“Clyne—!”
“RRRKKKKGGGAAAHHHHRRRR!”
I hadn’t roared like that since my playing field days on Saurius Prime.
The wooden cage shattered.
I was free.
The torches sped up.
“Hurry—”
Eli and I began a fast trudge over the freeze-blanketed surface. Silver Throat and her pack accompanied us.
“What I am saying, Eli, is that — in theory — if that is a WOMPER, and it could be freed and contained, we could catalyze a reaction, much like the time-spheres your sire created.”
Soon the explorers would be at their encampment and discover our escape. My friend Eli would be in a state of severe reprimand consequence, on my behalf. There was no turning back for him.
“Can’t you go any faster?” Silver Throat queried. Now that I was able to jump again, I probably could. But Eli could not.
“That, I think, is why the stone keeps you warm. The WOMPER creates a reaction at the core, winking instantaneously in and out of different time continuums. There is constant sub-atomic friction—”
“Clyne, don’t you ever run out of breath?”
“But there is so much to talk about, friend Eli. Though all of this remains a theory, unless we can free the particle from the rock using through a very high frequency.”
We could hear the other humans behind us. They’d discovered our flight.
“High frequency?” Eli was talking to humor me, to distract himself. I could see the hard puffs of cold air coming from his mouth, even in the dark.
You mean a kind of song? Silver Throat asked.
“Right at the edge of human hearing. I don’t know how to create it. And even then it would be what we called a ‘wild,’ or uncontained, reaction, with unpredictable results, especially because we’d have to use plasmechanics to contain the particle. The only such material is on the lingo-spots, and there is something I must tell you about the lingo-spots and everything else—”
“Clyne—”
“I regret not telling you sooner but there was no time—”
“Clyne—”
“Yes?”
“The wolves. Look.”
Silver Throat had heard what I’d said about high frequencies. She’d gestured to her pack. They stopped and had begun singing, howling to the stars and the Earth’s moon. They were making their own song cycle, with notes going higher, and higher still….
A song of farewell…
Then Silver Throat joined the inchoate keening.
In the distance, the pursuing torches stopped.
Eli put his hands over his ears, after handing the flame stone to me.
I hurried, peeling some of the plasmechanical substance from my lingo-spot, from his, to cover the stone before it might crack, leaving just enough exposed to the direct sonic vibrations provided by our wolf friends.
What grand theory testing!
And now, in these long seconds, I wait, unsure if my field theory will prove true, or if we have just lost more time to our pursuers.
The song grows, and I am reminded once again of the song cycle of King Temm.
“Eli,” I start to say—
—just as the WOMPER is freed and the wild reaction starts.
Chapter Twenty
Eli: Bayou St. John
February 1805
It feels like we’ve just been spit out by a thunderclap, and I can tell from my stomach, and the swirl of lights we’ve been though, that we just moved through the Fifth Dimension.
We’re in a city of some sort, by a small dock. It’s nighttime, I see fireworks in the sky and lightning on top of that, and we’re surrounded.
Surrounded by more soldiers in Nutcracker-type clothes, by a couple of people in weird costumes with animal heads, by a guy in a boat who’s just fainted, by a woman standing in the boat— Sally, I think— who looked after me in Thomas Jefferson’s tent so long ago —
—and by Thea.
Thea!
She calls my name —“Eli!” — and gives me a big hug, pulling me towards her. I now realize Clyne and I have appeared on the shores of the river, with our feet in the water, and I make a squishy sound as she hugs me.
“It’s so good to see you!”
And then, just as quickly, she lets go of me. I don’t know if she thought hugging me was too corny, or what. But I’m just as glad to see her.
“And it’s good to see you, too, K’lion.”
“A good time to meet, ktk! friend Thea,” Clyne tells her, “and I am gratified to discover fieldwork with wild WOMPER reaction was kng! successful in drawing us here, doubtless tkt! due to a prime nexus.”
“A what—?” I ask.
“Pulling us to this spot, together. A prime nexus is a crossroads of major outcome possibilities, first theorized in early Saurian time-venturing, and since borne out—”
Sally has been looking Clyne up and down. “I guess Jefferson is right. We don’t know what’s out there. But even though you can talk, lizard man, there’s no time for that.”
“You are right. I have to tk-tk! tell my friends what I now know about their lingo-spots ssskk! and the plasmechanical—”
“No, there’s no time…”
The Nutcracker soldiers are snapping out of their surprise and rushing down the street toward the river.
One of the people in costume — he looks like a cat with an enormous head — comes up to Clyne and starts tugging at his chrono-suit. And then on his head.
“Hello!” Clyne says.
The soldiers stop briefly to watch. Until the cat person realizes that Clyne isn’t wearing a costume at all, and starts to scream.
Right after that, the soldiers started firing.
“Oh, lord,” Sally says, jumping back into the boat.
Thea and I jump after her. It’s another kind of pirogue, and Sally uses the long poles to push us along the waterway while the boatman is still passed out. When you’re unstuck in time, hellos and goodbyes get constantly interrupted. I sort of said goodbye to Lewis, but not Gassy, Pierre, York, Clark, or even North Wind Comes. And I still haven’t found out where we are, or where we’re going.
It’s like the Corps of Discovery all over again.
Meanwhile, there isn’t room or time for Clyne to get in, so he’s following us, jumping along on the riverbanks — or canal banks, since they seem to be more wall-like— keeping up with us.
“Does zat phantom ‘ave to follow us here?” It’s the boatman. He’s waking up, pointing to Clyne, who hops alongside us, passing occasional small parades of people in costume who keep pointing to him like he ought to claim his prize somewhere.
“Yes, Banglees, apparently he does,” Sally says.
Banglees! The name from Jefferson’s camp. The fur trader who came back with the first reports of Clyne in the snow.
“Then I cannot take you wur I promised, because I will be trailing visions.”
“Oh, you can take us. After all that’s happened, I think we need to trust ourselves to the journey now. It’ll tell us what it wants from us.”
“Yes!” Clyne yells from the banks, clearing a low-hanging mossy tree branch that juts out over the water.
That Saurian hearing is pretty good.
“Sally sskt! may be right,” Clyne bugles over to us. “We could all be drawn here because of prime tkkt—tt! nexus!”
“Prime what?” Thea asks.
“Nexus!” Clyne has to cut into the trees, due to the overgrowth, and we lose sight of him quickly in the dark. The canal goes through someplace called Bayou St. James, according to Banglees. The canal itself is a kind of packed-earth water road, a dug-out channel, but we’re surrounded by swamp everywhere else.
Another flash of lightning gives us a quick electric snapshot of thick twisted oak trees, hanging moss, and tall grasses growing out of the water all around us.
“Nexus!” Clyne’s back from his detour, and jumps in the water, making a huge splash. Now Thea’s soaked
, too, along with the formerly dry parts north of my feet. Even Sally and the bird-feather outfit she’s wearing get wet.
“Sacre bleu!” Banglees yells. He grabs the long guide pole from Sally and is about to use it to thwack Clyne. “I am not frozen anymore! And you don’t belong in New Orleans!”
“A good time to meet, mon-ami man! Can I not swim along?” Clyne asks. “Jumping ligaments still ck-ck-ck! sore. Swim muscles unused for many time clicks.” He does a kind of sidestroke alongside us. “Feels both tumbly and nice.”
While he swims, Clyne explains the “prime nexus” theory to us: In any universe, at any time, there are prime-nexus moments — like crossroads, where all history that follows is changed, no matter what.
“But doesn’t everything we do affect history, no matter how small?” Sally asks.
“Yes, always —sssh glgg!” Clyne accidentally swallows some water in mid-agreement. He comes up, treading water, spouting the water back out of his mouth, like a living fountain. “Hmm. Slightly brackish. But intriguing.” Then he swims close to the boat again. “Think of it like rocks being thrown in this water. Different sizes make different splashes, different size circles. And some moments cast skkkt! bigger circles than others. The moments that change the most tk tk! things for the greatest number of life forms — those are prime skw! nexus moments. They have energy. They draw things toward pt! them. That may be why we are swimming in this dark tk tk cht! canal together.”
“Um, Clyne,” I tell him. “You’re the only one who’s swimming.”
“I really had convinced myself it was an ice dream, from being frozen.” Banglees shakes his head. “Mon Dieu.”
Thea, Sally, and I get busy trying to figure out what the prime nexus might be. This trip has had so many of them: Lewis and Clark’s whole journey, which changed all the history that came after, Thea meeting the president, even Jefferson digging up bones and discovering the past. All of it had an effect.
Has.
“What about him?” I point to Banglees. “Does he have anything to do with this?”
“I was not working for history,” Banglees says to me, attempting to explain something. “I was working for money.”
Banglees, Sally tells me, is involved in helping runaway slaves find something called “the doorway.”
For a price.
“What’s ‘the doorway’?” I ask.
“That’s what I want to find out. That’s why we’re headed to the lake.”
“What lake?”
“Lake Pontchartrain,” Banglees adds helpfully. “If we ever get there,” he adds. Less helpfully.
“It ees very dangerous!” he says, to no one in particular. “Zat ees why I must charge!”
“What does this doorway do?”
“It makes people… disappear.”
“Like my hat,” I say. And then touch the top of my head. Why am I worried about getting to the lake? I’m still not sure how we’re going to get back home.
“Sally — Ms. Hemings — when you were at Thomas Jefferson’s, did you happen to see—”
“I lost your hat, Eli.” It’s Thea. Looking right at me with her big brown eyes. “I haven’t had a chance to tell you everything yet. I lived in Jefferson’s house, as a slave.”
She’s speaking low, in Greek, I think, letting the lingo-spot translate for her. Banglees is casually trying to listen in.
“What!?”
“I can tell you more, later. Your soft helmet— Jefferson had it. I tried it on, hoping we could all use it to go back. But then it was taken from me. I’m sorry.” And now her eyes aren’t looking at me at all.
My time-travel hat. With the Joe DiMaggio autograph. Gone.
“You… you wore it, Thea? Did you go back? What happened?”
Before she can tell me, Banglees spits out an urgent shhhh! and pulls the boat alongside another of the low, mossy branches.
“What is it?” Sally asks.
“A noise zat doesn’t belong here. Shh. Shh.”
There’s a distant boom of thunder, but that’s not what he means. There’s the splash-splashing of Clyne, swimming up ahead.
“Cannot zat creature be silent?” Banglees hisses. He’s hearing something else.
“I don’t know what happened, exactly,” Thea whispers, continuing. “I went back for a little while… I saw your father.”
“You did? Is he all right?”
“I’m not sure. He needs you. He needs your mother.”
“How long were you there?”
“You people would make terrible trackers! Shh!” Banglees is getting more impatient. He ties up his boat to the branch and hops out. “Something ees following us.” He walks along the bank of the canal, balancing himself, not making a sound.
He’s pretty good. Almost like a wolf.
“Eli… I’m not even sure how long I was gone.” Thea’s still whispering. “But I’ve been back a long time. Worrying about you, and K’lion, for all the seasons we were separated.”
She pauses suddenly, then says, “By the gods, Eli. I believe I’ve had… a nativity day.”
“You’ve had a what?”
She tries it in English. “My native…day. Of borning. My day of borning.”
“A birthday, child. She’s telling you she’s had a birthday.” Sally was a better, quieter eavesdropper than Banglees.
“Happy birthday, Thea,” I say. “How old are you?”
“Fourteen summers, now.”
Then I stop and realize I’ve been here for months, too. I’ve been traveling with the Corps. This is the longest I’ve been away since coming unstuck in time in the first place.
“Thea… I think I’ve had a birthday, too. Last August. Around the time Kentuck died.”
“Who?
“A friend. I wasn’t even thinking about birthdays, then. I guess I’ve had thirteen summers. I still haven’t caught up with you.”
“Happy… birthday… Eli.” She sticks with English so I don’t have to wait for the lingo-spot. A bolt of lightning rips through the sky, and everything’s a bright brilliant blue for a moment. Thea’s looking at me like she doesn’t know what to say next.
And then she leans over and kisses me.
It’s a cheek kiss, mostly, sort of, I think. And it’s fast. And I can feel a deep burning red wash over my face, all the way to the tips of my ears.
“I am glad K’lion is safe. And you, too,” she says quickly. Still in English.
Sally is humming to herself. Her smile’s just grown, and then she sees me looking at her, mostly because I’m not sure where else to look at the moment.
“Where is that man?” she asks, helping me to change the subject.
Boom. Thunder follows the lightning boat.
“You!” I hear a voice shout, also in English.
“A good time to meet!” Clyne shouts back.
There’s splashing, and what sounds like fighting — “Zut alors!” — and Sally doesn’t waste any time. She grabs the guide pole, unties the rope, and pushes us into the canal toward the scuffle a few yards away.
“Who’s there? Who’s there?” Sally shouts.
It’s dark, but there’s just enough moonlight to recognize who Banglees is fighting with. It’s Mr. Howe. And Banglees is about to cut him with a knife.
Chapter Twenty-one
Eli: Lake Pontchartrain
February 1805
“Don’t hurt him,” I say to Banglees, nearly falling over as I step out of the boat.
“Why not? I think he ees a bounty hunter. He will turn us in.” With his other arm, he has Mr. Howe in a grip by the neck.
“Why do you think that?”
“Because I use to be one! I know!”
I move closer. “No. I know him.”
Banglees looks at me, looks at Howe, then releases him. He doesn’t sheath the knife right away.
Howe tries to brush himself off. “What are you doing here?” I ask him.
His clothes are torn and muddy, and
soon he gives up the idea of trying to clean himself off.
“Are you really here?” Howe asks. “Or is this some other part of the test?”
Back toward New Orleans, a lone rocket explodes in the sky.
“We are all really here. Some tracker.” Banglees spits.
“You know who he is?” Sally asks, coming up behind me.
“I do.”
“It feels like I’ve been here for months,” Howe tells me. I squint at him. The dark covers him with shadows, but I can tell that besides being dirty, there are whiskers all over his face and he’s lost weight.
“It looks like you have.”
“Eli?” Thea’s there when I turn. She’s shivering, and not from the cold. “Eli… it’s my fault. I did this. I brought him here.”
“How?”
“When I was — when I had your soft helmet on. I was turned into a kind of ghost. I didn’t fully… materialize…in your world. That’s when I saw your father. That’s when I saw him.” She points to Howe.
“How did he get back here?”
“We were tangled up, fighting. He was caught in my… presence.”
“You mean — you were a kind of time-sphere yourself?”
Thea nods, then shrugs. “I’m not sure. I felt someone with me when I was taken back here, as I moved through the dimensions. But I arrived alone.”
“I have to ask Clyne if that’s possible. If I—” I look around. No dinosaur. “Clyne?” And no answer. “Clyne?”
“I think he went on.” Sally nods in the direction ahead of us.
“Are we close to this lake?”
“Uuuuuf!”
The question was for Banglees, who doesn’t answer, because he’s just been shoved by Mr. Howe who sprints past him, quickly disappearing in the dark.
“Come back ’ere!” Banglees yells, running after him.
“We’ve got to get to the lake,” Sally insists. “We have to warn them.”
“Warn who?” I ask.
“Any slaves there, trying to escape. Jefferson told me of the plans. Governor Claiborne’s headed there, to find this ‘doorway,’ too. He wants to make an example of the slaves and end this runaway business. Jefferson may not be the most enlightened man, but he wants to prevent a massacre. Only, as president, he can’t do it, officially. So it’s up to me. And the two of you.”
Trail of Bones Page 14
