Stones of Time

by Andreas Oertel

  So that settled it—I would wait until dark, and I would have to be more careful than I’d ever been in my life.

  CHAPTER

  5

  “MORE MUD, ANNA,” Eric said. “And more moss and junk.”

  It was almost midnight, and Anna and Eric were prepping me for my mission. Ten minutes earlier, my dark brown T-shirt and khaki-coloured shorts looked brand new—now they looked like I’d found them in a dumpster. We even pounded both pieces of clothing with dirt and leaves, to get rid of any “foreign” smells.

  Now we were working on the finishing touches that would make my dark skin even darker. Anna smeared my legs with dirt, while Eric dripped sticky pine tree sap on my shirt. On each tarry blob, Eric pressed something from the forest floor—moss, leaves, bark, and so on.

  Making me look invisible seemed to take everyone’s mind off our problems—for the moment, anyway.

  “You look terrific,” Eric beamed. “Even if they stare right at you, they won’t see you.”

  We’d found a tree that had been struck by lightning, and both Eric and Anna used the charred wood to plaster my face with black soot. “I’m just glad it’s warm out tonight,” I said.

  “Yes,” Anna agreed, painting my ears black, “last night felt much cooler.”

  “They probably won’t be expecting us to backtrack and sneak up on them,” Eric said. “But you’d still better be super-careful and—”

  “I know, I know,” I snapped, and then grimaced when I heard my harsh voice. The idea of us being stuck here forever was getting to me. I took a deep breath and added, “But if I’m not back by morning, you and Anna better make plans to leave without me. There’s no point in all four of us being stranded here.”

  Anna and Eric looked at each other. “We’ll see,” Eric said. He gave me his pocket knife (his birthday present, by the way), and I shoved it deep in my pocket. I felt a lot better knowing I was armed and dangerous. Okay, maybe I wasn’t dangerous, but at least I was armed. I took off my wristwatch and jammed it into my pants too. I didn’t want the luminous dial attracting attention. Like I said, I was going to be careful.

  “Does that clock have an alarm?” Anna asked, pointing at my pants.

  “Clock?” I said. “Huh?”

  “Will it beep every hour?”

  I laughed. “Oh, I see. No, my watch doesn’t do anything fancy, it’s just waterproof.”

  The only other thing I took with me was the walkie-talkie. I slid it into my zippered pocket—thank goodness for cargo pants—and said, “Remember, the radio is for emergency use by me only. Don’t call me no matter what, or you’ll give away my position for sure.”

  “Understood,” Anna said. “I will keep my radio on, but I will not try to call you.”

  I drank half a bottle of water and made my way down to the river. The moon was below the trees, but I was still able to make good time in the darkness. When I got close to the spot where the highway bridge in Sultana would eventually be, I climbed the bank and entered the forest.

  I stuck to the open areas, slowly and quietly winding my way toward the fork in the river. With each step, I pressed down lightly to minimize the crunch of leaves and twigs. And when I thought my footfall was too loud, I paused and waited nervously for warning shouts. After thirty minutes, I began to catch the faint smell of wood smoke. I stopped again. Was it good or bad that I could smell their fire? The little hairs on the back of my neck tingled and sprang to attention.

  I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate. Think, Cody, think. What was it we learned in Boy Scouts?

  That’s right, I thought, as I remembered. If you’re trying to sneak up on an animal, you want to have the wind in your face, so that the animal can’t smell you. I allowed myself a quick grin. There was no wind—only a slight breeze—but the smoke I could smell meant I was downwind and moving in the right direction. Perfect.

  The nearly full moon rose higher as I prowled ever closer. With each pace, I gave myself more time to wait, listen, and plan my next step. Suddenly, a wave of laughter reached my ears. The camp was close.

  I took a cautious step and listened. Crickets and other insects buzzed softly around me, and I was sure the bats were out now too. Their eerie, black bodies flew in sloppy circles around the canopy as they munched on mosquitoes and other night insects.

  I took another ten slow steps and listened some more. I could recognize different voices now, though the bugs were still competing for my attention.

  WAIT! What was that?!

  I was so busy trying to angle my ears closer, I almost lost track of my other senses. That was when I caught a slight movement near a tree, thirty steps ahead. I froze, sank to a crouch and waited. Staring at the spot, I urged my eyes to focus. But there was nothing visible in the shadowy night. Had I imagined it? I willed my ears to listen even harder, but heard no noise. Still, I didn’t dare move. I had seen enough movies where someone gave away their position by being impatient and moving too soon. I wasn’t about to make that blunder. We had way too much at stake!

  If someone was there, they’d be patient too. So I waited, listened and watched.

  Fifteen minutes went by. My legs had cramped, and it felt like nearly enough time had passed. But nearly wasn’t good enough, so I stayed frozen. I trusted my eyes and my instincts—because I had seen something.

  The tree I was staring at suddenly came to life. Only it wasn’t a tree! It was a man cloaked in fur, and he had been squatting near the ground. He stood up and grunted something in a language I didn’t understand to a second person only three feet away. I watched as they both moved like ghosts toward their camp.

  That was way too close. I had almost walked smack into two lookouts. Thank goodness for my camouflage.

  That was my first close call. The second one happened twenty minutes later.

  After the sentries left, I prowled around the perimeter of the camp on my knees. I watched the camp carefully for signs of Rachel—and then another man walked out of a tent and headed straight toward me.

  For a moment, I wavered between fleeing and holding my ground. If I ran, he would see me for sure, and then I would have the whole tribe after me. But if I held my ground, he might walk straight into me.

  I had to take that chance and trust my disguise would hide me. But that didn’t slow my heartbeat one bit.

  When he was five feet away, he stopped and began to pee. I closed my eyes so he couldn’t see their whites glowing in the moonlight. I cringed at the sound of liquid hitting the soil. Holding my breath, I avoided the impulse to cry “P-U!” When I finally heard him turn and walk away, I opened my eyes again. This was nuts!

  The camp was smaller than I’d imagined. There were seven teepee tents set up to form roughly the shape of a semi-circle. Even in the moonlight, I could see that each tent was elaborately decorated with paintings. Beyond the tents I saw the final proof I was looking for. The Red and Kilmeny Rivers were right where they were supposed to be—just like in our Sultana. The riverbank in the distance was lined with several birch bark canoes. A cooking fire burned near the middle of the camp.

  I couldn’t see Rachel among the adults and children. Wait! The second tent from the river had a guard posted near the front opening. Maybe Rachel was in there?

  I crawled into a thicket of brush and settled in to observe the camp.

  I couldn’t see anything sinister or war-like about the group. Women chatted quietly around the fire—some were rocking infants. A few older kids were gathered around a Native Elder, like they were listening to a story. Others headed off to bed, and I’m sure some were in the teepees already asleep. The whole scene looked pretty peaceful.

  But they had Rachel, and we wanted her back.

  The tent flap opened on the second teepee. I held my breath. Rachel emerged from the shelter, followed by a Native who was probably a foot taller than me. He was dressed more or less like the other men, except he had a red cap on his head. It looked like something Ebenezer Scrooge mi
ght wear to bed. The red cap got me thinking about something I had learned in school, but the memory I was groping for slipped away.

  Anyway, the tall guy said something to an old lady who had been poking the fire. She stopped what she was doing and led Rachel into the forest. Rachel obediently followed, and they both returned five minutes later.

  Rachel wasn’t tied up. In fact, except for being watched by the tall guy—and probably by everyone else in the camp—she looked at ease. I was relieved to see that she looked healthy and alert. She walked to the fire and hovered around it. Some of the other women came to talk to her and offered her food or water, but Rachel declined with a shake of her head. She often looked up at the sky or around the camp.

  Anna told us that Rachel had been unconscious when they carried her away, which I guess explained why Rachel didn’t just run into the forest as fast as she could—she had no idea where she was or where she had landed. And since she didn’t even know we were here with her, it made a lot of sense for her to stay with the Natives.

  I desperately wanted to scream, “We’re here, Rachel! Don’t worry, we’ll rescue you!” But of course, I kept my mouth shut. Poor Rachel.

  How the heck could we get her away from them? Would they just let her leave? Could we trade something for her? But what could we offer them?

  I looked around the camp for anything that might help us rescue Rachel. Thanks to the stars, the moon, and the flames from the fire, I had a great view of the people near the campfire. But there was something about that tall Native—the one who had followed Rachel out of the tent—that grabbed my attention. He just looked different from the others around him.

  I squinted through the night at the stranger. I wished I’d brought the binoculars with me so I could really zoom in on his features. He was close enough that I could see he had long dark hair poking out from under his toque. And he also had a longer nose, paler skin, and a bigger head than anyone else in camp. Then, when he turned so that the fire illuminated the front of his body, I saw all I needed to see—a colourful sash wrapped around his waist.

  He was a voyageur!

  He was not a North American Native!

  I thought back to history class and tried to concentrate. If the man with the red cap really was a voyageur, and not with the Woodland Cree—the tribe I suspected these Natives belonged to—we must have gone back to the 1700 s or 1800 s.

  On the other hand, he could also be a fellow time traveller. Right? In which case, we may have travelled back hundreds of years before that. As I lay in hiding, I began thinking about what Bruno had tried to tell us just before we disappeared at the stones. I had been so distracted, his warning barely registered in my brain. But now—now I was sure he was urging us to be wary of other people from the future.

  It doesn’t matter, I decided, shaking my head. I knew this man spoke either French or English, and that little piece of information was enough for me to form a rescue plan. I fine-tuned the scheme in my head while I waited for the camp to shut down for the night. One hour later, as the two lookouts made a final sweep of the perimeter and turned in for the night, I felt confident we could get Rachel and return home.

  I gave them another fifteen minutes to zonk out and then I slid into their camp. Tiptoeing between two tents, I went straight to a dead poplar tree near the centre of their encampment. It had a million holes in it from woodpeckers or squirrels trying to use its remains.

  I dug my walkie-talkie out from my pocket and carefully turned it on. I was terrified it would let out an electronic squawk, but it didn’t. So far so good. Reaching as high as I could, I placed it in a knot hole and covered the opening with a thin layer of moss.

  I left the camp as cautiously as I had entered it. When I was sure I was out of earshot of anyone in the tents, I picked up the pace and jogged to the Kilmeny. I hid in the bush there for twenty minutes to be certain I wasn’t being followed. I didn’t want to be the dummy who got us all captured.

  After I caught my breath again, I ran down to the river and then south along the bank to Anna and Eric.

  “Pssst!” I whispered, when I got near the spot where I had left them. “Eric? Anna?”

  “What took you so long?” Eric said, stepping from behind a spruce tree. “I was starting to think you got lost.” He led me another hundred feet into the forest, where he and Anna had made a small fire. Anna was asleep under a thin, silver thermal blanket. She was using a backpack as a pillow.

  After two sleepless nights in the bush, Anna deserved some rest. We could brief her in the morning. “They have her,” I said quietly to Eric.

  He sighed and placed another stick in the fire. “Tell me everything.”

  He listened intently while I recounted my close calls with the Natives. He laughed when I explained that my disguise was so good I almost got peed on. And his eyes grew huge when I told him that another time traveller might be living among the Natives. I finished by saying, “I think they’re Woodland Cree.”

  Eric nodded. “Teepees?”

  “Yeah.” We had learned in school that the Ojibwe lived in domed lodges called wigwams, while the Cree preferred to live in teepees.

  “So,” he said, “do you have any ideas for getting Rachel back?”

  I grinned. “Yeah, actually I do. But it’s such a long shot we should have a Plan B too—just in case.”

  I told Eric how I had stashed the walkie-talkie in the tree, and what I wanted to do tomorrow.

  “If that’s Plan A,” he said, shaking his head, “we’ll definitely need a backup plan.”

  We made ourselves comfortable around the fire and tried to get some sleep. But as exhausted as we were, I don’t think either one of us slept very much. We had way too much at stake. The rest of our lives would be determined by what happened in the morning. If we didn’t rescue Rachel, and if we didn’t all make it back to the stones soon, we’d be stuck here for a long time, maybe forever.

  •

  I woke up sweating. The sun had managed to find a gap in the trees, and it was blasting my face with heat. I sat up, rubbed my eyes and wiped my grimy forehead.

  “Good morning,” Anna said. She must have just returned from the river. Her face was clean and some of her brown hair was still wet.

  I shook Eric awake, and we trundled down to the river to wash ourselves. Only it took me a lot longer to scrub away all the soot and junk I had smeared on my skin the night before. But all the rubbing and cleaning sure woke me up.

  When I returned to the bush, I filled Anna in on everything I had seen last night.

  “I am glad Rachel is safe and close by,” she said with visible relief. She still felt responsible for not being able to save Rachel. “But how are we going to rescue her?”

  We briefly told Anna what we knew about voyageurs, and I explained how I identified the tall man from his clothes—the red cap, the sash, the pants, and so forth.

  “So … we have a contact in the camp?” Anna said. “This fur trader person?”

  I shrugged. “We might.”

  “If we can trust him,” Eric added.

  “I believe I saw that same man at the pillars,” Anna said. “He did not have the red hat on when he took Rachel, but I am sure it was the same person.”

  “Was he … ” Eric searched for the right words, “was he mean to her?”

  “No,” Anna said. “He treated her kindly and with great care.”

  “He’d better have,” Eric said.

  Anna turned to me. “Now, tell me about your plan.”

  “Last night I hid one of our walkie-talkies in a tree, inside their camp, and today I want to walk into their camp and ask for Rachel’s return. If they refuse, Eric is going to use his walkie-talkie to trick them into thinking the tree is talking to them.”

  “A talking tree?” Anna said. “Why a tree?”

  “It doesn’t matter what is talking,” I explained. “We learned in school that the Cree have a strong bond with nature. They believe that everything in the n
atural world has a spirit, and that all spirits have to be respected. If we can convince them that the spirit of the trees is asking for Rachel’s release, then—”

  Anna held up her hand to stop me. “But you do not know how to speak the Cree language.”

  “That’s where you come in,” Eric said.

  “Your dad told us you’re great with languages,” I said. “Is your French as good as your English?”

  Anna grinned. “My French is even better. My mother was born in Switzerland—in a French-speaking town—and we often speak French with each other.”

  “Good,” I said. “Because we’ll need you to communicate with Red Hat in French, and then he can translate into Cree.”

  Eric chuckled. “‘Red Hat,’ eh? I like that.”

  Anna ignored Eric. “He looks like he is in his twenties, so if he is a time traveller, he may have been here for years. I wonder if he still speaks French?”

  “I sure hope so,” Eric said, chewing on a granola bar. “That’s a critical part of the plan.”

  Eric and I slung our bags on our backs, and we all headed north toward Rachel and the Natives. “And remember,” I said to Eric, “when we get close, stay way back. It’s probably best if you approach from the west and then hide. There are a couple of good spots in that area, where you should be able to see everything and still hear me when I yell.”

  “No problem,” he said.

  “And don’t say anything until I tell you to.”

  Eric nodded and began walking north.

  When we were five minutes from the camp, Eric left Anna and me and headed west to approach the camp from the far side. We gave him fifteen minutes to get in position. Then Anna and I did the unthinkable: we walked straight into the camp, in the daylight, with no disguise, to save Rachel.

  CHAPTER

  6

  THE NATIVES WERE so unprepared for our arrival, they didn’t know how to react. A few people working around the fire simply froze and stared at us.

  I put my bag down at the base of the old poplar tree and yelled, “HELLO!”