The Age of Knights & Dames Read online

  “Anyhow, it was great seeing you all. Have a great evening!”

  “Hold on, wait,” I said. “Do your old friend a favor and hang out for a minute.”

  “Favors take longer than a minute,” Jenn said morosely.

  “Maybe another time,” Clay said. “Catch you later, buddy.”

  There was nothing else to be done, I realized. I had to make them stay. I had to tell them.

  “Did you get the message from Dembroch?” I blurted out.

  The reaction was small, but instantaneous. Clay tensed as though he were scared—his bravado vanished, and I could have sworn some hairs on his head went grey. Jenn groaned a sad little groan that only ghosts and abandoned puppies should make. Meg rolled her eyes ever so slightly.

  “That’s what this is about,” Meg muttered.

  She turned to go.

  “Wait!” I shouted. “Didn’t you get the note?”

  Meg rummaged through her purse and pulled out a rectangular piece of paper.

  “This?” she asked, her voice mocking. “It was left at my office’s front desk by a man who had to be escorted from the building. Who did you pay to do it?”

  “What?” I said, completely confused.

  “I know you wrote the note, Nicholas,” Meg said, brimming with irritation I had never seen before. “Who did you pay to deliver the notes? The Renaissance Faire? Old Sal?”

  “Aye!” Old Sal grumbled groggily from two tables over.

  Clay pulled a similar note from his pockets.

  “Wait. This was from you?” he asked softly, a deep hurt in his voice.

  “Told you,” Jenn said sullenly. She dug into her purse, but instead of pulling out a note, withdrew hand sanitizer. She squeezed a generous amount on her hands.

  “No, no!” I shouted. I rummaged through my satchel and withdrew my own note. “I got one too, just like all of you. I asked you all to come here so we could go together.”

  Meg laughed harshly at me. It was like a car backfiring.

  “Go?” Clay repeated.

  “Very risky, Nicky,” Jenn grumbled at me. “We could have died in a car accident on the way here, just for you to have your fun.”

  “That’s a bit extreme,” I said.

  Clay hung his head.

  “This is why I don’t like people,” he mumbled under his breath.

  There was the Clay I remembered.

  I stammered, frustrated. I couldn’t believe how they were reacting. Weren’t any of them the least bit interested or intrigued? Maybe it was because Page Hybore had only talked directly to me. If I could tell them what he’d told me…

  “This is a waste of time,” Meg said. She turned to leave again.

  “This is an emergency,” I said, jumping in front of her. “This note was delivered to me by a guy named Page Hybore. He was from Dembroch. And he died in my arms.”

  Jenn let out a dramatic gasp. “You killed him?” She took a step back as though I were diseased.

  “He was already weak,” I explained. “But he told me everything. Dembroch is in danger. The people who live there need our help.”

  “Help?” Clay interjected. “What type of help?”

  “Like we could do anything to help them,” Jenn groaned.

  “It doesn’t matter! There is no Dembroch to begin with!” Meg shouted, her cheeks flushing.

  Clay put a hand on my shoulder, his puffed-up personality returning to the forefront.

  “Nick, buddy,” he said. “I know you’re all worked up about this, but…even if Dembroch is out there—”

  “It’s not,” Meg interjected.

  “—we don’t know where it is,” he continued. “Or how to get there. It’s a wild goose chase. We have better things to do with our time.”

  “Actually…,” I said.

  From my satchel, I pulled out the pocket watch Page Hybore had given me. I showed it to all my friends.

  “Did you all get one?” I asked. “Page Hybore told me how to use it. I think it can get us straight to Dembroch.”

  Clay shook his head adamantly. “Be sensible, man. We can’t just…leave. We have responsibilities.”

  “And we have a duty to Dembroch,” I insisted. “We signed up to help them.”

  “And then they kicked us out,” Jenn said. “Remember, we’re not knights and dames anymore.”

  “It never existed!” Meg exclaimed, eyes bugging out. “Am I the only sane person in this room?”

  “Aye!” Old Sal grumbled at us. Our shouts were drawing glares and firing up the feisty drunks.

  “It does exist,” I insisted, my voice a bit quieter but no less pleading. “Dembroch is out there. And they need us. You guys gotta believe me.”

  Meg sighed heavily. I knew what that meant. She was about to go to any lengths to prove I was wrong and make me see reason.

  “And a pocket watch will get us there?” she asked.

  “I think so,” I guessed, realizing how ludicrous it sounded.

  “Okay, then,” she said coolly. “Let’s go.”

  “What?” Clay and Jenn said in tandem.

  “We’re going,” Meg said. She gestured at me. “Right now. Take us there.” She stopped just short of saying, “Prove me wrong.”

  “This is a bad idea,” Jenn said tonelessly.

  “I don’t care,” Meg continued. “Nick thinks he can trick us all by sending cute little messages and forcing us to meet. Well, I’m calling his bluff. There’s no Dembroch. He should know because he wasted five years of his life looking for it. But if he still insists otherwise…”

  She fastened the buttons on her suit and crossed her arms again.

  I shrugged innocently and held up the pocket watch again, showing my friends the exposed gears.

  “He said to connect the watch to our Dembroch sigils,” I explained. “Together, they form a chroniseal.”

  “Great,” Meg commented.

  I pulled out my Dembroch medal and snapped the pocket watch onto it. The watch gears and sigil fit perfectly together.

  “Then he said to press the winding crown,” I explained. “That should be this button here on the top.”

  “Guys, wait,” Clay said, his bravado disappearing again, his face a wrinkled wreck of nervousness.

  “I don’t want to die,” Jenn bemoaned.

  Unsure what would happen, fearing that nothing would, I pressed the button on the watch. This would have normally unclasped the watch’s front and revealed the timepiece. Instead, the watch remained shut. But…nothing else happened. The gears within cranked loudly.

  For a split second, dread filled my heart. I panicked—had Page Hybore lied? Had he forgotten to tell me something? Was I a fool? Was this all a lie?

  Suddenly, a jolt of electricity shot out of the watch and passed through my whole body. A dizzy-spell hit me. Horizontal streams of color began to form around me.

  “What in the world?” Clay murmured.

  Assuming something big was about to happen, I reached out to my friends. Meg pulled away, but I grabbed a fistful of her suit and held tightly.

  The world began to spin. Dave’s Diner lost its detail, running into blurred lines. I felt my feet leave the solid floor.

  And just like that, we disappeared from the bar. Not a single person noticed except Old Sal, who hiccupped and returned to his lovely liquor, and Ol’ Dave, who humphed in interest before he returned to tending his clients.

  Like Ol’ Dave had said, bartenders tended to hear and see stranger things. To the observant, sober eye, four adults disappearing in a flash of color was just another Friday night at Dave’s Diner.

  CHAPTER 6:

  Rough Landings

  We spun for a few more seconds—I got very close to losing my lunch and the orange cream malt I’d had—until, suddenly, my feet touched ground again. Only my head kept spinning. The world came back into focus.

  The four of us stood outdoors on a green slope curtained in thick mist. Lights of a far-off town passed in and ou
t of sight. It was dark, even more so than Dave’s Diner. High above, the moon glowed softly behind swirling clouds. Wherever we were, it was a different time of day, perhaps the opposite side of the planet, somewhere European. At least it was still Earth.

  “What the hell?” Meg shouted.

  “It’s a little too cold to be hell,” Jenn commented with a shiver. She dug into her purse and squeezed out another drop of hand sanitizer.

  “Nick!” Clay exclaimed, his tie flapping in the wind. “Where are we?”

  “I don’t know!” I shouted, as confused as they were. It wasn’t quite the peaceful, serene island kingdom I’d imagined. The weather was miserable, and the wind was cold; though on a sunny day, the grassy meadow by the ocean might have been an idyllic picnic spot. Was this really the Timeless Kingdom?

  A blast of frigid air hit my face. Water speckled my cheeks. I scanned the landscape, searching for the source. A football field away, I saw a rocky shoreline and an ocean. Waves swelled dangerously in the high winds and crashed into the rocks. Amongst the chaos was a small, squat building with a dock leading out into the waters. I didn’t know exactly what it was, but a building meant shelter, and it was much closer than the city lights.

  “Come on!” I shouted, waving them toward the building.

  “Wait!” Meg shouted after me. “Nick!”

  We ran down the hill, slipping on the wet grass.

  The building on the shore was a shack. Its wooden sidings were peeling away and dark from the moisture. A dock ran from the back of it, disappearing into the haze of the churning ocean. Three rowboats were tied to the dock, rocking in the windswept waves.

  I tried the door, but it was locked. I thought about tearing it open, but we weren’t that desperate yet.

  The four of us flattened against the wood sidings, hiding from the weather.

  “What the hell was that, Nick?” Meg shouted in my ear. “What did you do to us?”

  “You told me to take you!” I replied, as shocked as she was.

  “We’re all going to die!” Jenn bemoaned.

  “It’ll be okay,” Clay said. “No one’s dying yet.”

  “What do you mean yet!”

  “Screw this,” I heard Meg mutter.

  She reached into her pocket, withdrawing her Dembroch brooch and a pocket watch. I was so stunned to see she still had her medal that I didn’t even think to stop her from connecting the two and clicking the top button.

  “No!” I shouted, realizing too late what she was doing.

  A flurry of color like a miniature rainbow tornado surrounded her. A split second later, the lights faded, and she was gone.

  “What—Where did she go?!” Clay shouted.

  “She died!” Jenn cried, sinking to her knees.

  A second later, light flashed out in the meadow. Meg appeared, stumbling out of the column of color. She looked around wildly. Even from a football field away in the high winds, I heard her curse.

  “Meg! This way!” I shouted.

  She didn’t seem to hear me. Instead, she pressed the button on the watch again. Lights appeared, swept her up, and deposited her right back where she’d been. More angry shouts reached our ears.

  Meg stalked back toward us through the rain. All the while, she yelled at me.

  “Nicholas Roger Hutchinson,” she exclaimed, “take me back! Take me back right now!”

  “I can’t!” I replied. “The watch thing must only take us to—”

  Meg lunged, grabbed my hand, and squeezed tight. My hand was compressed around the watch and medal contraption called a chroniseal. I felt my thumb press the watch’s winding crown. Pulses of energy jumped through us, the world blurred together. I felt like I was flying on a merry-go-round, and then we were standing on the green slopes again, one hundred yards away from the shack, Jenn, and Clay.

  “—here,” I finished.

  “Take me back!” Meg shouted through the wind.

  “I don’t think I can!” I called back. “It brings us here no matter what we do.”

  Meg threw her chroniseal on the ground, wrapped her hands into fists, and shrieked in anger. She looked to be at wit’s end.

  “How? How are you doing this?” she demanded. “Did you spike my drink? Did you drug me?” She was getting crazier by the second.

  “No!” I insisted. “It’s the watch. Page Hybore told me it would take us to Dembroch.”

  Meg visibly rolled her eyes.

  “You have a better explanation?” I asked aloud. When she said nothing, I waved toward the shore. “Come on. We’re getting sopping wet.”

  After picking up her chroniseal and giving it back to her, I led her back to the shack. All the while, I could practically hear her brain churning, studying her watch and medal, trying to riddle out how this was all possible.

  As we walked, the clouds to the east began to lighten. The mist thinned. Dawn was coming. Back home, the sun had just been setting.

  “What do we do?” Clay shouted when we were within earshot.

  “Stand here and ponder life, obviously,” Meg said grumpily.

  “Let’s look around,” I said. “Find out where we are, or find someone who can tell us.”

  “I’ll just stay here,” Jenn said miserably. “Let me know if you find anything.”

  “Come on, Jenn,” Clay insisted, pulling her to her feet and dragging her along. “Chin up, darling.”

  We circled the shack, looking for a clue or a sign. We found one—a literal sign—hanging from the dock, creaking in the wind. It read:

  Ferry of Northern Scotland

  Pick-ups at First of Every Hour from Dawn to Dusk

  “Scotland!” Meg shrieked. “You took us to Scotland?”

  I felt my heart drop.

  “We’re going to die!” Jenn moaned again.

  “Stop saying that!” Meg shouted. “No one is going to die.”

  Suddenly, Jenn froze. In a high, thin voice, she said, “Guys? What’s that?”

  I followed her gaze. Past the dock, something dark was moving through the mist. It rose and fell with the waves.

  “We should run,” Jenn said quietly.

  “What?” Clay said, his teetering voice betraying his bluster. “It’s probably just a—”

  A ship appeared out of the fog. Modest in size, the boat was covered in fading white paint. Rust lines trickled from the bow.

  “See,” Clay said confidently to his wife. “No need to worry.”

  She didn’t look any less panicked.

  The ship pulled up to the dock slowly. I noticed there were words written along its side: Omnia Aeterno.

  I gasped, not believing what I saw seeing—I knew those words. Fingers freezing from the cold, I fought to unclasp the pocket watch from my medal. There, written along the bottom of the Dembroch brooch were the same words. Long ago, I had deciphered this Latin phrase, which meant all timeless and eternal.

  Dembroch, I realized, my stomach doing a leap. This boat must go to Dembroch.

  By the time I had explained this to my friends and they had all grumbled their misgivings, the ship docked and a man strode down the gangplank. The dock’s boards creaked as he came to a stop before us. He was dressed in ornate clothing with filigreed designs sewn into the material. He smiled kindly, a flicker of green in his eyes.

  “Seeking passage on the ferry?” asked the man, his voice thick with a Scottish accent. “Where to? Ireland? France? Further?”

  None of us said anything.

  The man scanned over us. When he looked at me, he spotted the Dembroch medal in my hand and practically fell into a bow.

  “My sirs and ladies,” he said, his Scottish accent suddenly replaced with a twangier one like Page Hybore’s. “Forgive me! I am Sir Liliford, the ferryman of Dembroch.” He glanced over us. “Page Hybore?”

  “He passed while delivering my summons,” I explained.

  “I thought he might,” Sir Liliford said, knocking his chest. “I shall deliver you to Dembroch in his
stead. Before we embark, do you have any belongings you wish me to store onboard?”

  There was a beat of silence. I hadn’t even thought about packing a change of clothes or toiletries.

  “W–we don’t,” I finally stammered.

  Sir Liliford raised an eyebrow.

  “I must be mistaken,” he said, his voice straining as he regained his composure. “The seer anticipated you would be bringing plenty of…what was the word…ah, yes, baggage. I am inclined to believe the belongings you carry are unseen and far more powerful. Dembroch’s hope rests upon it. Now, please, allow me to give you a hand.”

  He helped us onto the dock and, before we boarded the ferry, asked to see our Dembroch sigils. I was pleasantly surprised to see that even Jenn and Clay still had their medals.

  As I passed the ferryman, I noticed again that he had a flicker of emerald green in his eyes, just like Page Hybore. I wondered if it was a Dembroch thing.

  “Settle in. The passage takes some time, but I promise a safe journey,” Sir Liliford said, leaving us at the bow of the ship.

  “Where are we going?” Meg demanded to know.

  “Through the Norwegian Sea,” the ferryman called back over his shoulder. “Past the Bolts of God to the harbor of Dembroch!”

  Within minutes, the morning sun began to thin the mist, Sir Liliford pulled the boat away from the dock and set us out to sea. The green, mist-hewn slopes and cliffs of Scotland shrunk away. We approached and passed a set of tiny islands. Jenn let out the occasional sad sigh. Meg glared at her every time she did. Clay was all smiles and gusto.

  “Fascinating,” he kept saying. “Interesting. Wow, look, over there. What an adventure we’re on, Jenn!”

  Meg glanced at me and rolled her eyes.

  “Hold on,” Jenn said tremulously some time later. “Shouldn’t we be…avoiding that?”

  Ahead of us, perhaps a quarter mile away, was a wall of clouds. I thought about calling out or warning Sir Liliford, but our ferryman was staring at it with a confident, green gleam in his eye.

  We entered the veil of mist. It was thick. My friends disappeared from view. I heard Jenn clambering to find the railings. I stiffened too.

  Suddenly, something tall, sharp, and dark passed by the starboard side of the boat. Hair stood up on the back of my neck. I spun, searching the fog.