A kaleidoscope of vivid, flashing colors swirled through the darkness. The rainbow-colored flashes seemed to close in on me. I threw my arms up to cover my head.

I felt myself falling endlessly downward. I could hear a voice yelling and screaming while the lights flashed. I realized it was my own voice bellowing like a scared cow.

Then I heard a different voice, and it was calling my name. “Wilbur! Will! Hey, brother, what the heck are you yelling about?”

It was my younger brother, Orville. He shook my shoulder roughly as he told me to wake up.

With a shout, I sat straight up in bed. I wildly looked around me.

Instead of flashing rainbows in pitch black, I could see the pale light of sunrise coming through the open window. I saw that window framed by the blue calico curtains my mama had sewn by hand. This was our bedroom.

Orville sat on the floor where I’d shoved him, wearing a confused expression.

I took a deep breath, rubbed my eyes fiercely, and then shook my head like a dog shaking off a bath.

“Whew! That was so real!” I said aloud.

Nearly a month had passed since the day my brother and I had fallen through a tunnel in an ancient Adena Indian mound. We had traveled back in time and spent an entire night drawing with Leonardo da Vinci in fourteenth-century Italy.

Hard to believe, right? That’s why we were keeping it just between the two of us. We had agreed that anybody we told about our adventure would think we had lost our minds!

But that hadn’t stopped us from going back to the mound and trying to find the tunnel again. We’d gone there three times and so far hadn’t found any sign of the hole.

Today, we were supposed to go visit our Aunt Hilda in Columbus. Aunt Hilda was all right. She made the best peanut butter cookies in Ohio, for sure. But we hated to waste a whole Saturday visiting relatives instead of exploring in hopes of another Traveler adventure.

All things considered, after spending the morning enduring the long bumpy wagon ride to Columbus, we were glad to finally reach our aunt’s house.

Aunt Hilda had a plateful of peanut butter cookies waiting for us. Orville and I ate our fill, listening to boring grownup chatter about the new governor and the price of horse feed. Both of us were nearly asleep from boredom when Aunt Hilda said something that caught our attention something fierce.

“He chased that darn cow all the way down by that old Indian mound!” She laughed. “Hiram was so mad when he got back, I thought he was going to have a falling-down fit.”

Orville spoke up. “Aunt Hilda, did you say something about an Indian mound?”

“Orville, don’t interrupt your aunt when she’s telling a story,” our mother scolded.

“Oh, that’s all right, Susie. Boys will be boys.” Aunt Hilda smiled indulgently. “Yes, Orville, there’s one of those Adena Indian mounds down by the river. That’s where the old milk cow wandered off to last week.”

I asked, “Ma, is it okay if me and Orville go for a walk?”

“Orville and I,” she corrected, and then, “Go on, boys. Just be back by dark so we can head on home.”

She was barely finished speaking before we were out the door, racing towards the river.

My brother asked, “What if this mound had a traveling tunnel like the other one?”

“I can’t wait to find out!”

We ran together down a trail that wound between the trees until it reached the riverbank.

“Wilbur!” My brother was awe-struck. “Will you look at that?”

We approached the mound a little more cautiously than we had the first time we saw one of these unusual hills. We knew that something really incredible might happen. Heck, we were hoping for it.

We started climbing, testing each step before we settled our weight, tense with anticipation that the ground might collapse beneath our feet. But the earth remained solid all the way to the top.

We started circling the mound in a downward, spiraling trail looking for a way into the hill. We’d made it almost all the way back down to the bottom when suddenly Orville gave a gleeful shout and started yanking on some hanging vines.

“Come on, Will!” Orville yelled with excitement as he stepped inside a dark tunnel previously concealed by the vines.

“Wait, Orville!” I reached out to grab my brother’s arm but he was already gone.

This time I did hesitate, but only for a second. Then I stepped warily into the darkness.

I was about to call out Orville’s name when a sound like a rushing, mighty wind filled the tunnel around me, growing louder. The earth beneath my feet shook as I tried to catch up with my brother.

The roaring wind grew louder, and then came the sparkling lights spiraling all around. I just kept moving, blinded by the alternating darkness and flashes of color.

Everything went dark and silent. My outstretched hands felt leaves and hanging vines that I flung aside as I stepped out of the tunnel.

I bumped into my brother, who was standing there blinking owlishly in the bright sunlight.

We both looked around to see where–and when–we had ended up. Strangely, everything looked about the same as it had before we entered the mound. We had come out in the same forest, near the same river. Maybe we had gotten turned around somehow inside the tunnel and just come right back out the same place we had gone in?

“What do you think, Will?” Orville asked as we started walking towards the trail that looked like it led back to Aunt Hilda’s house. “Are we still in Columbus?”

“It sure looks like the same place. I guess it didn’t work this time,” I replied. “Come on, let’s head back before Ma wants to leave.”

We trudged up the path through the woods. I kept thinking how it sure felt like something had happened when the lights were flashing, the wind was roaring, and the ground was trembling.

We hadn’t walked very far when we started hearing the strangest noise, a kind of putt-putt-putt-putt sound. Orville skipped forward a few steps to where the trail broke through the trees and crossed a smooth dirt lane.

Just as he stepped out into the lane, an odd-looking buggy came barreling impossibly around a curve and slammed into him. My brother tumbled across the hard-packed earthen road!

“Orville!” I shouted as I ran to my little brother. He lay crumpled in a heap on the ground, motionless. My heart pounded in my ears and I knew what it was like to really be afraid.

I knelt down next to him where he laid, his face pale and his eyes closed. There was a goose egg rising over his right eye, already turning a mottled purple color.

“Oh my God! Is he all right?” I heard a shrill, feminine voice exclaim behind me. The girl called frantically, “Andrew, come help this poor boy.”

I looked up to see a girl about my age standing in the lane beside the strange, horseless buggy. She had short, wavy hair the color of honey. She was as pretty as a picture with blue eyes and a peaches-n-cream complexion. I stared at her in a daze for a minute, until a familiar, loud, booming voice shook me out of my trance.

“Why don’t you boys look where you’re going? I can’t just stop that automobile in an instant when you jump right out in front of me!” The tall man striding towards me and Orville looked and sounded just like Signore Verrocchio! Same booming voice, same towering frame, same swarthy skin, black hair and dark, snapping eyes!

I knew we definitely were not in 14^th century Florence where we had first met the Adena Traveler, but there he was, standing right before me on a country lane in Ohio! As I was trying to wrap my mind around his unexpected appearance, he looked at me and winked.

Just then, Orville groaned. A huge pressure released off my chest as I sucked in the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. He was alive! His eyelids fluttered open, and he sat up slowly to look around.

“What happened?” Orville had a puzzled frown as he reached up and gingerly touched the bump on his forehead.

“Young man, you’ve been struck by an automobile,” said the man who looked like Signore Verrocchio. “How do you feel?”

Orville’s eyes grew round and wide as he looked up at the tall man. “Signore Verrocchio? Is that you?”

The man the girl had called Andrew ignored the question entirely. Instead, Andrew reached down. He plucked Orville up off the ground like he was light as a feather and stood him on his feet.

When Orville started to sway like a tree in the wind, Andrew scooped him into his arms like a baby and carried him to the buggy. As he drew near, a little door opened up and another young girl stepped out of the odd contraption, concern etched on her face. She had to be the sister of the first girl; they looked so much alike.

“Millie,” the second girl asked, “is that boy hurt very badly?”

“I don’t think so, Pidge,” the first girl returned. “But he has a big lump on his head. I think Dr. Lambert should have a look at him. We’ll take him home and see what Mother says.”

Andrew set Orville down on the rear seat of the buggy and told me to hop in next to my brother. I looked around for the horses, but the girls were climbing into the front seat already. I didn’t want to look like an idiot, so I got in and sat down beside Orville.

Andrew grinned at me and slammed the little door. Then he walked around to the front of the strange buggy and started winding on a crank handle. That putt-putt-putt sound started coming out from underneath the boxy front portion of the buggy.

Then Andrew came around and climbed into the front seat of the buggy. He grabbed a wheel and suddenly we were careening down the lane faster than I’d ever been in my life!

The short trip was a blur. In only a few minutes, we arrived in front of a massive white house with enormous columns supporting a second-story balcony. The two sisters chattered away about taking care of Orville and getting a doctor to look after him. Once Andrew helped him inside, I left Orville in the capable hands of the two pretty girls and followed the tall Indian back outside. Some explanations were in order.

And explain he did. Andrew told me, “After you and Orville visited with me and Leo back in time, I had the urge to travel again!”

“To Columbus, Ohio?”

Andrew laughed. “No, my boy! We are near Des Moines, Iowa more than twenty-five years in your future!”

We’d come out of a different Adena mound than the one behind Aunt Hilda’s house! The river we’d been walking beside wasn’t the Great Miami in Ohio but was instead the Des Moines River. Andrew told me about the automobile, that horseless buggy, which had been invented a few years earlier. Rich families like the Earharts traveled in style!

The master painter, Signore Andrea del Verrocchio—now going by the name Andrew Vickers—worked as a traveling portrait artist. He’d been hired by their wealthy grandparents to paint the two Earhart sisters. That day, they had driven to a pretty spot down by the river to work on their portrait.

Andrew said, “You and your brother have been granted an enormous gift, Wilbur! You are allowed to use the Adena mounds to Travel while you learn about an important mission you are meant to accomplish.”

“Important?” I laughed. “Us? Orville will get a kick out of that!”

“Every time and place that you visit during your Travels will give you another glimpse of this great feat. One you will achieve together. And now that you have come here,” Andrew said, “I know that I have been made your guide.”

During Andrew’s chat with me outside, Orville was being pampered and spoiled by the two pretty Earhart sisters in the parlor. The doctor came and went, assuring the girls and their mother that he would be fine with a little rest. When I came back into the room, he was eating ladyfingers off a little china plate and smiling at Pidge.

The older sister Millie picked up a notepad off the floor next to Orville’s feet. As she flipped through the pages, I recognized my brother’s drawings of ideas for flying machines.

Millie pointed down at one of the drawings. “I saw that old thing at the Iowa State Fair a few years ago! It was all rotten wood and rusty wires,” she said. “I don’t know how those fellows who built it ever thought that thing would fly through the air! Father said the machine we saw at the Fair was an early prototype of the one that actually made the first flight. ”

Orville’s jaw dropped open and his eyes bulged. “What are you talking about? That’s just one of my drawings I’m always making. I’m going to invent a flying machine one day.”

Millie threw her head back and laughed. “You can’t invent something that’s already been invented, silly.”

I quickly stepped forward and took the notepad from her hand. “Hey, Orville, if you’re feeling okay, we should get going. It’s nearly dark and you know mama is expecting us back before sundown.”

I managed to get my brother to his feet and heading out the door before he blurted something he shouldn’t. I planned to explain everything to him on our walk back to the Indian mound. As we were leaving, Millie had one last teasing remark for Orville.

“You’re a pretty good artist, boy. Maybe someday, if you’re lucky, you’ll get to fly in a machine like the one you copied in that drawing.” She grinned as she said, “Maybe, if you’re really lucky, I’ll give you a ride in my aeroplane someday. I plan to be the first female flying machine pilot in the world!”

Her mother’s voice called out at that moment from the porch. “Amelia Mary Earhart! You know better than to stand there with the front door wide open. Come inside and close that door.”

Millie smiled and waved goodbye before the door shut.

~*~

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.