THE TIME STAR

The Time Star

Chapter 1

"HEY! WHAT’S THAT THING?"

At the sound of her cousin's sharp tone,
Waneeta Meadows jerked up from adjusting her helmet in the headlight of her
ancient Skidoo. "Where?"

Kevin Meadows pointed eastward. The
Ontario night was as clear as any she'd ever seen, and in the openness of the
winter-bare trees, it wasn't hard to spot what Kevin saw skimming low in the
deep and dark horizon. Like a brilliant star, it twinkled, but, with reddish-orange
flares radiating away, it was also growing. Fast.

As fast as the seconds that raced by.

With a curse word, Kevin leapt onto the
seat of his Skidoo and revved the engine. "It’s heading this way! Let's
get out of here!" With one more rev on the accelerator, he disappeared
down the snowmobile trail.

"Kevin!" Waneeta called as the
sounds melted into the night. Good grief. That kid! Kevin may be 18, but he
acted 12. To hell with him. She wasn't going to speed to catch up with him,
Waneeta shoved on her helmet as her eyes lifted. Oh, wow! The eastern sky was totally
aglow and whatever-

Then, in the next blink of an eye, it barreled
past, so close she could feel its heat. A tremendous roar like a chimney fire
chased the brilliant thing. She squinted, automatically snapping her head to
one side to deflect the glare.

A shower of sparks chased after the
explosion. She felt the fireworks rain down on her. Several hit her neck.
Hundreds pricked and burned her new Skidoo suit, some jabbing through like
needles. Immediately, Waneeta ducked, too late, she knew, but the reaction
couldn't be stopped. She dived over the dark vinyl seat and into the soft, late
winter snow.

The fireball found its mark. The earth
around her shook, growling as though a freight train rumbled along this provincial
trail.

She crouched, afraid to breath, not sure
if she had died by whatever it was that raced past.

The roar choked abruptly, leaving only
the quiet spits as sparks met their ends in the damp snow somewhere deeper in
the forest.

Waneeta craned her neck to peek over her
Skidoo's handlebars, through the headlight's dim beam. Her gaze found a thin
line of glowing smoke fingering into the still, starry night. She stood there,
then, with cautious steps, she peered into the hole.

Understanding dawned on her. It had to
have been a meteorite! Through the trees in front of her, its sputters and
sizzles like bacon on a hot griddle. The Skidoo headlight glowed through the
steam rising from the foot wide, wet crater.

As it cooled, she craned her neck upward.
Beyond her position, a huge cloud of white sparks was quickly dissipating in
the wintry sky. Focusing back on the ground in front, Waneeta pushed back some
wayward branches until she had a clear view of the steaming hole. Then, wetting
her lips, she pulled her thick gloves on more snugly and reached down for the
rock.

Not the whole meteorite, after all. Instead
she found only a fragment, broken away in the last seconds of its life, not
having enough energy to indent anything more than this snowy crater. Warm, but
not hot, it weighed heavily in her hand, the size of a golf ball.

The headlight behind her dimmed and
died. The engine coughed and it too, died. Queasiness then washed over Waneeta.
Her stomach rolled, and she shut her eyes to stop the sensation from overwhelming
her. She reached for her Skidoo's handlebars with her free hand, hoping that
grounding herself would ease the nausea. But it was too powerful, and her right
hand released the rock. Her grip on the Skidoo gave way also to watery
weakness, the blackening sense of fainting.

Then, as quickly as the nausea rolled
over her, it passed. Abruptly, the Skidoo engine backfired and restarted. She
jumped. The headlight suddenly glowed brighter.

She released her wobbly grip on the
Skidoo and leaned over the handlebars. There, she twisted the key to shut the
engine off, but left the headlight on. Around her, the woods were suddenly colder,
quieter.

So very quiet. Surely the rest of this
meteorite would sizzle for a while? Maybe it wasn't that big. In the deep snow
of early spring, it may have cooled off quickly. Or perhaps it broke apart,
leaving only tiny chunks like the one she'd just dropped? Waneeta looked down.

It wasn't there. The snow was clean.
Nothing lay deep within it.

She quickly scanned the area around her.
All was pristine. Ahead where her cousin had just roared away was untouched snow
around thick trees. No one, save herself, had stood there since the last
snowfall. Waneeta's breath swirled in the dimming beam of the headlight. The
forest around her had closed in. No snowmobile trail lay ahead as it should
have done.

The air chilled further. She shivered, uneasiness
dancing through her bones. The new, one-piece snowsuit had become too flimsy
for the cold night and wet where the snow had melted on her.

She blinked, hoping that the action would
restore the trail that she knew should have been in front of her. But no. The
same untouched snow. Waneeta trudged through the deep snow to where the trail
should be, but a thick stand of pine and spruce blocked her way, a silent
testimony to her error. She turned and looked in the direction from which she
and Kevin had come.

There were no snowmobile tracks. Even
her Skidoo stood on virgin snow, no track marks behind it.

What? How was this possible? Eeriness
tickled her spine with cold thin fingers. Where was she? The only activity was a
wobbly line of snowshoe tracks crossing in the distance. That small trail was
wide enough for her Skidoo, so surely she wasn't too far off the beaten track?
Perhaps the meteorite had knocked her back, caused her to black out and in that
time, she'd moved her Skidoo without realizing it.

But no Skidoo tracks? What the hell was
happening here?

"Kevin!" she blurted out, but
her sudden call merely filtered through the forest, dissipating quickly in the
cold air. She tried again, this time with the hint of panic she was definitely
feeling. "Kevin!"

Nothing. Only total, creepy silence.

Waneeta climbed back onto the machine
and restarted the engine. She maneuvered the Skidoo down the snowshoe trail, a
trail far narrower than it should be, hoping to meet up with Kevin's tracks
shortly, all the while fighting the urge to speed away from the uneasiness lurking
around her. No, she wouldn't be like her immature cousin, taking off at the
drop of a hat. No, she'd be-

Suddenly, a black mass loomed before
her. She swerved sharply to avoid it. A scraping thud hit her skis and the
whole machine heaved on its side. Her own momentum carried her over the
handlebars and into the mass.

"Aah!" A sharp pain tore
through her right side when she landed on a broken branch. She arched in agony.

Rolling away, she turned to see what she'd
hit. The huge black bowl was just a freshly uprooted tree. And she'd collided
with it.

She groaned, looking disgustedly at her
Skidoo. From where she sat, Waneeta could the left ski twisted and bent. And
now, as the machine used up all the fuel in its carburetor, the engine
sputtered and died.

Gingerly, she struggled back to it, her
side tight with pain. She wasn't strong enough to right the heavy machine, especially
now with her side injured.

"Kevin!"

Still no answer, even to her now
panicked tone. Oh, this was pointless. She'd hear him coming and as much as her
cousin was a wimp, deep down, he wouldn't abandon her. He'd come back as soon
as he realized she wasn't behind him. She would just have to wait. Waneeta pulled
the key free from the ignition and eased down again with a wince.

The minutes ticked by. No Kevin. Waneeta's
normally sunny manner was sorely tested by her younger cousin.

"Come on," she growled
impatiently, pulling up her sleeve to check the time. Her watch was dark. When
she pressed the top button, the light did not glow. The crystal must have
cracked during her fall. Waneeta tapped it impatiently, but to no avail. She
pulled out her cell phone, and found it also damaged by her fall, its screen
now a mess of colours and black smudges. Great. She couldn't afford the
deductable for a new one.

Well, it was too cold to sit and wait. Pushing
herself to standing, she grimaced. She may as well start walking. The trail
couldn't be far and if she stayed calm and rational, she'd find it soon enough.

Figuring Stafford Village was southwest
of where she was, Waneeta noted the moon's rising and kept to the left at each
fork she met as she followed the snowshoe trail. Surely whoever made these
tracks came from there?

After half an hour, she stopped her
painful trudging and gingerly touched her side. All movement was fast becoming
excruciating. Waneeta willed herself to breathe more slowly, to breathe in
through her nostrils to calm her and ease the pain.

Breathe slowly, calmly.

Smoke. She smelled wood smoke. She sniffed
again. A house must be nearby. Whoever it was here really lived out in the
boonies, but hey, it was a house, nonetheless. Waneeta straightened. The pain
shot out in all directions, making her jerk.

Come on, girl, you can do it
.
Just a few
more steps
. Plowing through the deep snow, stumbling when her feet slipped
from the snowshoe tracks, Waneeta reached the house and fell against the rough
logs along the building's side. Her sharp intake of painful breath drew in
strong wood smoke. Yes, she'd found the source of the wood heat, all right.

Her breathing hard, she bumped down the
logs and into the drifted snow. Kevin better be here-

To her right, a door creaked open. A
large shape eclipsed the bright interior. Waneeta was sure she heard a swear
word as the man, too big to be Kevin, advanced on her.

Then all went black.

Chapter 2

Gently, even cringing when he heard her
moan, Thomas Stafford placed the limp woman on his narrow bunk. Still holding
her, he peered closely, deeply at her.

As pale as she was, this creature was
simply, extraordinarily, fantastically beautiful. Dark lashes rested on clear
cheeks. Her walnut hair circled her round face, giving her a quality that he'd
seen only on a painting from one of the great masters. Indeed, her trouser outfit
could have been worn by 17th century Turkish concubine, for it glimmered in the
firelight like silk woven with silver threads.

Thomas swallowed the lump forming in his
throat and turned to quickly stoke the fire. Whoever she was, one thing was for
sure: she was injured. He knew he should remove her garment and find her
injury. But...

But confusion waffled through his
resolve. From his quick examination, the only way to remove such a strange
outfit was to somehow open the hard-toothed fastening device running from her
neck to her waist. He cautiously tugged at its tab and found the teeth parted easily
as it traveled downward.

"Ow," she groaned in her
sleep. Thomas jerked back. Clearing his throat, he leaned over her again. "Come
on, Miss, let's get you out of this wet thing."

It took a while to peel the suit off
her, with Thomas gingerly tugging and pulling. That task done, he straightened
back in shock. She wore only a thin shirt and long undergarments. Sweat burst
onto Thomas' brow. No gown at all? Fascinated, he touched the fabric of her chemise.
Thin and tightly woven, it clung to her like a second skin. He could see the
outline of her breasts easily, despite the short corset she wore beneath it.
Thomas wondered if he should throw more wood on the fire, for her shirt was
damp with perspiration, and he wasn't prepared to remove it. But it was already
quite warm in there. Too warm for him.