The Theta Prophecy (3 page)

He had known the risks involved in trying to travel back in time to prevent the Tyranny. If the security services had found out about the plan, they would have aimed their assault blasters at the row of men and killed everyone on the spot. If he had escaped the Tyranny but reappeared in the wrong location, he might have treaded water in the middle of the ocean until he drowned, fallen to his death, or appeared underground and been smothered. And if he got sent too far back in time, as it was starting to seem, he would spend the rest of his life apart from his wife and son without the chance of changing the future for them.

He let his face fall into his palms and closed his eyes. How many friends had he watched get dragged away by the Tyranny to be found the next day with a blaster hole in the back of their head? How many people had he seen one day and then never seen again, no indication if they were still alive? How many people had he seen live with the constant fear of saying or doing the wrong thing, drawing the Tyranny’s attention, and suffering the consequences? How could he allow his son to grow up in such a world?

When people only knew one way of living, a life in which the Tyranny listened to everything you said and watched everything you did, people would eventually forget a better way of life was possible. He got sick to his stomach any time he thought of someone being born after the Tyranny was formed, thinking it was normal to have cameras watching everything they did, having guards at checkpoints controlling where they could go and where they couldn’t, watching television footage of the Tyranny’s constant stream of wars.

That wasn’t the world he wanted his boy to live in, and so he had volunteered, along with nine other men, to stand against a stone wall and vanish into history. Now he was here. Wherever, and whenever,
here
was.

Already, he saw a group of five men dressed in heavy clothes and carrying bows, running along the coastline toward him. He had no idea what tribe they belonged to or whether they had seen people outside their own society before. It didn’t matter, though; five natives, each with a weapon, was already an improvement over having just one of the Tyranny’s men pointing an assault blaster at his son or his wife.

Date: 1795

During the boat ride, the boys didn’t talk about things like the Super Bowl or the new hit song on the radio because those things didn’t exist yet. For them, life was limited to what happened around their town. Crop yields made for a popular discussion topic. The latest news of a wolf sneaking onto a farm and killing some sheep was the source of much gossip. The boys didn’t talk about what they wanted to be when they grew up, either. In Nova Scotia at the end of the eighteenth century, boys either took up a trade found in town, or became farmers or fishermen. There were few other possibilities.

It wouldn’t be until the industrial age took hold of the land that people would begin to see they could aim for lives beyond their parents’ limited horizons. A hundred years later, boys in a similar canoe might ask each other if they had seen the new sport where a pitcher tried to throw a ball past a man who was trying to hit it with a stick. Or they might discuss all the magical advances that were supposedly taking place in New York City. Those things were a long way off, though.

And yet, some topics are timeless, and so the boys somehow sounded and acted much like teenagers from any other time.

Daniel nudged John, who was sitting beside him in the back of the canoe, and said, “I heard Sarah Cunningham let Trevor Blake hold her hand the other day.”

Anthony and Samuel, the two boys in the front of the canoe, both saw their friend’s shoulders tense up.

“Is that news?” Anthony said, leaning forward and patting John’s shoulder. “I thought everyone knew Sarah let all the boys hold her hand.”

John turned and, with a wide grin, said, “Shut up, guys. Sarah doesn’t let anyone hold her hand.”

Poor John, Daniel thought. The kid smiled even when his heart was breaking. Daniel knew that most of the time his friend smiled like that he actually wanted to cry instead of laugh. And yet the stupid grin always showed itself. He had smiled when his father came home from the tavern drunk. He had smiled when his father beat him with a belt. And he smiled now when he heard his first love didn’t seem to care how many different boys in town held her hand.

Anthony leaned forward and patted his friend’s shoulder a second time. “It’s okay, John,” he said. “You deserve better anyways.”

But John didn’t say anything, only offered that dumb smile, and Daniel knew to let the subject drop. “Choppy waters today,” he said. “Let’s not go out too far from shore.”

They ended up picking one of the larger islands for their exploration, one that was fairly close to the mainland yet further south than they normally traveled. The island appeared even larger than it actually was because it was surrounded by a collection of islands that were nothing more than large piles of rocks sticking out of the water. It was certainly no Australia or Japan or any of the other exotic places they learned about in school. In fact, even though this was one of the larger islands in the area, the boys could easily jog around its entire one hundred and forty acres by lunchtime if they so desired. And with its highest point being just over thirty feet above sea level, there were no mountains to conquer, no games of king-of-the-hill to engage in until one of the boys had torn trousers or a bloody nose.

Even an island of that size could offer a day’s worth of adventure for the four boys, however. They could go anywhere they wanted, say and do anything they pleased. Daniel didn’t really think they would find a stranded beauty, monsters, or a chest of gold, but if they were lucky they might be able to find the skeleton of someone who had washed ashore after one of the various vessels hit the rocks and gave up its cargo and crew to the ocean.

As soon as their boat hit the pebbly beach, John jumped out into the shin-high water and pulled the boat and the other three boys to dry land. Daniel knew what the boy was thinking:
I hope Sarah realizes she’s missing out on someone who would have made sure she never had to get her feet wet.

The other three boys got out and all four dragged the boat twenty feet further onto land to make sure it didn’t wash away when the tide changed.

“Okay, what now?” Anthony asked, as if the boys had never gone exploring across other islands before.

Without receiving an answer, he fell in line with John and Samuel as they followed Daniel toward the middle of the island and to a swampy marsh where frogs and snakes and other excitement would probably be waiting.

When Daniel picked up a rock and threw it at a tree that was about thirty feet away, it just barely missed.

“Darn it,” he said and stepped aside for the others to try.

Anthony didn’t come close and cursed his poor aim. Both Samuel and John whooped with delight when they pegged the conifer.

Further off, a tree had been blown over by heavy winds. But instead of falling to the ground, it had come to rest against another tree, a giant white pine. The boys took turns running up the diagonal path of the fallen tree to touch the spot where it rested against the other tree, twenty feet off the ground, and then ran back down again.

After the first time up and back, Daniel said, “Wanna see who can do it the fastest?” and the boys timed each other by counting off seconds with a consistent “one chestnut, two chestnut, three chestnut.”

When Samuel got to the top and raced back down again he threw his hands in the air, sure he had the fastest time.

“Sorry,” Daniel said. “You had eight chestnuts. John only had seven.”

“Reckon not!” Samuel yelled, but all four boys were already off in search of their next competition.

No matter where they went, the boys could always find things to keep them amused. The usual thoughts that plagued Daniel at night, of being stuck in a town without any hope of a more exciting life, no longer bothered him when he got to adventure like this. And he guessed that John was able to forget about Sarah and her penchant for holding hands, just as whatever bothered Anthony and Samuel—each had a private angst that made him feel like life was against him—were also able to forget their worries.

They were ten feet from a giant white rock that seemed out of place amongst the swamps and trees, when a glimmer of light caught Daniel’s eye. For a few seconds, he kept his gaze on it to make sure it was real. When he was sure it was, he changed direction and the other three boys followed.

“Think we’ll find anything interesting?” asked one of his friends. But Daniel was too focused on the light—where no light should be—to respond or even to notice which of his friends had spoken.

Two of his friends were talking the entire time he approached the sparkle of light. John was probably one of them and they were probably talking about Sarah Cunningham again. Daniel kept walking, though, not caring to look back and make sure they were following him.

“Where are we going?” one of them finally asked.

He didn’t answer.

Over a fallen tree, across a series of rocks, through tall grass. The boys kept walking.

“Hey, Daniel,” one of the boys said, then grabbed his shoulder. “I said, where are we going?”

Daniel stopped and turned around. It was Anthony standing there, still with his hand on Daniel’s shoulder. Had Anthony been saying something to him?

“Huh?” Daniel said, blinking his eyes back into reality, allowing them to leave the glittering light just for a moment.

“Where are you taking us?”

Daniel smiled and looked up. Above the boys, a pulley system was attached to the thickest branch of an eastern hemlock they were standing under. All four boys looked around for someone, the owner of the pulley and crane system, but of course they were alone on the island.

“What’s this doing here?” John said. For once, he wasn’t smiling.

They hadn’t seen anyone else on the island. They didn’t know of anyone that visited the island. There were no other signs that someone else had ever done work on this patch of land. And yet here was a block and tackle used for hoisting heavy materials up and down from… from what?

Daniel looked at the ground, rubbed his shoe against the dirt, then stepped backward. All four boys were standing inside a circle of ground that was only about two inches lower than the adjoining land. If Daniel hadn’t seen the device attached to the tree limb, the boys never would have stopped to notice the indented circle.

“Someone was hoisting something up,” Samuel said, looking at the mechanism attached to the tree limb.

“Or lowering something down,” Daniel said, his voice low and strained. In all his daydreams of stranded women and forgotten monsters and buried treasure, there had never been something as concrete as this piece of equipment to prove his fantasies might not be foolish after all. Sure, it was only a lever and pulley system and a circle of ground that was recessed directly underneath the pulley, but this was better than any figment of his imagination because it was real and it was unexplainable.

He repeated what he knew: no one from the mainland was living on these islands. No one had cabins here or a reason for visiting. There was no explanation for a pulley system to be connected to a thick branch like this.

Each boy looked up at the tackle in wonder. It was nothing more than a rusted metal surface, rounded where ropes would lift or lower heavy objects.

“Must have been here for a long time,” Samuel said, reaching up and scratching off flecks of corroded, orange metal with his fingernail.

Everyone knew not to leave their tools lying around. In a place where all of the town’s inhabitants had to band together if everyone wanted to get through the brutal winters, no one would be foolish enough to leave behind a nice piece of equipment like this.

Then the boys lowered their heads and looked down at the indented circle of ground they were standing in. Without ever having asked them, Daniel assumed each of them spent the evenings wishing for something more exciting to happen than another day of farm life. Maybe the scenarios were different. Maybe instead of stranded blonds or lockers full of gold they fantasized about joining the expedition west that everyone whispered was supposed to happen in the next few years, to explore the uncharted western territories. Or maybe they dreamed of having super powers or of becoming a famous outlaw. No matter what the fantasy was, he was sure they wanted out from the lives they had. And here was the chance.

Anthony pointed to the pulley system. “It must have been left here by pirates or robbers or someone who wanted to hide something deep underground.”

The only people Daniel knew of that had ever lived nearby were the natives, but they had all either been killed or run off their land many years earlier.

“What should we do?” John said, not wanting to do anything that would warrant a beating from his father.

“Dig,” Daniel mumbled, already dropping to both knees and scooping dirt away with his hands.

The other three boys immediately joined in. With the marsh nearby and with the rain they had been getting recently, the soil was easy to move. But after they had displaced a foot of dirt from the circle, there was still nothing.

“Keep digging,” Daniel said. The boys did as they were told.

After another foot of dirt was gone, their fingers began scraping against stone. Daniel’s heart leapt into his throat. At first, not wanting to get his hopes up, he figured it would be just another rock, common to the area and plentiful anytime the farmers plowed fresh ground. But the surface his fingers ran across was much too smooth, too flat, to be something that just happened to be under two feet of dirt. With his palm, he wiped the mud away to each edge of the circular hole they were digging. The boys were standing on a set of flagstone rocks laid out to form a flat surface.

“Look,” Anthony said. “Chisel marks. Someone made them this size on purpose.”

Samuel looked back up at the pulley system directly above them. “Think that’s why the block and tackle is up there, to lay these stones down like this?”

Daniel took a deep breath and squinted. He wanted to say, “Yes, that’s exactly why someone went to the trouble of making a pulley system and bringing it here, just so they could bury a couple of stones two feet underground.” The only reason he didn’t was because his mother had taught him that if he didn’t have anything nice to say, he shouldn’t say anything at all, so he bit his lip to keep from telling the other boy just how stupid the question was.

“No,” Daniel said finally, “I think these stones are here to keep us from finding what the block and tackle was really used for, the thing that’s buried further down.”

“What do you think it is?” Anthony said.

“It’s got to be treasure!”

No one disagreed with this claim.

“Help me move ‘em,” Daniel said.

Two of the boys pulled dirt away from the side of the hole so their fingers had room to sneak under the stone.

“Are we splitting it evenly?” Anthony asked, referring to the treasure they were going to find when they removed the flagstone.

“Of course.”

With enough room to not only get their hands underneath the stone, but enough to drag one of the chunks an inch away from the others, the four boys all slid their hands under the first piece.

“Ready? One, two, three!”