by Renee Duke
“How do we get to her?” Dane finally asked, shouting above the wind. “We can hardly stand up in this, let alone climb that ridge.”
“We don’t stand,” Paige shouted back. “We crawl. Come on.”
It was hard going. Crawling was, in itself, difficult, and having to dodge broken branches and other storm-tossed debris made it even more so.
“Keep on,” the girl urged.
After what seemed an age, they finally got to the bottom of the ridge. As they did so, the rocks and bushes on either side of them shimmered, as though they had broken through some sort of barrier.
Instantly, the rain stopped and the wind vanished. Though the sky was still overcast, the storm was no more.
“Wow,” said Paige, standing upright.
The boys stood as well and joined Paige in scrambling up the ridge.
The girl waited patiently. When they reached her, she appeared neither wet, nor windblown, and Paige suddenly noticed that they were not, either.
“Are you Skookaweethp?” she asked, wanting to be sure that was the girl’s name.
“Yes.”
“What happened to the storm?” This from Jack.
“Gone. Vanquished by your passing into the inner world.”
“Inner world?” Jack looked perplexed.
“A spiritual realm within the physical realm. This one lies in the place of the rising sun, where the sun can best ignite the power of the golden circle so long concealed here.”
Their attention shifted to a gold head circlet she wore over a cedarbark headband, a thin chained circlet with five roses just like the one on their medallion.
“The Arcanus Piece. But why did it take us so long to get to it? To get to you?” Dane wanted to know.
“It should not have. Had you been able to open the portal from your true home, your journey would not have been as long.”
Dane nodded. “That’s right. Our house—the house we used to live in—was closer to here.”
“The disruptor made it otherwise so as to create opportunities to intercept you. I protected you as best I could. When I could not, the cloaked one was at hand.”
“The cloaked one?” Dane queried.
“The one from a time beyond me, but a time before you. You will meet him again, as you have before. His opportunities to serve you are few, and carefully selected.”
None of them could recall seeing anyone in a cloak, but chose to let this go; a mutual decision made without consultation, but which they all knew had been made. They now seemed to have an awareness of each other’s thoughts—and not just each other’s.
“How can we understand you?” Dane asked Skookaweethp. “Or you us? We only know a couple of words in your language, and ours won’t be heard by your people for thousands of years.”
“Within this realm, those who must commune, can commune. And even beyond it, once the golden circle has rejoined those with which it was crafted. A gift from the mid-time.”
“What’s the mid-time?” they asked as one, realizing, as the question came to them, that not once during this conversation had the girl moved her lips. Or they theirs.
“An intermediate time, with some trials past, and others to come. A time reserved for those of the final calling. A time of enlightenment and empowerment. And, should it be required, a time to claim the healing power of the golden circle.
“You have come to lay such claim. A rash act by one of those attuned to the rose rent a tiny, but troublesome, hole in a passage once safely sealed, allowing seeds of obstruction to be sown along the paths of the restorers. The disrupter was able to move against them in ways he could not move before. As the last of the restorers, you pose the greatest threat to his aspirations, causing him to move most strongly against you and seek your destruction.”
“Can he harm us here?” Paige inquired.
“He will try.” Skookaweethp raised her head as black clouds suddenly filled the sky. “Beware. He comes.”
A slightly higher ridge lay parallel to their own, separated from it by a small gully. A rushing sound arose, and from amidst a great flurry of sparks and swirls, a figure appeared.
He was not, this time, in the guise of a wolverine. When fully materialized, the new arrival was human, and definitely the man Paige and the boys had come up against in both the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries. Now, however, he was dressed in a dark robe and carried a staff which he wasted no time in wielding. Twisting it around in his hands, he pointed it directly at the lower ridge and fired off a succession of small lightning bolts.
The bolts bounced back to him, repelled by the invisible barrier that was obviously above the ridge as well as around. Scowling, he glanced up at the sky, where the sun had suddenly broken through the clouds, allowing beams of light to fall upon the golden circlet around Skookaweethp’s head.
In response to an unvoiced, but understood, command from Skookaweethp, the children put their hands out to her, and to each other, to form a circle.
The intruder’s lips curled into a contemptuous smile at what he obviously considered a childish display of solidarity, a smile that vanished once he realized it was something more. A circle of power within a circle of power, reinforced by the circling flight of a golden eagle high overhead.
The sudden appearance of the eagle seemed to enrage the man in the robe. Eyes blazing, and nostrils flaring, he swung his staff from side to side, causing dark, rotating funnel shapes to spew forth and strike at the lower ridge. At first, the barrier repelled these mini-tornadoes as it had the lightning bolts, but then there was a tearing sound, and the grass upon the ridge began to ripple. A wind seemed to be passing over it, even though they felt no wind.
“He’s got through,” Paige moaned.
“Not so,” was Skookaweethp’s firm reply.
But it seemed so. The ground shook, and dirt and rocks dislodged from a higher elevation came crashing down toward them, uprooting trees and bushes along the way.
“Landslide!” Dane cried.
Wanting, instinctively, to run, he tried to free his hand from Skookaweethp’s. Paige tried to let go, too, but Skookaweethp held fast to both of them. Unfettered by her, Jack could have jerked away, but instead stood transfixed, clutching his cousins’ hands all the tighter.
“Do not break the circle,” Skookaweethp cautioned. “Be calm. Resist with calm. What you see is not what is. That which is placed in the mind can be banished by the mind. See what is, not what seems to be.”
Fighting down panic, the children tried to comply, noting that she and the animals behind her were watching the approaching cascade with complete equanimity. As though it did not exist.
“It does not,” came the answer to this thought. “Hold firm. The golden circle awakens.”
And with those words, the circlet on her head began to glow. Thin, golden, rays stretched out from it and touched each of the children, filling them with resolve. Closing their eyes, they took deep breaths, and tried to picture a peaceful mountainside, free of descending rubble.
And when they opened their eyes, it was.
Watching almost with detachment, they saw the return of the sparks and swirls in which their adversary had appeared, and heard him howl what sounded like, “Votch!” before vanishing into them.
Several moments passed before Paige said, “Is he gone?”
“From this time, yes.” Skookaweethp replied. “He can no longer trouble you here. Nor reach through to you in your own time. Restrictions are once more upon him. Though enough of a crack remains to enable him to still influence certain others, he himself cannot threaten you again until the culmination.”
The circlet’s glow faded, and they felt a sense of loss as the rays also receded.
Skookaweethp released her hold on Dane and Paige. “Do not feel forsaken. The strands which heartened you only summoned forth what you already had within you and mended all that was torn or vulnerable.” She touched Paige’s arm where, earlier, two of her stings had still been looking
red and swollen. She now did not appear to have any stings, anywhere. Dane and Jack didn’t either.
Reaching up, Skookaweethp took the circlet from her head and handed it to Paige. “Take the golden circle. Its power is not spent. At the time of culmination, the five hundredth daughter of my daughter must call upon it so that we, too, can serve.”
Taking care not to tangle it, Paige wrapped the circlet in a facial tissue she’d had in one of her pockets. “Culmination means the end,” she said, easing the circlet into a different, deeper, pocket. “Are you talking about the end of our search for Varteni? Will we be going to her next time?”
“No. The lost ones have not all been gathered. Restoring them will bring its own dangers, as well as complications not present in other restorations. I urge you to remember that, when evil meets with madness, even good hearts can be misled. And not all can be saved.”
“But we will be the ones who find Varteni?” Paige persisted.
“Yes, though finding will not, in itself, be enough. Go now. Return to the physical realm, and from there to your place of origin. And, at the culmination, recall and use what you have learned here, during the mid-time.”
They made their way down the ridge, another shimmer indicating they had passed though the barrier.
“Well, that was…different,” said Paige. “I’ve never had people talking in my head before. I did move my lips this time, right?” The boys nodded. “Good. Natural though it seemed over in the spirit world, I’d hate to have lost the power of speech.”
They looked back at the ridge. Now empty. In the sky above it, only the eagle remained, flying a little awkwardly. Dane wondered if it had been injured by one of the energy bolts whizzing around. During the attack, it had been flying high, and might have been beyond the reach of the protective circle. Gazing upward, he felt himself forging a bond with it, a strange affinity that was stronger than any he had ever felt with any creature before, even his own pets.
Then it, too, vanished.
“It’s gone,” he said. “Like Skookaweethp’s gone. And all the other animals.”
“Or whatever they were. Was even Skookaweethp real?” Paige wondered aloud. “She might have been from the spirit world too.”
“I don’t think so,” said Jack. “I think she was just in tune with it.”
“She was real,” Dane avowed. “She had to be. The natives knew her by name, and she said we could call upon the power of the Arcanus Piece again through the five hundredth daughter of her daughter. How could you be descended from her if she never really existed?”
Paige raised her eyebrows. “Me?”
“Well, who else could it be? If we’re the final seekers, it has to be one of us, and Jack and I don’t qualify as daughters. You and I do have some native blood, remember. It’s getting thin, but we have it. Skookaweethp must have been one of our remote—and to have got to the five hundredth daughter, really, really, remote—ancestors.”
“I suppose. But I don’t have the faintest idea how to channel the circlet’s power like she did.”
“I expect you will when the time comes,” said Jack. He started to wriggle uncomfortably. “Right now, it’s time to go. The medallion’s tingling.”
He took it off and handed it to Dane. “Here, you say the rhyme.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure. I just want you to.”
Dane said the connecting rhyme, but for the first time, the mist carrying them back to their own time did not return them to the place from which they had left. Or the time of day in which they had left. It had been mid-afternoon then, and was now mid-evening. And, though they were still close to the creek, it was a low, peaceful creek, flowing gently along a fenced embankment instead of raging over the top of a sandbag barricade.
As Dane took this in, a curly-haired black dog with a white chest came hurtling toward him, barking furiously.
“Cupcake!” he cried, dropping to his knees to gather up his excited pet. “We’re home,” he added, looking around in delight as Cupcake vigorously licked his face. “Our real home. This is where we really live, Jack. Jack?”
Jack was nowhere in sight. Concerned, Dane gently disentangled himself from Cupcake. “Where is he?” he asked, standing up.
Paige frowned. “I’m guessing, England.”
“England? But he—”
Paige put up a hand to shush him and called out to their mother, who had just come out of the house.
“Hey, Mum, how long have we been home now?”
“Three days,” Mrs. Marchand replied, sounding surprised.
“And school starts tomorrow?
“No reason for it not to. I came to tell the pair of you to come in and start getting ready for bed. I want you both well rested.”
“Can I call Cora first?”
“No. You’d be on the phone for an hour. And you’ve already talked to her at least six times since we got back. By now you must have gone over every detail of our trip.”
“Yeah, well, as a writer, you know details are important. Did you get all the material you wanted for your new book while we were in England?”
“Most of it.”
“Is it going to be another best seller? And Dad’s documentary on those medieval letters another award-winner?
“Well, there are no guarantees, but we’re reasonably optimistic.”
They spoke for a few more minutes, the children asking questions Mrs. Marchand could find no point in. “That’s it,” she said. “Come on, now, no more stalling. It’s time you went in. You, too, felines.”
She stalked past them in pursuit of Pearl and Abraham, who were always brought in at night, but had just slithered underneath Elmer’s spacious hutch where they, mistakenly, thought they’d be out of reach.
“Jack?” Dane queried his sister.
“He’s okay. I’m pretty sure everything’s okay. Look around. We’re home. The creek’s down. The animals are all here, and, well, you heard Mum; she and Dad seem to be well-up in their fields again. She even knows who Cora is. Everything’s back to how it was. Which means Jack didn’t have to come home with us, and no one except Grantie, Granddad, and the other former medallion users, has reason to think otherwise. His insights must be back on track, too. That’s why he wanted you to say the rhyme. So the medallion would be here, with us, where it’s probably safer than it’d be in England just now.”
“We are, of course, going to check that out.”
“Of course. It’s really early in the morning there, but with all that’s been going on, I don’t think anyone will mind.”
They raced inside to the telephone and were startled when it rang before they could pick it up.
It was Jack.
A relieved Dane pressed the speaker button and asked him if everything was now all right with him in England.
“Mostly. I somehow materialized at Granny and Granddad’s—in the hallway outside their bedroom. Granddad did, too, at almost the same moment. Our arrival woke Granny. She was most put out, and asked us what we were doing up at such an ungodly hour. According to her, I’ve been staying with them because Mummy and Daddy are in Edinburgh seeing a heart specialist. Uncle Trevor was right. Daddy’s collapse and heart attack weren’t connected to the distortions. The heart attack wasn’t a really bad one, though, and didn’t get aggravated by…other things.”
“Like trouble with your birth parents?” Paige suggested.
“There hasn’t been any. They apparently did meet with Daddy sometime last week, but only because they were in town and wanted to know how I was doing. Granny said, as far as she knows, there was never any accident and they’re both successfully pursuing their careers. She couldn’t fathom why she had to tell us any of that, and went back to bed feeling most discombobulated.”
A chuckle from Granddad indicated he was standing beside Jack. “Trevor’s even more discombobulated,” he informed them. “Though reluctantly willing to do his bit, he wasn’t looking forward to going into the pas
t with you, and certainly wasn’t prepared for the sudden transition from here to York. He was sitting at the computer booking his ticket to Canada when it happened. Grantie fetched up at Rosebank, and while Uncle Edmond wasn’t actually transported to another location, he did get thrown ahead a few hours. I rang him almost immediately, but couldn’t get through because Trevor was on the line in full blown agitation. Had to ring his mobile and have a disjointed three-way conversation. With Jack turning up here, we assumed everything was sorted out your end too, but we wanted to be sure. Is all as it should be?”
“Yes,” said Paige.
“What about the weather? Has it settled down?”
Dane looked out the window. “Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight. Tomorrow should be warm and bright.”
The End
Historical Background
Canada’s First Settlers
Native peoples have inhabited the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia, Canada for millennia. First Nation stories passed down from one generation to the next indicate their tenancy may even go back to the Ice Age.
In January of 2012, archaeologists began excavating a site from which they have since unearthed thousands of native artifacts. Thought to have once been a winter encampment, the site is located along a stretch of highway in Lake Country, near the present-day city of Vernon, and was uncovered by construction crews working on the Highway 97 by-pass between Winfield and Oyama. Encampments like this one were for harvesting, drying, and smoking, the fish (primarily salmon) that provided food for tribe members during the winter. The artifacts found there include hammer stones, spear points, arrowheads, and the remains of a fishing net. Some of these items are estimated to be at least six thousand years old and serve as proof that the area has been inhabited for much, much longer than was once thought.
A society of hunters and gatherers, the people of the syilx nation had many such camps throughout the Okanagan Valley, but most were eradicated once European settlers came to live in the area and established farms and orchards on the same sites.
