Evadeen Brickwood - The Speaking Stone of Caradoc

This book is also available in print in all good bookstores

Remember the Future Book 2

First published by Evadeen Brickwood at Smashwords

The revised version was published

at Kindle Direct Publishing, Tolino and in South Africa

Copyright 2014 Evadeen Brickwood

NLSA ISBNs 978-0-9946918-1-1 (pdf), 978-0-9946918-2-8 (mobi),

978-0-9946918-3-5 (epub)

Kindle ASIN: B013RAZ110

Smashwords ISBN: 978-13-10856099

Tolino EAN: 9783739322797

Map illustration: Evadeen Brickwood

Cover Design by Yvonne Less, www.art4artists.com.au

Source for cover images: ‘Depositphotos.com' licensed

Book Layout: Birgit Böttner

Time Travel Adventures

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In the early afternoon sunlight, the ocean resembled a blanket made of shimmering scales. SPLASH! A school of dolphins accompanied the ‘Navis Arion’, diving effortlessly in and out of turquoise waters.

Trevor sat on a pile of coiled tackle, his hair tousled by the breeze. He steadied himself with his feet against the railing as he concentrated on drawing a colourful seabird perched close to him. Good thing he had brought his pad and pencil, but drawing the floppy thing over the birds beak was a bit of a challenge.

What swam around in these prehistoric oceans was still a complete mystery to them. They had only just left the country of Alesia and there were so many things they still had to learn about this ancient world.

“How clear the water is!” Katherine gazed longingly into the shallow sea. “I wish we could just stop the ship right here and go for a swim with the dolphins.”

“You’re kidding, right? It’s not safe to swim.”

“I guess so,” Katherine said.

It hadn’t even been a month since their trip through time began and Katherine sometimes still wondered, if this Alesian epoch was for real.

“Do you remember how it was in the beginning?” she asked Trevor. “How scared we were when we saw our first giant?”

“Túvar?”

“Yes!”

“Sometimes - and for your information, I wasn’t scared.”

“Hah, sure you were,” Katherine teased him.

Her accent was still faintly British, unlike that of her two American friends Trevor and Chryséis . The people of Alesia spoke an Akkadian dialect, so nobody cared much about English accents, and the time travellers had learned to communicate in this ancient language. At first, Katherine had been so scared of taking the trip back in time. Even in the name of science. Now she couldn’t wait to see more of the ‘Known World’ the Lady of Cydonia had told them so much about.

“I like it here. I’m glad we stayed.”

“Yeah, I’m glad too,” Trevor said and looked up briefly.

They had been exploring this long-forgotten time ever since the vortex had released them in Cydonia, the capital city of Alesia. The nature reserve of Carter Valley had been ideal for their time travel experiment. Not far from the school, but fairly remote and no major electromagnetic interference.

They were smart, but not in their wildest dreams would they have expected a marvelous prehistoric city in the middle of Carter Valley! This civilisation was so terribly ‘modern’.

It had all begun with a school project in quantum physics: an endless energy source that powered a time-portal-finder. Nobody had tried that before. Not even other gifted children at the Pemberton Academy. They were planning to present their project in class next week — well what was next week in the future. The other kids would fall off their chairs when they saw the pictures! They were almost 12,000 years in the past. Imagine that: twelve millennia. Twelve!

It didn’t matter how long their sea voyage took. They would return at precisely the same moment they had left the future when they decided to go back. So they had decided to stay for as long as it took to travel to Atala and back. A few weeks more or less surely didn’t make a difference.

“Are those merpeople under the boardwalk? There at the tip of the peninsula?”

“Hard to tell, could be sea cows.” Trevor squinted to get a better look. ”No, definitely merpeople.”

The ‘Navis Arion’ had left the seaport of Aztlan on the safe mainland over an hour ago. Safe, if one ignored the fact that giants had started a war against the country of Alesia there. An unsuccessful war. Before their time travel began, they had been afraid to bump into cavemen and dinosaurs or land in a volcano.

Who would have thought of mermaids and evil giants? Okay, there were actually cavemen and small dinosaurs and probably also volcanoes around, but nowhere near as scary. In fact some cavemen, known as Konks, were sailors on the ship.

As they moved east in a gentle seesaw motion, the citadel of Aztlan became a tiny white speck against the dark hills and the Alesian coastline slowly merged with the sky.

The dolphins leapt into the air and splashed back into the water.

“Ooh, careful you guys. I’m getting all wet,” Katherine laughed.