Preserving the Ingenairii (40 page)

She decided to see if Alec could awaken.
 
He seemed to know exactly what to do in these circumstances.
 
He might even be able to tell her what circumstances they were in, a mystery that she couldn’t fathom.

“Alec?
 
Alec,” she said gently, then firmly as she leaned over him and rubbed his shoulder.

“Bethany?” he mumbled in response.

It irritated her.
 
She was a member of the imperial family, and expected to be remembered.

“No, not Bethany.
 
Wake up, Alec,” she said crossly.

He opened his eyes, with no sign of comprehension at first.

“Oh,” he said after a few moments.
 
“Tell me your name again?”

“Jeswyne,” the girl answered, suddenly miserable and feeling her brave resolve crumbling fast.

“That’s right, the Lady Jeswyne.
 
The sun is setting, isn’t it?” he looked around.
 
“Is that why you woke me up?”

She nodded.

“I’ll bet you’ve never started a campfire before, have you?” Alec asked, and spoke again before she could even answer.
 
“Well now you’re going to be the first girl in the imperial family to do this,” and he talked her through the steps of preparing a fire pit and stacking the kindling and wood.
 
She began to strike the flint he had against the steel in one of the knives he had left in his bandolier, until she struck a spark that began to smolder.

Minutes later she had a small fire blazing.

You’re awfully handy to have around,” Alec told her.
 
“For your next trick could you place more of your medicine on my wounds,
then
help me pull my pants back on?
 
Before it gets dark, run out and get more ferns and bark from the leper bark cottonwood.
 
Then we can make the poultice and settle in for the evening.”
 
He closed his eyes, and grimaced in pain once again.

Jeswyne hitched up her skirt and did as asked one more time, then returned to a sleeping Alec and began mashing the materials together.
 
By the time she had all that accomplished, the sun had set, and she began to smear the paste across his wounds by firelight, awakening him in the process.

“You have very gentle hands,” Alec told her, making her jump in surprise when she heard his voice.
 
“You make a good healer.”
 
She helped him pull his pants on, blushing again as she did so.
 
“With your fair complexion, you turn the most remarkable shades of pink when you blush,” Alec observed.
 
“And it rises all the way to your hair line!”

“You’d blush too if you were doing this for a complete stranger!” she retorted.

“You’re right,” he answered.
 
“I remember the first time I had to apply medicine to wounds on an injured female; it would have been embarrassing, except that it made me so nervous – you see, her husband was standing right behind me, and he was a member of the Goldenfields Guard, armed with a sword!” Alec gave a little gurgle that was his weakest laugh, and pushed
himself
up into a sitting position.

“Lady Jeswyne, do you know how marvelous that medicine is?” Alec asked.
 
“You know it’s made from two simple plants, just crushed together, yet it manages to stop bleeding, it prevents infection, and it reduces pain.
 
All at the same time!
 
Did you think you could do all that at once?” he smiled at her, and for the first time, as she looked at him in the firelight, she considered that underneath all the dirt and blood, he was a handsome boy, not so much older than she.

“Where are we?
 
How did we get here?” she asked in response.

“And your third question is
,
how do we go home?” Alec spoke.
 
An animal howled somewhere not too far away.
 
“See that stick?” Alec pointed at a tree branch in the stack of firewood.
 
“Hand it to me,” he told her, and picked up a knife to begin whittling a sharp point on the end of the shaft.
 
He spoke as he whittled.

“When the demons were circling around us, there was something dangerous happening,” Alec began to explain.

“Well, yeah,” Jeswyne surprised herself by voicing her skepticism aloud in a sarcastic tone.

Alec responded to her grin with a lopsided smile of his own.
 
“Well beyond the obvious, the energy that was building between them and me wasn’t something you could see, but it was dangerous too.
 
And when it came to its climax, there was a great explosion, one that must have wiped out the demons, broke glass in the windows nearby, and probably raised a fountain from the waters below the ground.”
 
He paused as he thought speculatively about the stream nearby.

“But we left there just before the explosion, so we didn’t see it,” he told her.
 
“We saw a blue light, and then we left the scene of explosion.”
 
He looked down absent-mindedly at his hands carving the point on the makeshift lance.
 
His left hand was healed!
 
The raw wound he had received from touching the body of Christ had closed over, leaving a clean scar.
 
He flexed the hand studying it in wonder.

“Is that all you know?” Jeswyne asked after a minute.

“What? No.
 
I’m sorry,” Alec answered.
 
He looked up from the hand and stared into her face.
 
“This is something very special,” he said softly

“I am an ingenaire.
 
Do you know what that means?” he asked.

“That is the word you use for wizards,” Jeswyne responded.

“Yes, basically,” Alec agreed.
 
“There are different types of ingenairii.
 
I have a few different skills, and one of them is as a time ingenairii.
 
I can manipulate time.

“But I can’t do it very well.
 
I’ve learned the theory of how to move through time, but I haven’t done it very often, just a couple of times,” he told her.
 
“In our case though, just before the explosion occurred, I was able to use my powers to take us away from the explosion.
 
We didn’t move from the spot we were in, we just changed the date we were here.”

“What date is this?” Jeswyne asked, not completely comprehending.

“I just tried to jump to a date as far from the explosion as possible.
 
My guess is that we came back to a time before people lived in Oyster Bay,” Alec answered.
 
“I don’t know how far back, but as badly as I wanted to get away from there, I would guess we’re as far back in time as I am able to comprehend.”

Chapter 33 – Alec
Without
Powers

“So when will you take us back there?”
 
Jeswyne asked.
 
“And what will you do with me when we return?” she added a moment later.

“I am injured right now, in ways you can’t see,” Alec answered.
 
“An ingenaire should only use one kind of power at a time.
 
When an ingenaire has the ability to use more than one kind of power, we have to use only one at a time.
 
As I was fighting the demons at the end, I was using two kinds of power at
once,
and even three powers together when we moved through time.
 
That has crippled my ability to use my energies now.

“There was another battle I was in when I used two powers at once, and it took me a long time to recover,” he told her, not wanting to admit how difficult it had been to be cured, eventually needing the divine assistance of John Mark.
 
He glanced down at his arms.
 
Even in the dark he could see that his marks had grown dull and faded.
 
He was truly powerless now, and he was trapped in a time where there were no friends – only this girl from Michian.

“It’s getting chilly,” Alec noted, feeling the air cooling after the sunset.
 
“Put some more wood on the fire, and then, if you don’t mind, if you want, come over here and sit with me.
 
We can keep each other warm.”

Jeswyne obediently added the fuel to their fire,
then
carefully sat down by Alec, sitting stiffly next to him.
 
Alec closed his eyes, and tried to imagine how difficult the day had been for her.
 
“Tell me about your favorite person,” Alec said, wanting to make her feel better.
 
“Do you have a boyfriend?”

“I am the Lady Jeswyne.
 
I shall, at a proper place and proper time, become engaged to a suitable boy,” she said in formal tones.
 
“You say that you are already engaged?
 
When was that arranged?
 
Who selected your bride for you?” She countered.

She turned her head obliquely.
 
Alec’s eyes were still closed, and a small smile left a trace on his lips.
 
“I was engaged when I was around nineteen or twenty, to a beautiful, charming, talented girl.
 
We went on a trip together, and we stopped to see her parents,” Alec paused, and there was another hint of a smile.
 
“I remember her father gave me permission to marry her, when I hadn’t even been ready to ask!”
 
He chuckled as he remembered how bewildered he had felt when he left Bethany’s father following that conversation.
 
He leaned back against a tree trunk.

“I don’t think we’ll be able to mount a watch tonight,” he said.
 
“Tomorrow will be an important day.
 
I may not wake up, Lady Jeswyne.
 
Sooner or later I will fall asleep and stay asleep for several days.
 
I’m surprised I’ve been conscious at all today – it comes from the problem I was telling you about before – using the two powers.
 
My body has to recover from the damage I’ve done to it through that abuse.

“If I wake up tomorrow, we’ll try to move to a better place.
 
If I sleep all day, you know what to do – gather fire wood, feed yourself, and treat my wounds,” he stopped talking, and began to
breath
in a deeper, regular pattern that indicated he was asleep.

Quietly, Jeswyne began to cry.
 
She leaned against Alec, and cried over how utterly and completely her life was ruined.
 
Even if nothing attacked them tonight, she was going to be stuck as the nursemaid to an invalid wizard for who-knew-how-long.
 
Her tears flowed freely, soaking a patch of Alec’s tunic, as the Lady Jeswyne cried herself to sleep.

Alec woke when the sun was far overhead.
 
Jeswyne was not with him, and he wondered what day it was.
 
He felt weak, in a way that reminded him of his time in Bondell, when he had first made the mistake of using two powers, and had been feeble until John Mark had miraculously healed him.
 
He had no idea of where he could turn to find a sacred site here, and no one to ask.
 
And no idea what a dryad was.

“You’re awake!” Jeswyne was suddenly with him, emerging from the forest with an armful of firewood.
 
She looked disheveled and worn down; her gown was tattered, and her face smudged.
 
But she had a smile.

“I’m
awake ,
” Alec smiled.
 
“How long have I been asleep?”

“Three days,” the girl told him.
 
“For three days I tried to wake you up and couldn’t.
 
I shook you, I pinched you, I shouted at you.”
 
She dropped her firewood and knelt beside him.
 
“I was afraid you were going to leave me alone.”