He didn’t have to destroy the Fountain of Youth. If he controlled its power instead of Reverend Crane, then he could create a paradise of learning and peace. He could create the sort of place where knowledge held sway over ignorance and science over blind devotion. Like the natives, he would use the fountain’s power only when someone became too old or sick to go on. He would never conduct purges like Reverend Crane.
Even as he thought all this, he knew it couldn’t work. Someone else—Mr. Pendleton for one—would try to take control of the fountain for his own ends, to serve his own dream. So much power didn’t belong in the hands of men. It must be destroyed.
With his mind made up, Wendell proceeded up the path to the cave. He stopped just inside the cave when he saw the buckets lined up around the fountain. These were not native items, but items taken from the ship. Someone else had found the Fountain of Youth and taken its water. I’m too late, he thought.
Before he could turn around, someone grabbed his shoulder and slammed him into a wall. The supplies fell from his hands, scattering across the cave floor. Blood dripped into Wendell’s eyes, clouding his vision as the hand seized him by the shirt collar and lifted him into the air. He blinked enough blood away to make out Pryde’s face.
“Looks like I caught the stowaway,” Pryde said.
“How did you find this place?” Wendell asked.
“You led us right here.”
“Me? I didn’t. I couldn’t have.”
“I’ll let the reverend explain it. I’m sure he’ll think of something to do with you.” Pryde took out his knife, holding it up to Wendell’s face. “Not as much fun as what I’d do with you, I’m sure.”
He tied Wendell up with the string Wendell intended to use as fuses for his explosives and dumped him into a corner. As Wendell struggled to free himself, Pryde filled the buckets with glowing water. How could I have led them here? Wendell wondered. He had made sure to check behind him each time. He never saw Reverend Crane or Pryde. How could they have followed him? I was careful, he thought.
The answer came when Molly ran into the cave, her baggy clothes flapping like flags. “You shouldn’t be here,” she said to him. “This isn’t any place at all for a stowaway. This is Reverend Crane’s and my special place. We’re going to rid this place of all the savages and heathens and then the reverend and I can be together forever.”
“Molly, he’s going to murder people. You can’t let this happen. Untie me and we’ll stop them,” Wendell said.
“Reverend Crane wouldn’t hurt anyone. Not anyone who didn’t deserve it. He’s a wonderful man. You’re just a grubby old stowaway,” Molly said. She pranced towards the entrance to the cave, throwing herself against Reverend Crane. He kissed her on the cheek, causing her face to turn red.
“How good of you to join us,” Reverend Crane said. “You’re just in time to serve as our test subject.”
“What? No, you can’t. This isn’t right. You must realize that,” Wendell said. He thrashed against his bonds, but Pryde had tied them well enough to hold.
“I am doing the Lord’s work,” Reverend Crane said. “He has shown me the device by which I can create his holy kingdom on earth. With this water my kingdom will last until His return, when I will receive my reward for doing His work.”
“Murder is not the Lord’s work,” Wendell said.
“Sacrifices must be made for the greater good. If Mr. Gooddell and a few savages must perish to achieve His goal, so be it.”
“Mr. Gooddell?” Wendell thought of Prudence grieving her fallen husband. “You can’t kill them. They haven’t done anything wrong.”
“They are standing in the way of my divine imperative,” Reverend Crane said. “As are you, but that will soon be remedied.” He took one of the buckets Pryde had filled, dipping a ladle into the water. Wendell squirmed against his bonds, but could do nothing as Reverend Crane dumped the ladle over his head. The string holding him loosened so that he could free his hands. He tried to get up, but Reverend Crane shoved him back and doused him with another ladleful of water.
“Oh, he looks so adorable,” Molly said. “Isn’t he the most darling little boy you’ve ever seen?”
Wendell raised his arms to find his arms took up only half the sleeves. Reverend Crane stood over him like a giant and even Molly now looked down on him. Wendell toddled towards the cave entrance on his tiny legs, but Reverend Crane yanked him back. “I’m afraid you can’t leave yet, my child. Not until Mr. Pryde and I have completed our task. Molly, watch our little stowaway and make sure he does not escape.”
“Can’t I go with you, Reverend? I promise I won’t get in the way. I want to help you cleanse this place of the heathens and savages. Please,” Molly said.
He knelt down to look Molly in the eyes and brushed hair away from her face. “I need you to stay here and make sure no one else finds the fountain. It’s a very important job and that’s why I’m leaving it to you, my love.”
“If it’s that important, I’ll stay here.”
“Very good. We will return soon and then we will be able to be together forever.” The reverend kissed Molly on the lips, a brief, dry kiss that nonetheless had her on the verge of fainting. Then the reverend and Pryde took their buckets of water and left the cave.
“Molly, you can’t let them do this,” Wendell said. “They’re going to kill Mr. Gooddell and the others. Do you want that on your conscience?”
“I feel bad for Mr. Gooddell because he is a nice man, but what Reverend Crane is doing is important. He’s going to make a heaven right here where no one will ever grow old or sick and everyone will worship God and no one will be able to keep us apart ever again.”
“He doesn’t love you,” Wendell said. “He’s using you for his own purposes.”
“He does so love me. He told me himself. He said I’m the prettiest girl on this whole island and the one he wants to spend eternity with.”
“He only said that to get you to help him. He’s going to use your love to keep you in his power for the next three hundred years and when you finally do rise against him, he erases your memory and makes you a girl again.”
“He wouldn’t do that to me. How could you know?”
“I’ve come here from the future. I know what he’s going to do. Please, Molly, we have to stop him now or he’ll keep us all as his slaves for over three hundred years.”
“Let’s do something about those clothes,” Molly said. She took Wendell by the arm. He tried to shake her off, but couldn’t in his weakened state. From a pocket of her dress she produced a pair of scissors. “I thought I would use these to alter my dress, but I suppose we ought to do yours first so you aren’t tripping all over your pant legs.”
“I don’t care,” Wendell said. “Molly, you have to stop Reverend Crane. Go to the camp and warn the elders. It might not be too late to save Mr. Gooddell.”
“Hold out your arms,” she said. She used the scissors to cut off the empty halves of his sleeves. “I’m not sure what we can do about these pants. It’s too bad the missus isn’t here. She knows a lot more about sewing than I do. My Aunt Clara always told me I had the hands of a—”
“Mr. Gooddell is going to die! Don’t you even care?”
“You really are an ill-tempered little boy. I do care about Mr. Gooddell. He’s been like a father to me these last five years, but there’s nothing I can do for him now. As the reverend says, we have to make sacrifices. I hate to sacrifice Mr. Gooddell because I know it will upset the missus terribly, but it must be done for the greater good. Do you understand?”
“Nothing good ever comes out of murder,” Wendell said.
“It’s not murder. It’s really his own fault. If he’d listened to the reverend like he ought to, then everything would have been fine. He has no one to blame but himself now.” She cut the excess from his pants and then used some of the string to cinch the pants to his narrow waist. When she finished, she pinched his cheek again. “You are so cute. I hope
the reverend and I can have a bunch just like you, only with a better attitude. Although maybe you’ll sweeten up after a few days. I know this must be a shock to go from a grown-up to a little boy. It was a terrible shock for me too. I’m still not used to it. When I walk around, sometimes I still think I have my grown-up legs. I tripped a few times on the way here. But after a while I’ll get used to it and I’m sure you will too. Why, we look so much alike we could pretend to be brother and sister. I always wanted a baby brother, but Mama said we couldn’t afford to have any other children and then the fever took them—”
Wendell hit her in the face as hard as he could. She yelped with pain, but didn’t so much as stumble back a step. She grabbed him by the ear and dragged him over to a corner. “I want you to sit right here facing the wall and think about what you did. You can’t go around hitting people. It’s not polite.”
“Molly, you have to listen to me—”
She pushed him against the wall. “You sit right there and don’t make a sound. Reverend Crane said to watch you and that’s what I’m going to do.”
Wendell squatted in the corner, facing the wall. Tears came to his eyes at the thought of his failure. Not only had he not denied the fountain to Reverend Crane, his actions had led the reverend here. It’s my fault, he thought.
“We shouldn’t be up here,” he says.
Fiona kisses him on the lips, her dark hair falling all around him like a veil. “You worry too much,” she says. “Daddy is out with the flock. He won’t be back until supper. And Mum is visiting Mrs. McCracken. No one will see us.”
Wendell looks over the edge of the hayloft at the stone floor below. “That’s not what I meant. I meant we’re awful high up. If we fall—”
“I know what I’m doing,” she says.
“How many boys have you brought up here?”
“Just Angus Macleod. We were only eight at the time and he’s since moved on to Glasgow. He wasn’t anywhere near as handsome as you, though.”
“You didn’t think that at first,” Wendell says. “I think your first words were, ‘He smells bloody awful.’”
“You did smell bloody awful.”
“I had been lying in a ditch.”
“There you are. To be honest, at first I thought Mum was bringing me a little sister with all that hair of yours. But I must say you cleaned up very nice.”
“Thank you, I suppose.” He kisses her and runs his hand through her hair. These last two months with Fiona have given him a renewed passion for life. The first time he saw her standing in the doorway of the Connolly’s house he fell in love with her. Her lithe, sprite-like body with the sparkling green eyes enchanted him. He thought she must be younger than him, but he found out she was fourteen. She knew all too well the ridicule and patronizing from people mistaking her for a much younger girl.
He didn’t have the courage to approach her. Then one day when her parents were both out, she ambushed Wendell in the barn and kissed him. She disappeared a moment later so that as he sat there, he wondered if he had dreamed the whole thing. Only later did she creep into his bedroom to apologize. “I’m sorry about kissing you in the barn. I’ve been wanting to kiss you for so long now, I had to do it.”
Thus began their secret meetings wherever and whenever they could find the opportunity. Wendell wishes they could tell Fiona’s parents, but she insists they’ll throw him out if they find out. “They’re very protective,” Fiona said once. “Mum wanted to put me in a convent until she realized I wasn’t nun material a couple years ago. Now she wants me to find a proper husband. Proper meaning someone with money.”
“Not someone like me, in other words.” He kisses her again to ease the pain of this memory. He can never possess her except in these brief tumbles in the hay. In years or perhaps even months her parents will find her a suitable husband and he’ll lose her forever. “I love you,” he says.
“Wendell, don’t,” she says. “You know we can’t.”
“Why not? We can run away from here.”
“I couldn’t do that to Mum and Daddy.”
“You’d rather marry someone you don’t love than hurt their feelings?” he said. He rolled her off him onto a bed of hay.
She starts to cry. “That’s not fair. I don’t want to lose them. I don’t want to lose you either. Can’t we just enjoy right now and let the future alone?”
He nods and takes her back in his arms. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. We don’t have to decide anything.”
They kiss again and then her hands reach for the buttons of his shirt. He fumbles with the ties of her dress to get it off. “Are you sure?” he asks.
“More sure than anything in my life,” she says.
He finally gets the dress off her and for the first time sees her tiny breasts, not much more than nubs of flesh. They are still the most beautiful he’s ever seen. He puts a nipple in his mouth. She moans with pleasure and then screams with terror. She rolls off him, burying herself in the hay.
“What in God’s name are you doing up here?” her father shouts. “You filthy swine. My wife picks you up out of a ditch, feeds you, clothes you, treats you like her own and you try to defile my daughter? I’ll split you from end to end.”
He grabs a pitchfork and charges up the hayloft ladder before Wendell can even put on his shirt. Wendell scurries into a corner, putting up his hands. “You don’t understand,” Wendell says. “We love each other.”
“You’ll not lay a hand on my daughter again,” her father says. “I’ll make certain of that.”
Wendell can do nothing, but curl into a fetal position and wait for the pitchfork to run him through. “Daddy, don’t! I love him!” Fiona screams.
“You stay out of this. Go down and wait for me.”
“No. I won’t let you hurt him.” She positions herself between Wendell and her father.
“Get out of the way, Fiona. This boy has bewitched you. I’ll not have my daughter marrying one like him.”
“We love each other. Can’t you understand that?”
“I’m warning you one final time to get out of the way.” He shoves her aside and then reaches back to jab the pitchfork into Wendell’s chest. He sees her out of the corner of his eye and wants to shout a warning, but no sound will come from his throat. She grabs the pitchfork with both ends. Her father gives the weapon a furious shake that sends her reeling.
She’s suspended in the air for a moment, her eyes meeting Wendell’s and then she plunges to the ground, her scream echoing through the barn. Wendell climbs down the ladder to kneel at her side. He takes her hand and says, “You’re going to be all right. We’ll find a doctor.”
“Let’s just enjoy this moment,” she says, her face breaking into a smile that pains him more than anything in his life. He kisses her on the lips one final time before her eyes close forever and her limp hand drops to the floor.
“You killed her!” her father screams. “You killed her, you no good bastard!”
Wendell runs. Once more on the run he doesn’t stop until he’s reached the safety of a forest. Only then does he allow himself to grieve for the one he loved and couldn’t save.
“Have you learned your lesson yet?” Molly asked. Wendell didn’t say anything. He had failed Prudence just as he had failed Fiona. Her husband would soon be dead and not much later Reverend Crane would turn the water against all the settlers, including Prudence.
No, he could still save her. If he hurried, he might get to the encampment in time to warn them. It was a slim chance, but he had to cling to any chance at all. First, he needed to get past Molly.
She patted his head. “If you promise to behave you can come out of the corner.”
He turned around and threw his arms around her legs. “I promise I’ll be good, Mama Molly,” he said.
“That’s my boy. Now let’s go outside and get some fresh air,” she said. She took a step and toppled to the ground, the string holding Wendell’s pants up cinched around her feet.
“What’s this? What are you doing?”
“I’m getting out of here, Mama,” he said. He used the pants to bind her hands and then left her on the cave floor. Then he ran as fast as his legs could carry him through the forest and his one last chance to save the woman he loved.
Chapter 25: Memories
Molly stood at the edge of the cliff with Joey digging his fingers into her arm. At each gust of wind, he flinched in fear of being blown into the sea below. “Can’t we go back?” he said.
“Not yet,” Molly said. She pointed to the waves pounding against the shore. “Doesn’t this remind you of something?”
“No,” he said in a whimper. “Should it?”
“Of course. You grew up by the ocean in a town called Seabrooke. Do you remember?” He shook his head. She patted him on the back. “It’s all right. It will come to you.”
She led him away from the cliff. Two days since leaving the cabin and still Joey hadn’t remembered anything from his previous life. Molly didn’t know what she could do. A trip to Seabrooke might stir his memories, but she couldn’t risk letting anyone recognize him or else the secrets of Eternity would be revealed. There has to be something I can do, she thought.
As they walked through the forest, Joey’s nose began to run again. He hadn’t experienced another sneezing fit like back at the cabin, but he had to blow his nose about every three minutes. Molly had been forced to cut up an old shirt for him to use as makeshift handkerchiefs. He took one from his pocket and stopped to blow his nose, the sound like a trumpet. His knees buckled from the force so that she had to steady him.
“What’s Seabrooke like?” he asked. “Is it like Eternity?”
“Oh no, it’s much bigger than Eternity and many more people live there,” Molly said. “They live in great big houses and there are all kinds of different stores where people can buy things. The children there don’t have to do chores like here. They go to schools to learn about things like math and science.”
“And I lived there with Mommy?”
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