Ancient Fire

by Mark London Williams

  “We’d rather you didn’t.”

  “I’m about to faint.”

  Howe looks at Twenty-Five, who nods. “You can change your clothes, but you can’t eat yet. Put your clothes in here.” He hands me a plastic bag. “We want to test them for WOMPER radiation.”

  Mr. Howe orders a soldier to go with me. “Make sure he stays put! But first…”

  Howe carefully pulls some Thickskin over his hands and takes the satchel from around my neck. It’s soaked, too, and tangled with my jacket. I had hardly noticed it was still there. But Howe caught a glimpse of the lone surviving scroll from the library peeking out of the bag. And now he holds it—very carefully—in his hand.

  “Perfect,” he says, looking at it.

  “I don’t know what it’s about,” I tell him. “It could be slow pox. It could be Atlantis. It could be a million things.”

  “It hardly even matters,” Howe tells me. Before I can ask him why, he’s talking to the soldier again. “Definitely make sure he stays put.”

  I’m trying to figure out a way to lose this guy, but he’s sticking right next to me.

  Heading toward my room, we pass one of Moonglow’s limestone caves full of old wine barrels. Getting an idea, I take off and sprint inside. “Hey!” the guard yells after me.

  I have just enough of a head start to duck behind some of the barrels. But he’s only a few feet behind, and he’ll find me right away…unless…

  “Come on, kid, come out of there. What’s the use? You can’t hide in here very long.”

  I touch the lingo-spot behind my ear. I slowly peel it off my skin. I hate to give it up so easily…

  …but without thinking about it too much longer, I stick it onto one of the barrels near the guard. “Hey!” he says. “Come on!”

  Now, peeled off me, the lingo-spot doesn’t stay calibrated for English and goes back to default mode: dinosaur talk. “Brrrrk! Braaak!” The guard jumps. Every time he speaks, his translated voice comes out sounding kind of like Clyne’s.

  He hears it, and he’s not sure who’s talking. “Who’s there? Kid?”

  “Tkkk ka kaa kaaaa.”

  “Who is that?” he says, getting a little more freaked out.

  Again, he hears his own question repeated in Saurian. He unhooks his gun from his holster. When he gets close enough to start peering into barrels, I tiptoe out behind him, then tear off down the hall.

  By the time anyone spots me, I’m through the old kitchen in the lunchroom and out through one of the side windows.

  I’m in a full run to Wolf House, and I’m winded when I finally see the fire that Thea has going. But I gasp when I see she has company: Clyne. And my father.

  I’m not sure which one of them amazes me more. Clyne’s time-vessel, with its still-fresh rhino dents, is parked where horse-drawn wagons were once supposed to come to Wolf House’s front doors. He fixed his ship somehow, which explains, kind of, how he got here. But what about Sandusky?

  “Dad?”

  After all that’s happened, he doesn’t know what to say to me at first. I can’t really blame him. So he doesn’t say anything. He hugs me.

  “Dad. They said you’d disappeared, too. I thought maybe…you’d gone after Mom.”

  “I had to get away from the lab. I had to get away from them. I’ve been hiding out. But I’d check by here a couple of times a day. I figured this is where you’d go if you came back. When you came back.” He seems relieved that it turned out to be “when,” after all.

  “I’ve met your friends,” he adds.

  “Aaak! Nice sire man! Met k-kk-kkk your father.” Clyne seems happy to see me. It’s almost like he’d give me a hug, too…except there’s a big gash on his left arm. It doesn’t seem to faze him. “Being raised by a single parent of each gender is unique and worth studying!”

  Thea is pressing a damp bunch of leaves against Clyne’s wound. “Thea…,” I say to her, and realize that while she can understand me, I’m once again without a lingo-spot. She gives me a little smile, but she’s crying, too.

  “Clyne here’s been translating,” Dad says. Then he pulls me aside and whispers, “Is he from another planet, or another time?”

  I whisper back, “Both. He’s a dinosaur. Evolved. Like us.”

  I turn to Clyne. “How’d you get out?”

  “Not easy, with so many mad mammals tail-close. Good leg jumps help—pa pa pa paaak! —landing me dab-smack in the light tower!” He pats his time-ship. “Found Thea leftovers—”

  Thea hears her name and says something to Clyne. Whatever it is causes him to nod in a gentle way. “Her mother’s kris-talls,” he continues, trying out the word, “very helpful in reconstructing engine—gra-bakkness in time-vessel.”

  “What’s ‘gra-bakk’?” my dad asks.

  “We don’t really have a word for it,” I explain.

  “But chrono-compass is half-right now,” Clyne continues.

  “Half?” I ask.

  “Can’t fft-tt-kkk! blaze new time paths now. Can retrace old ones. Tracks particle residue of time travelers…skkk. Found my way back following you and Thea. Do a d-jump home, next stop, maybe in time for class.”

  “What’s a ‘d-jump’?” Dad asks.

  “We probably don’t have a word for it,” I tell him.

  “Dimension jump,” Clyne explains. Then he shakes his head in a very human way. “Teachers will unbelieve stories of this Earth. Dancing mammals! Failing marks for me. K-tng! Even with proof.”

  “Proof?”

  “Look.”

  I go over to peer inside the ship, and the light from the fire is just enough to let me see the pile of scrolls Clyne must have pulled out from the library flames after we left. Most of them are scorched.

  “Many mammal fires,” Clyne says. “Had to get going, or more would be brought.”

  I look back to see if this cheers Thea up, but it doesn’t.

  “What’s wrong?”

  My dad looks sad. “Apparently, Clyne told her what happened to her mother.”

  “What?”

  “She didn’t make it.”

  I turn to Thea. “I’m sorry.”

  That makes Dad bring up the question of my mother. “I’ve been studying some recent history, myself. Took one of your Comnet screens so that I could read up on the 1930s and

  ’40s. Trying to find out what happened to Margarite.”

  “And?”

  “Don’t know. Yet. Haven’t found anything. That Chronicle article is the last report we have.”

  Thea is still dressing Clyne’s wound, but there isn’t time for it. “They’ll be here fast,” I tell them. “They’ll be after me.” I look at Clyne and Thea. “The two of you need to get going. If they catch you, they’ll turn you into lab specimens. You’ll never be free.”

  “It’s true,” Dad agrees. “Look what happened to us.”

  Clyne looks over to Thea, and without saying anything, invites her onto his ship.

  With the campfire behind her, Thea looks kind of smart and heroic, even though she’s wiping her eyes. She looks…cool. And I don’t just mean for a girl.

  “It’s a long goodbye,” Clyne agrees. “But I’ll probably return with my teacher k-k-kkkatt! to show what I’ve been through and fix back my scores.” He extends his hand to Thea. “You can come to class. Together, we’ll win every science fair.”

  Thea’s about to step into the ship when she stops and does something totally embarrassing.

  She thanks me.

  I could tell that’s what she was doing. I didn’t have to know the exact words she was saying. But that wasn’t the embarrassing part. It was the kiss on the cheek.

  “Yeah, yeah, sure. No problem,” I say quickly.

  “Yes, gratitude!” Clyne says, and as cheerful as he tries to be, he can’t help wincing as he moves his wounded arm.

  He’s about to follow Thea into the ship when the light from the campfire explodes. At least, that’s how it seems when a row of spotl
ights get flipped on, each one held by a DARPA soldier. The new light reveals other DARPA henchmen carrying guns. Mr. Howe is with them, along with the lone Twenty-Five. “Nobody should be leaving just yet,” Mr. Howe says.

  “This is a severe security breach, Eli,” he continues. “You’ve brought living organisms with you back through the time stream.”

  Clyne takes another step toward his ship.

  “Don’t do that,” Mr. Howe tells him.

  Clyne shakes his head. “All the time, angry mammals! Like big Saurian carnivores with empty stomachs!”

  All the soldiers step back when Clyne speaks. “You talk,” Mr. Howe says to him.

  “You, too!” Clyne chirps agreeably.

  “I can’t let you leave.”

  “We can’t let you stay,” Dad mutters under his breath.

  “Sorry. Bye!” Clyne steps toward the ship, and all the DARPA men raise their guns.

  My hands fumble nervously in my pocket. I still have the Mark McGwire card that I used in Alexandria.

  But right here, right now, I’m not a wizard. The card won’t spook anybody. But then I realize that sometimes the most amazing trick of all, the one that can be hardest to do, is simply standing up for what you know is right.

  “I’m your secret weapon!” I yell back at Mr. Howe, jumping between Clyne and the guns. “I’m your Danger Boy! You can’t let them hurt me.”

  There’s a long pause as everyone considers what I just said.

  “Right?” I add hopefully.

  “We wouldn’t hurt anybody,” Mr. Howe says, almost whining. “The ammo in these guns is just for tranquilizing. So step away from there.”

  Nobody does.

  Clyne moves, and I adjust my position to stay between him and the guns.

  “Gratitude! Kkkh!” Clyne whispers to me. “When I move, you fall.”

  I’m not sure what he’s talking about.

  “I can’t let you get back to that ship,” Mr. Howe says. Apparently, that’s not what Clyne has in mind. He performs a jump that—if this was a basketball championship—would lead the highlight reels for all time. He leaps up high enough to kick shut the door to his ship, locking Thea inside. Off the door, he catapults himself backward through the air. Before the guns start firing, I hit the ground.

  “Eli!” my father screams.

  Clyne’s ship starts taking off — either with Thea guiding it or the ship guiding itself. Twenty-Five pulls a weapon out of his jacket, which is definitely not a tranquilizer gun. He aims it at the vessel, and a long beam comes out, glances off the ship, and causes it to wobble.

  But the ship vanishes anyway. The other men are aiming at Clyne, who keeps jumping and somersaulting farther away. Twenty-Five lowers his gun, and I rise up to put myself between him and Clyne again.

  I buy just enough time so Clyne can disappear into the trees. Twenty-Five keeps the gun raised in my direction, but Mr. Howe forces his hand down while waving the DARPA men into the woods to try and capture Clyne on foot.

  So I’m not a genie, but at least I helped my friend.

  My dad, however, doesn’t fare so well.

  One of the tranquilizer darts — I hope that’s what they really are — is sticking out of him. Right near his hip. He looks at me; his eyes widen a little, then he crumples over.

  I race over to him and hold his head in my lap. The soldiers run past me, chasing after Clyne.

  It’s good not to be the center of attention, for once.

  Mr. Howe isn’t even looking; a couple of parchment scrolls from the library fell from Clyne’s ship. Howe quickly wraps some Thickskin around his fingers, then picks them up gingerly, almost tenderly.

  I use that same kind of gentleness cradling my dad’s head. I whisper to him everything will be all right.

  I hope it’s true.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Clyne: Extra Credit

  Final Class Project: 10,271 S.E.

  4. Would you recommend this reality to other students?

  The answer is as complicated as a game of Cacklaw. This is a planet where the intelligent beings aren’t hatched to be raised by a community; they’re born live out of their mother’s body; they’re born hot-blooded, and there is no predicting what they’ll do.

  I am fascinated by them! And terrified. Our old saying “Know an egg before you crack it” has no application here. The humans of Earth Orange are wildly unpredictable.

  I hope this is taken into account when grades are assessed.

  For example, I am now what they call an “outlaw”—someone who breaks the rules of a community and is therefore chased by armed enforcers. And while the mammals here claim to dislike outlaws, they make many entertainments celebrating them and retelling their stories.

  I doubt they will make such an entertainment about me. Live Saurians evidently unnerve them. In fact, since the human named Howe tried to force me to stay, I’ve been reduced to sneaking around to fish meals of orange rinds and bird bones from the trash receptacles of private dwellings. I remain a few jumps ahead of them, but I don’t know how long it will last.

  Still, I will attempt to finish my homework during these short rests. If I ever return, I’ll need all the credit I can get.

  Especially since I will get points off for breaking nearly every school rule about time travel. Worst of all, I gave a non-Saurian use of my vessel and sent her home in my stead.

  But in this case, I knew a little about the egg before I cracked it: There’s a reason I sent Thea, the librarian from Alexandria, to live with you on Saurius Prime. She wasn’t safe here on her own world, not in her own time, nor in Eli the Boy’s. But she is intelligent and has knowledge that is worth studying; she also has an interesting idea or two of her own about the displacement of time.

  I hope she receives an opportunity to explain the scrolls I sent back with her, which were salvaged from her library: They contain amazing histories of ancient cultures on Earth Orange—many of which were gone long before Alexandria was ever built — surprisingly accurate predictions about dimensions and cosmology, maps of a place called Atlantis, which no longer appears to exist either, and a whole category of literature the Earth mammals call “love poems.”

  I also hope Thea is afforded the opportunity to address the whole school at an assembly; not only is she fascinating, but it will help prove to everyone that I am not insane, which will be most helpful should I ever get back.

  I have to stop writing now. One of the other Earth mammals — a “dog” in the local tongue—is sounding an alarm, and some humans are sure to come out of their dwelling to investigate. Better if they don’t see me, so I will move on.

  I don’t know how I’m going to get home yet, or whether you’ll send a rescue party out for me when you realize I’m not going to make it back to class. If you try to land here, it may not be pleasant.

  Still, there are plenty of good beings. I will try to figure out a safe way to make contact with Eli the Boy and his father.

  Until then, I will travel this surprising planet in secret, gathering what information I can, attempting to put it all in this report. And hoping this report will someday reach you.

  I am reminded of another saying I haven’t thought of in years, taught to me by one of my clutch-parents when I was still a nestling: “Keep both eyes open at all times — a million worlds surround you.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Thea: Letters Home

  Time Undetermined

  Ever since Tiberius came after us, setting everything in motion in Alexandria, so much of what has happened feels like a dream. And not always a good one. But there seems to be no indication that I will wake up anytime soon.

  Each new event outstrips the last: How do I adequately describe my journey with Eli, the boy wizard, who pulled me through the fabric of time itself, through the Fifth Dimension—a land of dream…and color…and longing? Longing for a time and place truly my own…but I doubt I will know such a place ever again.

  Perha
ps I should write of the brief time I spent in Eli’s world, where I found out that there is no time or place in which wizards are safe from attack.

  Or perhaps I should start with where I am now: a world wholly strange to me, filled entirely by lizard folk. They remind me of some of our animal gods in Alexandria—but they are not gods, of course.

  They are big and mostly polite and seem to be studying me cautiously; watching my every move, jotting things down, conferring with one another. They also provide what food they can for me, which they regard as a strange diet of exotic grains and fruits.

  They are still overcoming their absolute shock at seeing me emerge from K’lion’s time-ship. I think some of them might have taken offense that one such as I—a creature unlike them—could even master the controls of such a vessel.

  It was not hard. K’lion taught me the basics when he showed me the ship in Alexandria. And the course for “home” had already been set.

  I should say the course for K’lion’s home. Not mine. Mine is lost now.

  And perhaps that is where I should focus this journal entry: on the handful of scrolls that were saved from the library.

  With my mother gone, that leaves just me. The scrolls and me. We are all that remains of the great library.

  But I have Mother’s thirst for knowledge. And now, if my new hosts allow it, I have use of the lizard beings’ time-ship. I will become an explorer on my own, reclaim the knowledge that was lost, and add new discoveries.

  I will do all this in memory of Hypatia, who taught me life is a great mystery with much to know and explain.

  Perhaps they will let me go look for my two lost friends, and bring Eli the wizard here, or at least K’lion. This is, after all, where he belongs.

  And after a long adventure, it is good to go home.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Eli: Message in a Bottle

  October 30, 2019 C.E.

  LIZARD MAN IN THE WOODS!