Read: Part One || Read Part Two || Part Three || Part Four
I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the spectacular swirling whirlpool. Diamonds and stars spun down into the vortex, disappearing into the depths of the spinning tunnel.
Millie had completely vanished not a second after she’d stepped over the stone circle framing the sparkling maelstrom.
A loud whoop from across the circle caught my attention. There went Orville, wearing a gleeful grin as he hopped over the stones to the whirlpool.
“Orville! Wait,” I shouted uselessly.
My brother followed Millie’s lead into the Traveler’s tunnel.
Beside me, Ben stood speechless. He looked about as shocked and bemused as I was.
I gave an exasperated sigh and motioned to the stone circle. “Well, Ben,” I said, “you wanted to investigate the Traveler’s tunnels. You’re not going to let something like a little sparkly whirlpool stop you, are you?”
Ben shut his mouth with an audible clicking sound as his teeth slammed together. His face held something akin to terror mixed with elation. Without saying a word, he folded his arms and stepped into the circle flashing lights.
When the top of Benjamin Franklin’s head disappeared, I let my shoulders sag and said to myself, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
I followed my brother and our two new friends down into the unknown.
~*~
I couldn’t breathe. I opened my mouth and tried to draw in breath but no air came to me. I panicked. My mouth opened and closed like a landed fish. I had thought that stepping into the whirlpool would spin me around in circles, but instead I was floating in space, surrounded by stars. I absolutely could not draw a breath.
I hit the dirt with a thump. I drew in the air in gulps. I collapsed, gasped and relieved.
There was enough faint light for me to see I was in a small rocky cavern. I heard voices coming from the same direction as that light, so I stood and stumbled towards them.
Orville, Millie, and Ben stood in a huddle at the mouth of the cave, facing away from me. I stepped out of the cave and saw what had them all transfixed.
We stood on a rocky plateau high above a vast valley. In that valley, placidly grazing on the tall green grass, were…
“Dinosaurs?”
I spared a quick glance at my fellow Travelers to make sure that I wasn’t imagining the enormous lumbering reptiles on the ground below us. But they did see the huge beasts, and all stood gazing in awe at the pre-historic scene we had come upon.
I turned my attention back to the groups of different dinosaurs.
I thought back to those drawings in my Earth Science textbook and recognized some of the amazing creatures. Some, though, were like nothing I’d ever seen.
“Astounding! Absolutely incredible!” Ben’s voice broke the silence of our group.
Suddenly we were all chattering excitedly, pointing here and there and exclaiming our amazement at the tableau before us. A pair of long-necked dinosaurs nibbled leaves from the very tiptop of tall trees.
Then I saw a whole herd of smaller animals with pointy heads and long, skinny tails. They gathered around bushes covered in bright red berries.
“Oh!” Orville pointed. “A triceratops!”
Its huge horns dipped low as it drank from a little stream.
Caught in the excitement of actually seeing real live dinosaurs, we all fell silent again as one came into view. It was magnificent. And best of all, it was flying!
Gliding effortlessly on invisible currents, a beautiful blue-skinned creature with massive, widespread wings flew over the valley of dinosaurs. We all stood in quiet wonder and gazed at the majestic pterodactyl, watching it tip its wings to swoop into a graceful, curving turn. With a series of slow, powerful strokes, it flew off out of sight.
A shout from Mille broke our spell. “Look! Over there!”
She pointed to the east at a path that looked like it would take us into the valley. Of course, she didn’t wait for anyone else to agree that it would be a good idea to take a trail down into a valley full of dinosaurs.
Orville and Ben went after her without a second’s hesitation, leaving me standing there still admiring the dinosaurs. It must have been a minute or two before I decided to follow.
I trotted down the wide, rocky pathway to try to catch up. I had almost turned the corner past a giant rock and a bend in the trail when I heard terrified screams!
In a time of dinosaurs, I knew that couldn’t mean anything good. I ran but didn’t make it far before Millie came dashing around the boulder straight toward me.
“What in the world’s wrong?”
She flew right past me, grabbed my wrist, and yanked me with her. She screamed, ““Run! Run! Come on, run!”
I ran a few steps in a panic, and then stopped. My brother! Where was Orville?
I barely had time to breathe relief as he and Ben barreled around the bend, screaming as Millie had, telling me to run.
Didn’t take a genius to figure out that something big and scary was chasing them.
As we crested the top of the trail, Millie was halfway across the plateau and heading for the cave. Orville and Ben ran two steps ahead of me.
A sound split the air, one I will never forget for the rest of my life, rippling so loud and so close that it scrambled my brains and shook the leaves on the prehistoric trees. I’ve never heard a lion roar, but during a bad storm I heard a tornado across our field. The sound I heard in that land of giant reptiles was a mix of my imagined lion and that fierce, powerful tornado.
And it was too dang close!
I didn’t stop running, but I had to see what was chasing us. I snapped my head back to get a look behind me. As I did, my foot caught on a rock in the path. I tripped and fell, feet over head, until I landed on my back sprawled on the ground.
Well, I got my look at the beast. A good clear view. I gulped down my terror.
It had to be a Tyrannosaurus Rex—though it looked nothing like the bones I’d seen once on display in the Ohio Museum of Science. And it was definitely not like the flat, pastel image I’d seen in my textbook. No, not this guy. He didn’t stand up tall and straight, but ran in a crouch, his sharp-clawed arms tucked up close and his tail balancing him. Gooey strings of slobber dripped from hundreds of pointy teeth, each tooth as long and sharp as a machete.
The massive creature came around the bend in the trail and caught sight of us, his prey, and stopped running. He bellowed out another terrifying roar. As the echoes of the angry tornado-lion call faded, the scaly green head tilted downward and I found myself the object of an extremely baleful glare from a pair of red-orange eyes.
I think my heart stopped. I know I quit breathing. The slavering monster was still a good distance off down the trail, but those ginormous feet and tree trunk legs could cross the distance quicker than I had.
Suddenly, two sets of hands grabbed both my shoulders and yanking me to my feet. Orville and Ben. They’d come back for me.
Orville panted as he cried, “Come on, Wil! Run!”
We took off faster than I’d ever run in my life lives, faster than I would ever again.
Millie stood in the cave opening, screaming at us to hurry. As we ran closer to the small entrance, we heard the angry King of the Dinosaurs behind us, his huge feet crashing onto the earth creating minor earthquakes with each running step.
Millie disappeared inside the cave as another mighty roar lit a fire under my brother, Ben, and myself. We burst into the cave and never slowed down as we dove into the stone circle’s swirling waters.
The sudden silence was deafening. The feeling of weightlessness was a startling contrast to my feet pounding the earth as I ran. Again, the void had stolen my breath. Adrenaline mixed with panic and I was half an inch from really having a fit when I fell harshly to the ground.
I sucked in the air and searched with quiet desperation for Millie, Ben and Orville.
They, too, laid flat on the ground around the stone circle, all panting and breathing deeply. We were back on the Adena mound with not a dinosaur in sight.
I jumped to my feet as I thought, What if that monster follows us into the Travel tunnel?
I frantically kicked the stones in all different directions, scattering the circle and dissipating the last flying sparks of light from the whirlpool. When the last stone tumbled far into the nearby bushes, and there were no signs of a circle or a whirlpool, I stood still. My breathing evened out and my heart settled.
The other three had stood and moved out of my way during my frantic rock-kicking episode. I turned to them. “What? I had to make sure that monster didn’t come through the tunnel after us!”
“No, no, you’re right, Wilbur.” Orville said, “We were giving you space. I’d have helped you, but it… looked like you had it under control.”
“Hey, boys,” Millie said. “You think Andrew came back and found us all missing?”
“I should very much like not to displease that gentleman,” Ben interjected nervously. “Perhaps we should venture to the other tunnel entrance?”
Luckily, when we made it to where Andrew had left us waiting, he was nowhere in sight. We’d barely sat down on a fallen log when Andrew strode into the clearing.
“I hope you weren’t bored waiting for me,” he said, his accent thick.
He didn’t notice the furtive glances exchanged between the four of us.
“I have received permission for you to Travel together on a mission. One that will impact all of your lives.” Andrew grinned as he said, “Are you ready?”
~*~
To Be Continued…
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Cathy Jones lives on the Crystal Coast of North Carolina. She loves the beach, reading every type of book ever written, inventing delicious recipes, and making up tall tales.