Read: Part One || Read Part Two || Part Three || Part Four || Part Five || Part Six || Part Seven
I’d wondered how we’d get back to the top of the waterfall from the Adena village thousand years in the past… and here was my answer. Yes, I was flying up a waterfall! I was close enough to the cascading waters to feel the spray.
No other experience in my entire life compared to the feeling of weightlessness and complete freedom! With the damp mist of the waterfall beside me as I flew upward and the breeze lifting my hair, I drew in the freshest, most wonderful air I’d ever breathed. It was exhilarating!
The current of wind off the waterfall gently set me down on the grassy shore. I saw Ben’s frockcoat still tossed aside on the ground and knew I was in the right place.
I was so thrilled I felt like I must be literally glowing with excitement. As each of my companions landed nearby, I could see from their faces that they each felt the same way.
We were all a little breathless and awestruck, smiling with utter delight.
Finally, I exclaimed, “Wow!”
It was a bit of a shock to suddenly hear Andrew’s deep, booming voice speaking beside me… adult Andrew, that is.
“So now you know how it feels to fly.” Andrew clamped his large hand onto on my shoulder and grinned at me. “Amazing, I know. But, Wilbur, you and your brother have one more journey to take.”
Andrew started walking away from the water, pulling me along beside him. The others trailed behind. I heard Ben chatting, excited, about our flight.
“Andy? I mean, Andrew? How did things go with May after we left?”
Andrew smiled widely. “May is my wife. We’re very happy together. She says hello!”
We were almost at the tunnel entrance. Andrew stopped as the rest of our group joined us. I was still grinning at what he’d said when he spoke to the others.
Andrew said, “You two will have to exit individually, because when you leave the mound you’ll come out in the time and place you are meant to be. Ben, Millie, I know that you will both take what you have learned and do something great with it. Go ahead, Amelia Earhart,” our Adena guide said, speaking fondly, “ladies first.”
Millie hugged him fiercely around the waist. I thought she was going to leave right then, but she quickly grabbed me up in a quick hug, too. She did the same for Orville and Ben.
Millie smiled brightly. “I wish we could have spent more time together. It’s been amazing getting to know you, Ben. You have that, how do you say, oh… spark of genius. You have no idea what’s in store for you!”
“I’ll say,” Orville exclaimed.
Ben laughed. “My dear Millie, I truly appreciate your words of encouragement. I’ll keep them with me. Always. I know you have greatness in your future!”
Millie looked to my brother and then to me. “And you two. I figured out who you are,” she said cryptically. “Fly higher, Wright Brothers!”
I was about to ask what she meant, when Millie waved and stepped into the darkness.
Orville shouted after her, “Don’t forget about us!”
Ben was next. He shook our hands, saying, “I only wish I could know yours and Millie’s successes as you three seem to know mine!”
“We’ll see you in the history books, Ben,” I said.
Orville added, “We’ll miss you.”
Ben smiled, thanked Andrew, and left us.
Orville and I waited a minute before we, too, walked into the tunnel.
~*~
In the blackness, we shuffled forward until the sun shone brightly ahead. We stepped out together, blinded by daylight. As we stumbled forward, the most deafening, thunderous noise erupted around us; louder even than the terrible monster dinosaur that had chased us.
We were cowering with our hands over our ears when the clamorous sound actually grew even louder! A huge shadow covered us and then, just as quickly, passed over. A rush of wind knocked us off our feet as the roar faded away.
In all my time Travelling, I’d had a few shocking, unbelievable experiences. But nothing—nothing!—compared to what I saw then.
Soaring ever-higher into the brilliant blue sky was a magnificent flying machine!
As Orville and I hurried back to our feet to gaze at the wondrous contraption, a young man’s voice called out to us. “Hey, guys! Wasn’t that great? I’ve seen hundreds of planes take off like that and it still blows my mind!”
We spun around to see a gangly teenager with sandy-blond hair striding toward us. Behind him were more of those giant bird-like machines! A dozen of them sat on a flat field, all perfectly smooth surfaced, painted gray with white and yellow lines.
“What’s up, fellas?” The young man’s voice startled us out of our gaping. “Hey there, I’m Neil Armstrong.”
I shook his hand as he extended it. “I’m Wilbur. This is my brother, Orville.”
Neil laughed at that. “Your parents must be real airplane fanatics, huh? I haven’t seen y’all around the airport before. Are you new to Wapokoneta?”
“What? We’re in Ohio?” Orville’s bewilderment echoed my own.
I’d never been to Wapokoneta before, even though it wasn’t very far from where we lived. But I was pretty sure I would have heard about a place like this. An airport? What in the world was that?
I nudged Orville with my elbow. To Neil, I said, “We’re visiting relatives. We’re from Dayton.”
Neil replied in a friendly manner, saying, “Hey, they’ve got a much bigger airport in Dayton. Do you fellas ever watch the planes there? I bet you’ve seen some bigger ones than the little Beechcrafts and Piper Cubs that fly out of Auglaize County.”
I thought quickly. “Um, well, we live out in the country,” I said, “so we don’t get much chance to go to the airport. I’d sure like to look around?”
Neil grinned. “Come on, then! I’ll show you around! I have an after-school job sweeping up the hangar, so I know my way around here like the back of my hand. We have to stay out of the way, but you can check out some of the planes.”
He was talking and walking, so Orville and I picked up the pace and followed along behind our new friend, Neil Armstrong.
We crossed the strangely flat field and through an enormous doorway into a huge building. Inside, three of those airplanes sat side by side. Neil told us about the incredible machines as we approached.
“That white one is a brand new 1945 Piper Cub J-3,” he said. “It’s a two-seater, and it’s covered with fabric, so it’s really lightweight. That one is a ’41 Beechcraft Model 18, with four extra passenger seats behind the pilot’s seat. Aren’t they beautiful?”
Orville and I both nodded our heads enthusiastically.
Neil said, “Next summer, I’m signed up to start taking flying lessons. I can’t wait.”
I was a little too stunned and overwhelmed to speak, but Orville has never had that problem. He walked around one of the planes–the smaller one called a Piper Cub–and asking Neil all kinds of questions, pointing to the wheels and the wings.
It was another one of those surreal moments for me, like I was standing off to the side and watching the scene from the outside: Orville and I were actually looking at real, working flying machines. We had been dreaming of these things our entire lives, and now we were discussing the shape of the wings and the material covering the frame with some kid from the future.
Neil got my attention again as he asked, “You fellas want a bottle of pop? Let’s hit up the employee break room. We’ve got some RC Colas in the ice box if you’re thirsty.”
Orville gave me a puzzled glance, as if to ascertain that I didn’t know what Neil was talking about either. Then he shrugged and said, “Sure. I’ll have a bottle of pop.”
We traipsed behind Neil through the hangar to the other side, where we entered a small room with a few tables, some chairs, and a slew of huge poster-pictures all over the walls. Neil, followed by Orville, walked over to a big white box with a silver handle.
But I was mesmerized by the posters.
They were pictures of different flying machines with their names printed underneath. There were gleaming silver machines called bombers, ones with doubles sets of wings called crop dusters. As I slowly toured the room, gazing at the different posters, I came across one of the double-winged airplanes, and standing beside it, grinning proudly with one hand on her hip, was Millie.
I felt my heart clench. My friend. There she was, dream achieved. She was a little taller than I had seen her not too long ago. And she looked a lot older, maybe thirty or so. But those were her short-cropped, honey-blonde curls. And I’d recognize those sparkling eyes and that bold expression anywhere.
Neil walked up beside me, holding out a bottle of dark, bubbly liquid, which I took to be polite.
“That’s Amelia Earhart,” Neil said. “You’ve probably heard of her. She was something! First female pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, first to fly across the States. She got a Distinguished Flying Cross, too. I remember when her plane disappeared over the Pacific a few years back.”
My heart dropped a bit as Neil spoke.
He continued. “People still talk about what might have happened to her, but they never found any sign of her or the plane, even though they searched the ocean and all those little islands for months. It’s a big mystery.”
“Mystery? Huh.”
I was trying to take in this information, when Orville started sputtering and coughing. Neil rushed over to pat him on the back while I caught sight of another poster across the room.
“Th-thanks, Neil.” Orville caught his breath and came walking over to where I stood. “Will, this RC Cola is delicious but you have to drink it slow, because it’s really fizzy. Hey, what’s that you’re staring at?”
This poster showed another double-winged flying machine, a little more crude than the one in Millie’s poster. There were two men standing in front of it. I couldn’t get a look at their faces, but the printed caption underneath was perfectly clear. I touched the glass of the framed picture.
‘Wilbur and Orville Wright: First in Flight.’
Throughout our Travels, we had learned more about our destiny, discovering that a series of interconnected people and events throughout history would involve the two of us and our dream of building a machine that would fly. At that moment gazing upon a picture from this time’s past, we were looking into our future.
Just then, someone on the other side of the hangar called Neil’s name, saying they needed a hand. Neil shouted out the door, “I’ll be right out!”
Then he said to us, “I’ve got to get back to work, fellas. You can find your way back out, right? See you around sometime!”
Without waiting for an answer, he hurried off.
Orville and I made our way out of the break room, reluctant to leave behind the incredible posters. We walked across the airplane hangar toward the huge doors we’d entered earlier. We walked in contemplative silence, mulling it all over as we passed the flying machines.
It wasn’t until we had almost reach the Adena tunnel opening that we started talking.
“That was us on that poster.” Orville asked, “Wasn’t it?”
“I think so. Did you see the one with Millie?” I said, “Neil told me she gets to be a famous pilot like she wanted! But she disappears.”
Orville frowned, clearly upset. “What do you think happened to her?”
I smiled. I was glad he’d asked.
“Neil said people think her machine went down in the Pacific Ocean. I have another idea.” I said, “Remember when Andrew was talking about how the Adena tunnels being all over the place? I think Millie found one of those—in the sky, maybe, since there wasn’t a trace of her—and she’s off Traveling. Having amazing adventures.”
Orville pondered on that for a few minutes. “You think maybe when we’re older we’ll meet with her again while she’s traveling? Ben and Andrew, too?”
“I hope so.” I said, “But I get the feeling it won’t be until we’ve left our mark. Like Millie did.”
We were almost at the spot where we’d come out of the tunnel when Orville said, “So, Will, what’s next?”
“Hopefully we make it back to Aunt Hilda’s before dark so Mother won’t be mad at us.”
“No, I mean, Andrew said this was our last journey. What do we do when we get back?”
Ah. That.
“We’re get to work on a new design for a flying machine,” I said, determined. “We figure out how to make it fly. After all, isn’t that what all this Traveling has been about? We have a job to do. You’ve got your pencil? Get out your notepad. Let’s make some drawings real quick before we go.”
We sat outside the tunnel entrance, talking and drawing, alternating who was sketching and who was pacing and spouting off ideas. Life was full of possibilities!
I felt like, even if we hadn’t learned about our own future, it was good to know that there would always be new things to discover and invent. Anyone could create something amazing, no matter the century.
As Orville stuffed his notepad into his pocket and we entered the tunnel for our final journey, my little brother said, “Will, I was thinking about all the people we met Traveling. They’re each really important. Leo becomes a famous painter. Ben helps establish the United States. And Millie! She’s gets to be a famous pilot after we invent flying machines.”
I nodded and walked alongside him.
Orville said, “What do you suppose that kid back there, that Neil Armstrong? What do you think he’ll do when he grows up?”
I grinned and clapped my brother on the back. “If I had to guess, I’d say something we can’t even begin to imagine. I only wish we’d be here to find out when he does it!”
Orville agreed. Then he patted the notepad in his pocket. “Come on, let’s get home. I can’t wait to start on these.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
“One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Neil Armstrong, First Moon Walk, 1969.
