I held my breath, not wanting to shatter the delicate spell Sealth was weaving with his words.
He leaned forward. “Of the woman who waits for you, Alexandra. And of the man who searches, hoping to steal you away before she can find you.”
A young woman knelt on the far side of Sealth, and he accepted a small wooden bowl from her. She bore a strong resemblance to Kikisoblu. Sealth nodded to her and sipped from the bowl, then offered it to me.
I hesitated, but thirst quickly overwhelmed any fear of disease. I hadn’t drunk water since arriving in this time; Tex had only offered me whiskey, and I’d been so preoccupied that I hadn’t thought to ask for anything else. I took a sip, fully intending to pass the bowl on to Kikisoblu, but the water tasted so fresh and clean, and that single sip only reminded me how parched I was. I tilted the bowl back further and took several long gulps.
Sealth watched me, laughter in his eyes.
I lowered the empty bowl. “I did not realize how thirsty I was …”
Sealth reclaimed the bowl and handed it back to the young woman.
Meeting her eyes as she stood, I gave her a nod of thanks.
She bowed her head, then retreated to the back wall, where she dipped the bowl into a large, water-tight woven basket.
“The lady in the cave,” Sealth said, reclaiming my attention. “She came to my grandmother’s father one day when he was stalking a doe in the woods. My great-grandfather claimed the woman was the spirit of the doe. She offered him a trade—he and all of his descendants would enter her service, and in exchange, she would share her knowledge of the troubled times to come.”
I accepted the refilled bowl from the young woman with another nod of thanks, then looked at Sealth once more.
“My great-grandfather agreed and, in so doing, bound our future to the woman’s … and to yours. We gather information for her, keeping her apprised of the Collector’s activities and of any Netjer-Ats who enter our territory, and in return, she advises us so that our people might survive.”
“And have you met her?” I asked. “This ‘lady in the cave’?” It had to be Aset. I crossed my fingers. It had to be.
Sealth nodded once, slowly. “The first time my mother brought me to the cave, it was the same day I first saw Vancouver’s ships. My mother told me about the woman as we stood on the beach, staring at the strange, monstrous crafts floating on the water. She said we must go to the lady in the cave so she could advise us. And when we went to the cave, the woman greeted us by walking through a solid sheet of stone.”
My heartbeat picked up. It has to be Aset and Nik! If I could get to them—to this cave—then I could find out what happened to the others after I left. I had to know. I was terrified to know.
“I was but a boy, and yet the woman held my hand in hers and kissed my forehead and told me not to fear the men on the ships. She told me more would come, but that she would help me guide my people through the gathering storm.
“The second time I went to the cave, I carried with me news of my mother’s death. I was still a young man, not yet married or the father of children, but she told me of a great enemy from the north, of the tribe who would make good on their past threats to our people and our ancestral land. She told me I must convince my people to let me lead our warriors against this threat, that it was the only way we would survive.
“I did as she bade, and when I returned to her victorious, she taught me this language. Eventually, she told me what I must do to prevent my people from being washed away by the great and powerful wave of the white man spreading across this land. She told me that because they are countless, like the many blades of grass in a vast field, and we are few, the scattered trees standing tall across the field, we must learn to bend like the grass when the winds blow strong or we will break completely.”
I cleared my throat. “The Point Elliott Treaty and the reservation—is that why you agreed to it? Why you convinced the other leaders to agree, as well? Because of what she told you?”
Sealth nodded sagely. “It is. I only hope she spoke the truth and that my people will continue on, bending, but not broken.”
“She told you about me, did she not? About where and when I come from?”
“She did.”
“Then know that she spoke the truth to you. Your people still live, even in my time. You are not the same you once were, but then, nothing ever is.”
Sealth’s eyes were shimmering and glassy. “I am immensely relieved,” he said. He shook his head, reminding me of a great lion waking from an afternoon slumber. “But we are wasting precious time now. You have heard my story, and hopefully my family has earned your trust. We have been devoted to you and to the lady in the cave for generations.”
“You have my trust,” I said. “And my gratitude.”
“Good.” Sealth gestured with both hands for me to stand. “Please, go with my daughter.” He switched to his native tongue and exchanged rushed words with Kikisoblu. Once I was standing, he returned his focus to me. “She will take you to the cave.”
Sealth’s attention shifted past me, and I glanced over my shoulder at Tex. “I will deal with this one.”
9
Up & Down
I thanked Kikisoblu as we walked away from Old Man House. She’d given me boots made of supple leather, an enormous improvement over the sandals I’d been wearing. We made our way into the fringe of the woods bordering the beach, thick with pine trees, ferns, nettles, and dense underbrush. Well-worn trails cut through the woods, their paths cushioned by a thick layer of fallen pine needles.
“Think nothing of it,” Kikisoblu said, taking the lead as we entered a narrow trail.
Just as I stepped over a rogue blackberry vine crossing the path, a pang of nausea struck me hard in my belly. I bent nearly double.
“Alexandra! Are you alright?”
I held a hand out to my side, keeping Kikisoblu at bay while I emptied the contents of my stomach onto the forest floor. I feared the nausea wasn’t primarily because I was pregnant—not to mention exhausted and freaked out and worried as all hell—but because the twins sensed Apep closing in on me.
But after few more heaves, I felt the stomach-twisting sensation abate. I straightened. “I’m fine.” My focus shifted to the trail winding an uphill path through the woods. “I really need to keep going.”
“Come,” Kikisoblu said. “Let us hurry.” She started up the path, looking back at me every few steps. I was hot on her heels.
As the sun neared the horizon, its golden glow flickering between the trees, exhaustion settled into my legs and renewed thirst turned my saliva into a sticky paste. Hundreds or maybe thousands or millions or billions of steps later, Kikisoblu stopped. I looked up for the first time in ages to see that there were no blinding slivers of sunlight peeking between the endless sea of evergreens. I’d been too busy staring at the path, coaxing my feet to take just one more step, to notice that dusk had fallen.
I bent over, hands on my knees. “Why are we stopping?” I asked, chest heaving between each word. I spit tacky saliva onto the ground; it was so thick and glue-like that swallowing it no longer seemed possible.
“Because we are here.”
“What?” I straightened, and the forest swam around me. I brought my hand up to my forehead and closed my eyes. “Whoa …”
Kikisoblu rushed back down the trail, her steadying grip on my elbow the only thing keeping me from swaying my way down to the ground. “Perhaps I pushed you too hard, but I thought—”
“No, no,” I said, waving my hand. “You had to. We needed to get here as quickly as possible.” With a deep breath, I opened my eyes and raised my head, wondering where exactly the lady and her cave were.
Dread washed over me as I stared at my guide. Had I done it again? Was I both grand-prize winner and runner-up for most gullible person in the world? First with Tex, and now with Sealth and Kikisoblu—had I put my depleted faith in the wrong person once more?
“The ca
ve is just around the bend in the trail,” Kikisoblu said, moving closer and curling her arm around my waist. “I will help you the rest of the way.” She guided me along the trail slowly. “There is a spring just outside the cave. You will drink from it and be refreshed. And the lady in the cave is a great huntress, so surely there will be some rabbit or venison roasting over the fire …”
My stomach lurched at the thought of roasting meat, and I returned to staring at my feet, giving each a mental pep talk when it was its turn to shuffle forward.
“Look! See—the cave is there, just right there,” Kikisoblu was all but dragging me onward.
Somehow, I managed to haul my gaze up from the ground.
The mouth of a cave blocked off by an iridescent wall of solidified At was several dozen yards away. Right before our eyes, the sheet of otherworldly material shimmered, then dissolved in a puff of foggy, rainbow tendrils.
Aset stood in the mouth of the cave, Nik a shadow standing behind her.
Adrenaline zinged through me and I lurched forward, a joyous, desperate laugh spilling out of me. I made it about three steps before my knees gave out and the darkness of unconsciousness promised to cushion my fall. I was out cold before I even hit the ground.
***
“Here,” Aset said, handing me a cup made of solidified At. She sounded exactly like the woman she would become in another century and a half, slightly accented English and all. “This tea will act as a restorative.” I was sitting with her and Nik around the cookfire in their cave, Kikisoblu asleep on bedroll a yard or two from the fire’s edge. She’d already been fast asleep by the time I regained consciousness. The first thing out of my mouth had been, “Are they still alive?”
Aset had assured me that Marcus, Dom, Kat, Neffe, and Nik and herself had survived—would survive—the encounter with Apep-Carson. While Re hadn’t been able to see exactly what happened in the echo of that time and place, thanks to the time anomaly caused by the ripples from my temporal jump, he was at least able to see that they were all still alive and kicking a year later. And the cherry on the sundae: the twins and I were there, too.
My relief was palpable, far more real and comforting than the furs nestled around me or the warmth and crackle of the fire. I felt a hundred times lighter. I was ready to take on anything, including time itself.
I sniffed the steaming liquid in the cup Aset had handed me, then wrinkled my nose. It smelled like mildew and bad breath, and I had no clue what the little floating flecks of leaves or chunks on the bottom of the cup were.
“It will steady your stomach and return some of your strength.” Aset smiled, nodding. “I promise. Drink.”
“It smells awful.”
Aset snorted. “That may be, but it will do you good. Then we can get some broth in you, and then some meat.” She settled her stern physician’s stare on me.
Wide-eyed, I took a sip. The tea wasn’t so hot that it burned going down, but a few flecks of the herbs floating around stuck to my tongue. I pinched them off with my fingertips and flicked them away. Thankfully, the concoction didn’t taste as bad as it smelled, and much of the bitterness was cut by a generous helping of honey. I took another sip and found the taste almost pleasant. My third drink was practically a gulp.
“Careful,” Aset said, retrieving the cup from my clutching grasp. “Not too much at first. Let it settle …”
I stared longingly at the tea.
“We’ve been waiting for you for so long,” Nik said. He was crouching by the fire to the right of me, periodically adding herbs or roots to a cast-iron pot hanging just over the flames and stirring the contents with a heavy wooden spoon. It smelled savory and spicy, and the scent of the simmering broth made my stomach groan. “Mother was growing tired of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle—she’s really more of a city girl—and I think I’ve been sedentary for so long that my muscles have atrophied entirely. If I go a decade or two without setting foot in the At again, it won’t be long enough …”
My eyes skimmed over him, his buckskin tunic and pants covering a physique that was the picture of health and vitality. The only difference between this Nik and the one from my time was the lack of visible tattoos and piercings. It was good to be Nejeret; we aged well.
“He exaggerates, of course,” Aset said with a huff of amused disapproval. She patted my knee. “We’ll be just fine in our cozy little cave for a little while longer.” She returned the cup to my beseeching hands.
I took a long draw of the tea, choking back dozens of questions about why they were here in the first place. I had a much more pressing issue. “I have to keep moving,” I said. “Apep can sense me. He’s sure to be coming for me already. We can’t stay here, and I need to find Mar—Heru.”
Aset scooted closer to sit beside me on my nest of furs. It had been a cozy way to return to consciousness, nestled in all that soft warmth. “You have a long journey ahead of you, Lex, with many jumps backwards in time. This was the first jump for you. But for us, it was the last time we’ll be tasked with finding you. We’ve done this many times before.” She held her wrist out in front of me, displaying a quartz-like bracelet engraved with row after row of hieroglyphs. “This is our map to finding you. Every time and place we’ve found you is etched into its surface. Trust us, Lex. We know what we’re doing.”
I stared at the impossible bracelet, seeing it for what it truly was: a fragment of my future … and their past. “This is why you vanished so long ago,” I said, finally understanding. “Why everyone thought you were dead—because of me.” I felt sick with guilt and other things.
“It has been a grand adventure, dear Lex. Fret not.” Aset lowered the bracelet and gave my hand a squeeze. “And as for Apep—”
“He won’t be able to sense you through all the At I’ve laced through the cave’s walls,” Nik said. “It’s why we chose this place to begin with, and Re and I have been very careful to cover our tracks both here and in the At—Apep doesn’t know we’re here.”
“But Marcus—” I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head. “Heru. I need to find him.”
“You need to take care of yourself, first,” Aset said. “Then we’ll bring you to my brother.”
My eyes sought hers, and I clutched onto her arm. “So you know where he is?”
She nodded. “Nik and Re keep a close eye on him in the At.”
“Where is he?”
Aset offered me a mollifying smile. “He’s currently at Fort Nisqually.”
I’d been to Fort Nisqually once on a grade school field trip. The frontier fort had been relocated and reconstructed in Point Defiance Park in Tacoma, where it served as a living history museum displaying life on the Western frontier. I didn’t know the original location, other than somewhere in the south Sound area. It would take days to walk there.
Panic fluttered in my chest and I stared at Aset, eyes bulging. “I have to go—now. If I wait too long …” When I traveled back to Old Kingdom Egypt, it had only taken a day or so for bonding withdrawals to begin, and the symptoms had increased in intensity shockingly fast. Only being close to Heru had alleviated the pain.
“It’s only a day by canoe,” Nik said, setting down the wooden spoon in a small At bowl near the base of the fire. I was pretty sure he’d just conjured the bowl a moment earlier for the sole purpose of holding the spoon. “Barring poor conditions, of course.” He looked into the fire, his eyes growing unfocused. Several seconds later, he blinked and looked at me. “We should be fine.”
“But you don’t know that,” I said, leaning forward. “I’m a time anomaly. The actual weather might be totally different from what’s reflected in the echoes, and—”
“Lex,” Aset interrupted. “Do not forget—we’ve done this with you many times already.” Her eyes were penetrating, the dancing flames making her irises resemble polished tortoiseshell with the ever-changing play of golds and browns. “The era and situation may be different, but we do know what we’re doing … more so, I dare say, than yo
u.”
I took a deep breath, holding back tears of frustration. My life was in her hands—hers and Nik’s. I trusted them both implicitly, but that didn’t stop the frustration from churning within me.
Aset patted my knee once more, then tapped the bottom of my cup with her nails. “Drink up. We’ll have you strong enough for the trip by morning. With any luck, you’ll be marching into Fort Nisqually before you’ve even noticed any withdrawal pains.”
I took another couple sips of the cooling tea while I mulled over her words. Blood going cold, I lowered the cup. “Marcus—Heru, in my time—when we first met, he didn’t remember me from his past. I have to find him because of the bond, but I can’t go to him, because then he’ll remember me—which he didn’t. I’d be changing the past … and our future because of that.”
“Actually, you won’t,” Aset said. “A little bonus from the twins’ sheuts: anyone near you when you’re pulled back in time will forget you when you’re gone. Their memories of you will be blocked, just as you had to do to Heru and all of our people at the Oasis so long ago.”
My shoulders relaxed. “So I just have to make sure I’m close to him when the time comes?”
“Precisely,” she said.
I chewed on my lip. “How long?”
“How long what, Lex?”
I inhaled deeply, letting the breath out in a sigh. “How long will I be here—in this time?” I felt compelled to ask, but I dreaded the answer. I wasn’t ready to go through the whole process of finding them and Marcus—Heru—again. Not yet.
“A while,” Aset said. “The last time we saw you, your pregnancy was starting to show, so I would guess you’ll be here for a couple months.”
Ricochet Through Time (Echo Trilogy Book 3) Page 7
