The Time Travel Chronicles (14 page)

“Don’t leave them,” he wailed. “Let me go.”

Dutton struggled against their grasp, but they were big men, made hard and stalwart by a life of sweat and toil.

But the unicorns were stronger, faster, and built for speed. With hoofbeats thumping against the thick, soupy mud, they sprinted closer and trotted to a stop, whinnying, shaking their manes. They pranced in place and each quickly lowered their front knees to the ground as if to say,
get on
.

The tidal wave towered over them, driving forward, leveling anything in its path.

Noah and Shem climbed on the back of the male unicorn, while Dutton straddled the smaller female. The animals glided smoothly across the remaining expanse, hurtling over stumps and leftover piles of wood, then clopped up the ramp.

They dismounted. Noah and Shem grabbed one rope while Dutton and another son, Ham, grabbed the second, pulling as hard as they could in a tug of war against gravity and time.

The hull door boomed closed. Thick wooden pegs were driven in place to secure it. The family and Dutton retreated to the far side of the ark and hunkered down, holding hands and waiting while the animals lay still, silent and patient.

The unicorns kneeled down on all fours where it was safer on the floor. Their horns sparkled in a rainbow of colors.

Dutton held his breath, waiting for the impact.

He took Noah’s hand and squeezed it. “That’ll make my daughter happy.”

Deafening thunder shook Dutton’s insides.

Only a few seconds remained before the greatest flood the world had ever known would drive into them and toss the vast wooden ship like the twig of an olive branch.

In front of him, mere feet away, the air glistened. Dutton blinked, unsure of what he had seen until it happened again, ripples extending from the center.

There it was,
again
. The dream world gateway.

He knew what he had to do, and there was no time for an explanation.

Dutton scrambled to his feet, took a confident step, and jumped headfirst into the vertical pond.

* * *

Dutton landed hard on his knees, barely stopping himself with his hands. The bed of leaves on the forest floor felt soft on his bruised and blistered palms. His clothes were soaking wet, making the wintry morning colder. Snowflakes fell around him.

Wait, am I…

He brushed the now damp leaves from his hands and stood to see Jess racing down the hillside. “Jesus. There you are,” she exclaimed. “Where
were
you?”

She fell into his arms, her brisk speed almost knocking him over.

Dutton hugged her close, enjoying the feel of his wife’s body against his—a long overdue embrace. Such an epic dream, like he hadn’t seen her in thousands of years.

But if this was a dream… how strange was it that he was back
here
? Shouldn’t he be skydiving with Abraham Lincoln or chasing a shark on training wheels, something as inexplicable as Noah and unicorns?

“Answer me,” she said.

“I was helping—hang on, you’ve been crying,” he said.

Jess pulled away, still clasping his arms, studying him. “Did you—Dutt, when did you start growing a beard?”

“I…” Dutton touched his stubble, unsure. Mirrors hadn’t existed on the ark.

“Have I really been that out of touch?”

“Maybe?”

“Oh, God. I’m so sorry. It feels like you’ve been gone forever. You weren’t here when I got back and I looked everywhere. You’d just vanished, and that—that
thing
had disappeared. I was freaking out, like maybe you’d gotten sucked into it. Seriously, where
were
you?”

“I don’t—”

“Were you hiding in the rhododendrons to freak me out? Because if you were, you’re a massive asshole.” She stepped back and examined his robe, his sandals. “What the hell are you wearing? What happened to your pajamas? And why are you soaked?”

He looked down at himself. “This is seriously the craziest, most lucid dream ever. You’re never gonna believe me when I try to explain. And it’s so weird that I’m even talking about a dream,
within
my dream, and I went through the vertical pond and even that felt like a dream because I was helping Noah build his ark and there were unicorns. I know it sounds completely insane, even when I’m trying to explain it in a dream. Man. So crazy.”

Jess put her hands on his cheeks. “Let me see your eyes.”

“Why?”

“Your pupils aren’t dilated.”

“What?”

“Did you fall and hit your head? Maybe knock yourself out? Is that why you didn’t answer?”

“No, honey, I’m fine.”

Jess ignored his insistence, lifting the lapel of his robe, rubbing the material between her thumb and forefinger. “Even if you knocked yourself out somehow, that still doesn’t explain the different clothes. And why would you put them on soaking wet, Dutt? We should probably get you to a doctor. You disappear and then show up again out of nowhere talking about Noah and unicorns… What if—oh my God, did somebody attack you? Can you remember anything like that? What’s the president’s name? What year is it? Let me see your head.”

“I’m okay, really. Stop. I’m dreaming and I don’t even know why I’m bothering trying to convince you because five minutes from now I’ll be bowling with Santa Claus—”

The smack against his cheek stung, the sound sharp in the quiet morning woods.

“Ow! What was—”

“Does it feel like a dream now?”

“No, but—”

“Okay, well, I’m sorry, and I probably shouldn’t have hit you since you might have a concussion, but Dutt, sweetheart, you’re not making any sense. Noah? Santa Claus?” She took his elbow and pulled him up the hillside. “Let’s get you warmed up and then we’ll call the police. Okay?”

“Sure, I guess.” He couldn’t resist teasing her. “What do the cops do in dreams? Do their guns shoot jelly beans?”

“You’re
not
dreaming! Stop with the dream shit,
please
. You’re scaring me.”

Dutton showed her his palms in silent apology.

Jess pointed at his hands. “Where did those come from?”

“What?”

“Those blisters and bruises.”

“From the working on the ark.”

Angry, Jess grabbed his wrist. “We’re done here. Clothes, police, and then I’ll call Linda to come have a look.” Dr. Mills, their next-door neighbor, was a seasoned pediatrician.

All right, how have I completely lost control of my own dream
, he wondered.
If it’s really lucid, then I should be able to manipulate something.

He focused on Jess as she marched him up the hill, practically dragging him along behind her. He started with the color of her running outfit, something easy, trying to change her long-sleeve t-shirt from blue to orange. It didn’t happen. He tried to imagine away her ponytail, making her hair cropped short the way she had it last summer. That, too, failed.

He tried until they reached the dirt trail and turned west, facing into the blowing snowflakes. They speckled his face with crisp drops of moisture, each one driving home the sensation of reality, bringing him back around. The weight of his feet on the ground, the sharp chill of the breeze on his damp skin and wet hair.

Snowflake after snowflake, melting on his skin.

“Jess?” He resisted her pull. “Jess, stop.”

“No, we’re going home.”

“I know, but I… I’m…” he stammered. “Am I really not dreaming?”

“
No
, now please let me get you home, okay?”

Back in their bedroom, Dutton sat on the edge of the mattress bundled up in a bathrobe after a hot shower, trying to make sense of what had happened.

Had the vertical pond
really
been a gateway through time? Had he really helped Noah with the ark?

His damaged palms, the robe, and the sandals… were they proof enough?

To him, maybe. Anyone else? Not a chance.

If he didn’t want to have his medical license revoked or get tossed into a padded room, he would have to lie, to everyone, for the rest of his life.

That was his new reality. A legitimate one.

It would be easy to concoct a story about transients accosting him in the woods, knocking him over the head, dressing him in odd clothing, and then tossing him in the river. He came to, crawled out, and climbed back up the steep hillside. Yeah, that would have to work. He would tell Jess the memory had come to him in the shower.

As for the rippling gateway? It would have to be their secret, or he would convince her that it had been an optical illusion.

Something simple. Something explainable.

Dutton needed to feel
normal
for a moment. He walked over to Jess’s side of their king-sized bed and found the remote, then turned on the television. He cycled through football and the weather, a music station, and a food channel where some beautiful Italian woman had baked a gorgeous, picture-perfect lasagna.

He settled on the first twenty-four hour news network he found, feeling like he needed to hear about actual events happening around the world. More solidity to further divide the line between supposed dream and reality.

Time travel. No way. Yet there was no other explanation for what he’d seen.

The commercial for a new laundry detergent ended.

The news anchor smiled as the camera zoomed in for a close-up, her blazing white teeth glinting against the studio lighting.

She said, “Welcome back from that quick break. We’ll return to the situation in Thailand in a moment, but first, our producers just received some fantastic information. The world has been watching closely for the past few weeks, and it’s finally happened, folks. News out of the Portland Zoo this morning—Zeus and Hera, the last two remaining unicorns in captivity, have given birth to a healthy baby foal.”

Dutton shot up from the bed and moved closer to the television.

The news anchor beamed with excitement, her eyes moist. She continued, “Zookeepers say they plan to give her a modern name for modern times. Let’s take you there now.”

The screen cut to a live feed at the zoo.

Dutton’s hand came up, covering his mouth. The other fumbled with the remote, trying to increase the volume; it fell from shaky fingers. He touched the screen, gently caressing the heartwarming image—a mythical family made real.

“America, please allow me to introduce you to…
Lucy
.”

A Word from Ernie Lindsey

Time travel is at once an easy topic to write about, but also thoroughly confounding and complicated. Who hasn’t wanted to go back in time and take back that stupid thing you said in the middle of class, or those hurtful words you said to the One Who Got Away? Who hasn’t dreamed about righting some wrong, like stopping Hitler or John Wilkes Booth?

The very idea of time travel is governed by two words: “if only”.

It’s simple, right? We hop back in time, fix what went wrong, both personally or globally, and then we come back to the present and live the glorious lives we were meant to live. Or, we’re anxious or excited about the future, so we jump forward to see if we’re really going to be okay, or if we screwed up and need to get ourselves together before the train jumps the tracks.

Time travel is made of hopes, dreams, and curiosity.

It’s an easy topic to write about with a seemingly never-ending supply of wishes and wants for the past and the future.

Then again: it’s also frustratingly complicated when you start dealing with paradoxes and
if:then
statements. As an author, it can be maddening trying to keep up with all of the things that will potentially change if your characters modify something. You try to invent all sorts of concepts to massage the truth you’ve created, whether they’re (new) scientific laws that bend the properties of physics in previously undiscovered ways, or maybe you gloss over it by simply saying, “We don’t know why it works, it just does.”

But, the author boldly presses forth, because this is a story that needs to be told, and besides, it’s fiction. Suspension of disbelief. It’s all made up, so we get to make up our own rules! Hooray!

In “Beasts of the Earth,” Dutton and Jess are suffering through the devastating loss of their daughter. As the parent to a young toddler, I can’t think of anything worse than if something were to happen to him. Writing this story was perhaps my way of dealing with the heartbreaking potential of something like that. I didn’t come up with any magical answers, but it did make me realize this: we can’t fix everything, even if time travel existed, so enjoy the present while it lasts.