The Pirate

by Kate Hoffmann

  The sun was almost down by the time Meredith reached the cottage. In the waning light, she could make out a figure sitting on the steps. She breathed a silent sigh of relief, glad to see that Griffin was waiting for her. She shifted a bag of groceries in her arms and searched her jacket pocket for her keys.

  "Hey there, Meredith!"

  The figure on the steps stood up and waved. A flash of disappointment shot through her. This was not Griffin, but someone much shorter, with curly auburn hair. Slowly, Meredith smiled, recognizing her best friend, Dr. Kelsey Porterfield. "Kels!" she cried. "What are you doing here?"

  "Do you have to ask? My graduate assistant told me you've called four times in the past three days. What is the big emergency?"

  Meredith stepped up beside her and pushed the key into the lock. She opened the door and glanced around the interior, relieved to find that Griffin was not inside. She had plenty to explain to Kelsey without having to explain the presence of an eighteenth-century pirate living in her cottage. He was probably down at the harbor, watching the ferries come and go and the shrimpers return with their catch.

  "You didn't have to drive all the way down here," she said, trying to sound nonchalant. "There's no emergency. I'm fine. I just had a few questions I needed to ask you."

  Kelsey followed her into the cottage. "Come on, Meredith. You're the national poster child for patience. You didn't even bother to call me when you found out you were on the shortlist for the Sullivan Fellowship. I had to find out from that witch, Katherine Conrad, and her little band of campus cronies. You called four times!"

  Meredith put the groceries down on the kitchen counter. "Did I? I'm sorry, but I didn't mean for you to rush down here."

  "I was on my way back from my symposium at Wake Forest and decided to take a detour. I figured someone should check up on you, stuck here on this island with nothing but your books."

  "I'm fine," Meredith repeated.

  Kelsey studied her for a long moment, a shrewd look in her bright eyes. "You look all right, but whether you areall right is still to be determined. Why the frantic phone calls?"

  "They weren't frantic," Meredith said. "I simply needed some information about… something… something you might know about. Would you like something to drink?"

  Kelsey frowned, ignoring her question. "What is this mysterious something?"

  Meredith sighed. "I-I was hoping you might be able to tell me about… about time travel." The last came out in a rush.

  "Time travel?" Kelsey asked, her eyebrow arching in question.

  "Yes, time travel. I-I've been thinking about writing a book, a novel, actually, and the whole premise of the book revolves around the possibility of time travel. So," she said, "is it?"

  "Is it what?"

  "Is it possible? Can someone travel in time?"

  Kelsey grabbed the box of cereal from Meredith's hand and stuffed it back into the grocery bag. "Get your things," she ordered. "I'm taking you home. I don't know what's happened here, but I'm not letting you stay on this island an instant longer. You've got the Sullivan Fellowship riding on this next scholarly work of yours and you're thinking of writing a science fiction novel? The sooner you're back in an academic atmosphere, the better."

  "I'm not crazy and I'm not leaving," Meredith said stubbornly. "Just tell me what I want to know. Please."

  Kelsey looked into Meredith's eyes and sighed. "Only if you tell me what this is really about, because I know damn well it's not about writing a novel."

  "I want to tell you," Meredith said, wincing, "but I'm not really sure I even know what it's about yet. I promise, I'll tell you as soon as I do."

  An image of Griffin flashed in her mind and she felt a flood of desire wash over her. How she wanted to tell her best friend about the most incredible man she'd ever met- how blue his eyes were and how black his hair was. How she trembled when he touched her and how she dreamed of his kiss. But she couldn't.

  Instead, she grabbed Kelsey's hand and pulled her over to the couch, then sat down beside her. "Explain what you know, in terms a history dweeb like me can understand."

  Kelsey's expression was lined with concern and she shook her head in confusion.

  "Please," Meredith begged, giving her friend's hand a squeeze.

  Kelsey sighed, then tucked a curly strand of red hair behind her ear. "Well, theoretically, time travel is possible. In fact, all humans time-travel. We just do it at the same rate and in one direction-forward. But Einstein's theory of relativity opens the possibility that if we could travel faster than light, we could potentially travel into the future."

  "So to jump into the future, a person would have to go really, really fast, like on the Concorde."

  Kelsey rolled her eyes. "Didn't you ever take a physics class in your pursuit of higher education? That's the speed of sound. The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second," she explained. "That's a whole lot faster than the Concorde."

  "And what about going backward in time?" She sent up a silent prayer for Griffin, hoping that Kelsey's next words would prove to be the key to sending him back.

  Kelsey shook her head. "It's not possible. There's no theoretical basis for it."

  "But there has to be!" Meredith cried, jumping up from the couch. She paced the length of the room, gnawing on her thumbnail as she tried to accept Kelsey's pronouncement. "There just has to be."

  "Well, there is the wormhole theory," Kelsey offered.

  Meredith stopped and stared at her. "The what?"

  "Wormhole. Black holes in space. If you go in one and come out the other side, you could travel in both time and space."

  Meredith's spirits rose and she smiled in encouragement. "So let's say I went into one of these wormholes. Could I go back in time to the 1700s, and could I end up in, let's say… Bath, North Carolina?"

  "I suppose," Kelsey replied. "But why would you want to go to Bath, North Carolina? Does this have something to do with your Blackbeard research?"

  Meredith ignored her question, trying to logically sort through all the information she had been given, knowing how important it was to Griffin's future…and to hers. "So, could I have a wormhole in my backyard?"

  "What is this all about?" Kelsey cried, jumping to her feet and throwing her arms up in frustration.

  Meredith closed her eyes and let a vision of her pirate drift through her thoughts. "Just answer the question, Dr. Porterfield," she said, tipping her head back and sighing.

  "Sure. You've probably got hundreds of wormholes in your backyard, maybe even thousands, but they all have worms living in them. As far as we know, wormholes only exist in space and that's only a theory, because no one's really ever seen one."

  "I don't care if no one's ever seen a wormhole. Tell me about the theory."

  "You really want me to explain? Meredith, you can't tell a gluon from a meson. And don't forget our little luncheon conversation about quarks a few months back. You said it gave you a migraine. How do you expect to understand wormholes?"

  "I don't need to understand them completely. I just need to know if there could be a wormhole outside my back door."

  Kelsey rubbed her forehead as if she'd suddenly developed a nagging headache of her own. "It's possible. I suppose we really can't rule it out."

  "And going through a wormhole could send a person forward or back."

  "The physics of the black-hole theory would support that."

  Meredith drew in a deep breath and let it out in one big whoosh, then smiled. "I'm not crazy then. You don't know how much I needed to hear that."

  Kelsey grabbed Meredith's hands and stared at her. "You've been working too hard, haven't you? Alone in this cottage for hours on end. Your mind is starting to… wander."

  "That's not it," she said.

  "Then what is it?" Kelsey cried. "What is going on in that head of yours?" She stared at Meredith long and hard. Slowly, realization seeped into her expression and she sucked in a sharp breath. "Don't tell me you've had a close encounter
."

  Meredith felt a flush creep up her cheeks. Was it that evident? Could Kelsey tell that she'd spent the night with a pirate in her bed. That he'd held her as if they were lovers and that she'd imagined they were. "A close encounter? You-you mean, like, with a man?"

  "No, silly, with an alien."

  This time, Meredith had cause to look at Kelsey as if shewere going crazy. She shook her head and laughed. "Don't be silly, Kels. I can assure you, I haven't had a close encounter with any little green men."

  "Well, that's a relief," she said. "You were starting to worry me." She gave Meredith a sideways glance. "Wait a minute. Are you saying you've had a close encounter with a realman?"

  "No!" Meredith cried, knowing that if she answered any other way, Kelsey would launch into a full-scale interrogation. She decided it would be wise to steer the conversation back to physics. "So, let's say someone came through this wormhole and he wanted to go back. If you can't see these wormholes, how would one go about figuring out where they are?"

  "Forget what I just said. I'm still worried. Is there a man behind all this?"

  "Tell me how I find the wormholes!"

  "I don't know," Kelsey said. "Maybe you just call a really big robin and tell it to go fetch itself a little snack."

  "Very funny," Meredith said. "Now give me a straight answer."

  "I'll admit, lam the most brilliant physicist I know, but there are some things that are beyond me."

  "Hypothesize. That's what you physicists are good at, aren't you?"

  Kelsey flopped back down on the couch and tipped her head back. She stared at the ceiling for a long time before she spoke. "Well, I suppose it would help to duplicate the conditions that were present when the original time-travel incident occurred. Go back to the same place, at the same time of the day. Maybe do the same things, wear the same clothes…? I really don't know, Meredith. I'm just guessing."

  "An educated guess is better than nothing," Meredith murmured. "I'll have to be satisfied with that much for now."

  "So, are you planning a little trip back in time?" Kelsey teased. "Maybe you could dig up a few good sources and bring them back for posterity's sake? Just be careful, though," she warned.

  "Of what?"

  "Of changing the course of history," Kelsey said. "It could cause a lot of problems. Hey, while you're there, you can bring me back one of those romance-novel heroes, the guys in the tight britches and the lacy-" Kelsey stopped short, her eyes widening.

  Meredith tried to contain the blush rising in her cheeks, but it was already too late. The hero she was describing sounded an awful lot like Griffin.

  "I-I was joking," Kelsey stammered. "But-but you're not, are you?" Kelsey shivered then rubbed her arms. "Tell me what's going on here, Meredith. You're starting to scare me now."

  Meredith grabbed Kelsey by the arm and pulled her up off the couch. "I'll tell you everything as soon as I have something to tell. Now, you have to go before you miss the last ferry to Hatteras."

  "I was planning to stay overnight," Kelsey said, digging in her heels.

  Meredith grabbed her friend's elbow and maneuvered her toward the door. "You can't. I have important things to do."

  "No. I'm not leaving. If I have to, I'll get a hotel room. We are going to talk about all this. I am going to figure it out."

  Meredith loosened her grip and groaned. "All right. You want the truth? There is a man and if you're here when he gets back, it will spoil all my plans for a night of hot sex. I want you to get into your car and take the next ferry out of here. And I promise, I will call you with all the pertinent details just as soon as I have them. Are you satisfied?"

  Kelsey smiled smugly. "I knew it. I knew it all the time. You can't hide anything from me, Meredith. This is wonderful," she said, pulling open the door. "This is just what you need. So, is this man good in bed?"

  Meredith gently pushed her out the door. "I don't know yet," she replied. Though she certainly hoped he might be around long enough for her to find out.

  "Well, as soon as you do, you have to call and tell me. Promise you'll call?"

  "I promise," Meredith said, leaning against the edge of the door. She paused, then reached out and hugged her friend. "Thanks for coming, Kels."

  "No problem," Kelsey said with a grin. With that, she turned and headed toward her car, giving Meredith a little wave before she hopped inside and backed out onto the road.

  Meredith closed the door and leaned against it, slowly letting out a tightly held breath. If Kelsey was right, then maybe there was a way to return Griffin to his own time. She had a good idea of how he'd gotten here in the first place. But the historian in her also wanted to know why.

  Why had Griffin ended up here, in this time? Somehow, the notion that she had something to do with it was hard to deny. This whole affair wasn't just some cosmic mistake. After all, she was writing a book on Blackbeard and he knew the pirate personally. What more could she ask for in a research source? And then, there was her pirate fantasy.

  But that couldn't be all there was to it. There had to be a more logical reason that fate had sent him here. Meredith pinched her eyes shut and searched her mind for an answer. If he wasn't here for her benefit, then maybe he had been sent for his. Was she supposed to help him in some way? Was there something she knew that he didn't? Or was she meant to prevent his participation in the events she had studied so closely?

  Kelsey's warning about changing the course of history drifted through her mind. Exactly what did her friend mean by a lot of problems? And how could Meredith know whether her decisions would alter the past? She'd probably managed to lure a man right out of his century into hers, leaving a huge void where he'd once been. But then again, maybe sending him back would cause a problem.

  Meredith groaned and rubbed her eyes with her fingertips. This was exactly why she was a historian instead of a scientist. She found no excitement in pondering a paradox like time travel. In fact, the whole subject was starting to give her a migraine.

  Griffin stared up at the garishly painted sign. The familiar image of a pirate in a tricorn and eye patch, with a dagger clutched between his teeth, looked down on him- the same picture he had on his underwear. Loud music, hypnotically rhythmic, pulsed through the screen door of the weathered waterfront building. A jumble of voices could be heard from the veranda behind the tavern as patrons leaned against a railing and stared out at the setting sun. The Pirate's Cove was a popular place, a place where he might be able to disappear into a crowd and enjoy a tankard or two.

  Griffin pulled the screen door open and stepped inside. To his relief, only a few patrons noticed his arrival and they went back to their conversation after turning a brief glance in his direction. He spotted an empty stool in a dark corner at the end of the bar and headed toward it. His gaze was caught by row upon row of colorful glass bottles that lined the wall behind the bar and he cursed his naiveté.

  Ordering a drink might be more complicated that he'd imagined. For all he knew, asking for an ale might mark him as an outsider and provoke questions he was not prepared to answer. Merrie would not appreciate that. She'd warned him what people might say if the truth were known. His voyage in time was not an everyday occurrence and if the townsfolk knew, they might think both of them had lost their minds.

  Griffin couldn't fathom how this could be so, considering Merrie had told him he could wear a dress down Main Street without causing a stir. He smiled to himself. What would he have done without Merrie to help him navigate through the treacherous shoals of the twentieth century?

  Over the past few days, he'd come to trust her, to depend on her for his very existence. If only there was a way to repay her for her kindness and understanding. But he possessed nothing more than the clothes she'd bought him and the pocketful of money she'd lent him. She deserved so much more.

  His mind drifted to an image of her, standing beside him at the water's edge, the salt breeze blowing through her short-cropped hair, like a needle on a compas
s, his thoughts always returned to her. She was his North Star, his lantern in the fog, and try as he might, he couldn't deny the attraction he felt toward her.

  She was nothing like the women he had known in his life. Merrie possessed an inner strength, as if she knew exactly who she was and what she was about. And she was clever, maybe even in possession of a brilliant mind, if all those books she studied were any proof.

  But it was not her mind that drove him to distraction. It was that body of hers, so soft and slender. He'd thought himself immune to those feelings, his heart hardened into stone by the losses in his life. But like a sculptor with a sharp chisel, Merrie had begun to chip away at his defenses with her gentle touch, her sweet kindness, stirring a desire he'd thought completely dead. To his surprise, his soul had responded with a buoyancy, a resiliency he thought he'd lost.

  Griffin took a deep breath and slipped onto an empty stool at the bar. Most of the patrons had a small mug of amber-colored liquid that didn't resemble the nut-brown brew he was used to. And there was not a hogshead to be seen anywhere. The proprietor approached, a huge hulk of a man with a white apron tied around his considerable girth.

  "What can I get you?" he asked, his voice gruff but friendly.

  Griffin stared at the tavern keeper, suddenly unsure of what to say. "What might you have?" he countered smoothly.

  The man slapped a folded handbill down on the bar and Griffin stared at it with relief- A long bill of fare was exactly what he needed to steer his way through this strange place. Yet he saw nothing familiar-no ale or posset or metheglin, not even a mention of cider. He scanned the list of strange names until the familiar words rum and punchcaught his eye.

  "I will have this," he said, pointing to the middle of the list.

  The man's eyebrows shot up, but he didn't speak. "Anne Bonny's Grog? You sure you want that?"

  Griffin nodded. He pulled out his money and placed it on the bar, but the man ignored it.