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Cassandra

Chapter 1 – Pretty Girl in a Field

My life is forever changed. It’s funny how people never seem to know when their lives are about to turn completely upside down. At least, most of us never know it’s coming until it happens. But, apparently, certain people can see it coming from a long way off.

The first time I ever saw Cassandra, I was riding my bike home from the feed store, tearing along the muddy little dirt road that leads up the holler to our house. There are about half a dozen little wooden houses up in the holler, spaced out about a half-mile apart or more, and ours is the very last one. The old dirt road crosses back and forth five times over Sparrow Creek on some narrow, weather beaten wooden bridges. The creek bed is almost always dry, but it was early summer that first day I saw her, and the creek was swollen and rushing loudly from a hard rain the day before and all through the night. The whole earth seemed to smell sweet and wet, like it had just had a bath.

I spotted Cassandra before I even got to the first bridge, so I figured maybe her family might have recently moved into the first house right where our road turns off the paved farm road and starts up the holler. I knew all about that first house in the holler – the old Handley place – because it had stood there empty for as long as I could remember, and my buddies and I had sneaked inside many times over the years to smoke cigarettes, chew tobacco, and do all kinds of other mischief. We had hidden a bunch of magazines in there that we found at the county dump. Most were about muscle cars, dirt biking and motocross, but some also had some dirty pictures inside.

I couldn’t imagine anyone ever intentionally living in that old Handley house. I always figured it would fall down before anyone else moved in. It was already leaning slightly to one side as though it might tumble over at any moment. And when my buddies and I would sneak in there in the daytime, we could

see sunlight shining between most of the boards. When I first saw the girl there, I thought, surely nobody would try to live in that place, especially not when the winter months come along.

At that moment when I first laid eyes on Cassandra, she was standing out in the middle of a fresh mown field of hay grazer, with several dozen of those huge, round hay bales lying around her in the meadow, which was still bright green after all the rain. The land was gradually slanted down toward the creek, with the old Handley house up against the hills behind her. Cassandra was twirling herself around in circles, like the little plastic twirling ballerina one of my little sisters has on her music box. Cassandra had her arms raised high and her head thrown back just like that ballerina. Her dark red hair was spinning out behind her head and shining in the sun. It stunned me to see her like that, with her arms up high and her blouse hiked up till six inches of her belly was showing. I was already feeling all excited and exhilarated from the smell of the rain and from the fast speed I was traveling, dodging wildly around puddles and muddy ruts in the road. I guess the added surprise of some strange and beautiful girl appearing unexpectedly out of nowhere kind of overwhelmed my senses.

“Wow!” I shouted, slamming on my brakes. The girl immediately stopped twirling and started looking super embarrassed and maybe even frightened, like she might have been afraid of who would be coming up that road toward her. Then she turned around and started running across the field like there was a grizzly bear behind her. Sure enough, she was racing straight toward the Handley place, and she disappeared quickly into the dark opening where the front door had fallen off years ago. The thick plank-wood walls, which had obviously gone unpainted for forty or fifty years, appeared grayish brown in the distance.

“Sorry!” I shouted. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” But by then, she might have been too far away to hear me. I had the feeling that she was probably up there watching me through one of the cracks in the walls, so I raised my hand and waved in a friendly manner.

I rode a lot slower after that, and I couldn’t stop thinking about that strange new girl whose name I didn’t even know yet. All the way home, then later while I was slopping the hogs, milking the cows and feeding the chickens, I kept seeing her in my mind,

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twirling there in that field. Hours later, even after I went to bed, I still couldn’t get her out of my thoughts. And I had begun to feel terribly ashamed – ashamed for startling and frightening her, ashamed for hiding those magazines in her house, and ashamed for staring at her like that when her whole waist was bare naked.

As I lay there unable to sleep, I found myself wondering so many things about her: Where had she come from? Would she be staying around here from now on? Which room in that old place would she sleep in? How old was she? What grade would she be in? What was her name? Did she have other brothers and sisters? Why had she acted so scared? Did she have a boyfriend? Had she found the magazines we had hidden in there? I groaned in the dark with the pure shame of that thought. What if she knew somehow that I was one of the ones who hid them in there? What if that was the reason she had seemed so scared of me? But how could she have known? It seemed like I lay there for hours with all those ridiculous questions swimming through my brain before I finally fell asleep.

Chapter 2 – Duty

When I woke up to my alarm clock buzzing, I was still dreaming about the mysterious girl. In the dream, it seemed like something large and dangerous was chasing her across a field – some kind of dark, evil predator, but I couldn’t seem to run fast enough to reach her in time. It was like her scream in the dream turned into the sound of my alarm’s high-pitched buzzing.

I have to set my alarm for 4:30 A.M. because I have six cows to milk before I leave for my job at the feed store. In the summer, I work there full time, but during the school year, I’ll only work for a few hours every evening, plus all day Saturday. And during the football season, I didn’t plan to work at the store at all. During the football season, my whole life was about football. Old man Fannin is the owner of the feed store. He would always have me unloading heavy feedbags from his old beat up pickup truck first thing in the morning, then stocking shelves, sweeping, and helping customers all afternoon.

My pay at the store was kind of lousy, but I sure liked the job. I was still just 15, so I wasn’t old enough to work legally. Old Mr. Fannin said he’d have to keep me ‘off the books.’ What that really meant was that he could pay me a bit less than minimum wage, and he didn’t have to pay for any social security or health benefits. I didn’t mind though. At least he was nice to me.

Mr. Fannin hired me right when our local economy had gone to hell after the nearby tubular aluminum manufacturing plant closed down. He talked to me before he offered me the job, saying, “Luther, it’s like this;” (He called me Luther at first because my name really is Luther Daltry, like my dad’s name and my Gramps’, but everybody calls Dad ‘Lou’ and everybody calls me ‘Junior’ since neither of us really liked our first name.) “Luther,” Mr. Fannin told me, “I’ve got two choices. I can either close this place down and go on welfare like everyone else in the country is doing, or I can start cutting expenses. I’ve already let every employee go except for myself, and this place sure can’t afford any other full wage earner besides me. I had to let both my full-timers go. Everyone in the whole county around here used to come in to buy feed for their cows and pigs and such, but now, instead of feeding ‘em, they’re eatin’ ‘em ... just to stay alive. These are tough times we’re livin’ in, boy, tough times. So, if you’re willin’ to work hard, I can offer you six dollars an hour, straight cash. Can you live with that?”

“You’ve got a deal,” I told him, sticking out my hand to shake. “And, if you don’t mind, you can just call me Junior.”

The reason I also had to work so hard out at our place was because my dad had decided to go back into the Marines so he could get himself all shot to hell over in Iraq or Afghanistan or whatever other war zone they would send him to next. And the reason I wanted to work for old Fannin was because, by the time I turned 18, I planned to buy myself a sweet ride – like a Mustang or Corvette maybe – and drive as far from Turnbull County as I could possibly get, and I didn’t ever plan to come back. In the end, I guess I ended up leaving the county a lot sooner and going a lot farther away than I had ever expected – and I almost didn’t ever make it back … but I’ll tell you more about that later.

The week before Dad left on this last military tour, he had gone to a nearby dairy farmer who was

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going bankrupt, and he bought us six Guernsey milk cows for half what they were worth. Guernseys are a type of small, brown cows that have dark faces. They’re very friendly creatures, and they give a lot of milk – each cow produces about five gallons every day, counting both the morning and evening milkings, and it’s really creamy, delicious milk. But I sure get sick of milking them every morning and every evening seven days a week. Mom sells the milk for about half the store price to a lot of our friends and relatives. We aren’t really allowed to sell it legally because we can’t afford those fancy milking machines or the sterilization and pasteurization equipment required by the government. But our friends and neighbors have all kept right on buying from us because they know how good our milk is.

This would be my dad’s sixth tour of combat duty in just twelve years. I hardly even know him. I had seen more of him over the past six months than I had my entire life before that. My mom was extremely ticked off about him going back to war. I can still remember them having this same argument about him staying in the Marines way back when I was little. This last argument was the worst though. Either they thought I couldn’t hear them yelling at each other before they went to bed or they just didn’t care if I heard. By now, I have their never-ending argument pretty well memorized, so I’ll tell you how it sounded this last time:

Mom’s Voice: “Why didn’t you talk to me first before you signed the stupid reenlistment papers?” By this time, Mom was already practically screaming.

Dad’s Voice: “Cause I knew what you’d say?”

Mom’s Voice: “And maybe cause you were too cowardly to face me, just like the last time you went back in … You would have found work eventually. I already told you I wouldn’t mind if we moved elsewhere for you to look for a job … into the city even, if we had to.”

Dad’s Voice: “This is where we’ve always lived. We’ve got no family or friends anywhere else. We’re not moving,” Dad told her. I was kind of glad to hear that. I sure didn’t want to switch to some high school somewhere that I didn’t even know anyone. How would you like to have to do that for your last two years of high school?

Mom’s Voice: “Where we’ve always lived?” Mom shouted back at him. “Yeah, right! … Maybe

the kids and I have always lived here, but you already moved away a long time ago. Your real home is across the world in some damned Arabian desert.”

Dad’s Voice: “I’m not over there because I like it. I do what I have to do to provide for this family. I never would have found a job around here with this economy – not here or anywhere else. Half the country’s out of work.”

Mom’s Voice: “Aw, you didn’t even try! You could have gotten on at the mine. They were hiring.”

Dad’s Voice: “They’re only hiring because the miners are out on strike. You think I would actually go in there working as a scab, walking past all the miners every day? All our friends on the picket line would hate our guts forever. Hell, your own dad was one of the miners yelling the loudest that it was time to go out on strike.”

Mom’s Voice: “Well, something else would have turned up. Your unemployment wouldn’t have run out for another eleven months. You could have waited more than a few lousy months. There are plenty of folks around here who’ve been out of work a lot longer than that. I don’t see them rushing off to fight someone else’s war.”

Dad’s Voice: “Yeah? Well, maybe that’s cause they’re just a bunch of lazy cowards who enjoy being out of work.”

Mom’s Voice: “So you’re saying your dad and your brother are lazy cowards?” Mom challenged him.

Dad’s Voice: “No, I wasn’t talking about them … They both have a job.”

Mom’s Voice: “Your dad said that welding business of theirs took in less than a thousand dollars last year. I heard him when he told you that … That’s not a job, Lou. It’s a hobby. And unless the plant opens up again, they never will make any more money.” Mom wasn’t yelling anymore. Her voice sounded more like she was begging.

Dad’s Voice: “That’s my point exactly, Sweetheart,” he told her. “As long as the plant’s shut down, none of us will ever find jobs. And the plant’s never opening again because the company moved their whole operation to Indonesia or some place.”

Mom’s Voice: “Well, you could have waited a little while longer, at least until the unemployment money ran out.”

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Dad’s Voice: “We can’t get by on what the unemployment pays anyway. We’d have the kids starting back to school with no shoes or clothes.”

Mom’s Voice: “Just like all the other kids.”

Dad’s Voice: “Well, by God, our kids aren’t gonna live like that.”

Mom’s Voice: “That’s better than living without a daddy.”

Dad’s Voice: “They’ve got a daddy.”

Mom’s Voice: “Yeah, for maybe two months out of every two years.” She was right about that part. Dad would come home for about two months, then go off to war for 18 or 24 months again. He’d be home just long enough to get Mom pregnant again, and off he’d go. Her voice got soft and pleading again. “Lou, don’t you remember what you wrote me when Bo and Ernie got killed over there right in front of you. You said you’d never go back. That was less than a year ago.”

Dad’s Voice: “Well, that was before I learned that our country’s economy had gone down the toilet.”

Mom’s Voice: “Please, Lou. Please don’t do this. I’ve got a really bad feeling this time.”

Dad’s Voice: “That’s what you said last time.”

Mom’s Voice: “And last time you got blown up with Bo and Ernie!”

Dad’s Voice: “I didn’t get blown up. I’m still here aren’t I?”

Mom’s Voice: “You lost part of your hearing and part of one foot. I call that getting blown up.”

I could see Dad’s point of view in all this. It must suck just sitting around all day every day with nothing to do. But mostly I agreed with Mom. Dad had never been a proper father to us. There were seven of us kids, spaced two or three years apart, depending on how often my dad would get home on leave so he could get Mom pregnant again. I’m the oldest, and I can remember many times in years past when my youngest siblings would see my dad coming home on leave and they would ask questions like, “Who’s that man?” or “Is he our daddy?” That’s kind of pathetic if you think about it. And then he kept choosing to go right back over there to fight time after time.

During the short periods of time I’ve known my dad, he’s always seemed like a decent enough guy – taking us out to places and buying us stuff. But I get the feeling that he’s been pretty badly damaged by fighting all those wars. He acts sort of paranoid a lot of the time. Like, if there’s a loud noise or someone comes up behind him unexpectedly, he really overreacts. He’s also pretty quick to get angry or impatient if someone gets on his nerves.

I honestly think all that warfare has made him more than a little bit crazy. For example, one Saturday night, kind of late, when Dad was home on leave this last time, I was sneaking out behind the shed to have a smoke, and I came up on him back there, down on his hands and knees. He was crying and saying a bunch of crazy stuff about a lot of people and situations I knew nothing about. It was like he was talking to someone about all these things that were obviously bothering him a lot. But the weird thing was, there was nobody else there but him. Who was he talking to?

Then I finally got the impression that this was some kind of wild and crazy sounding prayer because he threw in the word “Lord” a couple of times during his ranting. I remember thinking, “If those wars have made him so unhappy and messed up, why in the world has he kept going back over there?” I backed away from him quietly that night and decided to have a smoke some other time.

Chapter 3 – Mystery Girl

The day after I had seen Cassandra that first time, I was riding home from work on my bike again. I started looking off into the field where I had seen her, but she was nowhere in sight. So I stopped and looked around the field and the old house in the distance, but there was nobody outside. Feeling eager to tell the girl I was sorry for frightening her and hoping to find out a little bit more about her, I turned up the muddy track leading to the old house. But when I got up to the house, I started losing my nerve. Nevertheless, I forced myself to step up and knock anyway. There was still no proper front door there, but since yesterday, someone had hung a piece of thin plywood across the entrance, using a couple of huge gate hinges.

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After waiting a long time, I knocked again, but right as I started to knock the second time, someone threw the plywood door open. I had to jump back to avoid being smacked by the door since it opened outward. And there, filling the entire doorway, was a very overweight lady – easily the fattest person I had ever seen. She wasn’t much over five feet tall, but she had to weight nearly 500 pounds. Her wrinkled dress, spreading out over her huge form reminded me of the canvas tarp my dad had draped over the tall mound of cow manure we used as compost for our garden.

“What are you doing here? “The big woman demanded, eying me suspiciously.

“Sorry to bother you, Ma’am,” I stuttered. “I just wanted to talk to the girl who lives here. I need to explain …”

“You git offen this place, raht now!” She ordered, cutting me off in the middle of my sentence. “Thishere’s private propity.” She slammed and bolted the door abruptly. I stood there too stunned to move for a minute. Inside, I heard what must have been the girl’s voice.

“Who was here, Granny?”

“It weren’t nobody you need to worry about.”

I stood there for a few more seconds, wondering how such a slim, beautiful girl could be related to a trashy blob like ‘Granny.’ Then I hopped on my bike and scooted off toward home and the many chores waiting for me there.

Over the next few days, I would cruise slowly past the old Handley place, watching to see if the pretty, red-haired girl might be outside again where I could talk to her. Then, about a week later, I got lucky and spotted her outside the old house. She was chopping down weeds in their overgrown yard using an old-fashioned scythe – that’s the same scary-looking ancient farm implement they always show the grim reaper holding. She swung the ancient implement with grace and precision, mowing down wide swathes of grass with each swing. It was like she was used to using it.

“What a strange skill to have in modern times,” I thought to myself. Then, on a whim, I turned into the long drive there and headed up toward the house. But when I got halfway up there, the girl dropped the scythe and started waving her arms around.

“Go back!” She shouted at me. “She’s got a gun in there, and I seen her shoot at people before!”

I stopped, glancing nervously at the house. Even if the old lady hadn’t seen me coming already, the girl’s shouting would have alerted her to my presence. How long would it take her to get her gun? I was thinking to myself. Does she keep it loaded?

“Is she really dangerous?” I asked the girl. “Are you sure you’re gonna be alright here with that woman?”

“Get out of here, now!” She warned me, looking genuinely frightened. Her fear was quickly starting to rub off on me, so I turned around and wheeled out of there, expecting to hear shots blasting behind me at any second, but the old lady never fired a shot. Was she really up there with a gun? Or was that girl just making up crazy stories to get rid of me?

Chapter 4 – Checking the Mail

I didn’t figure I’d have another chance to speak to the new girl until school started in the Fall – and that was if her fat grandma even allowed her to attend school. But then, about two weeks later, as I was headed home again, I spotted the girl strolling down her dirt drive toward the road. Had she seen me coming? Was she coming down to meet me? But she didn’t seem to even notice me until she was almost to the end of her driveway. I had slowed down some so that I would get to her about the same time she got to the road, and I sat there watching her approach me.

She wore a wide-brimmed, sun-faded straw hat with her thick, dark red hair hanging down around the shoulders of her yellow print dress. Speckles of bright sunlight, shining down through the trees above, glided across her gorgeous form as she approached me. There was something breathtaking about the perfect way her body moved. It reminded me for some reason of a slow-motion clip I had seen on television recently of a thoroughbred champion racehorse running full speed.

I rolled my bike forward a few feet and stopped beside her. She yanked the mailbox open and glanced inside it for half a second, then slammed it again. She got a funny little grin on her face, almost the same

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look a little kid might get if she knew a secret and couldn’t wait to tell it to someone.

“What you want?” She asked me after slamming the mailbox closed. “Why you always comin’ round heah?”

“I just wanted to apologize for scaring you that first time I saw you.”

“You dint scare me none.”

“Why’d you run away so fast then?”

“Maybe cause I already known it ain’t gonna end well if we start talking to each other.”

“Why wouldn’t it end well if you talk to me? Do you mean cause your granny’ll get mad?”

“It’s not really that. But let’s just pretend that I ran off on account of the fact I ain’t allowed to talk to you. Granny sez I ain’t allowed to talk to folks.”

“That woman’s really your grandmother?”

“I guess?”

“You guess?”

“Well, she tells people she is, and that’s what I’m s’posed to tell folks.”

“You don’t look a bit like her.”

“No, I ain’t old and fat if that’s what yer gittin’ at.”

“No, you’re certainly not ... But that’s not what I’m talking about. You don’t even look like you’re from the same family.”

“Well, she’s my granny. Git that straight.”

“How long have you lived with her?”

“Since I’s little.”

“You don’t have a mom or dad?”

“I ‘member stuff about having at least a mom once, but I cain’t rec’llect nothin’ ‘bout what she looked like. It’s been a long, long time.”

“Your granny didn’t keep any pictures?”

“I don’t guess they had no cameras back when my mama was around. Anyways, if I’d seen any pictures, don’t you think I’d still ‘member what she looked like?”

“Yeah, I guess you would … You were expecting some mail there?” I pointed at the mailbox she had slammed shut moments earlier.

“No … Why you askin’ so many questions?”

“Sorry, I was curious – just hoping to learn a little bit about you. After all, looks like we’re gonna be neighbors.”

“You ain’t no neighbor of mine. You live clear up by the spring.” The way she said it sounded like “by the sprang,” so I wondered where she was from.

“You from Alabama or some place like that? … You sound like you might be from down south.” I said.

“So what if I am?”

“Just curious.”

“Yer mighty dang curious about a lot of stuff.”

“Yeah? Well, here’s something else I’m curious about. How do you know exactly where I live? There’s two miles of solid hardwood forest between here and the natural springs, and the road takes several switchbacks across the bridges … You got some kind of sixth sense, or how do you know which house I end up in every afternoon?”

“Maybe I’s up there walkin’ and seen where you went, and seen you milkin’ all them cows.” She had that saucy little grin again, like she knew more than she was telling.

“How’d you ever get away from your granny to take a walk as long as that? That’s gotta take at least two hours up there and back on foot, plus however long it took you to stay around watching me milking.”

“It did take a while. I like to get out the house and look ‘round when she takes her naps.”

“Well, then maybe you could take a little walk with me right now.”

“Naw, she ain’t sleepin’ now – too worried ‘bout not gittin’ her checks. I told her them checks wouldn’t be here until tomorrow, but she never believes me.”

“What checks was she waiting for?”

“Her gubmint checks.”

“Gum mint checks?” I was still confused by her thick Southern drawl and dialect, but I was beginning to get to the point that I could understand most of the words she said.

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“Yeh, you know, checks fer the welfare and the kid fosterin’ and the food stamps and the dis’bility. She gits all them kinds of gubmint checks. She was s’posed to take care of changin’ our address fer all them checks to come here, and they was due here yesterday and they still ain’t come.”

“Wait, I thought you said a minute ago that you told her the checks wouldn’t get here until tomorrow, but now you’re saying they were due to come yesterday? I don’t understand.”

“Nothin’ much to understand. The checks was due here yesterday, but they ain’t actually comin’ till tomorrow.”

“Are the checks always a couple of days late? Or how could you have known for sure that they wouldn’t be here till tomorrow?”

“Cause I just know. That’s all … Y’all don’t git no gubmint checks?”

“No – well, nothing besides my dad’s military paychecks. Those come every month. He’s in the Marines. He went back overseas just last week.”

“He the one keeps his head shaved, and always wearin’ them military cammy-flage outfits?”

“Yeah, that’s my dad.”

“I seen him comin’ through here a few times on his motorcycle. Figgered him fer yer dad, cause you look just like him, all strong and … and handsome like.” She kind of blushed then and looked down at her bare feet. When she looked back up, her full, beautiful lips were smiling. There were delightful little dimples on both her cheeks. This kid might have sounded just like some hick from Alabama, but she looked like a supermodel – actually better than any supermodel I could ever remember seeing.

“Maybe we could go walkin’ out some other time,” she added, “or ridin’ our bikes. I got me a bike, too.”

“How about you and I go out tonight after your granny goes to sleep.”

“Naw, she don’t sleep more’n a few minutes at a time durin’ the night. Only time she takes a longer snooze is in the late afternoon and early evenin’. And she won’t be sleepin’ none this evenin’. But by tomorrow evenin’, after them checks come, she’ll take a bunch of her pain pills and sleep a couple of hours straight through. Maybe then you could show

me them beautiful sprangs ya’ll got up there and tell me all about them.”

“Sure, I could do that.”

“Come by heah on your way home tomorrow then. I’ll be hidin’ behind that there stinkwood tree yonder.” She nodded her head toward a nearby tree.

“What if your granny’s checks don’t come by then?”

“You don’t got to worry about that. I said they’d come. Now, you better git on home. She’s most likely lookin, down here right now to see if I got them gubmint envelopes in my hands.”

“Okay, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow then,” I said, trying not to sound too excited. I hopped on my bike and was twenty feet away before I realized I didn’t even know this beauty’s name. I stopped and yelled back over my shoulder, “Hey, what’s your name?”

“I’m Cassandra, with a Cee,” she hollered, grabbing at her sun hat to keep the wind from yanking it off her wavy hair. “Don’t nobody git to call me Cassy or Sandra. It’s Cassandra.”

“Okay, Cassandra – That’s a very elegant name.”

“It’s a very old name. And you’re Junior, ain’t you?” I looked surprised.

“How’d you know my name already. I don’t remember ever telling you.”

“Maybe I heard your mama yellin’ fer you from the house when I’s up there … And then ag’in, maybe I just know cause I know ... I’ll see you tomorrow.” She turned and trotted toward her house, moving again with fluid grace like a deer or some other wild creature. Man that girl could move fast!

Chapter 5 – Cowgirl

When I came back the next afternoon, I sailed past the old Handley house and didn’t stop until I was hidden behind the thick undergrowth beneath the stinkwood tree. I didn’t want that old woman up there to see me slowing down or stopping.

“Cassandra!” I whisper-shouted. “You there?”

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She suddenly leaped out from the undergrowth right beside me, so suddenly that I jumped back and fell over on my butt with my bike still between my legs. I don’t have any idea how she could have been that close to me and I never noticed her, or how she could have leapt out so suddenly, almost like a predator lunging for its prey. I scrambled back to my feet, feeling like a complete jackass. She was giggling, but trying not to make it too obvious.

“Gee, you scared me,” I said.

“Now we’re even I guess,” she said, giving me one of her flirting smiles.

“So, are you able to come for a ride?”

“Sure nuff, if you think you can stay up on that ole thang,” she said grinning again.

“Did your granny’s checks come like they were supposed to?”

“Of course they did. I’ve already ridden into town to deposit them, and I picked up her medicines at the drug store. She’s in the house now, all doped up on pain pills. It’ll be hours before she wakes up. Let’s get going. I want to see them sprangs.”

“Great. But I was hoping to ask a favor first.”

“Of course, Junior. I don’t mind stoppin’ to milk yer cows first. I love them cows.”

“Wait. How did you know that was the favor I was going to ask you?” I felt goose bumps on my arm because it seemed so uncanny that she already knew what I would ask.

“Maybe I’s just thinkin’ that’s what you have to do this time every day, since I already seen you doing it before.”

“Oh, yeah. I was beginning to think you could read my mind or something.”

“No, not exactly.” She took off riding ahead of me and never stopped or slowed down all the way up to our place. Even being as athletic as I am, it was all I could do to keep up with her, and by the time we got there, I was completely out of breath.”

“You never waste much time getting from one place to another,” I mentioned as we got off our bikes. She ignored me and started walking toward Trooper, our ancient sheep hound. Trooper was hobbling toward her, whining and wagging his tale like he had seen an old friend.

“There you are, Trooper old boy.” She had crouched down and was hugging his head. Normally, Trooper never trusted strangers, but, clearly, he was loving Cassandra’s attention.

“So how did you know Trooper’s name?” I asked. “Wait, let me guess. Maybe you heard us saying his name when you were up here spying on me before.”

“Something like that,” she replied, never releasing her hug on Trooper. “Or maybe he just told me his name.” With one side of her face still lying against the top of Trooper’s head, she had tilted her face in my direction so I could see her sly grin.

“Oh, so you can read dog’s minds, too?”

“Why would I have to read his mind when he’s already told me what I need to know?”

“So, what are you? Some kind of dog whisperer? … What else is he saying to you?”

“He says he’s glad to see you again even though you forgot to feed him this morning.”

“Hey, wait! Now that you mention it, I really don’t remember feeding him. Maybe I did forget. Come on Trooper, I’ll put some food out for you right now, Old Boy.”

“He says never mind. Your mom already fed him.” I was shaking my head at this weird girl’s outrageous games, and then something strange hit me. That hick accent of hers had kind of disappeared over the past minute or two. In its place some kind of unusual foreign accent was creeping into her voice – Eastern European or Middle Eastern perhaps – something strange and exotic sounding. It was faint and hard to notice, but it was definitely foreign. And it seemed unlike any kind of accent I had ever heard, even on TV or in the movies.

“Hey, what happened to that hick Southern accent of yours? Sounds like you’re slipping into something else now. What are you really? Some foreigner pretending to be from the South?”

She let go of Trooper’s neck and jumped abruptly to her feet, saying, “Well, ah do decleah. I’s sho nuff from the deep south, honey chile.” She began batting her eyelashes like in some corny old movie. She was starting to overact like a character straight out of Gone with the Wind. Then she laughed and added, “Let’s git to milkin’ them cows.” She trudged straight over into the barn, and by the time I

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got in there, she was already hugging the neck of Bess, one of our new Guernsey cows. Then she hugged each of the other cows, and they acted very much at ease around this total stranger.

“Elsie says not to forget the udder ointment,” she said without looking up at me. Elsie, of course, was the name of one of our cows, a name which I knew I had not ever told Cassandra. And the weirdest thing was, this girl knew what she was talking about. Three of Elsie’s teats really had cracked and bled a tiny bit lately when I milked her. “And you better butter up them hands, too. Elsie says your hands can be kind of hard and scratchy sometimes.” This girl was starting to give me a very eerie feeling, but I obediently applied plenty of the greasy udder ointment to my hands before I started the milking process. Udder ointment keeps the cows’ udders and teats from getting dried out, which can make their skin crack open.

My mind was reeling with this whole situation. How did this strange girl know so much about me and my whole family, and even our pets and farm animals? Like, how could she possibly have known I forgot to feed the dog? And then something occurred to me. There’s no way she could know everything she knew unless someone was feeding her a lot of information. And what was up with her shifting accents? I was becoming so agitated I just stood there clenching my ointment covered fists over and over. Finally, I sat down on the milking stool beside the cow we call Hilda, but I didn’t start milking.

They say cows can sense tension or anger, and if you’re super tense when you try to milk them, they’re likely to get so nervous they might kick over the milk bucket or step on your foot in their hurry to get out of the stall. But whether or not it was going to make me and the cows more tense, I suddenly felt like I had to get some answers about what this girl was up to.

“So, do you know all the cows’ names or just Elsie’s?” I asked her, trying to keep my voice calm.

“Of course I know them all, Silly. There’s Elsie and Hilda there, along with Beulah, Dolly, Mabel, and then Clarabelle down at the far end. How sociable would I be if I couldn’t even remember the names of six new friends?”

“Friends!” I barked, sarcastically. “Give me a break! Listen, Cassandra – or whatever your real name is – I have no idea what kind of charade you’re playing here, or who’s been giving you all this

information, but it’s making me more than a little bit nervous. Obviously, you or someone else has gone to a lot of trouble to do surveillance and research on me and my entire family. Otherwise how could you know all this stuff … about me forgetting to feed the dog and such? Someone had to have been watching us pretty closely. I can’t imagine why anyone would have gone to all that trouble. Hey, maybe, with that weird accent, you’re some kind of foreign spy or something, trying to get information. But you’ve got the wrong idea – the wrong family maybe. My dad’s just a Marine sergeant. He doesn’t have any information that would help you or whoever you’re working for.”

“No, Junior, that’s not what’s going on. You’ve got it all wrong.” She knelt down in the dirt and fodder beside me and put her soft hand on my arm.

“I don’t know what your bizarre game is all about,” I went on, “but I don’t want to play anymore. I’m just a normal guy. I like people who really are who they say they are. I like regular people I can trust. When I first saw you, I thought you were just a pretty girl in a field. But now I realize I have no idea who you actually are or even what you are. What is that strange accent you have … or pretend to have? And which accent is really yours? Where are you really from?”

I guess maybe my dad’s paranoid tendencies must run in the family, because it dawned on me just then that I was kind of trapped here with this beautiful, terrifying creature I knew nothing about. I was wedged into the little stall, in the narrow space between Hilda’s big cow body and the sturdy wooden wall of the stall, and this Cassandra person was standing between me and the only path by which I could hope to escape from the stall. I experienced a moment of intense panic, when I actually considered hurling myself up over the wall of the stall and crawling across the stacked hay bales on the other side. And then, as I glanced around wildly, I thought of rushing toward her, pushing and shoving my way past her, and scampering for the safety of the house.

I suppose Cassandra – or whoever she really was – must have sensed my panic because she suddenly took hold of my hands, still slippery with the thick layer of udder ointment I had applied. She was still kneeling beside me where I was sitting on the milking stool. Then she looked into my eyes intently and she began massaging my greasy hands gently and tenderly, her eyes never leaving mine. While she

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touched me, a soothing, relaxing feeling seemed to enter into my hands and flow up into my arms and shoulders.

“Oh, Junior!” She whispered. “Sweet Junior. You’re right. I’m not what I pretended to be, but I would never hurt you.” Her gentle massaging of my hands continued, and I felt the muscles of my entire body go slack. My head drooped down and my big shoulders sagged. It was like some primeval comfort was being magically transferred into me, and there was a rush of physical satisfaction and a sense of safety – like a newborn baby must feel finding its mama’s nipple for the very first time or a baby chicken finding warmth and shelter beneath its mother hen’s wings. Within the tender caresses of Cassandra’s voice and her hands, I felt complete love and security. All my paranoid fears and suspicions melted away, leaving an overwhelming sense of perfect peace.

Chapter 6 – Warning from an Ancient Oracle

“Why have you moved here?” I finally asked her when I had settled down enough to speak calmly. “Are you running from someone? Please, Cassandra, tell me who you really are,” I begged. “You can trust me.”

“Can I trust you, Junior? … Anyway, I already told you who I am. I really am named Cassandra.”

“But I don’t even know your last name.”

“I’ve gone by a lot of last names, but Cassandra’s my only real name.

“But where did you really come from?”

“I have been many places. But originally, I came from the area you now call Turkey.”

“Is that where your mother was from – the one you barely remember? She was Turkish?”

“The area my mother was from is now called Turkey. But, technically, my mother was a Hittite.”

“A Hittite? What’s that? Like a religious group or something?”

“No, the Hittites were a people group ... an ancient civilization living in a land called Phrygia.”

“Phrygi … what? Where’s that?”

“A better question would be, ‘When was that?’ The Phrygian culture existed on the peninsula of Asia Minor more than three thousand years ago.”

“The peninsula of what?”

“Asia Minor is the large peninsula where modern day Turkey is located, but it was inhabited by many different cultures thousands of years ago. My mother was from the ancient city state called Troy.”

“Troy!? So you’re trying to tell me that your mother lived thousands of years ago?”

“Yes, to be more precise, she lived three thousand four hundred years ago.”

“And that would make you something like ... What? Three thousand three hundred and eighty years old I guess.”

“That’s almost exactly correct. I’m actually two years younger.”

“Let me see if I’ve got this straight then. You’re claiming to be some kind of time traveler from ancient Troy.”

“Well, I have traveled through time, but not inside some science fiction contraption like in the movies. No, I’ve traveled through time the slow way, just like everybody else.”

“This is insane! My God, Cassandra, don’t you realize how crazy you sound. Look, I can find you some help. I’ll ask my mom. There are professional people who can talk to you, maybe give you medicine if you need it, so you can figure out what’s real and what you’re just making up in your head. Please, Cassandra, let me help you find someone you can talk to.” Now I was the one massaging her hands and trying to comfort her.

“People have been trying to get me that kind of help for centuries – for millennia. I’ve been inside mental asylums on five different continents. The people I meet always mean well, but it never ends well. Remember what I warned you earlier about things not ending well? People always get hurt.” She started speaking faster at this point, like she had to tell me something before her time ran out.

“Listen to me carefully, Junior. There are some people following me – very bad people, well, not

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really even people any more at all – but evil creatures from the ancient times. I need to warn you about them before it’s too late. Whenever I’m trapped somewhere – an asylum or a dungeon – they have a better chance of finding me and destroying me … and all the people I care about. See, I had this boyfriend, my first true love. Now don’t get that jealous expression on your face. I knew that boy thousands of years ago.

She got a very troubled look in her eyes. “And my stepmother murdered that first boyfriend of mine because he witnessed her and her lover killing my father. My father was a king, and he had married my stepmother without even getting to know her. She turned out to be very evil. I had no idea at first that my father’s new wife and his wife’s lover were so evil … I loved that boy so much … the one they murdered. In a way I still do even though he’s been dead for so long.” She was still talking very fast and seemed to be kind of rambling.

“Cassandra, don’t you understand how completely loony this whole story is. It’s like completely paranoid schizophrenia.”

She ignored my last statement and clasped both of my greasy hands between her own. I could feel the strength of her grip. She was by far the strongest female I had ever encountered. It reminded me of something I had read in a magazine a couple of years earlier – an article that said insane people can sometimes seem to have almost supernatural strength. Looking deeply into my eyes, she told me something strange and terrifying.

“Junior, I have to be going home now, but before I go, I need to warn you about something terrible that’s about to happen. I know about some things that are really and truly going to happen. Right now, you think I’m just some nutty girl ... I realize that. But you have to promise me you’ll listen closely to what I’m about to tell you, and you have to promise me you’ll do something about it.”

“Sure, Cassandra, I promise. Whatever you ask.”

“You say now that you’ll do what I’m warning you to do, but will you really do it? Everyone always says they’ll listen to me, that they’ll heed my warnings, but then in the end nobody ever believes me. Nobody ever takes the opportunity to change their fate.”

“Cassandra, I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about, but I swear to you, whatever you ask me to do, I’ll do it, as long as it doesn’t involve murder or suicide or something crazy like that.”

“Okay, first let me ask you, do you have any way to contact your father – right away – wherever he is over in that war zone?”

“Yeah, sure. When he re-enlisted, he went straight back into his same Marine unit in Afghanistan; got there a week ago. They have cell phones we can call over there, and they also have computers we can hook up to and even see Dad while we’re talking to him. We can see him, and he can see us. We get to talk to him at least once a week whenever he’s overseas, but we can contact him anytime if there’s an emergency. Hey, three thousand years ago, I’ll bet your folks didn’t have anything like televised phone calls.” I chuckled.

“Junior, this is not a joke, and I’m not crazy like you’re thinking. This is deadly serious. Your dad could be killed tomorrow … He will be killed if you don’t warn him!” Her voice had started getting pretty loud.

“Warn him about what?”

“Warn him not to go into that last house – the last little house on the right at the end of the street, at the very edge of the village – the stone house just before he reaches the wadi.”

“The … wadi? What does that even mean?”

“It’s Arabic. It means a dry riverbed. Warn your dad, whatever happens, not to go into that last house – the little stone one.”

I felt the hair standing up on my arms and the back of my neck. The details of her story sounded so real I had formed this picture in my mind of my dad out on patrol, going into a little rock house on the edge of a village.

“What is this all about, Cassandra? How would you possibly know about some house my dad will be going into halfway across the world?”

“I told you. I see things. Things that haven’t happened yet, but they will ... they always do.”

“So, why are you saying my dad shouldn’t go into some stone house?”

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“It’s an ambush. That’s where he’s going to die – he and three other American soldiers that go in with him. You’ve got to warn him right away. It happens very early tomorrow morning … Please don’t forget to warn him … right away.” She was actually starting to get tears in her eyes. And I felt so sorry for this poor deranged girl that I was getting tears in my own eyes. I had to hand it to her. For a nut case, she really had quite an imagination. She told the story so perfectly, she even had me almost believing it.

“So you promise you’ll call and tell him?”

“Yes, I promise.” And I meant exactly what I said when I told her that.

“Even if you think I’m just crazy, you’ll still call him?”

“No matter what. I’ll warn him … just in case you’re right.” And right at that moment, I had every intention of doing what I said. I was pretty sure she was just plain nuts, but I didn’t believe in taking any chances – not if my dad might truly be in danger.

She hugged me hard, then said, “Thank you, Junior. I believe you. I can sense that you’ll warn him like you said. You’ll be the first person who has ever listened to me and believed me.” She was getting to her feet. “I gotta go. Granny’s already starting to wake up, but it’ll take her a few more minutes before she’s awake enough to notice I’m not there.” She bolted from the barn and was already riding away on her bike by the time I got outside. The cows were mooing sadly, anxious to have the milk pressure removed from their bulging udders, so I turned back into the barn to start getting my chores out of the way.

Chapter 7 – Hoping to Bend Fate

It was 10:30 that night, and I had just finished a big Halo battle match online when I remembered about the promise I had made to call and warn Dad. For a minute, I considered not even calling him. How was I going to explain to my mom why it was so urgent to make that call? I didn’t actually believe Cassandra’s wild story. Why should I follow through? ... Still, though, you never can tell. Then I stopped in the hallway, shaking my head and feeling like an idiot. Why would Mom believe my crazy

story if I couldn’t even believe it myself? But then I remembered that I had made a solemn promise to Cassandra. A moment later, I was knocking on my mom’s bedroom door.

“Come on in,” she said. I pushed the door open and saw she was already in bed.

“Were you already asleep?”

“Almost. What is it Junior? You look worried.”

“I was just wondering if we could call dad.”

“Right now? Why? What’s up?”

“I just needed to talk to him. It’s something important.”

“Well, what time is it?” She glanced at her alarm clock. “10:30 … With the eight-hour time difference, that’s 6:30 A.M. over there in Iraq. By now he’s already left the compound.”

“I had forgotten about the time difference. Dang! It might be too late by now.”

“Too late for what? … Junior, what’s this all about?”

“It’s too hard to explain, Mom,” I said, shaking my head. “I just know we’ve got to call him right away. I hope I didn’t wait too long. I’ve got to warn him!” I guess I was raising my voice and sounding a little bit desperate because she hopped up, pulled on her housecoat and headed toward the den where we kept our computer. She was talking fast as she walked.

“He’s on dayshifts this month, remember? That’s 6:00 A.M. till 6:00 P.M. And if he’s already out of the compound, there’s no way they’re gonna track him down unless it’s an emergency.”

“This is an emergency.”

“What’s happened?” Her voice suddenly sounded alarmed.

“Nothing’s happened, Mom. Not yet. But I think something might be about to happen?”

“Well, what is it that you’re so worried might happen?” She stopped walking and made me look at her eyes like she always does when she’s having a ‘serious’ talk.

“I can’t really explain that to you.”

“Is someone bullying you or something? Did someone threaten you in town today?”

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“No, Mom! Look at me! Do I look like a kid who’s ever going to get bullied?”

“Well, there are one or two boys in that football team of yours who are even bigger than you.”

“Yeah and they’re my good buddies. Mom, I’m telling you it’s nothing like that.”

“Well, what then? Are you in trouble or something? What did you do?”

“Mom! I didn’t do anything.”

“But you’re about to do something. You said something bad is about to happen.”

“Mom! Will you please calm down? I’m not going to do anything stupid. You ought to know me better than that by now.”

“Then you tell me what this is all about, young man. You tell me right now!” I could tell she was getting mad.

“This has nothing to do with me. It’s about dad.”

“What about him?”

“Something bad might be about to happen to him.”

“Aww, Sweetie, come here.” She pulled me over and gave me a long hug, then pulled back, leaving her hands on my shoulders. “We’re all worried about him. How could we not be? But you can’t be making yourself sick with worry. Your dad’s a grown man with many years of experience. He knows how to take care of himself. We just have to wait it out again and hope for the best.”

I pulled away and started talking louder. “No, Mom! We can’t wait it out. Something bad’s about to happen. At least I think it is.”

“What do you think will happen, Junior?”

“I think he might be killed today – this morning I think.”

“Why do you think he’s going to die?” Now she was the one raising her voice.

“He’s going to be out on his reconnaissance patrol – him and three other Marines. They’re going to go into a stone house, the last house on the right at the edge of the village where a dry riverbed is. They’re all going to die. It’s an ambush, Mom!” Tears suddenly seemed to spring out of her eyes.

“Junior! You do not talk like that about your father. You’re talking crazy. How would you know something so detailed like that before it even happened?”

“I can’t tell you how I know. Truth is, I really don’t know it for sure. I just think it might happen. We’ve got to call him right away – just in case.”

“But how could you possibly know so exactly what might happen? Did you have a bad dream? Is that what this is all about?”

“No, Mom. I didn’t have a dream. I just have this feeling, this idea of what will happen. It’s too real not to be true. Please, Mom, we have to call him right away. We have to get him back into the compound before it’s too late. Please believe me!”

I guess my desperate voice got Mom pretty worried because she suddenly turned and started moving even faster down the hallway. “I swear to God, Junior, you are going to give me a heart attack someday,” she said as we rushed together into the den.

Chapter 8 – A Mother’s Worst Fears

It took us another ten or fifteen minutes to get our lousy old computer up and running and to make the connection to Iraq. By that time it was after 11:00 – after 7:00 AM Iraqi time. Dad would have been out patrolling already for at least an hour. All we saw on the computer screen at first was the Marine Compound Recreation Room where all the guys hung out when they weren’t patrolling or sleeping. The room looked empty.

“Hello! Hello? Is anybody in there?” Mom said loudly. A few seconds later, a G.I.’s face appeared on the screen, looking at us.

“Who are you looking for, Ma’am … Oh, hey, I recognize you. You’re Sergeant Daltry’s wife. He keeps your picture hanging up. But I’m sorry, Ma’am, Lou’s already out for the daytime patrol.”

“Can you radio him for me and get him back to the compound? This is an emergency.”

“What kind of emergency, Ma’am?”

“A very serious one,” she answered vaguely.

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“Well, Ma’am, Lou’s going to need the battalion commander’s approval to come back from patrol. What should I tell the commander about the emergency?” Mom glanced over at me before answering.

“Tell him it involves one of his sons and that it’s a matter of life and death.”

The soldier nodded. “That’ll get him back here, Ma’am. Give us a call back in half an hour. We should be able to get him in here by then.”

“I’ll do that.” Mom disconnected the call and the screen went blank. She looked over at me with a troubled look. “What should I tell your father when he gets on?”

“Tell him whatever you need to tell him to keep him in the compound all day.”

“And tomorrow, when I have to admit that there really was no emergency, what do you suggest I tell him then?”

“Tell him I had a bad dream about him.”

“Is that what this really was about? A bad dream?”

“No, Mom, this was not a dream.”

“Then where did it all come from? – That whole scenario you described in such detail, how did some idea like that ever come into your head?”

“I can’t tell you that. It’s impossible to explain.”

“You haven’t been taking one of those crazy drugs – LSD maybe – or visiting a fortune teller or playing with a Ouija board or something stupid like that have you?”

“No, Mom.”

“Cause you know all that stuff is from the devil, right?”

“I did not take LSD or consult a Ouija board.” I raised one hand like I was swearing an oath in court.

“Or talk to a fortune teller?” She was staring hard into my eyes when she asked that last question, and I guess I hesitated for a second before answering because she pounced on that immediately. “Oh, my God! That’s what this whole thing has been about! You went to some stupid fortune teller. Your dad’s going to be so ticked off when he finds out about this. You’ve always been such a level-headed boy. I can hardly believe it … Where did you even find a

fortune teller around here? There’s no carnival in the area that I know of.”

“She’s not a fortune teller … not exactly.”

“She? She!!! Filling your head with this nonsense!” Mom was shrieking now kind of hysterically. “Who is this woman?”

“It’s not a woman.”

“Well, who is it then? You said ‘she’.”

“It’s just this girl I met.” I was beginning to realize that this entire phoning-Dad plan had been a very bad idea.

“What girl?” She demanded. “I’ll have a talk with her parents right now even if it is the middle of the night.”

“She doesn’t have a phone, I don’t think. She’s kind of new here.”

“New?!”

“Yeah, she just moved here like a couple of weeks ago.”

“Some girl you don’t even know tells you this outlandish story about your father and you come getting me out of bed in the middle of the night to call and upset him halfway around the world. Junior, we are not bothering your dad with this garbage. He has enough to worry about without having to worry that his son has lost his mind.”

“Well, don’t we have to tell him something? When we call back, they’ll already have him on his way back to the compound.”

“Yeah, you’re right about that. When they bring him in, he’s going to be expecting us to call back and tell him about some emergency – some life and death emergency involving his son, like I told that guy. So, Mr. Wild Imagination, what story do you suggest we tell your dad?”

“Shouldn’t we tell him something that will keep him on base the rest of the day – just in case this girl is right?”

“So you intend to go right on believing this ridiculous story told to you by a schoolgirl you don’t even know.”

“Please, Mom! This girl knows stuff. Stuff that nobody could know.”

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“Junior it’s all tricks. These fake mentalists always use tricks – smoke and mirrors. You’ll find out she’s a phony like all the rest.”

“Please, Mom. Let’s stick to the emergency story just for today – just to be sure. What could be the harm in keeping Dad in the compound one day?”

“So what all-day emergency did you have in mind, young man?”

“We could say that Arthur has a high fever and that Doctor Rivas isn’t sure he’ll pull through.” (Arthur’s my two-year-old brother, and he gets sick a lot.)

“We’re not telling your father that. He’ll find out it was a lie when he comes back home – probably sooner than that. And your father does not take kindly to being lied to, believe me.”

“Then we’ll leave Doctor Rivas out of it, just say Arthur’s fever keeps going up, and then, when Dad’s duty day’s almost over, we’ll tell him the fever spiked and Arthur’s fine.”

“What in the world have I gotten myself into?” She was shaking her head. “Okay, Junior, I’ll go along with this charade this time, but we have fifteen minutes to kill before we can call back over there. During that time, you’re going to explain to me in detail every single thing you know about this mystery girl.”

“Okay, what do you want to know?”

“Her name to start with.”

“It’s Cassandra.”

“And her last name?”

“I … I’m not sure. She hasn’t said.”

“You don’t even know this girl’s full name!” Mom was shaking her head back and forth again, looking disgusted at me. “Do you at least know where she lives or did you just find her on a street corner somewhere?”

“She just moved into the old Handley place – she and her granny.”

“You’re kidding! That place is about to fall down.”

“Yeah, well, they’re fixing it up. It’s got a new front door already.”

“Where did they live before that?”

“Cassandra acted like they were from somewhere in the South – Alabama maybe. And she even had a strong Southern accent, but then she started talking with more of a foreign accent.”

“Sounds like this girl might have some serious mental problems ... like she can’t figure out who she is or who she wants to be ... Did she say anything about where her parents might be?”

“I think her parents might have passed away. She said something about her mom being from the area of Turkey originally.” I was hesitant to tell my mom when the girl’s mother was supposed to have lived in Turkey.

“Oh, well, that might help explain the slight foreign accent. And being from southern Europe, maybe she’s part gypsy. There are still some of those gypsies roaming around in Europe. And a lot of them still try to make a few bucks telling fortunes. I saw a documentary on the gypsies a few years back. I’ll bet that’s why she likes to try to tell people’s fortunes. Does she look like a gypsy?”

“I don’t know what gypsies look like.”

“Does she have dark curly hair and really tan looking skin?”

“No, she has wavy red hair. It’s dark red, but she’s still what people would call a redhead. And her skin isn’t very tan, more like, even paler than most people.”

“What are her facial features like?”

“She’s the most absolutely beautiful girl I’ve ever seen in my life … Really, Mom! She’s the prettiest thing on this planet.”

“Oh – my – God! You like her don’t you?” She had this little teasing grin.

“Mom, I think … I think I love her.”

“Junior! Wait, you haven’t … been with her have you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about. Have you or haven’t you?”

“Mom! No! She’s not that kind of girl.”

“Every girl is that kind of girl eventually,” she muttered loud enough for me to hear it.

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“Time to call back isn’t it?” I asked her, hoping to end this line of questioning once and for all.

Chapter 9 – Protocol

When we got through to the Marine post, the soldier who had been there before wasn’t on the screen anymore, but there was an older looking gentleman with a lieutenant colonel insignia sewed into his collar. When we appeared on the screen, the officer had his cap in his hands and he was twisting it between his hands nervously with a concerned look on his face.

“Ma’am, I’m Lieutenant Colonel Freeman, Battalion Commander, United States Marine Corps. Are you Mrs. Luther Daltry?”

“Yeah, Lou Daltry’s my husband.”

“Well, Ma’am, I’m afraid there’s been a … a battlefield situation here. Your husband’s not going to be able to speak to you today.”

“But why not? What’s happened to him?”

“The Marine Corps will be in contact with you shortly to let you know more about the situation with your husband. I’m afraid that’s all I’m at liberty to say at this time.”

“Did my dad get ambushed today?” I shouted.

The colonel glanced at another officer only half visible beside him on the screen. “What’s that? What’s this kid yelling about?”

“He’s asking about the ambush, Sir?”

“I’m asking if my dad and three other marines were killed today in an ambush on the edge of the village?” I said loudly and distinctly, trying not to let the weepy sound out that I felt in the back of my throat.

“How did you hear about that?” The colonel growled, staring intently at us. “All battlefield operations and situations are highly classified. Providing any of that kind of information to non-combatants is a serious breach of military security protocol.”

My mom started talking then. Her voice sounded angry and shaky. “I don’t care about your military security protocol. Is my husband still alive or not?”

“Ma’am I can’t talk with you about this anymore. Representatives from the Marine Corps will be dropping by very soon to visit with you personally, and they will explain every…”

“They’re coming to visit me … at my house?!! … That can only mean one thing.” She groaned. “Oh, my God! Then it’s true. It’s all true!” She was up out of her chair and had begun wailing so loudly that a couple of my younger sisters came running out of their bedrooms a moment later rubbing at their eyes. Vivian, who’s fourteen, came out first, followed by six-year-old May Ellen.

“Is it time for school already?” May Ellen, asked.

“School’s out for summer, Silly,” Vivian told her.

My mom fell down on her knees in front of May Ellen and squeezed her tightly in her arms. “No school, baby.” She said with a big sob. “No school for any of you today.” She had started sobbing loudly over and over. I saw that lots of tears and snot were getting all over my mom’s face, and she started wiping it off with the sleeve of her housecoat. Within a few seconds other brothers and sisters started appearing from other bedrooms. Even little Arthur came out, dragging his favorite blanket behind him. Then I realized that the Marine colonel was still trying to talk to us on the computer screen, so I turned back to see what he was saying.

“Are you listening, young man? … I said, I need to know how you learned about today’s attack. Who’s been in contact with you about this? … Has anyone been providing you with information about any other battlefield operations.”

“Nobody from your stupid war over there has told us anything.” I told the man, wiping tears from my face.

“Then how did you know what was going to happen?” He asked, staring hard at me.

“Because someone I know saw it all in advance – before it even happened.”

“What did he see?”

“She saw my dad and three other soldiers going down the street toward the edge of the village, toward

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the dry riverbed – the wadi. Then she saw them entering the last house on the right, made of stone. And there, they were ambushed and all four killed.”

The colonel turned to the soldier beside him. “By God! That Sergeant Daltry must have been wearing a damned camera. He’s been sending back live battlefield action shots. This kid’s obviously seen the whole thing. No telling who might have that footage in their possession right now. And who knows what else he’s been filming and sending back stateside. Get this Internet feed completely shut down …immediately! Damage control starts right now.” A few seconds later, the screen went black.

By now, all the other children had come out into the den, and most of the younger ones, seeing their mother crying so hard, were starting to cry, too, even though they had no real clue what was wrong.

“Who’s dat soldier man on TV?” Arthur asked me.

“I guess he was dad’s boss,” I told him.

“Is Dad gon’ be on TV again?”

“No. No he’s not.” I told him.

Mom was lying back on the carpeted floor now, sobbing and moaning, and the kids had started kind of piling onto her, each one hugging a different part of her. Within a minute, every one of them had started crying, and so had I.

“Did Dad get hurt?” Vivian asked Mom.

“We don’t know anything for sure yet, Honey,” she said in a raspy voice. But it was obvious to everyone in the room that Mom already knew something terrible had happened to Dad. Arthur had gone over and started hugging one of mom’s lower legs since the rest of her was pretty well occupied. I sat down in the office chair by the desk and stared at the sobbing dog pile of people that was what was left of my family. I must have sat there in a daze for a few more minutes.

“I want to meet your Cassandra,” Mom said, staring straight up at the ceiling. Her voice was still shaky, but there was a certainty in it.

“Why?”

“I just want to talk to her for a minute. I want her to tell me exactly what she saw in that vision of hers.”

“Why would you want to know that? It’s too late to do anything about it now.”

“I don’t know why I want to talk to her. I just do.” But mom never got up off the floor.

Chapter 10 – Under Investigation

Two days later, a couple of Marine Corps officers showed up on our doorstep asking to talk to Mom. One was a chaplain and one was a company commander. They weren’t even active duty, just a couple of weekend warriors from a nearby reserve unit. They were there, the chaplain said, “to help us get through this difficult time,” but my mom wouldn’t let them in the house.

“I already know why you’re here,” she said when she first opened the door. “I’ve been grieving my husband for two days already. Nothing you can say to me is going to make that any easier.”

That was when the chaplain guy started in on his spiel about helping us through this difficult time, and I could tell he was just spouting some memorized official Marine Corps statement he was supposed to say whenever a dead guy’s widow opened the door. But it didn’t work exactly as planned with my mom. I guess he was used to taking the poor widows by surprise – having them collapse in his arms when they became overcome by grief. But Mom just stood there and told him she didn’t need any of the Marine Corps’ help in this “difficult time.” She said that last part kind of sarcastically, like she was mocking him.

“My husband’s commanding officer acted like a rude, unfeeling jackass when I called to ask about my husband. I certainly don’t need any more of the Marine Corps’ help. But thanks for stopping by.” She closed the door so abruptly that I had to jerk my head back inside to keep it from being whacked.

Later that same day, I was in the barn when I heard a vehicle driving up. I came out and saw a couple more military looking guys in plain clothes step out of a black SUV and head for our front door. I followed and waited a few feet behind them when they got on the porch. One of the guys was tall and muscularly built. He was wearing what looked like a regular businessman’s suit. But I could tell from his

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haircut and his military stance that he was for sure a Marine or a very recent ex-Marine. My mom opened the door and said immediately, “I already told those other two guys I don’t want or need any condolences from the Marines. Please go away.”

“Ma’am, we’re not here to offer condolences,” the taller gentleman said. “I’m Inspector Sikes with the U.S. Marine Corps Criminal Investigation Division, and this is Agent Thatcher with the National Security Agency. We’re in the process of conducting a JAGMAN investigation concerning a serious breach of military security. First, I must warn you that anything you say may be used against you in a court of law or in a military court. You have the right to an attorney. If you …”

Mom cut him off, shouting in a really loud and angry voice. “You’ve got the nerve to show up here on my doorstep and start reading me my rights two days after my husband was killed? You get the hell off my property!”

“Ma’am, you can make this a whole lot easier on yourself if you’ll just cooperate.”

“I already heard that colonel over there in Iraq running his mouth about violations of military protocol or some crap like that – talking about how my husband was supposedly wearing a camera in battle and sending classified information out. I don’t need to listen to any more of that garbage.”

“Ma’am, we’re simply trying to find out exactly how this might have happened …”

“No. You’re simply trying to blame Lou for something he didn’t do. You guys didn’t find a camera on his body did you? … And I know damned well you searched him looking for one, didn’t you? … Well? … Did you find one?”

The man hesitated for a moment, then said, “I’m afraid we can’t comment on the details of this ongoing investigation.”

“Well, you certainly won’t get any more comments from me either. And you better not set foot on my property again unless you have a warrant, or so help me, I’ll be contacting both the sheriff’s office and the media. Now get out of my yard!” She suddenly slammed the door so hard it made me jump, and I was six or eight feet away. The government guys looked at each other.

“That went well,” the shorter guy said.

“Shut up!” The other guy said. He looked plenty angry when they passed by me on their way back to their vehicle.

I went in the house and saw that Mom was already sitting on the couch. She wasn’t crying at the moment, but her face was still red from all the crying she had been doing lately. The kids were sitting around looking sad and bewildered. All except Arthur who was pushing his toy cars around and making revving noises in his throat, oblivious to everything that was going on.

“Why’d you yell at dose guys?” My four-year-old brother, Ted, asked her. “Are dey the ones who hurt our daddy?”

“No, Teddy, they didn’t hurt Daddy. But they were being bad. If you start acting bad, what do I do?”

“You yell at me to stop it.”

“Well, it was time someone yelled at those gentlemen.”

“You think they’ll be back?” I asked her.

“Oh, I’m pretty sure they will be,” she said, sounding bitter. “Probably with some armed security officers along to protect them from scary ladies like me.”

“What do you think’s going to happen?”

“I don’t know for sure. We didn’t do anything wrong, so I don’t think we can get into any real trouble. We still live in a free country so far … well, free-ish.”

“Should we talk to someone? A lawyer maybe?”

“I’ll tell you who I need to talk to. It’s that Cassandra girl. She saw this whole thing coming, and I need to know how she did that.”

“What good would that do, Mom?”

“That girl tried to save your father’s life. The least we can do is thank her for that.”

“And she would have saved his life if I had remembered to ask you to call sooner. I just never thought about the time difference between here and the Middle East. It’s really my fault he’s dead.”

“No, in a way I think it’s more my own fault. I didn’t even want to make that call, remember? Neither of us really believed the girl’s story because

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the whole thing was – well – unbelievable. But I sure believe her now.”

“I wish I didn’t have to talk to her again,” I admitted.

“I thought you said you had feelings for Cassandra?”

“I did … I do! But it’s just that I promised her I’d do something about the warning she gave me, and I completely blew it. She said nobody had ever believed her warnings before, and I could tell that she was so happy I was going to warn Dad. And now, I don’t know what I could say to her.”

“So, you’re telling me she’s warned other people before this?”

“Yeah, lots of times I think, but they wouldn’t ever believe her, so the bad things she saw coming always happened anyway.”

“How old is she?”

“She seems to be about my age, but that’s another weird thing you’re not going to believe. She says she’s a lot older.”

“How much older?”

“More than three thousand years older.”

“This girl told you she was three thousand years old?”

“Yeah, she said she was born in an area that’s now called Turkey about three thousand four hundred years ago.”

“So she’s just plain crazy!”

“Well, I don’t know, Mom. She told me a lot of stuff about myself and about our family that nobody could have known, and she was sure right about Dad. Simply being crazy wouldn’t give her the power to know the things she knows. She knows plenty of other things, too. It’s kind of spooky all the stuff she knows.”

“I’m going over to her house right now, and I want you with me. I need to find out what’s going on with this girl.”

“What about the little kids?”

“Vivian can watch them. She’s fourteen. That’s old enough.”

“Okay then. But aren’t you going to put on some shoes or comb your hair or anything?” She was

wearing her dirty old house slippers, and she hadn’t done so much as run a comb through her hair in two days.

“No,” she said. “Let’s go.” She took her key ring off the hook by the door, then turned to Vivian. “You need to watch these guys for a few minutes. We’ll be right back.”

“I want to go, too.” Vivian said. “I’ve heard what you guys have been saying about that girl, and I want to meet her.”

“Not this time, Vivvy.” She rubbed her fingers down Vivian’s face and kissed her forehead. “Maybe you can ride bikes down with Junior later after we get back. But right now I need your help here with the little ones. I can’t do this without you.”

Chapter 11 – Cassandra’s Story

As soon as we came to a stop at Cassandra’s place, Mom hopped out of the truck and started pounding on the plywood door with the side of her fist.

“Who’s out there?” I heard Cassandra’s Granny’s voice saying.

“My name’s Ginny Daltry, Ma’am. And I need to talk to Cassandra.”

“She ain’t allowed to talk to folks.”

“Well she’s going to talk to me. I have some questions she needs to answer.”

“You git on offen this place. Heah me?”

“I’m not leaving till I’ve spoken with Cassandra.”

“I got a gun in heah. And I ain’t waitin’ long to use it.”

“She really does have a gun in there.” I whispered.

“Ma’am, if I leave here without speaking to Cassandra, I’m going straight to the sheriff’s office. You can’t be living in a shack like this with a child, never allowing her to have contact with anyone. Something’s not right here. I’ll get social services

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involved if I have to ... So, do I get to talk to Cassandra or do I go to the authorities?”

There was silence for about ten seconds. Then the door opened a few inches, and Cassandra slipped out, closing the door behind her. She glanced at Mom, then looked at me with a sad and hurt expression. “You brought your mom here?”

“She wanted to meet you ... We needed to explain to you about what happened.”

“I already know exactly what happened.” There was an uncomfortable pause as the two females looked each other over.

“We can talk better back behind the house,” Cassandra said, finally. “They won’t be able to hear us as well back there.”

“They? Who’s trying to hear us?” Mom asked, but Cassandra just went ahead of us behind the house to a couple or old logs lying parallel a couple of feet apart. She sat down on one of the logs, so Mom and I sat on the other. Then Cassandra looked at me.

“You didn’t warn your dad when I asked you to.” It was a statement, not a question.

“How did you know that?” Mom asked her.

“Well, I could say I know because you look like you’ve been crying for a couple of days. But the truth is, I just know because I know.”

“Cassandra, please don’t be mad at us,” I said. “We tried to warn my dad. But by then it was already too late.”

“But when did you finally try to warn him?”

“It wasn’t until 11:00 that same night that you warned me … I was finishing up my chores and … and doing some video gaming before I remembered to call. I thought he wouldn’t be in any danger until the next morning. I wasn’t thinking about how late it already was in Iraq.”

“You were playing some stupid video game instead of warning your dad? … You’re just like all the others!” Her eyes had tears in them now.

“No. That’s not true. I believed you. We made the call. I just forgot to make it for a few hours. I don’t know how I could have forgotten something that important. It’s like somehow it vanished from my mind for a few hours – almost like something took it out of my mind for a while ... until it was too late.”

“It’s the curse.” Cassandra muttered with a dark look in her eyes. “He warned me that nobody would ever believe me … that it would never end well … and I guess, even when someone finally does believe me, it still can’t ever end well.”

Mom put her hand on Cassandra’s hand. “What curse? Who warned you? What’s this all about?”

“It’s a long story. And it happened a long time ago.”

“You mean like three thousand years ago?” Mom asked. She picked up Cassandra’s hand and held it in both her hands.

“Yeah, something like that.”

“And this curse thing happened somewhere in ancient Turkey?”

“Yeah. Phrygia. Near the ancient city of Troy, where I grew up.”

“And the man who put the curse on you – is he the same person who gave you the power to see the future?”

“No, receiving my powers happened earlier, when I was little. And I find it hard to believe that the powers came from the same guy who put the curse on me. My mother said she remembers how the visionary powers began when I was about three. I had a brain fever, according to what she told me, and when I woke up, I could see what was going to happen to people all around me. But I remember some other strange things happening that were a lot different from the story my mother told me – some strange things that happened right when Helenus and I got our special powers.”

“What other things can you remember about the time when you received your powers?”

“Well, something happened late one night. Our mother woke me and my brother, Helenus, and took us to the temple of Apollo.”

“Your brother was named Helenus? I figured that should be a girl’s name,” I said.

“Hellen was a girl’s name, but Helenus was a boy’s name where I came from ... We were just little children, and we had no idea why our mother took us to the temple of Apollo so late at night. There was nobody else there, no priest or anyone. She took us inside and just left us there, with no light but a tiny oil lamp. She ordered us to stay inside the temple,

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told us the gods had said that it had to be done this way. Then she left. We cried and begged her not to go, but she left anyway. She was crying, too, so I guess she was as upset as we were. I was only about three years old, and Helenus was a year older. It was very spooky and terrifying in there all alone, nothing around us but huge stone pillars, a massive stone altar, and a couple of stone benches in the back. Eventually, the oil lamp burned out, and we were even more terrified. My brother and I huddled together on one of the benches for a long time, hoping Mother would return. But after a while, we got so sleepy that we lay down on the cold stone floor together and fell asleep.”

“Did she leave you there all night?” My mom asked, sounding kind of shocked.

“Yeah, it was morning when we woke up.”

Mom was shaking her head, looking concerned. “Did she do things like that very often?”

“No, that was the only time.”

“So, you and your brother went to sleep in the temple, and when you woke up, you had those powers?”

“Yeah. But that’s not the whole story. There were some other strange things that happened during that same night – things I should tell you about. At least, I think those things happened. It may all have been a dream ... While we were sleeping, I remember waking up because I felt something cold and scaly moving across me. Then I realized it was a snake, and pretty soon, there were a whole bunch of snakes – big ones.”

“Oh my God!” Mom said. “Are you sure they were snakes?”

“I couldn’t see them very clearly because it was so dark in there, but they were snakes alright, and I could see enough to tell that they had the triangular pit viper heads our parents had warned us to watch out for – so they were poisonous snakes; I’m sure of that. I started trying to scream at Helenus to wake up and help me, but it was as if no sound would come out of my mouth.”

“Were the snakes crawling on your brother, too?”

“Yes, they were all over both of us. We were lying side by side right next to each other. But I saw that he was so sound asleep he apparently never even

realized the snakes were crawling on him. I got really still, hoping they wouldn’t bite me if I lay perfectly quiet. I kept my eyes closed tight, but I felt them slithering all around my neck and across my face. Then I started to feel something tickling inside my ears, and I realized that the snakes were poking their little forked tongues deep inside my ears, licking over and over against my eardrums.”

“Oh, no! That’s so creepy!” Mom said, with a shiver.

“I felt the creatures taking turns. Each one would push its nose up into my ear, then flick its tongue way up into me ear canal over and over. It tickled like crazy and, at first, my heart was really racing from the complete terror of it all. I saw they were doing the same thing to Helenus, but he just kept sleeping away like nothing was happening. After this had been going on for a couple of hours, I finally calmed down and began to realize that the snakes must not plan to hurt me. If they were going to hurt me, I figured they would have done so by then. And then I began noticing something very peculiar. I started to understand that the snakes were somehow communicating, and I realized that I could understand what they were trying to tell me.”

“What were they saying?” I asked her. I had been sitting there wide eyed with horror the whole time.

“They were just letting me know that I had nothing to fear from them, that I was special, that I had been chosen by the gods to possess certain powers.”

“Like to see the future.” Mom said, still holding her hand.

“Yeah, and to understand the languages of animals, and … well … some other powers I won’t get into right now.”

“And did you have the powers right away after that?”

“After we woke up the next morning, from then on Helenus and I both had the same powers ... not that they ever did me much good. Well, they did help out the first few years. Before the curse was put on me, I would warn people about some tragic event coming, and they would actually do something about it. Helenus and I quickly developed a reputation in the area as powerful oracles.”

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“What is that? Like one of those ancient Greek fortune teller things?” Mom asked.

“Yes, we both became what you would call fortune tellers.”

“So, Cassandra, if you’re three thousand years old, how come you still look like a teenager?” Mom asked.

“I am a teenager. I’ll always be one I suppose, unless I die.”

“Is Helenus still alive like you? Did living forever come with your powers?”

“No, that’s not why I’m still alive. Helenus lived a fairly long life, but he got older like normal people, and eventually, after reigning as a king over a small kingdom, he died more than three thousand years ago, just like everyone else does … No, my permanent youth didn’t come along with the special powers. It was something that only happened to me alone, and it came a few years later. It was part of the curse.”

“Okay, tell us more about the curse,” I said. I was super curious about that.

“As I started growing up, I started becoming very beautiful.”

“You certainly are amazingly pretty. Junior sure wasn’t wrong about that,” Mom said.

“It’s not something I’m glad about. It has always brought pain and tragedy into my life. Many times I’ve considered pouring oil or alcohol on this face and setting fire to it.”

“Please, please don’t ever do something like that.” I told her, taking her other hand.

“Don’t worry. I don’t think I would be able to do that even if I tried. The curse doesn’t allow any way of escape that I can find. Anyway, what happened was, when I turned thirteen, I began working in the temple of Apollo.”

“The same temple where the snakes were talking to you?” I wondered.

“Yes, the same place. As the daughter of Priam, the King of Troy, I was destined to be a priestess of Apollo, and as such, I had certain duties in the temple – duties that began on my thirteenth birthday. Anyway, I was there later than usual one evening when a man came in, claiming to be the god, Apollo. He looked a little bit like the Apollo statues I’d seen

outside the temple, but I didn’t know this guy. Why should I believe his story?”

“What did he do?” I wondered.

“For a while, he just talked to me in a friendly manner – not too forward or rude at first. But pretty soon, he was coming on too strong, and he was trying to touch me. That made me very frightened. There was no one there to protect me from this fellow. He was a stranger, and he was a grownup. Soon he was pawing at me and trying to drag me to the floor. But I went crazy, out of my mind with fear. I started screaming, kicking him, scratching him, and biting him. He became rougher and rougher, slamming me against a stone pillar and pushing me down onto a stone bench.”

I saw that Cassandra’s face had gotten very pale as she was speaking. She lowered her head for at least half a minute, unable to go on.

“Did that man hurt you, Cassandra?” Mom asked quietly, putting her hand on the girl’s shoulder. When she looked up again, there were tears in her eyes.

“He would have, but I wouldn’t stop fighting him. At one point, he grabbed me by the hair and shook my head around violently. ‘You owe me, Maiden!’ The man screamed in my face. ‘Whose house do you think you’re in here?’ But I kept on fighting, and soon we heard people banging on the doors of the temple. They must have heard me screaming inside. There were no locks on the temple doors, but for some reason the people out there couldn’t get them open.

“‘You foolish, willful child,’ the man growled at me, right up in my face. ‘You have the audacity to resist me? Then you shall be forever accursed. You will retain your powers, but nobody will ever again heed your prophecies. And you will forever retain your youth and beauty, but from this day forward, they will never bring you any lasting joy.’ And then, as soon as he had said that, he vanished right in front of me. At that moment, the townspeople who had been shouting and banging at the doors suddenly burst into the temple, the doors no longer being barred by the power of that evil fiend, I suppose.”

“Were you still only thirteen when this happened?” I asked her.

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“No, I had already been fulfilling my temple duties for two years by then. I had just turned fifteen the week before the man attacked me.”

“Who was the man? Did you ever find out?” Mom asked.

“No one else saw him besides me. All that the townspeople saw when they came in was me with bruises all over, and with blood coming from my nose. When they asked what had happened, I just said that there had been a man attacking me – a stranger and that he had run out the back door. A few gave chase, but of course there was no one there.”

“Who do you think that man was?”

“Perhaps he truly was Apollo. His curse certainly was carried out. Since then, my powers and my beauty have both been horrible curses.”

My mom spoke up at this point. “I can understand why you might feel like your fortune telling had become a curse – since nobody would believe your warnings – but why do you think your beauty was also part of the curse?”

“Because everywhere I’ve ever gone, some boy would fall completely in love with me, but within a few years, I have to break his heart and move on. And my heart gets broken, too – every time. Just because it’s happened so many times already doesn’t make it any less painful.” I felt a sharp pang of jealousy as she talked of other boys she had loved, but I tried to say something encouraging anyway.

“I don’t think your beauty’s a curse.” I assured her.

“Don’t you? … It enticed you to approach me, and look what that’s done to you.”

“You didn’t do anything to us. My Dad was going to die anyway. You just tried to stop it from happening.”

“But it didn’t end up that way. It never ends up the way I intend it to. And now, not only is your father dead, but the military authorities are coming after you as well. I saw them at your house. I heard what they said to you – I heard it before they even said it. And the worst thing is, I’ve placed you all in terrible danger. What would have been just one single tragic death, I’ve turned into a catastrophe for your entire family.”

“Aw, those government creeps aren’t as dangerous as they think they are. I’m not afraid of them,” I said, even though I really was afraid.

“Well, perhaps you should be,” she warned me. “but there are some much worse dangers besides the government that I’ve brought into your lives. In the end, we’ll all suffer. And the thing that will bring you the most pain of all, Junior, will be seeing me suffer. This has happened so many times – hundreds of times. I’m always moving on because, for one thing, when people begin to notice I never seem to grow older, I have to slip away. There’s no way to explain perpetual youth. I can’t ever get away with staying more than three or four years in one place. And if I try to help people – try to warn them about something bad that’s coming – then I end up having to move on even sooner. Like getting away from this place right now – for my own protection, I should have waited till the middle of the night and simply drifted away as soon as I knew your father had died after all.”

“Those government guys might try to come after you if you try to slip away now, right?” I asked.

“The authorities might look for me but they would never find me because I would always see them coming. I see them coming now.”

“Please don’t leave us yet, Cassandra. I would miss you so much.” I held her hand a tiny bit tighter.

“I won’t,” she assured me. “I owe it to you all to stay here and protect you.”

“From those military authorities?” Mom asked. “Don’t worry, Cassandra. They mean well. They just don’t understand. They’ll ask us some questions and then leave us alone. What else can they do? We’re not guilty of anything.”

“That’s not what I’m really worried about ... the government agents,” Cassandra was shaking her head. “No, there are much greater dangers coming our way. There are two evil fiends who will soon be coming after us. If they discover me and my connection to you, they’ll torture, mutilate, and utterly destroy everyone you hold dear. Your little innocent children are in terrible danger.”

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12. Two Ancient Fiends

Mom was getting a very frightened look on her face. “Is there anything you could do to protect us, Cassandra?” She asked in a shaky voice.

“For one thing, I can see them coming. So far, they haven’t started tracking me. But it’s just a matter of time.”

“Who are these people?”

“Well, they’re not really what you could call people ... not anymore, not for thousands of years.”

“So these are ... creatures from the old times like you?”

“They’re from olden times, but they’re nothing like me, trust me on that.”

“How would they track you?” I asked.

“As soon as anything about me hits the information grid, they’ll know.”

“The information grid?”

“Yeah, you know, the Internet, or any type of wave-borne signals.”

“Wave-borne signals?”

“Yeah, like any kind of radio waves or microwave transmissions.”

“What would microwaves have to do with anything?”

“I’m not talking about the microwaves you keep in the kitchen, silly.” She smiled and squeezed my hand. “Nowadays, almost all communications are sent using microwaves, everything from cell phones to television signals, plus about a million other transmissions ... TV remote controls for example.”

“How would these ... these evil creatures know that the transmissions were about you?” Mom asked her.

“If they detect any message about a girl my age with certain abilities, they’ll come in blasting. Even if they don’t know for sure it’s me, they’ll incinerate an entire apartment building – or an entire city – if they think there’s any chance I might be in it. They’ve killed a lot of innocent people who had never even met me. Some of those so-called terrorist bombings you’ve heard about haven’t really been terrorists ... Well, not the kind of terrorists everyone talks about

on the news. And if those fiends see a photographic image of my face or hear my voice, they’ll get a complete lock on me. They’ll be here within hours.”

“They know your voice?”

“Oh, yes! That’s the main reason why we’re sitting out back here, in case those government guys in the car over there have listening devices in my house or aimed toward us.” She waved her hand in the general direction of the nearby farm road, but I didn’t notice any government vehicles there. “All those ancient fiends need to hear is a few words of my voice and they’ll have me in their crosshairs – me and everyone around me.”

“How do they know your voice?”

“They’ve known me since I was a little girl. One of them was Claudia, who was my governess, and then became my stepmother.”

“Was she the one who left you overnight in the temple?” Mom asked.

“No, that was my real mother who always loved me. I have reason to believe that Claudia, my stepmother, and her lover, Darius, killed my real mom when I was eleven years old. My mother supposedly tripped and fell from a cliff, but Helenus and I always suspected foul play. And we know for certain Claudia and Darius killed our father. That murder we witnessed with our own eyes. All the history books claim he was publicly dismembered by political enemies after the fall of Troy, but don’t believe everything you find in a history book. He was dismembered, but not by Troy’s political enemies.”

“What must I do to protect my children from this Claudia and Darius – or whatever creatures they’ve become?”

“There’s not really anything you can do. But there may be something I can do.” She put her hand on Mom’s arm to reassure her.

“What can you do?” Mom asked.

“I have to play my role again – my role as the crazy girl. I’ve acted that part so many times – hundreds of times. I’ve stood accused of witchcraft, madness, spying, and many other things. I’ve often spent years in jails and dungeons and asylums. Just lately, in the last century, the mad-house accommodations have gotten much more comfortable and humane. Over the years, I’ve come within seconds of death on many occasions. I’ve had my

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neck in nooses and my head lying on their bloody chopping blocks, but I’ve always survived.”

“How do you get away?”

“As I think I mentioned, I have some other powers – some powers you may not ever have to witness. Pray that you don’t.”

“Tell us what we should do,” Mom said.

“Do whatever you would normally do.”

“Should we go to my husband’s funeral? Hug our friends? Cry together? Act like nothing weird is happening?”

“I’m afraid you won’t have much time left to do any of those things. You need to go home now, hug your own family members, and call someone you trust to come over, stay with your little ones, feed and tend to your animals.”

“You think the military investigators might arrest us?”

“Yes, Ma’am. They’ll pick you up this afternoon.”

“So what should we say when they start asking us more questions?”

“Tell them the truth.”

“You want us to tell them everything we know … about you?” I asked.

“You may not need to tell them everything. But yes, tell them about ancient Troy, my powers, the curse. After that, they can only assume I’m psychotic. It’s the only way out for all of us.”

“But what if they try to come after you?” I said. “What if they try to say you’re a spy or something? Even if they believe you’re crazy, they’ll still lock you up. And it’s not fair. You haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Neither have you, and you have much more to lose than me.

“I certainly don’t intend to sit by and let you get thrown in jail or an institution,” Mom said.

“Mrs. Daltry they have you accused of major Federal crimes. You’ll lose your military survivor’s benefits. You wouldn’t actually end up going to prison in the end … I have foreseen that. But if you try to fight them, you would spend everything you owned hiring attorneys to defend you in court. You

would lose your home and your farm, those wonderful cows – everything your husband worked so hard for – everything he gave his life for. You mustn’t ever let that happen to you and all your children. She put her hand on Mom’s shoulder again and continued.”

“For me it’s really no big deal. I’ve done it plenty of times in the past. They’ll stick me in an asylum and watch me act nutty for a couple of years and then I’ll pretend to get better. I’ll say all those seeing-the-future powers and such were never real and that I know it now. Then they’ll let me go … Then again, maybe I’ll just tell them the whole truth this time and prove to them that I am what I say I am … I’m so tired of running.”

“Whatever you decide, will you come back to see me?” I hoped I wasn’t sounding as desperate as I felt.

“Junior, these little romances never end well. You’ll continue to age, but I’ll always stay the same. By the time I get out of whatever institution they will have tucked me into – six or seven years from now – you’ll already be old enough that having any serious romantic relationship with me would be wrong. It would be illegal, in fact.”

“Well, don’t just leave. Please!” I was outright begging by this time.

“I’ll tell you what, Junior. I’ll let you come visit me as long as I stay in the mental hospital. After that, I’ll have to disappear. It’s for your own good … and mine.”

“Okay,” I agreed, glad to have a few more years. But I was secretly hoping that somehow, she would find a way to stay with me forever. After we said our goodbyes and hugged each other, Mom and I left. As we pulled away from her house, I saw in the distance a black SUV parked on the far end of a field of new cotton, over by the paved highway.

“Look, Mom.” I said, pointing.

“Yes, I saw them. Don’t point.” After we had left Cassandra’s long drive, I saw the dark SUV slowly pulling out behind us.

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Chapter 13 – Interrogation

By the time we got over into our driveway at home, the SUV and two other dark vehicles were right behind us. We stayed in the car for a minute, wondering if we should get out. By the time we climbed out, nine or ten security guys had surrounded us. A couple were in military uniforms, but most were wearing what looked more like SWAT team uniforms, with the flak jackets and bullet proof helmets. Five or six of them were aiming automatic rifles at us. The tall, angry fellow, Sikes, who had visited us earlier in the morning was there along with his shorter, quieter associate. Sikes was still doing the talking.

“Mrs. Daltry, I now have that Federal warrant you were so eager to see. But the truth is, I didn’t really need one because the Fourth Amendment in the Bill of Rights, the amendment requiring warrants, doesn’t really apply in military investigations and in matters of national security. I encourage you to read your Constitution more carefully. So, if you and your son would please lean forward and put your hands on your vehicle, this lady and gentleman need to make sure you aren’t carrying any concealed weapons.”

Mom and I did what he told us and the agents started feeling all over us to make sure we didn’t have anything. At least Mom had a female officer frisking her. When they were done with that, Sikes said to his thugs, “Cuff them and get them in the vehicle.”

“Do you have an arrest warrant to take us in?” Mom asked.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I do, as I believe I’ve already mentioned.” He took a paper out of the inside pocket of his suit coat and held it in front of her face, but since her hands were cuffed behind her, she couldn’t take it to read carefully. He only held it there for about two seconds. “You can read it more thoroughly some other time. But like I already told you: read the Fourth Amendment. We didn’t even need a search warrant or an arrest warrant.”

They sent a couple of their female personnel into our house to watch the other kids – two apparently unarmed ladies who must have been social workers. Mom never even had a chance to call a friend to come over – someone the children would know and trust. The smaller children were screaming and

crying and trying to get past the government ladies to escape out the front door of the house, but the ladies managed to keep them inside.

Then the government agents drove us for two hours all the way into the city with our hands cuffed behind our backs the whole time. Finally, they drove up into the interior parking garage of an unmarked building.

“What is this place?” I asked through the steel grate separating us from the government agents in the front seat.

“Department of Homeland Security,” the shorter guy, Agent Thatcher answered. “We’re going to need to ask you some questions here.” The vehicle stopped, and, after helping us out, they hustled us into an elevator. When it dinged at the fifth floor, the doors slid open, and we were met by a couple more goons in suits who ushered us over to an interrogation room where there were several other people waiting.

“Okay, Mrs. Daltry,” Sikes said as one of the goons removed our handcuffs, “this is how it’s going to work. We’re going to ask you a series of questions, and you’re going to answer them truthfully and thoroughly. We already know the answers to most of the questions, so we’ll know as soon as you start lying to us. And if that happens, we’ll walk you straight downstairs where you’ll be formally arraigned and charged with espionage, conspiracy, and hindering a Federal investigation.”

“Am I not even allowed to attend my husband’s funeral tomorrow?”

“That’s been postponed indefinitely, and that’s the least of your worries. Just so you’ll know, Ma’am, citizens involved in international espionage are not generally allowed to keep custody of their children. Federal penitentiaries are not really set up for daycare. Am I being clear enough for you so far?”

“Yes, Sir.” Her voice sounded weak and frightened. “I’ll tell you whatever I know.”

“Good. Now, Ms. Jenkins here,” he nodded at a short-haired lady nearby, “is a court reporter. She and I will stay here to interview you and record your statements while Agent Thatcher and his court reporter take Luther down to a separate room for questioning. I certainly hope, for your sake, that your answers match up with your son’s.”

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I made eye contact with Mom as they walked me out of the room, and she just nodded her head and gave me a little smile. I knew what she meant by that little look – ‘Just tell them the truth like Cassandra said.’ And that’s exactly what I did.

Agent Thatcher interrogated me for what felt like ten hours, but it was probably only about six or seven hours. By the time it was over, I was completely exhausted, and I was starving. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. I figured it must have been three or three-thirty in the afternoon when the government vehicles had followed us up to our house. Then a couple more hours of driving to get to this place, then six or seven hours getting questioned. It had to be well after midnight by the time it was all over. I had begun nodding off in between questions.

Agent Thatcher turned out to be kind of a nice guy after all, compared to that Sikes fellow, but he would often ask me the same questions several times, although he would word them slightly different each time. I tried telling him when I had already answered a question earlier, but he would make me keep answering it. A couple of times, he left the room, and I suspect he and Sikes were getting together to compare notes. I got the impression that maybe he felt a little bit sorry for me, with my dad just dying and me in so much trouble.

“We’ve made inquiries, Junior, and we know you’re not a bad kid,” he told me late that night after I guess he had run out of questions to ask me. “And we also know you’re plenty smart. How could a smart, hard-working kid like you fall for a crazy story like that from some girl you didn’t even know?”

“I don’t understand exactly why I listened to her. I guess I didn’t really believe her that much, but I just wanted to be on the safe side, just in case she was right … and she was right wasn’t she? She knew the ambush was going to happen before it did, right?”

He hesitated for a moment as if uncertain how much he should tell me. Then he nodded his head slightly. “We believe that’s true … Son, it’s like this. I’m going to tell your some things about what we know – these are the kinds of things I would normally never share with a suspect – or in your case, a witness. But I feel that I need to keep you informed about some things since we’re going to have to ask for your help. And you probably wouldn’t be willing or able to help us if you didn’t know what’s going on

… You think you might be willing to work with us a little bit?”

“As long as you’re not going to ask me to hurt Cassandra or betray her.”

“No, nothing like that. You would actually be helping her in the long run.”

“Okay, then whatever I can do to help,” I promised.

“Here are some things we know so far. When you and your mother initially called overseas to reach your father three nights ago, that call was received nearly ten minutes before the deadly ambush even took place. So we know that this Cassandra girl had to have prior knowledge of the attack. And that’s our biggest concern, Junior. Initially, we figured we either had to believe her seeing-the-future story or we had to believe she got her information from somewhere else. And, Son, regardless of stories you may have seen on television or the movies, in the real world, people don’t generally see the future – or, at least not that we ever knew about before this. So we weren’t inclined to believe that possibility ... not at first.”

“I believe she did see the future,” I said. “Cassandra’s a good and kind person. She’s not a liar, and she’s not a spy or something. If she was against our country or working for foreign terrorists, then why would she give us information that could help us and hurt them – like about the ambush?”

“Those are the same questions we’ve been asking ourselves, and we still aren’t certain that we have all the answers. But we’ve learned some things that have actually led us to believe some of the most preposterous parts of her story – like how long she’s been alive … Listen, how much actual time have you spent with this girl altogether? How many hours would you say?”

“Well, in the beginning, I talked to her a couple of times, but only for a minute or two each time. Then she rode bikes with me up to our place and stayed there for a little while. That was another half hour or forty-five minutes maybe. And then we talked in her back yard for about twenty or thirty minutes earlier today – maybe a little longer. I’m not sure.”

“So you’ve been able to get to know her for a grand total of about an hour or so?”

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“I know it must sound ridiculous to you, but in the time I’ve spent with her, I really have gotten to know her. She’s a very special girl. Very special.”

“Junior, it’s obvious that you’re crazy about her, and what boy your age wouldn’t be? A girl who looks like that! But whatever else happens, I think it would be in your best interest to stay away from her. There’s something very suspicious about her whole situation.”

“Suspicious?”

“Well, suspicious may not be the perfect word – more like ... dangerous.”

“What’s so dangerous about her?”

“Okay, here are some things that have us concerned. I’ll start with that accent of hers – the real one, not the fake southern accent. Our language experts say she’s originally from somewhere in the Middle East, but he can’t be sure exactly where. So that concerns us. Also, there was no record of her existence anywhere before two years ago – at least no records that make any sense. So she’s made up her entire identity. She was picked up on suspicion of being a runaway two years ago, and since she refused to give the authorities her real name or her parents’ names, the police there in Georgia where she was picked up, sent her picture out to every police station within five hundred miles. But it didn’t match with any missing persons. So she was eventually placed with that Dougall woman.”

“The fat one?”

“Yes, the morbidly obese woman she calls ‘Granny’.”

“You say you’ve heard her accent, and you already know she calls the fat lady ‘Granny’? So, I guess that means you’ve already spoken with Cassandra?”

“She’s right down the hall. We picked her up before we arrested you and your mother.” I felt suddenly very worried for her.

“What did she tell you?”

“Her story about the ambush in Iraq matches yours, and she’s also provided us a lot of additional historical details about her life.”

“You mean about ancient Troy and stuff?”

“Well, yes, there’s that, but it wasn’t just that crazy story. I was more interested in the recent

historical data – what she’s been doing lately – here in the United States. The recent activities I figured we could actually check up on to verify if they really happened. She told us that she’s finally getting tired of being on the run and having to lie all the time about who she is, and having to change identities over and over. She said she had just recently decided to tell us her true story. Then she gave us a fairly extensive list of the mental institutions she claims to have been in over the past fifty years. Of course, we simply couldn’t believe her stories at first because she was obviously not any older than fifteen. How could we believe her? But since then we’ve already been able to contact a lot of those places – the ones that are still in operation – and we’ve learned that it’s very likely that she did spend some time in many of those places – either her or her mother or someone else who looks exactly like her. Some of the institutions she listed have faxed or emailed us photos they had on file after we gave them a detailed description of the girl and the years she said she was in each place.”

“And she really was in those pictures they sent back, wasn’t she?” I asked.

“It certainly appears to be the same girl in all the photos – the oldest photo being from nearly fifty years ago. And she appears to be the exact same age in all of them – about fourteen or fifteen – in every shot. And here’s the most incredible thing we just found out. A couple of the institutions took her fingerprints, and still had them on file. They weren’t in the national fingerprint database because she’s a juvenile and had committed no crimes.”

“And they were really her fingerprints, weren’t they?”

“Yes, they were, Son.”

“So that completely proves she’s telling the truth ... if she has the exact same appearance and fingerprints as some girl in a nuthouse more than 50 years ago. Otherwise, she would have to be nearly seventy years old by now.”

“That’s true. ... Junior, I’m not sure I should be sharing all of this with you, but I need your help with this girl. I need you to convince her to cooperate with us and help us with some … some international projects we’re planning.”

“So you’re planning to turn her into some kind of spy who can see the future. Mr. Thatcher, you’re

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going to get her killed. And if you think I’m going to help you convince her, you can forget about it.”

“Junior, before you start getting too upset, let me finish explaining what’s going on, okay?”

“Alright, I’m listening.”

“I didn’t expect you’d be too eager to talk to her for us, but let me explain why she has to work for us. Why there’s no other choice. It’s not just the old pictures and the fingerprints that have raised some red flags in the Agency. This girl told us she had finally decided she was ready to prove to us who she really is and the fact that she’s capable of seeing into the future. So we tested her out – her ability to predict things that are about to happen – things like that ambush. We asked her about some national security events that we know are about to happen … We know because we’re causing them to happen. And she told us in detail exactly where, when, and how each of those events would transpire in each scenario. So, crazy as it all seems, we’ve had to admit that her story appears to be entirely true; her ancient life in Asia Minor we couldn’t prove, but her ability to tell the future and everything else she’s been saying seem to be bona fide. This whole situation is extremely mysterious. And it’s also extremely promising from a national security standpoint.”

“It’s a strange thing,” I told the agent. “She said nobody ever believed her prophecies in the past. And now, everyone’s believing her all of a sudden.”

“Yeah, she mentioned something about that, too, something about an ancient curse. She thought that maybe the whole curse was broken because you had truly believed her at last. Even if you didn’t act on her warning soon enough, at least you had believed her enough to try to prevent the thing she had warned you about. She said that, because of some things she can feel that are going on with her body, she believes that the curse is finally broken.”

“I guess maybe that means she’ll start getting older now like everyone else. God, I hope so. If only we could grow old together.”

“Only time can answer that question, Junior.”

I know now that it was selfish of me to want her to get old and eventually die like everyone else, but that way, I thought maybe I would have a chance with her for more than just a few years. I’ve been such a selfish fool.

“So what are you going to do with her?” I asked Agent Thatcher. “You can’t stick her in a jail or in some nuthouse. She didn’t do anything wrong.”

“No, but that doesn’t mean we can’t hold her. Once this wild story is completely confirmed, we certainly have to place her somewhere secure, for her own safety … and everyone else’s.”

“Why?”

“Because of what our foreign enemies might do to her.”

“Why would they harm her? She’s just a kid.”

“Think about it, Junior. If they find out we have someone who can predict specific future battlefield situations in advance – ambushes, terrorist attacks, nuclear launches, things like that – do you think the bad guys are going to be really happy about that?”

“No. I see your point ... But can you really keep her safe?”

“We could if she would cooperate. But that’s the problem we’re having. And that’s where maybe you could help us to convince her. She doesn’t want to go into any kind of supervised hiding arrangement, where special agents would be watching over her. She says that would be worse than being in jails or asylums. She said that, at least in the institutions, she had some friends to talk to, but in a supervised safe house, she says she’ll never be free. Plus, she said she would never be safe in that kind of setting. She says that, because some law enforcement agents are corrupt, the bad guys would eventually find out who she is and where she’s being hidden. And she thinks that even the honest Federal agents wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation to communicate electronically with other agencies since they’re so accustomed to conducting their business that way.”

“Maybe she’s right,” I suggested.

“Son, don’t believe everything you see on the movies about so many government agents being corrupt. Most of them are the salt of the earth. And they know how to follow orders. If we tell them not to communicate electronically, they won’t do it.”

“I hope you’re right about that.”

“We know what we’re doing, Junior … But your girl also thinks there are some even more dangerous people following her – a couple of people from her ancient past. She says the only reason they haven’t caught her before is because she has kept moving.

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She claims that if there’s anything about her anywhere in our computer system, her enemies will know about it immediately. And if they’re as powerful as she believes them to be, we may not be able to protect her from them. We’ve already sent a few encrypted messages about Cassandra via the Internet, but if what she says is true about her bad guys, they might be able to decipher the messages, whether or not they’ve been encrypted.”

“Yeah, she said something to Mom and me, too, about those ancient killers.”

“What exactly did she tell you?”

“Nothing much, really. All I know is that one was a guy and one was a woman – her stepmom and her stepmom’s lover I think. They killed her dad and an old boyfriend of hers ... and maybe her real mom, she said.”

“Yeah, that’s what she told our interrogators. I don’t know what kind of power those two might possess … or if they’re really even out there, but she seemed genuinely frightened about seeing them again. Anyway, Junior, I’m going to need your help talking to her about what she has to do. That’s why I’ve told you all this. There’s no way we can let her go. She’s far too valuable an asset for our national security. If we do something stupid now and let her go, she’ll end up in the hands of our enemies, being used against us. And that’s something we’re not ever going to let happen.”

“So what do you want me to say to her?”

“I need you to convince her that going into hiding under government protection is the only viable option.”

“I don’t know if I want to do that. What if the bad guys find her wherever you hide her? What if they kill her? It would be my fault for talking her into it. Did you ever think that maybe she knows something you don’t know? She can see things we can’t see, remember? I don’t want to be the one who talks her into anything that could hurt her.”

“Maybe if you talk to her, and she agrees to go into hiding, we can get her into a perfectly safe hiding place, and then arrange for you to come visit her occasionally ... maybe even live nearby.” Now he had my complete attention.

“So when would you want me to talk to her?”

“How about first thing in the morning after you’ve both had a little rest?”

“Sounds good to me,” I said. A few minutes later, I was in a holding cell, worried that I was too excited to sleep. But almost immediately, I fell sound asleep and slept like a rock for eleven hours.

Chapter 14 – Running for Our Lives

After I woke up, the guard assigned to stand outside my cell spoke into his headset, asking for someone to bring me a meal. “Make it something substantial,” the guard said. “It’s almost suppertime by now, and I don’t think this kid has eaten in twenty-four hours.”

It was a few hours after I ate before Agent Thatcher finally came and led me back in through the labyrinthine hallways and staircases of the federal building. He continued asking me questions as we went along, but now, they were more like the questions a new acquaintance might ask when you first meet him, and he’s just trying to get to know you better. I relaxed a bit, realizing that all of their interrogation must be over with now.

Finally, he stopped and swiped his pass-card in the slot of a secure doorway. The door clicked and swung open automatically. As soon as I had stepped in after him, I saw Cassandra behind a large glass window, sitting at a table. Her head was hanging down a little bit, but she lifted it as soon as I looked her way, and she made perfect eye contact with me as she rose to her feet.

“Cassandra,” I said, stepping over to the window.

“Oh, she can’t hear you in there. It’s a completely soundproof room,” Thatcher told me. I put my hand up against the one-way glass. “And she can’t see you either,” he added. Cassandra had come around the table and was leaning against the glass. She put the palm of her hand up on the glass directly across from my hand and continued gazing into my eyes.

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“Then again, maybe she can see you,” Agent Thatcher mumbled. He still had his key-card out, and he slid it through the slot in the doorway connecting the two rooms. Once we got into the room, she threw her arms around me and hugged her slender frame against me for a long time.

“I told them everything,” she said. “I don’t care anymore what happens to me.”

“Everything’s going to be alright now,” I assured her, patting her back. “I guess these government guys aren’t so bad after all.”

“It’s not the government guys I’m worried about right now,” she told me, taking a step back. Then she looked at Thatcher. “Listen, we’ve got a problem. There are some people on their way here already,” she told him. “They’ll be here any minute … the evil couple I told the other agent about. They will completely destroy this building and kill every living thing in it within minutes if I stay here. I tried to warn the guards, but they acted like I was crazy. You’ve got to get me and Junior out of here quickly ... immediately. And you should clear this building in case they think I’m still inside.”

“Where exactly are these people? And how could they possibly know you’re in here?” He asked her.

“They’re approaching this building right now. They’ve intercepted your messages, so they know I’m in here.”

“What do you think they’ll do?” I asked.

“If they get here before this building is cleared, then we’ll all be dead in an instant.”

“Explain to me again how you can be so sure that they know precisely where you are?” Thatcher asked her.

“As soon as I appear on the grid, they know where I am.”

“The grid?” I said, wondering if this had something to do with football.

“Yeah, the national network – state and local law enforcement, mental facilities, national defense agencies, anywhere they would transmit my fingerprints. The instant my prints hit the Net, then they know exactly where I am. And your guys scanned and transmitted my prints more than three hours ago. By now, they’ve had time to transport themselves all the way from Troy.”

“So you’re just assuming they know where you are because we fingerprinted you? You don’t actually know for sure, right?” Thatcher asked.

“I always know for sure whenever they’ve locked in on me. How do you think I’ve stayed alive so long? And I’m warning you, they’re almost here right now. With all the recent advances in technology, it’s getting harder and harder to stay ahead of them.”

“Why exactly are these people so dangerous?” Thatcher asked casually, sounding like we had all the time in the world.

“Well, first, they’re not even people actually. Not anymore. The female was once married to my father, and the creature she’s with was her lover. They murdered my dad.”

“So, if they’re not people anymore, what are they?”

“Well, in a way, they’re like me since their bodies will never die – at least not from natural causes. But they don’t stay young like I do. There’s nothing left of their bodies now but dry, gray leather husks stretched over brittle bones.”

“So, if these are nothing but a couple of old dried up zombies, what are you so worried about?” He asked.

“I don’t worry about their old skin and bones. It’s what travels around inside those bodies that’s so dangerous.”

“What’s that?!” I hissed in horror.

“These are dark spiritual forces with tremendous powers.”

“Why are they after you?” Thatcher wondered.

“I suspect the god, Apollo, sent them to track me down.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Because I have some things that belonged to him – his sword and his Omphalos.”

“Omphalos? What’s that?” I asked.

“It’s Apollo’s magical stone.”

“Have you got this … this Omphalos with you? If so, I’d like to see it,” Thatcher told her, holding out his hand for it.

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“No, Sir. It’s much too large to carry. Weighs millions of pounds. Anyway, your agents already confiscated everything I had with me, remember?”

“What does this Omphalos do?” Thatcher wondered.

“I don’t have time to explain anything more. Don’t you understand? We have to get out of here right now! … Move!” She had suddenly started shouting loudly at Thatcher by that time, and he had a look on his face like he was trying to make his mind up about something.

He suddenly pulled a small radio from his belt and yelled into it. “Derrick, get the chopper ready to leave immediately! Then get on the intercom and tell all personnel to evacuate the building ... to get as far from the building as quickly as possible. Tell them to run!”

Then he told us, “Follow me – quickly.” He key-carded the door, looked both ways in the hallway, then turned and started literally sprinting toward the stairwell. We ran behind him, then continued flat out running up the stairs about six flights until we burst out through a door onto the roof. There was a helicopter there with its blades already starting to spin. Thatcher ducked his head a little bit, then ran with us over to the machine and helped us up into the cockpit. Then he clambered in.

“Take her up right now! I’ll explain later.” He shouted above the roar of the engine and the giant blades above. The pilot nodded, then started moving the instruments as the helicopter lifted rapidly.

“Which direction are we headed?” He asked.

“West … as fast as she’ll go,” Thatcher said.

I leaned to one side and saw the Federal building and the whole skyline of the sleeping city falling away beneath us. Thatcher was yelling into his radio again.

“Captain Sikes, make sure we get the entire building evacuated immediately! I want everyone out. This is an emergency!”

Captain Sikes’ obnoxious voice squawked on the radio. “Yeah, I already heard an announcement about that just now. What’s up Thatcher? Don’t tell me that freaky little b_____ managed to escape from you already?”

“No, Captain, the young lady in question is sitting here right beside me hearing every word you

say. Now are you going to get that building cleared out?”

“Yes, Sir, I’ll take care of it. I just hope you know what you’re doing. I suspect that psycho little girl’s been jerking you around this entire time.”

“Get off the radio and do what I asked you to do.”

“Yes, Sir. I guess you’re still the boss – so far.” At that moment, the radio made a loud crackling sound and the captain’s voice stopped abruptly. At the same instant, we noticed a glowing that seemed to suddenly fill the night sky behind us.

“Turn this bird around. I need to see what’s going on back there,” Thatcher shouted. The pilot immediately flipped the chopper around and kept it hovering in the air. We saw a horrifying sight in the distance. A huge building – apparently the Federal building we had just left – was glowing brightly as if from a super-hot fire within. Then, that building and several smaller buildings around it seemed to simply melt to the ground.

“Let’s get out of here!” Thatcher shouted above the helicopter’s roar. The pilot swung us back around and continued our rapid flight from the city.

“My mom was in there!” I shrieked with sudden realization.

“Your mother was taken to a hotel more than three hours ago,” Thatcher said.

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. I arranged it myself … But, even as late as it is now, there were still quite a few mighty good people in that building. Damned shame ... So what do you suppose your ancient friends might try next, Cassandra?”

“They’ll keep coming after me. And if there’s anything at all in your communication system that can show where you’ve taken me, they’ll find it. They always do.”

Thatcher frowned. “Cooper, this thing’s running with the special NSA-linked GPS trackers on it, right?” Thatcher asked, addressing the pilot.

“Of course it is,” Cooper answered.

“Any way you could completely dismantle the GPS trackers?”

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“No way that I know of, especially not while I’m up in the air … But I know where there’s a little chopper that we use for black ops – absolutely no tracking mechanisms of any kind. It’s small, but it’s fast. We use it for missions where we’re going to need complete deniability. I can get us to that bird in less than an hour.”

“Perfect. Wake me when we get there.” Thatcher tilted his co-pilot seat back some, stretched his legs out, lay his little golf cap across his face, and appeared to fall asleep immediately.

“Isn’t there any way to stop those fiends?” I asked Cassandra, speaking directly into her ear so as not to wake the sleeping agent.

“Not that I’ve ever figured out.” She took my hand and squeezed it gently. “Sorry I got you into this mess, Junior.”

Chapter 15 – Cassandra’s Love Life

She leaned her head against my shoulder. “I’ll bet you’re sorry you ever saw me out spinning in the field that first day.”

“I’m not sorry about anything that’s happened … except for my dad, of course.”

“In a way, I trapped you into being my friend,” she admitted.

“How? I’m the one who came over to your house first, remember? And you hadn’t even invited me.”

“But I saw you coming, Junior – that day you first saw me spinning in the field – I saw you coming from a long way off. I saw you before you ever even turned your bicycle into the road going up the holler. That’s why I went out and spun around in the field – so you would notice me.”

“Why would you want me to notice you?”

“Because I was bored and lonely, with no one to talk to besides that woman I called Granny … and because I liked you.”

“How could you like me? You had never even seen me.”

“Sure I had. And I had heard your voice. I loved the way you looked and the way your voice sounded, Junior … before I ever met you.”

“But you were surprised that first day when I saw you and shouted at you. I could see from your face that I had startled you by yelling. And then you ran away frightened.”

“I was just faking it – putting on an act. I always have to put on an act so that nobody might begin to guess my powers. That’s what my life has always been like.”

“So, are you faking it right now with me – you know, putting your head on my shoulder and all that?”

“No, Junior. At least I don’t think so. But I’ve learned that most people go through their entire lives never being all that certain about their own sincerity ...” She hesitated and lowered her eyes before looking back up at me. “I’m going to tell you something now, Junior, something I can tell you with absolute certainty that it’s sincere and true ... I’m completely in love with you. But I want to be perfectly honest with you – always ... You need to know some things about me.”

“Like what?”

“Okay, here’s one example. The thing I just told you … about loving you ... I’ve said the same thing to plenty of other boys before, and every time, I’ve meant it.” When she said that, it was like a huge wave of jealousy washed over me.

“I had no idea you had gotten yourself tangled up in that many love affairs before me. I should have known better than to get involved with a girl who looks like you. But I thought you were a good girl,” I told her. I don’t even know why I was speaking to her so harshly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I think you know exactly what I’m talking about,” I said. I must have sounded like a snot-nosed little kid, whining because he had been forced to share his favorite toy with someone else.

She didn’t say anything to deny it, just lowered her head again, so I went even further. “I’ll bet you’ve said ‘I love you’ to at least a hundred other boys in all the years you’ve been alive.” She still didn’t say anything to deny that, and she had turned

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her face away from me. Finally she turned to face me.

“Where I come from, three thousand years ago, by the time people were my age – fifteen – they usually were already married and starting families. Back then, people usually didn’t live past 30 or 40 years of age. Grownup responsibilities had to start early because adulthood didn’t last long.”

“So that’s your excuse for starting love affairs everywhere you went?”

“Listen, I don’t have to justify myself to you ... I only met you a few days ago, and I hardly even know you ... I thought I had seen some kind of future with you, something I hadn’t seen in all those other guys ...”

“All those other guys! My God! How many other guys have there been? ... I’ll bet you can’t even tell me!”

“How should I know! ... A lot! You think I’m going to stay some place for three or four years without anyone to love or anyone to love me? Remember, I don’t have any family like you have – no parents, no brothers or sisters, no one to share my life with. I would have taken my own life from sheer boredom and loneliness if I had forced myself to remain all alone. When you’re fifteen years old, three thousand years is a long time to be alone.”

“When did all of these ... romances start up?”

“Junior, I was already an adult in terms of love and romance before I ever even left Phrygia. I was on the verge of marrying a boy I was in a very serious relationship with when I had to leave there. Claudia and Darius cut my boyfriend’s throat right before I had to escape and run for my life. It was only by a miracle that they didn’t kill me, too .”

“And this boy was ... what? Your lover?”

“What do you think? Yes, he was my lover! We were due to marry two days later.”

“I’ll bet you don’t even have any idea how many boyfriends you’ve had!” She was shaking her head as she started wiping tears from her eyes now.

“A thousand, maybe? How should I know?”

“A thousand boyfriends! You’re nothing but a slut!”

“Stop it, Junior! Don’t talk to me like that! I’ve been alive for thirty-four hundred years, moving from

place to place every three or four years ... I guess that adds up to quite a few boyfriends.”

“You mean you’ve found a boyfriend in every place you’ve ever gone?” I said so loud that the pilot glanced back at us.

“Well, yeah, pretty much. But at least I stayed faithfully with the same guy each place until they outgrew me and I had to move on. It wasn’t like in your world, in your century, where people live together for a few weeks or a few months and then move on to their next shallow, meaningless relationship ... Would you rather I had lived through all those centuries without any friends?”

“Why not some girl friends to share all your troubles with?”

“I tried having female friends at first, but that never worked out too well. With me looking the way I do, none of the females I met ever wanted to have much to do with me. And none of the girls I’ve ever known trusted me to come anywhere near the boys they liked. And the way it’s always worked out, I’ve never shared my troubles much with anyone, male or female. If I had ever done that, all hell would have broken loose ... kind of like what’s been happening with us over the last couple of days ... just because I shared the truth about my life with you.”

“You’re telling me you never told any of your other guys about who you really are or where you’re from or about all your fortune-telling skills?”

“Of course not. I can’t tell anyone anything about myself or my past or where I come from. And that’s one of my problems with having really close female friends. Girls always want to really get to know each other. I’ve had a few female friends, and eventually, they always start asking lots of questions that I didn’t dare answer. Guys don’t generally care all that much, trust me. As long as their needs are being met, they don’t seem to feel much need to learn all the details. Guy friends are a lot simpler to deal with.”

“So you’re saying I was the first person you ever talked to about who you really are?”

“Yeah … well, there were a couple of people thousands of years ago that I tried to warn about the future, but I never told them how I knew, and of course they didn’t believe my warnings anyhow. I’ve never told anyone who I am or what I can do, but since I met you, I’ve told you my whole story, and

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then I told your mom, and over the past few hours, I guess I’ve told half a dozen government agents. At the rate I’m going, I suppose I’ll be on Oprah, telling the whole world pretty soon.”

“So why did you pick me? ... Was I the only one you ever really and truly loved completely?”

She actually laughed at me. “I’m not wanting to hurt your feelings, Junior, but I’m not going to lie to you either; there have been plenty of boyfriends that I truly loved before you, pretty much all of them, each in a different way.”

“But it’s never been like it’s been with me, right? Otherwise, why would you only ever reveal the truth about yourself to me? ... So you must have decided that I was the one you wanted to stay with more than any of the rest.”

“I wish for your sake I could honestly tell you that was true. But the real reason I told you the truth about myself and I didn’t tell any of the others had nothing to do with ... with these romantic notions of yours.”

“Then why?”

“It’s hard to explain.”

“We’ve got plenty of time. Please try to answer my question.”

“Well, okay, Junior. I’ll try. With all the others, I could always see the end from the beginning. I could see the path we would walk down together, like playing a movie in my head in super fast forward. I could always see all the way down that path to the moment when our time together would end – the time when we’d have to split up, and I’d have to run, to move on. And I could also see where that path would have led if I told them all my secrets, and it always would have ended very badly. But the future I could see with you, the path I could see if I revealed to you the truth about myself ... that path didn’t end like all the others.”

Chapter 16 – The End is Near

“So, you finally saw a happy ending with me?”

“No, that wasn’t exactly it either.” She glanced away from me, looking like maybe she was ashamed about something. When she raised her eyes to mine again, she had tears on her eyelashes. “Junior, I hope I haven’t made a terrible mistake.”

“What did you see?” She got quiet again and her eyes slid away from mine. “Cassandra, you’ve got to tell me what you saw in our future? You owe me that much.”

“I didn’t actually see anything.”

“Nothing?! ...”

“Nothing but a solid wall of ... like ... gray slate where the movie of our future together should have continued playing.”

“My God! Then we’re going to die?” I asked, raising my voice. “We’re probably just about to die!”

She gave her pretty head a tiny nod. “There’s a definite possibility that we might.”

“So you chose me to die with? ... We’re probably going to crash and burn right out here in the middle of nowhere.” I had started talking way too loud.

The helicopter pilot glanced nervously back at us. “Is there something going on that I need to be aware of, kids?”

“Everything’s alright,” she assured him.

“And what’s going to happen to my family?” I said, ignoring the pilot. “Are those fiends going to kill them, too?”

She suddenly grabbed both of my hands and shook her head sadly. “Junior, it’s obvious that you’re not understanding this whole situation at all. I’ve never seen that gray slate wall before when I’ve looked into the future, but the truth is, I’ve felt it coming for a long time now ... This isn’t just about you and me and a few of your loved ones. I know those two fiends Claudia and Darius. I know them only too well. I can feel their fury and their power quickly growing. That rock wall I saw in the future wasn’t about you and me dying. I’m afraid that gray slate at the end of our path is the color of the end ... the end of everything ... Are you hearing what I’m telling you?”

“You mean like the end of the world, right?”

“Not just the world. The end of everything. The end of the universe.”

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“So is there anything you can do to stop it? ... Anything we can do?”

“I estimate we have about twenty hours before we hit that gray wall.”

“Twenty hours until the world ends,” I said. “So you just chose me to die with.”

“Unless I can turn the clock back,” she said. Then, without saying anything more, she began tapping on Agent Thatcher’s shoulder. Thatcher sat up immediately and dragged his little golf cap off his face.

“We there already?” He said, glancing around.

“Not yet, Sir,” Cooper told him.

“I’m the one who woke you up, Sir,” Cassandra said. “It’s an emergency.”

“What’s up?”

“I’m seeing something coming up that concerns me.”

Thatcher leaned forward, trying to peer out through the blackness that surrounded the chopper, hurtling through the night. “What is it? I can’t see a damn thing.”

“It’s not something we’re going to run into in the dark, Sir.”

“Well, what then?”

“It’s the end of the world ... the end of the universe,” I said, cutting to the heart of the matter.

“What in hell are you talking about?” He growled.

Cassandra spoke up louder. “We’re trying to tell you that in just under twenty hours, it appears that everything that now exists is going to abruptly disappear.”

“That’s ridiculous. Why should I believe you?”

“You remember what happened to your government building and everything around it about an hour ago? You remember how you hesitated to believe me then and we were almost destroyed, too? That same sudden vaporization is about to happen to everything.”

“God Almighty!” Cooper, the pilot, said with a look of horror on his face.

“There’s nothing you can do to stop it?” Thatcher asked Cassandra.

“There might be ... How fast can you get me to Western Turkey?”

“Why? What’s in Western Turkey?”

“That’s where I hid the Omphalos of Apollo.”

“You mentioned that Omphalos thingy once before. What is it?”

“It’s a giant, very powerful stone formation.”

“Powerful in what way?”

“It can be used in many ... supernatural ways. For example, it can predict the future, just like I can ... But it can also serve as a sort of time portal.”

“Like for traveling through time?”

“That’s right.”

I interrupted them now. “I thought you said you had traveled through time the old fashioned way, by living three thousand years.”

“I’ve never used the Omphalos ... not for time travel anyway.”

“Then how would you know it even works that way?” Thatcher took over, firing one question after another.

“I just know things ... the same way I knew your building was going to blow up ... the same way I know the world’s going to end in less than twenty hours.”

“What size vehicle would we need to move this Omphalos rock thingy?”

“You can’t move it. No one can move it. I can ask it to move itself, and it’ll obey me because I have the key.”

“The key?”

“Right. The Omphalos of Apollo is a huge stone structure – granite – an oracle stone, as big as a very large train car only much, much heavier. But the key to engage the Omphalos isn’t large at all.”

“And you have that key with you?”

“No, Sir, but I know where I buried it. It’s near the stone.”

“Western Turkey’s a big place. How exactly will you find this thing? You haven’t been there for thousands of years. The geography will have shifted

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– erosion and such. And there’s probably a city built there by now.”

“No, there’s not. And the Omphalos is buried not far from an important archeological site – only about fifteen miles from where the ancient walled city of Troy was located, so I can find my way there easily. That’s where I’m from.”

“Well, if it’s anywhere near Troy, then some archeological team has probably broken it up and carried it off piece by piece a long time ago.”

“No, they couldn’t have because I buried it a mile beneath the surface.”

“How could you have done that?” Thatcher wondered.

“Well, it would be more accurate to say that the Omphalos buried itself … because I told it to. It obeys me because I have the key.”

“Cassandra,” Thatcher said in a firm voice, “you need to tell me what it is exactly that you expect to accomplish by going back to ancient Troy.”

“First, I intend to find Claudia and Darius.”

“That’s your stepmother and her boyfriend – the fiends, right?” Cassandra was nodding solemnly.

“And then what?”

“Then I’m going to kill them both, once and for all – their rotten bodies, and their evil spirits should die along with their bodies.”

Thatcher didn’t look shocked or even surprised; he just said, “What’s to say they won’t kill you first? They seem considerably more powerful than you.”

“They won’t kill me first because they’ll never recognize me. I’ll go all the way back to a couple of years before they ever met me. I’m hoping to meet them before they have even developed their tremendous powers.”

Chapter 17 – Lovers’ Quarrel

I spoke up for the first time in a long while. “You can’t kill someone before they’ve even done anything wrong. That would be murder.”

“No, it wouldn’t be because we already know that they’re murderers – that they’re going to kill a lot of people including my father. And, I suspect, my mother, too.”

“Well, don’t expect me to help you kill anybody,” I insisted.

“If we don’t kill them, they’ll kill everybody.”

“Get this straight. I don’t kill people. I’m just a normal kid.”

“C’mon, Junior. You have to help me. I’ve seen you there with me in ancient Troy – You’re a mighty warrior there. I’ve seen you as clear as day.”

“Is that why you picked me as your assassination partner?”

“I didn’t pick anyone. What I want … what I hope will happen … has nothing to do with what actually happens. You’re just there with me. I didn’t make it so. I have merely foreseen it. That’s all there is to it.”

“You can’t make me kill people.”

“Just come with me, Junior. Everything’s going to be alright. You’ll see.” She put her hand on my arm, and I felt the same warm tingling feeling all over – just like I had felt two days earlier when she touched me in the barn beside the milk cows.

“You’ll never find what you’re looking for … no matter how huge it is,” Thatcher warned. “All the landmarks you remember from nearly four thousand years ago are going to have changed by now.”

“Are you going to keep discussing this and asking me questions until our twenty hours are all used up?” She asked him. “Or are you going to get me to Troy while I still might have time to stop what’s coming?”

Thatcher stopped talking, nodded his head once, then pushed a couple of buttons on the dashboard of the helicopter. A monitor turned on showing a GPS screen. “Cooper, I forgot how to zoom out on this thing?”

The pilot, glancing to one side, punched a couple of buttons and the screen zoomed out to show a grid about 200 miles wide. “How fast can you get us to this point right here?” Thatcher pointed to a spot on

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the far right side of the screen and said, “Fourteen miles north of Hebbronville.”

“We should be able to get there within thirty minutes, Sir.” I could already feel the chopper pulling G’s as the pilot turned it sharply. Thatcher had his cell phone out and was pushing buttons.

“You think that’s a good idea ... using your cell phone?” Cassandra asked. “They’ll be tracking us.”

“You want to get to Turkey or not?” He asked.

“Yes, Sir.”

Thatcher started speaking in a fast, urgent voice to someone on his phone. “Get me Mitchell ... This is Agent Jerry Thatcher, NSA ... I’ll be at the HBT secure landing strip in thirty minutes. I’ll need an intercontinental jet, mach two or faster, fully fueled and ready to take off.” He stopped talking for about ten seconds, then added, “This is a category Z7 national emergency. You heard what happened to the federal building in Lexington an hour ago? ... Well that’s going to be happening to the whole country, hell the whole planet, if you don’t get that plane on the runway ... No, I don’t have time to explain what happened ... No, don’t ask anyone for authorization. Our lines are no longer secure. Our encryption is no longer secure. Listen, Mitchell, how long have you known me? ... And have you ever known me to do anything that wasn’t by the book? … Now, I want you to listen carefully to what I’m saying. There is no book anymore. If you don’t have that plane on the ground for us, the book closes. Everything ends. Extinction. ... Well, I appreciate that ... I can’t make any promises, but we’re going to do all we can.” He clicked his phone shut.

“I hope you know what you’re talking about, young lady,” he said over his shoulder. “No ... actually, I hope you don’t know what you’re talking about. I’d be in a lot of trouble, but at least the world would still be around.”

“In this instance, Sir, I have to admit that I’m not as sure as I always have been in the past. I’ve been accustomed to seeing exactly what’s coming, but this time I can’t really see it. I can only feel it coming.”

A few minutes later, we landed at an isolated runway somewhere in West Virginia I guess. I didn’t even ask. We hopped out, keeping our heads down under the helicopter blades and sprinted toward a sleek looking black military jet sitting on the tarmac. As soon as we had climbed the little ladder and

crawled into the porthole in the side of the plane, the plane went screaming down the runway. It must have been going eight or nine hundred miles an hour by the time it lifted off near the end of the runway. Through the jet’s tiny round windows, I saw that giant cones of bright turbo-thruster flames were shooting thirty feet out from the engines on both sides. It scared the hell out of me.

Immediately after lifting off, it felt like we had turned straight upward. We were accelerating so fast I was pinned back against the seat as though a five-hundred-pound gorilla was sitting on my chest. I glanced over at Cassandra and saw that she was looking at me and actually grinning, almost laughing.

“Oh, you think this is funny?” I tried to scream above the incredible roar of the turbo-thrusting jets, but I couldn’t even hear myself, so I’m sure she couldn’t hear me either. After the most powerful acceleration was finally over, Thatcher started waving his hands around, trying to get our attention. He had put a military aviation headset on his head and was holding out two identical headsets toward us. Each headset consisted of fancy earphones that completely covered up each ear, and microphones that hung out right in front of our mouths. We each took a headset and put it on. Immediately, the deafening roar subsided completely.

“Can you hear me?” I heard Thatcher’s voice inside my headset. Cassandra and I both started nodding.

“Okay, see these switches?” He held up a tiny black switchbox that was hanging down from his own headset. “My headset is number one, Cassandra’s is number two, and Junior’s is number three.” He was pointing at the different switches on his little box. “First, you need to turn on your own number so you can hear your own voice. Then, you need to switch on the number of whichever person you’re trying to talk to. You got that?” I held one thumb up, and so did Cassandra. Thatcher continued. “But, unless it’s an emergency, please don’t turn my set on and talk to me. I’ve had only about an hour of sleep over the past 36 hours. We’re traveling Mach two point two, so we’ll have nearly three hours flying time to Western Turkey. I plan to sleep that whole time if possible. And I advise you to do the same. It sounds like you’re going to need to be wide awake when we get there.”

“How fast is Mach two point two?” I asked.

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“About seventeen hundred miles per hour.”

“Good Lord!” I exclaimed.

“Well, there’s no time to waste if Cassandra’s prediction is accurate ... Now you two get some rest.”

He abruptly switched his headset sending unit off. Cassandra and I looked at each other. She was smiling again, like maybe I looked funny.

“What?” I said. She pointed at her ear and shook her head. So I turned my number two switch on and said again, “What’s so funny?”

“The expression on your face. You look all nervous and stressed out ... Haven’t you even flown before?”

“No, my family’s not exactly the jet set type. My dad’s the only one of us who’s ever flown anywhere.”

“Well, you can stop worrying. Mile per mile, flying’s a lot safer than driving.”

“Sounds like you’ve done a lot of flying.”

“A lot more than most kids my age, but then, of course, I’m not really my age. I’ve been flying since planes were first invented … before your great-grandparents were my age.”

“How could you afford all the air-fare? It’s kind of expensive isn’t it? Especially for a teenage girl in foster care.”

“Well, I haven’t really spent much time in foster care. Most of the time I’ve lived with wealthy families. Anyway, flying is only super expensive when you fly first class. But I have to admit, I’ve flown mostly first class. Almost all of my boyfriends have been from wealthy families. A lot of them owned their own jets. I’ve even gotten to sit in the cockpit and fly a few of them myself.”

“For God’s sake!” I shrieked. “No more boyfriend stories! I’ve already hit jealousy overload.”

“I was just answering your question.” She turned her face away from me.

I sat there sulking for a couple of minutes before I said anything else, and I guess she must have been nearly asleep by that time.

“I guess you’re really just kind of a snob,” I eventually said. “Your daddy being a king ... and then living with all those rich boyfriends and such.”

“I was hoping you were finally going to let me get some sleep,” she said, without turning her head back in my direction.

“Sorry to have annoyed the sleeping princess,” I said quietly.

“You’re acting like a big baby, I swear!” she muttered.

“I guess you really had to swallow your pride when you stooped all the way down to my lowly level,” I whined, knowing as I said it that I must sound like the world’s most pathetic loser, but I just plowed forward, apparently determined to make a complete jackass of myself. “No jets or airplane runways on my family’s noble estate. Whatever could have been the attraction for you? Because we know from your own pretty little mouth that it had nothing to do with any of my ‘romantic notions’.”

“Stop this, Junior.”

“No, I want you to answer my question. What’s the real reason you’ve pretended to like me so much? Why did you trot out in that field and twirl around for me? Just because you knew I would listen to your prediction about my dad?”

“No! I told you, I liked you before that. I revealed my secret life to you even before you believed me about your dad. I let you know who I really was. I’ve never allowed any other boy to know who I am and how long I’ve been around. If I had told all those other boys the truth about myself, then everyone on earth would know about me by now. You’re the only one. Think about it.”

“So before you met me, you’re still claiming that you had never even told a single one of your richy-rich little boyfriends, anything about how long you’ve been around or any of that stuff?”

“I’ve already answered this question, Junior ... But let me ask you a question … Why do you think I’ve let you see who I really am after hiding my true identity from everyone else for more than three thousand years? ... And why do you think I’ve finally revealed my true identity, not only to you but to the authorities who, at the rate they’re going, are almost certain to get me killed? … “

“Well, you didn’t really do me any favors either.”

“Oh, my God, Junior! Can you hear yourself? At least most of my other boyfriends would have been

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more concerned about the danger I was in than the danger I put them in.”

“So now you’re going to compare me unfavorably to all your other lovers?” She gave her head a little shake and got a very angry look on her face. Then she tilted her reclining seat all the way back and rolled over so that I could no longer see her face. Since she didn’t seem to be planning to turn back over and talk to me, I kept on trying to talk to her.

“So, is this how you always end arguments with your lovers? Just roll over and pretend like they don’t exist?”

I saw she had the little headset switchbox in her hands and was messing with it. A couple of seconds later I saw that the tiny red indicator light on the top of her headset went off. I called her name a couple of times, but she apparently wasn’t hearing a thing, so I reached over and gently put my hand on her arm. Suddenly, she started swinging her hard little fist back, smacking my arm three times before I could get it out of her reach.

I sat there, staring down at her. Lying down like that, with her back to me, she seemed so small and vulnerable. Within a couple of minutes, I noticed her shoulders and the side of her chest were kind of shaking, and I realized she was crying. In that moment, I felt fully what a cowardly, unfeeling jackass I was being. Here was the most beautiful girl in the world, absolutely, and she had given up her safety – and very likely her life – trying to save the world from the forces of evil. And when it came time for me to support her efforts, all I had done was to call her a whore and sit around pouting and feeling sorry for myself. Chances were good that, with my attitude, this whole “rescue the world” adventure would end in dismal failure, and it would all be my own fault. At that moment, more than anything I had ever wanted before, I longed to touch her shoulder, to kiss her, to beg for her forgiveness.

But knowing better than to try touching her again, I sat back down and reclined in my chair. As tired as I was, I guess I must have fallen asleep less than a minute later.

Chapter 18 – In Turkey

When I opened my eyes again, the airplane tires were shrieking loudly as we touched down somewhere, apparently somewhere in Turkey judging by the ancient stone houses and the domed roof of a Muslim mosque in the distance. It was already daylight, and I could see that Cassandra had moved to the other side of the plane where she was looking out one of the tiny windows. Thatcher was awake and looking out the windows as well.

“Are we in Turkey already?” I asked. Nobody looked at me, so I turned on the number one switch so Thatcher could hear me.

“Is this Turkey?” Thatcher turned my way and gave me a thumbs up. Then I heard his voice in my headset.

“I’ve got a four-wheel-drive vehicle waiting at the end of the tarmac,” he said. “The place we’re going is only an hour or so further on from here, Cassy says.”

“She prefers to be called Cassandra,” I said.

“Then that’s what I’ll call her … Can you still hear me, Cassandra?” She glanced back at him and nodded, but she didn’t even look at me.

As we pulled in next to a hangar at the end of the runway, I saw a camouflaged SUV waiting, with a huge machine gun attached to the top, complete with a big soldier standing ready to man the gun. Another soldier was standing beside the driver’s side door. The driver started walking toward our plane as we clambered down the little ladder thing to the ground.

“Are you Mr. Thatcher?” He asked, popping a brief salute.

“Yes I am, Captain, and these young folks are Cassandra and Luther.”

“You can just call me Junior,” I told him as he shook my hand.

“Alright, Junior.” He looked back at Thatcher. “I’m Captain Willard Johansen. But you can call me Cap’n Joe. … This is our limousine.” He pointed at the rugged, dusty SUV, and we all started getting in. I was hoping Cassandra would sit in the back where I got in, so maybe I could apologize for the way I had talked to her, but she got in front and sat between

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Thatcher and the captain. The gunner remained standing at his gun on the back. As soon as we were in the vehicle, Cap’n Joe turned to Thatcher, wasting no time. “What coordinates will we be shooting for this morning, Sir?”

“Cassandra here will tell you which turns to take. Just follow her instructions.”

He glanced doubtfully at the rather small teenaged girl beside him, saying, “This is a big country, young lady, and there won’t be many road signs. Are you familiar at all with Turkey?”

“Let’s go,” was all she said, indicating with a pointing finger that he should go to the right. He took off slowly, still looking doubtful.

“We don’t have time to be going five miles an hour, Captain,” she informed him.

“Well, I had no idea how far we’d be going on this road, and I didn’t want you missing your turns.”

“We’ll be on this road for another forty-six and a half kilometers. Check your odometer. At that point, you’ll take a left on a small dirt-track road that will lead you back into a little village now known as Zeytinli Koyu ... Are you familiar with the place, Captain?”

“No, can’t say that I am, but it sounds like you know exactly where we’re headed.”

By that time we were already barreling down the narrow roadway about a hundred miles an hour. I was wondering how the gunner outside would manage to hang on. I tightened my seatbelt and held onto the armrest, watching through the window as a blur of scrubby little trees flew by.

It seemed like only a few minutes later when we turned off and drove into a small town with tiny stone buildings. It appeared as though about half the houses had fallen to pieces, leaving nothing but heaps of stones.

“What happened to the houses?” I asked.

“They’ve had a lot of earthquakes recently in this region,” Captain Joe said.

“They’ve always had a lot of earthquakes in this region,” Cassandra said. Then, as we were driving out of the village, she added, “Turn in here.” She was pointing left, and the captain already had the vehicle half turned when he came to a stop.

“This isn’t a road, Ma’am. This is someone’s yard.”

A couple of young children had spilled out the front door of the little rock house there and were staring at us with their mouths hanging open.

“Let me talk to them,” she commanded, gesturing impatiently with her hands for the captain to climb out of her way.

“All due respect, Ma’am. But in this country, females don’t just climb out and talk to strangers in the street.”

By this time, Thatcher had already scrambled out on his side and was holding the door open for Cassandra, who slid out right behind him.

Thatcher put his head back into the vehicle and spoke to the captain. “Sorry, Captain Joe, but we don’t have any time to worry about local customs and taboos right now. Please just do as she asks.”

Then we were all following Cassandra toward the stone house. I could see, at the far edge of the woman’s property a steep drop-off leading down into a deep arroyo. About the time we got over to the door, a small woman came out, looking somewhat nervous. The captain hurried over and began trying to tell the woman something, but his Turkish language skills were obviously very limited. After stumbling through a few words, he pointed at the vehicle and started pantomiming like he was driving it; then he began jabbing his hand toward the side of her house. Now she looked truly alarmed. I guess she thought he was planning to ram the vehicle through the side of her house.

At this point, Cassandra kind of moved sideways a little bit in front of him and started speaking to the little lady in what sounded like the same language the woman had been using, and Cassandra wasn’t stumbling over her words. She was speaking extremely fast and forcefully. The lady was answering, and soon they seemed to be arguing or bartering about something.

Cassandra finally stopped arguing abruptly and told the Captain, “Give her twenty Turkish Lira and she’ll let us cut through her property ...” He didn’t answer immediately. “C’mon, Captain. That’s like three bucks.” She added, sounding like she was getting impatient.

“I only have Euros,” he said.

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“They don’t have much use for Euros here,” she told him.

“Here, take my watch.” Agent Thatcher was trying to hand the lady his watch. “Tell her this watch is worth two thousand Turkish Lira.” Cassandra immediately rattled off a few words in Turkish and suddenly the little woman was all smiles with her hand out for the watch.

One minute later, we were bouncing along wildly through the brush behind the village. Apparently the countryside in these parts consisted primarily of huge stones and small, dry-looking bushes with big scaly lizards running in and out of them. Captain Joe asked Cassandra the same question I was too timid to ask.

“So why did you have to do all that negotiating back there? Why didn’t we just drive a couple hundred yards further past the village and then turn off into the brush?”

“Because, to go any further past her house, we would have had to cross a bridge going over a deep gorge, and we never would have gotten back across that gorge. Surely you noticed the huge ravine back there right beside her property.”

“Yeah, how could I not have noticed … So how do you know the terrain so well hereabouts, and the language? Did you live in this region at one time? ... I noticed you had some kind of slight accent.”

“I lived here a long, long time ago. But I’ve come back occasionally just to check on things.”

He snickered and said, “You talk like you’re as old as Methuselah, but you’re obviously just a teenager – barely even a teenager.”

“Looks can sometimes be deceiving, Captain Joe,” Thatcher said mysteriously. The entire time they were talking, their statements were punctuated with pauses and grunts as the vehicle’s tires crashed up over boulders and down into cracks in the hard, dry terrain.

“So what are you trying to say?” The captain said, glancing over at the government agent. “Are you suggesting this girl’s had some kind of plastic surgery to make her look younger, when she’s really much older?” He turned his gaze toward Cassandra and looked her over carefully. “Cause I don’t believe it. I’ve seen plenty of older, remodeled ladies, and she ain’t one of those.”

“Captain,” Thatcher told him, “I’m afraid I can’t enlighten you any further.”

“Top secret stuff, eh? Only on a need-to-know-basis. I think I understand.”

“Well, I doubt that, Captain. Even if I told you the truth, you would never believe it.”

“Bear more to the left now,” Cassandra said, pointing with her whole hand as if she was delivering a karate chop in the air. “We’re getting too far away from the arroyo.”

“I’m staying clear of it intentionally. The sides of that ditch drop straight down, like a cliff three hundred feet high.”

“But we have to get back there,” she insisted. “That’s where we’re headed.”

“We’re going down into that gorge?” He sounded alarmed.

“Well, not all of us,” she told him. “Junior and I have to go down to the bottom of the gorge to find the entrance of the … the passageway we need to take.”

Since Thatcher had acted like we shouldn’t share our secrets with the captain, I leaned forward and spoke to Cassandra right beside her ear. “You still want me to go with you back to the past?”

“What choice do I have?” She answered without even lowering her voice. “In our future that I’ve seen (which will be the past we’re about to go to) you’re there. So I’m stuck with you it seems.”

Captain Joe gave her a puzzled glance. “You’re talking way over my head, young lady.” Then he started objecting again about us trying to climb down into the gorge. “I doubt you two kids will ever get down there without climbing gear ... And you probably don’t even know the first thing about rock climbing.” He turned to Thatcher. “You planning to let these kids go off on a suicide hike like this on their own?”

“She knows what she’s doing.” Thatcher said without hesitation.

About half a minute later, Cassandra told Captain Joe to stop the vehicle, that we could walk from there. Thatcher opened the door and got out, with clouds of desert dust from our tires still blowing past him. She slid across to hop out after him, but then I said, “Wait a second. I’ve decided I’m ... not

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going. Remember what I said before, Cassandra. I’m not going to help you kill people … no matter how bad they are.”

“Please, Junior, you have to.” She reached out to put her hand on my arm where I was leaning against the back of the seat, but I yanked it out of her reach before she could send another jolt of her warm tingling magic through me to change my mind.

“Why don’t you take Captain Joe? He’s a soldier. He’s probably used to killing people and that kind of thing.”

“Son,” Captain Joe told me, “you don’t ever get used to killing someone. Anyway, there’s no way I could go with you. I have four hundred ground troops waiting for my leadership. And I haven’t been authorized to run off on some spy run to who knows where … I’ve been instructed to drive you were you need to go. If the drive ends here, then my participation in the mission ends here.”

“Please, go with her, Captain. If she takes me with her, she’s gonna get killed. We’ll probably both get killed.”

The captain was shaking his head. “There’s no way I can go running off into the desert, chasing bad guys down gorges and such. I would find myself facing court martial proceedings as soon as I came back ... Anyway, I get the impression that Mr. Thatcher here doesn’t want me tagging along ... Listen, Junior, I don’t know what’s going on here, with the NSA sending young kids off on their own to run suicide missions ...” He glanced over at Thatcher again when he said that. “... But you look like a big, strong kid. If this excursion has to be made, and you’re the kid who has to make it, then, seems like it’s time for you to man up.”

I gave him a dirty look, but climbed out of the vehicle finally. Thatcher also stepped out and started cautioning us about not taking unnecessary risks. I could have told him he didn’t have to tell me that. Once Cassandra and I had our backpacks on and were ready to set off, we lingered for a minute beside the vehicle, and Cassandra started talking to him.

“Whatever happens, Mr. Thatcher, I just wanted to thank you for at least trying to help me. I’m not exactly sure how this is going to play out. If I’ve foreseen things correctly, then, once we’ve entered the Omphalos, time will not continue to pass here in the present day. When we return to this exact spot in

time – if we’re even able to return – when we step from the Omphalos everything should be exactly as it was when we entered it ... But it’s hard for me to tell for sure, because I’ve never had to deal with two possible futures. Maybe that’s why all I can see is the slate grey stone. It could happen that something we do when we go back will alter the future completely. In fact, that’s exactly what I’m hoping for. But if something goes wrong – like if time continues passing here in the future while Junior and I are back in the past, or if we do something that results in our world destroying itself, then I suppose everything will be over and we won’t see you again.”

“What do you mean, everything will be over,” I asked. “We could just come back to the time right before everything gets destroyed. We would still be back before something went wrong, and we could still fix the problem by getting rid of the bad guys in the past. Wouldn’t that automatically change the future for the better?”

“We might not even know that something went wrong in the future. I’m going to be honest. Right now everything is upside down. Right now, the immediate future is the ancient past. For once in my life, I don’t really have any clear idea what’s going to happen in whatever future we end up moving toward. Maybe there are so many different possibilities right now that everything has begun to blur into a grey blank where I should see the future. I don’t know.”

“All the worrying in the world isn’t going to help us. Let’s just get this thing done … We’ll be waiting right here when you come back up out of that gorge,” Thatcher said. He held one hand up slightly, without waving it, and we did the same.

Chapter 19 – Taking a Giant Step Back

The trek down into the ravine was pretty rough, especially because we were in such a hurry, but, by some miracle, we made it without hurting ourselves. The smaller gorge that led down into the huge one was comparatively easy, with no huge cliffs to climb down.

As soon as we reached the bottom, we looked up at the massive cliffs all around us and I whistled in

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amazement. “I can’t believe we made it all the way down here!” But I noticed she wasn’t even paying any attention. She was getting a tool out of her backpack. It was a little garden digging tool, like the hoe I use to dig weeds in our garden back home, only the handle of hers was much shorter. Then she looked around for about twenty seconds before dropping to her knees and starting to dig beside a big boulder.

“You’re going to try to dig a mile down to the Omphalos with that tiny thing?” I asked.

“No, silly, this is where I hid the key.” I noticed that she was beginning to uncover a black stone buried in the dirt. The stone was almost perfectly round. She was tugging at it and grunting, so I got down beside her.

“Here, let me try,” I said. I wiggled my fingers down into the dirt around the stone, which she had already loosened up some; then I gave it a mighty tug, and it moved a tiny bit. The stone was only about eight inches across – a little bit smaller than a bowling ball – but it was extremely heavy. After a couple more mighty tugs, I managed to roll it up on top of the ground.

“How can you use something this round as a key?” I asked.

“Here, I’ll show you.” She rolled it halfway over, and I saw what looked like a deep impression of a human hand on the other side of the stone. Cassandra put the palm of her hand into the impression and tried to turn it, but it didn’t budge. “We have to unscrew the top of the stone. The key’s inside.”

“Here, let me try it.” I put my big palm on the stone, and it obviously was designed for a man-sized hand and fingers because mine fit into it perfectly. But when I tried to rotate the top of the stone, the entire stone turned. Cassandra grabbed the bottom half of the stone with both hands to hold it still, and I tried to twist the top half off again. I finally felt it start to give, and almost immediately, the top of the stone tumbled off.

Inside, I saw a bright, pale green piece of stone. From the side, the green rock thing seemed to be shaped like a capital letter E. Cassandra, still kneeling in the dirt, got a faraway look in her eyes and touched the green rock with her fingertips.

“Is that the key?” I asked her. She nodded reverently. “Looks like nothing but a big green E to me,” I added. “Wouldn’t it be easy enough for

anyone to make themselves a copy of a key that simple?”

“It just looks like an E from the side,” she said. “It’s actually a miniature representation of the Delphic tripod – That’s the three-legged chair the oracle sits upon when he or she is making prophecies. I have sat on the Delphic tripod many times myself when I was the oracle in the temple.” Then she lifted the green stone from the slot it was resting in, and I noticed that it was indeed three-dimensional. She sat it down on the ground, and it stood up on its own, like a tiny three-legged stool.

“What’s the key thing made out of?”

“It consists primarily of Chinese jade, but the feet are sapphire and two rubies.” She held it out closer to me, and I saw that, on the ends of two of the legs, there were dark red stone feet, while the third foot was a brilliant blue color. And I saw that the blue and red colored gemstones had been cut a certain way so that they would be interlocking with the green stone of the legs.

“This is pretty cool! Who made it?” I asked her.

“No one knows … No human being knows at least. It had been around for a long, long time before I was ever born – at least ten thousand years. They say it was fashioned by the gods at the same time when they made the Omphalos of Apollo.”

“And how soon do we get to see that Omphalos thingy?”

“As soon as we turn the key.” As she said that, she inserted the three feet of the tiny stool thing into three perfectly spaced square holes in the flat center of the round black stone we had dug up. When she pushed down on the little stool, I heard a distinct clicking sound.

A couple of seconds passed, and nothing happened. “It didn’t work,” I said, feeling very disappointed.

“That’s because we haven’t turned the key, silly. Here, you hold onto the stone, and I’ll turn the key.” I grabbed the bottom of the stone with both hands, and she turned the key slowly as if it was difficult for her to move. When it was turned about one-fourth way around, there was another clicking sound.

What happened right after that scared the hell out of me. It was like the whole earth started shaking like

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crazy under my feet. I felt as though I was about to fall down and start bouncing around.

“What the hell have we done?” I shouted dropping to one knee and holding tight to the big stone nearby.

“Don’t worry. It’s just the Omphalos moving.”

“Where is it moving?”

“It should pop up right over there … where that little crater is.” She pointed behind me, and I whipped around expecting some huge rock to spring out of the ground and land right on me. “Calm down, Junior! It takes a few minutes for it to get up here. Remember, it was a mile beneath the surface. The vibrations are going to get a lot worse than this as it gets closer to the surface.”

She was certainly right about that. For the next twenty minutes, until that thing came crashing up into our view, the whole gorge was bouncing around so bad that big boulders from the tops of the cliffs were crashing down all around us.

“Bring the keystone,” she shouted. “We’d better move out into the center of the gorge just in case,” She didn’t have to tell me twice. Once we were out in the middle of the gorge, she said, “Keep an eye out in case a falling rock is bouncing right at us. We might have to dodge out of the way.” And sure enough, about five seconds later, we had to run for our lives from a huge boulder tumbling from a cliff above us.

“You saw that coming before it ever even came loose, didn’t you?” I shouted. She was grinning at me.

“At least I warned you … And right about now, we had both better step back this way a bit.” I followed her quickly away from the little crater, and it was fortunate I did because at that instant a giant stone formation, about as wide as a train car but twice as long, came crashing up from inside the earth, throwing out great stones and piles of dirt in all directions.

“Holy hell!” I screamed in terror. The thing flopped over on its side right in front of us with a mighty boom and its impact shook the ground so much that Cassandra and I both fell flat on our butts.

“There she is, Junior! The Omphalos of Apollo – the vessel that will carry us into the ancient past.”

“How can we get into it? It looks like a solid rock.” Actually it looked more like an enormous, fat screw made of stone.

“All we have to do is move the key another quarter turn.” We walked back and turned the key until it clicked again.

“Nothing happened,” I said since I hadn’t heard anything but the little click, and the earth hadn’t quaked.

“Look at the Omphalos.” I glanced over and was astonished to see that a door had opened up without any sound at all. The open door wasn’t at the sharp end, which was shaped like the end of a screw, but at the opposite end, which was flat. “Let’s go back to Troy!” She shouted, grabbing the black stone with the key in it. I followed her over and stepped up into the Omphalos doorway.

Inside, it wasn’t completely dark as one might expect inside a giant rock. There was no obvious source of light, but I noticed that all of the rock of the Omphalos was giving off a dull, phosphorescent glow. Then the chamber suddenly got noticeably darker, and when I looked behind me, I saw that the doorway had disappeared without a sound. It wasn’t like it simply closed. It looked as though there had never been a doorway there at all. I instantly began feeling claustrophobic.

“Oh Great Omphalos!” Cassandra chanted. “You know where we need to go. Please transport us there.” I felt a deep sort of vibration around me – or more accurately, inside myself. I couldn’t hear anything, but I could feel that vibration deep in my chest and in my bones.

“Wait! Shouldn’t we strap ourselves in or at least hold on to something before this thing takes off?”

“Don’t get excited, Junior. I believe we’ve already reached our destination.”

“How could we have? We didn’t go anywhere. You didn’t even tell the machine where to take us.”

“He doesn’t need telling. He knew where I wanted to go.”

“He? He, who?”

“He … the Omphalos! If you’re in possession of the key – if you’re the one who turns it on, he automatically knows where your heart desires to go.”

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“So you think this rock already took us back in time?”

“Well, let’s take a look.” As she walked toward the place where the door had been, the opening suddenly appeared again and we went outside, stepping easily down to the ground.

“See? Exactly the same as it was before,” I said after we had walked out, and the doorway had disappeared behind us. “It’s obvious we never went anywhere.”

“Do you see the pile of dirt and stones where he came up out of the ground?” I looked around wildly in the direction of the crater, where all the rocks had been thrown up, and now it looked like nothing but the unbroken bottom of a rocky ravine. “And where’s the hole I dug up to get the key over there?” She was pointing toward the smaller ravine we had walked down to reach the bottom of the gorge. There was no hole dug beside the big rock now.

Chapter 20 – In Olden Times

I scratched my head and let out a low whistle. “Dang! This is too weird!”

I helped dig a new hole by the rock and we reburied the key to the Omphalos. “Come along,” she commanded, moving toward the place we had entered the gorge earlier. I followed her for about ten steps, then stopped.

“Wait, you’re not just gonna leave this Omphalos thing lying down here are you? What if someone comes along and steals it? We would be stuck here to live and die in some cave man era.”

“This is not a cave man era, Junior. And nobody could possibly move the Omphalos anywhere unless they had the key, and we have that.” She held up the green stone key to prove it.

“So, what’s your plan right now?”

“First thing we need to do, I guess, is bury the key again. Then we should think about getting ourselves some clothing from this century so people don’t think we’re from outer space.”

“It won’t matter much how I dress cause, as soon as I open my mouth, and people hear me speaking some language they’ve never heard, they’re gonna know I’m not from anywhere around here,” I said. “Maybe you should just tell people I’m a deaf mute. That way, I wouldn’t ever have to speak their language.”

“Maybe that’s not a bad idea,” she said. “We might try that.” After we buried the black bowling ball thing under a little pile of rocks, we had some hard work climbing back up out of that gorge – harder than it had been climbing down – and we were both huffing and puffing and dripping with sweat by the time we got up on the plateau and started looking around.

On a hillside not far in the distance, we saw what appeared to be a small flock of sheep being watched by a boy who looked to be about twelve years old. As we slowly approached him, we eventually realized the animals he was tending were goats, not sheep. The boy backed away from us in horror when we started getting closer. Cassandra called out to him in a language that sounded remotely similar to the Turkish she had been rattling off earlier when she was bartering to cut through the Turkish lady’s yard in the modern-day village, but this language she was using now was noticeably different, with strange little upturns at the ends of certain words and with some exotic sounding guttural noises coming from the back of her throat.

The young goat herder, who had obviously been poised to turn and run like a rabbit when we first approached him, had very quickly calmed down as soon as she started talking to him. But he was still staring wide-eyed and looking us up and down, dressed as we were in our modern day garb. After she and this kid had been chattering at each other ninety miles a minute for a long while, I finally pulled her away gently until we were thirty or forty feet away from him.

“Did you tell him I was deaf?” I asked.

“Nah, as soon as I started talking and I saw the wide-eyed way he was staring at us, it gave me a different idea on what to tell people. So we don’t have to worry about this kid. He’s ready to do anything we tell him.”

“Why? What have you been telling him?”

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“I just explained to him that you and I are young gods who have come down from the heavens because we wanted to find out what earthly people are like – maybe live down here for a while just to experience what human life is all about.”

“And he believed you?”

“The way we’re dressed, what else could he believe?”

“What if he talks to me? I won’t understand a word he’s saying. Then he’ll know for sure that I’m no god.”

“Don’t worry. I already took care of that. I told him that you are a very high level, important god from a distant star system where everyone talked and acted very strangely.”

“Thanks a lot!”

“You’re welcome ... “Come on. This is fun. For me, this entire scene brings back ancient memories. Let’s talk to him some more. I’m trying to get him to give us some regular clothing from this time period so we can blend in better.”

I started shaking my head. “No way. I can smell his ‘regular clothing’ from here, so no thanks on that.”

“Come on, we need the clothes. Don’t act so high and mighty.”

“I’m a god, remember. I’m probably expected to act high and mighty. And as a god, I’m entitled to dress any way I like, right?”

“Maybe from now on I should tell everyone that you’re just my stable boy.”

“Ha ha,” I muttered without enthusiasm as we walked back to the smelly kid. When I got up close, the smell was truly overpowering, and his skin was shining all over with oiliness. His hair was so greasy that it looked like one big wet clump pasted to the top of his head.

“How!” I said, holding my palm up like an American Indian in a bad western movie, and then I gave him the Star Trek salute with my fingers held apart, two fingers sticking out on each side. The smelly kid tried unsuccessfully to make his own Star Trek salute back at me. He looked enthralled, like he couldn’t wait to fall down and worship me or something. And then, sure enough, he dropped down on one knee right there with his head bowed down a

bit and started blabbering toward my feet in a humble tone.

“What the hell is he saying?” I asked her.

“He asked me to beg you to you take mercy on his family and to always remember that he was right here to help you when you first arrived on this world.” She turned and chatted some more with the kid. I could tell from the kid’s facial expressions that he had much more fear and reverence for me than he had for her.

“I’m actually starting to feel a little godlike,” I confided to Cassandra, with a little grin on my face. But then, about two seconds later, as the kid was pointing off into the hills where, I suppose, he was telling us we had to go to get some goat-smelly clothing to wear, I suddenly felt Cassandra kick me pretty hard in the butt with the pointy toe of her tennis shoes.

“Hey,” I hissed at her, but she was already standing perfectly still as if she hadn’t just kicked me. She seemed to be giving her full attention to our primitive guide, with a smile of innocent benevolence on her face. This moment of playfulness on her part made me feel suddenly elated. Perhaps, I thought, she had decided to forgive me for my childish jealousy earlier on the plane.

“This kid – Ichtar is his name – he says his village is only a couple of miles in that direction. He can’t go with us, since he has to stay here with the goats, but he told me how to find his mother’s home. He told me that we should tell his mother that Ichtar said you could have his father’s old tunic. His father apparently died recently. The tunic was meant for Ichtar after he grew into it, but he wants you to have it.”

“What is a tunic? I’ve never heard of it.”

“It’s the same little short robe thing Ichtar’s wearing, only a bit larger I’m sure, since it was his father’s.”

“I’m not wearing that mini-skirt thing,” I said flatly.

“Don’t be so stubborn. If you don’t dress the part, we may never get out of here alive. Claudia and Darius will hear all about us pretty soon if we act too conspicuous, and they’ll kill us long before we ever get near them.”

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“But if we’re pretending to be gods from some faraway galaxy, why would we even need to dress like these guys.” We could stay in our modern clothes and keep everyone believing that’s what faraway gods wear. They would all be falling at our feet like this guy.”

“No, this story might fool some people out here in the sticks, but it won’t fool the people we’re after. By the time we head for the city of Troy, we’ll have to dress like contemporary natives so that Claudia and Darius don’t hear rumors about us before we even get there. Reports of visiting gods would have Claudia scrutinizing us very closely. We need to take those evil creeps completely by surprise. Come on, Junior. Quit being such a wimp. Smelly clothes aren’t going to hurt you.”

“Would I get to wear anything under that thing at least, or do I have to walk around in a miniskirt that barely even covers my bare butt and groin?”

“They generally wear a loincloth underneath, wrapped around their private area.”

“Loincloth? You mean that grownup diaper-like thing ... like what the Natives Americans would wrap around their groins in the old movies?”

“Yeah, I guess that’s a fairly accurate description of a loincloth.”

“Well you can forget about that. I’m not wrapping up in someone else’s smelly old used diaper. No way!”

She just ignored me and started babbling to Ichtar again. Then she turned to me and said, “Follow me. We’re going to the village.”

More than an hour later, we were still slogging along in the sun, dying of thirst. I had finished off our last water bottle a few minutes earlier. Finally, I said, “We’re completely lost. Admit it.”

“We’re on the goat trail Ichtar said to follow. Just be patient.”

“How would you even know if we were on a goat trail?”

“See those?” She was pointing down at a small pile of little shiny black balls along the track we were following. “Those are goat droppings.”

Chapter 21 – Visiting an Ancient Village

Sure enough, within five more minutes, we saw the village. The little stone houses in this village looked exactly the same as the houses had looked in the modern day Turkish village earlier, except none of these had any electric lines running into them.

“Where to now?”

“He said his mom’s house has three olive trees in the yard with a small border of white stones around the trunk of each tree.” So we wandered around, looking for the house, which wasn’t easy since the houses were arranged haphazardly, with little footpaths running all through them. But eventually, since there were only about a hundred houses in the village, we were able to find what looked like the right one.

We stopped outside a house with three olive trees, and Cassandra said something loudly through the front door, which was standing wide open. A small, dark woman appeared suddenly as if she had been crouching right beside the door. She spoke a few words in a trembling voice, and Cassandra responded. Then the woman spoke to someone behind her – someone we couldn’t see in the darkness. A second later, a lad, maybe a year or two younger than Ichtar, emerged, squeezed past us, and trotted away.

“What’s going on? What did you tell her?”

“I told her basically the same thing I told Ichtar – that we’re visiting gods and that you’re from a distant galaxy – but she doesn’t act as gullible as the kid was. I don’t think she believed me ... It would help if you started acting more godlike and less like a scared little boy.”

“Well, excuse the hell out of me! I haven’t had all your centuries of experience practicing to act like a snob.” I was getting tired of her treating me like dirt. At that point, I didn’t care what the lady in the doorway thought of me yelling in front of her. I guess I sounded furious. But what happened next shut me up in a hurry. Cassandra fell down on her knees in front of me, bowing her head down.

“Oh wise and powerful one,” she kind of wailed at me. “Please do not reduce me to a puddle of mush.

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Please do not turn me into a fish flopping around on the ground.”

“What in heck are you talking about now?” I asked, crouching down beside her.

“Listen!” She hissed. “This lady just sent her son to fetch the village elders because I guess she didn’t believe we were who I said we were. They’ll be here any minute now to examine us and question us about our story. They have to believe us or we’re likely to find ourselves suddenly being stoned to death. That’s how poor villagers preferred to execute people back in these days.”

“What exactly did you tell her?”

“I told her that you were some top level god from a faraway star, and that I was just a junior god acting as your servant, your slave.”

“Oh great! Why couldn’t you be top goddess and I could be the slave?”

“Because in this culture village women aren’t ever the leaders, only the lowly servants. You have to be the god in charge.”

“I can’t convince them of anything because I don’t know a single word of their language. Can’t you understand that?”

She kept her eyes lowered. “It doesn’t matter what you say, Junior, as long as you keep talking. Then I can pretend to translate for you and tell them all sorts of profound truths about things that are about to happen. Like, right now talk to me for a minute in a serious tone of voice, and I’ll pretend to translate for you. Go on! Start talking! Say anything. Hurry!”

I stared into her eyes, desperately trying to think of something to say. And then I just started talking – telling her the whole truth. “You remember that day in the milking barn when you told me my father was going to be killed?” She was nodding. “And remember how you were touching my hands and rubbing the oily udder cream into my hands, trying to calm me down?” She was nodding again. “I just want to let you know that I fell completely in love with you that day ... Oh, I was plenty attracted to you before that, but that day was when ... when my heart became your slave. So it doesn’t make much sense for you to pretend that you’re my slave ... when it’s probably obvious to everyone that I’m your slave.”

She stared at me for several seconds as if she wanted to say something in reply, but then she just

hopped up, turned to the lady in the doorway and started talking fast in her ancient language. The lady kept glancing over at me with fear in her eyes. When all the prattle was over, I asked Cassandra in my best ‘god of the universe’ tone of voice, “What did you say, my pretty little slave?”

“I told her what’s about to happen according to you, oh great god from a distant star system. I said that you told me that the village elder and two of his three village councilmen would come to her doorway in a couple of minutes. I said that, along with them would come young Diomedes, the village elder’s son, visiting from his military outpost south of Troy, where he lives near his pregnant wife and two daughters. I described the elder’s son, how he would be dressed in a dark green soldier’s tunic but no armor, because his armor had been left in the elder’s home. And I told her that Diomedes would be carrying a bow and seven long arrows – arrows fletched with black eagle feathers he got during a recent military excursion in southern Egypt, and that the arrows’ feathers were taken from an eagle that he shot out of the air overhead, flying full speed. He hasn’t even told his father about bringing down that eagle yet. He’s been waiting to share that tale at the village gathering this evening.”

We heard the woman’s son’s voice speaking loudly, with excitement outside, and Cassandra quickly told me, “Our visitors are here. Look godly.”

Since the house was so small and dark, the woman urged us all out into the yard where we men folk all squatted together, glancing around at one another, beneath the shade of the olive trees. While we squatted there in the shade, the woman spoke with great animation to the village elder and the other men, along with a little boy of seven or eight maybe, perhaps the elder’s grandson, I figured. The visitors appeared exactly as Cassandra had said they would, including the soldier with his bow and arrows.

Ichtar’s mother kept gesturing and pointing (mainly at me) as she told the whole wild story Cassandra had related. At one point, we saw Diomedes, the elder’s son, talking with excitement while pantomiming how he had tracked with his bow as the eagle had crossed the sky above him, and I knew from his excited and rapid speaking that he was explaining what had happened down in Egypt. His father and the other men jumped up and patted him proudly on the shoulders. At that point, everyone was all smiles. And by the way, that Diomedes kid, who

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looked like he was only 20 or 25 years old, was like a super buffed up weight lifter – made even me look puny, and I’m a very athletic guy – practically a football star back home. But I’m sure Diomedes could have curled my full body weight with just one arm. I was wishing that he had worn more than that skimpy tunic here in front of Cassandra.

The elder said something to the little kid with us, and the kid took off through the village at a dead run. Then the elder turned to us and spoke solemnly and reverently for several minutes. He kept his eyes lowered respectfully most of the time, making eye contact briefly with me only a couple of times during his entire spiel. It felt odd to me to have this community leader, old enough to be my grandfather, speaking to me with such humility. Every minute or two, Cassandra asked him to stop so she could explain to me what he was saying.

Basically, he was thanking me for gracing his small village with such an important visit from the gods. He said that it was clear to him and all the others that I possessed the power to know everything that had ever happened or ever would happen. He also begged me to confer on one of their villagers – preferably his son – the powers of the oracle, which means to be able to see into the future.

When she translated that last part, she gave me a sarcastic little grin. “That is, your divine holiness, if you can find such generosity within the heavenly beneficence of your heart,” she said with her little sarcastic grin.

“I guess you can promise them whatever powers you want to promise,” I said. “But what are these guys going to say when I can’t give the kid his super powers after all?”

“Don’t worry about it,” she told me. “I can finagle that. Then she rattled off a few more sentences to the visitors and they all looked pleased.

“So how are you going to make them believe that this kid can see the future?”

“I won’t need to pretend. It probably won’t ever get to that point. I just told them that you said Diomedes would have to prove himself worthy before such powers could be granted.”

“How’s he supposed to prove that he’s worthy?”

“I said he would have to come with us to the city of Troy, and bring his bow and arrow in case we needed protection.”

“And he agreed to that?”

“He not only agreed, but he said he has two fellow warriors – buddies I would guess from his same military unit, and he says they’re equally as gifted as he is in warfare. They both live nearby, and they’re both home on furlough as well. One’s a swordsman, and the other’s some kind of battle strategist.”

“What good would these poor guys be against your two supernatural fiends? Won’t they just get vaporized … along with us too, probably?”

“That could happen, Junior. But I’m hoping that those two ancient fiends haven’t received their supernatural powers yet. Remember, I came back a few years before they killed my mom.”

“So you’re hoping that they may not have had an opportunity yet to sell their souls to the devil or whatever force of darkness they got their power from.”

“That’s what we both should be hoping.”

I was relieved when the elder invited me and Cassandra to come to his house to rest and eat. He explained that his home was the only one in the village with two rooms instead of just one. We were there within a minute since his house was only about two hundred feet away. And when he took us inside, there were mud-colored pottery dishes stacked around all over the floor, and every one of them was full of delicious-smelling food. I guessed that the elder must have sent his little grandson running earlier to have the village ladies round up all this food. The old guy was pointing around at the dishes and talking. Cassandra quickly started explaining things to me.

“All this food is from the local villagers. They’re all eager to please the gods. He said that we would soon learn to appreciate their hospitality.”

I loudly inhaled the delicious aromas all around me. “I’m already learning to appreciate it. How soon can we eat?”

“They’re getting started already,” she said, indicating a small blanket on the ground with several men milling around near it. They were mostly standing around a few feet away from the blanket,

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and they all seemed to be glancing meaningfully in my direction. I noticed it was only the adult males who were hovering near the eating area. All the women and children were still standing around in the background against the walls, with serving bowls of food in their hands.

“I don’t see any chairs. Where’s everyone going to sit?” I wondered.

“Back in these days, poor people didn’t sit in chairs at tables. At mealtime, the men would recline – you know, lie down – around the eating mat to eat.”

“When do the women eat?”

“Whenever the men are finished – if there’s anything left.”

“What’s everyone waiting for? Silverware?”

“No, in these days, poor people didn’t own forks or spoons or anything fancy like that. People in these days just eat with their hands … except for the super wealthy and kings and queens – people like that would use eating utensils. We used them in my first household.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet you did ... So what’s everyone waiting for?”

“They’re waiting for you. You’re a god, remember? They’re not going to start eating until you do.”

“Oh. Sorry.” I flopped down in the wide space they had left open for me and stuffed some food in my mouth so that everyone else could get started. Immediately, I and the other men folk were all using our hands to pull chunks of food from the same big wooden platter. I realized this was not a very sanitary way of eating, especially since it didn’t look like these guys had washed their hands in the last few years. And I wasn’t certain how good the food would be, but it tasted so delicious that I proceeded to absolutely stuff myself.

The meal was somewhat stressful because the guys all around kept talking to me, and I had no idea what they were saying, so Cassandra kept having to translate for me. She remained kneeling right above me to one side, never eating a bite.

After we finished eating, we all went outside and lay around under some shade trees. (‘We’ meaning the guys only.) The other men besides me just lay down right on the dirt and were snoring within about a minute. I figured this must be nap time – kind of

like what I remembered from preschool, except this was naptime for grownups. Cassandra was the only female out in the yard; I guess she came out to continue translating for me if necessary. As soon as the others fell asleep, we talked quietly for a few minutes about what our plan should be when we went to the walled city of Troy to hunt for Claudia and Darius. But that planning session didn’t amount to much. After we ran out of ideas for our Troy excursion, we just talked.

While we were talking, we witnessed something that reminded me of home – a dirt devil, one of those tiny tornado things that’s only a few inches wide and lasts only for a few seconds or a minute at most. I used to see them back where I lived whenever the ground got really dry and hot. And here, thousands of years earlier, I was seeing the same thing. The little whirling column of dust moved across a field right next to us.

“Look at that!” Cassandra said, pointing.

“Yeah, I saw it. I love those things. We had them back home. The first time I ever saw one, I was about six, and my dad was giving me a ride on his motorcycle. He stopped and pointed it out to me. ‘Look, a dirt devil,’ he said. ‘What makes it do like that?’ I asked him. ‘Just the wind kicking up some dust I guess.’ ‘But what makes it go in circles?’ and he said, ‘Maybe it’s two winds dancing together.’ My dad was funny like that, always saying stuff that makes you laugh or think about things a different way.”

“We have them all the time here, especially on hot days, as dry as it always is, with all the sand and dust everywhere.”

“I guess some things never change.”

“Everything changes … even when things seem to stay the same.” She sounded sad somehow.

“I have noticed that you seem to be changing, Cassandra – the way you look – just in the last few days. Are you sure you’re feeling alright?”

“Don’t worry about me, Junior. Worrying doesn’t help anybody.”

“To be honest, I’m worried about a bunch of things. Like these guys right here.” I indicated the fellows snoring all around us on the dirt. “Don’t they suspect that I’m not really a god since I can’t even speak their language?” I asked her. “I mean, wouldn’t

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a real god have super powers and be able to do something as simple as learning a language?”

“No, our gods only had certain specific powers, and each god’s powers were different. For example, a god like Apollo could tell the future and do a couple other very specific things. Or a god might have power over the weather or over the sea or over war or over love and beauty. But none of them was all-powerful over everything, not even Zeus.”

“All this is making me really nervous.”

“Quit worrying about it, Junior. I can guarantee you that these fellows believe everything we’ve told them. As soon as we told them about Diomedes shooting the eagle and he confirmed our story, their faith was complete. We would have to do something pretty stupid to lose their trust now.”

Not long after that, I must have dozed off because as I awakened, I noticed that Cassandra and all the guys were gone. I went inside the house, worried that I would be stuck without an interpreter, but Cassandra was inside, talking with the other women. There was Ichtar’s mom, whose name I learned was Lavinia, and a neighbor lady who was apparently her best friend. There must have been close to fifteen small children lying here and there all over the floor, still asleep.

“So, where did all the men folk go?” I asked Cassandra.

“The old guys went to water their crops. Then Diomedes left to round up some of his warrior buddies from two nearby villages. He said it should only take a couple of days before he returns with the other soldiers. They want to get an early start for Troy as soon as they return because we’ve been emphasizing how important it is to attack the evil ones there before they can kill anyone else.”

“Isn’t there anything we should be doing to prepare for that attack?” I asked her.

“It’s hard for me to plan anything when I can’t see exactly what’s coming.”

“You don’t have any idea what’s gone wrong with your ability to see in the future?”

“I’m pretty sure that evil witch, Claudia is jamming my abilities somehow. I thought if I came back a few years earlier – before she married my father, the king – maybe she wouldn’t be as powerful

yet, but there’s definitely something powerful at work already.”

“But you were able to know about the eagle Diomedes shot. You were able to see into the future to when he would have told his father the story. If your powers are messed up, how could you have known about that?”

“I was able to see and hear him telling his father about it later this evening – just a few hours into the future. I pre-empted him and forced him to tell his dad about it sooner, but I definitely saw it coming. But anything more than a day or two into the future, I draw a blank. Or when I’m trying to guess what Claudia and Darius might be up to, I get nothing.”

“So your power’s not completely messed up?”

“No, not completely, just mostly when it has to do with the things pertaining to Claudia and Darius. I can’t see what they’re doing tomorrow, much less in a week or whenever we face them … I can’t even see what they’re doing right now.”

“I thought we went back to a time before that evil woman ever met you. How would she know to mess with your mind or your powers already?”

“I don’t know, Junior. It’s probably not even her doing it.”

“Then ... who?”

“I’m afraid it might be Apollo.”

“You mean like the god guy?”

“Yeah, I angered him when I was young … at least I assume it must have been him who attacked me at the temple that day. And he has oracular powers … the power to see into the future, and also to control the future to some extent.”

“So now we’re fighting against some god, too? That’s just great. We’re going to die for sure.”

“We’ll have to be careful – and smart – if we’re going to win this battle. And if Apollo really is involved, then I’m worried about something else. Apollo is also the god of archery – Aphetor, they call him in his role as archery god.”

“A feeder?” I said, cause that’s how she had pronounced the word.

“Yes, Aphetor, A-P-H-E-T-O-R.” She spelled it out for me. “It’s just one of Apollo’s many names, the one they use for him in his capacity as the god of

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archery. What that could mean for us is that our new friend, Diomedes, may be of little use to our mission if Apollo chooses to mess with his archery abilities.”

Chapter 22 – The Little General Arrives

I was kind of glad that we had a little time to kill before we had to ‘march against Troy.’ Cassandra and I were able to get our friendship back on track. I could sense that maybe I had permanently blown the chance of ever being her serious boyfriend, but at least we were on friendly terms. We took long walks together and talked about a great many things. She completely forgave me for being such a juvenile pain during our flight over earlier.

On one of our long walks, she and I even discovered a cave. It was small, but intriguing. We discovered it about a mile north of the village, early one morning. We were walking very early to avoid the hot sun later in the day, and we found the cave’s entrance by chance because, as we were walking about half a mile away, we saw thousands and thousands of bats coming from all directions and disappearing into the cave’s mouth.

After we had stood watching the swarms of bats disappearing into the cave, I said, “We should go inside and see what’s in there … unless you’re scared of bats.”

“No, I’m not really squeamish about bats.”

So in we went. But we didn’t get very far into the cave before it became unsafe to go any further without any source of light. When we had reached the point where we could barely even see each other’s faces, Cassandra stopped and sat on a big flat stone.

“Something’s happening to me down here in the cave, Junior! My oracular powers seem to be returning ... Yes! … I can see it all now. It’s like, ever since we got into the past, something has been interfering with my abilities. But down here, I’m beginning to see the future very clearly again. It’s as though all this earth and stone above us and around

us is blocking whoever or whatever has been messing with my powers.”

“What can you see?”

“I’m seeing Troy … our visit there.”

Even in this dark chamber, I could distinguish a very disturbed look on her face. Tears seemed to be appearing on both of her cheeks. I touched her face and confirmed that it was moist with her tears.

“We’re all going to die there, aren’t we?”

She grabbed my hand in both of hers. “No, Baby. It’s not that. You will not be dying in ancient Troy.”

“Then why are you crying?”

“It’s just … some of the things I see there are stirring up memories … my parents … myself as a little girl. It’s just got me feeling emotional. That’s all … We’d better be going. I think I’ve seen all I need to see.”

But before we left, we found some interesting things inside – things that suggested that some kids had been in there playing and exploring. For example, we found a little heap of smooth round stones that obviously had been rounded down for centuries in some creek bed somewhere. These round stones didn’t seem to belong among the sharp, rough stones around them. Clearly, someone – probably some young boys – had been in there and had left their little collection of smooth stones behind like some kind of hidden treasure.

“Let’s go back to the village and bring a light,” I suggested, excited to explore further. “I’ll bet we could find all sorts of ancient treasures further back in there.”

“Well, we could ask,” she agreed, “but the only light the villagers might have would be a torch made of flammable tar pitch maybe, and I doubt they would even have that.”

“Can’t we at least ask them?”

“Men!” She said with a smile. “You’re all just overgrown boys … always wanting to explore something or climb something or climb something and then jump off it.” We went back to the village, intending to ask about borrowing a torch, but we were tired by the time we got there, so we never did get back into the cave. But I learned something in the short time we were in there. I learned that human nature and human behavior hasn’t really changed

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much over the years. Cassandra was right. Men and boys loved to explore things three thousand years ago just as much as they still do in our time today.

When Diomedes got back two days later after collecting his military buddies, we saw that one of them, his swordsman friend, was as big and buff as Diomedes. But the other fellow was tiny – smaller even than Ichtar had been – the little goatherd boy. I estimated that this so-called warrior was probably not much more than five feet tall and kind of scrawny. After a brief chat with the young soldiers, Cassandra told me, “This big guy here is an expert swordsman. He’s called Hektor.”

“Finally, a name I’ve heard before … And who’s the little bitty guy?”

“That’s Paris.”

“Like the city in France?”

“Yeah, pronounced just the same. I guess he’s the one they said was the military strategy expert. I had a cousin named Paris when I was young. But this certainly isn’t him. Most of your history books in the future say Paris was my brother, but he wasn’t really. Almost everything they’ve got in the history books of the future, concerning ancient Troy and our gods, is completely wrong.”

“So, you think maybe this little guy’s related to your cousin.”

“Not likely. There were lots of guys named Paris back then.” She turned and started talking to the little guy, then turned back to me. “Huh! Turns out you were right; he’s one of my third cousins. But I didn’t tell him who I really am of course.”

“None of them are going to recognize you I hope,” I told her.

“We didn’t come back to the year when I was fifteen, remember? Right about now, I would only have been about three years old.”

“Hey, you’re going to have to look up your family in Troy, right? Maybe you can hold your three-year-old self on your lap? That would be pretty weird.”

“Yeah, too weird. But we can’t avoid going to my house in Troy eventually because, by this time, Claudia and Darius were already living in my parents’ home.”

“Why were they living with you?”

“They were our servants.”

“You had servants?”

“Sure. We had about a hundred of them.”

“Wow! That must have been nice.”

“Yeah, but I could have done without having Claudia and Darius around.”

“What servant jobs did those two have?”

“I’m not sure what duties Darius had. But Claudia was supposedly our head governess.

“Governess? That’s like a babysitter for rich kids, right?”

“That’s right. And we were terrified of her.”

“We? You mean you and Helenus?”

“Not just us. There were quite a few children. My dad had lots of wives, so there were lots of us ... somewhere around sixty of us as I recall.” I whistled in amazement. I thought I had a big family.

“So, somewhere in that big palace, we’re going to find you as a three-year-old. I’ll bet you were pretty cute when you were three … I can hardly wait. When are we going to Troy? Have you made any kind of definite plan?” I asked her.

“I’m almost afraid to make any of the plans myself because, if those two fiends are able to jam my power to see into the future, they might also be able to see what I’m planning for the future.”

“Well we sure can’t go marching into town without a plan of some kind.”

“I thought maybe we could let Paris come up with a battle plan,” she suggested. “He’s supposed to be good at that ... like some kind of battle genius.”

“Battle genius,” I said with a sarcastic laugh, “this little guy? Are you crazy? I’ve got a twelve-year old sister who’s bigger than him.” I had noticed that the wee warrior had been hanging around close to Cassandra and me all the time. It was like he had been trying listen to what we were saying. I figured he couldn’t be too much of a genius if he’s trying to listen in on a language he doesn’t even know.

By this time, I realized it must be time to eat again because the ladies had started laying trays of food down on the eating mat in the middle of the room. All the older men had left to do whatever work they did, so there were only a few of us guys

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remaining. I didn’t want everyone waiting around for me for a long time again, so I lay down right away, ready to eat.

Since I already knew there was a pecking order with the most important and respected people lying down to eat first, I expected to see Diomedes flop down to eat next. After all, he was a muscle-bound hero type. But he was still standing around waiting for something. Then, to my amazement, Paris got down in the eating position next, and he positioned himself right beside me. Then, Diomedes and the swordsman guy, Hektor, lay down to eat at the same time. So I guessed that Paris must outrank them all.

I was eager to start eating so nobody would be waiting on me. But as soon as I had stuffed a big, juicy piece of goat meat in my mouth and started chewing, Paris began talking to me, apparently asking a question, based on the rising inflection at the end of his sentence. “Doesn’t this guy see that I’m in the middle of a bite?” I was thinking. Then he asked the same thing again, looking at me expectantly. I was chewing and swallowing as fast as I could. About that time, Cassandra squatted down on the other side of me.

“Is there a question?” She asked me.

“Yeah, but I sure don’t know what it is,” I said when I had finally swallowed the meat.

She then asked Paris what he needed to know, and he answered.

“He wonders if it’s possible for him to get some idea of our battle plan going into Troy.” She just waited, as if she was expecting me to suddenly cough up a battle plan on the spot.

“I haven’t got a clue how to answer that question. I thought you said the plan was to make this little guy come up with a battle strategy, right?”

“That’s right, so just talk to me about random things for a couple of minutes. Then I’ll pretend to tell him what you said you wanted him to do. And remember, you’re a god, so try to speak to me with godly authority in your voice.” She said all this in a very humble voice with her head down a bit as if she was frightened about speaking directly to me.

I tried desperately to think of something to say, then just started in telling her a story about a time a few weeks ago when my dad and I had gone duck hunting together. There really wasn’t much to tell in

my hunting story since Dad and I hadn’t gotten any ducks that day. All we did was sit out there in a drizzling rain, freezing our butts off for a few hours, blowing on a duck call every few minutes. But, hunkered down under a camouflage tarp, Dad and I had gotten a chance to talk about a lot of stuff, and it was really one of the few times in my life when the two of us got to do guy-stuff together. I still remember clearly the sound of the rain pattering on the plastic tarp above our heads and the sound of our voices as we talked quietly. I realized later that he must have known already that he was about to reenlist and go back to war, so he must have wanted to spend a day with me before he went.

Telling the duck hunt story like that made me think about how I would never see Dad again, and this was the first time I had slowed down enough to feel the sadness and grief of never having a dad anymore. I was trying hard not to let my voice get shaky with emotion in front of this Paris guy, but I wasn’t completely successful.

Then Cassandra, still with her face slightly lowered and her voice all humble sounding, responded. “Please just try to keep it together, My Lord. I know how hard this has been for you ... I know what it’s like to lose a parent. Now if you could just continue eating calmly, I’ll explain things to Paris.” I saw that, when she mentioned Paris’ name, his eyebrows went up and he got a curious look on his face. I ignored him and continued my meal, but I ate slowly and with dignity now.

Cassandra quickly rattled off some long explanation in the weird ancient language they spoke. I glanced at Paris’ face a few times as she spoke, but it revealed nothing. After she finished, he simply nodded his head once, without expression. Then he turned and started eating. Something about this little guy’s shrewd face gave me the feeling that he was not going to be as easy to fool as all the others had been.

“What did you tell him?”

She bowed her forehead all the way down till it was touching the dusty floor in front of me. “I’ll tell you later, My Lord,” she muttered quietly. I turned away, trying to look bored and godlike, and continued eating.

There were several things about this Paris guy that made me very nervous. The main thing was the way he looked at me, and at Cassandra. The other

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ancients would always get this expression of like humble reverence on their faces whenever they would look at us or talk to us. But Paris was just the opposite. He seemed to get this little sarcastic smirk on his lips, like he didn’t believe a word we were saying, and it felt like his eyes were piercing right through me. I started trying to look away really quickly instead of making eye contact, and that must have made me seem even less confident and godlike.

Another unnerving thing about him was the tone in his voice. Even speaking his ancient language, I could tell that he had no respect for me, that he didn’t believe anything I was saying. As soon as I was done eating, I hurried outside, hoping Cassandra would come out, too, because we needed to talk about this little fellow and maybe figure out what we were going to do about him. She came out right behind me, and I started in telling her my concerns about Paris.

“This Paris kid can see right through our story. I don’t trust him. He’s going to ruin things. We’ve got to get rid of him.” But before she could even respond, Paris came outside, too. That seemed slightly awkward, but things suddenly got a whole lot more awkward right after he came out.

“I...hear...much...you...talk,” Paris said.

“My God! Is he speaking English?” I hissed in disbelief.

“Sure sounded like it.” Then she rattled off a few words in ancient Phrygian, and he responded.

“He says he’s learned to pick up new languages very quickly. There are hundreds of regional and tribal languages in Phrygia alone, and his military travels have taken him many other places outside of Phrygia. He says he knows at least a hundred languages fluently, and can completely master a new one in about a week.”

Right then, something strange and terrifying happened – something that left me feeling helpless and heartbroken. Without warning, Cassandra slumped down to her knees, then crumpled over in a heap beside a small fig tree in the yard. Paris and I hopped down on either side of her. I picked her head up in my lap and patted her gently on the cheek, but she was out cold. I was hoping that maybe she was just faking it to keep this Paris guy from asking any more questions, but when Paris lifted open one of her eyelids to look at her eye, I could see that she was really unconscious. I tried to keep from letting my

emotions get the best of me, but before I knew it, I could feel tears dripping from my face. I tried to wipe them off as discreetly as I could, but I knew he had to have noticed I was crying like a baby. I knew I wasn’t seeming very godlike at the moment.

“She ... fall down ... many time?” Paris asked.

“No, it’s never happened before ... not since I’ve known her.” I was staring at him, hoping that, somehow, he might have understood what I was saying. And then I noticed something unexplainable. I saw something completely different in Paris’ eyes now. The penetrating look of mistrust had given way to something much different, something more like deep concern for Cassandra.

“How much ... time ... you know Cassandra?”

“I just met her a few days ago.”

“I did think you ... together ... long time.”

“No. Truth is we’re not even together – not really.”

“Why … you not?”

“I don’t know. I guess cause I’m just a stupid kid.”

“But you love ... and she love ... both ... you love.”

I nodded involuntarily. He took my hand and moved it so that my palm was cradling her cheek. “Now, you together,” he said with finality.

Staring at Cassandra’s face at such close range, I was surprised at that moment to notice that her skin didn’t seem quite as soft and supple as it always had before, and her color didn’t seem quite right. But with all the dust and grime we had accumulated on our faces, it was hard to see exactly what had changed. Plus, I didn’t think her cheek felt as warm as it should have. I felt her body stirring slightly, and there was a childish whimpering sound from her throat. Her eyes opened slowly, but they seemed dull and blank, without self-awareness. The bright vitality of those eyes seemed to rise from a great depth until they suddenly popped open a bit wider, and she glanced around.

“Junior?”

“I’m right here, Baby.”

“What happened?”

“I think you just fainted.”

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She reached up and touched my hand that was on her cheek, apparently realizing just then that something was against her face. She suddenly clutched my hand with both of her own and hugged it hard against the middle of her chest. Then she bent her head down and started kissing my knuckles.

After an awkward minute, I said, “Let me get you up so I can make sure you’re alright ... Do you think you could stand?”

As I helped her up, I noticed that Paris was no longer beside us. I guess he had gone back inside to give us some privacy. When we were back on our feet, she remained leaning against me, with her arms tight around my waist. I was about to start asking her how she was feeling, but I noticed that her head was tilted back slightly and she was looking up into my eyes expectantly. It was obvious even to a childish fool like me that she was waiting to be kissed, so I leaned in and kissed her slowly and tenderly, and she returned my kiss warmly.

“Finally,” I heard her sigh quietly as we stood there leaning together after the kiss.

I kissed her grimy forehead a couple of times and said, “Together at last.”

“Yeah, well, it took you long enough,” she muttered.

After we had hugged for a while, I told her, “I thought you should know that something’s changed with that Paris guy all of a sudden. I don’t know why, but he looks and acts like he’s on our side now ... Ever since you fell down.”

“Well, if he can really see through people like he says, then I guess he’s concluded that we’re alright ... that we mean no harm.”

“How are you feeling? Should we postpone our trip to Troy?”

“No, we can’t do that,” she said with determination. “Our time is running out.”

“I thought you came back a few years earlier than you needed to ... just to be on the safe side. You made it seem like we would have time to spare.”

“I did believe that, but now ... we can’t wait around. Something’s coming.”

“What can you see coming?”

“I can’t see anything, remember? But something evil is coming at us. I can already feel it tearing into

me. We’ve got to get on the move.” She suddenly started shouting. “Paris! Diomedes! Hektor!”

The three warriors came charging out the door. They stopped and looked around, I guess expecting to see enemy combatants or wild animals since Cassandra had shouted.

“All is ... well?” Paris asked. I shook my head.

“All is not well. Something or someone is here, attacking Cassandra ... from the inside. We can’t see them, but they’re here already. We have to get to Troy as soon as possible, before they can hurt her or destroy her.”

“I … hear you.” Paris said. “I … tell them.” Then he turned to the two young warriors, and his voice seemed instantly transformed. I had no idea what he was saying, but I could see the effect it had on Hektor and Diomedes. Their faces became very serious and attentive. Their bodies became rigid as though they were standing at attention. And they both simultaneously slapped their right hands over a bronze medallion each of them had attached to their tunics up near the left shoulder. They remained frozen in that position until Paris lightly touched a similar medallion on his chest. After he spoke quickly and forcefully to them for about five more minutes, the two warriors relaxed and squatted beneath a nearby shady tree, speaking quietly.

“What’s up with all the chest slapping,” I wondered, whispering close to Cassandra’s ear.

“They were saluting Paris. He’s of much higher rank, and belongs to a military command unit. He would be the modern equivalent of a general. The medallions designate both rank and military unit affiliation.”

Paris started talking again, but this time he was addressing Cassandra, and I could tell he was speaking a completely different language now – not Phrygian and definitely not English – and Cassandra was responding to him in that same different language. After a minute, I asked her if it was a different language, just to make sure, and she confirmed that it was. “We’re speaking an ancient Greek language now.”

“You might as well let him know that he needn’t bother to switch languages if he’s trying to hide what he’s saying from me. I don’t know any language except English. I tried French in school, but that was a waste of time.”

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“Junior, we’re not trying to hide what we’re saying from you. Why would we? Not everything is about you. The members of our upper class society – the educated gentry – would often resort to other languages when discussing private matters ... whenever servants were within earshot ... Or, as in this case, low-level soldiers who might not know how to handle certain information or how to keep confidential information to themselves”

“So, this little guy is an upper class snobby-snob just like you’ve always been?”

“This little guy, as you call him, can apparently understand nearly every word you say in English. Remember that. And the main reason he suggested we switch languages was to avoid revealing to the two warriors over there the whole truth about who you and I really are and what we’re up to – for our own protection. Paris has decided to give us the benefit of the doubt and not reveal to the others, just yet, the truth about us being fake gods.”

“So you’ve told Paris all about us already?”

“I’ve told him absolutely nothing, but he’s told me plenty.”

“Like what?”

“Like the fact that you are obviously no god. He said he’s been in the presence of Apollo, that he has matched wits with Zeus, and that he knows the aura of power that emanates from the presence of a true god. He says that you seem nervous, fearful and without confidence, like a slave pretending to be a king.”

Now she was getting me upset. “Well, what did you expect? I begged you not to make me come to this horrible place … pretending to be a god! I never wanted to be a member of your war party. Have you forgotten that?”

“No, Junior, I haven’t forgotten.” She put her little hand on my arm.

“I warned you that I wouldn’t be any use to you, that I would mess everything up, but you wouldn’t listen!”

She glanced nervously at the seated warriors, who were quietly watching us. “Calm yourself, Junior. This isn’t helping. I think things are going to turn out okay.”

“How could anything turn out okay after all this?” Right then, I felt something on my shoulder,

and I saw that Paris had stretched up to rest his hand there.

“Junior,” he said with his peculiar accent, “I...going...help you.”

“Why would you?”

“I see ... you eyes ... I see you ... good ...You good.”

From this point forward, language translations were still almost continuously necessary although Paris had started stumbling along in basic English, but I’m getting tired of writing all the translating down, so from here on out, I’m just going to tell you in English what was finally said.

The three of us sat down, and we told Paris the entire truth about Cassandra’s long life, about how we got to the ancient world, and what we were planning to do there in Troy. He didn’t even seem to blink when we told him our incredible story. We even asked him how he could so easily accept such a preposterous story, and he explained.

“It’s not that I’m easily persuaded to believe any outlandish story someone might tell me. Actually, that’s the exact opposite of my nature. Remember, I didn’t believe any of that nonsense you were telling all the villagers.”

“Yeah, I could tell you didn’t … So how did you know we were lying?” I asked him. “What tipped you off?”

“I always know when someone’s lying or pretending. That’s why I was watching you two so carefully and asking you so many questions when I first met you. I needed to find out what you were really up to. I can always see right through false stories people tell me.”

“Is this like a power you were born with?” Cassandra asked.

“No, it’s a skill I’ve carefully developed through the years. I’ve learned to make very effective use of this ability when I’m dealing with foreign officers claiming to be our allies ... I don’t normally tell anyone about this ability, but in this case, it may be beneficial if we are all three aware.”

So Paris, we learned, had some kind of built in lie detector in his brain. I figured this skill would soon prove extremely useful when we came up against Claudia and Darius. But maybe they had similar skills of their own. Probably so, I suspected.

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After we had learned that Paris had decided he could trust us, Cassandra suggested that the three of us should go somewhere private and plan our trip to Troy together, so we excused ourselves and walked just outside the village. I thought we had just wandered aimlessly out into the desert, but then Paris pointed at the tiny path our feet were on and said that, if we followed this road, and merged a few times with larger roads, we would eventually reach Troy.

“What road is he talking about?” I wondered out loud.

He pointed down at the ground with his index finger and middle finger forked apart. “Road!” He insisted in English. To me it seemed like a very bumpy little goat trail.

“Open your eyes, Junior. He’s pointing out the two separate tracks there, about three feet apart. One track means it’s just a footpath. Two tracks running parallel means it’s a roadway travelled by two and four-wheeled wagons and carts.”

“Okay, then, I suppose this must be the cave man equivalent of a superhighway. So now we know which way we’re going. How are we going to get there?”

“How do you think? We’ll walk.” She shook her head looking all sarcastic.

“I don’t look forward to hiking through the desert sun for ten or twelve miles on foot. I was hoping maybe we could ride in one of those two-wheeled or four-wheeled carts you were talking about.”

“Now who’s being a snob?” She said, with her little sarcastic grin. “And tell me this. Who do you think would be pulling the cart? Do you see any horses around here? … My guess is this village might have one little cart that they share among themselves, and we’re certainly not taking it from them. And do you think all five of us would fit in one tiny cart? Anyway, you wouldn’t make it a hundred feet down this road bumping over all those rocks. Riding that far in a wooden-wheeled cart would shake us to pieces.”

“Okay! Okay! All I was trying to say was that it might not be such a good idea to show up in Troy too tired out to fight.”

“Hopefully we won’t be doing any fighting right away,” she said.

“No fight,” Paris agreed, shaking his head.

“Why do you say that all of a sudden? Have you two already been making the battle plans without me?”

“No ... I just mentioned to Paris that we can’t go in there randomly attacking people. Troy is a heavily fortified city and the royal palace is well guarded. Anyway, that’s my home town, full of wonderful people I once cared about ... people I still care about. I certainly don’t want to hurt anyone besides Claudia and Darius.”

“But aren’t those two already living in the royal palace? How will we get to them without anyone getting hurt?”

“Well, certainly not by battling our way through all the palace guards. They would cut us to pieces … and our fight isn’t with them in the first place.”

Paris told me, in translation, “Junior, here’s what we’ve decided so far. We know that Claudia and Darius, at this point, are, indeed, servants living in the palace. So, when we go there, Cassandra will pretend to be a fifteen-year-old first cousin in King Priam’s family. She has a maternal uncle living in Byzantium of Thrace, just across the border with Greece. This uncle has a daughter who would be fifteen right now. So Cassandra will pretend to be that first cousin.”

“What if they don’t believe her?” I asked him. “Wouldn’t a visiting foreign niece bring some kind of introduction letter from her parents?”

“We plan to say we were robbed by highwaymen who stole even her letter of introduction.”

“And what if they ask why she brought all of us guys along with her?”

“Because of her fear of highwaymen of course! In these dangerous times, with murdering bandits and ravenous lions wandering everywhere along the roadways, young ladies would not dream of traveling without protection.”

“Hold on!” I said, somewhat alarmed upon hearing this translated. “This is the first time I’m hearing about bandits and lions everywhere along the roadways.”

“Take heart, my fearless friend,” Paris said. “Together, we will make a formidable band of brothers to protect this tender maiden.” I can assure you that Cassandra had her little sarcastic grin going

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strong when she translated that last bit, but even at her most sarcastic moments now, she looked like she was forcing herself to seem strong and confident. Even from ten or fifteen feet away, I could tell that she was not her old jaunty self anymore. I had noticed that Cassandra’s color was getting worse than ever. Her face looked kind of pale grayish yellow. The last thing I wanted was to have her get too sick to be part of our expedition. I figured, without her along, the most likely outcome for this whole mission would be our speedy death followed by the whole universe getting vaporized by the evil fiends.

“So when do we leave?” I asked. At this point, I just wanted to get it all over with.

“Not before I’ve had a good night’s sleep,” Cassandra said. “I don’t think I could even make it twelve miles as tired as I feel right now.” Paris, looking at her with a concerned expression, took her hand in his, putting his other hand on her waist, and led her into Lavinia’s house. I could suddenly feel the bitter resentment of jealousy rising up in me again. Why did she always have to be so friendly with other guys? I sulked outside for about a minute, but finally followed them inside. As my eyes adjusted, I saw Cassandra, eyes closed, sitting in one corner of the tiny house, with Paris standing above her, fanning her with something that looked like a homemade fan, made of long, skinny leaves woven together.

I flopped down on my knees beside her.

“Cassandra, are you alright? Have you passed out again?” I saw her eyes open slowly.

“Just resting,” she seemed to be barely whispering. I noticed that Paris was now holding the big makeshift fan right down in front of me. I just shrugged my shoulders, not really understanding what he was getting at.

“You … make wind … to her. You … wind now.” It finally dawned on me what he was saying.

“Oh, sure! I’ll take over.” I hopped up, took the fan, and began waving it above Cassandra. Without another word, Paris quickly backed out of the house, nodding his head respectfully as he went. I noticed that Cassandra was still staring at me, her face tired and disappointed.

“I guess nobody ever taught you much about being a gentleman,” she said, sounding sad.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Surely you had to notice that I was ailing, yet you didn’t even bother to step inside to see if I was alright … Why is Paris the one who’s watching over me and protecting me? When are you ever going to step up? … Were you just pretending to love me earlier, out in the yard, Junior?”

“That’s exactly what I was wondering about you. I saw how Paris had his hands all over you, and you obviously didn’t mind.” She started shaking her head.

“He was helping me because I was unsteady on my feet, something you didn’t even bother to do … I swear, you’re like an overgrown child. You don’t seem to know anything about love. Have you ever even been in a relationship with a girl?”

“Not the kind of relationship you’re talking about, I guess.” I was feeling like a complete fool again, and it was starting to tick me off. “Listen, just tell me the truth. Is Paris hitting on you or what?”

“Junior, stop acting like a complete idiot. Paris is a married man with four children. His family lives between here and Troy, and he plans to stop off tomorrow and introduce them to us.”

“Four kids? That’s impossible. He’s just a kid himself.”

“Paris is 26 years old. He just happens to be short and small. You’re the one who’s just a kid … I can see now that I’ve made a terrible mistake. I liked you, so I tried to push you into a relationship that you’re not ready for yet. I’m sorry now that I got you into this whole mess. I pressured you to come here with me, and now … now everything is disintegrating. I can’t see any possible way this quest of ours could end well.”

I dropped the fan and sat down right beside her, taking her hand. “Don’t talk like that, Baby. Everything’s going to turn out fine. Tomorrow you’ll feel better, and starting now, I’m going to step up, like you said, and act like a man.”

She leaned her head against my shoulder, and I felt her squeeze my hand. Then she rubbed the back of my hand against her face. A moment later she was kissing my knuckles again, and that made me feel crazy in love.

“Earlier, outside, when I woke up after passing out,” she said, “and I felt your hand against my face, I felt so safe and secure,” she told me. The moment

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she said that, I considered myself the most fortunate guy on earth.

Chapter 23 – Leaving the Village

I feel like I haven’t taken enough time to explain in detail exactly what it was like living in an ancient Phrygian village, so I want to say some more about that before I start telling you about going to Troy and staying briefly in a shiny clean palace. I want to explain how the regular people lived. The villagers were such special people – so kind and generous, and gullible enough to actually believe we were gods.

I had learned that the little village where we had been staying was called Bat Cave Village because it was near the little cave that was so full of bats. It was that cave Cassandra and I got to venture a short way into before it got too dark to find our way. I call it a ‘little’ cave only because the entrance was tiny, but judging from how many bats lived in there, it must have been fairly huge inside.

There were tons of other animals around the village besides the nearby bats. There must have been twenty or thirty scruffy little underfed dogs roaming the village. And the entire place was completely filled with goats and chickens. These goats and chickens, along with various herbs and grains – gleaned from wild desert vegetation and from the little garden plots the men grew – were about all there was for anyone to eat.

The village lifestyle was extremely friendly and relaxed, but the living conditions were utterly filthy. Simply disgusting in fact! Modern conveniences – such as toilets and toilet paper – didn’t even exist yet. I’m sure you can’t begin to imagine how unpleasant all this filth was to people like me, accustomed to clean living in modern America.

And, in the village, there was no such thing as bathing or showering. For one thing, there was no water to spare anywhere. There’s no way anyone was going to draw out enough well water for a bath. You would have had to lift out bucket after bucket of water from an eighty-foot-deep well. And it would have been very cold to wash yourself in it. Hot as the weather was in the daytime around there, the water

from underground was very cold – great for taking a drink, but I would not have dreamed of bathing in it.

The villagers told us there was a little river about eight miles away, pretty close to Troy, and Diomedes said that people would sometimes swim there, which I guess would clean them off a bit. But by the time they put on the same filthy clothes and trudged in the sun all the way back to town, I’m sure they would be about as sweaty and filthy-smelling as ever. To be honest, though, I had gotten accustomed to the bad way the villagers smelled. I’m sure, by that time, I smelled just as bad, so I never seemed to notice the others much.

Another unpleasant aspect of village life was the sleeping arrangements. At night, when everybody slept, the people of each household would lie flat out on the dirt floors inside the little stone houses. Only the village elder and important visitors (like Cassandra and I) would get a sheep’s fleece to cushion our rest, and, believe me, it wasn’t that much of a cushion compared to a real mattress on top of a box springs and a bed.

And probably the grossest thing of all about village life was what went on with the animals during the night. All those goats and chickens seemed completely free to wander through all the dwellings as the humans slept. They were continuously walking around on us, especially the goats. I was awakened more than once by the sharp little hooves of goats when they would step on me as they wandered through. And I would generally wake up in the morning to find more than one chicken roosting on my prone body, clutching onto my flesh with their scaly little claws, and leaving their droppings on my clothing. And if one of the chickens turned out to be a rooster, it might awaken everyone in the house quite suddenly, about an hour before dawn, by letting out an incredibly loud and shrill “cock-a-doodle-do.”

And these were not the only scaly things that got onto us at night. An occasional serpent or scorpion would also crawl across us. I was looking forward to escaping from these nights on the floor. Surely, I thought, in a Trojan palace, there would have to be beds of some sort.

On the morning we were to be leaving for Troy, I got up even earlier than expected (thanks to one of those roosters). In the dark, I went outside, shivering slightly in the early morning chill, and relieved myself a discreet distance from any house. Then I

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noticed candlelight coming from the doorway of Lavinia’s house, where Cassandra and some other unmarried girls and small children were sleeping.

As I approached, I noticed the delicious smell of one of my favorite Phrygian breakfasts – goat liver chopped up with feta and goat cheese frying in olive oil with green onions and a blend of local herbs. We would eat that along with some delicious bread made of barley grain. I’m sure that, a month earlier, back in the modern world, if someone had mentioned that combination of foods all cooking together, I would have made a face and said, “Yuck!” But in this cool Phrygian pre-dawn, that food’s aroma seemed like the most wonderfully delicious sensation I had ever experienced.

“Cassandra,” I whispered through the open doorway. “You awake already?” I heard stirring on the floor inside, so I stepped back and waited so as not to disturb anyone else. A moment later, Cassandra stepped outside, trying to pat down her red hair, which appeared very greasy and wildly ungroomed at this point.

“Sorry if I woke you. I saw the candle light and thought maybe you couldn’t sleep either.”

“It was actually Lavinia who had lit the candle. She’s making us all a big breakfast to send us on our way to Troy with full bellies. I was helping her cook earlier, but everything’s pretty much ready now ... What are you laughing at?”

I had actually been trying to keep from laughing after seeing her frightful hair and her rumpled, dirty clothing. “I think maybe the chickens might have been roosting in your hair,” I said, snickering.

“You’re one to talk with dirt and clumps of chicken poop all over you.” She thumped a hardened chunk of the stuff off one of my shoulders just to make a point.

“You really think that fancy dad of yours is going to let us in his palace looking like this?”

“We’ll be crossing a small river on our way to Troy. It should have running water this time of year. We can wash up there … And I suspect Lavinia plans to send us out in some new clothes … well, not new, but clean. I believe you’ll be getting the tunic her husband wore. I’ve seen it. It’s clean and nice looking – soft, hand-carded wool I believe.”

“Okay, I have no idea what hand-carded wool means, but, whatever that is, I’m sure it’ll be fine … but what we’ll be wearing is not really the issue I’m most worried about right now.”

-----------------------------

Within an hour, before the morning sun had even risen above the surrounding hills, our tiny band was ready to set off – Hektor and Diomedes, the two warriors, Paris, the wee general, Cassandra, the ancient oracle, and me, the clueless teenager from a faraway land in the distant future.

First, we had all been stuffed with breakfast, then hugged by everyone in the entire village. Cassandra, of course, was a great favorite among the dozens of small children of the village, and had trouble breaking away from them. She had been playing with them every day and directing them in all sorts of silly games they obviously found delightful. Every one of the tykes insisted on prolonged hugs and kisses from her before she could leave. And when we finally began stumbling through the semi-darkness down the virtually invisible ‘highway’ to Troy, about thirty of the grimy little cherubs came running alongside of us. Many of the mothers had to begin trotting after us to drag their little ones back to the village, struggling and wailing loudly. Obviously, I was not the only kid who had ever fallen victim to Cassandra’s charms.

Chapter 24 – Lethor Ganto!

We stumbled along over the rough terrain in virtual silence, carefully watching our feet as we went, so as not to trip or stumble. I stayed pretty close to Cassandra because I continued to feel very worried about her. I still thought she had no business setting off on a twelve-mile hike so soon after her fainting spell or whatever it had been. Before we left, I had suggested that we fashion a litter to carry her on, but she had insisted that it wasn’t necessary.

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“You still feeling alright?” I asked her quietly after we had been tromping through the arid landscape for about an hour.

“I’m doing fine.”

“You want a drink? I can fetch the water-bag from Paris.” Paris was carrying about a gallon of water in a goat-skin pouch. But Cassandra said she was fine. “Just quit fussing over me, okay? … Let’s talk about something else.”

I struggled for something else to say, then finally said, “I’m just not at all sure I can pull off the fake god routine in Troy. I could barely convince these hick villagers.”

“Don’t worry. Paris and I already discussed that. You’ll be going along as just a regular human member of our party. I’ll be the visiting cousin, and you’ll be my deaf-mute bodyguard.”

“How can I pretend to be a bodyguard? I’m not any good with swords or bows and arrows or anything else. I’d be more believable as a fake god than a fake bodyguard.”

“My father isn’t going to believe you’re a god, and neither will Claudia or Darius … Come on! You can be a bodyguard. Aren’t you good with any kinds of weapons?” I was shaking my head.

“Why would I be?”

“How about some kind of sport maybe? … Wrestling, perhaps? … Javelin throwing?”

“I’m really good at football. I was put in last year as the starting quarterback in several games, and I was just a freshman.”

“So you’re suggesting that you could be a bodyguard who hits any would-be assassins in the head with footballs? Or maybe you could tackle them.” I saw her annoying little sarcastic grin starting again.

“You can laugh all you want, but nobody at my school ever laughed at me, and neither did any of the schools we crushed in the games I quarterbacked. And I didn’t need to tackle people. I was the quarterback. I can throw a football sixty yards like a bullet. I’ve been practicing that for years.” I was starting to get ticked off again. I felt like she was always forcing me into impossible situations, then having a good laugh at my expense.

Then she said something to Paris in Phrygian, and I was starting to feel even angrier, believing that she must have made some sarcastic comment about my football throwing skills being useless for a bodyguard. But I saw that Paris was trying to hand me something. After I took it from his hand, I realized it was a golden colored knife without a handle. Instead of a handle, it had a sharp-pointed blade on each end. It felt much heavier than it looked, and I noticed the metal blades were very thick. I had never seen a knife with a blade on each end.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” I demanded, frowning at Cassandra.

“Well, you said you could throw a football pretty far. Maybe you could also throw this. It’s a Trojan two-sided bronze throwing knife.”

“Where do you suggest I throw it?”

“How about at that tree there?” She waved her hand out casually in the general direction of a distant tree with a trunk less than a foot wide.

“That skinny little tree is more than 200 feet away … And I don’t even know how to hold onto this stupid little thing.” I still had it lying across my open palm.

Paris reached over, took the knife and started demonstrating, holding it first by one end, then by the other. “You hold here … or here.” He made a throwing gesture without ever releasing the knife, then placed the knife back in my hand.

“Come on, Junior. At least give it a try. Maybe with a lot of practice you could learn how to throw it ... well enough at least to fool people into believing you could be a real bodyguard.” For some reason, the way she was talking down to me made me furious. I was already feeling like a humiliated failure before I could even try practicing with the knife. And then, without thinking, without even seeming to aim really, I grabbed one end of the heavy little knife and hurled it into the distance with all my strength. I threw it just like I would have lobbed a football for a long shot – arced slightly high for greater distance. I had no idea where it might land, but I noticed it seemed to fly through the air amazingly fast. I doubted for a minute that we would ever find it again.

Instantly, all five of us froze, our eyes fixed on the tiny missile glittering in the sun as it flipped over and over, rising steadily at first, then beginning to drop gradually. Five or six seconds after I threw the

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thing, it struck, apparently dead center in the trunk of the little tree, maybe four or five feet from the ground. Immediately, a tremendously loud cheer roared from the throats of all of us, my own included. And then we were all running toward the tree, running as a group, full speed, like a pack of wolves after an elk.

When we reached the tree, we all stared in amazement. The little knife was exactly centered in the middle of the tree trunk. And it was sunk in very deep so that the center of the knife, where the two blades joined, was inside the wood of the tree. Diomedes and then Hektor both dropped to their knees before me, bowing down low. Then, to my complete surprise, Paris bowed down on his knees as well. And finally, to my utter amazement, even Cassandra was bowing down to me, without even a hint of sarcasm on her face. I heard more than one of them saying some word or words that sounded like, “Lethor Ganto.”

“Come on, guys!” I finally said. “Get up! You’re embarrassing me.” I helped Cassandra up and the others also stood. “Before we reach Troy, don’t you need to explain to these guys that my role as a visiting god is over and done with? ... We can’t have them falling down before me like this once we get to the palace.”

Paris said, “Diomedes, Hektor ... they know you not ... god.”

“Then what was all that bowing and scraping?”

“That was just some comrades in arms acknowledging a heroic act,” Cassandra explained. My three Trojan friends had clustered around me, patting me on the shoulders. It reminded me of how my football buddies back home would run up to me and slap my shoulder pads whenever I made a great pass or run.

Paris grabbed the deeply embedded knife and began trying to wiggle it up and down to loosen it from the tree, but it wouldn’t budge. He said something to Diomedes, who then took over trying to dislodge the knife. It took him more than five minutes, but he finally got it out.

After my heroic moment as a knife-thrower, there seemed to be a huge change in our little war party’s spirit. Before, we had been very quiet, with worried faces all around. Now, somehow, the feeling of hopelessness and dread had given way to euphoric

camaraderie, bravado and a victorious sense of invincibility. Cassandra lagged behind a bit then, and I slowed down to keep pace.

“Are you feeling dizzy again, Babe?”

“No, I’m okay now. Just dropped back a bit because I wanted to talk to you. That’s all.”

“I’m glad you’re feeling better.”

She stopped walking, so I stopped beside her. “Junior, I owe you a huge apology. Since I met you, I’ve gone along treating you like a total loser ... like an annoying little kid who’s never even been with a girl, and now I learn that you’re some local football super-star. You probably have a dozen girls clustering around you everywhere you go … probably lining up to go out with you.”

“No, your first impression of me was much more accurate. I’ve never even been on a date. I’m not actually allowed to date yet, not until I turn seventeen. That’s the rule in my family. It’s always been my mom and dad’s rule … well, I guess just my mom’s rule now.” Cassandra snuggled up under my arm and put her arm around my waist as we walked along a few paces behind the others.

“Aren’t you at all uneasy or tense about visiting your family again after all these years?” I asked after a long silence.

“Yeah. You know, I didn’t expect it to be this way, but I’m more nervous about this visit than I’ve ever been before about anything … What if they recognize me somehow?”

“I wouldn’t worry about that. You’re supposed to be some cousin who’s come visiting, right? … So it stands to reason that you would look like a close relative.”

“I guess I’m mostly just worried about facing Claudia and Darius. I need to figure out how I can keep the anger and hatred from showing all over my face when I see them for the first time.”

Just before noon, judging by the position of the sun in the sky, we finally reached the little river they had told us about. Here we ate a traditional Hittite travelers’ lunch of dried figs and goat jerky. After lunch, all four of us guys walked up around a bend in the river to give Cassandra some privacy for her bath. While she washed up, we did the same a few hundred yards upstream.

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Knowing that ladies always take a lot longer cleaning themselves, I wasn’t in any hurry to stop swimming and horsing around in the water. We warriors had found a huge, long boulder jutting up out of the middle of the river, with a pool of deep water all around it, and we were taking turns climbing up, then showing off and trying to outdo each other with crazy dives from the top of the rock. We were all completely naked and whooping and hollering. Back at home in Kentucky, three thousand years from now, we would call this skinny-dipping. But here, I’m sure they just called it swimming – or however they would say that in Phrygian.

After we finally got tired of splashing around we got into our clean clothes. The tunic Lavinia had given me from her deceased husband was kind of nice. It was made of wool, but it wasn’t scratchy at all. The ladies must have done something to make the yarn very soft and smooth, and the fabric had a tight weave that made it look nice when I put it on. I was actually glad to wear the thing after my filthy modern clothes. Those, I stuffed down out of sight into some reeds along the water’s edge.

When we were about halfway back to the place we had left Cassandra, we heard a scream, and we took off running. The scream had been high-pitched and disturbing – like something not even human. We came around the rock bluff by the water, and we could already see the rocky pool where we had left Cassandra, but she wasn’t there. And then we heard the screaming again. An instant later, we saw what had made the eerie shriek. It was a mountain lion scrabbling up the steep bluff, and only a few yards above him was Cassandra, backing up the hill crabwise, but not nearly as fast as the lion. She was trying to throw rocks at the lion, but that was just making it furious.

“Shoot it!” I screamed at Diomedes, but he was gesturing toward the water’s edge, and I recalled that the warriors had left their weapons there along with the lunch things and the water bag ... all the weapons, that is, except for my throwing knife. The knife, I remembered, was tucked under the belt of my new tunic. Within an instant, I had it out, but then I hesitated. “What if I hit Cassandra? I might kill her.” But I knew that every second I waited, the big cat would be that much closer to her. “Don’t think!” I willed myself. “Just throw!”

My arm shot forward, almost as if by its own accord and the knife was loose, ripping through the

air so fast that I lost sight of it immediately. I knew that, this time, the knife would have to rise and keep on rising as it went up the steep incline toward the predator far above us. We band of brothers continued scrambling up the incline for a few more seconds as the knife flew ahead of us.

But then, something bizarre happened to the lion. It was like something you might see in a catfight in some silly TV cartoon, when things start moving so fast on the television screen that you can’t see what’s happening, and when there’s so much snarling and growling that it all blends together. And this whole twisting, spinning, snarling blur of frenzied action was tumbling down the steep hillside – fast! A few seconds later, the giant animal slammed into the water with a mighty splash and all the noise and movement instantly stopped. The creature was floating on its side, obviously dead, with blood beginning to color the water all around it.

We continued as fast as we could toward Cassandra, and found her basically unharmed aside from some scrapes and bruises on her hands and knees.

As Diomedes approached, she gazed at him admiringly, said something in Phrygian, then gave him a big hug. But Diomedes was shaking his head and pointing below toward the far bank of the little river. Our eyes all followed his gesture, and there, lying on a large flat stone beside the water, we saw his long bow and his quiver full of seven black-feathered arrows, right where he had left them after lunch.

Diomedes pointed at me and said something else. Immediately, Cassandra had redirected her admiring gaze at me.

“Junior, you killed that lion?!”

“Yeah, I guess with the throwing knife Paris gave me.”

After that, she was hugging me. “It would have killed me, and probably eaten me. I’ve never been so scared in my entire long life … Hey, you turned out to be quite a bodyguard after all … the best bodyguard ever.”

“Proud to be of service, Your Highness,” I said, bowing low.

Everyone but me was anxious to get on the road to Troy, but I refused to leave until we had dragged

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the big, dead lion out of the water, cut its chest open, and removed my throwing knife, which was lodged sideways, straight through the animal’s heart. Not until I had the knife gripped tightly in my bloodied hands, did I feel at peace again. It was like a wave of energy had entered me when I touched the weapon again.

“Silly boy! We could have bought you a new one as soon as we reached Troy,” Cassandra said, looking at me like I was being ridiculous.

“No!” I barked loudly.

“Well, you don’t have to yell at me.”

“You don’t understand. It has to be this knife! This one fits my hand, and it’s balanced just right, and … oh, I don’t know exactly how to explain it, but it seems to be a part of my own body, almost like it’s come alive, as though it’s under my mind’s direct control like every other part of me.”

Paris, who had just helped me cut my knife out of the lion’s chest, was still standing beside me, his hands also dripping lion’s blood. He asked Cassandra a question, and she nodded solemnly, getting tears in her eyes. Then she said something that I didn’t understand, something that sounded like what the warriors had said earlier – “Lethor ganto.”

Immediately, Paris screamed the same word at radically high volume. He grabbed my bloody, dripping hand, with the throwing knife still in it, and raised it up high in the air.

“Lethor ganto!” He screamed again, this time even louder, and the other warriors screamed it back twice as loud. As they screamed, they held their weapons high in one hand, just as I was doing – Diomedes with his bow held up, and Hektor with his sword raised on high. Being a modern boy, accustomed to clean living, I was already wanting to put my raised arm back down so the lion’s blood would stop dripping down into my armpit and all over my clean new tunic.

“What are they all still yelling about? I killed the lion half an hour ago.”

“No, it’s not the lion they’re shouting about. It’s you … It’s what you just said about your mind being in direct control of both your body and your weapon – your throwing knife.”

“Why would they be so enthusiastic about that? … And what’s that word they keep saying? … ‘Lethorganto?’”

“Lethor ganto was a popular term back in these days. Warriors running into battle would scream it at the top of their lungs.”

“But what’s that word mean?”

“It’s actually two words. Literally translated, it might mean something like “Body/Weapon.” The Trojan warriors, when they have fully mastered their chosen weapon, and they feel that their body and their weapon both operate in perfect unison under the full control of the warrior’s mind, they will proclaim ‘lethor ganto.’”

“My mom and dad, as the king and queen, would often go to Troy’s battle training school graduations, and sometimes some of us children got to go along. The graduating soldiers, after the ceremony, would stand in formation in front of the king, touch their medallions, then raise their weapons and shout ‘Lethor ganto’ in unison. I know that you’ve never been through battle training school, Junior, but today, on this desolate hillside, you have graduated. Like it or not, you are a warrior. You are my bodyguard.” She hugged me tightly and pressed the side of her face against my chest. All of my victorious moments back at school on the football field were nothing compared to this.

Chapter 25 – Entering Ancient Troy

The remainder of our march into Troy was comparatively quiet, with each of us deep in our own thoughts. If the others were like me, they were wondering if they would live to see another day. By about 2:00 o’clock, the gigantic walls of Troy could be seen in the distance. The distant structure was so huge that it seemed never to get any closer. But as we tramped steadily forward, the city’s walls eventually began to fill the entire horizon in front of us.

Cassandra and I were strolling along, holding hands when she told me, out of the blue, “I’ve

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changed my mind about you being my deaf-mute bodyguard.”

“Then who am I going to pretend to be?”

“I need you to be someone I can still keep talking to without arousing suspicion.”

“But how will you explain that I can’t speak any of the local languages?”

“I’ve thought about that. We can say that you’re a slave – like a prisoner of war or something – from some faraway place.”

“Like where?”

“I was thinking maybe we’d say you’re from the Norse lands.”

“You mean like I’m a Viking?”

“Yeah, that would be perfect. You’ve got that reddish blond hair, so that would make it seem believable.”

“So the people of Troy know what Vikings look like?”

“Our ships have been all over the civilized world. There were legendary accounts of one ship that ventured up into the North Sea, where they encountered sailing men of great stature with the reddish blond hair and speaking an unknown tongue.”

“But how am I supposed to have become your slave? … Not that I mind, of course.” I dropped to one knee in front of her with a smile.

“We’ll say that you were a member of a party of Viking explorers who had sailed all the way down into the Mediterranean, where … let me think … oh, I’ve got it … where they were overcome by an epidemic of smallpox that spread through all the sailors, killing every one of them – all but you, because you were apparently immune somehow. We’ll say that you were found by the Greeks of my community, drifting on the open sea – the only living soul among a floating boat full of corpses.”

After walking for another hour, I noticed that we had practically reached the gates of the city, so I said, “Hey, Paris, how much further before we reach your house? I’m looking forward to meeting your wife and kids.”

He shook his head. “No, my fellow warrior, we will not visit my home after all. We passed the turn-

off long ago. Perhaps another time we can have that visit. But for now, the evening shadows already grow long, and we must not offend our hosts in Troy by arriving too late for dinner.

By about 5:00 that afternoon, judging from the slant of the sun, the gigantic entry gates of the city were gaping open before us. The huge doors – fifty feet high – were about 18 inches thick and were made of some hard, heavy wood – oak maybe. I estimated that each bronze hinge of the door must have stood at least a foot or two taller than I was, and each hinge, made of heavy metal, two-inches thick, probably weighed ten or twenty thousand pounds.

The city’s walls weren’t like what people in the modern world would consider as walls. The city walls were actually more like huge apartment complexes thirty feet thick and four or five stories high. Hundreds of entire families actually lived inside the apartment complexes that formed the walls of the city. Before we walked through the corridor between the giant doors, I saw that the outermost wall of the apartments was constructed of huge granite blocks, each one about eight feet thick.

“I’m glad the gates were open!” I said.

“They stay open all day,” Cassandra said, “unless someone’s stupid enough to try attacking us … but even at night, we could have gotten in through the man-gate.” She pointed at a tiny door down in one corner of the giant door.

There were uniformed soldiers everywhere around the gates, and one of these men stepped out, touched his medallion, bowing his head toward Paris, then said something to him. Paris responded, and the soldier nodded respectfully and motioned us past.

I noticed that Cassandra had a very nostalgic look on her face as if all the sights around us were bringing back old memories – very old memories in this case.

“So, is it all coming back to you – all the old familiar sights?”

“Yes!” She exclaimed with a huge exhalation of breath. “I never thought I’d make it back here. But I’ve always dreamed of the day. When I was in the future, I kept meaning to return to this area, but the city of Troy would no longer have existed. It wouldn’t have been the same.”

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Within a few minutes, we were standing in front of another set of large doors, but these were not nearly as huge as the gates of the city. Armed guards were posted at the gate, and they wouldn’t allow us to enter. This, I realized, must be the royal palace.

“They say that they have not heard from anyone letting them know to expect the arrival of a niece,” Cassandra told me (in English of course).

“Well,” I responded, “you told me once that you look just like your mother. Why don’t you tell these stupid guards to get someone out here who might recognize you as a family member?”

I noticed that the guards had started looking at us with anger and suspicion in their faces. A couple of them had quietly drawn out their weapons.

“What is their problem?” I growled, putting my hand on the knife at my belt. In an instant, one of the bowmen had notched in an arrow, drawn the string all the way back, and was aiming straight at my heart from about three feet away.

“Take your hand away from your knife,” Cassandra warned me quietly. “This isn’t going to be a problem unless you make it one. They’re just nervous because you and I are speaking a foreign language. That’s one of the things they’ve been trained to watch out for – foreigners trying to gain entry into the palace. Troy has always had many enemies.”

I had moved my hand away from the knife and was holding both of my hands up at the level of my head, showing them all that I didn’t want a fight.

About then, Paris started talking. I couldn’t understand a word he was saying, but it was easy to see that he was a persuasive and powerful speaker. They had all started lowering their weapons almost as soon as he started talking. After talking for about a minute, he asked them all a question. After a moment of hesitation, one of the older guards raised one hand slightly, and let it drop. Paris stared at him and asked him another question, gesturing with his entire hand toward Cassandra. The older guard glanced over at her, looked kind of embarrassed, then nodded his head and looked at the ground as if slightly ashamed. Then he barked an order at the youngest looking guard, who took off running into the palace.

“What’s going on?” I whispered to Cassandra.

“That young soldier ran to fetch the captain of the interior guards,” she told me.

“Interior guards?”

“Yeah, the bodyguards who are trusted enough to actually enter the rooms of the palace. These outer guards just protect the perimeter from attack.”

“So what do you think the captain of the interior guards is going to do about us?”

“The captain knows every member of my family well. He sees our faces every day. But these guys out here have no idea what the royal family even looks like. The older guard there said that he’s seen the royal family a few times at a distance and that he could see that I bear a family resemblance. I’m sure the captain will recognize me as a family member. I look very much like my mother.”

Sure enough, as soon as the captain showed up, he told the outer guards that Cassandra was unmistakably a member of the royal family, that she looked almost identical to Hekuba, the queen. After that, the outer guards were all apologizing and bowing low about a million times as the captain led us inside.

The inside of this palace was like something from a one of those old epic movies like Cleopatra or something. There were enormous rooms, each one way bigger than my whole house, and there were fancy giant vases standing here and there and statues and paintings all over the place. One courtyard we passed through actually had a full grown tiger in a bronze cage out in the middle. I was surprised that the room didn’t stink, but I guess there were plenty of servants around to clean up the tiger’s messes. And when I say plenty of servants, I’m talking about servants of all kinds going all over the place.

Finally, we reached a doorway with four armed guards – two on each side of the door. The captain said something to them, and they stood aside to let us pass. This was by far the biggest room we had entered so far. I would guess that a few thousand people could easily have had a party in there. On the far side of the room, on an elevated platform, was an enormous throne with what must have been the king sitting on it. A woman who, judging from her face, had to be Cassandra’s mother, was standing behind the king with one hand resting on his shoulder.

The throne and everything else on the platform was decorated with all kinds of carved gold

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ornaments and fancy artwork and emblems – probably emblems about Troy I figured. The captain approached the king, saying something with his head bowed down. Then he got down on his knees. Cassandra approached the throne and also kneeled down, so I kneeled down, too, right behind her. I had my head bowed down a bit like the others, but I sneaked a peek at the king and queen and saw they both looked very pleased that we were there.

The king, still smiling, said something to Cassandra, and then the queen came down off the grand platform and gave her a long hug, then pulled back to look her over. She spoke warmly to Cassandra, and vice versa. Then the queen said something else, and I noticed she was gesturing toward me. Cassandra started speaking a bit faster. I assumed she was explaining how I was supposed to be some Viking sailor found adrift.

When they reached me, Cassandra put her hand out, so I took it and got to my feet. Then I noticed that the queen was actually smiling at me, and she patted my shoulder a couple of times. After a few more minutes of listening to them chatting, the captain led us out and took us to some rooms nearby so that we could rest and prepare ourselves for dinner with the royal couple.

“The people up on the platform – the king and queen – they were your mom and dad, right?” I said under my breath.

“They certainly were!” She had a blissful look on her face like a little girl who had just been given a beautiful pony.

“And they believed your story?”

“Every word of it. My mom said, ‘You even sound just like Golpas.’ Golpas was my uncle’s name.”

“And what did she say about me? She seemed pretty friendly toward me.”

“That’s because I told her how you saved me from a lion, only I had to change the story a tiny bit to fit in better with the captured slave story I had told the guards outside. I told her that, six months ago, you were being transported to a slave labor camp when your party came across the scene where a lion had me cornered and was just about to eat me. And – you’ll like this part – I told her that, as a captive slave, with your hands and ankles still shackled together, you leapt on the ferocious beast’s back, got

your wrist shackles around its throat, and hung on tight until the lion was dead … strangled.”

“You have one wild imagination.”

“Well, it’s not that far from the truth.” She squeezed my bicep playfully. “My hero.”

“So what am I supposed to have been doing for the past six months since I saved your life?”

“I said that I had begged uncle Golpas to buy you so I could always have you as my bodyguard, and that I had learned a lot of your Norse language since then … So you and I are supposedly speaking an ancient Norse language.”

After the captain had escorted Cassandra to her room, he was taking me to mine when I felt this freezing cold ache in the back of my head. It was as if someone was hammering a big ice sickle through my skull. I actually reached back and touched the back of my head because the sensation seemed so real. Then I spun around and looked behind me, and there she was – that Claudia fiend. It had to be her. She was staring at me with a little sneer on her face, basically telling me that she knew all about me.

Once I had entered the bedroom which the captain pointed out for me, I hovered just inside the door, clutching the heavy handle just in case that creature tried to come in there after me. I didn’t want that creepy thing anywhere near me. I was crouched there, trying to figure out what it was about the woman that had creeped me out so badly. If I were to see the woman on the street, I would have considered her rather pretty and harmless. But there was something wicked and horrible in her – something that seemed to spill out from her pale blue eyes.

Chapter 26 – Dinnertime in the Trojan Palace

An hour later, we assembled in the giant dining room for supper. I stayed as close as possible to Cassandra because I was anxious to be seated beside her. There had been some doubt that I, as a foreigner, would even be allowed to enter the royal dining room, but Cassandra had told Queen Hekuba that she and I were engaged to be married soon, with her

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father’s blessing, so I was sitting down to eat with a king and queen – along with half a dozen other queens who all shared the same king.

About the time we sat down, Hekuba came in leading a toddler by the hand. Without any doubt, I knew this child had to be the younger Cassandra. I’ll be talking about both Cassandras – the teenage one I’d known for a couple of weeks and the little one I had just met. To make things easier, I’ll just refer to my Cassandra as Big C and the little Cassandra as Little C from now on.

Anyway, as Little C passed her older self, she stopped and stared, her mouth hanging open a bit. Then she started immediately trying to climb up into big C’s lap. Her mother tried to pull her child away so she wasn’t crawling all over some virtual stranger, but Big C smiled and touched Little C’s cheek, then gave her a hug and said something to her (their) mother. Evidently she was asking their mom to let Little C sit in her lap during supper because that’s exactly what happened. I watched them sitting there having this bizarre big-self/little-self conversation. It was a strange but delightful thing to watch.

However, the pleasant scene didn’t last long. Before the meal was over, that evil harpy, Claudia, came into the room and waited just inside the door. I saw her as soon as she came in, but Big C hadn’t noticed her. I watched the witch carefully and saw that her eyes were darting around, apparently looking for Little C.

When her eyes found what they were looking for, and she realized that Little C was sitting in Big C’s lap, I witnessed a subtle transformation take place in her facial expression. I knew that look. It was a look of recognition. And there was something else I noticed. There was no surprise in her pale blue eyes, just wicked satisfaction, as though she had fully expected to see Cassandra there – as though her evil plans were falling into place just as she had intended. That evil creature had looked into the future and the past, and had watched Cassandra coming. I was sure of it. I knew right then that we were in immediate, terrible danger.

I was trying to get Cassandra’s attention to warn her that we needed to talk, but her mother was chattering with her non-stop across the table, and as soon as the meal was over, Hekuba beckoned for her to follow and they started toward the door.

“You come, too,” Cassandra told me, looking back across her shoulder. “We’re going to the royal nursery so I can meet all the children … my brothers and sisters and half brothers and sisters.”

She had told me earlier that there were at least fifty of the siblings still living in the palace, so I was expecting complete pandemonium. The children were all cheerfully playing and eating their dinners, but the nursery was fairly quiet and well organized. There were several classrooms where lessons must take place during the daytime. It was a joy to watch Cassandra greeting all the other children and hugging them, holding their hands and such. Watching that made me think of what a wonderful mother she would make … if only she and I could make a family together, I was thinking.

And then, the children all started getting strangely quiet. The silence had started behind me and was moving forward like a wave through the kids. I glanced back and saw the reason. Claudia had come in behind us. The kids had all gone silent as stones, and were looking down at their dinner plates as if they were afraid to continue eating.

But then, without explanation, the evil one turned around and left. Right away, the children all began acting like normal children again. It was enchanting to watch Cassandra among them. Apparently she was telling them an exciting story at one point because they were all listening intently, their eyes big with wonder.

A few minutes later, she was teaching a wild Phrygian song to a big group of four and five year olds. She had them doing steps and hand motions, and they were all laughing and obviously having a great time. A little bit later, she was teaching a game to a bunch of older kids – most of them about ten or eleven years old maybe – and each kid had a stone slate they must have used for school, and a rough chunk of chalky stone to write with. They were running around, showing things they had drawn, and the other students sounded like they must be guessing at something. Without knowing the language, I couldn’t really tell what the game was all about, but it was easy to see that the kids were all having a blast.

“Cassandra would make a good teacher ... and a good mother,” I was thinking, but I knew that I had to get her away from all these kids as soon as possible so that I could warn her about what I had seen on

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Claudia’s face earlier. I managed to get close to Cassandra and said, “We have to talk right away.”

Within a few minutes she had managed to excuse herself, claiming exhaustion (and she did look completely exhausted). We finally had a chance to talk, and I told her what I had seen earlier in Claudia’s facial expression. She said, “We’ve got to talk to Paris. He’ll know what to do.”

Chapter 27 – Racing to Save the Universe

The three warriors had been housed in the soldier barracks where all the palace guards slept, so she and I sneaked out of the palace and made our way toward the barracks. It’s funny how some places you never forget. Cassandra still remembered her way around in the huge palace compound. At the main barracks, the guard on duty gave Cassandra a funny look when she asked to talk to Paris, but he still sent someone to bring him out.

“Is anything wrong?” Paris asked.

“We’ve got trouble. That Claudia woman knows who I am. Junior saw that she recognized me, and he believes that she saw us coming long before we got here. And I believe it. I’ve seen the hatred in her eyes when she looks at me … She’s about to do something. What should we do?”

“First, we need to find out what she’s got planned,” he said with a worried look.

“How?” I asked him.

“We need a spy in her private chambers. If she’s collaborating with that Darius fellow, she’ll be talking to him about their plans.”

“Would you be willing to do the spying?” Cassandra asked him.

“Who else?” He said.

“Can he get permission to leave the barracks?” I asked her.

“He outranks any of the soldiers here in the palace. He can pretty much go wherever he likes.”

So Paris left to find a way to sneak into that evil woman’s chambers, and Cassandra and I headed back into the palace. I noticed that she seemed unsteady on her feet, and she was shuffling along slowly, dragging her feet on the floor like she was a hundred-year-old woman. Her facial color also didn’t look good at all.

“Cassandra, are you going to be alright?” She just shook her head a tiny bit.

“Is that evil witch messing with you?”

“I don’t think that it’s Claudia, Junior … I’ve felt this coming on for a couple of weeks.”

“Well, what is it then?” She was using one hand against the wall to support herself as she hobbled along.

“You know how I told you that I thought Apollo’s curse might be broken?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, now I’m pretty sure it has been broken.”

“But that’s a good thing, right? Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“It is what I wanted, but, Junior, do you remember what the curse was about?”

“Yeah, that you would always be young and beautiful, but that nobody would ever believe your warnings.”

“Do I still look young and beautiful to you?”

We had stopped right below one of the wall torches, so I took a close look at her face, then moved in for an even closer look. The realization hit me that, it wasn’t just her skin color not being as bright as it had been that I had been noticing. I saw places where her skin was sagging down and changing color. And upon closer examination, I noticed all the tiny wrinkles that had formed everywhere, as if overnight she had started becoming an old woman.

“My God!” I groaned out loud. And immediately I regretted saying that. I saw her expression, how she looked so crushed and humiliated. I saw tears suddenly spilling out over her sagging eyelids, and my heart was completely broken for her. I cradled her against my chest and let her cry there quietly for a minute.

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“I thought we would be able to grow old together,” I said.

“I thought so, too. I thought I could have your babies – lots of them I was hoping – and we could raise them together, maybe even live long enough to see a bunch of our grandchildren growing up … I’ve always loved children so much.”

“Maybe we could still have children – well, maybe one at least.”

“Aw, my sweet boy.” Her voice sounded like a very old woman’s. She put her aging hand against my cheek. “I’m afraid I don’t have much time left … only a few more hours I would guess.”

“It isn’t fair!” I said, slapping my hand hard against the marble wall.

“I don’t think life has ever been much about fairness,” she said, sounding tired and sad. “It wasn’t fair for your dad to die halfway around the world, with a wife and seven children waiting for him to come home. It wasn’t fair for my own parents to be murdered.”

Right then, Queen Hekuba came around the corner of the corridor and approached us. She began talking to Cassandra. After she left, Cassandra told me what their conversation had been about. It went something like this:

“Is everything okay? I thought I heard something strike the wall. My bedroom chambers are on the other side of this wall.”

“It was nothing. I just gave my bodyguard some bad news, and he slapped the wall. Sorry if we disturbed you.”

“Is he really only your bodyguard? I’ve seen the way you two talk. I don’t need to understand the language to know when people are intimates.”

“I didn’t know we were that obvious, Mother …” She had let the word slip out accidentally.

“Mother?” Hekuba asked.

“I meant ... Aunt Hekuba.”

“I know you’re my close kin. You look so much like me when I was younger and so much like my little Cassandra ... But something’s not true about the story you tell. I can see through it. And I can read people. I can also see that something about your appearance is changing rapidly. Confide in me, Child. You can trust me.”

And then, in the space of about a minute, Cassandra had told her mother the short version of our entire story. Hekuba, with tears gathering in her eyes, touched her daughter’s face lightly with her fingertips.

“I knew there was something that drew me to you, some kinship … I can see you changing right before my eyes ... What’s going to happen to you now?”

“I’m think I’m dying now.” And sure enough, she sank down to the floor.

“No!” I moaned. “You can’t go yet!” I had dropped down beside her.

She tried to grab my hand, but her grip was too weak, so I held on to hers. “Take my body back to the Omphalos of Apollo,” she told me. “That will be my sarcophagus – my tomb. When you get back to the future – if you’re able to get back – leave my body inside the Omphalos when you send it back down into the earth. Leave me buried deep in the heart of the earth. Don’t try to change history, Junior. Don’t try to play the hero and save me by jumping around through history. Claudia would use that against us. Just get yourself home, and help your mom. And stay there. She needs you ... And I want you to destroy the key to the Omphalos.” She squeezed my hand harder for emphasis. I don’t want Claudia, or anyone like her, ever to find it and use it for evil.”

We suddenly heard footsteps pounding down the hallway toward us. It was Paris. He interrupted us before he noticed Cassandra was on the floor.

“I hid in Claudia’s room and overheard them.” He turned to me and spoke English: “I … hear them.”

Then he started speaking fast in Phrygian. Hekuba’s face instantly went pale. She suddenly leapt to her feet and began sprinting down the hallway toward the nursery area.

“Claudia … takes … little Cassandra.” He said to me, then trotted off toward the nursery.

“Cassandra,” I said to my Cassandra, patting her face gently. But she made no response. Her face flopped to one side, her eyes half open. “No, Baby! You can’t be dead. You can’t be!” I wailed. But I knew as I said it that she was dead. I picked her up and scrambled to catch up with Paris. Her body seemed to feel much lighter than it should have.

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From a distance, I heard Hekuba screaming her daughter’s name, and by the time I reached the nursery, it was obvious that something terrible had happened there. In front of the doors leading back into the nursery area, there should have been two armed guards posted. But instead of the guards, there were just two big black marks scorched into the floor. Claudia or Darius must have worked their evil magic and burned the guards to a crisp right where they had stood.

Inside the nursery, there were also burn marks here and there on the floor – but smaller marks, as though smaller persons had been incinerated there. But there were also still a few living children hiding under furniture or crouched in corners screaming and crying. Hekuba, wailing, crumpled to the floor and touched one of the black places.

Suddenly, an evil looking man I hadn’t seen before emerged from one of the darkened nursery rooms in the back. I guess he had been in there torching more small children. Hekuba jumped to her feet and shouted three words at him. The first word, I recognized as “Darius,” so this, I realized, had to be the evil lover of Claudia. The second word was Phrygian that I couldn’t understand, and the third word was “Cassandra.” So I guessed that she had apparently asked him where her little girl was.

Instead of answering, he sneered, said something loud and threatening, then pulled out a big sword and brandished it, apparently preparing to take the queen’s head off immediately. Several things then happened during the following two seconds: I saw that Paris was much too far away to reach Darius before his sword struck Hekuba. In one fluid motion, I snatched my throwing knife from my belt and fired it straight into Darius’ left eye.

The knife struck with such speed and force that it went almost completely through his head. Darius’ sword, which was already in mid swing downward toward Hekuba, dropped from his hands and clattered to the floor in front of her. Darius continued to stand, staggering, for several more seconds, then slowly settled down on his knees and slumped sideways to the floor. Blood was literally pouring out of the back of his head and out of his eye.

I calmly leaned down, yanked my knife out of the back of his head and stuck it back into my belt. Then I wiped the blood from my hands onto my tunic. In a single day, I had gotten both lion’s blood

and human blood on my new tunic. I remember thinking at that moment that, after all my protesting to Cassandra about how I would never willingly kill anyone, I had become a fine-tuned killing machine.

Hekuba had approached me and was hugging me, saying a lot of things I couldn’t understand.

“She … thank,” Paris said. “She say stop Claudia … not kill … little Cassandra.”

“Where do you think she might have taken little Cassandra?”

“Claudia … wants steal … Omphalos.”

“Oh my God!” I said. The realization hit me. The evil hag had been reading Cassandra’s thoughts all along. She could probably see exactly what Cassandra’s eyes were seeing when she was hiding the Omphalos key in the dirt. I knew that, if Claudia ever gained full access to the Omphalos and its key, then mankind would never be safe, no matter what era they lived in. There would be no place in history to hide from her.

And, since my own dear Cassandra had apparently grown old and passed away, if Claudia had little Cassandra and could control her and continue feeding off her oracle powers to see the future, she could go bouncing around all over history, and nothing and nobody would ever be able to stop her. If she got to the Omphalos before we did, mankind was doomed.

“What’s the fastest way for us to get to the Omphalos?” I shouted at Paris.

Paris turned to one of the princes – a boy of about twelve – and said, “Run to the barracks. Tell them to send the warriors Diomedes and Hektor to the stables.”

“Yes, Sir!” The little fellow barked, touching his shoulder as if there was a medallion there and he was saluting.

Hekuba put her hand on my shoulder. “Remember, you promised your Cassandra you would take her into the Omphalos of Apollo.” Hekuba had made us wait as she wrapped the girl’s frail body quicky in a dark sheet of linen – evidently some cloth they used back then for burials.

“Come! … Follow!” Paris told me, and I ran with him toward the back courtyard, carrying Cassandra’s wrapped body in my arms. On the far side of the back courtyards, we came to the stables.

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Diomedes and Hektor were already there. Paris called out orders at a bunch of uniformed soldiers and some stable hands. I assumed that the palace must keep chariots ready to roll at all times just in case there was any trouble because, in no time at all, four chariots rolled out, with three horses harnessed to each chariot.

As soon as each of us had gotten into a chariot, Hektor asked if he could help me by carrying Cassandra’s body since I was obviously having trouble holding onto her and keeping my chariot under control. This evidently wasn’t going to be as easy as driving a car or a motorcycle. Hector took her from me, draped her now frail body over one of his massive shoulders and easily controlled his chariot at the same time.

Less than a minute after Paris had ordered the chariots, we went thundering out of Troy, and were soon tearing along about thirty miles per hour toward the distant Omphalos. I was hoping I would have some chance of finding the right place in the dark without Cassandra’s help. But I couldn’t imagine how I would ever be able to find it again. Fortunately, there was a full moon out that night, and it was very clear visibility, so we could see for miles. But even if it had been full daylight outside, I doubted that I’d have been able to locate the place where Cassandra and I had buried that key when we reached the gorge where the Omphalos lay.

It was all I could do to stay in my chariot at the speed we were going. The roads close to Troy were fairly even and flat, but the farther we went out, the rougher our ride became. After we had been going for maybe half an hour, I saw what looked like a distinct plume of dust rising in the distance ahead of us.

“Could that be Claudia?” I wondered.

“Hey!” I shouted at the other warriors, pointing ahead.

“Yes!” Paris shouted back. “We see her.”

“Her!” I thought to myself. “So they believe that’s Claudia, too.” I noticed that we were very quickly gaining on her.

“We catch fast.” I shouted, using Paris’ abbreviated English.

“She … one horse. We each … three horse.”

So that was what was making the difference in our speed. But there was no way I could gauge whether we might catch up before she reached the Omphalos. Yes, we were gaining on her noticeably, but we still seemed impossibly far from her I reckoned.

In the bright moonlight, I began to see what must have been the drop-off of the huge gorge in which the Omphalos was lying. It was beginning to look more and more like she was going to beat us to it. We saw her drawing the chariot reins in and coming to a stop still far ahead of us.

She hopped out of the chariot, dragging little Cassandra by the hair behind her over the rough stones. The battered little child was screaming and wriggling around, obviously desperate to get away from the fiend that had a hold of her. As Claudia lunged quickly down the rough gully leading into the big gorge, I saw the poor child’s body being yanked like a rag doll and bounced brutally across the stones and boulders.

But as painful as that was to watch, one thing about it heartened me. I realized that bringing the child along by force was slowing Claudia’s progress considerably. Perhaps that factor would be enough to enable us to catch up to her. Another delay she had that we didn’t experience was when she had to stop to dig up the key to the Omphalos, she had to dig one-handed, all the while, with her other hand, wrestling to control little Cassandra and yanking her around by the hair as the child tried continuously to escape from her.

The warriors and I were bounding recklessly down the gully, leaping over boulders and down small precipices, falling often and scrambling back up onto our feet. At one point, I landed wrong and a jolt of excruciating pain shot through my entire foot and ankle. I thought at the time that I might have sprained it, but I would later learn that I had broken my foot in three places.

I tried to soldier through despite the pain, but my foot simple wasn’t functioning right any more. Whenever I would step down on it, it wouldn’t hold me up anymore. I was reduced to crawling along over the boulders. By the time we were halfway down the gully, I was bruised and bleeding in many places on my knees and hands, and both Diomedes and Hektor were getting further and further ahead of me.

75

Diomedes had already stopped running several times to load and fire arrows at Claudia, so Hektor, with his sword drawn, had gotten ahead of him – maybe a hundred feet ahead of him by this time. But I noticed that Hektor did not run directly behind that witch, but kept his path a few yards to one side, I assume to allow Diomedes a clear target for his arrows.

But then, as Hektor gained ground rapidly on Claudia, something terrifying happened. I saw that, in an instant, Hektor had ceased to exist. I was looking right at him where he was running, but in the next instant, all I saw was a man-sized section of smoke rising, and there was a dark patch of what appeared to be ashes on the ground. It would seem that Darius was not the only one with the power to burn people to a cinder.

I’m pretty sure that Diomedes would already have killed Claudia by this time if he were not being so careful to avoid hitting little Cassandra, whom Claudia was still dragging along by the hair behind her. I saw that all his shots had sailed past Claudia at head level or higher, well above Cassandra’s little body. And I had been counting the shots – six already. I knew that he only carried seven arrows, so if he missed again, everything would be lost.

I saw that Claudia had reached the bottom of the gorge by that time and was nearing the Omphalos. “What are you waiting for, Diomedes? Shoot!” I said under my breath. But that witch was already leaping up into the Omphalos by the time Diomedes had stopped and notched in his last arrow. I could see that he wasn’t going to make his shot before she got through the door, and I was right. She was already inside.

But then I saw something that truly amazed me. Although Claudia was inside the Omphalos, little Cassandra was not. With the evil harpy still yanking her by the hair brutally, the child was clinging to the stone rim of the Omphalos door’s threshold, refusing to let go. She was crying loudly, in fact screaming, but she wasn’t letting go. It reminded me so much of the teenaged Cassandra that I knew – her stubborn determination and her willful refusal to be bullied or ruled by anyone.

And then the child’s little body suddenly fell from the bottom of the doorway that she had been hanging onto, dropping abruptly to the rocky ground. A split second later, she was up on her chubby little

legs running as fast as she could, with Claudia leaping out the door right behind her.

But after Claudia had taken only two or three strides chasing after the child, she stopped running and stood still, staggering slightly, and when she staggered, her body turned toward us slightly, and I saw why she had staggered. There was a very long, black-feathered arrow sticking sideways through her neck. She took several more unsteady paces before crashing headlong to the ground. The other warriors and I all let out whoops of victory. Female or not, Claudia had been a dangerous and evil adversary much in need of killing.

By the time I had crawled and hobbled down to the Omphalos, I saw that Diomedes had already picked up Hektor’s sword and chopped the witch’s head off, and that was fine by me. But even without a head, I was still a bit fearful that she might spring back to life at any moment and vaporize us all.

I saw that Paris had already picked up the traumatized little Cassandra and was cradling her in his arms. His fathering skills and experience were very evident as he held her in his arms, patting her back gently. After that, she didn’t allow herself to be held by any of us but Paris.

When we went over to the entrance of the Omphalos, we saw a big clump of little Cassandra’s dark red hair, with a visible patch of bloody scalp on one end. And then we knew how she had escaped from Claudia’s grip. That brave little child, rather than giving in to Claudia’s ruthless yanking, had continued hanging onto the threshold until half her hair had been yanked out. Claudia had been left holding onto nothing but a bloody clump of hair. This was one heroic little person.

In fact, I felt that, over the past few days, I had been in the company of the finest bunch of heroes I had ever known. In that moment I realized something for the first time. I realized that throughout history, there have always been heroes, rushing face first into hell to keep the world safe for their loved ones.

My father, I also realized in that moment, had been one of those heroes his entire life. He had been like Paris, having to leave his family behind, to go off to war. He had gone back into the anguish of mortal combat time after time because he was a hero, and I had looked down on him for that, considering him less noble than me because he was willing to bear arms to protect my freedom.

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And the noblest hero of them all, I remembered, was lying dead beside a Trojan chariot at the top of the ridge. She had been willing to lay down her eternal life so that she could grow old with me. And that frail hero’s body was in need of a hero’s burial. Diomedes, with Paris translating, let me know that, because of my injured foot, I would not be welcome on the trek back up the ravine and back down again with my Big Cassandra’s remains. So Paris and I stayed behind.

While Diomedes was collecting her body, I watched Paris comforting the little one – rocking her in his arms, singing silly-sounding little Phrygian songs to her, songs that made her laugh, so soon after a terrifying ordeal, and even I was smiling sometimes without even knowing the words. But I was mostly feeling deep sadness.

Since Cassandra’s death, I had been charging full speed against vicious enemies, and I hadn’t taken the time to let the pain and loss sink in. Now, as Paris sang to and rocked this miniature Cassandra, I thought of the children my Cassandra and I might have had together if she had not aged and died so suddenly. I thought with deep sadness of the fact that she had never gotten to cuddle a child of her own although it had been plain that she loved children dearly.

After Diomedes had returned with Cassandra’s body and laid it down inside the Omphalos, I spoke to Paris. “Can you take the shroud off her face?” I asked him. “I want to see her face one last time.”

Paris kind of hesitated, then said, “No ... you ... no see ... she gone.” I remembered how light and bony her body had felt wrapped in its linen shroud, and I knew he was right. This was not the way I needed to remember her.

Even after we warriors had hugged each other numerous times, we all seemed reluctant to go our separate ways. Right at this moment, I understood for the first time what my father was always talking about when he spoke of his brothers in arms. Many times, I had seen him break into tears when things would remind him of his fallen comrades that he would never see again. Fighting side by side, when your own life and all your brothers’ and sisters’ lives are on the line, creates a common bond like no other.

And now, here I was, also having to leave behind my own comrades in arms – one dead and gone, one dead and waiting for burial, and two still living. My

dear brother, Hektor, reduced to nothing but a dark smudge, Cassandra, wrapped for burial by her long lost mother, the queen, and Paris and Diomedes – both still alive for the moment – but I had to assume they would each die hero’s deaths as well when the battle of Troy would be lost to the Greeks in the near future. Like every warrior in history, leaving his brothers behind on the battlefield and turning his face toward home, I realized that I was not likely ever to see them again.

As the sun was just dawning in the east, I entered reluctantly into the door of the Omphalos. I saw just inside the door where Claudia had dropped the round black stone containing the key. I opened it to make sure the key was still in there, and it was. I stuck my head outside the Omphalos door again and spoke to Paris one last time.

“What will you do with that evil witch?” I asked him, nodding toward Claudia.

“Her ... we leave ... animals eat.”

I nodded. It seemed a fitting end for that wicked creature. And I knew that, with all the wolves and jackals and lions and such that roamed these wild canyons, her remains would be gnawed down to a skeleton within a few days.

I raised my fist through the open door and said quietly, “Lethor Ganto, Brothers.”

“Lethor Ganto!” They called back, their fists raised toward heaven. Then I saw that little Cassandra had one tiny fist raised as well.

I turned the key, and the door closed without a sound.

“Omphalos,” I said, hoping that Apollo’s ancient oracular stone could understand my English, “I want to go home now – back to the exact moment when Cassandra and I left. I’m not going to try to change history by going further back to save my father’s life or Cassandra’s life because Cassandra warned me not to, that it would be likely to end with the world’s destruction. And she’s always right ... Just take me home.”

Then I felt the deep vibrations in my chest, and I knew that I was speeding through time into the future. When the vibrations stopped less than a minute later, I turned the key, and the door opened again. I stuck my head out and looked around. No warriors in sight. No headless corpse of Claudia

77

sprawled on the rocks. And in the distance by the edge of the gorge, I saw Cassandra’s backpack in which she had carried her little digging tool, still lying right beside the little hole in the ground from which she had dug out the key to the Omphalos.

Once I was sure we were back in the future, I set down the black bowling ball stone, with the key inside, right next to Cassandra’s body. I touched the linen shroud on the end where I knew Cassandra’s head was resting.

“Baby, I wish ... I wish ...” But then I realized there was nothing I could hope for that might possibly come true with Cassandra’s shrouded body lying dead here in front of me.

I stood up and stepped down through the open door, then stuck my head back inside.

“Omphalos, you can dig yourself back down to your resting place now.” I jerked my head back out, for fear that the door might close with my head still inside. I waited, but the door remained open and nothing happened. Then I called through the door, “I said you could go on back down into the ground where you hide out, and you can keep Cassandra with you.” But once again, nothing happened.

Then it occurred to me that the Omphalos might be set up so that it could never be sent back down into the earth with the key inside because then nobody could ever bring it back up again or get it open. That must be why Cassandra had kept the key hidden nearby, outside of the Omphalos.

So I kept the key with me, stepped outside and turned the key. The door closed silently. Then I turned it another quarter turn and felt the earth begin shaking mightily beneath my feet. The Omphalos was already out of sight, as it began screwing itself a mile deep into the earth. I quickly positioned myself in the middle of the canyon where I knew I needed to be to see the rocks that were sure to fall into the canyon. I had to spend the next ten minutes leaping out of the way of rocks and boulders bouncing down toward me.

When the tremors finally stopped, I carefully placed the key back inside the round black stone. Then I climbed up out of the ravine, carrying Cassandra’s backpack with the key-stone inside.

A few hundred feet from the top of the small gully by which Cassandra and I had climbed down into the canyon a few minutes earlier, I saw Agent

Thatcher and Captain Joe still waiting beside the military ATV, right where we had left them. I walked toward them, wondering how I could ever explain all that had happened.

“Where’s Cassandra?” Thatcher asked.

“She didn’t make it back. She’s dead … and buried.”

He put a hand on my shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Son. I know how much you cared for that girl.” I felt like a youngster in need of sympathy and hugs, but I shrugged his hand from my shoulder. I knew I was a grownup now – a warrior from ancient days. And I had a family waiting for me, a family that needed to be consoled and protected in our time of tragedy and grief, and I had to stand up and be a man to face that responsibility.

“Did you have any success dealing with those two evil creatures?”

“Yeah, we killed them both. Cassandra and I, along with some other wonderful people we met back there … brave warriors … heroes.”

“So, are we ready to head back to the base?” Captain Joe asked.

“Yeah,” I said, “but one more thing before we leave. Have either of you got a GPS tracker on your phone?”

“I do,” Thatcher said, pulling his phone from his pocket.

“Can you give me the exact coordinates for this location?” I asked. He read out the numbers for me as I jotted them down. Then I read them back to him and double-checked them carefully.

“Planning to come back here someday, are you, Son?” He asked.

“Well, Sir, since I can’t see the future, it’s hard to say,” I answered, tucking the GPS coordinates into a secret compartment inside my wallet.