It is all I can do in response to the pain.
Suddenly my body tilts upwards, I think, with the change in the man’s trajectory. His footsteps are loud and booming as we move from the crunch of gravel to the groan of old wood. I’m immediately overcome with a feeling similar to goosebumps rising all over my skin.
A boot shuffles, its worn leather squeaking as the toe is rubbed uncomfortably by the sole of its partner. This, shortly followed with the croak of a phlegm infused cough, as someone loudly whispers, “shoosh!”
A growl reverberates from the Captain's chest directly beneath my ear and I am abruptly aware that the buzz, akin to the kind you might get after exposing an unprotected eardrum to a speaker at a rock concert, has finally left my ears. We cease moving. His shoulders shaping themselves into what I assume to be a shrug before we launch forward once again. The man’s hefty weight combined with my own, forcing a groan from the planks of wood beneath us.
With darkening light flickering across the insides of my eyelids and the musty smell of old wood, I know we have entered a room indoors. The hairs on my arms prickle. I cannot help but feel as if I am surrounded by a crowd of people. Their body heat radiating towards me as a door clicks shut behind us.
The Captain bends, my body dropping with the action. Gently I am set down on a soft material that sinks and bounces beneath my shifting weight. I feel as if the Captain is trying to make me comfortable, yet how can he know how discomforted I feel?
The faint whiff of his briny scent remains with me as I rest on the spongy surface. I sniff, my only means of figuring out if he is still near but the smell is gone, replaced by what I can only describe as a charred piece of chicken that has been left on the braai too long.
The silence of the room starts to gnaw at me. What if I am in one of those god-awful nightmares were everyone believes me to be dead and the springy surface, he's placed me on is actually a coffin? Internally, I whimper at the thought before logic straightens me out with a hard slap of realization. The man with the accent had called out to the other one after he found me.
He’d checked my pulse and said I was alive. At least that’s what I think he'd said. There is no telling with his confusing enunciation.
“Gus, fetch me tha’ blue bottle the hag gave ta us would ye?” The Captains growl hooks and reels me away from my terror.
“She looks a right mess. Do ye really think she is going ta be alright?” Gus, I’m assuming, replies as light steps move swiftly across the room.
My ears bristle as the rarely used hinges of a door whine inside the cavernous room.
The Captain’s voice booms over the careless clanking of bottles being struck together.
“Hush lad. Her body may be broken but I’m sure she can hear just fine.”
The clanking stops. My ears prickle. All is silent.
The echo of a forlorn tune slithers along the walls and ceilings, splashing upon the worn floors until it forms a puddle of heartbreak around me.
I have never heard such a sorrowful sound come from the lips of a human before. I have never even known a whistle could be so saccharine. My ears melt, halting them as they attempt to fill the role of my eyes, which sting with fresh tears.
Enraptured, my mind is temporarily wiped clean of the bomb, the religious war that had instigated the nuclear warheads and the fact that my life is now in the large, calloused hands of a stranger. I listen as the whistling draws closer before coming to an abrupt end. The spell is broken. My memories and my pain return worse than before, and then a cool, smooth, glasslike object wedges itself between my teeth. Tilting, the object tinkles against enamel.
I try to hold my breath, to not allow the liquid passage to go down, but within seconds it is searing the sensitive skin of my throat and I am forced to swallow. It’s as if someone has emptied a bottle of bleach into my mouth.
This is about the time when I need my body to be alive and kicking the most, but the sad fact of the matter is that the healthy body I had taken for granted on a daily basis is now badly damaged and in what way, I am not sure yet. All I do know is that I am unable to I defend myself. Right now, I am nothing more than a hysterical prisoner inside my own mind.
The man’s fingers are focused on prying open a gap between my lips, but once the liquid has been emptied and swallowed, he lets them fall closed, removing the glass object as he does so. Its surface grazing against my incisors, the sound reverberating inside the confines of my skull.
The liquid continues its journey down my throat, like lava it flows towards my toes, burning my insides as it reaches the end of its destructive path. My mouth is left dry, a cloying taste lathered around the edge of my lips. Soon the burn cools, the taste becoming minty. My entire body tingles, my
blood, a jolt of electricity racing through my veins. I gasp. My eyes shoot open as I reach to claw helplessly at my neck.
“Ahrr, there we go! That did the trick that did,” the Captain says, bringing his hands together with a slap.
Finally, I can see, and it is just as confusing as I imagined.
I'm in a cabin. Its walls, floors and roof consisting of thick wooden planks and heavy iron nails. Slowly and with heaving breaths, I turn to face the owner of the deep growl while doing my best to ignore the gentle sway of the room.
He is nothing like I expected.
My breath is rough as it catches. I heave, the sound alarmingly close to the beginnings of an asthma attack as I gasp, “Who?”
The Captain is a hefty blonde man dressed in black breeches and thigh high boots. This motley ensemble, as well as the gold hoop in his ear and a indigo blue sash wrapped around his waist, has him looking like he’s just come from a Cosplay gathering and won, for the best-dressed pirate.
“Relax lass. Let the potion work its magic and ye’ll be fine,” he says, his curly beard moving up and down with the movement of his chin.
Swallowing, my tongue strains to form words. “Who are you?”
He mulls over my question, the corners of his deep brown eyes crinkling. “I’m the Captain, lass.”
I nod and with it, my breathing slows. “I’ve gathered that much. Maybe the better question is what... I mean, where am I?”
I shift. Uncomfortably aware of my grazed skin. It feels like I've fallen asleep in the sun and broken a world record for the worst sunburn in history. I attempt to lift my hands, wanting to place them on my lap, but they are dead weights at my sides, tingling as the pain recedes.
His reply is interrupted by a high-pitched whoop, as a small, thin man with wavy brown hair that just touches his shoulders bounds past the Captain towards me.
I jump back in my seat, more startled than frightened. Before he can reach me, the Captain cuts the excitable man's path short by grabbing the back of his patchy tunic. The first thing I notice is his unusually large eyes as he bounces on the balls of his feet, his grin nothing short of gleeful.
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