Winds of Change (Empires Lost Book 2)

by Charles S. Jackson

  “I’ve tried to hide it as best I could but I suspect you’ve seen me talking to myself sometimes when I’ve thought no one was watching?”

  “Yes…”

  “They talk to me… all the ‘Brandises’ – I don’t know how to say it any other way – that have gone before me.”

  “’They ‘talk’ to you…?”

  “Maybe they’re past versions of me connecting from those other, alternate realities I said were possible earlier… maybe they’re just the thoughts of my own sub-conscious that my mind has created using a different way of communicating them to me… maybe it’s no more than a form of low-level insanity brought on by having lived two hundred times longer than any man has a right to… what they actually are I don’t know, but up until last night I’ve spent almost my entire long life in the company of voices in my own head, all of them – when they’re not giving me grief – working to help guide my actions and advise me on what to do next. He gave a faint chuckle. “I asked them too, and none of those useless bastards knew which was the truth either… go figure!

  “Whatever the cause, there have been times I don’t think I could’ve survived without their company – something that makes me suspect they are just a figment of my own imagination, developed as a self defence mechanism to stop me going completely crazy.” He gave a vague shrug of resignation and acceptance. “If they are a ‘safety valve’ created by my own mind, then they’re created in a part of the brain that’s common to everyone ‘cause I know for a fact that at least two or three others who’ve come back from the future the same as me are also hearing voices in one form or another.”

  “Saint Joan also heard voices…” Briony observed quietly, and Brandis finally understood why she seemed to be accepting everything he was saying so readily.

  “Whoa – hold on there…! I admit I’ve had a long association with the Vatican and the Catholic Church in general, but I’m a long way from being beatified just yet, believe me,” he countered quickly, recognising she was referring to Joan of Arc and not wanting her to get any wrong ideas. “I may not know what the voices are after all these years but I can tell you with certainty that they’re definitely not the product of divine inspiration. Father Pat – admittedly at the request of the Vatican itself – has been gracious enough to allow me to hang about here while I kept an eye on you and your mother, but I know he never liked me wearing the robes when he knew damn well I wasn’t really part of The Church. I used to tell your mum all the time not to call me ‘Father’ and there was good reason for that: I’m about as far away from a ‘man of the cloth’ as you’re likely to get.”

  “Isaiah Chapter Forty-Five, Verse Fifteen: ‘Verily you are a God that hides yourself, O God of Israel, the Saviour’.” Her vague smile was almost serene as she quoted scripture. “Father Pat always said the lord often worked in mysterious ways… why should you be any different…?”

  “Oy…!” Brandis muttered in mild exasperation, rubbing at his eyes beneath the grubby bandage. “Look, I may not be the absolute last bugger any self-respecting, benevolent deity might choose to work through in a time of need but I’d be well down the bloody list…” as he spoke he realised that the words were having no effect whatsoever “…but you’re not going to take a scrap of notice of what I’m saying, are you?”

  For some reason, he realised it had become very important that his actions not be considered part of anyone’s greater plan… at least, of any plan other than the one he knew that he was working to. The idea of allowing Briony to believe God was working through him – for good or otherwise – seemed incredibly dishonest in that moment. He also realised however that it was quite possible Briony needed to believe exactly that. Her entire world had been shattered and left crumbling around her, and if one looked at it a certain way, all she now had left was her faith. Taking that from her as well just to prove some meaningless, philosophical point seemed just as cruel as consciously misleading her into believing the opposite might’ve been true.

  “All right, all right…” he said finally, releasing a long, tired sigh and raising a hand in recognition of defeat. “I’m not going to argue with you. I don’t agree with you, but I’m not going to fight you on it.”

  “You must know I saw the pictures – the ‘photos’ you mentioned…” she added, as if that alone was explanation enough.

  “Photos…?” It took a few seconds before Brandis understood what she meant. “Oh, those photos…” he sounded almost sheepish now as he recognised that the images she’d seen might make any denial seem foolish.

  “It is him, isn’t it?”

  “Well, that depends very much on who you think ‘he’ is,” Brandis countered, not quite ready to give a definitive answer. “If you’re asking me if some of the photos I have on that computer are of a man named Jesus Christ, born in Jerusalem on the Twenty-Fifth of December of – quite ironically – the year Six BC… then yes, I have photographs of that man on my hard drive... if you’re asking whether that same man was the Son of God, then I can say with all honesty that to this day I have no bloody idea whether or not that’s really true.”

  “But… but…” she went on excitedly, everything she knew and believed in swirling about within her own mind “Surely you saw the miracles…? The Sermon on the Mount… the loaves and fishes… cleansing the lepers, and casting out a demon at Gerasenes…?”

  “Well, some of that’s been exaggerated or misrepresented over the years and some of it hasn’t…” Brandis answered evenly, willing to give a little ground. “I don’t deny I saw the man involved in some very weird shit while I was there, some of which even I couldn’t explain with the benefit of 21st Century knowledge, but whether I could actually put that down to divine intervention is another thing altogether.” He drew a deep breath as he considered memories long past that he’d not thought of in many years.

  “After two thousand years roaming this Earth, I’ve seen a lot of strange and unusual things that defy explanation, so my own standards regarding what one could classify as miraculous in the literal sense have probably been skewed somewhat.” He shrugged. “Whatever he might or might not have been, he was a fine man who wanted only the best for his own people and everyone else. In that sense he was at least two thousand years ahead of his time. He made a lot of enemies as a result and he damn sure paid for it with his life…”

  He instinctively wanted to add ‘poor bastard’ to the end of that sentence, but somehow felt it inappropriate and withheld the remark. Lost in in his own memories, he’d been staring unfocussed into the middle distance the whole time. As he returned to the present and glanced across the table, he realized that Briony was completely asleep, head supported by one hand above a wavering elbow on the table top. As much as she’d been desperate to hear more, the need for sleep had finally broken through her resistance.

  Without another word, he rose and moved around the table, lifting her from her chair as gently as he could and carried her through the house to her own room, where he laid her down on the bed and drew some blankets across her body. She stirred once, moaning softly before opening her eyes just barely and using every last ounce of her energy to stare up at him once more.

  “The ‘new’ you swears too much, Uncle James,” she said simply, only half-conscious, her voice thick with sleep. “I liked the old you… he was… nice…” Her words faded into nothingness as she rolled over into a foetal position and disappeared into her own dreams. Reaching down to brush the hair from her face, Brandis smiled sadly in agreement before turning and leaving the room, closing the door softly behind him.

  Back in his own room, he fought his own exhaustion as he took the time to shut down the laptop that was still running at his table, moving the mouse to cancel the screensaver and finding himself presented with a single, open photo in the middle of the screen. He couldn’t remember where it had been taken – the small water well and the hard-packed earth of the surrounding desert could’ve been any scene from biblical Palestine, bu
t there was no mistaking in the face of the bearded, long-haired man at the centre of the picture, albeit a man with olive-tones common to someone native to that region rather than the more usual pale skin depicted in so many historical or religious icons.

  Gathered about the well with three or four others – he could remember all their names quite clearly – Christ’s charismatic presence came through clearly even in the grainy photo he’d had his companion take secretly (it was one of the very few in his collection he hadn’t taken himself). Brandis took a moment to stare at the image before closing it, indulging in a memory of pleasant times before the young man’s fame had spread and history had taken its course. The picture was rare for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that he was actually in it. He looked completely different of course. His long beard and hair – not unlike the facial hair worn by most of the men around him – helped him to fit into the group, but there was something about the wild eyes that nevertheless set him apart from the others in his own mind.

  It was a few more seconds before he recalled what he was actually doing in that photo, and he gave an grimace as he wondered at what had possessed him to ‘photo bomb’ Jesus Christ by making a heavy metal ‘Horns of the Devil’ sign behind the man’s head.

  “Not exactly my finest work…” he muttered in mild embarrassment, closing the image finally and shutting the computer down “…but I was still just a ‘young’ idiot of sixty or seventy then…” He hid the laptop away within his steamer trunk once more and closed the secret panel before slumping down into his own bed and dragging a blanket half over his shoulders. “I guess that’s what you lot would say… probably something like it… right?”

  Again he was met with complete and total silence, but this time he was far too tired to care all that much. He too was asleep within moments, finally allowing himself the luxury of a few hours rest and oblivion that was free from the events of the night before and of the days to come.

  It was well into the afternoon by the time Briony awoke, head still thick and aching from insufficient sleep. Shafts of sunlight were streaming into the room between the mostly-closed curtains, and the sounds of activity elsewhere in the house could be heard faintly beyond the closed bedroom door. She pulled a disapproving face as she stared into the mirror over the dresser. Her hair was wild and unkempt and her eyes, dark and sunken from lack of rest, still displayed a faint redness from the incessant crying of the days before.

  “No more tears now,” she said valiantly to herself, as if that in itself was enough said.

  It was quite evident she needed a long, hot bath and a significant amount of time spent cleaning herself up after the last few days in self-imposed exile, but that would have to wait a while yet. She still had questions that required answers – answers that only one person could have any hope of providing. Changing out of the clothes she’d been wearing from the night and day before, she was at least able to change quickly in a clean dress and undergarments before giving her hair enough of a perfunctory brushing to at least give it some semblance of once more being under control. With all that done, Briony Morris ventured out of her room and into a world that was quite different to the one she’d known the day before.

  Her first port of call was Brandis’ room – the next door on the right along the hallway at the rear of the house – but she found that it empty. Her breath caught in a gasp a second or two later as she realised that ‘empty’ truly was the word to describe it: not only was no one there, but the steamer trunk was also gone along with every other personal item Brandis had ever kept within.

  Still maintain her determination not to cry, she raced through the house to the front door, ignoring Mrs Tuttle and Father O’Donnell on her way past, and burst out into the warm, bright sunshine of an October afternoon to find Brandis making no small job of wrestling his steamer trunk into the back seat of the Ford V8, parked on the street out front of the house.

  “You’re leaving...?” She demanded plaintively as she strode quickly across the grass toward him. “After everything that’s happened, you’re still leaving...?” He stopped what he was doing and attempted to turn in her direction, caught at a point of teetering awkwardness with the trunk neither properly in nor out of the vehicle. “Were you even going to bother to say goodbye?”

  “I didn’t want to wake you yet...” he explained with exertion in his tone, too distracted by the need to maintain his hold on the trunk to give the reply too much consideration. “I was going to wait until you got up before I left.” His ‘old’ voice was back now – that distinctively undefinable amalgam of European accents that she’s known for so many years. “Just give me a moment to get this thing in and I’ll be able to talk to you properly...”

  Without waiting for a reply, he turned his back to her and gave out several grunts as he gave one last twist and push and the trunk finally slid clumsily into the rear seat on the passenger side. Breathing heavily, he was at least then able to turn around and face her completely for the first time. At that moment she also realised that he now seemed shorter again and more hunched over, as if his return to the ‘character’ that was Brandis had affected a physical change of height.

  “Even before all this happened, you knew I had to leave at some point…” he began, not really expecting to get anywhere with that line of conversation.

  “How can you go now…? You keep saying you care about me and how you want to make sure I’m all right, and yet you’re leaving now…?” Briony was still fighting back the tears but anyone could see the look of abandonment on her face as she stood there before him on the side of the street. Her stance was one of confidence and determination – hands on hips, feet planted firmly apart as she stared him down – and on the surface he could see the strong, proud, independent young woman he knew she was destined to become.

  But right at that moment, he also knew that in spite of all the bravado, she was still just that fourteen-year-old girl he’d watched grow up, albeit at times from afar when other business had drawn him away. He’d never had any children of his own, but Brandis had nevertheless once known the joy of seeing someone he loved grow and flourish.

  “Come on…” he said softly, filled with a terrible sorrow as he saw the pain in her eyes and voice and he turned to open the car’s front passenger door. “Have a seat… I’ve got a goodbye present for you.”

  She stood for a moment, unwilling to give in as if it might be seen as acceptance of his leaving. He left the door wide open, moving around to the driver’s side and staring at her across the top of the Ford’s roof. With a crooked half-smile and a cock of his head toward the open doorway, he slid in behind the steering wheel and began fishing about inside one of the pockets of a folded trench coat lying in the middle of the front bench seat.

  Left without a target for her accusing glare, Briony remained where she was, fully intending not to give an inch. As time passed however, she began to feel progressively less angry and increasingly more foolish, and after a few more moments she finally gave in and slid into the passenger seat beside him with an exasperated sigh.

  “I don’t want a goodbye present!” She growled sullenly. “I don’t want you to go at all…!”

  “I don’t want to go either…” Brandis answered honestly, heartbreak in his own eyes now as he allowed the thought of never seeing her again to finally sink in “…but I must go. This is where our journey together ends and another one begins.”

  “But you’re all I have now. If you leave, who’s going to look after me?” A single tear forced its way past her defences and trickled down her cheek. “Who’s going to be my Jean Valjean?”

  “Your saviour will come, I promise you,” he countered quickly, fighting his own emotions after that last remark, “and sooner than you think. There’s some rough road ahead yet – I’ll not lie about that – but I give you my word: by the end of next week, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. I won’t be silly and say you’ll have forgotten all about me, but
I guarantee you that you’ll be worrying about ‘yours truly’ an awful lot less.” He managed a thin smile that was almost reassuring. “…And, since it wasn’t me who brought up the Les Mis reference…”

  It was at that moment that Briony realised for the first time since entering the vehicle that he’d all the while been holding some kind of device in one hand, mostly hidden and resting on the seat beside his leg. He lifted it now and passed it across as she gingerly accepted it with some trepidation.

  She turned it over between her dark, slender fingers. It appeared to be a frame of brushed stainless steel sandwiched between two dark, almost featureless plates of glossy black glass. Thin and flat, it measured approximately 115cm x 60cm and was less than a centimetre thick, yet it felt quite heavy and solidly-made for all that. One black face was unmarked save for a single large push-button set quite close to one end and a small, narrow slot at the other.

  As she turned it over once more, she found a tiny circle of clear glass in one top corner, a stylised silvery depiction of a once-bitten apple in the centre and the word ‘iPhone’ in large letters toward the bottom, set above much smaller print that included a range of incomprehensible numbers and words.

  “What is it?” She asked slowly, having no clue as to its purpose yet somehow entranced by it all the same.

  “My dear, as the name on the back suggests, that is an Apple iPhone… an iPhone-4 to be exact.”

  “This is a telephone…? Where are the wires? How do you even fit a phone into this?”

  “Welcome to the future, young miss…” he gave her a genuine grin then. “That is an example of 21st Century technology right there that had started to sweep the Western World by storm by the time I left it at the end of Two Thousand and Ten. They call them ‘Smartphones’ and they’re actually a lot more like tiny little computers than can make phone calls rather than the other way around. Press the button on the front there and see what happens…”