Helen Douglas: Chasing Stars

Visibility was low. Opening his eyes, all Ryan could see was churned up sand and seaweed. He pushed to the surface and got his bearings. Travis had one hand on Eden’s head. He was pushing her under. Blood poured from a cut in his forehead. Even so, Travis was strong.

Ryan threw himself into a powerful front crawl, while the high waves tossed him up and down. Travis and Eden disappeared and reappeared from view as the sea rose and fell beneath him. Once he was within striking distance, Ryan swung his fist and made contact with the bloody cut on Travis’s forehead. Travis’s head snapped back and then recovered. Ryan swung again. This time with power. Travis fell beneath the waves.

Ryan wasted no time.

He held his breath and kicked down below the surface. Eden was slowly floating downwards, one hand clutching Travis’s shirt. A ribbon of pink rose from Travis’s head.

She was sinking fast. He kicked harder and reached for her, grabbing her waist and pulling her hand free from Travis. He had her now. Clutching her to him, he kicked hard for the surface, his lungs burning.

He had to get her to shore as fast as possible. On his back, he floated her next to him and held her under her armpits. The onshore wind helped. He reached the sand and pulled her up the beach.

Water trickled from the side of her mouth, but she was breathing. He’d saved her.

Cornwall – June 2012, three days later

It was no ordinary cemetery. There were no white granite headstones sparkling in the diffused light, no ancient cracked tombs, no parish church. Just a deep, green woodland tumbling down the steep side of a hill to a stream.

‘First she had you cremated and then she buried your ashes next to a tree down by the stream.’ He looked at me. ‘An apple tree.’

‘My favourite. Blossom in the spring, apples in the autumn.’ I couldn’t keep the shakiness from my voice.

Three days ago I had been dead. Three days ago I had drowned in the swollen waves of the harbour during a storm. Three days ago, Travis, my aunt’s boyfriend, had pushed my head under the water and held me down until my lungs burned and I opened my mouth to let the water in. But now I was alive.

‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ Ryan asked.

I nodded.

We made our way down the hillside, stepping over gnarled and twisted roots, past hawthorn and beech trees, plums and cherries, to an ancient apple tree whose knotted, weather-beaten branches reached across a small stream.

I ran my fingertips down the rough bark of its trunk. ‘So this is where I was laid to rest.’

‘Yes. She buried your ashes next to this tree. I saw it in your file.’

The nearby stream gurgled and the air was sharp with the scent of English apples. As final resting places went, this had to be one of the best. Miranda knew me well. I wouldn’t want to be buried in the ground, trapped under the weight of a granite tombstone. But my ashes nourishing the earth was a cool way to end up.

‘I should be dead,’ I said. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was living on borrowed time, that eventually Fate would catch up with me and it would all be over.

Ryan reached for my hand, twining my fingers through his. ‘No, you shouldn’t. That should never have happened. And now it didn’t.’

We left the darkness of the trees behind and followed the stream until it emerged into the sunshine. We were less than a mile from the sea; I could smell the salt on the air.

‘I just worry about the future,’ I said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You coming back and changing time works out great for me. I get a second chance. But what if you coming back to save my life sends ripples of change through time? What if we bring death and destruction to the future? What if the price of saving one life is too great?’

Ryan smiled. ‘You’re talking about the butterfly effect. When a butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazon, it helps to create a hurricane on the other side of the world. Small actions lead to great consequences.’

I nodded.

‘It’s a beautiful theory. I studied it in pre-college science and philosophy class. Completely wrong, though.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s just not helpful when applied to time travel.’

‘When you visited 2012 for the first time, you stopped Connor from discovering Eden and saved the future of the Earth. That was a pretty massive change.’

‘How can I explain?’ said Ryan, half to himself. He pointed at the stream trickling through the orchard. ‘OK, where do you think this stream runs to?’

I shrugged. ‘Probably to a larger stream or a river. And then eventually to the sea.’

‘Right. And there are millions of little streams just like this all running into the sea.’

‘What does that have to do with time travel?’

‘Think of the timeline as a giant ocean. It is fed by millions of tiny streams. If one of those streams runs dry, what impact do you think that will have on the size of the ocean?’

I shrugged. ‘Not much.’

‘Exactly. But if the Amazon or the Nile runs dry, it will have a significant impact on the ocean. Connor was an Amazon. His life changed the course of human history. But you’re just a little stream, Eden. No one in the future will notice whether you run dry or carry on.’

‘I guess.’

‘In any case, Travis changed the future when he killed you. If you’re concerned about the integrity of the timeline, I’m just putting the future back on course.’

We reached a wide section of the riverbank, where the ground was green and mossy. Ryan stopped suddenly.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘I want to dance with you.’

I looked around. ‘Here?’

‘What’s wrong with here?’

I laughed. ‘Well, there’s no music.’

‘I don’t care about music.’ His voice was quiet.

He opened his arms and I walked into them, resting my head on his shoulder as he held me. I’d never felt so alive. I felt the thudding of his heart against my chest, the blood racing through my veins, the mad tingle of electricity in every place his skin touched mine. I’d never felt so aware. Of the stream gurgling and sloshing alongside us, the honeybees, slow and drowsy, buzzing around like sleepwalkers, the soft ground yielding beneath our feet. I’d been given a second chance at life and I was going to make it count.

‘I’ve been waiting for so long to dance with you again,’ he said.

I laughed. ‘It hasn’t been that long. You danced with me last Saturday night at the Year Eleven Ball.’

He shook his head. ‘It’s been four days for you; it’s been nine months for me.’

I knew that of course. He’d already explained to me that he had left me four days ago, after the Year Eleven Ball, and portalled back to his time. It had taken him nine months to find a time-ship and enough fuel to get back to 2012. But he had come back just one day after he had left. Nine months for him. Four days for me.

‘I want to dance with you at night, under the stars,’ he said.

‘We can do that.’

He pulled me closer to him and then we were tumbling slowly backwards on to the green moss. I fell on top of him, our legs tangled together, my head against his chest. His fingers were in my hair and the sun was warm on my skin. I breathed in his scent, the lemony soap he always used, the metallic smell of his jacket, the warm, clean smell of his skin. Things were going to be different between us now. We hadn’t even kissed until the night he left. Because we knew he would leave and we would never see each other again. Because we knew we couldn’t be together. Because we knew how much more it would hurt if we allowed ourselves to fall in love.