Into the Dim (16 page)

“Ready as you can get to travel through time, I suppose.” I muttered though paralyzed lips.

Collum looked like an extra in a Robin Hood movie, with his father's gladiator sword strapped to his side and the thick leather belt cinched around a cobalt-blue tunic. He gave me a quick once-over that gained me a grudging nod of approval. I reached for the water skin of toughened hide that hung at my hip, attempting to wash away the taste of ancient stone and ghosts.

“You should know”—Collum flicked a glance from under his blond lashes—“the journey itself can be a bit unsettling. Particularly your first. But we'll be there with you on the other side, so try not to panic.”

Still quaking like underdone egg custard, I managed to mumble, “Sure. Yeah. No problem.”

“It's time,” Lucinda called.

Doug wrapped Phoebe in his massive arms, so that her feet dangled inches from the ground as he rocked her gently back and forth. Bran Cameron's face flickered through my head as I watched, and allowed myself an instant of self pity.

If Collum and I looked like kids playing dress-up, Phoebe was utterly transformed. Since spiky blue hair might draw some attention our way, my friend now wore an auburn wig, braided and coiled behind her head. The eyebrow stud was gone, of course, and her small, pointed face was blotchy as she took her place next to Collum and me. Doug's whiskey-colored eyes stayed fixed on her as he escorted a sniffling Moira to the steps.

Mac's face crinkled as he approached. “You stay close to Collum, lass,” he said to me. “And bring yerself home safe, aye?”

Mute, I could only nod.

With a final squeeze, he dropped my hand and joined Lucinda and Moira on the staircase. Only Doug now remained in the chamber, checking his watch and reviewing the dials on Tesla's machine. My stomach was doing backflips, and I wasn't sure I could hold down the breakfast Moira had forced on us an hour earlier. Collum's hands shook as he worried the opal ring on his finger. Seeing him nervous made it better. And worse.

Lucinda's gaze fixed on mine.
Bring her back,
she mouthed.

I managed to nod, but fear was starting to take over as purple electricity popped and crackled around the mushroom tops of Tesla's machines. Building. Growing. Condensing.

No. I—I don't want to do this. I want to go home. Please.
The words died before they reached my tongue, my body frozen in place.

“Okay, guys,” Doug yelled over the increasing whine. “The sun will rise at 0750 on December 6. That's when the pattern will repeat. I'll power up the machine at that exact moment to bring you home.” As he looked at Phoebe he tapped two fingers to his heart. “You'll be there? Promise?”

“On my lunch box,” Phoebe croaked.

Doug smiled though his face had gone bleak and scared. “Good. Then I won't worry a bit.” He took a breath. “Here we go. Three . . . two . . . one.”

A click as Doug flipped the toggle switch on the back of the master machine.

No. No. No!

Too late.

The two beams blasted toward us, meeting just over our heads in a cataclysmic clash.

Funny, I'd almost grown used to the low pulse of energy that flowed through the chamber. The interruption, the sudden absence, shook me to the bone. It grated along every nerve ending. Doug bolted for the staircase as the incredible power of the ley lines—blocked from their natural flow by Tesla's current—began circling us.

The vortex of energy whirled higher and higher. I couldn't see the ley lines. Not exactly. But I could feel the power rage around the unnatural disruption that encased us, angry and immutable.

A sound like the cracking of the earth's crust screamed in my head. I clamped my hands over my ears, desperate to block it. Warm blood drizzled from my nostrils. “Oh God!”

“Don't fight it,” Collum called over the noise. “Makes it worse. Relax and let it take you.”

Phoebe's freckles stood out in 3-D. She pulled me close to yell in my ear. “Don't worry. Gran claims it's like childbirth. Afterward, you barely remember the pain.”

Sweat slicked the back of my neck.
Childbirth? Oh sweet Moses. I want out. I can't do this. No way. No freaking way. Let me . . .

Out.

I was wrenched upward and into a darkness so dense, it seemed to leech the blood from my veins and peel the skin from my flesh. Tumbling, falling—endlessly falling—through a living entity of blackness. It surrounded me. Choked me. The nightmare tree rose up before me. Black spiky branches reached down to stab at me. They snatched me, hoisting me high into an inky sky. I crashed through the branches, frozen wood slamming into my flesh as it stuffed me into its mouth. I was back inside. Things crawled in my hair and down the back of my dress. I shrieked. I screamed and sobbed and fought. But no one could hear me.

Then my descent halted sickeningly. Before I could orient myself, I was hurtling backwards. Faster and faster. My hair lashed at my face. My stomach heaved as colors and spears of light surrounded me. Shades of plum and green and yellow. The colors of death and decay.

Faces appeared and disappeared. Fat-cheeked babies that morphed into crumbling skulls in an instant. Millions of faces. An unending stream of shrieking mouths on either side. I closed my eyes, or thought I did. But death was everywhere.

I scrambled for something—anything—to hold on to. But there was nothing. I was nothing. A microbe. A grain of sand on a beach surrounded by a dry ocean.

Then, the pain, as I slammed through what felt like the world's largest plate-glass window. Except I was the one who shattered into a million pieces.

Blood boiled in my veins. My joints flexed into unnatural poses. The pain . . . Oh God, the pain.

Help me. Help.

Everything sped by in swirls of green and white and brown. Cold air washed my skin. Seared my lungs.

My lungs! I'm breathing.

I filled my chest with the glorious taste of air. Blessed oxygen raced to my starving cells, and slowly I became aware of cold, hard earth beneath my back.

I cracked an eyelid. Stark, rosy light sliced into my skull, and I squeezed it shut again. Groaning, I rolled to my side and puked till I thought I might die.

When the heaving slowed, I peered through watering eyes to see Collum crawling across a bare forest clearing toward me. A strange purple light flickered over him, dissipating as I watched. Closer to me, Phoebe lay splayed on the ground, the same lavender haze fading from her skin. As I inched across the cold earth, the last remnants of the tinted light arced off my fingertips, then disappeared.

When I reached my friend, I swiped at the blood beneath my nose and shook her. “Phoebe! Can you hear me?”

She moaned and began to stir. I rolled her away just in time.

“Ugh.” Wiping her mouth, she scooted away from the disgusting mess, moaning, “Hope? You all right, then?”

I collapsed onto my side, arms no longer able to hold me up. “Yeah. Though it would've been nice if someone had warned me”—I shuddered as my gut gave a final twinge—“about the rotting baby heads.”

Phoebe peeked through one bleary eye. “Uh . . . rotting baby heads?”

“No one's experience is the same,” Collum explained, his voice hoarse. “That's why we didn't warn you. But the first time is always the hardest. The next time won't be quite so bad.”

“Well, jeez,” I muttered. “Thank God for small favors.”

F
INALLY RECOVERED ENOUGH TO STAND
, we retreated from the eerie glade and began to slog through the snow-laden, primeval forest. New sunlight glittered pink and gold on chittering limbs. I breathed in the forest scents of ice and wet wood and stillness. So fresh and clear, I tried not to think about how no one in a thousand years had tasted air like this.

I looked back only once. The little rise, surrounded by a perfect circle of ancient oaks, pulsed with a sleepy power. Nothing littered the bare earth inside. Not a weed. Not a leaf. Not even a fleck of snow, as though it didn't answer to natural law.

“According to the research, the locals believe this part of the forest is haunted,” Collum said, noticing my look. “Which is good for us.”

I'd read about places in the woods where even today people didn't venture. I wondered if some of those dark areas were nodes, other places where ley lines crossed. Maybe the spooky feelings people reported were the unseen power of the earth warning them away.

Collum forged ahead, breaking a trail. I followed, zombie-like. Sure, my cheeks were already burning from the cold. And snow squeaked under my boots. And I could hear the birds waking in the dawn light. But none of it seemed real. How could it?

“I know how you feel.” Phoebe's breath puffed out in a white cloud as she stomped along beside me. “Bloody bizarre, right?”

I snorted. “You could say that.”

“Well, I cried like a baby the first time, so you're doing better than me.”

I
felt
like crying. But Collum had set a brutal pace, and it took all I had to keep up.

At the rutted road that twisted through the frigid forest, we hitched a ride with a farm family headed for London. It took a lot of coaxing, and some coins had changed hands. But soon we were perched on a wagon laden with winter root vegetables. Collum did all the talking at first. But gradually I joined in. When the “thees,” “thous” and “wherefores” sprang naturally from my lips, I felt a pang of gratitude for my mother's insistence that I master all those archaic languages. Still . . .

If you'd just told me, Mom, maybe it would've been different. Maybe
I
would've been different.

We had so little to go on.

My hands tightened on a basket of turnips
. Well, I'm here now, aren't I? And I'm coming for you.

Collum rode up on the wooden bench beside the farmer. I began to chat, carefully, with his wife. Phoebe stayed quiet, still uncomfortable with the twisty medieval dialect. Two ratty-haired children perched atop a crate of wormy apples, casting shy glances our way.

“'Twill be our last trip to town before the roads close for winter,” the woman offered. “But my John just had to come see the new king crowned. Wanted the little ones to see it too.”

She sighed and settled her thin frame more comfortably against the hard wagon bed. “I pray to all the saints this winter won't be hard as the last. We lost our good milk goat. And our youngest babe.”

The young woman's prematurely weathered face never changed as she spoke. Phoebe and I exchanged a look, marveling at a time when the loss of livestock and a child were uttered in the same breath. In this era, however, losing a goat would likely cause more suffering. She could always have more children.

We rested as best we could, jouncing along the nearly impassable road. One of the children, a little girl with a perpetually runny nose, crept closer and was soon fussing with Phoebe's braids. I shut my eyes, the sun winking in orange patterns against my lids, and listened to the cadence of the conversation going on up front.

The sway of the wagon lulled me, and I must've drifted into a sort of fugue. Tiny nuggets popped up like bubbles in my drowsy mind.

A man's voice, speaking urgently as his strong arms set me on the ground. A whiff of burning that coated my tongue. Shouts. Screams. Someone grabbed my hand, and I began to run.

My eyes popped open. The half dream dissipated, leaving me shaken and strangely hollow. I lurched across the wagon and eased down beside Phoebe. Our feet dangled from the back.

She glanced at me sidelong. “You all right, then, Hope? You look pale as milk.”

“I'm fine.”

Phoebe raised a skeptical eyebrow, then uncapped a leather flask and handed it to me. “Here, take a drink. It'll help.”

I took several long gulps. The slushy water we'd filled from a clear spring burned my throat. “Thanks.” I croaked.

“Look”—Phoebe nudged my side—“I know it's hard, yeah? This is my third journey, and it still feels like a dream. Or like I'm inside a play. But you get used to it. I promise.”

I snatched another look at the family, the little girl now snuggled in her mother's lap, the older boy at her feet. It struck me suddenly that these people were
dead.
Only dust in the ground in our own time. And yet there they were. The father chatting quietly with Collum. The mother stroking her daughter's hair. How could anyone ever get “used” to something like that?

When we emerged from the forest, the farmer halted. I rose to my feet. Phoebe pulled herself up beside me. Everyone, including the family, gaped at the sight of the walled medieval city lying before us in the distance.

London. 1154.

Wow.

Distant bells chimed the hour, I thought I counted ten peals, though there were so many ringing all at once, it was hard to tell for sure. Tendrils of smoke rose from a thousand fires to coat the sky above the city in a smoggy cloak.