Robert Appleton - Prehistoric Clock

“Bravo, Verity!” Embrey raised his glass and flicked her a mischievous grin.

“And with that, I will bid you good night, gentlemen.” She yawned and left for her cabin before the men had a chance to stand up.

When she’d closed her door behind her, Embrey leaned over the table and whispered, “Let’s we three make a pact, then. Tangeni? Reardon? Let us promise to never leave Billy unguarded until all this is over. Verity has enough on her plate overseeing the camp. So whatever happens, at least one of us must stay with him at all times. Agreed?”

“I’m with you, Embrey.” Tangeni shook his hand. “Whatever happens, you have my word.”

The mellifluous amber light intensified both men’s gazes. Where a minute ago Cecil’s protective urge had been private, contained, it now blazed out into the night air with shared fierceness. Two of the best men he’d ever known were watching over Billy with him. A relieved tear slid down his trembling cheek.

Rather than wipe it away, he extended both hands to his friends across the table. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you both. Whatever happens, I will never forget it.”

At noon on the day before their scheduled departure through time, Verity and Embrey headed a hunting party to the western forest. A plague of black, weevil-like organisms infested much of the Empress’s food reserves, and Polperro’s posse had all but run out of their meagre rations. While in her own time it was common enough for sailors and aeronauts to eat weevil-ridden meals, here in prehistory the grubs were an unknown entity. They might be poisonous, perhaps lethal. She therefore had little choice but to buttress these final days’ supplies-and maybe several others besides, if Reardon’s machine couldn’t find 1908-with as much dinosaur meat as Kibo’s car could carry.

Her engine man stopped the tri-wheel vehicle and ice cream trailer at the tree-line ahead of them and waited. The long grass fell away to a damp, spongy moss for the last hundred yards to the forest. Embrey’s over-the-ankle boots with white, spat-style uppers appeared ridiculous for any kind of wild terrain, but he was just as sure-footed as Verity. He also looked strikingly handsome in his winged-collared shirt and decorative waistcoat. Behind him, Carswell and his two cronies kept to themselves, while Reba, Philomena and three more of her crew continuously scanned the trees on all sides.

“What’s the biggest thing you’ve hunted, Embrey?” Let him brag. A little macho hubris might go a long way to making her feel she was in familiar company. During her years spent with African hunters-turned-aeronauts, she had grown fond of that peculiar male tendency to extol one’s own life-or-death conquests as a measure of one’s masculinity. It was dumb, yes, but also, on occasion, reassuring.

“Why?” he replied.

“You don’t think it pertinent, considering our goal?”

He shrugged and loosened his collar. “Not especially. I’m by far the best shot here. Is that good enough for you?”

It was.

“What’s eating you, Verity…so to speak? You’ve faced leviathans of the deep and not flinched. A little hunting wouldn’t bring this on. What’s the matter?”

Was her anxiety so clear on her face? How well he knew her and yet how little. To think she hadn’t been stricken with absolute fear when they’d faced the liopleurodon gave her more credit than she deserved. But on this he was right; an unspoken fear had nagged at her ever since their tryst in the bough nest. Its insidious, gnawing quality was affecting both her appetite and her sleep. With all the incredible goings-on around her, that one personal question should preoccupy her mind like this was not something a captain should admit.

And yet, if she didn’t ask now, time was running out…

“Embrey?”

“Yes.”

“You’re wanted for treason. What are you going to do when we return to London?”

He halted, shrugged again and then carried on walking. “Whatever it is, it’ll be on my own. I might be a wanted man, but I have means of…I know what to do.”

Her insides turned queasy. What didn’t he want her to know? Did he already have an escape plan? If so, would that be the last time she’d ever see him?

“Everyone check your weapons!” he shouted to the party. “Let’s avoid any slip-ups before they happen. And no one goes anywhere alone.” Then he said quietly to Verity, “I think we should pair Kibo with one of the Whitehall cronies, so he can spy on them.”

“Agreed.”

He looked away and briefly mimed a whistle. “And you and I…let’s not separate.”

Funny, I was thinking the same thing.

They trekked a good half hour past the trees they’d felled, into the heart of the forest, without spotting a single dinosaur of any notable size. Several skittish bipeds no bigger than house cats darted across their path, while Reba found a nest of large, broken eggs. Embrey said he’d tracked game through the Amazon jungle before, and the route they were following-already somewhat hewn and trampled-had been forged by an animal of stupendous size. He pointed out huge prints in the mud and pine needles, and whole branches plucked bare high up.

“Some kind of sauropod?” Verity recalled the general name for the largest long-necked dinosaurs described in Billy’s book.

“A herd of them.” Kibo pointed his rifle higher each time they stopped.

Distant roars kept everyone alert, and the constant threat of meeting a baryonyx ensured the group remained silent and tight-knit. Occasionally a quick-moving shadow passed over the forest and Verity squeezed the slippery stock and barrel of her weapon.

She remembered Mr. Briory when they happened upon an area populated by beautiful yellow flowers. One or two bees quested through them, and she affectionately named the flowers “Briories.”

Shortly after, Embrey shot a lumbering, armour-plated quadruped through its upturned mouth, killing it. Philomena chased its even bigger cousin-about the size of a cow-into a glade and spent several bullets bringing it down.

No sooner had everyone rushed to congratulate her when she started back toward them, a look of terror frozen on her face. She began to shake uncontrollably.

“What is it?” Kibo caught her as she flopped in his arms, her eyes bulging like boiled eggs.

She mumbled something unintelligible over and over again before her partner, Reba, slapped her hard. “This no way for aeronaut to behave! Tell what you see.”

“I…I see…” Everyone leaned in. “Look out. Look out through the trees. ” The poor woman squirmed loose in a panic and then started to dance in the middle of the glade-a violent tribal dance reminiscent of one Verity had seen performed in Kenya when the first British airships had arrived to recruit African crews. It was as though she was warding off evil spirits.

“What’s got her so spooked?” Despite being limp with trepidation-Philomena had never displayed fear like this before-Verity cocked her rifle and ventured out toward the fallen dinosaur. Embrey followed close by.

Look through the trees?

She stood on the spot Philomena had reached and gazed northward. A brilliant glare, like the sun reflecting off the ribs of a rain-minted airship, blinded her. She rubbed her eyes and looked again. The glare spread lower, and she made out the infinite glimmers of sunlight on the ocean. They’d almost reached the coast.

A cloud passed over, removing the glare and revealing…

What?

She rubbed the daydream out of her eyes and gazed once more. The impossible only came into greater focus. Waves broke upon it. Pterosaurs perched on its broken tip. And wait… there…much farther away, like a chalk shape in the blue ether, another. How was this possible?