by Dale Peck
Charles fed his fire until it was as high as his waist and its crackle drowned out the stream’s gurgle. He made a stack of firewood as tall as he was, then headed to the stream for another drink. The work of gathering the wood had made him thirsty (and hungry, though he didn’t want to dwell on that). He drank his fill, and when he was finished he continued to lie on the rock, his eyes unfocused, the smell of water filling his nostrils.
A flicker caught his eye. Charles pushed his sliding glasses up his nose and saw a blue speckled fish floating in the pool beneath him. It was hard to tell, but the fish looked to be about eight or ten inches long. Thin but tall, an elongated silver oval suspended in the water.
Another flicker, and then another. With a mental duh, Charles realized the stream was full of fish. After his success with the fire, he felt there was nothing he couldn’t accomplish. He kicked off his shoes and began rolling up his pants.
The shadows had lengthened considerably by the time President Wilson returned. Charles sat in front of the roaring fire. He had made a crude strut by driving two forked branches into the ground, and a pair of fish lay spitted between them on a thin stick. When drops of liquid dripped from the fish, the fire hissed and snapped as though it was as hungry as the boy. Charles turned his spit with a nonchalant expression on his face, but it was obvious from his quivering lips he was bursting to talk of his accomplishments.
President Wilson dropped a small branch in front of the fire, on which dangled a dozen dark, limp-looking berries. The parrot’s beak was stained purple, suggesting he had not waited to eat as Charles had done. Eyeing Charles’s face for a moment, the parrot said, “Did you fall?”
Charles pushed his twisted glasses up his nose. “Er, no. I just had to make a little, um, adjustment.”
President Wilson shrugged. He nodded at the branch he’d brought. “Blackberries, I think. Past their prime, I’m afraid. There might be more if you want to go back, but it’s quite a—oh!”
For Charles had grabbed the branch and devoured the berries in an instant. His lips puckered from the tart taste, but they were still just about the sweetest thing he’d ever eaten.
“I see you’ve been busy,” President Wilson said as Charles plucked the last shriveled berry from the branch. “A fire, and fish even.”
“I built a lean-to too. A lean-to also,” Charles said, jerking his thumb behind him at what President Wilson had at first taken to be a thicket. Now he saw that Charles had laid leafy boughs across a tree that had fallen at a sharp angle over the ground. The lean-to was about six feet long and four feet high, and carpeted with a tufted layer of fern.
President Wilson was—he had to stretch his brain for the word, since it was not one he used often—impressed. Astonished even.
“My word, Charles. How did you learn how to do all this?”
Before he answered, Charles used a stick to prod a flat rock out from the edge of the fire. On the rock were the mushrooms Charles had gathered earlier, sliced and sizzling.
“I think it was Mario’s book,” Charles said now. He speared the cooked mushrooms and transferred them to another flat rock to cool. “I think it taught me things.”
“But there were no words,” the parrot said, eyeing the mushrooms with a half-open beak.
“I know. I think it’s, like, subliminal.”
“Subliminal?” The parrot hopped closer to the mushrooms.
“Yeah, that’s the word. Subliminal.” Charles speared a mushroom and held it up for the parrot. “When I looked at the pictures, I kept getting all these flashes of other things. Stuff that wasn’t on the page. And I knew it wasn’t just my imagination, because the pictures in my head were so specific, and sometimes they even came with words and names and, I dunno, history. And then, when I was building the fire, it was like I knew exactly what to do before I did it. The fish too.”
Charles turned his fish. He felt a slight tug on the stick in his hand, and when he looked back the mushroom was gone.
“How, um”—swallow—“how did you catch the fish?”
Charles’s face beamed. He reached to his right and grabbed a branch behind him. One end of it was as plain as a broom handle, but the other end broke into a particularly tangled mass of branches from which all the leaves had been stripped, leaving a sort of jagged ball about two feet in diameter.
“It’s like a cage,” Charles said, standing up and holding the branch with the tangled branches facing downward. “I just stood on a rock in the water until a fish swam in front of me, and then—bam!” Charles smashed the jagged ball into the ground so forcefully that President Wilson jumped back. Charles laughed, and tossed the branch aside.
President Wilson’s beak dropped. “Ingenious!” he said. And burped.
Charles’s grin split his face from ear to ear, but he was also shaking his head. “I wish I could say I was that smart. But honestly, I didn’t figure it out. I just did it. It was like I’d learned how a long time ago, and all I had to do was remember.”
“That sounds a lot like the way Murray describes his premonitions.”
“I know. At first I thought maybe I was like Murray. It’s like you were saying before: how do we know we’re not all Accursed Returners and just haven’t figured it out yet? But Murray always had specific memories of things. And this, I dunno how to describe it, this is like knowledge. Like A2 + B2 = C2, or never crossing the positive and negative wires in a circuit. Notice which way the wind’s blowing?”
“Er, what?” President Wilson looked around. There was a slight breeze, gusting… the parrot didn’t know his deep south from north-by-northwest. “It’s blowing that way.” He pointed with a wing.
“Yup. Taking the smoke away from the lean-to. That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about. I didn’t consciously build the lean-to upwind. It just worked out that way.”
President Wilson nodded. Then a thought occurred to him. “But I looked at the book too—twice in fact. Once with you, and once with that hateful Zenubian. And I’ve had no special insight.”
“Maybe it was the angle—you were kind of looking at it upside down both times, weren’t you? Or, I dunno, maybe…”
“Yes?”
“Well, maybe you’re too old. Your mind is too… full. Or something.”
President Wilson made a dour expression.
“I think the fish is done,” Charles said to change the subject. As he took the spit off its struts he said, “I was torn. I had this idea of baking it on a rock like the mushrooms. Maybe wrap it in leaves to hold the moisture in? But the spit looked cooler, don’t you think?”
“If only we’d brought a camera.” President Wilson laughed. “No one will ever believe us when we tell this story.”
Charles pulled over a pair of wide flat rocks and slid the fish off the stick, one to each rock. He divvied the mushrooms between the two plates, then added a few spiraling green things.
“Fiddleheads. They grow by our country house upstate, so I know they’re good, although Mum always serves them with a vinaigrette.”
President Wilson eyed the two plates. Wild trout, served with sautéed mushrooms and a salad of fiddlehead ferns. The meal looked more like something you’d see pictured in a food magazine than the scrounged-up fare of a city slicker and a housebound parrot. The dark eye of the fish stared up at the parrot accusingly.
“Er, I think I’ll stick with the vegetables. Please, eat my fish. You need the protein more than I do.”
“Suit yourself.” Charles was too hungry to protest for the sake of good manners. He had filed a stick as flat as he could on a rock, and with another whose prongs he’d sharpened into a fork, he sliced his fish open and tried to debone it the way he’d seen waiters in restaurants do. By the time he finished, the two fish were pretty much mangled to a pulp, but they smelled delectable.
He speared a morsel of white flesh and brought it toward his mouth. The cold water had been delicious, the tart berries had been extraordinary, but this… this was heaven.
A few moments later all that was left of the meal were two fish skeletons, tails at one end, heads at the other. Charles crunched the tart fiddleheads slowly, a sleepy, satisfied smile on his glistening lips. His twisted glasses slipped down his nose, and he made no move to push them back up.
“It’s getting dark out.”
President Wilson nodded. His own eyes were already closed. “Are you worried?”
“Too tired to worry. If a bear came, I’d just stare at him like old fish-eye here.” He jabbed a finger at his plate.
The parrot’s eyes snapped open. “Bear?”
Charles laughed sleepily. “I’ll put a few more logs on the fire. That should keep them away.” A thoughtful expression crossed his face. “We should bury the fish skeletons though. They’re attracted to the smell.”
“How do you know—oh right. The book.”
Charles smiled and patted his backpack, inside which Mario’s book rested securely. Now he stood wearily and placed several branches on the fire, then scooped out a shallow hole and buried the fish skeletons. When he’d finished he stretched and let out a sound that was half yawn, half yawp. The sound echoed through the otherwise silent forest, and President Wilson looked around nervously.
“Coming to bed?” Charles said.
“In a moment. I have to do my, um, birdlike things.” The parrot ran his beak through his feathers.
“Suit yourself. See you in the morning.” Charles crawled into the lean-to and rooted around the thick bed of fern like a dog, making a deep nest. He used his backpack as a pillow, felt the book’s familiar tingling sensation on his cheek. “G’night, President Wilson,” he called, half asleep already. He took his twisted glasses off and hung them on a twig poking from the wall of his shelter.
“Good night, Charles.”
The parrot waited until the boy’s breathing came evenly, then flew to a thin branch about ten feet off the ground. He could still see Charles from his perch, but he was pretty sure no bears could reach this high.
The branch swayed slightly in his grip, the way his roost did when Drift House was on the Sea of Time. The parrot wondered how the house was doing, and Farley, and Susan.
“Don’t worry, Farley,” he whispered, his own eyes closing. “We’ll rescue you.”
A moment later, the thousand thousand trees with their million million leaves heard something they’d never heard before: a parrot’s snore.
ELEVEN
The Tempest
“Oh, This is grand!” Susan said as Uncle Farley knelt in front of the radio dials. “We’re finally going back in time!” Without realizing it, she sucked in a deep breath and held it.
“Latitude… seventy degrees…thirty minutes… north. Longitude… twenty-two degrees… zero minutes… west.”
Susan felt her cheeks burning, but continued holding her breath.
“Temporality …” Uncle Farley flipped the dial. “August …” Another flip. “Second …” Flip. “One …” flip “four …” flip “eight …” flip …
Popping noises in her ears, stars in front of her eyes.
“…three,” Uncle Farley said finally. Flip.
The breath burst from Susan’s mouth so loudly Uncle Farley jumped.
“August 2, 1483! I mean…I mean….” Susan wasn’t sure what she meant, really, besides: “Wow!”
The fifteenth century! It was just…so… before… everything.
Bjarki’s voice came from the radio.
“I’m afraid I can’t get you right on the coast because of the squall. This’ll put you a few miles offshore. Now, before you sluice, I want you to—”
“Sloosh?” Susan interrupted.
“Sluice,” Uncle Farley whispered. “Travel back in time.”
“—fill a few vials with water from the Sea of Time. Once you make land, you can use them to help you communicate. Simply put a drop in each ear and you’ll be able to understand anything that’s said to you, and a drop on your tongue to speak any language.”
Susan was shocked. “But won’t that turn us into Ac-ac-ac—Returners?”
Bjarki’s chuckle had a faintly tinny sound. “Water from the Sea of Time deintensifies the moment it enters the temporal universe. Within a few days, it’s indistinguishable from good ol’ H-two-of-O. Now, bon voyage!”
For vials, Uncle Farley supplied a pair of test tubes from his study. Susan opened the front door and dunked them into the warm water of the Sea of Time. The tiny tubes filled instantly, but Susan lingered a moment, glancing over the wide blue expanse as if Diaphone’s head just might poke above the gently rolling surface. But the sea was empty, and Susan wedged corks in the test tubes and closed the door between her and the loneliness of eternity, and hurried back to the drawing room. Its walls were blank now—a probable effect, Bjarki had said, of the squall’s interference.
“Right then,” Uncle Farley said when he saw her in the doorway. “Let’s be off.” And he reached to push a button on the radio.
“Do I need to sit”—Susan began, even as her uncle’s finger depressed the button—“down or anything?”
Uncle Farley looked at her with a mischievous smile on his face. “Why would you?”
“Well, is it, I don’t know, bumpy?” Susan was recalling her ride to the bottom of the Great Drain in Frejo’s mouth, which had been quite bumpy.
“You tell me. Did it feel bumpy?”
“What? Was that it? Are we there?” But even as she spoke she caught a glimpse of her shadow on the floor, and realized they were indeed back in the temporal world. The rocking of the house had increased as well, indicating a less calm body of water than the Sea of Time.
“I’m afraid it’s not very dramatic, is it? No flashing lights or fading in and out.”
“Well, it’s not the transporter on the Enterprise, that’s for sure.”
Susan wasn’t sure if she was let down or relieved. Before she could decide, Drift House pitched dramatically to the right, and she had to grab on to the back of a chair to keep from falling over, nearly dropping her test tubes. A loud crash emanated from the other side of the room, echoed by several smaller crashes through the house.
“What was—”
Susan was cut off by a squelchy voice from the radio.
“—North Atlantic is famous for its own squalls.” Bjarki’s voice pitched and rolled like the house. “Nothing to worry about but your stomachs.” The transmission was swallowed by a wave of static. “Lose radio contact soon” was the next thing Susan heard. “Interference … temporal squall.” A longer wave of static, and then: “Remember,” Bjarki’s voice said with undeniable urgency, “watch for”—static—“babble.”
And then: nothing.
Uncle Farley was still sitting on the pitching floor. With his soft belly and splayed legs, he looked a bit like a big bearded baby. He leaned close to the radio, speaking directly into the grille. “Bjarki, are you there?”
The house was rocking wildly from prow to stern, but Susan could feel its rhythm in the soles of her feet and her stomach. Anything that has a rhythm has some element of control also, so Susan wasn’t too alarmed. If the house had been shaking erratically, she would have been more scared.
“I think we’ve lost contact,” she said now. “Did you hear him say something about babbling?”
“I think he said Babel.”
“Babel?” Susan glanced at the drawing room walls, which were still blank. “We saw the Tower of Babel there. But that’s not in Greenland? I mean, right?”
Uncle Farley laughed. “No, ancient Mesopotamia. Er, modern Iraq,” he clarified. “About seven or eight thousand miles apart, not to mention a few thousand years.” He frowned now, not in displeasure, but as if he’d suddenly remembered something.
“What is it, Uncle Farley?”
“Oh, nothing, I’m sure. It’s just the ancient Babylonians—”
“I thought we were talking about the, um, Babel people.”
“Babel, Babylon, Babylonians,
same people, same place. Anyway, there are legends that they made some extraordinary breakthroughs in temperology.”
Susan’s legs—and her stomach, fortunately—were getting used to the rolling ocean, and she stood up carefully and went to a window. “I’m not sure I understand, Uncle Farley.” She looked out at a wide gray expanse whose dips and swells reminded her of pictures of the moon. “How does this affect us?”
“Well, I don’t know that it does. I just wonder if perhaps some artifact might have made its way from Babel to the New World.”
“All the way to Greenland?” Susan said, still staring at the empty ocean. It was so big and empty that she could hardly imagine getting across it herself, let alone a civilization that had lived before steam engines and motors and airplanes.
Uncle Farley stood up somewhat less steadily than Susan. “Well, take that mask I showed you earlier. It originated in Pompeii, on the Italian peninsula, but I bought it in a market square in Buenos Aires. Things do get around, given enough time, and—oh. Oh, that’s too bad.”
“What is it, Uncle Farley?” Susan said, leaving the chilly window and wobbling in his direction.
“The mask. It’s—”
“Broken!” Susan exclaimed. It was true: the beautiful, eerie, two-thousand-year-old death mask had fallen to the floor and broken into three pieces.
The fractured face sobered Uncle Farley. “No use crying over spilt milk and, um, broken masks. We obviously need to make our vessel shipshape. I’m afraid I’ve let it get much too domestic.” He chuckled ruefully. “Where’s Mr. Zenubian when you need him?”
The first thing he did was pull open a drawer and take out a package of bootstrings—black, Susan saw, and indicated for twenty-hole boots. He used them to make necklaces for each of the test tubes. He worked quickly and efficiently—rather like Charles, Susan thought, who never blinked when he’d set himself a task.
