Time and Tyra Again

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  “He outlawed Jews,” I said. “I am not a Jew.”

  “You look like one, even though you dress as a lord.”

  Her rich prejudice and withering tone acted on me as a bucket of chilled water might. It was similar to waking up, a sensation I only vaguely remembered. I shook myself, just as if I had woken.

  “Come along,” I said, although I didn’t reach for her this time.

  She shook her head. “This is none of your business. Go away. Leave me be.”

  I stared at her, absorbing her self-centered focus. She was no longer thinking about her family or Scotland’s honor. Now, she simply wanted to thwart me because I was not of her kind—whatever that meant.

  I, though, could not forget the innocent Scots who would pay for this night’s foolishness if I did not act for her.

  I gripped her arm and smothered her protests with my other hand, then picked her up and carried her back to the cot where her brother lay. She kicked and screamed and bit my hand until it bled but I did not let go. I didn’t care enough anymore to hide what I was.

  I dumped her in the shack and barred the door from the outside. Cameron could let her out when he returned, once Brody retrieved him from the castle.

  Then, feeling exhausted, even though that was not possible for me, I went back to Brody’s room to stare into the flames and wait for him.

  All the lightness in my soul had fled.

  * * * * *

  We left York the next day, as soon as the light was broad enough for travel. Both of us were quit of the place in our hearts. All that remained was to remove our bodies.

  Brody, though, insisted I travel with him as far as Inverness in the north of Scotland, to demonstrate that the Scots were not all as bigoted as Mary. In Inverness, he would be able to buy passage on a Norwegian whaler to Greenland, where Veris was waiting. I, too, could find a ship heading for the mainland, from where I could make my way back to Iberia.

  We took our time travelling north and I learned about the generosity and warmth of the Scottish people and more about their dire circumstances. It was little wonder to me they resented their English overlords and blamed them for their straits. It was more of a puzzle why they had not risen in rebellion long ago.

  As I learned more about their history, I discovered they had rebelled. Over and over. Their entire history was one of fighting for freedom. In all that time, their identity had not been subsumed by an invader, as so many civilizations I remembered had disappeared.

  It was a pleasant few months, as the weather turned fair and the mountains rose in front of us. We travelled in easy stages, sometimes stopping in an inn or a village for several days, if inclined to do so.

  It was in Perth where we learned about Mary’s fate. Her family were from the area and the news of her betrothal to a petty French lord was the talk of the inn that night.

  “Which lord?” I asked the clansman who shouted the news to anyone who would listen.

  “The Count of Larrow.”

  I puzzled out the pronunciation. “Le Comte de Larrau?” I asked.

  “That be the one,” he confirmed, with a nod.

  I must have had an odd look on my face as I carried the two mugs of ale we would not drink back to the table where Brody was sitting, for he looked at me and tilted his head. “Something is making you want to laugh,” he observed, taking the mug.

  I told him about Mary’s betrothal.

  Brody narrowed his eyes. “I’ve heard of the family. They have a touch of royal blood. It’s an advantageous match. It isn’t what is making you smile, though.”

  I shook my head. “I know the family better than you. They’re ambitious. They have been making marriage alliances for generations.”

  Brody nodded, still puzzled.

  “Larrau is just north of Iberia. There is Moorish blood in their family.” I brushed my cheek, which was the olive color Mary had objected to. “Le Comte is darker than I.”

  I think Brody laughed louder and longer than I.

  * * * * *

  It was only three days later when we met Cameron, who was also on the road, heading for the family home. We were not hurrying, while he was anxious to get home and overtook us. We stopped by the side of the road and made camp for the night. We shared the food we carried to appear human with Cameron and his men, just as they offered theirs.

  The talk turned, as expected, to the second attempt they had made to steal Saint Edward’s Crown. Now they were safely inside Scotland they were free to talk about it more openly. Cameron was philosophical about the failure and thanked Brody for intervening and saving them.

  “The lark was sour from the beginning, anyway,” Cameron growled. “What might have been a bit o’ fun was ruin’t at the end.”

  “How?” Brody asked. “I found you on the very verge of the strong room with the door open.”

  “Aye, only not to save us from going in,” Cameron replied. “We’d already been inside. That’s the bugger of it. We got the box open an’ all.” He looked at us dourly. “The bloody crown wasn’t there.”

  Brody sat back, suddenly thoughtful.

  I commiserated with Cameron and moved the conversation on to less obnoxious subjects. The next day, Cameron and his men raced ahead of us on the road and were soon lost to sight. When they were safely gone, I looked at Brody. “What was it about the crown you wouldn’t say in front of them?”

  Brody dropped the reins over the neck of his stallion, who was smart enough to follow the road without his guidance. “It reminded me of something that happened not long after I got back to England from Acre. King Richard died in France and his little brother John was tearing up the kingdom, fighting the French, his own lords and more. There was a story I heard about John losing his entire baggage train in the Wash, when they were too slow to outrace the incoming tide. People whispered that the crown jewels were among the baggage train.”

  He looked at me and raised a brow.

  “The very next king was Henry, yes? The one who said the crown was too precious for a lowly king to wear?”

  Brody nodded. “It could be a coincidence. Life is full of them.”

  “As full as it is with people who resemble each other.” I smiled.

  So did he.

  “I have been thinking about York,” I added.

  Brody shook his head. “Better you than me. The whole affair was pitiful. I regret ever suggesting we meet there.”

  “Perhaps we were supposed to.”

  He sat up and patted the side of his horse’s neck, sharply enough to make the stallion blow a startled breath. “Your God insists upon a Fate for all believers. I don’t believe.”

  “Yet you do believe Veris knows something about your future, don’t you?”

  Brody looked at me from under his brow. “So?”

  “There are things about Jerusalem, puzzles I still cannot answer, even now, when I know the biggest puzzle of them all. You were there, Brody. I spoke to you, you were as you always have been. Yet you say you were asleep, that you remember none of it, while Veris does.”

  Brody just looked at me.

  “What if it was not you?”

  “Who, then?”

  “Someone who resembles you.”

  He laughed. “Someone who knew my life so intimately, he could fool you?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “And fool Veris and Taylor, too?”

  “There is one person who could do that easily.”

  “Who?”

  “You.”

  Brody pulled up short. I tugged on the reins, halting my gray alongside him and waited.

  Brody was staring down at the saddlecloth, picking at the edge of it with quick, nervous movements. “Me…” he breathed. I could hear his heart thudding hard.

  In the alders growing along the side of the dusty road, a warbler fluttered and gave a short trill. It made me aware of the land around us, the stillness and the whisper of the wind, high up in the peaks, and the sun on our backs.

>   “Veris speaks of answers lying somewhere in the future,” I added. “Everything seems to point there.”

  “The future…that is where the me who went into the desert came from?” He was not asking me. He was asking the question aloud to see how it sounded, if it fit with whatever thoughts had blazed to life at my suggestion. Then he frowned and shook his head. “How is that even possible?”

  “I don’t know,” I said honestly. “It was a thought that occurred to me, that you were you, just a different version of you, just as Mary was a very unpleasant version of Tyra.” I shrugged. “Pay it no mind. My thoughts wander in strange directions sometimes.”

  “You should thank your God for that,” Brody told me and picked up his reins and gently kicked the stallion back into a slow walk. “If you didn’t ask strange questions, you would not have learned about the Blood and you would not be here yourself and personally, Alex, I would regret the loss.”

  “Thank you, I think.”

  “Life with Veris is always heart stopping. You, though, add a different sort of interest,” Brody explained. “I never fail to leave your company without a bit more peace in my heart.”

  I realized I was smiling. This place was not as cold as I had first found it, after all.

  Chapter Four

  Los Angeles. Present Day.

  Sydney sank down onto the carpet next to Alex, where he sat cross-legged, a medical text open in his lap. She put the pile of loose pages down in front of him.

  “You’ve finished reading it already?” he asked, surprised.

  “It’s compulsive reading,” she said. “You knew that. You set me up to want to read it.”

  “I merely said it would explain why you sometimes think you should feel jealous about Taylor, yet you can never figure out why.”

  “Yes, yes,” she said quickly. Dismissively. “Alex, you were so close to the truth about time travel, way back then. Why couldn’t you see it? Either of you? It was right there in front of you.”

  “In hindsight, it was obvious,” Alex agreed. “Time travel simply wasn’t a concept back then, not even in stories. Time itself wasn’t properly a concept, not to the common man. It just was. It took me another hundred years or so to start thinking about time in that way and only after I woke from a sleep of several days myself and learned I had been walking around, living my life the whole time.”

  Sydney grew still, her eyes wide. “When? Where?” she demanded.

  Alex closed the text book. “It’s a time and place we haven’t jumped back to yet, so I can’t say.”

  “I was there?”

  Alex shook his head. “No details.”

  Sydney rolled her eyes. “You spoil everything,” she muttered. “You and Veris are a pair. I can understand why Brody had to run away to meet you in England, just to get away from the man.”

  “Thank you. Being compared favorably to Veris is one of the highest compliments I could think of.”

  “It wasn’t a compliment,” she shot back.

  “I know.” Alex picked up her hand. “The more I learn about time, the more I learn how everything is linked, how everything affects everything else. If I hadn’t thought myself in love with Taylor, if I hadn’t worked to remember everything about her, I wouldn’t have been so shocked by Mary’s resemblance to her. Brody would never have met her and learned what Taylor looked like. Nine hundred years later, he wouldn’t have been able to pick Taylor out of the crowd at one of his concerts and kiss her instead of one of the thousands of other fans. Because he kissed her, she and Brody and Veris were united. Because those three got together, I got to meet you and Rafe. I’ve learned to respect the quantum mechanics and not mess with it.”

  Sydney sobered. Her fingers tightened in his. “So…no details.”

  “Not yet,” Alex qualified. “Not quite yet.”

  “Then I’ll have to do this, instead.” She kissed him. “Thank you for telling me about Taylor.”

  Alex drew her into his lap and unbuttoned her shirt, his body throbbing with promise. “Yours is thanks I can accept with all my heart.”

  Did you enjoy this book?

  How to make a big difference!

  Reviews are powerful.

  Authors like me, without the financial muscle of a sleek New York publisher backing me, can’t take advertisements out in the subways and billboards of the world.

  On the other hand, New York publishers would kill to get what I have: A committed and loyal group of readers.

  Honest reviews of my books help bring them to the attention of other readers. If you enjoyed this book I would be grateful if you could spend just a few minutes leaving a review (it can be as short as you like) on the book’s page where you bought it.

  You can jump to the book’s page by clicking on this link: http://tracycooperposey.com/time-and-tyra-again/

  Thank you so much!

  Tracy

  Bonus Chapter from New Star Rising

  Turn the page to enjoy the first chapter in the science fiction novel New Star Rising, which will be released at the end of March 2017.

  Chapter One

  Kachmarain City, Kachmar Sodality, The Karassian Homogeny.

  They had survived ten days in the Homogeny, yet Sang still found it difficult to ignore the constant attacks upon their concentration. Screens were everywhere—disposables, transluscents, impermeables for wet conditions, building-sized, thumbnail-sized, embedded in windows, luggage, shopping bags, vehicles and clouds. The spoon they used to eat breakfast had a long, narrow screen running along the handle. The faucets in the ablutions areas featured rosette screens on the activation sensors. Each and every screen offered a different data stream, a unique offering designed to seduce and hold the viewer’s attention.

  The babble had been overwhelming, at first. After ten days it had evolved into merely distracting, which was why Sang failed to notice they were being observed, until the man made his move. By then it was too late to counter.

  Sang held still, on alert. They put their spoon down. Regretfully, they would have to miss breakfast.

  The eatery was busy, even this early. Many of the screens were displaying a show featuring a self-confessed biocomp called Chidi who mocked and disparaged the people he met. The Karassians seemed to enjoy the show, enough to train screens to focus on it. Sang did not understand how they could enjoy the derisive negativity. It made Sang uncomfortable.

  Therefore, Sang did not watch the screens as so many in the eatery were. They pretended to watch, which allowed them to measure the man’s progress toward the far corner where they were sitting. The man would have to move around six long tables, with every stool occupied by noisy Karassians.

  The man did not look enhanced. He did not look Karassian, either. He did not have blond hair or the pure, rich brown eyes that Karassians valued. That made him an outsider, as was Sang. Yet he was not Eriuman, either.

  Was this the one? Sang waited with tense readiness.

  “Will you look at the pretty one, then?” The question came from behind Sang.

  “We’re going to sit down right next to you, sweet one.” A different voice. This one, female. Sang was jostled from behind, forcing them to look away from the stranger and up at the pair addressing them.

  “You don’t look like a Karassian, sweet thing,” the woman said. She was native Karassian, visibly enhanced. Her bare arms featured metal sinews that sat on top of her white skin. There were plug-ins at both wrists. She would be strong, then.

  The male narrowed his standard brown eyes. He had no chin and a large mouth. “That’s a thick lip you have there, little one.”

  The swollen lip and the bruise on Sang’s cheek were courtesy of a scuffle two days ago, when Sang had explained physically why they did not appreciate a hand groping under their skirt when they were trying to board a carriage. Sang had assumed that the disfigurements would deflect interest. They had not.

  “Move over, sweet thing,” the woman said, bumping Sang’s shoulder with her
hip. Her metal enhanced hand gripped Sang’s arm, tugging them sideways and almost off the stool.

  The man was pulling a third stool over to the long bench.

  Sang sighed. “I do not wish to keep your company,” they said.

  “We’re good company,” the woman replied. She put her hands around Sang’s waist and lifted them, then pushed the stool aside with her foot. She placed Sang on the relocated stool, her hands lingering. “Heavy,” she remarked. “You may be enhanced under that odd skin of yours?”

  “I believe the lady said she did not want company.” The third voice was that of the man who had been watching Sang.

  Sang was surprised to feel a sensation of relief trickle through them.

  “She’s with you?” The woman was irked.

  “Told you someone would have her,” the man muttered.

  Sang looked at the stranger. “I am not with them.”

  His nod was tiny. “She is with me. Move on.”

  The woman looked at her partner. “He doesn’t look enhanced.” Her fingers curled inward, in preparation.

  Sang braced for action. They were close enough to the woman, but they would have to turn to get a grip on her. It could be done, even against an enhanced.

  The woman shot out her hand toward the stranger. It was very easy to pick her wrist up as she thrust it past Sang. Sang squeezed. Metal tendons bowed. The woman shrieked.

  A few heads turned, though not as many as Sang would have expected.

  The stranger who was not Karassian gripped Sang’s upper arm, not hard, but firmly enough for Sang to know they would not be able to dislodge the grip without causing damage. “Let her go,” the man said quietly. “You’re drawing attention.”

  “We are not nearly remarkable enough to do that,” Sang said with a confidence built over the last ten days. Only Karassians like Chidi, with their extremes of social behavior, held anyone’s attention for long.

  The man shook Sang. “Let go.”