Mystic Passage

Arrival in the Past

Arrival in the Past

The harrowing ride through the obscure currents seemed to last forever this time around. On my trip to 1978, I estimated that it may have taken about a minute or less according to my own internal clock. Truthfully, I believe that getting pushed backward through that awful darkness does not register at all, as far as time itself is concerned. But during our journey to the eleventh century, I felt sure that my body remained helpless to those jostling currents, pulled in all directions, pushed forcibly against a powerful undertow for an infinite eternity. I could hardly form a conscious thought during the traumatic passage, but I did think briefly of Beth and Joel, wondering how they were tolerating the experience. They had come with me—I knew that—but I could not sense them. I was alone.

Shortly after stepping into the currents, I began to hear those bothersome whispers all around me demanding my attention and my understanding. Since the journey seemed lengthier this time, I concentrated a bit more effort on trying to interpret those voices, wanting to discern of what exactly they sought to warn me. But they spoke a language I did not know. It was not German, English, Bayerisch, or French, nor was it Latin or Teutonica. It sounded older, more rudimentary, yet also more profound. The whispers continued throughout my entire journey, insistent, warning, warning . . . .

Just as I began to believe that I could pick out a word or two, a dismal moan crept up from the depths, breaking my concentration. I may have discerned a shift in the whispers at that point, a hint of mockery mingling within their unknowable warnings. I struggled to focus entirely on the voices, trying to ignore how helpless my body felt with the moans seeming to work their way deep inside. At last I caught just two words, both sounding similar to Latin: obligure and damnere. Obligate, perhaps, or obligation? Damnere . . . that was easy enough. To condemn, to consign to hell. Fear washed over me at the potential meanings of those two words. The realization struck me again that I should not have opened the gateway, not at all. I should not have used the Torstein twice, not after learning about its true nature from the f*******n writings. This time, I feared I would face serious repercussions.

The fact that I could see nothing but whirling darkness and intermittent bursts of light and color—nothing solid, nothing that would have a mouth or speak with a voice—disturbed me. While the persistent moans wove their way upward from somewhere below, it seemed that those niggling whispers came from every direction at once. Some spoke directly into my ears, close enough that I should have been able to reach out and touch something. But my hands remained immobile. I could not move any part of my body, for the currents were far stronger than me. A burgeoning terror overtook me, convincing me that this time there would be no end to these currents, to this darkness. I had chosen—knowing the writings—to go back to a time before the Torstein had been created. Would I never make it there alive? Would I remain entangled in the strands of time until the end of infinity? What about Beth and Joel? They were innocent outsiders. What had I done?

Suddenly that horrible, abysmal laughter rang out again from the darkness in a tone so deep it could not have been human. Panic raced through my veins at the thought of the alternatives. If it’s not human . . . then it must be a demon . . . Wuotan . . . ? The laughter increased, piercing my soul, grasping at my heart with hands as black as the depths of the ocean. I tried to react, but I held no power against the forces that drove me backward, and even less power to smother the laughter. Damnere . . . the word crept into my brain again.

Finally, I found myself falling forward, bursting from the portal onto soft brown leaves in the sheltering shade of a forest. I heard two oofs as my companions landed beside me, and I pivoted quickly to confront the gates, raising the Torstein in my left hand, silently ordering them to depart before that wretched, laughing demon reached out to take me. They responded properly, fading much more swiftly than they had come. I sighed in relief and collapsed onto the ground, flopping down on top of my leather bag, the Torstein still clutched in my left hand. I closed my eyes and chuckled foolishly at nothing, the twittering sounds of birds and buzzing insects soothing my frightened soul. I did not think to question why I had landed in a forest rather than on the streets of medieval Muniche. My gratitude at my safe arrival impeded my judgment.

“Swanie?” My cousin’s voice pulled me out of my reverie of relief. I opened my eyes and looked toward her, where she stood in the brush on the opposite side of Joel. She clutched the strap of her bag with both hands, the skin of her face as white as a sheet. “That . . . that was way worse than you described,” she accused in a trembling voice, her wide eyes locking with mine.

I felt oddly jubilant at the fact that the three of us had survived the journey, and I heard my own voice chuckling again. “Guess our mental images of Muniche were a bit off,” I commented, glancing around at the trees. I recognized white oak and birch interspersed with brambles, ferns, and moss. Maybe the medieval version of my city had a woodsy section like the modern Englischer Garten. I heard no sounds that indicated human activity, though. It was quiet in the glade where we stood, a soft summer breeze rustling the leaves overhead.

“So,” Joel interjected more loudly than necessary, “I’m going to make an assumption here and say I’m dreaming.”

I lifted myself off the ground and turned to regard Joel, who stood upon a massive birch root several paces behind me with his bag on the ground before him, his eyes dazed as he stared at our surroundings. I exchanged a quick look with Beth, knowing that we could no longer keep everything to ourselves. After all, we were here. “Well, Joel,” I began, trying to discern how I should explain what had happened. “Actually, we’re not dreaming. We’re in the eleventh century.”

Joel focused on me, confusion in his hazel eyes, then looked around again. “No, I have to be dreaming this,” he insisted, appearing thoughtful. “I must have fallen asleep while Beth was in the shower. She said we were supposed to meet you outside at ten-fifteen. I really need to wake up. I’m going to be late.” He started smacking his arm, pinching his face. “Wake up, wake up,” he muttered.

I gawked at him, shaking my head at the ridiculousness of it all. Beth took it upon herself to march up to him and take hold of his right arm. “No, Joel, I promise you, you’re not dreaming. This is real. You wouldn’t be wearing those clothes in a dream. You’d never seen them before.” She gestured at his linen tunic and pants.

Joel continued slapping himself with his left hand, ignoring his girlfriend’s words, still murmuring that he needed to wake up. Then his gaze traveled down to his shoes and the root where he stood, and he scooped up a small stick with a sharp point. Waving it at Beth and me in an ingenious manner, he announced, “I know how to wake myself up.” Before either of us could yell at him to stop, he stabbed his own palm with the stick, drawing blood.

Beth screamed and grabbed for the stick, ripping it out of his hand before he could do any more damage to himself. I heaved an aggravated sigh and plunked my bag onto the leaves while she urged him to sit down. “For heaven’s sake, Joel, listen to me!” I ordered as his girlfriend fairly shoved him down onto the root. “You are not dreaming, and you need to stop trying to hurt yourself, because we are in the eleventh century! You could give yourself blood poisoning with a cut like that.” Joel cringed and stared down at his bleeding palm as I turned to Beth. “He’s got the gauze and alcohol in his bag. We’d better get that wrapped up before it gets dirty.” His blood had started dotting the moss below.

“Right,” Beth said, crouching down to unclasp his bag and dig for our very small batch of medical supplies. Annoyance washed over me at the idea of wasting some of it now, two years before the siege. Maybe we should have left Joel at home.

“That really should have woken me up,” Joel said while Beth dabbed his left palm with alcohol, softly chiding him as she worked. She began to wrap his wound, and he shook his head, disbelief still written all over his face. “But time travel is impossible. There is no way . . . .”

“Just think about it for a minute,” I admonished him, watching my cousin work to repair what he had done. I wished again that Hans had agreed to teach me blood control. If I knew how to tap the full powers of my Teuton blood, I could have stopped Joel’s bleeding already. Maybe here in the eleventh century, where ancient traditions still flourished among my people, I could finally learn the things that Hans was so loath to share. I smiled to myself at that idea, then focused on Joel, trying to discern the best way to convince him that we had traveled time. “If you’re being honest with yourself, you’d have to admit that there is no possible way your unconscious imagination could have come up with what happened just before we got here,” I pointed out. “Similar to what Beth said before about your clothes. You can’t dream up something you’ve never seen before.”

Joel’s countenance paled, dull fear creeping into his eyes. “Those gigantic gates . . . those whispers . . . those awful moans . . . .”

I nodded at him in agreement. “My nightmares could never come up with something like that,” I said, and it was true. Beth finished dressing his wound and tucked the remainder of the gauze back into his bag. Then she got to her feet again and retrieved her own bag, looking toward me with a determined nod. “That place in the darkness after we stepped through those gates? Those were the currents of time,” I explained to Joel while pulling the strap for my bag back over my right shoulder. I moved to stand beside my cousin, feeling more at ease now that our crises seemed to be winding down.

“That was an incredible journey we made,” Beth remarked, bumping lightly against my left shoulder. “And I’m kind of hoping that the journey forward will be a lot less terrifying.” I did not meet my cousin’s gaze, preferring to concentrate on her boyfriend, who was in the process of regaining his feet. No, Beth, the trip forward is just as terrifying as the trip back, I thought.

“The currents of time,” Joel repeated, realization dawning in his eyes at last. “Is that why it felt like I was being pushed against a tornado or something?” He rolled his shoulders a bit and situated his bag beneath his left arm, flexing his fingers around the gauze binding his hand.

“Yes, we were flying backward through the currents of time,” I clarified, thinking back to those moments in the darkness. “It’s kind of crazy, but it seemed like it took forever that time.” I shared a look with my cousin and explained, “The first time I did this, I just went to 1978, and it wasn’t quite so bad. That trip . . . .” My voice trailed off, and I shuddered.

“I guess an extra nine hundred years would make the trip a lot longer,” Beth said, and Joel murmured in agreement. He seemed to have accepted the fact that we had traveled time.

I opened my left hand and looked down at the Torstein, glowing a muted ruby in the shade. Its powers overwhelmed me again at the thought of what we had just done. Then just as abruptly, my mind turned at last to the forest and to the medieval city of Muniche. We were supposed to arrive . . . there . . . . I stared at the Torstein, then around at the trees, then back at the rock. “Why did you bring us here?” I whispered to it in Teutonica, fear seeping into my veins again.

“Is that the rock you said would take us back in time?” Joel inquired, stepping forward to peer at it himself. He reached his unwounded hand down to touch it, but I closed my fingers around it quickly. “How does it work?”

I pulled away from him and looked around again, taking note of the ancient trees, the sunlight filtering through their branches, the dried leaves beneath our feet. “It’s a long story, but I can’t tell you yet. We have a problem. We were supposed to get here in the Teuton city of Muniche, but we’re in the woods.” I looked at Beth and saw that a touch of worry had creased her brow.

“Muniche. That’s right,” Joel repeated, apparently remembering what I had told him when we stood on the path to the gazebo. “What’s a Teuton?” he asked, the word finally having made him take notice.

I gave him the shortest possible explanation. “The Teutons are one of the old German tribes from before the Christian era. This rock was created by one of them.” I held up my left hand significantly and finished, “I am one of them.”

Joel nodded, following along. “Barbarians,” he said, and I frowned at him. Beth giggled in an impish manner.

“Maybe to the Romans,” I allowed, “but that’s not important right now. I’m trying to figure out why we’re in the forest. Were you thinking about the city of Muniche when we leaped through the gates, like I told you?”

Joel’s face clouded over, and he put one hand to his chin as he considered. “I was thinking of the eleventh century, like you said . . . but I guess I was picturing some medieval battle in a field or in the woods, like Middle Earth. Remember when we were talking about Lord of the Rings?” He grinned crookedly at me.

I groaned in despair, realizing that it was the fault of Joel’s foolish imagination that we had arrived in a forest. “Sounds like we’d have been better off if you’d gone back to bed,” Beth observed in a scathing tone. “I was thinking about the city of Muniche, Swanie.”

“At least you listened to me, but your boyfriend had to be an i***t thinking about elves and hobbits, and who knows where we may have ended up?!” I snapped. “I don’t have a map, and I don’t have a compass. We may be on the wrong continent for all we know. We’re going to have to do this again.” Terror seized me at the idea of reopening those gates again and confronting those voices and that laughter. And Wuotan knew that I knew that it was he who laughed. He would try to take me . . . .

All at once, Beth clutched at my left arm. “Swanie!” she gasped in a low voice laden with horror, “I think there’s someone out there!” Her eyes scanned the trees around us. Joel followed her example, moving to stand before us.

I froze, my element sweeping into my veins at the possibility of immediate danger. I endeavored to keep my ice out of my eyes so it would not ruin my contacts, but I allowed it to sharpen my other senses. My keen ears picked up the distinctive crunch of twigs snapping, and a moment later a man stepped out from behind one of the ancient oaks not five meters from where we stood. In the dimly lit clearing, I could see that his clothing was brightly-colored, his complexion darker than expected, his hair jet black. And in his right hand he carried a spear.

The man stopped short when he saw us—two young, dark-haired girls standing behind a youthful blond-haired boy with three bags between them. He stared at us, confusion crossing his face. Apparently he had not expected to encounter the likes of us in this forest, but as I glanced again at his spear I felt a rush of sympathy for whatever—or whomever—he sought. Three, then four more men, each looking about the same as the first, also emerged from the brush, all bearing spears. They halted as well, ogling us, and then began speaking excitedly amongst themselves in a language I did not understand.

I had a strong feeling that this would not end well unless I played the role of the peacemaker. I raised my right hand slowly, non-threateningly, disregarding the warning tug of Beth’s grip. “Do you speak Teutonica?” I addressed the question toward the man who had first appeared, pronouncing every word distinctly.

There was a short pause, and then all of the brightly-dressed men began speaking at once, to each other, the word Teutonica on every pair of lips. That was when the first man leveled a furious gaze upon me. He slammed the base of his spear upon the leaves as he spat one word, an accusation. “Teuton!!”

I cursed, hesitating just one second longer. Then I grabbed Beth’s hand to yank her into the forest and shouted, “Run!!”

Chapter Two: