Once Every Never Part 2

"And I'm standing on a riverbank in the middle of nowhere, at night. And there are these guys ..."

"What guys?"

"I don't know. They weren't speaking English. One of them was big-like huge-and holding that s.h.i.+eld thing." Clare's gaze drifted back to the table where the artifacts lay. "It looked like he was about to throw it in the river. But the other one ... was young. And ... and ..."

"And what?"

"Gorgeous." Clare swallowed convulsively. "And he said my name. He looked at me-well, not quite at me-and he said ... Clarinet."

"Clare ..." Al had gone milk-pale and was starting to look really angry. "This isn't funny."

"Do I look like I'm laughing?" Clare whispered back urgently. "Have you ever known me to make up a story like that?"

"... No."

"You said I disappeared. You saw it yourself."

"You did. I did. Seriously, Clare ... what's going on?"

"I don't know." Clare looked down at her hand-where her fingertips still tingled-and then back up at Al. "Okay-here's the deal. You keep a lookout and make sure I don't get in s.h.i.+t from the curator or my aunt. Or Robo-Cop. I'm going to try that again."

"Are you deficient?" Al hissed.

No. She was curious. Frantically, terribly, intensely curious. For the first time in ... well, for the first time in a long time. Maybe the first time ever. But that guy. He'd said her name. And she had to know why.

In her ordinary life, surrounded by extraordinary people, Clare had never really taken much of a chance with anything important. Everyone she knew-everyone in her family, Al, Al's family, Maggie-they were all so ... so effortlessly competent and accomplished. So she'd learned at a young age not to risk doing anything too complicated. She could handle failing. She just couldn't handle failing spectacularly. As a consequence, nothing particularly interesting had happened in Clare Reid's life for a very long time. Nothing ... cool. Nothing to make her extraordinary.

But now, with that single flash of weird, everything was different. Maybe she was special. Or maybe she was just crazy.

"You're crazy," Al said.

Well, there you go.

"What if you disappear completely? What if you don't ... you know ... rematerialize? I can't believe I just said that!" She shook her head fiercely. "What if you're gone for good?"

Clare took a deep breath. "Then you're gonna have a better story than boring old party shenanigans to tell when you get back home to Toronto, aren't you?"

Al glared at her best friend stubbornly and s.h.i.+fted slightly so that she was standing in front of the table, between Clare and the artifacts. Excitement was bubbling up in Clare's chest at the thought of doing it again. Whatever it was she'd actually done. This was ... definitely special. She knew that much. She could sense it. Was it normal? No. Explainable? Absolutely not. At least, not yet. And that-surprisingly-appealed to her somehow.

She pegged Al with a tight stare. "Look. You're the scientist. Aren't you the tiniest bit curious about what just happened?" she asked.

"Clare ... you disappeared." Al emphasized each syllable of the word. "'Curious' doesn't quite cover it. I'm not curious. I'm freaked. I'm very seriously freaked."

Clare was too, if she was going to be honest with herself. But for maybe the first time in her life she wasn't going to let that stop her. Despite Al's frantic, whispered protests, Clare stepped around her and approached the table for the second time with a kind of giddy antic.i.p.ation. The image of the auburn-haired young man swam up before her mind's eye. She felt her heart thump in excitement ... and then lurch with apprehension.

Hey, she silently encouraged herself, why let mind-numbing fear keep you from doing something so incredibly boneheaded it would give Mikey the Linebacker at school pause for thought? She steadfastly ignored the fact that Mikey also liked to throw himself off his garage roof. For fun.

Come on, Clare ...

What was it Milo had said to her the day before?

"'Live a little before you die,' right?" she murmured to herself. He'd also said, "'Go crazy'..."

Clare smiled then in spite of her fear. Maybe the super-hot egghead had a point. Things seemed to be working out well enough for him, after all. In keeping with thoughts of Milo and in the spirit of scientific curiosity, Clare decided to conduct a control experiment on this second attempt. Instead of placing her hand on the bronze s.h.i.+eld again, she surveyed the a.s.sortment of artifacts laid out on the table. A brush of her fingertips along the teeth of a carved-bone weaving comb did nothing. Neither did a plain bronze drinking bowl produce any effect. Chariot bits and an iron cauldron hook yielded similar non-results.

Al stood staring at her with her arms crossed tightly, and Clare started to feel a little ridiculous, surrept.i.tiously fondling all that historical junk. But then she put her hand down on the great golden Snettisham Torc.

At least when it happened this time she was half expecting the sudden s.h.i.+ft in reality-but it still didn't make it any less shocking to find herself suddenly ... wherever it was she found herself.

WHICH, IN THAT MOMENT, was definitely not the restoration room.

Just like the first time, all around her was darkness. But she had no idea if it was the same night or a different one.

Clare tilted her head and stared up into a sky that, save for a pale haziness all around her, was shatteringly clear and spattered with an astonis.h.i.+ng number of stars, brighter than she'd ever seen them, even on camping trips. The crispness of the air made it feel like early autumn, and it would have been a truly beautiful night-but in the distance, there was fire. And screaming.

She gasped and felt her lungs burn from the acrid smoke that drifted toward her. With her heart fluttering crazily like a tiny, terrified animal's, she stared at the lurid orange glow just over a near rolling hill. She tried to concentrate. Tried to catalogue and memorize every detail of the world into which she'd tumbled-just like Alice down a rabbit hole-so that she could tell Al when she got back. If she got back. But back from where?

Clare looked down to see her hand still held out in front of her as if she were still touching the gleaming golden neck ring. Slowly-oh so slowly, so as not to break her focus, she lowered her arm to her side. A giddy, fearful thrill ran through her when she didn't suddenly rematerialize back in the fluorescent-lit workroom. She took a tentative step forward.

... And then dropped behind a big rock so she wouldn't be seen. The very same auburn-haired young man as before came suddenly careening over the hill in what looked to be some sort of chariot. And he was heading at breakneck speed down a path that ran right past her.

In a ... chariot? Clare blinked dumbly. Okay. I'm not so sure this is a "where am I thing" anymore ... I think this is a "when am I" thing!

As it got closer, Clare saw that the chariot was really more of a wicker-sided racing cart, built for speed and drawn by two st.u.r.dy, lathered ponies. The driver was definitely the same guy she'd seen the first time. He was bare-armed and lean-muscled, with skin that showed sun-bronzed even in the moonlight, and he stood with legs braced wide to steady himself as the two-wheeled cart jounced over the uneven ground. He wore a sleeveless tunic with breeches laced tight around his calves and his feet were bare. A simple silver torc encircled his neck, and from his belt on either hip hung a dagger and a short, broad sword with a leaf-shaped blade.

He must be some kind of ... warrior, Clare thought.

A warrior, maybe, but he was no brute. He was strikingly handsome in a wild, dangerous way. His long auburn hair was tied in a tail at the nape of his neck, the bones of his face were elegantly sculpted, and his eyes flashed with fierce intelligence. Clare tore her gaze away from the young man's face long enough to notice that on the floor of the cart, tucked between his straddling legs, was something that looked like a large bundle of cloth. The shapeless thing bounced heavily as, with a sudden, violent curse, the driver hauled the reins back on his steaming charges and the wheels of the cart jumped the rutted track. Pulling the whinnying ponies up short, the charioteer was just in time to avoid cras.h.i.+ng headlong into another chariot that came screaming around the bend in the track to meet him.

The young man vaulted over the wickerwork side of his cart, calling out a word-a name? Only it wasn't hers this time.

This time, it was the name of the terrifying creature at the reins of the other cart.

Clare had thought she'd seen female fury before. Like the time the permanent-detention headcase three rows over from her in biology cla.s.s had Krazy-Glued an entire dissection lab's worth of dead frogs to the princ.i.p.al's Lexus. To Clare, the expression on Ms. Henderson's face was what pure wrath looked like. She'd been so wrong.

Pure wrath was the woman in that chariot.

With eyes rolling white like those of the horses pulling her cart and hair a wind-wild tangle of fiery red, the woman leaped to the ground before the wheels had stopped spinning and pounded down the last few yards of the track to meet the other driver. Words that Clare could not understand spilled from the young man's lips-questioning, angry words, from the sounds of them-and the woman answered him in a harsh crow-call of a voice.

Clare stared unblinking at the scene, fascinated, with the knuckles of one fist jammed against her mouth to keep herself from making any noise. She couldn't take her eyes off the young charioteer. He couldn't have been more than a few years older than Clare was-nineteen, maybe twenty-but there was a fierce intensity about him that made her think he was more than just a chariot driver. And there was obviously something more to the woman than met the eye. A regal quality blazed through the rage that twisted her features into the mask of an avenging Fury. Under other circ.u.mstances, when she wasn't so angry maybe, the woman would have been striking to look at. Not necessarily beautiful-with her strong, angular features, handsome was probably a better word, but not at the moment. At the moment, she was seriously p.i.s.sed about something. Clare wondered what on earth could possibly have driven her into such a colossal freak out.

And then the woman turned around.

Below the tangled ma.s.s of her auburn hair, the material of the woman's s.h.i.+rt-a kind of long, belted tunic-had been completely torn away in the back. By the dim light of the sickle moon and stars, it looked as though thick black tar stained her torso from shoulders to waist. It took Clare a moment to realize what the stains really were. Blood. The woman was covered in blood. The vicious lash marks from what even Clare could identify as a brutal whipping criss-crossed her pale flesh and blood stained the back of her long skirt all the way down past her knees.

As he surveyed the ravaged landscape of the woman's back, the charioteer spat out another string of words-awfully impolite ones, from the sounds of them-and Clare was close enough to see that bright tears filled the corners of his eyes. But the woman merely lifted her proud head and held up a hand. Then she turned her palm face-up. Wordlessly, the young man reached into the folds of his tunic.

Clare gasped, her heart suddenly hammering, as he drew out a ma.s.sive gold neck ring. It looked like the very same one she had touched in the museum. The woman smiled grimly and took the torc, bending the ends out slightly so that she could slip it around the strong white column of her graceful neck and settle it on her collarbones. She looked as if she'd always worn it. With a nod of thanks the woman turned back to her own chariot, but then she froze. Her gaze drifted toward the blanket-wrapped bundle on the floor of the young man's cart.

She asked the charioteer a single, soft-voiced question.

He hesitated, a riptide of emotion distorting the handsome features of his face, but then-as if in answer-he stepped aside and gestured, his shoulders sagging in what looked like a kind of defeat. From behind the rock Clare craned her neck, watching as the woman strode past him and leaned down to push aside the folds of the heavy woollen blanket.

There was a moment of utter stillness. Silence. And then a high, thin sound spiralled out from where the woman stood, tearing through the fabric of the night air. The cry built to an ear-shattering howl and the red-haired woman fell to her knees, raising her fists to the night sky and throwing back her head. The grief that poured from her throat was like the cry of a wounded animal.

Clare looked back at the chariot. She wished she hadn't.

The folds of the blanket, now thrown aside, had concealed the crumpled form of a teenage girl maybe a year or two older than Clare herself. With only her face and one bare white shoulder exposed, the girl looked as though she could have been asleep; dark eyelashes feathered upon the clear, pale skin and a cloud of long, deep auburn hair pillowed her head.

But from the way her limbs sprawled under the blanket, awkwardly propped up against the sides of the chariot, it was clear that the girl was not asleep.

As she stared at the dead girl in the cart, a profound awareness descended upon Clare-her careless actions back in the restoration room had landed her in a very dangerous place. It was a realization that was dramatically reinforced when she suddenly felt the small hairs on the back of her neck rise.

A s.h.i.+ver went all the way up Clare's spine and she turned her head very slowly ...

To find herself staring into a pair of wide blue eyes.

4.

The blue-eyed girl crouched in the long gra.s.s behind the rock, less than a foot away. She looked to be about the same age as Clare, but the similarities ended there. There was a distance and a depth to the girl's gaze that spoke of having seen and lived through things Clare couldn't begin to imagine. She wore a cloak and a calf-length belted tunic of deep green wool. Her hair was strawberry blond, long and wavy, but it was tangled into knots where it had escaped from a thick plait. There were fresh, deep sc.r.a.pes along one of her arms and the shoulder of her sleeveless tunic was torn. Tears ran down her cheeks and her pretty face was flushed with exertion. Her breath came in panting gasps.

And she stared right through Clare as if she wasn't even there.

The girl's blue gaze was instead focused sharply on the path and the two charioteers. Her mouth worked silently for a moment and then she whispered the word "Tasca." Her voice broke on a sob and she raised a hand as if reaching out toward the unmoving girl in the cart.

Clare jumped back, startled. But she wasn't fast enough to evade the girl's reaching hand and, as her fingertips connected with the s.p.a.ce Clare was already occupying, there was a sudden crackling in the air like a strong electrical discharge.

As the girl gasped and flew backward. Clare felt as if she'd been hit by lightning-a much bigger bolt than the one that had sent her there-and the night all around her grew subtly brighter, almost as if she'd turned up the contrast on a TV screen. Sounds suddenly seemed louder, too. She could hear crickets and the scurrying of small animals in the gra.s.s-and the laboured, raspy breathing of the blond girl in front of her who was shaking her head back and forth, her eyes squeezed shut. When she opened them again a moment later they went almost perfectly round in shocked surprise.

And they were focused on Clare's face.

"Clare!" she whispered. "Rho ddiolch i Andrasta!"

Clare! Thank Andrasta!

The moment froze in time. Clare's mouth worked sound-lessly as she tried to form some sort of reply to the words she heard in her head-different from the ones she'd heard with her ears.

Her name. She had said Clare's name.

Suddenly the girl turned her head sharply as though hearing a noise from somewhere behind her. When she turned back, her gaze was full of fear.

"Helpa fi, Clare! Maent yn fy hela ..."

Please help me, Clare! They are chasing me ...

"What?" Clare blurted finally in response, her voice a startled whisper. "Who ..."

The girl opened her mouth to reply but a sudden shadow blotted the moonlight from her face. A large, rugged hand clamped tightly over her mouth and Clare skittered backward as the looming form of a man, dressed in a bronze helmet and armour, rose up behind the girl and grabbed her cloak-yanking her back behind the rock, out of sight of the path.

The girl whimpered, but the sound was almost completely m.u.f.fled by the soldier's calloused palm. The man and woman on the track with the chariots would never hear it. Clare watched helplessly as the girl thrashed about wildly, her hands struggling at a brooch that fastened her cloak around her neck. As the man tried to drag her away she made one wild lunge directly at Clare.

Clare shook off her paralyzing terror and tried to grab the girl's flailing limbs. Tried to help somehow. But the soldier cracked the girl sharply on the back of her skull with the b.u.t.t end of his sword hilt and she went limp, eyes rolling up into her head.

Clare cried out in protest, but the soldier ignored her as if she didn't even exist. Or wasn't even there ...

With a glance in the direction of the redheaded woman and the chariot driver, the soldier threw the girl's slim body over his shoulder like a sack of grain and loped away, running silently through the long gra.s.s toward the dark edge of the forest and away from the river track.

The girl's cloak lay upon the ground. Clare plucked at the material as if trying to convince herself that what she'd just seen had really happened. Fear and confusion clutched at her and she stayed crouched down, frozen and unsure of what to do. But the young girl was pretty obviously in a serious heap of trouble and Clare couldn't help feeling that it was somehow all her fault. If she hadn't been there-hadn't distracted the fleeing girl and stopped her in her tracks-she would have made it to the riverbank. To the young warrior and the ferocious-looking woman, either of whom might have been able to help her ...

"Help!" Clare shouted suddenly, leaping up and shouting, waving her arms wildly in a desperate attempt to attract the attention of the pair on the path. But the woman had already leapt back into her own cart and, with a crack of the reins, the pair of chariots thundered off down the path, away from the distant smoke and fire. Clare pounded down the track in their wake, hollering and flailing her arms to absolutely no effect, the dust thrown by the chariot wheels burning in her throat.

They didn't hear her. They hadn't seen her.

Clare slowed to a jog finally, the sound of her own laboured breathing almost drowning out the sudden harsh call of a raven, startled from its night perch into flight. She bent over, hands on her knees, dizzy. Sparks flared behind her eyes and the world tilted on its axis.

"WHAT HAVE I DONE?" Clare gasped.

"You tell me. Then we'll both know." Al's voice still managed to convey tightly wound sarcasm in a fierce whisper.

Clare blinked.

Sudden starbursts faded from her vision and Al's pale, frightened face, framed by the dark fringe of her hair, bent into focus inches from Clare's own.

"Oh s.h.i.+t ..." Clare shook her head and glanced around the restoration room. The overhead neons seemed painfully bright after the darkness by the riverbank. She was dizzy and felt as though she were still a bit transparent. She was also, she noticed, shaking like a leaf.

"Clare?" Her aunt's voice floated over to her from behind a row of metal shelving-that is, if something that stern and p.r.i.c.kly could float. "You aren't touching anything, are you?"

With an almost audible tw.a.n.g Mall Cop's steely gaze snapped over to where the two girls stood. Al composed herself enough to give him a bored "as-if-we'd-touch-that-dusty-old-stuff" glare. Satisfied, he went back to his recruiting-poster stance, eyes empty of all emotion except perhaps a wistful longing for mirrored sungla.s.ses to complete the look.

"Gawd, no, Mags," Clare replied, trying to clamp down on the warble in her voice. "There's history cooties all over that stuff."

"That's my darling angel." Maggie's voice dripped weary sarcasm.

Clare heaved a sigh of relief and turned back to Al.

"'Oh s.h.i.+t ...'?" Al parroted Clare's sentiment of moments before. "Where did you just go? And how did you do that? And what exactly is going on? Clare?"

Clare put a hand to her head, feeling shaky.

"Clare?"