Path to Pandora (Timewalker #1)

The memory of finding the sword haunted Rory’s dreams more than any other. 

There was something so visceral about it, the dank of the rotting forest floor penetrating the tent, the canvas pillowcase making her face itch whenever she shoved her nose into the foam to escape the stench, Kurt Cobain’s voice vibrating her eardrums when he hit the high notes. She escaped so far into the sensory experience of it all, into the now, that she didn’t notice her father hovering until he yanked off her headphones.

“It’s time,” he declared with a hard emphasis on the ‘i’. Actually, it was more of an ‘oye’. His Aussie accent had come out in full lately. Rory figured it was because his Romanian wasn’t very good. If Tyler Freeman couldn’t gain the local’s respect by speaking the same language, he would earn it by projecting razor sharp vowels from the diaphragm.

The whispers didn’t take over, even though Kurt’s voice had become nothing but a tinny noise blasting out of her Discman headphones. There probably aren’t many voices out this far, Rory thought, only the ones we’ve come to find.

She flicked off the Discman; she’d need to save battery life for the unknown length of the road ahead. Rory dug her father’s hand-me-down leather bomber out of the burrow she’d made of her bedding. Warmth still clung to the silk lining, offering an extra layer of comfort against the damp, and she wrapped her hand around the silver lighter that lived inside the pocket. She didn’t know if her father intended that as part of his hand-me-down offer, but the feel of its smooth surface and squared edges helped to ground her in the present. He could always just ask if he wanted his lighter back.

Her father put his hand on her shoulder as he led her out. She was never sure if that was his way of attempting to hone into what she was experiencing, to feel it by proxy, or if he was afraid she might take off running. A fresh blast of cold air, scented by the tangle of twisty trees, greeted her as she pushed through the tent flaps. The daylight was grey and even, just as it had been every day since their arrival. 

How does anything even grow out here? Rory wondered as she took in the one peek of slate sky she could glimpse in the clearing ahead. 

Dex was waiting at the edge of the dig site, hands clasped behind his back like an usher at a theatre. The fresh layer of dirt on his round face made his big, kind eyes look that much bigger. He greeted her with a warm smile and a nod as she entered the kicked-up bit of clearing that was his stage. Their hired hands were standing back, nothing but silhouettes in the trees. Findings were laid out on the ugly green tarp they’d been dragging all over Europe. Rory was more focused on wishing a muddy death upon that green eyesore than she was on the little rows of unearthed metal bits arranged on top. That didn’t stop the voices of those who’d once carried that metal from floating up out of the past and into Rory’s ears.

It began as the low mutter of men in conversation, their language too old and unfamiliar for her to understand. Rory listened to the voices and focused on the objects on the tarp, gradually opening the door to the moment in time that they shared. Ten translucent figures took shape beside her, along with the flickering, transparent campfire they were huddled around. They wore the traditional garb of Crusaders, so identifiable that most would assume it was fabricated by some Hollywood costume designer, but Rory had seen countless others proudly wearing the same bold crosses. Those guys popped up everywhere. It only took a glance between the clasps of their cloaks and the objects on the tarp to see that Dex had more digging to do.

“Did you find all ten of the medallions?” Rory asked her father.

“Dex,” he said, with a flick of his chin in Dex’s direction. It was Tyler’s way of saying, make it happen. A ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ wouldn’t have gone astray.

Rory had just settled into the calm rhythm of the Crusader’s conversation over the fire, of their ignorant assumption of safety, of their unwarranted faith in superior weapons, a superior god, when a battle cry shrieked out of the woods.

Warriors wrapped in heavy layers of fur and leather poured out of the shadows in the tree line. They appeared to Rory as translucent mists of the muscle-bound men they had once been, but their wild and forceful appearance was still alarming. They charged ahead, painted shields swinging, long swords and broadaxes leading the way. Rory shrank back against her father as they closed in and surrounded the clearing.

The Crusaders leapt to their feet, threw back their cloaks, and drew their swords. The two forces met. The battle began. Clashes of metal and cries of agony were only echoes in her ears, the entangled bodies nothing but veils of the past, but the sight of each goring and beheading was still worse than she could have imagined.

“Oh gross!” Rory had to look away as the slash of an axe gutted the man in front of her. She swore she could hear the wet flop of his insides landing in the mud.

“The sword, Rory.” Her father squeezed her shoulder.

Of course, he had no idea what she had just seen. He could only guess what happened here from whatever the earth hadn’t claimed. He had no way of knowing how many body parts had been detached from their owners.

Rory focused on the heat of his hand, sucked in a deep breath of dense forest air, and closed her eyes. She told herself to look beyond the clashes and cries, just far enough to enter the moment in time when this battle fell silent. Keeping her thoughts fixed on only the Crusaders and the warriors dismembering them, she took a small step forward in time.

When Rory opened her eyes, the battle was over, the clearing littered with bodies. All had fallen, except for one lone Crusader, the only moving figure in the deathly still landscape. He carried a broad sword, far too big for his skinny arms. A large red jewel shone proudly from the cross of the hilt, like a giant eye that had just watched over the massacre. The last Crusader staggered on uneasy feet as he headed toward the tree line.

“He’s headed into the woods.” Rory pulled out of her father’s grip as she took off, but could feel him following close, like a shadow.

The Crusader looked like a hunched pile of mud-stained robes. He stumbled from trunk to trunk, using his bejewelled sword as a crutch. Rory followed his swaying path until his attempt to flee the inevitable ended at a rock face. He collapsed to his knees in defeat, crumpling to the forest floor, his back against the wall of stone. The sword thumped to the ground beside him. He pulled a hand away from his middle, revealing blood-stained robes around the hole in his gut.

Blood of the past always looked black to Rory, like the old detective movies Dex loved so much. That never made the moment of death any less real… and death was coming for him.

Rory pointed to where the Crusader lay, heaving through pain. “There.”

“You’re sure?” Her father always asked that. It was so aggravating.

“He’s not about to get up,” Rory responded in an appropriately annoyed tone.

Tyler whistled for Dex. Dex shouted in his most commanding Romanian to his trusted diggers. They surrounded the body of the man they couldn’t see, as death crept up on him.

Rory stepped closer to the dying Crusader, weaving between the diggers’ shovels, and knelt to get a better look at him. It was only then that she saw the details of his face. He couldn’t have been much older than her, barely a teenager. It didn’t matter how much of a man that would have made him back then. This was no man in front of her now, just a dying kid.

She had already stepped past the death on that battlefield, the slaughter and suffering of all the others. This was just one more. But something about his age, his desperation, his fear, stole her focus away from the object they hunted. Rory unintentionally opened the door.

“He didn’t know.” Her breath was cold already, chilling the moisture on her lips. “He didn’t know what any of this meant. Why any of it mattered.”

The chill set into her limbs. Rory clasped her icy fingertips into her fists.

“Tyler,” Dex said in his worried tone. She must have been trembling.

“We’re almost there.” Her father was focused on the patch of forest floor their diggers were exhuming by the shovelful. The young Crusader’s form was hovering above the churning earth, desperately clinging to life.

“He was so scared.” Tears threatened to emerge, but cold stole each droplet before it could escape. From somewhere in the distant present, Rory felt Dex’s hands attempting to rub heat into her arms. It never worked, but he always tried anyway.

“Let it go, Rory. Come back to us.” Dex’s voice was close, but it echoed. She knew what that meant. She was slipping out of her time and into another. Dex was in the present. She was in the past. Rory had to climb back into herself. Into the now.

“There! Acolo!” Tyler’s shout was a cacophonous din of echoes.

The diggers dropped their shovels and began ripping away fistfuls of mud. Above all the sludge-slinging chaos, the young Crusader was still holding onto the last dregs of his ebbing life.

Rory began to breathe the same rattling rhythm as the young Crusader. Each puff of air past her quivering lips became colder, and colder. She could feel his last breath as it approached. She shut her eyes and, as the young Crusader’s life slipped away from him, she was finally able to close the door.

Rory took a moment to step back into herself. Into the present. She breathed in the smell of freshly turned mud, kneaded her fingers into her palms until warmth returned to them, and listened to the sounds around her, their echoes diminishing as she got closer and closer to the now.

When she opened her eyes, the young Crusader was gone, replaced by a broad sword with a big red jewel at the centre of its hilt. She watched many hands caress away the mud, rubbing nature’s grime off of the scarlet stone. Another mud-caked hand reached out to help her stand.

“You did it, kiddo,” her father said, as he pulled her to her feet. He looked more than pleased. His face was calm, his brow no longer furrowed. Even his five-o-clock shadow seemed thinner. 

Her own shoulders softened. Rory decided to capitalise on her success. “So, what do I get?”

He laughed. Actually, it was more of a proud snicker. “Whatever you want.”

Dex gave her another nod as they turned away. His way of saying, glad you’re back.

As her father led her to the tent, Rory tried to think of the best reward she could ask for. 

***

An insistent vibration rattled into Rory’s temple. In her half-asleep state, the vibration entered her dream and her dream—her memory—followed her into the present. She could still smell that tent. The vibration turned out to be her phone, jiggling its way across the table she had fallen asleep on… again. Her eyes hadn’t focused yet, but she still recognised the name on the screen. It was Ian… again.

She wiped the drool off her cheek, yanked out one earbud, and answered. “Just one more week. I swear! Gotta go. Creative process and all that.”

She hung up before he could utter a peep of protest, and placed the phone at a careful distance. Something about lying to her publisher made her feel as if a poisonous gas was about to come pouring out through the speaker holes. Her previously buzzing phone just sat there, glinting in the morning light.

Rory allowed her other ear to listen to the end of the violin solo that had started before she was so rudely awoken. She stared at the blank laptop screen and piles of useless research on her table. 

One more week… yeah, right. 

The hum of the lonely strings sang its final note. Rory switched off her music, and the noise of the city, along with all of its rich history, gradually took its place. She turned toward her high-rise window and looked out over the forest of New York City skyscrapers. The gentle whispers of thousands of distant voices floated up to tell her their stories.

“And good morning to you, too,” she said to all of them.

Rory distracted herself with the ritual of making coffee with her race-car-like espresso machine. She sipped today’s efforts and crinkled her nose; too bitter this time. The remnants of the mug’s contents found their way down the sink as she noted her dwindling supply of wine. Her gaze wandered to the laptop sitting on the table, then back to the last bottle of red. Surely a trip to stock up—on food, too, of course—would help her productivity. Taking the amount of time required to find her best Boho Chic look for the current weather may not have been as necessary, but she knew to look good was to feel good.

Rory was feeling quite together indeed, as she wilfully looked past the work on the table to pick a fresh music player from the row of devices constantly charging in the kitchen. She considered which option would be most suited for a quick shopping trip—and possibly a walk along the river—for inspiration, of course. None of the older ones held their battery life as well, but would last the day at least, and she wouldn’t have to worry about a pesky call interrupting the middle of a song. She tucked her device-du-jour into her bag and marched out of her apartment.

Living well above the city came at the cost of a long descent to join the masses below. The voices always found her all alone in that little lift box, as the numbers lit up and the floors swooshed past. They would grow more numerous with each floor, blending into a din by the time it reached single digits. She wished she could explain that if they were all going to talk at the same time, she wouldn't be able to make out any one voice, any one story, but the past doesn’t listen to the present.

She reached into her bag and wrapped a fist around the prescription bottle that lived in there. She wasn’t about to pop one of those fugue states in pill form, but there was comfort in the feel of the safety cap. Rory rubbed her thumb across the little ridges, back and forth, back and forth, focusing on the sensation against her skin. It wasn’t enough to quiet the voices today. 

What are they trying to tell me? she wondered. As if the people of the past were like dogs predicting an earthquake. Of course, they couldn’t predict anything. They only knew what had happened, not what would.

The whole ritual was a bit more frustrating than usual today, perhaps because she’d sacrificed the last few sips of her bitter coffee and was that much less caffeinated. Or perhaps her looming deadline was occupying more of her mental energy than she cared to admit. Rory closed her eyes and tried to ‘shush’ away the voices, less because they would listen and more because the sound of her own voice usually grounded her. It wasn’t working today. Her own shushes simply added to the slithering symphony of whispers. They layered and layered, blending into a static buzz, until she demanded that they all, “Shut up!”

Rory opened her eyes to discover the lift had just opened onto a lower floor. A very surprised grey-haired man with a fluffy little dog on a pink leash was staring at her. The heat of embarrassment rising into her cheeks immediately silenced the chattering voices.

“Morning,” Rory offered, as the little ball of white fur pulled the surprised senior into the lift despite his better judgement. He responded with a nod and they took the rest of the ride in a silence, of both present and past, that Rory found utterly blissful.

The lift doors parted and revealed the lobby. The sure-footed canine yanked her lift neighbour forward in its desperate race to wee, and the clatter of construction overtook the atmosphere. The pounding hammers and grinding sanders were like music to Rory. Maybe she would move from unfinished high rise to unfinished high rise until people started living in the sky itself. It would take at least a few years before human history would grow dense enough to find her up there.

She was so content in the chaos of construction that she didn’t notice the suavely dressed, smooth moving man until he stepped into her path.

“Aurora Freeman?” he asked, a silky assurance underlining the authoritative tone he’d used to be heard over the hammers.

His appearance was so striking, in both unexpectedness and presence, that all Rory could manage was little, “Ye-huh.”

“My name is Keo Noguchi. I’m here to escort you to your appointment.”

She tilted her head, certain she had misheard. “Appointment?”

He responded by striding to the front door and holding it open for her. “Please,” he half-offered and half-instructed, as he gestured toward the Lincoln Town Car waiting outside.

Rory assessed the situation as she followed him out. She had been forced into conversation with self-proclaimed treasure hunters before; the richer they were, the more forceful they tended to be. But getting swept off to a pretend appointment was something new, especially by someone so… she couldn’t put her finger on it.

She noted his suit as he opened the car door; high-end yet understated, simple yet immaculate. Rory found herself resisting the urge to run her finger along the fabric of his sleeve as she slid past him and into the back seat. She gave his reflection in the rearview a once over as he settled into the driver’s seat, and noted his equally flawless yet simple hairstyle. Japanese descent was easy to guess from his name, but there was something else in the mix, a worldliness that distracted her from worrying about whatever horrible meeting she was in the process of being kidnapped for.

“Keo. That means ‘God will increase’ in Hawaiian, doesn’t it?” Rory praised herself for her subtlety.

“And it means ‘He shall add’ in Hebrew,” he said, with the same slickness with which he pulled into traffic.

“Isn’t it something like, ‘precious stone’ in Vietnamese?”

He flicked a glance and a briefly raised brow at her in the rearview. “Indeed. Though most would agree it simply means… extraordinary.” 

He’d seen her subtlety and upped the ante. Annoyed at having lost that hand, Rory turned to other concerns. If this was just her escort, then to whom was she being escorted? She dared to do the one thing she swore she would never do with the living… unless absolutely necessary, of course. She took a gentle tip-toe into the past.

There Keo sat, or rather a translucent version of the same man ghosted around the one who was driving, though this ghostly Keo was sitting in thoughtful stillness. His most recent passenger was right beside Rory. She was in her forties, dressed like the Vogue spread version of a power player. She sat with an intentional stiffness in her spine, and breathed forcefully through her nostrils.

“She’s never accepted an offer.” Past Keo spoke with a much softer tone than he’d used with Rory. “What makes you think she will now?”

“Any creature will bite if you dangle the right bait in front of it,” the woman said to the view out the window.

“If she’s not even answering her phone—”

“I don’t care what it takes! Just get her in front of me.” The woman whipped around, revealing sharp eyes and a jaw as stiff as her spine.

“Charming,” Rory accidentally said out loud.

“Pardon?”

The stiff woman and past Keo vanished.

Present Keo raised a curious brow at her in the rearview.

“This ride,” Rory said with a cheeky smile. “Nothing says old money like a Town Car.”

Keo promptly went back to focusing on his slick driving.

Rory stayed silent for the rest of the journey and prepared to meet the sharp-eyed woman dangling the bait.