Arrows of Time (21 page)

Naturally.

She pulled Shane in a little further and glided her hand over the plasma Entity, her mind focused on her mother, in either of the woman’s forms. She thought first of Earth, where Kreshkali would be, picturing her at the entrance to the resistance stronghold in Half Moon Bay. Next she imagined her mother Nell, standing in her gardens near the Dumarkian Woods, just in case she was there. It wasn’t likely, but she wanted to cover all bases. It was the right choice, either way. She needed guidance and reflection after her encounter with young Nell and the Treeon guards.

Jarrod would have met the Caller on Tensar by now. She felt a wave of concern at the thought, but convinced herself he could handle things there. She’d find him after she sought counsel with her mother—be she Nell on Gaela or Kreshkali on Earth. She chuckled. Her mother was one of the few witches who had the skill to be in two worlds at once, more even, judging by her recent meeting with the young Nell here on this world—this Gaela. Rosette bristled. She still wanted to have words with that girl. What was she thinking, turning them over to the temple guards?

Perhaps it was not the most fortunate thought to be holding as she crossed through the portal and into the corridors. Her intention was to reach her mother, and that was what she did, but her overriding emotion was focused on the Nell of this reality, and she got that too, more or less.

W
hen the portal opened, Rosette put Fynn down, her hands going slack. It wasn’t the view she’d anticipated. It was neither Earth nor the Gaela she’d thought of, but the landscape took her breath away. ‘So it’s Nell, is it?’ she said. ‘I wonder what she’s doing back here.’

Drayco leapt through the portal to land beside her.
Dumarka, Maudi. We’re home to Dumarka!

His voice roared in her mind. ‘Dumarka,’ she whispered, while taking a keen look at the contours of the land as it sloped away from the ledge. ‘It is Dumarka, of course. Look at the trees. Nothing like them anywhere else, but this isn’t where the portal normally is, not the one we’ve ever used, and everything is so much greener.’

Dumarka’s always been green, Maudi.

‘Not quite these shades, even in spring. Where are the ruins?’

I don’t know, but it’s unmistakably Dumarka.
Drayco pressed his head into her leg.
Aren’t you glad, Maudi?

‘I am, but it’s so strange. It feels the same, but it looks…different.’

Breathe, Maudi. This is good. This is my place, where I come from.

‘It’s my place too, but…’ She drew in a breath. Loam filled her senses, mingling with the sweetness of pine needles, wild sage and blackberry blossoms. It had to be the height of summer. The tall redwoods were tinged crimson in the sunrise, creating a shining canopy above them, and the warmth of the sunbeams made the air all the more fragrant. The shades of green ranged from the colour of sweet peas to freshly mowed grass, more vivid than she had ever remembered. A layer of white mist, remnants of a night fog, hovered above the ground like a mystical sea. The allure and slight unfamiliarity reminded her of the first time she walked into these woods with Nell, gathering herbs and mushrooms, before she and Drayco had even met. ‘This is very near where I found you!’

As I said, Maudi, our Dumarka.

‘I still don’t see the temple ruins.’ Her eyes strained into the distance. ‘Where’s that massive slab of marble, the vine-covered columns and the crumbled steps that lead nowhere?’

Drayco didn’t reply. He’d turned around to face the other way, his tail brushing her thigh. Birds were flitting in the high branches, calling like a mad chorus—sparrows with their sweet chirps, ravens, guttural and sharp, and lilting magpies, gloriously melodic. Louder than them all, noisy miners were scolding in their high-pitched ‘weet, weet, weet’, clearly annoyed by the intruders, especially Drayco. A red-tailed hawk whistled long and mournful, her single descending note lingering above the treetops. Rosette tipped her head
back. The raptor’s shadow passed over them, and it wheeled once before disappearing towards the North Seas.

Maudi!

‘Beautiful,’ she whispered, sighing at the space between the trees where the hawk had been.

Stop gawking at the sky and turn around. You won’t believe this!
Drayco’s mind speech jarred her reverie.

Rosette turned, her mouth opening in slow motion—the world waiting for her awareness to catch up. Hairs prickled on the back of her neck. As the scene before her registered, she rocked back on her heels, snapping her mouth shut. She reached for Shane and turned him around also. Automatically her hand found the hilt of her sword. She sensed Shane doing the same. ‘What is that?’ she asked, her voice barely audible.

‘Looks like a temple to me,’ Shane whispered back. ‘Quite a decent one, I’d say. This Earth of yours is a spectacular place. I can see why words wouldn’t describe it.’

Rosette shook her head. ‘This isn’t Earth. Nothing close.’ She let go of her hilt, her hands falling to her sides. What was the Entity up to, sending her here, this time?

‘Where, then?’ Shane asked.

‘It’s Gaela, the woods of Dumarka, but the question isn’t “where” any more. It’s “when”.’

‘Again?’

‘Seems so.’

‘I thought you knew what you were doing.’

‘Me too.’

Maudi! Temple cats! Dozens of them! They’re coming.

‘I see them, Dray.’

This is thrilling!

‘Yes, it is.’ She stroked the top of Drayco’s head,
feeling him quivering beneath her hand. They had to be quite a long time ago for this to be happening.

Here they come, Maudi.

Below them, expansive temple grounds rose out of the mist. It nestled among the trees like part of the forest itself, with its tall pillars, open walkways and redwoods growing on all sides and up through the middle of the inner courtyard. The place felt alive, an island surrounded by mist and waterways. There was a series of arched wooden bridges crossing the meandering streams. The steps leading to the entrance were massive, wide enough for twenty horses abreast, and down them paced the most impressive sight Rosette had ever seen. Temple cats by the dozen were descending the stairway, their heads high, eyes bright.

Drayco dropped to the ground like a sphinx, stretching out his nose, testing the air. Rosette’s lips parted as she watched the clowder of felines. Most were black with red highlights, like Drayco, but some had rust-coloured spots on their flanks, and others had deep red tabby stripes around their eyes and forelegs. A few had white markings on their chests with dusky-grey striped limbs. All were at least as large as her familiar and more than a few were bristling. Drayco didn’t react to the threats, but she felt Fynn sandwiched between her feet, whimpering.

My ancestors! Maudi!

‘Wonderful, Dray. Are they friendly?’ She crouched down and stroked his back, unable to take her eyes off the other felines. She wondered what it would be like to face these creatures without her bonded mate. That was not something she wanted to find out. Drayco had identified them as forebears and it made sense, though just how far back in time they’d gone, she couldn’t guess. The temple had been destroyed before the Corsanon wars had got under way. She tried to
remember when that would have been. Gaelan history was not her best subject.

They’re my family.

‘I’m glad you’re so excited, Dray.’

You’re not?

‘I was hoping to get to Earth and find Kreshkali, or Nell.’

That’s not a problem.

‘What do you mean?’

You’ll see.

‘This isn’t a good time to be cryptic.’

‘What’s wrong?’ Shane asked, missing the mental communication from Drayco. He tore his eyes away from the approaching temple cats to look down at her.

‘I don’t know what’s going on. We aren’t where we wanted to be—again—and Drayco isn’t making much sense.’

Shane put his hand on her shoulder as the lead temple cat sat in front of them and stared at her with jewel-green eyes. ‘Maybe where we think we want to be and where we actually need to be are not the same thing,’ he said.

Rosette stood up, glancing sideways. ‘Are you sure you dropped out of the mystery teachings?’

He laughed. ‘Bards can have insights too, you know.’

She smiled. ‘I know.’ She said the last words so softly she didn’t think he heard her. Turning her attention to the temple cats, she squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. ‘You’re all so magnificent. Let me introduce myself.’

They know who you are, Maudi. I told them.

‘Thank you.’

But you better tell her.

‘Who?’

Nell.

Rosette’s eyes widened. ‘Nell? She’s here?’

‘Of course, my dear.’ A voice floated from the top of the steps, light as a breeze.

Rosette stared at the woman. She wore a long green dress that dropped down from her shoulders and plunged deeply between her breasts. Her arms were tattooed with temple cats, ravens and other symbols, black images with just a hint of shade and colour. Her hair was red with highlights of gold.

‘Nell? Is that you?’

‘Who else would I be?’ The woman opened her arms, her lips curling into a smile. ‘Welcome to Temple Dumarka,’ she said. ‘Now tell me who you are and how you come to know my name.’

E
verett pulled the tome from the highest shelf, and dusted the jacket. It was quiet in the rare books library, the long reading table empty, only one lamp turned on. He stretched his neck from side to side. He’d been searching half the night, looking for answers in the artefacts of the past—books. So far, he’d found none. The old medical texts offered nothing he didn’t already have in his database. They listed the diseases now eradicated, particularly the cardiovascular disorders that plagued earlier times, but he found no clues to Jane Doe’s condition. The editions from the twenty-first century post-enlightenment period were too dated to be of any use. Dead ends. But the text in his hand might offer something the medical books could not.

Art in the Ancient World—the Collected Works.

He re-read his handwritten notes before opening the book. Jane Doe’s skeletal scan placed her at no more than thirty years old. She couldn’t have a physiology susceptible to heart conditions, unless she wasn’t
human, or was much older than her bones. Or from somewhere else. Where else could there be? He was getting nowhere down that path. He folded his notes and put them in his pocket.

What she did have was body art, and that might tell him something about where she was from and who she was. The thought made him shiver. It may not be a question of pathology as much as species, or even time. He wasn’t sure which possibility frightened him the most.

He checked the table of contents. Running his finger down the chapter headings, he stopped at number eighteen,
The Art of Tattooing.
He flipped forward and found drawings of island cultures, people with abstract tattoos, dark curved lines covering half the face and decorating buttocks and limbs. He adjusted his glasses, chastising himself for missing his laser treatment. The print was small. He squinted, pulled the text closer and read.

The art of tattooing was traditionally practised by many cultures for hundreds of generations. Performed on both men and women and sometimes animals, but rarely children, tattooing could indicate honour, rank, collective worth and, in some cases, punishment or identification—i.e. pirates or slaves. In other cases it was reserved for those of revered standing, high achievement within the family, clan or culture, or for those involved in spiritual initiations (see Art and Shamanism pp. 689-702). Some tattoos were thought to contain magic spells and were worn only by adepts or spiritual guides. In other societies, the tattoos were believed to bring the individual closer to the divinity or their source—to higher consciousness.

He coughed. Nonsense.

What she wore certainly didn’t look like a punishment. He guessed it was more the latter—an image for an adept or spiritual guide. It was too beautiful, and too potent, to be derogatory or simply identifying. He continued reading but could find nothing in the text about ASSIST and their campaign against all forms of such practices in the twenty-second and twenty-third centuries, nor the consequences of contravening the bans.

My, how they had changed the history.
He’d read a speculative theory about small resistance groups that had managed to code dermal art into the DNA, but there’d never been any proof. Those resistance groups were long gone and the ‘artists’ with them.

He scooted his chair closer to the table. So much had been omitted from these records that it made him doubt the validity of what was left in. Still he read on, scrutinising the images and colour plates. They were fascinating, and he wondered how such creativity could be feared, abolished. Whatever the reason, it had lasting effects. No such creative spirit had survived to his day—nothing close.

He turned through page after page, but none of the plates matched what he’d found embedded in the flesh over his patient’s heart. No winged lions with eagle claws, looking as if carved out of jewelled stone. He kept on, losing himself in the designs, until the last page of the chapter came into focus.

He stopped, drawing in his breath. His forehead wrinkled as he stared at the image, his hands shaking. He shoved them into his lab coat pockets, as if hiding them would help, and leaned closer to the book. There it was, right in front of him—a winged lion with a woman, a deity of some sort, riding upon its back. The image was scanned from a photo of the actual
monument dated third century BCE. ‘Five thousand years ago…’ he whispered. There was an inscription, a translation, if it could be considered accurate: