Time Rocks

  *

  At dusk, I went back to the river crossing. When I was sure the that the Aurochs had gone, I went down to check on the village men. As expected, they were dead. I dragged their bloody bodies away from riverbank and covered them with bracken and branches to help stop animals getting to them. Blaith would decide whether to treat the corpses honourably, or simply leave them to rot. I took a talisman from the neck of one man and a quiver of arrows from the other for identification purposes - objects their friends would recognise.

  Back at the city of the river bend people I told Blaith what I had seen. As custom required, I embellished the tale to make it sound as if his dead warriors had been real heroes. I invented a bit about my part too, spicing it with a few heroic postures. I added that the raiders had taken their own dead away, so there could be no body count to make a liar of me. When I was done, Blaith grunted and patted me on the shoulder. I decided this was a good thing and tried not flinch like a gibbering loony.

  He began barking orders to his men and I quickly realised that he intended to go after the raiders. I didn’t want to go with them. I'd had enough and did not want to be part of yet more killing. I warned Blaith that I’d seen aurochs in the area, hoping this would cool his passion for revenge. It did not, leaving me to openly risk refusing his invitation to join the war party. When I did, he just shrugged seeming not to care.

  I watched the men leave, knowing my dissent could harm my relationship with him, but I was sick of all the killing. I did not want to be part of more of it.

  Feeling low and lonely I walked up to Arweth-Cifflu, the bear place, to look at the spot where I had buried my binoculars. I know it sounds lame, but I do this sometimes when I want to think about my family and Tori. I suppose it’s like visiting a grave. I just sit there and talk to them. I even tell my dad what I’m doing – as if he was alive. It's weird knowing he's not dead yet, but then he's not even born yet either. Sometimes I ask Ryan about stuff – you know about his dinosaurs and Thomas the Tank Engine. I tell my mom not to worry, though I know it won’t make any difference. I mean, I know they can’t hear me – obviously – but I do it to try to make a connection. It’s like inside my head, but across the centuries. It’s because I know that there was a time in my own past when the things I can see lying around on the ground were hidden under five thousand years of history. I was there when archaeologists dug them up. I have been in this very same place, in my past - in my future. Crickey! It’s all so weird. It does my head in. But it makes me think too, and that’s when I realise that somewhere Tori and the professor may have already dug up my binoculars. I imagine them sitting at the table in Professor Baldwin’s camper van, carefully cleaning the chalky earth from them, gasping with amazement when they realised what they are. I like to think that they have already telephoned the newspapers and the TV. I imagine my stupid school photograph is on the telly - being flashed around the world. Because of me, everybody will know that time travel really exists. They will all know that I’m alive, stuck here, five thousand years in their past. Then, my little daydream moves on and I imagine the Government setting up a special research lab with the cleverest scientists and space engineers from around the world: M.I.T, NASA, Cambridge, CERN, and they all work together to find out how the time wand works.

  Yes OK, I know - it’s just a stupid daydream, but it stops me going crazy.