Read: Part One || Read Part Two || Part Three || Part Four || Part Five
“Are you ready?”
The very instant the words left Andrew’s mouth, Millie leapt to her feet with an excited, “Let’s go!”
Orville jump up as well, ready for action, while Ben and I were a little slower to respond. Kind of hard to comprehend that we were about to leave again right away.
We weren’t far behind the others, and Andrew took off at a quick pace down the path around the mound, talking as he went. I quickened my steps so I could hear what he was saying.
“Orville, Wilbur,” Andrew says, “you and your young friends will Travel to the year 200 BC to visit Star Village… the home of my youth.“
Ben shot me a look, and I knew what he meant when he asked, “What’s it like there, Mr. Andrew? Is there, um, anything particularly horrible?”
I added, “Or hungry?” Having a huge, roaring dinosaur chase after you could make anyone a little jittery.
Andrew laughed. “No, boys, it is a beautiful land of clear, flowing rivers and lush green meadows. I doubt you’ll run into any wild creatures near the village.”
As we walked along the trail, Andrew stopped short beside a particularly large boulder resting against the side of the mound. With a gentle, easy push, he rolled it aside to reveal yet another tunnel entrance.
This is incredible, I thought as I listened to the others ask about our upcoming journey. These openings must be hidden away everywhere!
“Well, young friends, here is the beginning,” Andrew said. “I hope that your experience brings you the enlightenment you seek, and that your lesson is well-learned. Much depends upon it.”
With that cryptic comment, Andrew stepped aside and gestured toward the dark opening with a flourish. Of course, Millie and Orville both tried to be first. After a little jostling, they went inside, followed by Ben.
As I stepped forward, Andrew placed a hand on my elbow to stop me.
“Wilbur, wait.” Andrew looked at me with an oddly embarrassed expression. “Do me a favor, Wilbur, and… don’t laugh.”
I hesitated for a second as I searched his face for a clue as to what he meant. Then I heard my brother’s characteristic whooping holler of excitement from inside the tunnel, so I shrugged my shoulders and stepped inside.
Like all the other tunnels we’d been in, it was pitch dark but with a light a short distance ahead. I heard a strange noise coming from that direction. It almost like… like…. Rushing water?
Oh no! Not again!
But I didn’t land in anything or on anyone. I kept walking.
When I turned a final corner, I stepped out of the dark tunnel into a huge, bright chamber. A damp mist rose from a cascading waterfall. We stood next to an underground river at the top of a tall waterfall.
Orville and Millie, I realized, were having an argument about what to do next.
“Hey, calm down,” I said to them. “We’ll have a look around and figure this out.”
They both shut their mouths and turned to me at the same time. Then they looked at each other. I saw Orville’s impish, mischievous grin reflected on Millie’s face.
Those two were peas in a pod if ever I saw them. Two terrible, impulsive, nerve-wracking peas.
I stepped forward, reaching out my hands shouting, “Wait!”
They both jumped into the water. The rushing foam sucked them under. In no more than an instant, both disappeared over the edge of the falls!
I cursed and leaned against the wall. Exasperated, I said to Ben, “Doesn’t anybody look before they leap anymore? Are they for real? Jumping into a waterfall?”
Ben laughed, pulled off his frockcoat, and tossed it onto the grassy shore. “Come now, Wilbur! Your Mr. Andrew wouldn’t send us into danger.”
And then dear old Ben Franklin took the leap himself, shouting, “Tally ho!”
I shouted after him, “I’m not leaping into a waterfall, Ben! I can’t even see the bottom!”
I paced, and breathed deeply.
Was what Ben said correct? We did always come out safely through all our other Travels. Sure, there were a couple of close calls. But….
But, dang it, I was responsible for Orville! And the others! Beeing the oldest and all.
“All right, Wilbur, boy. You can do this.” I closed my eyes and drew in a deep breath. I pinched my nose between my thumb and forefinger, and took the plunge.
There were none of the fireworks and flashing lights we’d encountered in our previous Travels. I was just tossed down a waterfall, completely immersed in torrents of raging waters and falling, falling, falling…
The falling lasted so long that I started to wonder if it would ever end. Then, with a splash, my feet touched the bottom. I pushed upward with a mighty kick.
Air. Glorious air! I burst through the surface and started paddling to stay afloat. I drifted on the calm currents of a peacefully flowing river.
I sighed with relief when I saw Ben bobbing in the water downstream. He waved as we floated past wide, grassy meadows dotted with daisies and larkspur, and weeping willow trees just like the ones beside our river at home. And…
“Hey! What’s that?” I shouted, “Is that an Adena mound?”
Ben said, “I do believe so. And, past it, some huts and people!”
Several boys waded into the river up ahead. They had Millie and Orville, helping them climb out of the water. As Ben approached, they pulled him over the side, too.
The bare-chested, copper-skinned youths wore fringed, buckskin trousers. “Andrew’s village,” I whispered reverently.
Orville helped me out of the water, cheerful. “Glad you made it, brother!”
The boys led us toward a cluster of small, round houses with pointed roofs covered in what I figured were strips of tree bark. We walked down a narrow pathway between two of the domed huts, and came to a circular courtyard in the center.
A ring of stones held back a bed of low flames and coals. A pair of women stirred a pot of something that smelled amazing, while another pretty Adena lady poured batter onto a flat stone on the edge of the fire.
Ben, Millie, Orville and I took in our surroundings. It was incredible to stand in the center of an ancient Adena village that had mysteriously disappeared almost two-thousand years before my brother and I were born. What was strange, though, was how none of the villagers were surprised to see four young foreigners in strange dress suddenly standing in their midst.
On the other side of the fire, some old men sat on large logs. It was towards them that the young men led us. Bright eyes peered up from beneath wrinkled brows as the elderly Adenas inspected us.
“Welcome, young ones,” one man said in a deep, resonating voice that reminded me so much of someone else we knew. He looked like Andrew, too, except he was much older and not as tall.
“I am Santaro, chief of the Adena,” he continued. “We have been expecting you. There is a special lesson to learn while you are here with us in the Star Village. You must complete a task if you are to return to your homes. If you fail, you must stay with us, in this time and place, for the rest of your lives.”
“Wh-what?” Shocked, I looked at my companions. Stay there? That’s not how it was supposed to work! Orville and I had passed through the Adena tunnels before without a problem. Each tunnel was completely different—from trip to landing—but we’d never faced the prospect of being stranded before. Every other time, we could turn around and re-enter where we’d exited. Although, we couldn’t swim up a waterfall…
“Whoa, mister! Hold on!” Orville spoke up, saying, “Our ma will be really mad at us if we aren’t back at Aunt Hilda’s house before dark. We’re happy to visit with y’all and learn a lesson and stuff, but then? We have to go.”
The old man roared, “Silence! Do not speak when your elders talk! Did no one tell you that your name means ‘flapping tongue’ in our language?”
“Yeah, Orville,” Millie muttered. “Didn’t your ma teach you better than to interrupt people?”
The Adena chieftain pinned her with his baleful glare for a moment before continuing. He said, “You were allowed to Travel through time, an enormous gift. You have witnessed some of our world’s most pivotal developments. You must now demonstrate to the Guardians of the Mounds that you are worthy to possess this knowledge. Your task shall be explained in the morning after the Sunrise Song.”
I took a deep breath, feeling the weight of the chief’s words.
“My son will show you where you may sleep tonight. Andironus,” the chief said as he turned to a scrawny kid standing in the shadow of an overhanging roof, “take good care of our guests.”
I hadn’t even noticed the kid, but as he stepped forward, wearing a beaming smile and gestured with a beckoning wave of his hand, he looked friendly enough.
“Welcome to Star Village,” Andironus said. “Follow me.”
Andironus was about my age, fifteen years old or so. He was gangly compared to the buff copper-skinned guys who had pulled us out of the river. There was something familiar about the way he tilted his head when he talked and how loud his voice resonated even though he wasn’t yelling.
I chuckled when I realized that Andironus, son of the head elder, was our familiar Adena friend and Traveling guide, Andrew. Here, in the village of his youth, he was a teenager like the rest of our group.
I wondered how much young Andironus knew about his own future as adult Andrew, and whether we were supposed to talk about any of that. I also wondered how Orville and I were going to get back to where and when we’d left our mother: visiting with her sister over tea and cookies in Columbus, Ohio, 1880.
Standing beside an ancient Adena domed hut, looking at a kid who would become my mentor, I felt as though I were standing outside the situation. These kids—these people—were about to affect not only my destiny but the world’s.
Walking in the back of the group, following Andironus, I watched my younger brother hop-skip-walking next to Millie, chatting like an excited magpie.
Millie. Amelia Mary Earhart. The girl from the future who had been to the World’s Fair and seen a model of a flying machine that Orville and I were going to make some day. The girl who had declared she was going to become the first female flying machine pilot. I didn’t doubt it.
Then there was Ben. Benjamin Franklin. A young man I’d learned about in school in my American History class. As a man, he’d do great things, like help write the Declaration of Independence.
What would happen to the flow of history if none of us returned to our proper place and time? We were all part of a chain of events, maybe even dependent on one another, like stepping stones across the rivers of time.
If Ben didn’t go back to his time, there might never be a Declaration of Independence. Maybe no one else would discover how to harness electricity, and our father and our brother may never get to wear bifocal eyeglasses.
And what if Amelia Earhart didn’t get the chance to pilot a flying machine?
Or if Orville and I didn’t make it back home… What would our mother think?
Weren’t we supposed to be following our dream to build a machine that would fly? The machine that, one day, Millie would pilot?
I thought that running away from a slavering dinosaur had been the scariest experience of my life. But there, with my insides trembling as I contemplated the of the four of us stuck in 200 BC for the rest of our lives, I knew I’d been wrong.
I had no idea the task or trial we’d face in the morning. Whatever it was, we had succeed. History depended on us.
~*~
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.