Prince of Time (6 page)

Llywelyn.

The other man’s voice spoke out of the darkness, quiet so I couldn’t quite make out the words. It tickled my ear to hear him, as if I should understand what he was saying but couldn’t quite catch it. David replied under his breath. I glanced from one to the other, ready to run, but not yet running. I couldn’t run away from that name and there was something about the boy that wasn’t really threatening, though I held up the TASER just in case. David held out his own hand again. “Please! Don’t go. We really need some help.”

“Why do you think I can help you?”

“You have a cell phone?”

“Of course.”

“Please call 911. You can stand over there to do it, but please call. My friend’s been shot in the back.”

Believing him now, I fumbled in my backpack for my phone while David returned to his friend. He shushed him and began to work at his clothing, perhaps trying to get at the wound.
I dialed my phone.

“911,” the woman who answered said. “We have your location. What is your emergency?”

“A man has been shot. We’re at the plaza at the Penn State campus, outside the archaeology building.”

“Stay on the line. An ambulance will be with you shortly.”

As she spoke, I moved next to David, but held the connection open. I fell to my knees beside him.

“Can I help?”

David scooped up a pile of weapons that lay beside him, consisting of, from what I could see, two swords (he no longer wore one), three knives, a bow and a quiver.

“I need you to take these and put them somewhere safe,” he said.

“You’re not serious!”

“If the authorities find me with them, we may end up in jail instead of the hospital. We’ve done nothing illegal as far as I know, but we’re dressed strangely enough without complicating matters further.”

I blinked. He talked just like a professor, but he couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen.

“Do you have a vehicle?” he said.

I nodded. “In the parking lot.”

“Please do as I ask. Please.”

Giving in again, I took what he gave me, leaving him my phone so the ambulance’s tracking device could find him. I ran to my car, though the weapons were so heavy my shoulders were aching by the time I reached it. I threw open the hatchback and dumped the weapons inside, only to find that the bow wouldn’t fit. Grumbling, I scooted around to open the door to the back seat and folded down one of the seats. Slamming the doors, I ran back to the plaza. The emergency crew had arrived.

While the EMTs worked on his friend, a policeman grilled David. I ran up just as the cop said, “I need to see some ID, sir.”

“I don’t have any.”

The policeman’s mouth twisted, irritated. “Give me your name and date of birth.”

David rattled them off. The policeman hesitated over his paperwork when he realized David was only sixteen—he didn’t have to carry identification at all times until he was eighteen.

“How about your friend?” the policeman said. “He’s older than you, isn’t he?”

“Yes, but I don’t know that he has identification either. We didn’t plan for him to get hurt.”

“What’s his name?”

“Ieuan Cynan,” David said.

“Excuse me, sir,” I interrupted. I’d been rummaging in my pack while they talked, and now pulled out my driver’s license. “I’m Bronwen Llywelyn,” I said.

David’s eyes almost bulged from their sockets, but thankfully he kept his mouth shut.

“It was you who called emergency services?” the policeman said.

“Yes, sir,” I agreed.
What are you thinking, Bronwen! Are you out of your mind? Why are you getting involved?

“He’s your brother?” The man gestured to David.

“Cousin,” I said, though we looked nothing alike, with David a Viking to my Celt.

“And the other guy?”

David spoke this time. “Our friend. He’s visiting from Wales and doesn’t speak any English.”

“They don’t speak English in Wales?” the policeman said.

“Not always.” I gave David a speaking look.
From Wales. No wonder their voices sounded familiar.

“Excuse me, sir, ma’am,” one of the EMTs said, walking over to stand next to us. “We’re taking your friend into the hospital.”

“Can I ride with him?” David said. “He’ll be lost without me.”

“No, sir; I’m sorry, sir; that’s against hospital policy. Anyway, we’ve sedated him, so he won’t remember the trip.”

“I’ll need certification from you that this was a gunshot wound,” the policeman said to the ambulance technician.

“No gunshot, sir. Looks like he fell on something sharp. It bit him between two of his lower ribs. He’s lost some blood, but it missed his lungs.”

The policeman glared at us while the ambulance man returned to his work. We stood and watched them load Ieuan into the ambulance, and then the policeman spoke again. “I thought you said he’d been shot.”

“I thought he had!” I said, looking at David.

“I’m sorry,” said David. “I must have misspoken.”

“Don’t make a habit of it,” the policeman said. He snapped his notebook shut. “I hope your friend recovers soon.”

“Thanks,” David said, and the policeman walked away. David turned to me. “Will you take me to the hospital?”

I bit my lip and looked up at him, meeting his blue eyes. They were bright and sincere and fixed on mine. I shook my head to say no, but found myself saying yes to him again.

Surely I will regret this!

David grinned.

Chapter Four

David

I
t was an amazing feeling to sit in the car as Bronwen drove it through the nearly empty streets of State College to the hospital. The interior was dark, except for the lights of the dashboard, and when we’d pass a streetlight, the light would fill the car before dissipating again as we drove by it. I gazed out the window, watching the reflection of the tall apartment buildings, forming canyon walls on either side of the street, flash past.

I was progressing through the stages of adrenaline crash with my usual rapidity. First:
jubilation!
It was the dirty little secret of battle that afterwards it wasn’t horror, or fear, or revulsion that we felt, but utter joy at having survived another day.
I’m alive! And they’re not! Against all odds, I will live to see another sunrise!
The whole time we were with the police officer, I’d been in a euphoric, dreamlike state, yet so confident that things were going to go my way that I was completely unsurprised when they did.

I can’t believe it worked!
I’d spent the last two and a half years in and out of danger, but I recognized the moment with the English soldiers bearing down on us as the
end
in a very concrete sense—far worse than when Edward of England had leered at me across his pavilion. That first soldier would have run me through without hesitation if I’d not jumped off the cliff with Ieuan, who would have died from the arrow, if not the sword. I’d been thinking about possible ways to return to the twenty-first century for
years,
as had Mom and Anna. It was really Anna’s idea to jump—she’d wanted to try it from the tallest tower at Castell y Bere, back in the early days. I’d dissuaded her, not wanting her to risk her life even if it left us ignorant.

This time, however, it was no kind of risk at all to jump. Now, of course, the question was how to reverse the process and go home.
Would we be able to go home?
I stopped myself before I began to dwell on those thoughts.
Put it away. Put it away. There’s too much else to think about.

The post-battle optimistic and joyful feeling was generally followed, in my case, by chills. Feeling them coming on, I rolled down the passenger side window. It was a warm night, typical for August in Pennsylvania. I set my elbow on the door frame and rested my head against my fist. I could feel Bronwen watching me, checking my profile between glances out the front windscreen. I wanted to gain some measure of control before I talked to her and tried to explain anything.

I am so tired.
As soon as the thought passed through my head, I squashed it, told myself to
put it away
again
.
For the first time in years, I was safe.
Really safe—unless Bronwen was about to get us in a car accident.
I looked over at her. She looked competent. She sat, slim and dark beside me, back straight, brown hair up in a no-nonsense bun, her left hand resting on the wheel while her right worked the gear shift.

 “Is Llywelyn really your last name?” I asked her, breaking the silence.

She smiled. “Yes, it is. I didn’t lie. You really shouldn’t lie to the authorities, David.”

“I actually didn’t lie either. Ieuan was shot.”

“Where was the bullet? Did it just graze him?”

I didn’t want to answer. “He was shot with an arrow,” I said, after a moment’s reflection.

“An arrow! What are you talking about?” Bronwen was looking at me instead of out the windscreen of the car.

“We were being chased by men and they shot at Ieuan,” I said.

“But this is ridiculous!” Bronwen said. “They’re still out there! You need to go back and tell the police.”

“You heard the EMT,” I said. “There’s no indication now that he was even shot, much less by an arrow. What would the police say to me, dressed as I am, still with no identification?”

“What if they shoot someone else?” she said.

“They’re long gone,” I said, not yet ready to explain further. “Leave it be.”

Bronwen ground her teeth.

“Thank you for helping us,” I said, trying to distract her.

Bronwen didn’t look at me, and her fingers clenched tightly around the steering wheel. “I’ve had a lousy day,” she said. “This feels pretty much par for the course.”

“Do you live far from here? You can drop me off and I can take care of things myself.”

“How are you going to deal with the hospital with no ID?” she said.

I felt a funny twist in my stomach at her words. “I’ve no money either. Will the hospital treat him even if we can’t pay?”

“Why would you have to pay? It’s been a couple of years since you had to pay.”

“Really?” I said, and then Bronwen gave me a confused look so I didn’t say anything more.
What else has changed since 2010?

Bronwen didn’t say another word for the rest of the short drive to the hospital. She was thinking
something
but maybe I didn’t want to know what it was. She parked the car and got out, jerking the door handle and slamming it closed behind her. The parking lot wasn’t full, and we walked across it to the emergency room entrance. The ambulance men had already unloaded Ieuan and together we peered through some glass doors into a room where he was being worked on by a doctor and two nurses. Bronwen headed for the nurses’ station.

“Do I need to sign him in?” she said.

A woman behind the desk looked up. “Yes.” She handed Bronwen a clipboard. “I’ll need his full name, birth date, ID number, and current address.”

Bronwen looked over at me. I shrugged and put out my hand for the clipboard. We walked to some chairs, set against a wall in the hallway, and studied the paperwork.

“How closely are they going to check all this right now?” I said.

“It’s all in the computer,” Bronwen said. “They’ll know immediately if something isn’t right.”

This was going to be a little more difficult than I’d thought. I picked up the pen and wrote Ieuan’s name and nothing else. I had no ID numbers, no address, and certainly no credible birth date, so I left it all blank and walked back to the desk.

“My friend is from Wales,” I said. “I don’t know his ID number.”

The nurse looked irritated. “May I see your ID then?”

“I don’t have any. I’m only sixteen,” I said, taking a cue from Bronwen.

“Social security number?” the nurse said.

“I don’t know it.”

Pursing her lips, the nurse wrote INDIGENT in big letters across Ieuan’s form. I hoped he would still get decent treatment from the doctors, since that’s why I had brought him here in the first place.

I went back to Bronwen. She had a cup of coffee balanced on her lap and was in the process of loading it up with cream and sugar. She ripped off the top of the packets of sugar, two at a time, and dumped them in until I lost track. She saw me watching her, and smiled.

“Like a little coffee with your sugar?” I said.

“Coffee is one of the four basic food groups, didn’t you know?” she said.

“And apparently cream and sugar are two more,” I said.

“No, no, no. They’re included in the coffee group.” She stirred her coffee with one of those tiny straws that came with Styrofoam coffee, but were remarkably ineffective, especially given the quantity of sugar in her cup. “I don’t actually
like
coffee,” she confessed. “What I drink is basically hot coffee ice cream.”

She took a sip and sighed. I sat beside her again.

“May I ask you a question?” I said.

“You can ask,” she answered, her eyes closed now and her head resting against the wall behind us.

 “Since you share his name, do you know of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, a Prince of Wales from the Middle Ages?” I said.

“You mean the last Prince of Wales? The one the English killed in 1282?”

“Yes, that’s the one.” I let out a breath, and it was like a cold rush of water had been poured over my head. I felt lightheaded, almost ready to pass out
.
It was as I’d feared and suspected: my Wales existed in a different dimension. We weren’t time travelers, but travelers to another world, separate, and parallel to this one.

I stared off into the distance, taking in the bustle of the emergency room without really seeing it. Riding across the Scottish countryside with Ieuan and Aaron, I’d had a moment where I’d felt myself free, but Bronwen’s words truly loosed the chains that held me. If I got back to Wales—
no, I wouldn’t think it—
when
I got back to Wales—
I could do and be what I wanted, without fear of affecting the future into which I’d been born.