The Runestone Incident (The Incident Series, #2) (25 page)

Jacob’s cell phone suddenly winked out, leaving us in the dark. I knew that the battery hadn’t died; he had just switched to a backup one.

“Hey, what’s that noise?” he whispered, looking around nervously. “That’s not normal for the woods, is it?”

Was this it? Were we about to clash with those unseen eyes?

30

Drums. A rhythmic beat, accompanied by rising and falling voices, had broken through the soft background noises of the night. The beat washed over the shadowy tree trunks around us like a wave over seashore, disguising the direction of its source and making the hairs on my arms stand on end more than the chill of the evening had. Had History led us to this spot only to corner us? The darkness of the old woods was absolute except for the moon peeking though a web of dark leaves. We had found shelter under a canopy of intertwined branches, suddenly menacing and eerily limb-like. Next to me, Jacob’s eyes were wide, two beacons of fear in the darkness.

Nate had jumped to his feet and was listening intently, trying to decide where the sound—and possibly the danger—was coming from.

“It’s all right,” Ruth-Ann whispered. Her head was cocked as she listened.

Dr. B pushed herself to her feet and said, her voice equally low, “Shall we see if we can take a look?”

“Can we? Will we be able to do it without being seen?” Ruth-Ann whispered back. I couldn’t see her expression, but she had turned in Nate’s direction as if daring him to even suggest that our mission was too important to bother with what he had called
sightseeing
.

Nate’s body still projected tense energy, but he nodded. We formed a line—each person putting a hand on the shoulder of the person in front of them—and crept through the woods single file. Twigs snapped and leaves crunched under our hiking boots no matter how softly we put one foot in front of the other as we felt our way along a path that seemed to get narrower and narrower—but not because of any tangible constraints—before coming to an abrupt stop at the edge of the woods. We managed to inch forward a bit more into a clearing until our noses were pressed against a head-height wooden fence that curved left and right in the darkness.

We had come almost full circle in a wide, zigzagging arc back to the village. I opened my mouth to comment on this, but no words came out, not even the whisper I had been planning. Not surprisingly, even the faintest sound would have given away our presence. We were closer than we would have been able to get had we belonged to the present, History’s hand guiding us into the village’s blindspot. We were so close that I could have flung the granola bar in my pocket and bounced it off the back off the bark house just on the other side of the fence.

I’d had an uneasy feeling ever since I had seen the village half empty. Maybe it was still a lingering fear from Pompeii, where we had known the town would be destroyed without being able to do anything about it.

The village was no longer empty. Peeking through the thin gaps between the wooden stakes of the palisade, we saw that a celebration of some kind was underway by the light of the flickering fires. The prairie fire technique had resulted in a good haul—the scent of the stew simmering in the clay pots wafted invitingly toward us. There were hand drums and dancing, and, to one side, a clutch where a tense game with carved-bone dice was being played. Voices rose and fell, the dancers’ thumping feet kicking up dust from the dry soil, their necklaces jiggling along as the drums beat on. Some of the village kids were dancing in their own circle off to one side. The younger ones had what Ruth-Ann would later explain were maple-sugar cones, like lollipops; she figured that much of the village must have been away on a maple-tapping expedition.

We could not go in, I knew—a social, cultural, and historical gap of over six hundred years separated us more than the solid wooden fence did. Still, to hungry and weary travelers from afar, it was all very inviting, even if not in any realizable sense. I wondered what the villagers would have made of us, with our strange clothes and lack of fourteenth-century life skills, if we had burst out of the woods. Would we have been met as friends, as foes, as supernatural beings of the good kind…or the evil kind because we had approached so effortlessly and so stealthily?

I saw Ron dab at his eyes. Next to him Ruth-Ann was aiming her camera in the direction of the celebrating villagers. She let out a small grunt of frustration. The camera’s button did not seem willing to respond to her touch. Dr. B silently offered Ruth-Ann her own camera, the lab one, which I knew had a night setting and a quiet mechanism. I was already planning to get a copy of the pictures to Nate’s grandmother when we got back.

Nate was watching the village festivities with his back to the rest of us, his arms crossed. Dr. B signaled to me that she was ready to head back, and next to her Ruth-Ann started putting her camera away. Weary from the wildfire and all the walking we had done, I, too, was ready to call it a night and tumble into my sleeping bag.

I was pretty sure History would lead us right back to our site, but didn’t want to take any chances getting separated. I put a hand on Nate’s shoulder to alert him that the others had begun backing away, their hiking shoes noiseless under the curtain of the beating drums.

He grabbed my hand and held it for a moment, then pulled me to him.

In the darkness of the woods, with the fourteenth-century moon and stars as the only witnesses, to the sound of the celebration of life going on in the village a stone’s throw away from us, we kissed. It was all very romantic and, for an all-too-brief moment, I forgot about my tired feet and Quinn and the Norsemen, and just let myself go.

31

“We’re on the right track. Look.”

Something on the forest floor had captured Nate’s attention.

It was a single footprint, made by a hiking boot of modern design, with the indentations from the curves and the brand name from the shoe sole still discernible in the dirt. Only two people on the whole continent (other than the six of us) could have a modern shoe like that.

“L
ooks like they headed that way,” Nate said. “Deeper into the woods.”

It was mid-day, and a slow and steady hike to the north had yielded the prize.

“How long ago?” Jacob asked.

Nate eyed the young graduate student. “How long ago what?”

“How long ago did they walk by? Can you tell?”

“You mean because I’m part Indian? Or because I’m in law enforcement? Either way, I’m no Sherlock Holmes.”

“You mean you can’t tell us if it’s going to rain today?” I said jokingly. It had been steadily clouding up as we pushed our way northward. The shafts of sunlight that had brightened the forest floor were slowly shrinking and disappearing. Instead of answering, Nate shoved a low-hanging branch out of the way and held it up for me to go under. He was back to his business-like self and hadn’t said much all day.

Soon we came upon a second clue, this one hardly bigger than a postage stamp—the tiniest bit of green packaging. I recognized where it had come from instantly. Thin Mints, Quinn’s favorite Girl Scout cookies. He had been their best customer on our street, keeping our small pantry stocked with the cookies at all times. The piece had fallen into a bed of starflowers that someone had walked on, crushing the white, delicate blossoms into a sad mess.

Nate wordlessly placed the green piece of cardboard into his pocket and we pushed on.

“Hey, look over there,” Jacob said at one point, and we all shuffled to a stop. A few yards ahead, a well-trodden path opened up. There was no way anyone would choose to keep battling the thick of the forest when there was a perfectly good path available. Clearly Quinn and Dr. Holm had taken it, but in which direction?

“I’ll see if I can spot their footprints,” Nate said.

“And I’ll see if there’s a History barrier on one side or the other,” Erika said.

Nate went to the left and Dr. B to the right. Nate’s head was angled toward the ground as he carefully scanned the pine needles and last season’s leaves on the forest floor; Erika held her arms up in front of her in anticipation of an invisible wall. As the rest of us watched, they came back and passed each other in opposite directions. We heard Erika say, “Ooof,” and Nate call over his shoulder, “Watch out for the wall.”

I was half-hoping we would be stuck in both directions so that we could get a bit of rest. The increasing humidity was making me sweat and my legs were sore. Ron had bound his ankle inside the hiking boot with a wrap from Dr. B’s emergency medical kit, but even with a walking stick to lean on, a look of pain snuck onto his face every time he took a step.

Nate and Dr. B came back.

“There’s a wall blocking the path,” Dr. B said, rubbing her arm, which must have slammed up against the barrier.

“Well, there aren’t any tracks or anything the other way,” Nate said, “but there don’t seem to be any walls either.”

Without looking at Ron, Ruth-Ann said, “Chief Kirkland, do you mind if we rest a bit before continuing on? I need a break.”

“Me too,” said Jacob. “I’m starving.”

“Yes, all right.” Nate put down his backpack. “Everyone, have some water and something to eat. Meanwhile I’m going to walk up that hill to see what’s ahead.”

I eagerly set down my backpack as well, feeling twenty pounds lighter immediately. “I’ll join you,” I called out after him.

I don’t know what made me say it. Some kind of sixth sense, perhaps. Or maybe I just wanted to steal a moment alone with him.

As we followed the narrow, single-file path in the uphill direction open to us, I watched Nate bend his head to navigate his way under a tree branch. “Did you have to get your campus security uniform specially made?”

“Hmm, what, Julia?” he asked as if his mind was on other matters.

“Your campus security uniform. Being so tall and all, I mean.”

“They make them in all sizes…I was just thinking about Sabina, actually.”

“What about her?”

“I’ve been assuming that it would be best for her to make a clean break with the past, but I’m not so sure anymore. Seeing how excited Jacob is about being here, and the fact that she tried to run away…And then there’s this runestone thing, which is like a cold case. Those are old unsolved crimes.”

The word came out before I could stop it. “Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“STEWie would be a great for solving cold cases. If it’s ever used for that, I’d love to help. I’m good at combing through documents and photos and all that stuff. And Sabina—I think she’d jump at the chance to time travel back home.”

“I think she might need to find out what happened to her father and grandmother. I know it’s unlikely they made it through the eruption—and I suspect she knows that too—but it might give her closure.”

A rumble of thunder pre-empted my answer. Nate threw a look up at the sky. “We might think about setting up shelter early. I don’t like the look of those clouds.”

I didn’t either. The fluffy white clouds that had greeted us upon waking that morning had been driven away by fast-approaching thunderheads. The leaves of the trees were starting to stir in the approaching storm.

“How safe are we from lightning?” I asked, eyeing the clouds through a gap in the canopy.

“Well, we should probably try not to stand under the tallest tree in the area.”

I was about to point out that most of the trees around us seemed pretty tall to me, but before I could, he said, “Ron’s leg seems to be really bothering him.”

“More than he’s letting on, I think.”

“The prudent thing to do might be to split up.”

“You mean let the others head back to Runestone Island?”

“Well, yes—if you want to stay. The others can take their time heading back so that Ron doesn’t overexert himself.”

“Ruth-Ann might want to stay as well,” I said over the rumble of thunder in the distance. “It’s not like Ron’s injury is life-threatening.”

“No, true enough. You’re right, I shouldn’t have assumed that.”

“After all, how many chances does a person get to go into the fourteenth century?”

He glanced in my direction with a smile. “I get it, Julia—all I meant was that the two of them seem inseparable.”

“They do, don’t they? I suppose you’re right.”

“Either way, Dr. B can leave us the Slingshot after she programs it with the coordinates for home. And if we have trouble getting back, they know where to find us…where to…”

He had stopped short and I had walked straight into him. “Oof, sorry—”

“Shhh. Look.”

We had reached the top of the hill. There was a circular clearing on the other side, bordered all around by the woods. The strengthening wind had sent brown leaves into a dance around the boulders strewn on the sparse grass. The view out of the
forest
had opened up and I noticed that there was an ominous green tint to the sky, but at the moment I was more interested in what was going on in front of us.

I hadn’t known what to expect. From the beginning, I’d had my doubts about Dr. Holm. The evidence, and what I knew about Quinn, seemed to indicate that she had gotten onto STEWie’s platform willingly. I had suspected that Quinn might have charmed her into taking him into the fourteenth century to shoot footage for his
History’s Dirty Secrets
show. I had even considered the possibility that that
she
had charmed
him
into doing it, perhaps because she needed someone to carry her tent and backpack.

But I had not expected this.