by Claire Davon
Very soon they were at Akrotiri. They parked in the parking lot on the edge of the village, and walked the short distance to the excavation, sharing their walk with tourists, and locals on bicycles. Below them she saw the other side of the island, and a sign informed them that Red Beach was nearby. It was ridiculous to have avoided this and Fiona vowed she would go and check out the aforementioned Red Beach soon.
In the distance she could see glimpses of the red rock face and tumbled boulders to the beach below, far different from the layered strata on their side of the island. It glowed in a blood red, and Fiona shivered. The blue of the Aegean was a stark contrast to the rocks.
We could go down there, she thought. It looked pretty. We could bypass the Akrotiri ruins and explore Red Beach instead. That would be fun.
She looked back at Sonder, who was watching her with a look of concern.
“Let’s go,” Fiona said, holding out her hand to him. With dismay she noticed it was shaking slightly. He took it, sliding his own over hers and pulling her to him.
“Are you okay?” he asked, grazing a kiss over the top of her head. He wasn’t the most demonstrative person in public and this touch of PDA made her warm inside.
“I…it’s strange,” she said, knowing she wasn’t making sense but helpless to stop the feeling. “They’re just ruins but…oh I’m being ridiculous. Let’s go.”
#
The town of Akrotiri had been buried by the explosive volcano blast and preserved until recently, when it was discovered under multiple layers of dirt and excavation had begun. It was a remarkable time capsule of a village stopped in its tracks by the force of the natural disaster. Every day the diggers found something new. Part of the site was open to the public to view the spectacular devastation. Ruined buildings lay half excavated, and pottery and the remnants of everyday life were still being discovered. This allowed the archaeologists, as well as the casual visitor, a glimpse into how life had been in the ancient Minoan village.
They made their way through the remains, marveling at the way everything was preserved. At this early hour Fiona and Sonder had much of the site to themselves, except for the workers and a few hardy tourists.
After an hour of wandering, they paused in a room where some frescoes had survived the destruction. Sonder was gazing over the wall at another building. They appeared to be in some sort of town square, judging by the clearing. One fresco caught her attention, and Fiona bent over the guide rope to study it. Painted in gold and blue, as well as a blood red that matched the color of the rocks of Red Beach, this fresco looked like wall ornamentation. It had four flower designs together in alternating colors, surrounded by a rough rectangle in white. Near it was a picture of a woman in green and gold robes, looking like a toga. She was long and tall, with dark hair and a serene expression. Next to her was a man and a woman, similarly garbed. Another fresco showed a series of oared ships in the water, and appeared to be moving from one island to another. The frescos, like most of the ones that had been discovered at the ash covered ruined city of Akrotiri, were well preserved for their age and the destruction they had endured.
Fiona felt a buzzing in her ears and heaviness in her body. She shot a quick glance at Sonder, who seemed absorbed in the low brown walls, over which other buildings could be seen. His eyes kept sweeping the room, landing back on her and then observing the archaeological site as if it would bite him. He was edgy, shifting with impatience and something else, something deeper. He caught her eyes and jerked his head towards the curved, plastered doorway in a clear suggestion they move on.
She raised one heavy hand in a “wait a minute” gesture. Sonder glowered and then folded his arms. He looked as if he wanted to yank her out of there. She thought later he must have suspected something was amiss. It was Sonder who loved history, and lived to explore museums and archaeological digs. She had discovered that he had wanted to become an archaeologist, before he was yanked out of his time by the accident that led him to the Guardians. He still clearly felt that fascination, judging by the time he spent on the Internet immersing himself in the surrounding culture, coupled with the eagerness he had for day trips. When she had suggested jaunts to Mykonos, Rhodes, Chios and other Greek islands he had pounced on the ideas, and had many suggestions of his own for less famous islands. She wasn’t always excited about his choices, but he was hard to resist with his “kid with his first bike” charm.
The fact that he was looking at her with impatience was out of character. Normally he’d be pacing well ahead of her, studying each new artifact with delight. It was Fiona who didn’t have much interest in historical things, which was ironic, given her new role in the world. Sometimes she thought the wrong person had been granted the time travel powers.
A handful of people whirred around them, checking out the ruins with varying degrees of enthusiasm. They dodged the pair, giving Fiona a wide berth, without seeming to be aware they were doing it. She wondered if others could feel the difference in her, the strangeness that set her apart. Aside from Sonder, she didn’t often touch other people. Touching him made up for all the rest, though.
Fiona turned to the fresco of the gold and blue flowers to study it. It was typical of what they’d been seeing in the ruins and she raised an eyebrow, dismissing it. She went to turn away but right then someone bumped her, hard, jolting her off her feet. Without thinking, Fiona reached behind her to stop herself from falling. The thin white rope in front of the fresco did nothing to break her fall and Fiona stumbled into the wall. Her backwards stretched hand fell against the paint.
She felt a jolt and the buzzing got stronger. Something burst through her palm, a feeling of light, of heat and of motion. Words, movement, flowed around her from the wall even as time around her slowed. The sound grew so loud she wanted to clamp her hands over her ears but one hand was still on the painting. She couldn’t see the person who had bumped into her. Sonder came to full attention, and started to move towards her.
Between the span of one heartbeat and the next she was gone from the room, sucked into the absolute blackness that signaled a time and place shift. Fiona shrieked. She’d had no place in her mind, nothing she had fixed on, and no way of knowing where, if anywhere, she was going to be when she emerged. Panic gripped her, and she thought she moved out of fear, but there was no way to gauge anything in the black. She hadn’t shifted, hadn’t called her powers to go through time, and had no idea what had caused her shift. She counted one…two…three, expecting to come out the other side in when and wherever she was going, but she stayed in the dark. She prayed that when she came out the other side she would be somewhere safe, and not in the middle of a rocky mountain or at the bottom of the ocean.
It was long, too long. Even when she had shifted with the older Rogald to the Event, two hundred years in her future time, it had taken a few heartbeats longer than the usual timing. She started to panic and knew she cried out, but there was nothing to carry the sound. Fear gripped her. What if she stayed in this dark forever? What if she were stranded here, caught in the nothingness between time? How long would it take her to die in the infinite blackness?
She tried to focus on something, anything. Maybe if she could gather her thoughts and tugged an image through she could land somewhere. The only picture she pulled in was Akrotiri, the city she had just been yanked from. She hadn’t been at the small archaeological dig long enough to be able to focus it into her mind with clarity, not with the dark pressing on her. She couldn’t get her safe areas of Brazil, London, or even her so-familiar Brookline to surface. All she could bring forth was Akrotiri while she was caught in the blackness.
She hated the dark.
Chapter 4
Fiona tumbled out of the black, landing on something solid with a muted thud. Her body felt rubbery and she had no idea where she was. She blinked in overwhelmingly bright sunshine. After what seemed like an eternity in nothingness, the light was a relief. She raised her hand to shield her eyes from the rays scorching the
m.
She turned, tripped, and fell as her legs gave out underneath her. She felt as if she’d run the Boston marathon, or been hit by sledgehammers. Fiona collapsed to a dirt-packed floor that was solid, and cool to against skin. Gratitude filled her that she hadn’t been stuck in the dark. She had finally come out of the horrid blackness. Wherever and whenever she was, she was back to something familiar. Fiona breathed words of appreciation that she had landed on dirt and rock. She wasn’t in the middle of a nuclear reactor, or at the Marianas trench, or buried under a mountain.
She’d asked Sonder what happened when you jumped without a fixed place in your mind. After he’d reminded her that she was the only one who could time shift without equipment he went somber, just shaking his head. It wasn’t good, he’d told her, but didn’t elaborate. Of course that left her fertile imagination to conjure up all sorts of horrible images. All of those images had gone through her mind as she hung in the blackness, and she’d taken them out for a test drive.
Fiona looked around, trying to orient herself. She was in a room of some sort. Curtains, waving in the breeze, were revealing and then concealing arched window openings. There was something strange about the hollows, but she couldn’t identify what was bothering her. After a moment, Fiona realized what it was. There was no glass filling the gaps, and no frame to indicate that glass had ever been there. Scents of sea salt, fish, and incense assaulted her nostrils, and Fiona sneezed at the strong odors.
She had no idea when or where she was, but it was nowhere familiar.
Fiona struggled to her feet, spots dancing in front of her eyes as she rose. She wanted to run somewhere, anywhere, panic gripping her with the desire to flee from this unfamiliar room. She took a deep breath, forcing herself to calm down, even while her heart was beating a fast pitter pat against her chest. Running got her into trouble more often than it helped. Wherever she’d landed, and by whoever’s hand, it was no accident that she had been brought to this place. Her abilities couldn’t have taken her here.
Fiona pivoted, focusing from one side of the room to the other, her mind in a whirl as she sorted through her options. The place was unfamiliar and nothing she could have conjured up as a landing place, even in her subconscious. She stopped moving, and listened. At first the only thing she heard was the sound of her own breathing, raspy and uneven. Then she made out sounds in the distance. She waited, forcing herself to slow her breathing further. Finally the drumming sound of her harsh breath faded from her ears as she made herself be still.
In the distance was the familiar slap of waves, confirming her initial thought that she was near the ocean. There were seagulls or other seabirds, judging by the loud caws that now crossed her awareness. Maybe she was hearing voices but she couldn’t be sure. People had to be somewhere – she was in a building, after all. There was population somewhere, but they might not be near. Or maybe, she thought, they were gone too, gone from this place, this time frame. Maybe she’d lurched into someplace else altogether. Maybe the mad scientists had it right and there were all sorts of alternate universes and she’d tumbled into one. Maybe she was the only one left in this world, if this was even Earth. Maybe there was an alternate Fiona even now taking her place next to Sonder, in Santorini.
Realizing that her heart rate was starting to rise again, Fiona drew in a breath and exhaled it slowly, then again, and a third time until she felt the panic begin to recede. Wherever she’d ended up, getting hysterical wouldn’t help her.
“Hello?” Fiona called, once she decided she was calm enough to be steady on her feet. Her clothing clung to her and she picked at the simple tank top. There was a chill in the air, a briskness that told her she’d likely shifted seasons as well as places, time and who knew what else. It looked like Earth, and it felt like Earth, but she didn’t know if it was. She shivered, rubbing her hands up and down her gooseflesh covered arms.
Fiona listened again and it dawned on her what she wasn’t hearing. The roar of the sea was obvious, but there wasn’t anything else. Even if she was on a remote island, there should have been the sounds of modern man. Airplanes. Horns. Car engines idling or roaring down roads. Televisions. Trucks rumbling. Fiona sniffed the air and discovered that it was delicious. Behind the tang of the sea she smelled nothing she was used to. The air should have the taint of man, but this had the aroma of fish and not pollutants. She was used to a certain amount of smog, even on Santorini, but she didn’t smell them here. No diesel. No heavy elements.
Fiona looked around and realized that the walls were painted. Frescoes similar to the one she had touched on Santorini lined the otherwise white, stuccoed room. She turned around from one wall to the other, trying to get an impression of the work. After the experience at Akrotiri that had led her here she was reluctant to touch anything. The next inadvertent hand placement might send her somewhere far worse than this.
Her initial impressions were strengthened when she looked out the window. There were buildings all around her that looked similar to what she had seen in recreations, most recently in Akrotiri. Gold glinted in the corner of her eye, along with bright colors. She’d seen these buildings in pictures, and re-created by historians. She’d seen them in the crumbled remains of the archaeological dig she had just visited, depicted in painstaking detail, Fiona realized with a jolt.
“Kalo̱sórisma.”
Fiona whirled.
If she could have pictured an image of an ancient Greek woman, and sketched it on a pad, she would be staring at that person brought to life. Dressed in a toga that matched the one she’d just seen on the fresco in Akrotiri, a woman stood in the archway. She had sandals on her feet, appearing to be made of hemp or another natural material. The toga was secured with a gold rope and both cloth and tie showed the fray of long usage. She was several inches shorter than Fiona, judging from her height in the doorway, with black hair that hung in long plaits around her head and neck. With a start, Fiona realized that this could be the woman she’d seen in the fresco, if adjusted for the painting of the times.
Fiona stared at her. “Who are you?”
The woman blinked, a slow blink that Fiona wasn’t sure was a welcoming gesture or a threat, and stepped inside. Fiona looked around, checking for possible escape routes. She saw another archway behind her, one that led away this room. It seemed to lead into a small town or city of some sort. She could see more buildings in the distance, low and appearing to be made of long bricks, with columns in bright colors, mostly red, stacked down a hill. It looked familiar and she studied the view, trying to fit the pieces together. She was on an island, and was still in or around Greece. There was only one place she could be, only one place that made sense.
She turned to the woman again, who had advanced another step into the room, but had stopped, still looking at her. All of her movements were careful, measured, like she was trying not to frighten Fiona. Without warning, the woman turned and retreated. Fiona stared at the spot where she had been. Now what? She may have been friend or she may have been foe, but she was a human being in a land where Fiona was lost.
Before she could formulate a plan, the woman returned. Another woman was with her, a large, strong looking older woman with similar dress and a full head of grey.
“Kalo̱sórisma.”
Fiona realized what they had said. She’d picked up a smattering of words in Greek over the last few months and even though the accent was strange and unfamiliar, they’d just welcomed her in that language. She searched her still black fuddled mind.
“Efxaristo.” Hoping that was the right pronunciation, she raised her hands in a helpless gesture. “I don’t really speak Greek.”
The women exchanged glances. The older woman leaned in and whispered to the younger one, who nodded.
“Good. We were making sure.”
Fiona felt as if she was taking crazy pills.
“Where am I? Who are you?”
The women looked at each other again.
“You are in Akrotiri,
Fiona, on Thera. This is the Minoan culture.”
Fiona felt such relief that they understood her that she staggered again. She felt light headed from the journey, and knew she was going to have to get off her feet very soon. She reviewed what she knew about Akrotiri and realized it wasn’t much. Now she wished she had spent her time studying ancient Greece instead of lollygagging with Sonder. He’d wanted to go to Crete, but that same strange reluctance she’d felt about going to Akrotiri also made her put off Crete. No wonder, she thought. Maybe a primal memory of hers had told her that to go to these places meant being yanked through time to…somewhere. Minoan culture, from what she’d seen in her brief jaunt on Akrotiri, was long dead, destroyed so long ago they existed mostly in legend.
“What year is it?”
She knew that it had to be farther back in time than she had imagined she could travel. The Guardians and Liberators were barricaded by a natural fading around a hundred years plus or minus their original time, even with other jumpers. However, she’d been able to jump to the Event, two hundred years in her future, and had carried Rogald with her. This, the lack of modern elements, told her that that jaunt had been a day trip to this around the world excursion. Her limited knowledge of history was leading her to one inescapable conclusion. There was only one real answer.
Again, the women shared a glance. The older one raised her hands as if in puzzlement at Fiona’s question.
“It is the time before, if that is what you mean.”
That told her nothing, Fiona thought in frustration, but then paused. She stopped, trying to clear her head of the buzzing, the blackness that still crowded her thoughts.
“Why am I here?” Something nagged at her and she struggled to get her mind around it.
She didn’t expect the women would have an answer for that, it was more a rhetorical question, kind of like “have you stopped beating your wife,” but to her surprise they both nodded.
