Ancient Fire (Danger Boy Series #1)

by Mark London Williams

  Chapter Fifteen

  Eli: Many Happy Returns

  August 23, 2019 C.E.

  Thea and I return, materializing just outside Moonglow at night. We fade in next to a series of new generators that have been installed behind the building. They’ve really built the place up since I’ve been gone, but how long has that been?

  I’m feeling a little wobbly, as usual, but Thea is worse — shivering, her teeth chattering, trying to pull the remains of her robes around her. We’re both still soaked—more than sixteen hundred years after getting wet.

  “Where…? Where…?” she manages to ask.

  “Home,” I say. Meaning, my home, or what’s been passing for home ever since Mom vanished and Dad and I left Princeton.

  I’m still tingling. I need to get the cap off my head before it sends me back through the time stream, but I don’t want to touch it myself. Hurrying, I take Thea’s hand and use it to yank the Seals cap off my head.

  “What are you doing?” she asks, pulling her arm back.

  “I’m sorry. The cap and me, we’re two parts of a whole. It creates a reaction . . . that causes my time traveling. If I want to stay put, I can’t wear it.”

  “I am traveling with a wizard,” she sighs, “who has an enchanted hat he cannot control.”

  Since I don’t have any Thickskin left, I take a stick, lift up the cap, and hide it in the hollow of an oak a few yards away.

  I turn back and squint into the bright lights surrounding the winery. Realizing how exposed we are, I tap Thea on the shoulder to get her to go a little deeper into the grove of trees with me, until we figure out what to do.

  But she’s mesmerized by the electric lights. Of course. She’s never seen them before.

  I hear heavy boot steps. “Come on!” I tell her. But she doesn’t want to move. “Come on!” Reluctantly, she goes with me. Huddling behind a tree, I see a couple soldiers walk by in uniforms I don’t recognize from DARPA. The situation at Moonglow must have grown bigger and more serious, and I figure it’d be better if Thea didn’t come to Mr. Howe’s attention at all.

  “Listen.” I try to whisper, but it comes out faster and louder than I want. “I have a hideout here in the woods.”

  “Where?” she asks again, and it occurs to me that so much has happened to Thea, she might still think she’s back in Alexandria somewhere, having a really strange dream. One with electric lights in it.

  “This way,” I tell her. We race past more oaks in the dark, stumbling a little, though her footing is at least as steady as mine. She must be feeling a little bit better, or she’s a really great sleepwalker.

  When we reach Wolf House, I show her how to climb through the holes in the fence, and we step carefully around the stone ruins. I take Thea down to where the basement was supposed to be—a big, boxy area that was used for storing coal. Now it’s more like a fort, where you can look out and see anybody who’s coming before they see you.

  But the old stone walls don’t warm her at all, and she still shivers. “We need to build a fire,” she says.

  “I don’t have a lighter or matches,” I tell her.

  “You mean, something to spark the flame?” She looks around, then gathers some sticks and rocks in her hands. “Let me.”

  Thea wipes her face and for the first time really takes in her surroundings—the trees, the crumbling house. “Your world isn’t so different from mine,” she says. “Not quite as built up, maybe.”

  She hasn’t seen a traffic jam yet, or a crowd at a ballgame, or the skyscrapers in a million different places, like San Francisco or New York. The world seems pretty built up to me. I hope I get a chance to show her those things someday.

  Right now, we have more pressing needs. Like getting warm. And getting help. I have to figure out a way to get my dad here to explain what’s going on. “Thea, I have to go back there to the lab.”

  “You’re leaving me?” She looks a little confused, like maybe she’s lapsed back into that dream state. “What is a ‘lab’?”

  “I have to get help. From my father. And a lab is a place where we do experiments. Science.”

  “Like a gymnasium?”

  “Like a gymnasium. You should be okay here for a little while. Hide if you need to. I won’t be long.”

  She gives me a look that says I hope not. I can tell even in the dark.

  I head toward the winery. Somehow the path back is harder without Thea. I trip over a couple fallen branches I didn’t see before, but I get there. And when I do, this time I walk right in the front door.

  “My God. You came back.” It’s Mr. Howe, who emerges almost immediately. His comment makes me wonder if he really expected me to come back at all, in which case, why was he so slaphappy about sending me off into time in the first place?

  Two guys in particularly thick Thickskins emerge and scan me up and down. Some kind of bug alarm, I think. Right. I could be carrying slow pox or something else. A third guy comes out of the lab and takes off his hood. I recognize him from the BART tunnel: one of the Twenty-Fives.

  “I want to see my dad.”

  Howe exchanges glances with Twenty- Five. “We haven’t seen him, Eli. He’s been gone for a couple of days. We were about to ask you.”

  I groan. “Don’t tell me he got sucked into the time stream, too?”

  “He just drove away in his truck the other day. Ran away. He was getting depressed that you hadn’t come back.”

  “How long have I been gone?”

  “Three weeks, now.”

  “But I was only gone for a night.” Mr. Howe makes a note of that.

  Having scanned every tangled inch of me, the Thickskin guys appear to be steering me to Dad’s lab. I stop suddenly. They bump into each other, like a pair of bowling pins. “Why are we going in there if my dad’s gone? Who’s running his lab?”

  “We have to do more tests, Eli. Find out what’s happened to you.” Then Howe lowers his voice, as if he’s telling me a secret. “Find out more about the effects of time displacement on human beings.”

  “I’m soaking wet.”

  “From time displacement?” He makes another note.

  “From water. Do you think I could get something to eat? And change my clothes first?”

  More notes. I’m also still feeling a little queasy, which is from the time travel, but I’m not gonna tell him that, ’cause that’ll mean an extra hour or two of tests.

  “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-sp
ot 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 spotlights 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, almo
st 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.