Stones of Time

by Andreas Oertel

  “But we can’t trust him,” I whispered. “He might be hiding something else. So we have to be careful when he’s near.”

  “That makes sense,” Eric said.

  Rachel ran over to us as soon as we entered the camp. “Gosh,” she said, “what took you two so long? We were getting worried.”

  “It’s a long story,” Eric said, grinning, “and I’ll tell you about it later. But we’re both heroes.”

  Rachel looked at her brother with confusion. “What are you talking—?”

  “Children!” Léon waved us over to one of the tents. “Come ’ere.”

  “This better be good news,” I said, heading toward the teepee. “We’re running out of time.”

  Léon glared at Eric and then scowled at me, but he didn’t question our lengthy absence from the camp. He held back the tent flap, and we all piled into the chief’s home. The chief, a few women, and a bunch of other senior Natives were already sitting around in a circle. They had left a gap in the circle, and Léon ordered us to sit there. The tent was smoky, hot, and packed with people.

  When everyone had settled in, the chief started things off with a long speech. My hands were sweating fiercely, and I tried hard to keep them from shaking as I listened. We had no idea what Léon may have told the chief. I was worried we had made a mistake trusting him—instead of making a run for it—and I sensed that time was slipping by. We needed to be on our way, and we didn’t have time for any more shenanigans or complications from the chief.

  Finally he stopped talking, and Léon summarized his lecture for us in English. “Zee chief ’az reconsidered. He does not understand why zee spirits would want such pale, sick-looking children back. You are all welcome to stay ’ere forever, but zee chief will leave zee final decision to zee spirit of zee stones.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “It means,” Léon said, “if you can all pass through zee pillars, zat is a sign zat zee spirits must want you back. And zat is fine with zee chief. But if you fail to travel back to your world, zee chief will take zat as a message from zee spirits zat zey don’t want you and you must remain ’ere.”

  I couldn’t believe it. That was exactly what we wanted! “That sounds reasonable,” I said, struggling to keep my voice even.

  “And if you leave,” Léon continued, “’e wants you to tell zee spirits to stop sending ’im troublesome gifts.”

  I exchanged glances with Eric. There was no way we could guarantee that, but we could tell Bruno when we returned. “Sure,” Eric said, “whatever.”

  I felt that I should show my appreciation, so I said, “Tell the chief we thank him, and we will ask all the spirits to bless him and his people with excellent hunting, fishing, and health.”

  I stood up, hoping that would signal an end to the meeting. But it didn’t.

  The chief pointed at the ground, the universal sign for “sit your butt back down.” So I sat my butt back down. He solemnly spoke to me, and then I waited to find out what he’d solemnly said from Léon.

  “Zee chief said zat you should show your gratitude immediately by presenting ’im with a gift.”

  Eric groaned and said, “What a guy.”

  Rachel jabbed Eric in ribs. “Don’t make him mad.”

  “He can’t understand me,” Eric mumbled.

  “I know,” Rachel said, “but a groan is rude in any language.”

  “I suppose,” I said to Eric, “I can give him your pocket knife.”

  Eric groaned again, only louder.

  Rachel nodded.

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out Eric’s birthday present, the folding pocket knife. We hadn’t used it for anything yet, so the metal still sparkled like new. As soon as I flipped out a blade, the Natives “Ahhh’d,” appreciating the knife’s shininess. I folded and unfolded it several times, so everyone could admire the craftsmanship. Then I flicked open the steel a final time, picked up a piece of firewood and shaved off a foot-long curl of wood.

  The chief laughed and clapped his hands together like it was his birthday present. He snatched the knife from my hand as I was tucking the blade away, and it accidentally cut his thumb. He grinned and proudly showed the group the blood flowing down his hand.

  I guess he liked it.

  •

  “I still can’t believe that guy,” Eric complained as we headed down the trail toward the pillars.

  “Just let it go already,” Rachel said.

  But he wouldn’t. “He kidnaps you, he smashes your camera, and then he has the nerve to demand a gift—my gift.”

  “You’ve got at least three more jackknives at home,” Rachel said.

  “But I really liked that one,” he whined.

  “As long as we don’t miss the wormhole,” I said, looking up at the sky, “I don’t care what he takes from us.”

  “They should have had a massive feast for us—like in the movies. Why couldn’t they make a huge fire and barbeque steaks, and hamburgers, and chicken wings, and—?”

  “I do not think they have any of those foods,” Anna interrupted.

  “Well, they could have tried,” Eric whined. “Every-one knows how to make a burger.”

  Anna laughed and said, “Maybe you are right, Eric. The bun could be made from the bannock, and if they mashed up deer meat, they could form meat patties.”

  Eric laughed too. “It’s not a Big Mac, but I don’t feel super-picky right now.”

  I was pretty sure we would make it to the stones before the meteor shower ended, but we all hustled down the trail at a near-run anyway. Léon was the only one from the Cree camp accompanying the four of us. The chief wasn’t into emotional farewells—thank goodness. He simply waved us away with a flick of his fingers.

  Léon led the way through the forest. I felt a bit bad for not trusting him, but we weren’t out of the woods yet—literally. Anything could still happen. We let Léon get far enough ahead so that he couldn’t hear what we were saying. Then we did our best to fill Rachel in on everything that had happened since she disappeared at the cemetery.

  When I finished, Rachel said, “So during the Perseid meteor shower, that wormhole opens up in the centre of the stones?”

  “Yes, exactly,” I said, stepping over a fallen oak tree. “And that wormhole is a shortcut to the past.”

  Eric added, “But that only happens once a year.”

  “Actually,” Anna said, “the portal may open many times during the year. But I think Papa was only able to translate a few of the symbols. Other cultures may have observed the wormhole opening at other times of the year too.”

  Rachel nodded. “So the ancient people who painted and carved those symbols and messages on the stones were marking the exact locations of wormholes here on earth, where the shortcuts would appear.”

  “It was just rotten luck,” I said, “that Anna, and then you, were standing in that spot when the wormhole opened.”

  Léon turned around and pointed ahead, down the trail.

  We were back at the pillars.

  There had been so much happening when we arrived the day before, I never really had a chance to examine the markers. They were the exact same stones, of course, but they looked slightly different. Some of the carvings appeared newer, fresher, and some of the glyphs had less moss and lichen growth.

  Thank goodness. We made it, I thought.

  Eric went straight to the centre of the three stones and threw down his bag. “Good. So who wants to go first?”

  “Ladies first?” I asked Rachel, tossing my backpack on the ground next to Eric’s. I dug out a water bottle and passed it around.

  “Do you think it could carry all of us at once?” Eric said. “Or are we too heavy?”

  Anna took a drink of water and gave the bottle to Eric. “I do not think it works like an elevator,” she said wryly.

  Eric frowned. “I’m just worried that the meteor shower won’t last long enough to transport all of us.”

  “Yeah, you’ve
got a point,” I agreed. “But we do know that two people can pass through the wormhole at the same time. So why don’t Anna and Rachel go first, and then we’ll jump in as soon as they vanish.”

  Anna and Rachel nodded. It seemed like a good plan. The girls stood in the centre, back-to-back and holding hands, waiting to disappear.

  Eric paced in a circle around the girls. “It should happen any second now.”

  Anna and Rachel shook with nervous energy.

  I picked up my pack and swung it on my back again. “We’ll see you on the other side,” I said, trying hard to sound optimistic.

  Eric strapped his bag on too. “Any second now … ”

  “Stop saying that!” Rachel snapped. “I’m nervous enough as it is.”

  Minutes passed, but nothing happened. Eric stopped doing laps around Anna and Rachel. “Something’s not right,” he mumbled.

  “Give it time,” I said. “Don’t move now. Stay put.” But even as I said that, I wondered if Eric was right.

  “Why are we still here?” Rachel asked, staring angrily at the sky.

  We didn’t know the answer to that, so we didn’t say anything.

  Léon, who had been standing several feet back from the centre of the pillars, shook his head. “It seems you are destined to stay here,” he said, sounding far too smug.

  “But how could that be?” I asked. “We’re doing everything exactly the same.”

  Anna and Rachel refused to give up and stubbornly stayed in the centre of the stones.

  Eric unstrapped his pack and threw it on the grass. “So now what?” he griped, to nobody in particular.

  “Are we stuck here forever?”

  “This is crazy,” I said. “We’re doing the same thing we did to get here. It should have worked.”

  “Unless we have missed the entire astronomical event,” Anna said, letting go of Rachel and moving away from her. “Perhaps we are days or weeks too late.”

  Rachel looked stricken. “What does that mean? You mean we’ll have to wait until next summer to go home?”

  I nodded. “Unless we can interpret Gaelic, or Chinese, or Mayan. Then maybe we can bounce to some other petroform site. There’s a chance those wormholes might get us back to the cemetery in Sultana.”

  Rachel looked down at her feet. “I have a bad feeling we’re going to be stuck here for another year.”

  CHAPTER

  8

  WE HAD LOITERED near the petroform all day, taking turns sitting in the centre and waiting for the wormhole to take us home. Nothing happened, of course, and now it was late afternoon. Anna and Rachel were stretched out in the shade talking softly, Eric was napping in the centre of the stones, and I was wandering aimlessly around the site, worrying if we’d ever make it back to our time.

  Léon had left right after our failed attempt to use the time portal, explaining that he needed to update the chief. And as I’d watched him leave, I remembered how satisfied he seemed when the wormhole didn’t open. Maybe he knew we couldn’t leave, I now wondered, because he had tried to leave years ago. But then, why wouldn’t he tell us that?

  After kicking the nearest pillar in frustration (ouch!), I stomped over to the next stone. While trying to shake my foul mood, I also began to notice the sun dipping behind the tall spruce trees to the northwest.

  The northwest?

  The northwest?

  I stopped walking and studied the path the sun was taking down to the horizon. Hmmm. I tried to imagine the layout of the cemetery and the location of my house back in Sultana. Something suddenly seemed off … different.

  That’s it!

  The sun was going to set way more to the north today. Back home, the sun would be setting due west. And that meant—I closed my eyes to concentrate—we arrived here at least a month earlier in the summer. Which meant …

  Oh, no! No! No! No!

  The significance suddenly sunk in. If we arrived here in June, and the meteor showers weren’t due until August … We were stuck here for another month!

  My head began to swim with panic, and I felt like I was going to pass out. I had to sit down. Then I realized my legs had collapsed, and I was already sitting down. I took three deep breaths, closed my eyes and reconsidered my findings. I was hoping I was wrong about the time of year, but after reviewing all the facts again and again, I knew I wasn’t. It was June.

  I stood up slowly and began walking over to the girls. I was about to give them some very bad news.

  But there must be a way to get out of here, I thought. The ancients travelled back and forth along the timeline—at least, that’s what Bruno said—so there was no reason why we couldn’t do that too. Those people even took the trouble to mark the wormhole locations and provide written instructions and …

  “That’s it!” I whispered to myself. I changed course and hustled back to the nearest pillar. I examined the symbols that I thought were left by Native North Americans, and as I suspected, they were exactly the same as the symbols on the stones in the cemetery. I mean, they had to be, right? They were the same stones. Sure, the messages looked slightly different, because they were newer and less weathered. But other than that, I was looking at the same pillar …

  Huh?

  I squinted at the base of the stone, suddenly seeing something new—a series of engravings not visible in Sultana.

  Anna and Rachel walked over to join me. “Did you find something, Cody?” Anna asked.

  I quickly forgot about the bad news and focused on this new opportunity to get us home. “Yeah,” I said, pointing at the pillar, just above the grass and earth. “I don’t remember this message being on our stones, in the cemetery.”

  Anna stood and compared the height of the rock with her body. “I think you are right,” she said. “More of this rock is visible and exposed.”

  Rachel dropped to her knees and examined the symbols. “The soil must have built up slowly over the decades, hiding more and more of the rock—and this message.”

  I had another thought and quickly shared it. “What if,” I began, “we weren’t able to travel back, because we never read the right instructions to get back.”

  “What do you mean?” Rachel said.

  “Well, what if these pillars here—actually, all the pillars—are kind of like the departure boards at an airport? Those boards tell you when and from where your plane leaves. Right?”

  The girls nodded.

  “Well, we just assumed that we could leave this time period the same way we left our time. But that didn’t work, because we never checked the departure board—or rather, the pillars—for our instructions.” I pointed at the newly discovered message at the bottom of the stone.

  Anna and Rachel looked at each other like I was talking gibberish.

  So I clarified my gibberish. “We can’t just walk into an airport, hop on any old plane, and expect to end up where we want to end up. We have to read the instructions on the departure boards and then go to the correct gate at a specific time to end up in the right place.”

  Rachel started nodding slowly. “I think you’re onto something.”

  “Do you have a pen or pencil?” Anna asked, getting excited. “I will sketch these messages and patterns so we can look at them later.”

  I found a pencil and some paper in my backpack. Then Rachel and I watched as Anna skillfully copied the symbols and messages left so long ago. She was just as good an artist as Rachel.

  Rachel smiled for the first time in hours. “So if we can figure out this new set of instructions, we might still be able to get out of here.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “We need to—”

  I broke off when I heard people coming down the trail, from the direction of the Cree camp. It was Léon and the three kids we had helped that morning. The children kept their distance from the lanky adult. I didn’t blame them.

  Now what? I wondered.

  Léon walked up to us and said, “Zee chief ’as asked me to escort you back to zee camp. ’
e fears for your safety if you stay in zee forest overnight.” Maybe I was being paranoid again, but he said that like he couldn’t have cared less about our safety.

  I looked around the clearing. The area looked pretty harmless to me, and since I’d already spent a night in the bush, I wasn’t too worried about it. Plus, we needed to figure out the meaning of those symbols as soon as possible. We had to make as much use of the fading light as we could.

  I opened my mouth, about to tell Léon to “buzz off and leave us alone,” when one of the kids mumbled something in Cree. The boy shifted from foot to foot and looked about nervously.

  “What did he say?” Anna asked.

  All the talking woke Eric, and he meandered over to join us. The kids gave him a sly smile and secret nod that Léon didn’t see. I had been worried that they would rat on us, but after seeing those smiles, I doubted it.

  Léon explained their presence.

  “Barks-Like-An-Otter,” Léon pointed at the little girl who had almost died that morning, “insisted zat she and ’er friends come with me to make sure you come back to zee camp. She said you must return to zee camp so zat you will be safe from Windigo.”

  “Who,” I asked, “or what is that?”

  “It is a silly story zat zee kids believe. I’m sure you will learn about ’im sometime.”

  “I don’t think I want to meet him,” Eric said, clearly stalling. “Look at how he’s freaking out the kids.”

  Léon frowned down at Eric.

  “Zat is not what I meant. In zee evenings we tell stories at camp. Zere might be one about Windigo. Don’t worry. Now you ’ave plenty of time to learn all our stories.”

  I scowled. I didn’t like what he was implying.

  The children must have sensed our reluctance, because Barks-Like-An-Otter started yanking on Eric’s arm, pulling him back toward camp.

  Eric laughed. “Hey, Cody, I think we’ve made friends for life.”

  Anna and Rachel looked at each other with confused expressions. In our hurry to make it to the stones, we had forgotten to tell them about the near-drowning. But I sure wasn’t going to say anything now, in front of Léon. If he could keep secrets, so could we.