A Captive in Time

by Sarah Dreher

  She dug an ice crystal out of the corner of her eye and rammed her hand back into her vest pocket. Her finger tips ached from the cold.

  Keep on truckin’.

  The January Invasion. January in Boston was ugly. The temperature could be below freezing for weeks at a time, but the snow would find a way to turn to dirt. Trash-laden slush with an invisible sheen of ice, making a trip down the sidewalk a Journey into Terror. Rivulets of scummy water, deeper than they looked. City soot everywhere. In the snow banks. On your clothes. On your skin. In your mouth.

  The Armies of Winter in January had one goal in life—to turn everything and everybody in Boston the identical shade of gray.

  Winter, the great equalizer.

  God, we’ve got to get out of Boston.

  Well, you’re out of Boston now. Smell that fresh country air.

  She took a deep breath. Cold wind rushed in and turned her lungs to leather and tied a band of iron around her chest.

  Not a good idea.

  She stopped. The snow was so thick now she could see about as far as you could from the inside of a closet.

  You know, McTavish, this was a pretty stupid thing you got yourself into.

  Yeah, that’s beginning to occur to me.

  You don’t know beans about winter survival, and you don’t know the territory.

  You read it here first, folks.

  So what are you going to do?

  Well, I think maybe I’ll stand here and think.

  And freeze to death.

  It’s not a bad way to go, you know. You kind of fall asleep.

  Not going at all’s better.

  True, but it’s beginning to occur to me...

  Yes?

  OH, SHIT, I’M LOST!!

  Wait a minute, wait a minute, let’s not panic.

  LET’S.

  No, she told herself firmly. This is not the way you do things. You do not run wildly off into the night screaming like a banshee. You’re Stoner McTavish, named for Lucy B. Stone. You ran away from home at the age of sixteen. You have a useless degree in Journalism. You move hundreds of people from place to place every year. You’re the world’s authority on lost luggage. You’re reputed to have minor psychic powers. You’re not afraid to love...

  ...well, not very afraid…

  ...just a little afraid.

  You, Stoner McTavish, are a WARRIOR!

  I want to go home.

  The sky had turned from silver to slate. Darkness coming on, and coming on fast.

  The wind raged, howled, roared.

  It reminded her that there were wolves out here.

  Wolves. Wolves are nothing more than un-evolved dogs.

  I like dogs.

  Dogs like me.

  Therefore, wolves will like me.

  Wolves will like me very much.

  Wolves will like me very much FOR DINNER.

  She spun in a circle, completely lost now.

  I’m going to die here. I’m really going to die. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know when I am.

  I’m going to die in the wrong century and nobody will know what happened to me.

  I’m going to die with my eyes frozen shut and my hair turned to ice, and the last thing I’ll know will be the sound of the wind and the clawing cold and the smell of wood smoke...

  The smell of wood smoke?

  THE SMELL OF WOOD SMOKE!!

  She sniffed the air, found the direction, and lurched forward.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  The stove pipe was nearly hidden in the snow, but it was easy to see the great dark crack where the creek cut through the prairie. Stoner took the slope sideways, bumping her way to the bottom. She pushed aside the moth-eaten blanket and threw herself into the room.

  Billy sat in a corner, wrapped in a pathetic Indian robe, huddled close to the stove. A faint glow showed through holes in the rusted and pitted iron. His hat was pulled low over his eyes. A single candle, stuck into the dirt in the center of the room, was the only light. The furniture was gone.

  The boy looked up, his eyes startled, frightened, red-rimmed. “Jeez,” he said. “What’re you doin’ here?”

  “I came to save you,” she panted.

  He stared at her, at her frozen hair, at the rim of frost bite along her earlobes, at her shaking knees and trembling hands. “Gosh,” he said, “good thing you showed up when you did. I was just about a goner.” He burst into laughter.

  “Very funny.” She came as close to the stove as her snowshoes would allow.

  “I’d offer you a chair,” the boy said, “but I just burnt it.”

  She held her hands out to the pitiful fire. The air was sharp with cold. “Billy, this fire wouldn’t even melt ice.”

  He shrugged.

  “You can’t stay here.”

  He turned his face away from her. “Nowhere else to go.”

  “What about Dot’s? Why didn’t you stay in town?”

  “This here’s my home,” he said stubbornly.

  “This isn’t a home.”

  “Only home I got.”

  She realized he was right. She was being small-minded. Just because this place was a mud room cut into the side of a creek bank was no reason to put it down.

  She squatted to get closer to his level. “I know how you feel, and I didn’t mean to be rude. But you could freeze here.”

  “Might,” the boy said petulantly. “Least I’d be somewhere that was mine.”

  Okay. Here we are, faced once more with adolescent stubbornness. What works with adolescent stubbornness?

  Reason?

  No way.

  Peer pressure?

  What peer pressure? To exert peer pressure, you have to be a peer.

  Common sense?

  Forget it.

  Guilt? Look what I’ve done for you?

  Hah.

  Inspiration! Appeal to his macho pride!

  “Look,” she said, “you can stay until Hell freezes over if you want, but it’s much too cold for me. I probably wouldn’t make it through the night. If I interfered with your privacy, I apologize. But I’m here, and if I try to go back to Blue Mary’s alone, I’ll get lost. You know your way around out here. Will you help me?”

  Billy got to his feet slowly. He looked as if he hurt. His shoulders beneath the denim jacket were thin. His lips were blue. “Might as well,” he said, hitching up his pants and feeling for his gun. “Jeez, girls.”

  Stoner pulled the blanket from the doorway. Wind and snow slammed into the room. The fire blazed for an instant and died. The candle went out. She groped for him in the dark, handed him the blanket. He led the way outside.

  “Don’t suppose it’s occurred to you,” the boy muttered as they trudged up the bank, “it ain’t gonna be real easy for me to walk in that snow.”

  He pulled himself up a few strides. She could tell from his ragged breathing he was weak. She followed.

  “Billy, when did you eat last?”

  “Dunno. When did you?”

  “This morning.”

  “Sometime ‘fore that.”

  She wished she had brought something. Even a chunk of corn bread. Well, at least he wouldn’t be heavy if she had to carry him.

  They had reached the top. “Over this way,” Billy said, and started off into the dark and snow.

  Stoner grabbed him. “Whoa. Let’s be sensible about this, okay?”

  “Sensible?” He laughed sharply. “You come all the way out here in this dog turd of a night, and you’re talkin’ about sensible?”

  “We can’t just go plunging off. This snow’s deep in spots. You don’t have snowshoes, do you?”

  “I did. Burned ’em.”

  “Well, then, we have to have a plan.”

  He stood and looked out over the expanse of snow. “So what’re we gonna do?” he asked, typically male helpless.

  Stoner made an effort to control her temper. “I think we should walk together where we can. And when it’s too deep, I’ll ca
rry you.”

  She waited for his indignant explosion. It didn’t come.

  “Think you can?” he asked after a moment. There was something in his voice. Fear?

  “If I can’t, I guess we’ll freeze to death, won’t we?”

  “We could go back to my place.”

  “Where there’s no food and no heat. It could be days before this lets up.” She reached out to touch him. “Nobody’s going to come looking for us, Billy. We’re all we have.”

  They set out, Billy following in her snowshoe tracks.

  It was rough going. She was already tired, and the wind had picked up. Light flakes swirled around them in a vortex, erasing any sense of distance or direction. Billy seemed to know where they were going, would tug at her blanket from time to time to correct her.

  She hoped he really did know.

  Maybe he was right in the first place. Maybe they should go back to the dugout.

  No, it was certain death back there.

  Trust his knowledge of this place.

  She trudged on.

  If my Higher Spirit brought me all this way through time and space just to freeze to death on the Colorado prairie, my Spirit and I are coming to a parting of the ways.

  I mean, Colorado isn’t even a State yet, for God’s sake.

  Billy corrected her direction of travel.

  I don’t believe it. I’m crawling across the frozen wastes and complaining because Colorado isn’t a State?

  All right, she had accepted it. She had, indeed, somehow traveled back in time, just casually crossed the street on an errand of mercy or whatever. To do what? This?

  She nodded to herself. Yep, that made sense.

  Made sense?

  Apparently, freezing to death has a serious impact on one’s mental capacities.

  If she was going to warp out of time whenever someone needed a traveling companion in a blizzard, she was going to be doing a lot of warping.

  It had to be more than this.

  They came to a place where the snow was deep, high as Billy’s hips. He tried to push through it, and fell. She gave him a hand up and could tell, by the feebleness of his grip, that he was weakening.

  “This is it, kid,” she said. “Piggy-back time. Hang around my neck and wrap the blankets around us. It’ll keep us both warm.”

  He surprised her by doing it without argument. She felt his arms go around her, felt his body press against her back. He was warmer than she’d expected. Very warm. Unnaturally warm. Feverish.

  “Don’t you feel well?” she asked over her shoulder.

  “I’m okay.”

  “Tell me the truth, Billy.”

  “Not so great, I guess.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I dunno.”

  Oh, God, let him hang in there until we get to Blue Mary’s.

  It should be soon. They’d been walking for—well, to tell the truth, she hadn’t the slightest idea how long they’d been walking. On a normal, sunny day like yesterday—was it only yesterday?... it shouldn’t take more than half an hour to get from Blue Mary’s to Billy’s. But in the dark, in the snow, with her sense of time and direction completely scrambled...

  The boy seemed to get heavier.

  “Billy?”

  “Huh?” he said, startled and sleepy.

  “Don’t you pass out on me now, Buddy. I need you.”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  She walked a few more steps, felt him go limp again. “Billy!”

  He didn’t answer.

  She shook her shoulders. “Damn it, Billy!”

  He started to slip.

  “Oh, shit.”

  He fell away from her and crumpled in the snow.

  Stoner stood looking down at him. The wind swirled curtains of white around them. The darkness was solid.

  She tried to lift him, and realized how weak she had become. Couldn’t even raise him enough to get a good grip. She slipped out of her snow shoes and sat on them. Clumsily, she pulled the boy close to her, arranged one blanket beneath them, covered them both with the other. It seemed to take her forever, and exhausted the last of her strength. His breathing was shallow. She felt for his pulse, but it was hard to read with the wind shrieking and tearing at her.

  As soon as it’s light, she thought. I’ll be stronger. We’ll get up and go on. I’ll feel better after a little rest. I know I will.

  “Don’t you die on me, boy,” she whispered. “Don’t you dare die.”

  His hat was beyond her reach. It didn’t seem right, to make him lie here in the snow and wind without his hat. He’d hate to die without his hat.

  But to get it she’d have to move out from under him, crawl through the snow, crawl back, lift him, cover them...

  She couldn’t do it.

  Tears of weakness and frustration and impotence leaked from her eyes. They froze in her eyelashes.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  Chapter Seven

  She wasn’t sure when she first became aware of the white wolf watching them.

  The wind had dropped a little. She must have dozed off. Snow lay nearly half an inch deep over her arms and hands. In a flash of panic, she brushed it away as if it were radioactive.

  Billy was very still in her arms. She pressed her face to his chest. It rose and fell gently. His lungs bubbled like a spring.

  Oh, God.

  She looked back toward the wolf.

  The wolf smiled.

  She remembered reading that wolves smile at their prey just before they kill it.

  She hoped the present situation was the exception to the rule.

  They stared at each other.

  Billy stirred, opened his eyes. “What?” he murmured.

  “Nothing.” She stroked his hair. “Only a wolf. It seems to be just watching.”

  The boy grunted. “Always hang around when someone’s dying.” His eyelids fluttered and closed.

  No!

  Fear made her angry. She turned on the wolf. “Get out of here, you mangy, overgrown mongrel. You can’t have this boy.”

  The wolf looked around, as if wondering who she was talking to.

  “Look,” she said, “we made an agreement. Thousands of years ago. You hunt, we cook. You find the game, we let you sleep by the fire. Remember? You keep the bad guys away, we invite you into the cave. But we don’t eat each other, right? Friends, right? Friends are friendly, right?”

  She hoped word hadn’t filtered back from the future regarding what men had done to the Wolf ’s descendants. She had the feeling it would render all treaties null and void.

  She reached down, surreptitiously, and grasped the butt of Billy’s gun. She didn’t want to shoot it. Of all the forms of killing she knew of, she hated the senseless hunting down of animals for sport the most. But if it came down to whose life it was...

  Please, she begged the wolf silently, don’t make me do it.

  The wolf edged closer. She could almost touch it. It was a beautiful creature, nearly as white as the snow. Its fur was clean and seemed to glow in the near-darkness. A small wolf, not much bigger than a large German Shepherd—which, under the circumstances, was quite large enough, thank you. Its eyes were yellow-brown. The nose was coal black. It smiled again, showing black lips and gums.

  The teeth were formidable.

  She tried to read its attitude, but couldn’t.

  I really should brush up on my Wolf-as-a-second-language.

  “Well, Mr. or Ms. Wolf, one of us has to make the first move.”

  As if it had understood her, the wolf lowered itself to its belly, rested its head on its paws, and studied her.

  Stoner studied it back.

  The wolf cocked its head, then stretched its front legs and eased itself a few feet closer. The ridges above its eyes formed comical bumps. It gave a huge sigh and lowered its head again.

  She ought to try to chase it away.

  She picked up a handful of snow and tossed it in the wolf ’s gene
ral direction and said “Git” the way one might if one were in control of the situation and fearless.

  Which one weren’t.

  Wolf merely lowered its head in a hurt kind of way and gazed into her eyes.

  It was trying to put thoughts in her mind. The way dogs are always trying to put thoughts in your mind. Thoughts like DINNER and WALK and GO-FOR-A-RIDE and LOVE.

  What were Wolf ’s thoughts?

  Probably not GO-FOR-A-RIDE.

  Probably not LOVE. We haven’t even been introduced.

  Wolf crawled a little closer.

  “Listen,” Stoner said, “I’m not going to hurt you. You don’t have to demean yourself.”

  Wolf got to its feet and trotted boldly over to her.

  Which was a terribly unsettling thing for Wolf to do under the circumstances.

  The animal pushed its nose close to her hand.

  She decided not to move.

  Slowly, it maneuvered its snout beneath her wrist and shoved upward. The motion placed her hand on its neck.

  “Okay,” she said, and buried her fingers in its fur. It was warm and soft. “Okay, I get it. This is a friendly encounter, right?”

  Wolf put its forehead close to hers and panted. It had terrible breath.

  “Good grief,” Stoner said, “don’t you floss?”

  Come on, if you lived on dead and rotten things, you’d have bad breath, too.

  Come to think of it, she did live on dead things. Rotten things, too, if you counted little delights like Brie cheese and mushrooms. Fermented things like beer and wine. Things plucked from the ground, things that grew in dirt, things...

  “Listen,” she said to Wolf, “human beings are disgusting. Don’t get involved.”

  Wolf smiled.

  It lowered its head and took a corner of the blanket in its mouth and looked up at her and moved its eyebrow bumps around.

  What does a wolf do with your clothes in the middle of a blizzard?

  Anything it wants.