Ancient Fire (14 page)

I use that same kind of gentleness cradling
my dad’s head. I whisper to him everything will be all right.

I hope it’s true.

Chapter Sixteen

Clyne: Extra Credit

Final Class Project: 10,271
S.E.

4. Would you recommend
this reality to other students?

The answer is as complicated as a game of
Cacklaw. This is a planet where the intelligent beings aren’t
hatched to be raised by a community; they’re born live out of their
mother’s body; they’re born hot-blooded, and there is no predicting
what they’ll do.

I am fascinated by them! And terrified. Our
old saying “Know an egg before you crack it” has no application
here. The humans of Earth Orange are wildly unpredictable.

I hope this is taken into account when grades
are assessed.

For example, I am now what they call an
“outlaw”—someone who breaks the rules of a community and is
therefore chased by armed enforcers. And while the mammals here
claim to dislike outlaws, they make many entertainments celebrating
them and retelling their stories.

I doubt they will make such an entertainment
about me. Live Saurians evidently unnerve them. In fact, since the
human named Howe tried to force me to stay, I’ve been reduced to
sneaking around to fish meals of orange rinds and bird bones from
the trash receptacles of private dwellings. I remain a few jumps
ahead of them, but I don’t know how long it will last.

Still, I will attempt to finish my homework
during these short rests. If I ever return, I’ll need all the
credit I can get.

Especially since I will get points off for
breaking nearly every school rule about time travel. Worst of all,
I gave a non-Saurian use of my vessel and sent her home in my
stead.

But in this case, I knew a little about the
egg before I cracked it: There’s a reason I sent Thea, the
librarian from Alexandria, to live with you on Saurius Prime. She
wasn’t safe here on her own world, not in her own time, nor in Eli
the Boy’s. But she is intelligent and has knowledge that is worth
studying; she also has an interesting idea or two of her own about
the displacement of time.

I hope she receives an opportunity to explain
the scrolls I sent back with her, which were salvaged from her
library: They contain amazing histories of ancient cultures on
Earth Orange—many of which were gone long before Alexandria was
ever built — surprisingly accurate predictions about dimensions and
cosmology, maps of a place called Atlantis, which no longer appears
to exist either, and a whole category of literature the Earth
mammals call “love poems.”

I also hope Thea is afforded the opportunity
to address the whole school at an assembly; not only is she
fascinating, but it will help prove to everyone that I am not
insane, which will be most helpful should I ever get back.

I have to stop writing now. One of the other
Earth mammals — a “dog” in the local tongue—is sounding an alarm,
and some humans are sure to come out of their dwelling to
investigate. Better if they don’t see me, so I will move on.

I don’t know how I’m going to get home yet,
or whether you’ll send a rescue party out for me when you realize
I’m not going to make it back to class. If you try to land here, it
may not be pleasant.

Still, there are plenty of good beings. I
will try to figure out a safe way to make contact with Eli the Boy
and his father.

Until then, I will travel this surprising
planet in secret, gathering what information I can, attempting to
put it all in this report. And hoping this report will someday
reach you.

I am reminded of another saying I haven’t
thought of in years, taught to me by one of my clutch-parents when
I was still a nestling: “Keep both eyes open at all times — a
million worlds surround you.”

Chapter
Seventeen

Thea: Letters Home

Time Undetermined

Ever since Tiberius came after us, setting
everything in motion in Alexandria, so much of what has happened
feels like a dream. And not always a good one. But there seems to
be no indication that I will wake up anytime soon.

Each new event outstrips the last: How do I
adequately describe my journey with Eli, the boy wizard, who pulled
me through the fabric of time itself, through the Fifth Dimension—a
land of dream…and color…and longing? Longing for a time and place
truly my own…but I doubt I will know such a place ever again.

Perhaps I should write of the brief time I
spent in Eli’s world, where I found out that there is no time or
place in which wizards are safe from attack.

Or perhaps I should start with where I am
now: a world wholly strange to me, filled entirely by lizard folk.
They remind me of some of our animal gods in Alexandria—but they
are not gods, of course.

They are big and mostly polite and seem to be
studying me cautiously; watching my every move, jotting things
down, conferring with one another. They also provide what food they
can for me, which they regard as a strange diet of exotic grains
and fruits.

They are still overcoming their absolute
shock at seeing me emerge from K’lion’s time-ship. I think some of
them might have taken offense that one such as I—a creature unlike
them—could even master the controls of such a vessel.

It was not hard. K’lion taught me the basics
when he showed me the ship in Alexandria. And the course for “home”
had already been set.

I should say the course for K’lion’s home.
Not mine. Mine is lost now.

And perhaps that is where I should focus this
journal entry: on the handful of scrolls that were saved from the
library.

With my mother gone, that leaves just me. The
scrolls and me. We are all that remains of the great library.

But I have Mother’s thirst for knowledge. And
now, if my new hosts allow it, I have use of the lizard beings’
time-ship. I will become an explorer on my own, reclaim the
knowledge that was lost, and add new discoveries.

I will do all this in memory of Hypatia, who
taught me life is a great mystery with much to know and
explain.

Perhaps they will let me go look for my two
lost friends, and bring Eli the wizard here, or at least K’lion.
This is, after all, where he belongs.

And after a long adventure, it is good to go
home.

Chapter Eighteen

Eli: Message in a
Bottle

October 30, 2019 C.E.

LIZARD MAN IN THE WOODS!

It’s a headline in the
National Weekly Truth
, one of the few remaining
“papers” still actually printed on paper. I see it when Dad and I
are standing in line at the grocery store in Glen Ellen.

It’s been a few weeks now, and we
occasionally get secondhand news about Clyne that way. The online
Chronicle
had its own, more serious,
article called “The Return of Bigfoot,” describing footprints
people had seen near here. I think they were Clyne’s. I hope he
manages to stay safe.

A couple weeks ago he left an orange on our
doorstep, with the word
Hello
carved in
the peel.

Luckily, I found it before the DARPA agents
did.

There are only a couple around at any given
time lately. But they follow us everywhere. One is behind us in
line at the grocery store now, getting ready to tail us home.

We don’t see Mr. Howe much, but he uses the
agents to keep tabs on us.

His current fascination is with slow pox. The
situation’s getting a little scary—a couple cities are on the verge
of declaring quarantines.

As it turns out, that’s what Mr. Howe wanted
with the scrolls from the library at Alexandria. He didn’t actually
care what was
on
the scroll; he wanted the
scroll itself, the parchment, the goatskin.

Most of the livestock back in Thea’s time
were carriers of slow pox, and Mr. Howe figured if he could get a
sample of animal skin—like the parchment—he could extract the slow
pox DNA and make his own batch.

Dad wonders if maybe that’s what’s causing
the outbreaks in the first place. The time stream is still out of
whack. Recently another plane, this time going from Chicago to
Mexico City, managed to land before it actually took off, after
disappearing off the radar screen. But that was so unbelievable, it
wound up in the
National Weekly Truth
,
too, a few days before the “Lizard Man” story about Clyne.

With all the strange things happening, Dad
has a strange idea of his own: He thinks maybe Mr. Howe got his
strain of slow pox perfected after all, and it escaped from the lab
and caused the outbreak.

Or rather, it escaped from the lab in the
near future, but strains of the disease have come back in time to
start infecting us now.

I hope that doesn’t mean I helped cause it by
becoming unstuck in time in the first place. By messing up the time
stream with my WOMPER charge. I wonder if Dad feels that way, too.
Or Mr. Howe.

No, I’m pretty sure Mr. Howe wouldn’t worry
about it.

Dad and I talk about that in the truck, and
he tells me again and again not to blame myself. But that’s what
I’ve been telling him about Mom’s disappearance, that he couldn’t
have known what would happen and he can’t keep making himself
miserable, not if there’s a chance to get her back. But he doesn’t
buy it at all.

We get home, and the DARPA guy pulls up right
behind us.

As Dad unpacks the groceries, I go to my room
and check the Comnet for messages. For the first time in months,
there’s one from my friend Andy:

Sorry it’s been so long. I miss having you here.
Strange things have been happening since you left. Like my little
sister saying she’s been talking to my great-grandma a lot lately.
Except, my great-grandma’s been dead for years. Weird, huh? My
parents have been taking her to doctors, but she won’t change her
mind. I don’t even know what my great-grandma looks like. How have
you been? How’s California?

Hey, Wall, I miss you,
too,
I start to write back. But I leave the reply
unfinished. What can I say? That his sister will be all right once
we get the fabric of time patched back up? That I’m friends with a
girl who’s more than a thousand years old, and that I know a
talking dinosaur, too?

How could you even tell anybody who wasn’t
there?

That’s the worst part of it, really. I’ve
become kind of a secret myself, like a part of DARPA. Kind of a
shadow, living a different life from everyone else.

Maybe that’s what Mr. Howe meant by “Danger
Boy.”

The danger is getting cut off from the world
you know, because you’ve seen worlds no one else can even
imagine.

But Andy’s isn’t the only message waiting for
us at home.

There’s a slip of paper, stationery from some
old hotel, lying on the floor in Dad’s lab, next to the time
sphere.

It’s in Mom’s handwriting. It says
Help
.

The DARPA agent sees it, too, and he’s
already on the phone to Mr. Howe, who I know will come rushing over
now, and this might jump-start everything again.

“Dad, I have to go outside and take a walk,”
I tell him.

“I understand.” He thinks I’m confused and
upset about the note from Mom, knowing she’s back there in time and
knowing she wants our help.

I
am
upset and
confused, but not for the reasons he thinks.

I walk down the path to the spot where Thea
and I came through the Fifth Dimension. I stand in front of the oak
where I hid my Seals cap.

There seems to be so much left to do.

Help
,
Mom
wrote. How? When?

I tried to go back to a “regular” life after
Alexandria, but maybe this is my regular life now, moving around in
time.

Maybe I am Danger Boy.

I need to ask Dad a couple things first, then
I’ll be back for the cap.

And I’ll be gone before Mr. Howe gets
here.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As the whole “Danger Boy” series migrates
and morphs from traditionally published form into the ebook you now
hold (or, at least, read on your screen), all the people who were
there at the beginning, in those four previous acknowledgements,
should consider themselves -- these many moons later -- still
thanked, loved, appreciated: the friends and family who provided
the encouragement (or sometimes the literal space to write), my
former editors at (sadly now defunct) Tricycle Press, and later
Candlewick, who helped whip those early manuscripts into shape. All
of them -- all of you -- thanks so much for being, well, time
travelers, and riding with these stories from their past, into the
future.

At the present moment -- for that is all we
time travelers ever actually have -- I want to especially thank my
agent, Kelly Sonnack, for being such a good steward of the books’
conversion to the format you currently enjoy, and as well,
longstanding “Danger Boy” cover artist Michael Koelsch, who took
many of his “boss” covers from the book series and worked his magic
so they’d look equally cool in download land.

And of course, thank
you
, dear reader, for taking this story into your
home, and, hopefully, your heart. Happy voyaging.

Eli’s adventures continue in Episode
2!

DANGER BOY

Dragon Sword

The old king stands by the lake, looking
over it as for the last time, waiting.