Anachronist

by Andrew Hastie

  Josh wandered over to inspect a collection of old shields and swords hanging on one of the walls. Their edges were pitted and nicked as if they had seen a great deal of action. He ran his finger along a blade, sensing the echoes of the terrible battles. Below them were a set of daggers with strangely carved bone handles. Josh took one and felt the weight of it in his hand. These were real historical items, ones that didn’t need a timeline to see what they had experienced.

  ‘Shit!’ Caitlin cursed under her breath.

  Josh turned to see her putting the lens away and taking out a blade and looking around nervously.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Monads — real vampires. We have to hurry!’

  She grabbed him by the arm and walked quickly down the hall towards the portrait.

  There was a door to the right, a small insignificant door with the symbol of a dragon on it.

  ‘I thought you said there was no such thing?’

  ‘Not now!’

  ‘Shouldn’t we just leave?’ Josh asked, but Caitlin was obviously not about to give up her plan. She opened the door slowly, trying not to make the hinges complain too loudly. The room was lit with an amber glow. The heat from a large open fire warmed their faces. It was a finely furnished bedroom with a sumptuous four-poster bed and furs covering every inch of the floor. In one corner was a cot in which a child slept soundly. The nanny sat snoring in the chair next to it. Caitlin nodded to Josh to watch the sleeping nurse, which he duly did — although he had no idea what to do if she woke.

  Caitlin went over to the cot and carefully took a look inside.

  The fire crackled, and the nanny stirred but did not wake. Josh looked over to the hearth.

  Caitlin whispered his name, and he turned back to see her waving at him. He walked over to her, the fur-lined floor muffling any sound of his step.

  The boy was no more than four or five years old. He was fast asleep and looked completely innocent of the life to come. Spinning slowly above the child’s head was the talisman of a dragon eating its own tail. Josh assumed that this was why Caitlin had called him over, but when he reached out to touch it she held his hand back and shook her head. She held out a small white tooth in the palm of her hand.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘His first tooth.’

  Josh scoffed. ‘Really? Of all the things you could take? You want to play tooth fairy?’

  ‘Sometimes it’s not about the value of a thing, but what it represents. Haven’t you learned anything about what we do yet?’

  ‘Obviously not,’ Josh said with a mystified look.

  Suddenly there was an inhuman scream from the other side of the door.

  Josh saw Caitlin go white, her eyes wide, and he turned to see a ghostly figure walk through the very solid-looking oak door. The thing had no eyes, and a dark hole where its mouth should have been. Its body was distorted, like a bad copy of a corpse.

  Josh instinctively opened the timeline of the dagger he was holding and pulled Caitlin into the first time point he found.

  35

  Lost

  [Northwest Europe. Date: Unknown]

  Josh woke slowly, surfacing from a dream in which he had travelled back to Dracula’s castle and been killed by a werewolf — who’d been the boy’s nanny. He’d been cold, frozen to the core — which must be what death felt like.

  He tried to move but found that his arms were held down by something warm and thick. He attempted to open his eyes, but it was too dark to see.

  ‘Lie still,’ a woman’s voice whispered in his ear. ‘They’ll find us soon.’

  He could feel her body warm against him, her breath on his neck, and he closed his eyes once more and fell into a dreamless sleep.

  The next time Josh woke he felt more alert and this time when he opened his eyes he saw daylight. His arm brushed the furs that covered his naked body and without needing to turn he knew that Caitlin was curled up behind him. He listened to her breathing and felt her body rise and fall against his back. It was triggering all sorts of sensations. His heart started to beat faster as the blood began moving exactly where he didn’t want it to.

  Josh tried to think of something else. Looking up, he saw that they were in a cave, although what they were doing here was a mystery. He could remember nothing after he had used the dagger to escape the monster.

  ‘You’re awake. I can tell from your breathing,’ Caitlin whispered in his ear. ‘Don’t move.’

  There was a shock of cold air as she wriggled away from him, dragging some of the furs with her.

  ‘And don’t get any ideas. We had to conserve body heat, and this was the best I could do.’

  He could hear her feet slapping against the rock floor as she walked away.

  ‘OK. You can look now.’

  He raised himself up on his elbow to find that he had been lying on a bed of tatty old furs in a cave full of skulls of creatures he’d never seen. Caitlin was wearing a mixture of skins and fur that covered most of her body. She threw something at him that looked like a long vest made from animal hide.

  ‘Put that on,’ she ordered, and disappeared further into the cave.

  He could hear gurgling from somewhere, and a few minutes later Caitlin returned with a crude wooden bowl full of clear spring water.

  ‘Drink this,’ she ordered in a tone that inferred she was pissed off with him.

  He did as he was told. The water was freezing and tasted of rock, but it was refreshing, and he drank the whole bowl in one go.

  She sat down by the remnants of a fire and poked at it with a bone, then slowly added dry tinder and sticks until it was burning well.

  Josh was disorientated, his head was still fuzzy and his stomach was empty, which made him feel weak. He sat down opposite her and let the fire warm his body.

  ‘You should put something else on,’ she muttered. ‘We have to stay here for a while. Until they come.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Draconians, of course. They’re the only ones who can find us. Probably once we’ve died of hunger,’ she said through gritted teeth.

  ‘What happened?’

  She looked at him through eyes filled with fire. He could see the storm building in her. ‘You happened, that’s what happened. What were you thinking? What was your brilliant plan? I’m dying to hear it.’

  ‘I don’t know. I panicked.’

  She picked up the handle of the dagger, there was nothing left of the blade. ‘You used a natural. Do you know how dangerous it is to use natural materials?’

  He shook his head.

  She waved her hand around the cave and then at their furs. ‘This dangerous. You made a jump into the periphery — the unknown past. We’re off the grid. I have no idea how far back. The tachyons don’t even work back here.’

  He looked at his own watch. She was right, the dials had all frozen — it also explained why their clothes had disappeared.

  ‘But these Draconians will find us?’ he said, trying to sound hopeful.

  ‘They should be able to. The tachyons will be found in the future and then traced back.’

  ‘How far into the future?’

  ‘Oh, I’d say in about fourteen thousand years. By the look of the ice, I would estimate we are somewhere in the Mesolithic.’

  They sat in silence for a few minutes. Caitlin poked the fire absentmindedly while he tried not to think about how hungry he was, but he didn’t dare ask if there was any food.

  ‘Why didn’t you just use the tachyon to take us back,’ she asked, breaking their reverie.

  ‘Then you would have lost the game.’

  ‘It was only a game — no one was supposed to die,’ she sighed.

  ‘We’re not going to die,’ he said, pulling another fur around himself.

  The wind roared, driving the snow into the cave and over his feet. Josh stood at the cave entrance; he could feel his hands going numb and went to put them in his pockets — which was when he realised he didn’t ha
ve any. The furs were warm, but they weren’t stitched together, and the cold air had an exceptional ability to find the gaps.

  Caitlin was inspecting the bone handle, holding it up to the firelight to get a better view of the carvings. ‘This is a ceremonial handle, probably for a stone blade. They used them for skinning animals.’

  Josh was only half listening; the noise of the wind was overwhelming. He watched as it scattered drifts of snow across the tundra. A herd of mammoth was making slow progress across the short stubby grassland, their coats matted with ice as they battled into the winds. He took a long, deep breath of the sharp, cold air — it was pure, as if the world were just waking from a long winter’s sleep.

  Caitlin had said something about a land bridge and that the plateau before them would be the English Channel one day. They could walk to France, or Eurasia as she called it, if they could survive the cold.

  Josh went back into the cave. ‘So what was that thing that came through the door?’

  ‘A monad — time wraith,’ Caitlin replied.

  Josh dropped the gorse bushes that he’d collected on to the meagre pile of other burnable stuff they’d found. He rubbed his hands over the fire to warm them. They were raw from the cuts of the prickly thorns.

  ‘Wraith? You mean like a ghost?’

  ‘More like a vampire — one that likes to feed on your memories.’

  ‘How?’ was all that Josh could manage. He was weak from the lack of food.

  ‘They are from beyond the continuum, outside of time — a place we call the Maelstrom. There are many dark and terrible things out there, and they all like to feed on the energies of our timeline.’

  Josh wondered why the colonel hadn’t mentioned this. It was the kind of health and safety video he would have expected on day one.

  ‘How did it find us?’

  She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Wild ones need a breach, a hole in time, but I’m guessing that this one was a captive, although we won’t know now after your brilliant escape plan.’

  ‘So what exactly would you have done?’

  ‘I’m quite capable of dealing with a monad. They’re not the worst thing I’ve had to take on.’ She flipped the dagger handle over and threw it at him.

  Josh caught it with one hand. ‘If this monad was captive, then it was a trap?’

  ‘No shit, Sherlock. It’s not the first time Dalton has played dirty.’

  ‘He doesn’t like losing, does he?’ He came and sat next to her.

  ‘No, he doesn’t. It’s a shame. I thought Dracula’s first tooth was a definite winner — it had a certain irony,’ she said to herself.

  ‘Yeah. It did,’ he laughed. ‘I would love to have seen Dalton’s face when you dropped that one on the table.’

  She smiled, and then they both laughed for no other reason than it was better than crying.

  ‘How long did this ice age last?’ he asked as he poked the fire. It was getting low, and the sun was setting outside; the temperature would drop drastically soon, and they would have to work hard not to freeze to death.

  ‘The last one? About 300 million years,’ she said without taking her eyes off the fire.

  ‘And the chances of anyone finding us in the next couple of days?’

  ‘Not great.’ She shrugged. ‘This far back, there are hardly any man-made artefacts. It’s mostly tribes of nomadic hunters and cave art.’

  ‘So what’s further back than this?’

  Caitlin shivered and moved closer to him, pulling the furs around them both. ‘It’s not been mapped. The Draconians are the only ones allowed to travel into the ice ages, and they have forbidden anyone from going back. It’s too dangerous.’

  He could hear her stomach groaning through the furs. She was being brave, and he knew that he would have to do something soon. They couldn’t survive on water and grass.

  ‘So tell me about these Draconians. They sound like a crazy bunch of mothers.’

  She chuckled. ‘Funny you should say that. My mother was one, and my father.’

  He had wanted to ask what the deal was with Methuselah, Alixia and the Colonel — it was obvious they had been looking after Caitlin for a while.

  ‘They were both Draconian Nautonniers, specialist navigators who travel into the forgotten parts of history, literally the spaces on the map. You ever heard the saying “Hic sunt dracones”?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘It means “Here be dragons”. It was what the old cartographers used to put on the blank parts of their maps — when they didn’t know what to draw.’

  ‘I like their style.’

  ‘So, anyway, when I was ten they were sent on a mission, some kind of anomaly in the Egyptian second dynasty. I can still see them getting ready — they always went on missions together,’ she paused as if cherishing the memory. ‘But they never came back, none of them did. I’ve been staying at the Chapter House ever since. They’re like my second family.’

  ‘I never knew my dad,’ Josh volunteered without thinking. He’d never said that to another soul. It felt kind of good.

  ‘I don’t remember much about mine. Only what Uncle Rufius would tell me when he used to take me on our adventures, as he would call them, usually around the fifteenth century.’

  ‘Looking for lost Italian art?’ Josh joked.

  ‘No, our fifteenth century, about 9000 BC. We used to explore, hunt and fish, the usually outdoorsy kind of things. We’d camp out for weeks and he’d tell me stories about what my mum and dad had done.’

  Josh thought back to the childish fantasies he used to have about having a father: going to football matches, camping, learning to drive — they’d all died a long time ago.

  ‘So you actually know how to survive back here?’ Josh looked mildly annoyed.

  ‘I guess so, but it doesn’t matter — the Draconians will come soon.’

  ‘So why haven’t they found us yet!’ Josh snapped as he got up and went searching around the cave.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Caitlin replied, moving his discarded furs over her legs. ‘What are you looking for?’

  ‘Something sharp. Didn’t you say there were hunting tools here?’

  ‘Yes, over in the corner by the tusks. What are you going to do?’ She sounded concerned.

  ‘I think I know why they haven’t come. We die here in this bloody cave, and no one ever found us.’ He kicked over a pile of bones and pulled out the broken end of a spear. ‘I have never sat around and waited for someone else to rescue me — that only happens in the movies. We have to survive, Caitlin. We have to go out there —’ he waved the spear towards the blizzard that was battering the world outside — ‘and we have to make a difference — start a village or a religion or something. We have to make our mark on history. Think of it like a signal flare. They will find it and come for us.’

  ‘I don’t know if I can. I’m tired and it’s too cold,’ she muttered, moving deeper inside her furs.

  ‘Not now, but tomorrow when the sun comes up, we need to make a go of it. If I’m right, they will come. If not, well, it’s still better than dying in this cave.’

  She was drowsy, and he had to shake her awake.

  ‘Caitlin. The colonel didn’t teach you all that stuff so you could die in the middle of the Mesolithic, did he? You make the best of what you got. That’s what my Nan used to say.’

  She roused at the mention of her uncle, her beautiful green eyes looking deeply into his, and he saw the flash of anger once more.

  ‘And now he’s disappeared too, just like they did! They’ve been doing it for years and still couldn’t save themselves. What chance have we got?’ She stood up and shouted at him, the cave amplifying her voice. Her eyes were blazing now, all traces of sleep gone. He knew he had to push her further.

  ‘Well, maybe he wasn’t as good as you thought he was. Maybe he just ran off with another woman?’

  She punched him in the face with such force that he fell back into a pile of old bones.

&nb
sp; ‘You never, ever talk about my parents again! You hear me?’ The heat had risen in her cheeks and her eyes were brimming with tears.

  ‘Fine. No problem,’ Josh replied rubbing his chin.

  ‘Fine. If we’re going to survive we need food and soon.’ She walked over to the old tools, ‘And we should move south, it’s warmer there. Now help me make some kind of weapon out of this shit.’

  Later that night there was a noise from the mouth of the cave. Josh woke first, his arms wrapped tightly round Caitlin. In the dim glow of the dying fire he could just make out a figure at the cave entrance. It was covered almost entirely in snow, a few moments later another arrived. Josh urged his frozen fingers to reach for one of the spears they had made that afternoon and hid Caitlin under the furs.

  The first figure signalled to the second, and both marched into the cave. They wore large bulky furs with hoods that covered their heads. It wasn’t until they came nearer that Josh saw the insignia on their bags.

  ‘Well, you took your time,’ he said as he bent down to wake Caitlin. ‘Wake up, Cat. The cavalry has arrived!’

  36

  Consequences

  Josh couldn’t believe Dalton’s mother was a high-ranking official in the Protectorate. Ravana Eckhart sat behind the captain’s table; her face gave no hint of emotion as she studied the report. On either side of her stood two menacing-looking men in full face masks, dressed in black leather armour with tubes running into the backs of their heads. This was the first time Josh had seen officers of the Order’s police force — the black glass of their eye lenses reflected nothing.

  Before the chief inquisitor sat the various prizes from the game, including the tooth that Caitlin had taken from Dracula and the crudely carved bone handle of the knife that had taken them back into the Mesolithic.

  Methuselah stood beside Josh. Caitlin had been confined to her bed for two days by Alixia, and no amount of pleading would change her mind.

  He was still trying to come to terms with the fact that his plan had worked; somewhere in another branch of time they had survived long enough for the Draconian team to find them. There was a life back in the Mesolithic that he and Caitlin had made together, enough time to make themselves stand out.