Evadeen Brickwood - Children of the Moon

A pale half-moon watched over the commotion in the parking lot at Carter Valley Inn. It was cool this morning, but the weather could change rapidly in spring.

The place was packed with impatient school children. Many of them only half-listened to Dr. Broadbent’s speech and some even yawned. Why didn’t they go already?

“Ladies and gentlemen, I hope we understand each other. Please keep in mind that under no circumstances is anyone to go near the escarpment. I fully expect to see everyone safe and sound on top of the hill by lunchtime.”

The principal of the ‘Pemberton Academy for Advanced Learning’, a well-known school for gifted kids, made sure that his instructions were carried out properly.

“Stay on the footpath - yes, you too over there!” The culprit quickly stepped back onto the rocky footpath. “Remember poor Tom Fraser—”

General murmur arose. They all knew that Tom Fraser had tripped and fallen off the cliff three years ago. Luckily, he had been okay. Sort of.

“There we go,” Dr. Broadbent said with satisfaction. “The junior grades follow Dr. Naidoo and Mr. Van Straten. The senior grades line up to my left, right here. You will walk with Mrs. Meyer and Dr. Wilkins.”

Dr. Naidoo was so short that she almost disappeared between the students in the ensuing chaos. She tried to make herself heard in a shrill voice, “Victor and Brandon, come back here this minute!”

Dr. Broadbent pushed sparse strands of hair back from his shiny forehead and began to assign the students to groups. Soon orderly columns started to move uphill. Only three of the seven-graders hung back right from the start.

Chryséis Cromwell seemed to have hurt her ankle and sat down on a wooden bench. Her best friends Katherine and Trevor sat down next to her and they watched the others file past.

“Hey, lazy buggers. What are you still doing here?” they teased the three friends.

Chryséis pulled a face in faked pain as she rubbed her ankle and moaned, “Oh that really hurts.”

Chryséis Cromwell was eleven, had lots of freckles on her cute nose and blonde hair that was tied up in a ponytail. Her usually bold blue eyes took on a suffering expression as soon as somebody looked her way.

Katherine MacDougal was twelve and rather pretty with her long, auburn hair. She came from England and was as shy as a dormouse, according to the self-confident, younger Chryséis, who had an opinion on absolutely everything.

The third conspirator was the quiet Trevor Huxley from Chicago. He was twelve like Katherine and attended Pemberton on a scholarship.

It wasn’t easy to get into an exclusive school like that and it helped that Trevor was very smart. His parents had never really understood their gifted son, but a scholarship meant that they didn’t have to pay for their son’s education.

Because of the divorce, it was just better for everyone, if he went to boarding school.

Trevor loved to daydream. In his thoughts, he could do as he pleased: fly on sun rays beyond the grey clouds in Chicago to the African jungle, or work on an alternative to washing machines, or cruise the blue Mediterranean Sea. And when he felt like it, he could even travel back in time to ancient Rome.

The three of them had never done anything like this before, but today they had good reason. So they sat on the wooden bench and waited.

It didn’t take long for one of the teachers to approach them with a stern face to see what was going on. Of course, they were prepared. Katherine grew nervous all the same and started to fidget so badly that Trevor had to shove her a couple of times.

Would Dr. Wilkins buy the sore ankle or would he notice that they were up to something?

“And what’s that?” the educator asked. “Chry-sé-is Cromwell, shouldn’t you be with your group?”

“My foot rolled off that stone over there,” Chryséis complained. “It hurts.”

She pointed to a random stone on the ground. The teacher’s expression softened and he stared at the spot. There was nothing unusual on the ground.

“I see,” Dr. Wilkins said and scratched his long nose.

Thankfully, he liked Chryséis. Excellent student, and her mother, Professor Cromwell, wrote such interesting articles in the scientific magazine, he enjoyed as a bit of light reading at bedtime.

He decided to give Chryséis the benefit of the doubt and gave her an encouraging look. Chryséis was to stay at the little inn and wait for the other students to come back in the afternoon.

“The two of you—” he waved Katherine and Trevor over, “you come with me.”

Oh no, they had to stay together! According to plan, they also had to avoid cars, buildings and especially people. Electromagnetic interference was just about the last thing they needed for their experiment. The sooner the teacher left, the better.

“Ahem, Dr. Wilkins,” Chryséis said bravely. ”I’d really like to go to our picnic on the hill. Maybe we should just take it slowly. I’m sure my friends will help me. It doesn’t hurt so bad anymore, see.”

She stood up on wobbly legs and smiled. It worked.

Dr. Wilkins agreed. “Alright, then,” he said and told Trevor and Katherine to look after Chryséis. Then he caught up with his group and helped a flustered Mrs. Meyer herd some of the students back onto the path.

Dr. Wilkins turned around briefly and saw Chryséis limping, as was to be expected, and leaning onto Trevor’s arm. Then he went to the front of his group and soon disappeared behind a rock face.

“Phew, at last,” Katherine said relieved.

Chryséis bent down and rubbed her ankle, then she recovered in record time. “I’m going to get lame for real, if I keep this up much longer... okay, so what now?”

Trevor stopped and scanned the hill. He pointed with his chin to some larger rocks. “See, how the path kind of forks to the right over there?”

“Yes - and?!”

Trevor had already mapped out the best site, just right for their purposes. Also rather close to the escarpment, but that couldn’t be helped.

“We aren’t supposed to go so near to the edge!” Katherine said immediately. Her stomach ached with nervousness. “What if we get caught? And what about Tom Fraser?”

“What about him? He’d fall over his own feet when he had half a chance,” Chryséis said.

“Yes, but…”

“Give us a break, Katie. If we don’t do it today, we can forget about the whole thing.”

“We’ll be careful.” Trevor started walking. “The others won’t see us for a while. At least not until they get to the top of the hill. By then, we’re back on the path.”

“I knew that.” Katherine caught up with them. “And what if we can’t find a portal up there?” She was still skeptical, despite weeks of careful preparations.

“Oh stop it already.” Trevor was eager to get going. Today! “There has to be a time warp around here somewhere.”

“I guess,” Katherine mumbled and trudged after them.

“I found a time warp in the school garden last week, remember?”

Sure, she remembered. Trevor had told them all about it, over and over. It had been his job to test the time-portal-finder... and what a test it had turned out to be!

First a shimmering, holographic spot had appeared that was growing larger all the time. That was the closest description Trevor could think of for the warp in the space-time continuum.

Then behind that ‘curtain’ a vortex had opened up. Churning like a washing machine during the spinning cycle - and Trevor had jumped in. Just like that!

On the other side, he’d seen a large ‘thing’ with shiny scales and steaming breath, stretched out right there before him. Creepy! The ‘thing’ had moved in waves and given Trevor the grandmother of all shocks.