Spiral: Book One of the Spiral in Time (68 page)

“Frankly, Sir Aubrey, it is not sounding very good right now.”

She opened one eye briefly. Dr. Ramachandra stood in her room, talking on a cell phone.

“She cries a lot and calls out to people you say you have never heard of. One in particular she says is her brother. And you assure me she has no siblings. This obsession she has with Sabrann could mean there are more serious problems than we can see. I will have her see a psychiatrist ... Perhaps order some antidepressants. We will have to keep her longer.”

The next day, Germaine stopped talking about Sabrann.

She was not crazy and did not want to be locked up in an asylum or heavily medicated. Every stubborn cell in her body resisted. Somehow, she would figure out the puzzle of how she became two people. And always, there was the fear of some permanent mental disorder.

Each day she felt stronger, and the nurse helped her walk up and down the halls, trailing catheter tubes and pulling a small oxygen tank. Dr. Ramachandra was pleased to see her improvement, but would not let her get out of bed unattended. She got used to having her bottom exposed from the flapping hospital gown and grew less modest about her body. And all the time she carefully remembered everything about Sabrann’s life, like a story she must not forget.

They tested her eyes, her balance, her day-to-day memory and nothing was abnormal. She recited everything about her life as a respected teacher, an expert in her field. Each week, Dr. Ramachandra would test her with cognitive tests. The hospital’s ophthalmologist checked her eyes. The physical therapist checked her balance.

And always Dr. Ramachandra would ask her about Sabrann. “Was that her name? Who is she? Tell me your name.”

“No,” she said. “I was upset and confused. My name is Germaine.”

She had stopped talking about Sabrann. But she didn’t stop trying to figure it out.

Conan Ryan came to visit her once or twice each week. He was charming, but he tested her like the doctor, asking questions she could not answer.

“What do you remember about the accident?”

“Nothing,” she said. “It’s a complete blank.”

He frowned and gave her a dubious look, like he thought she was crazy, too. Once he asked her about Sabrann, and she gave him the same reply as the doctor. So even he knew she thought she was someone else.

“Do you remember what you found in the burial chamber? Anything at all?”

She answered truthfully, “Nothing.” He left with a worried look on his face.

After the first visit, she asked Dr. Ramachandra why she could not remember anything about the burial chamber, and he told her it was common in severe head concussions. The short- term memory seemed to be most affected. Many times it came back; sometimes it didn’t. It was just not predictable.

Germaine cried again that night. If her memory was gone she could not work. She remembered nothing about the dig. She could not even remember the title of her book, so important to her job and tenure at Cal, so how could she write?

What if she
was
crazy? What if Sabrann was an illusion? If they suspected she still believed she was Sabrann, they would lock her up and throw away the key. Nicholas and Aubrey were her only friends, and even they gave her concerned looks.

Without her sanity, she was doomed.

She would keep quiet and give the doctors all the right answers.

It was a brisk September morning, and the nurse had wheeled her out to a small courtyard. Aubrey found her there dozing from boredom.

“Wake up, my girl, you have an important visitor.”

A man who looked vaguely familiar gave her a formal little half-bow. Dressed in a fine tweed suit and jaunty hat, the man smiled.

“Dr. O’Neill, I am so happy to have found you.”

That was a little strange thought Germaine, but some of Aubrey’s friends were unusual. They sat down on a bench near Germaine.

“This is Dr. Sykes,” Aubrey said. “You remember him. We heard his lecture on mitochondrial DNA at the conference.”

Oh, yes, she thought. The seven women. She remembered that! She had started compiling a list of things she remembered along with everything about Sabrann’s life.
Her
life.

“Aubrey sent me the skull of the woman you found in the burial chamber at Maiden Castle for DNA analysis,” Dr. Sykes said. “And there is something rather amazing going on.”

She held her breath. She did not remember anything about the burial. Maybe this would tell her something, be a clue for her memory.

“The skull is of a woman from about 2,500 years ago. We have dated it to mid fifth century BC. We are quite excited. Your Iron Age burial find is one of the earliest DNA analysis we have been able to date in Prehistoric Britain. Your find will be one for the archaeological record. Congratulations! You’ll be famous.” He winked at her.

You’ll be famous.
Those words struck a chord in her sleeping memory. Famous for what? She dimly remembered something about wanting to be famous, about being first into the burial chamber, but nothing more.

“But it gets better!” Dr. Sykes doffed his hat and fanned his face. “We did a complete mitochondrial DNA analysis. We wanted to determine if this woman came from a Celtic land. And she did. She was from a clan in France! This was Gaul, of course, and thought to be a Celtic land. When I got the results I ran a scan through our DNA donor file to see if by chance there was a contemporary match, someone who was one of her descendents. There was one match. Only
one
out of thousands.” He fanned his face again and withdrew some papers from a briefcase.

“Do you remember giving a DNA sample at the lecture I gave about the clan mothers? Well, your mitochondrial DNA profile matched the woman in the burial chamber exactly! You are a direct descendant of this woman. She is your clan mother.”

The hairs on the back of her neck rose and ripples of goosebumps went down her arms.

“We don’t have a name yet for this woman,” Aubrey said. “She had a shield and richly engraved swords buried with her. So, for now, we call her the warrior queen of Mai Dun.”

Germaine closed her eyes in silent prayer as great waves of relief flooded through her body. She was not insane or brain damaged. She had no more doubts.

Something had brought her to the grave of her own far-distant relative, her clan mother.

They had the same DNA—it was a Scientific Truth. And she knew this woman, had felt her blood coursing through her veins, felt the pain and love that made up the fabric of her life, the strands of living that, somehow continued in Germaine through a thousand lifetimes: they were one.

Sabrann
, she wanted to cry out.
Her name is Sabrann!

HOMECOMING

September 1, 2006

This was the day she was getting out. The nurse helped Germaine into the shower and set out the fresh clothes Aubrey had brought: a long tan skirt, a green turtleneck, and sensible flat shoes. After two months in flapping hospital gowns, real clothes felt strangely confining.

A wheelchair waited at the door to take her down to Aubrey’s car. “Hospital rules,” the nurse said, and then smiled. “We don’t want you having an accident.”

Oh, my god, no!
Germaine shuddered at the thought. She looked in the mirror as the nurse brushed her hair and braided it into one long braid. Face almost white, much thinner and her eyes ... they defied any rational explanation—at least to Germaine.

There was no way anyone would understand. She was two people now. Sabrann’s fierce gaze flashed out of Germaine’s own eyes. Sabrann was her other half.

She had to find out what happened to Sabrann. Did she die like Glas? Yet the fact that Germaine was alive said, somehow, that Sabrann had lived on, for Germaine was her descendant. But where? And how could she ever find any record of Sabrann in that deeply illiterate time?

Her legs trembled as she walked to the doorway. Daily physical therapy had strengthened her physically, yet Germaine’s mind spun with these thoughts. She sat down in the wheel chair and fidgeted with the small bag of personal items the hospital had kept for her: her silver spiral ring, her favorite pearl stud earrings, and everything emptied from the pockets of the khaki pants she was wearing when the site collapsed. The ring was the only thing she still cared about. She wanted to be gone from this place. The wheelchair rolled silently down the hallway.

“I have a surprise for you,” the nurse said and turned the wheelchair into one of the rooms. “There’s someone you might want to see before you leave.”

What now?
Germaine wondered impatiently, still caught in her thoughts of long ago.

A patient lay on his side, looking out the window.

“Look who’s here ... Jemmy Aston. He survived a terrible accident, just like you. He was part of the Druid burial and that unfortunate explosion.”

The man on the bed turned toward her and smiled. He held out his hand.

Germaine’s heart gave a single thud and she felt all the blood leave her head.

Blue eyes like the sky. Pale hair like the clouds.

Glas!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Judith Schara writes historical fiction that blends history and archaeology with the mysteries of time and time travel. She spends her time writing and reading all types of books, with daily therapeutic trips to the garden to keep her grounded in nature, something all writers need who live mostly in their head.