The Messenger: Mortal Beloved Time Travel Romance, #1 (6 page)

T
he inside
of this tiny dwelling was proportioned like a field huddle of Chicago Bears’ football players on game day: round, compact, and incredibly dense. Every inch of the dark space was packed. Drying plants hung from the ceiling. Fur pelts covered low benches. Rough metal and clay bowls and pots sat next to a small, open fire pit dug into the earth in the hut’s center. There was actually a hole built into the roof above it, and smoke drifted out.

Oddly enough, this woman’s home still looked and felt comfortable as well as friendly. Not like your neighborhood’s crazy-hoarder-lady’s place; more like your favorite great auntie who thought the stack of newspapers printed the day Diana married Prince Charles, as well as the newspapers on the day she died, might be valuable in the future. Which is why she saved them for you.

We sat next to each other on mats on the ground. She filled a small, sturdy, ceramic bowl with leaves and berries. “All the gossip-starved tongues in this garrison are wagging about you,” she said and poured liquid from a flask into the bowl. “How lucky Abigail was to escape the massacre at the Endicott settlement.”

She ground the concoction together with a pestle and mortar-like utensils. Then she handed the bowl to me along with the instruments. “Mix that for me, please.”

I had never used a mortar and pestle before, but I did what she asked. Could it be all that different from stirring a bowl of cookie dough?

She stood, reached for some herbs hanging from the ceiling of her hut, pinched off some leaves and crumpled them between her fingers. “Show me,” she said.

“Show you what?” I edged away from her, worried she’d turn into another weirdo from whatever dream I was in.

“The contents of that bowl, silly.”

“Oh,” I said, relieved, and held it out to her.

She dipped her index finger into it and swirled it around. She pulled out a dab and rubbed it on her wrist on top of a big jagged scar. She nodded. “Good.” She sprinkled more pinches of this and that into the concoction. “More mixing please.”

So I did.

“Do you remember the last time you were here?” she asked. “Answer truthfully.”

“No.” Why did she look so familiar? In all honestly, I didn’t have a clue where I would know her—especially not as Abigail. “What’s your name, Ma’am?” I asked.

“The English call me Angeni,” she said, took the bowl and placed it on the ground. She reached her hand toward my chin and cradled it. Leaned in, she tilted my head up and down.

I don’t know why I didn’t see it before now, maybe because my heart was racing from my escape attempt, or ’cause the hut was so dark. Her eyes were a bluish color with strange white patches across them. I realized that Angeni was, for the most part, blind.

She put her fingers from one hand on my face and traced my chin, my lips, my cheeks, and my nose. She felt my forehead, the bandage, and ran a finger through my hair. “Hmm,” she said. “You have beautiful hair.”

“Everyone says I have my mama’s nose and my dad’s hair. I mean, his is brown, and mine is dirty blonde, but we both have hair that’s super thick. Like, no one in my family will being needing Rogaine any time soon,” I babbled.

Oh jeez, I sounded like a moron, but Angeni smiled. I didn’t want to stare at her but the past couple of days had been strange. But I didn’t think she could see me all that clearly. Fine, call me terrible.

Angeni had high cheekbones and deep-set eyes. She was tiny, lean, and fit. She could have been in her sixties, or even in her seventies. I couldn’t tell. That’s when she pulled the gauze bandage off my forehead and poked at my wound.

“Ow.” I flinched.

“This is nothing: a flesh wound that’s getting better, and a small knock to your brain. I can fix that. If you are to be a warrior one day, you must first learn to become a Messenger. And if you are to be a Messenger, you must gain knowledge of the differences between pains that steal lives, and those that are merely irritating.”

Why did Angeni think I would want to be a warrior one day? The only warriors I’d be doing would be yoga poses. The only messengers I knew were those people who earned twenty bucks an hour plus tips, weaving their bicycles through the Loop’s traffic to deliver documents, fruit baskets, or bad news. No way I’d ever be a messenger.

“I know for a fact you have been through far worse than this, Abigail,” Angeni said. She dipped her fingers into the crock filled with her concoction, and smoothed it on my cut.

It stung and I cringed.

“This will help you heal,” she said. “You will have a small scar, but every Messenger needs a marking. Otherwise, how would other Messengers recognize her?” She smiled.

My heart had calmed down, and my head did feel better. “I don’t think I’m a messenger. I don’t think I’m supposed to be here,” I confided. “My name’s not Abigail. I don’t even know who she is.”

“Fascinating. You and Abigail look so much alike, that you could be sisters,” Angeni said. “Tell me more.”

“I haven’t met anyone from here until a couple of days ago,” I said. “And no one will even tell me where I am.”

She frowned. “You look like Abigail. But you do not talk or act like her. Share with me your real name and where you are from.”

Angeni got it. Someone in my dream got it. I felt so relieved. “My name is Madeline Blackford and I’m from Chicago, Illinois,” I said.

“How old are you?”

“I’m sixteen.”

“Just like Abigail,” she said. “Maybe you are long lost relatives. You lived miles away and never met.”

“The problem is, Angeni, I’m from Chicago, probably hundreds of years after this time.”
Whenever this time was
, I wondered. “We don’t wear the kinds of clothes people wear here. We don’t live in little huts, or houses with wooden forts around them,” I said. “And we don’t wake up to find everyone around us bloody and dead, unless we are in the military, or there’s been a terrible, natural disaster or a terrorist attack.”

I stood up and paced, agitated, around her hut, all twelve feet of it. “Which, thankfully, doesn’t happen all that often, and has never happened to me before,” I said. “Until now.”

“This never happened to you before?”

“No. I’ve had my share of bad dreams, but nothing like this. Everyone’s treating me like I’m an idiot,” I said. “They think I just hit my head, or that some Reverend needs to pray over me.”

“Hmm. There is a metal rod on the ground close to you. Find it and stir the fire for me, please.”

“Sure.” I’d stirred fires before. Like, well, some time in my life. I found the rod, picked it up, and poked the fire.

“The fire is not your enemy. You do not need to attack it,” Angeni said. “Just move the wood a little so the fire can find the driest parts of the branches, and burn them more easily.”

“Okay,” I grumbled and swooshed the rod around the branches and logs a little less violently.

“Do you want me to call you Abigail, or Madeline?” she asked.

“Call me Madeline!” I said, thrilled. “Would you tell me where I am?”

She sighed. “You are in a province in the Americas called Rhode Island. You were rescued from the Endicott settlement that was brutally attacked during a war. You do not remember any of this, Madeline?” she asked.

I shook my head. “I live in the United States of America. We have fifty states and one’s called Rhode Island, but I’ve never been there.”
Think
, I said to myself. Colonial outfits. A War. People who talk funny. “Am I in the Revolutionary War?”

Angeni shook her head. “No. You live in King Philip’s War. People on both sides are very upset and have old angers, fears, and grudges.”

The fire sparked under the kindling I had shifted and the flames started licking their way upward.

“There are so many hateful feelings that I do not believe this bloodbath ends any time soon.”

How many wars had happened that I’d never heard of. Hundreds? Thousands? Good for me this was just a dream. Bad for Angeni that she believed she was living during a brutal war. But—“Who is King Philip?”

“The son of the great Wampanoag sachem Massasoit.”

“A Native American chief?” I asked.

“The great Indian chief who welcomed the colonists to these shores, and helped them so at least some survived the first winter,” she replied.

“But now they’re at war?” I racked my brain to say the right thing. “I’m so sorry. Everyone here must be very scared.” I was thrilled this was simply a dream.

Angeni took my hand and squeezed it. “Whether they admit it or not, everyone in this war is terrified. But you are not dreaming, Madeline. You left behind your life in Chicago in future years when you traveled here. You are living, just like the rest of us, in the year 1675 during King Philip’s War. A conflict I fear, many of us will not survive.”

Did she just say what I thought she said?

“Are you telling me that I traveled over 300 plus years back in time—for real?”

She looked up. The dim light from the fire made the white patches covering her blue eyes look like morning mist.

“Yes,” she said. “For real. Elizabeth is here. It’s time for you to stop running, and help her.”

There was a thumping and shaking of the skins covering the entrance to Angeni’s hut. “Abigail!” Elizabeth hollered.

I jumped and looked at Angeni. “How’d you know?”

“Come visit me again.” She covered the top of the medicine bowl in fabric and tied some twine around it. “Messengers need to learn the art of communication. Be nice to Elizabeth.” She handed me the bowl. “No matter how many times she calls you Abigail, she still cares about you.”

She kissed me on my cheek, turned, and opened the flap of her door.

Elizabeth stood there with Daniel and she didn’t look very happy.

“I made some healing balm for Abigail’s wound,” Angeni said as we stepped outside her hut.

“Thank you, Angeni.” Elizabeth grabbed my arm and marched me away from her hut.

By the time I swiveled and looked back, Angeni had already vanished inside her tiny home.

M
e
, a time traveler? Me, with the anxiety who couldn’t move through a crowded room without breaking out into a sweat, was supposed to be a Messenger? Me, who could barely cross bridges or climb a ladder? Did this sound like someone who catapulted through years, and careened through lifetimes?

Someone had a screw loose here, and that description usually applied to me. But this time I was going to sit back and see how this whole scenario played out, because this just couldn’t be true.

Even though I was apparently living in the middle of a war, the next week was filled with the most awful to-do list of tedious, boring chores. Elizabeth let me sleep in until a little after dawn. Each morning I woke up to the sounds of a few roosters, hens, and animal noises instead of city buses and the TV news. My breakfast consisted of tasteless, blechy gruel.

Every single day I had to wrap my head around the crazy fact that I was still here, living in a freaky, colonial garrison during a war I’d never even heard of. Although I did get an earful about King Philip and his family.

His dad, Massasoit, was the Wampanoag Native chief who welcomed the colonists to America years earlier. He even celebrated the first Thanksgiving with them. He managed to keep the peace with the colonists for years, and apparently handed them a lot of land during that time.

When Massasoit died, his eldest son Alexander became chief. He was young, strong, and the colonists didn’t trust him to keep the peace. They captured and questioned him. But by the time they released him he was terribly sick, and died on his way back home. Just about every Native on the east coast believed the colonists had poisoned and killed Alexander.

His brother, Philip, became chief. But after that, there really was no peace. Just compromise and suspicion.

Elizabeth and her crew made me do Abigail’s regular chores: churning butter, spinning wool and making candles. When it quickly became obvious I had no talents in all these departments, (although the butter churning thing could be a great upper body sculpting work-out if properly updated,) I was demoted to simpler tasks—like carrying firewood, stirring stews, feeding the chickens, and sweeping floors.

On the days Elizabeth taught the children, I was supposed to help out by keeping an eye on them. Considering everyone in this garrison thought I was whacked from the attack, apparently I was supposed to keep my crazy eye on them.

Thanks to Angeni, I could now stir a fire and keep it going. Slamming! If I were really lucky, my upcoming SATs would include questions on all these subjects.

I’d been at the garrison for about ten days when my “sick girl” reprieve was over, and I had to be interviewed by the Reverend Wilkins.

Elizabeth made me put on a very proper dress (
translation: the ugliest dress ever)
and marched me down through the village across the commons to the church.

A couple of townspeople stared at us because I was still the subject of local gossip. I’d already guessed that Abigail wasn’t the nicest person in the world. So they were pretty curious to see what had become of her. And what became of her was, unfortunately, me. Sorry Abigail. (
Note to Self: Karma’s a bear.)

Elizabeth and I stood in front of the church. It was a wooden structure, bigger than the garrison’s houses and huts. It was located close to the commons, not too far from the stocks and other tools of punishment.

She leaned toward me and tucked a few wisps of my hair back under my white cap.

“Do I have to do this?” I whispered.

“Yes. The Reverend keeps asking everyone I know about you,” she said. “’Has Abigail recovered? Is she still righteous? What if the demons claimed Abigail’s soul during the Endicott attack?’ The questions are exhausting.”

“Tell him to stand in line, and take a number. Lots of people have asked about me before,” I said. “What’s the worst they can say?”

Elizabeth frowned. “They can say the only reason you are living is because you are a spy for King Philip or that you are a witch. They’ll hang you for both.”

“Oh.” It seemed being labeled different wasn’t trouble-free in any year. People would make your life a living hell in the year I came from. But in the year 1675, they would torture and kill you.

“So if I tell this Reverend guy what he wants to hear?” I asked. “Will this make life easier for us?”

“Yes, absolutely,” Elizabeth replied. “I know things have not been simple for you since the attack. Reverend Wilkins is very smart. I do not ask you to lie to him.” She looked me in the eyes. And then glanced quickly away.

She totally wanted me to lie to him. Assure the Reverend I was Abigail. After ten years of having panic attacks, and awful anxiety, the white lies came a little easier.

“Miss, you’re on the floor of a Bloomingdale’s dressing room. Do you want me to call an ambulance?” the store clerk asked when I was twelve and lying smack-dab on my stomach after a panic attack.

I looked up at her and didn’t blink an eye. “Oh gosh, no. I’m just looking for my contact lens.”

Now I peered at Elizabeth. She bit her lower lip, just like I did when I was nervous.

“Do you think you can do this, Abigail?”

I thought about Stanley Preston and what a tool he was. I would deal with the Reverend. “Piece of cake.” I squeezed her hand.

W
e walked
into the tiny church filled with a few hard, wooden pews, an aisle that ran up the middle, and a narrow, wooden pulpit about two steps up in the front.

Reverend Wilkins was waiting to interview me. He was that tall, skinny guy with the silver, greasy hair I nearly took out during my escape attempt in the garrison’s commons.

“Come here, young lady,” he commanded, and gestured briskly toward him.

“Yes, Reverend Wilkins.” I looked at Elizabeth, who nodded.

I walked up the short aisle. We stood face to face. Not good because he had really bad breath. Did they even have dentists here?

He pushed my hair back and examined the pink scab on my forehead. “Hmm,” he said. “Your gash heals. What is your name?”

“Abigail Endicott.”

“What year is it?”

“1675,” I said.

He frowned. “Who is our sovereign King?”

“Our King is…” Oh dang, I didn’t know that one. “King Simon Cowell the First.” The former American Idol judge was English after all.

Reverend Wilkins glared at me squint-eyed. But I had answered two out of his three questions correctly. “King Charles II,” he said.

“King Cowell, King Charles. I’ve been mussed up a bit lately. You are so smart, Reverend Wilkins. You knew what I meant to say.” And for some reason—I curtseyed.

Elizabeth pinched my arm and covered a smile. Then she frowned and composed herself into a proper, uptight, colonial woman.

The Reverend harrumphed. “I am keeping an eye on you, Abigail.”

“Yes, sir, your holiness, sir,” I said.

His eyes narrowed. “We are not those unholy Catholics.”

Elizabeth’s eyes practically rolled back in her head. I’d screwed up again, as my parents raised me in the non-denominational church of God Loves You whoever your God is.

“What’s a Catholic?” I widened my eyes innocently.

Reverend Wilkins looked constipated and mumbled something. “I trust you will be attending services this Sunday?”

Elizabeth and I answered in unison, “Yes.”

“Thank you Reverend Wilkins,” she said and took my arm. “Thank you very much for your time.”

W
e exited
the church ladylike and proper. We held our heads high and walked so slowly that all we needed was a casket to complete our funeral procession.

As soon as we were out of his sight, Elizabeth grabbed my hand. “Follow me.” We tromped around the back of the church, passed some tiny houses, and entered an area lined with rickety, lean-to stables and small muck-filled pastures occupied by a few thin cows, chickens, and some goats.

She dropped my hand and peeked around—there were no people in sight. She lifted the bottom of her skirt up several inches off the ground. “If there are no persons present, I usually lift my dress up a little when we go through this part of the village,” she said. “That way, I do not have to wash it soon thereafter.”

“Got it.” I hiked my skirt over my knees and followed her.

Elizabeth glanced back at me, looked horrified and stifled a giggle. “No! Not above your knees, above your ankles. You are not allowed to show your knees.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“No. Was all the sense knocked from your brain during that attack?”

“Maybe some sense got knocked
into
Abigail’s brain,” I said. “You colonial people need to lighten up.”

“Right now
you are a colonial woman
,” she said. “I don’t know if the Abigail I knew will ever come back. But the Abigail that you are now needs a place to relax. Where you can think, breathe, and escape from all the eyes that stare upon you.”

She led me to a dilapidated barn. A bigger barn door was closed and latched. She pushed open a short, tiny door next to it, and we ducked down to enter.

I
t was pretty dark inside
, and it took a few moments for me to see clearly. The barn was a small, earthy, musty space filled with a few, thin bales of hay, some stalls, a horse, and a goat.

She stuck her hand in a bucket and then walked over to a stall halfway down the only aisle in this shack. She petted the head of a large, chestnut brown horse with a thick, black mane. “Hello, my friend,” she said and let the horse eat from her hand. “Good appetite, Nathan. Are you feeling better today?” He flicked his tail while Elizabeth stroked his mane with her other hand.

For some reason Mama had insisted I take riding lessons when I was young. Those stopped after the accident. These gorgeous animals seemed too tall, big, skittish, and made me nervous. I didn’t even volunteer at horse rescues. I stuck with the dogs and cats at the animal shelters.

But Nathan was stunning. I grabbed two handfuls of oats from the bucket. “Do you think he would let me feed him?”

Elizabeth smiled. “Is Reverend Wilkins an arse?” We giggled.

I held the flat of my hand out to Nathan who tickled my palm with his lips as he nibbled. When his huge tooth grazed my hand, I yanked it away. The horse looked at me and I swear, he rolled his eyes and quietly harrumphed.

“Go on now,” Elizabeth said. “Nathan is a good horse. He will not bite you. Give him what’s left in your hand. Everyone deserves a second chance.”

I held my palm out to the horse again, closed my eyes, and stiffened my shoulders as his lips grazed my skin.

“I know you are still healing and have these outbursts,” Elizabeth said. “I realize this has been a difficult time. But I have been tough with you for a reason.”

“Explain, please?” I asked.

“When your mother decided to re-marry, and move back to England with your brother, you refused to go. You were thirteen-years-old but you declared you would not step one foot on that ship,” she said.

This was definitely Abigail’s life memory, not mine. But I needed to know it. “Tell me the story, Elizabeth.” Nathan bumped my empty hand for more food and Elizabeth suddenly looked sad. “Please tell me the story,
again
,” I said.

She lumbered back to the feed bucket. Seemed like her pregnant belly grew bigger every day. “You said you felt like you had important things to do here in the Americas. Things to learn, possibly even share with people some day.”

She grabbed several handfuls of oats and returned to Nathan. “I told your mother I would look after you, school you, Abigail. I even promised her I would marry you off some day,” she said as Nathan nibbled the oats. “Everything was good until you left to live with the Endicotts over a year ago.”

“Oh,” I said. “Why did I leave?”

“You do not remember?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

She sighed. “You met someone, you would not tell me who. This person encouraged you to be independent and take chances. This person said that you had the power to change things in the future.”

“That sounds a little crazy,” I said.

“I know. But you were always very strong-headed.”

“Me?”

Elizabeth smiled. “You used to love it here, in this barn. You told me you could think your thoughts and plan your plans without any of us worriers interrupting you. The animals calmed you. It was so quiet, you could even write in the pages of your book.”

Whoa. Abigail had a book that she wrote in? Even the school kids Elizabeth taught, who I basically babysat, didn’t have actual books. “Where’s Abigail’s book now?” I asked and watched Elizabeth’s face fall from happy to sad. “I mean, where’s
my
book?”

“I do not know. You always hid it.” She sighed, walked toward the door and opened it a sliver. “Stay here a while longer. Maybe this place will help you remember who you are, as well as where you left your book. But, you must return before nightfall.” Elizabeth ducked her head, squeezed under the opening of the short doorway, and left.

For the first time since I landed in the year 1675, I was alone.