Trafalgar Boone and the Children of the Burnt Empire

by Geonn Cannon

  She couldn’t close her eyes, and summoning the ability to speak or move an arm was out of the question. Rute’s lower body was just barely in her line of sight and it seemed she had been equally incapacitated. Someone stepped over Cora, followed by two more people moving in from the sides. The clearing was suddenly full of people. Their trousers were oddly modern, and they had fashioned strange shoes out of thick strips of leather held together by string.

  One of the men crouched down and twisted his head to look into her eyes. He had a patchy beard and thick, curly blonde hair.

  “Hi there,” he said with an accent she could have sworn was American South. “My name is Travis Peterson.”

  Cora managed to blink one eye shut, but couldn’t open it again.

  “That’s all right. There’s gonna be plenty of time for talking when we get back to our camp.” He looked past her and scanned the trees. “I know you’ve got more people around here. The redhead and the tall black lady. Are they around here? Or did they go wandering off for food or something? You can just nod, or... make a sound or... damn.” He looked over his shoulder at the other members of his group. “I’m not getting anything out of this one. I think you hit her with too much.”

  “She got in the way of the dart I shot at this one. But I think he’s so looped that he would’ve died if we did tranq him, so we got lucky there.”

  “Sure, sure,” Travis Peterson said. “What about the others?”

  “Big lady is still mostly conscious, but she’s not answering. The guy is completely out.”

  Travis shook his head. “Two women and a pair of fellas who look like they’ve both got their brains squashed. I told you we shouldn’t have used the darts.”

  “What do you want to do?” the other man asked. “We can wait and see if their friends come back.”

  “Nah, we’ve already lost most of the day. Have Jeremy stand watch. If the missing ladies show up, he can take care of them himself.”

  “What if they went into the caves?”

  Travis said, “Then they’ve got bigger problems than we do. Come on, let’s get them up and get moving. I bet these ladies aren’t as light as they look.”

  He grabbed her around the waist and hauled her up with effort, grunting as he slung her over one knobby shoulder. Cora couldn’t do anything but dangle and stare at his back as he started walking. She could only assume that Rute, Ketcham, and Felix were being treated to the same indignity by the other members of Travis’ party. The sound of moving water faded as they were carried into the heavy foliage and she realized with dismay that, if they went far enough, they would never be able to find their way back to the cave or their camp.

  There was little she could do about it now. Dorothy and Trafalgar were on their own, and she was now a prisoner of the Burnt Empire.

  #

  “What time is it?”

  The question was so unexpected that, at first, Dorothy assumed she’d misheard. She put her hand against her hip where she usually kept a pocket watch. She looked at Trafalgar, who was equally at a loss. Their timepieces were back with the rest of their wet clothing. Being underground meant that she also couldn’t use the quality of sunlight to make an educated guess.

  “I’m not certain,” Dorothy said. “I assume it’s not long after dawn.”

  D’janira said, “The sun began brightening the sky about thirty minutes ago. Sixty seconds repeated thirty times. Meaningless to the sun and its actual progression across the sky. The day begins when it begins, and no amount of marking heartbeats will change that. It doesn’t matter what time it is, to the exact minute, just as it doesn’t matter what day of the week, or the month, or the year.”

  “You’re beyond such matters?” Trafalgar said.

  “Beyond, above, removed from... it’s insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Time is simply perception. Humans perceive things happening in a single moment because it would drive them mad to see everything all at once. Your mission is to prevent an aircraft from entering an anomaly fifty years from now and being sent to a point hundreds of years in the past.”

  “That’s correct,” Dorothy said.

  D’janira shook her head. “These things all occurred at the same time. They all happened right here, in this spot. You and Miss Trafalgar are experiencing this moment because you are in the same time stream. You were born to a moment and remained tied to it your entire lives because humans cannot cut that string. At least not yet. One day you will find the secret.”

  “So by that logic, we’ve always known it,” Trafalgar said.

  “Yes.”

  Dorothy said, “When we get home, I am destroying every damned clock I can find. This is driving me insane.”

  “Allow me to demonstrate.”

  D’janira lifted her right hand. The room shifted and Dorothy felt sick to her stomach, as if the ground was being tilted and spun at the same time. She reached out and grabbed Trafalgar’s hand for balance only to find Trafalgar had been reaching for her as well. Dorothy closed her eyes and tried to find her equilibrium, swallowing her nausea and finally forcing her eyes open. Everything was the same as it had been a moment before, but there was an added element: she saw herself and another Trafalgar standing across the room.

  Their duplicates were wearing the wet clothes Dorothy had last seen in the chamber where they spent the night. They were speaking to another version of D’janira. Dorothy remembered enough of the conversation to read her own lips. She wanted to move closer but feared breaking the spell. She thought back to that moment and tried to recall if she’d seen anything else in the cavern, any hint of a ghost from the future lurking in the background, but she couldn’t say for sure.

  “Of course we were all present for this, so it’s not enlightening.”

  D’janira held up both hands palm-out and spread them apart as if opening a window. The day-old images of Dorothy and Trafalgar vanished to be replaced by someone new.

  Captain Neville.

  He looked younger and more polished than the man she’d last seen on the surface. His clothes were clean and unpatched, and his hair was cut close to his scalp. He was scanning the room with awe, and Dorothy realized he couldn’t see them. Light from his torch reflected off the water and made the stone walls look alive with movement. Except... no. The walls were moving, covered with curtains of snakes. She couldn’t tell if the snakes were ‘now’ or ‘then,’ but she chose to believe they were phantoms.

  Neville moved closer to the edge of the water. He moved the light of his torch over the plinths before stretching out one leg to test its stability with the toe of his boot. He judged it safe and hopped onto it. They watched as he continued across the pool in this manner, testing a plinth before trusting it with his weight until he finally reached the center where D’janira was currently standing. She moved out of his way and Dorothy saw what appeared to be a stone well.

  “That isn’t here... or wasn’t... it’s...” She shook her head. “That’s gone now, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  Trafalgar sounded like she was on the verge of breaking down. Dorothy realized she was still gripping Trafalgar’s wrist, so she moved her palm down and linked their fingers together. Trafalgar squeezed her hand in response.

  Neville circled the well. In the light of his torch, Dorothy saw the well was closed off with a cover stone. He used his free hand to push it, then put down the torch and used both hands. His boots scraped on the ground and he bared his teeth. His grunting echoed off the walls. D’janira watched his efforts with detached interest, her hands behind her back and head tilted to the side. Her body was still wreathed by snaked like living jewelry.

  “Blast.” Neville ceased his efforts and straightened to stare at the well. He pulled a notebook from his back pocket and began scribbling. Eventually he sighed, closed the book, and returned it to his pocket. He circled the well, hands on his hips, examining the problem.

  “This takes some time.” D’janira lifted her hand again, a
nd the scene shifted.

  Neville now looked as if he had just finished a bare-knuckle bout. His jacket was discarded on the ground next to him, the collar of his shirt was open and darkened by sweat, and both sleeves were rolled up. He raised a shovel with both hands and brought the blade of it down on the stone. The stone had obviously already been weakened by a great many blows, and this was the one which caused the wooden handle of the shovel to splinter. Neville stumbled and stared at his now-useless tool.

  “Blast!” His shout echoed off the water and rock. “Blast and damn and blast!” He threw both pieces of the shovel, now two spears, and dropped to his knees in defeat. “God damn it to hell...”

  After a long, defeated moment, he lifted his head. He wiped his forearm across his face and, with great effort, got back to his feet. He walked to the well, looked at the cracked cover stone, and gave a startling, animalistic shout. He raised both fists over his head and brought them down with all the strength he still possessed.

  The stone shattered.

  He recoiled in shock and then continued his retreat when a knot of snakes began writhing out of the now-open well. Trafalgar pulled Dorothy a step backward at the sight of them. Neville shrieked and tried kicking at them, then ran to retrieve the discarded pieces of his shovel. The snakes swarmed him. They wrapped around his ankles and kept him from advancing. He fell forward, arms extended and stopping his fall while presenting his wrists to more of the serpents.

  “This is it,” Dorothy whispered. “This is the moment that led to the anomaly.”

  Trafalgar nodded but seemed unable to take her eyes off the scene playing out before them.

  The past version of D’janira looked haggard and weak. She sat on the rim of the well and stared at the snakes before she noticed the man sprawled among them.

  “You woke me.”

  “I... I was...” He groaned and tried pushing a snake away, but it coiled around his hand. “Call them off. Please, tell them to leave...”

  “I don’t control them.” She slipped off the well. The snakes writhed around her feet but did nothing to impede her progress. “Did you come to free me, sir, or control me?”

  Neville said, “I didn’t... know you were here. If I had...”

  D’janira’s face darkened. It felt as if all the air was sucked from the room, and the snakes converged on Neville. He screamed and brought up his hands to prevent them from sliding into his mouth. D’janira moved to stand over him.

  “If you did not come to free me, then you are here to exploit my gifts. You want to steal it.”

  The snakes were now around Neville’s throat, tightening slowly.

  “Please,” he gasped. “Let me live and I will assist in your liberation.”

  “Lies.”

  His face was rapidly changing colors. He tried to get his fingers under the snakes, but their bodies were obviously too strong and their scales slick with water from the well.

  “You wish to live?”

  Neville could only make a grunting noise at this point, but Dorothy saw his chin lift and drop in a nod. The snakes responded to some invisible signal and loosened their grip on him. D’janira crouched at his feet and rested her elbows on her knees.

  “The damage you’ve caused is already creating ripples. The echoes are forming even now.” She looked directly at Dorothy and Trafalgar, holding the gaze of both women before moving on to look at other things that only she could see. “The damage you have caused will also be mended through your actions. You will bring others and they will heal the scar. But you must survive for that to happen.”

  “Thank you,” Neville said. “I promise, I will bring them back. I’ll--”

  D’janira put her hand over his mouth. “You will not remember...”

  The scene faded and Dorothy was suddenly lightheaded. She stumbled, nearly fell, and then choked back another wave of nausea.

  “Are you well?” D’janira asked.

  “I’ll recover.”

  Dorothy looked at Trafalgar to make sure she was also recovering. She took a deep breath of cool air and stood up straighter. She faced D’janira.

  “The Burnt Empire is on their way, aren’t they?”

  D’janira looked toward the ceiling of the cave as if she could hear footsteps on the surface above. “I do not know the hour of their arrival. But it approaches swiftly.”

  Trafalgar took a step closer to D’janira. “Tell us what we need to do.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Let me tell you a story.”

  Cora was propped up against a tree not far from the Pratear and the cave where Dorothy and Trafalgar had vanished the day before. She still couldn’t move but she could blink and breathe. Rute was lying flat on her back nearby, one hand on her stomach and the other sprawled out next to her. If it wasn’t for her chest rising with the occasional shallow breath, she would look dead. Ketcham and Felix were sitting against trees directly across from Cora. Travis Peterson was standing between them, near Rute.

  “It’s a long story. It’s the story of my ancestors. You see, one day a long time ago, they boarded an airplane in a place called Texas. During the flight, something happened. They never figured out what it was or where they went. A group set out to see what they could find, to learn where exactly they were, and they found civilization. Such as it was. That was when they discovered the horrible truth: they were hundreds of years in the past. They had no idea how that happened and definitely had no idea how to get home. All they knew was that they were trapped and had to survive somehow. So they got to work. They built homes. They planted food. And yes, in order to feed themselves and their families, sometimes they had to take from the people who were already here.

  “I know what you’re thinking. You’re judging them. But imagine what those tribes would have thought! They either would have worshipped our ancestors as gods or burned them as demons. I don’t know if they made the right choice. I don’t know what I would have done in their position. But I know they were successful. They survived. They began to thrive in this inhospitable place. Babies were born. Soon this was their home.”

  He moved and bent at the waist to look at Rute. After a long moment where he seemingly assessed her health, he straightened and went to Ketcham.

  “They kept a lot of things about their previous lives. Names. Language. Customs. They knew eventually time would catch up with us and someone would arrive to take us to the world we should have inherited. I think you’re a little early, though. We’ve still got fifty years before the plane gets tossed back in time, if the calendars we’ve been using are right. But I think we can make it work. That’s my opinion, of course. We’ll see what our big boss man has to say when he gets here.”

  “Oh, I’m here.”

  Travis turned toward the brush from which the voice seemed to emanate, unable to hide his surprise. Another man appeared, a wry grin on his slender face.

  “Jeremy,” Travis said. “How long have you been there?”

  “Not long. I just like hearing that story.” Jeremy walked past Travis and examined the prisoners. “Well, who are these?”

  Travis regained his focus. “Explorers. You know about Captain Neville, of course. These ones are new. That one,” he pointed at Rute, “is a local. The others are British. There are at least two more, maybe three, who went underground.”

  Cora was surprised at the depth of his knowledge, spotty though it might have been, and wondered how long the Burnt Empire had been tracking them.

  “Underground,” Jeremy muttered. “Into the cave.”

  “Yeah. The very same.”

  Jeremy knelt down next to Cora and touched her cheek so they could look each other in the eye.

  “What do you know, Miss London?” he asked. “What do your friends know? Can they reverse this?”

  “Ahh--” Her tongue felt like stone in her mouth, but the ability to move her lips was an enormous relief. She blinked slowly. “Ahh.”

  Jeremy looked at her throat and t
wisted to look at Travis. “How much did you dose her with?”

  “I may have gone a little overboard.”

  “Moderation, Mr. Peterson. We are working on a deadline, you know.” He faced Cora again and sighed heavily. “Give me the stimulant.”

  Travis fumbled in his pocket and produced a small phial. Jeremy took it and twisted off the top. “My guys use this for themselves sometimes. They dip those darts they hit you with in it, prick their arms or necks or whatever, and it gives them a boost of energy. It makes the natives around here think we’re superhuman or something. Are superheroes a thing yet...? I think it’s a little too early for that. There were some comic books on our plane when it went down. Anyway, I don’t really know how this will interact with the tranq, and you’re going to get a much bigger dose than we usually give anyone. But we need to know what to expect in the cave. So bottom’s up.”

  He held the phial against her lips and tilted it. Cora’s mouth filled with a vile, nasty liquid that she had no choice but to swallow. Thankfully he didn’t give her more than a mouthful, but it was enough that she nearly choked on it. She coughed and gagged, leaning forward. Jeremy put a hand on her shoulder and moved to one side just in case she did manage to vomit up the poison.

  “There we are! What’s your name, new friend?”

  “Corahyde.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “Mynameiscorahyde. Goodlord.” She could feel the throbbing of her pulse in her extremities, but she could barely catch her breath. Colors were sharper and the light was so bright it hurt her eyes. A wave of shudders passed through her and she choked back a cry of fear. “Whatdidyougiveme?”

  “Just woke you up a little, darling. Just take deep breaths.”

  She pushed him away and got to her feet in a burst of motion. Travis grabbed for her, but she grabbed two of his fingers and twisted them until he yelped. She didn’t let go and spun, using him as a counterweight. She only released him when his trajectory would send him tumbling into Jeremy. She didn’t wait to see them hit the ground. She ran, but someone grabbed her arm and jerked hard enough to knock her down.