Post by StoryGirl83 on Jul 18, 2010 13:44:47 GMT -5
Chapter Sixteen – Another Time, Another Place
On the other end of the phone Vicki knew the cell in her hand was running low on batteries and that if she didn’t come up with something soon she would not be able to convey anything when she did. She talked briefly to several different children, but with each one she realized there was nothing they could tell her. The last boy she’d talked to had given her a frown and pointed off into the distance. “She’s dressed like a pilgrim,” he told her of someone in that direction. “Maybe she knows something.”
Vicki wasn’t sure what to make of the comment, but she headed in the direction he had pointed and came across a group of five children of varied ages and extremely varied style of dress. One thing was very clear. Not one of these children had seen the twenty-first century.
“He’s going to get into a fight, again,” came the musical voice of a girl. One of the girls started pacing around the group and stopped next to a boy who seemed to be the oldest in the group. “Thou know that this is going to happen, Charles. We may never have another chance.”
“You don’t think you can survive another century of this, Katherine?” an annoyed voice asked, presumably Charles’ voice.
“Why can’t you give up this show of thou’s?” “Katherine” asked. “We all have known thou far too long for that.”
“He’s not a good man anymore,” one of the youngest children, a girl who was, as the boy had mentioned, dressed something like a pilgrim, commented.
“I don’t think he ever was, Charity,” a voice identical to hers said coming from a second girl in identical garb.
“Excuse me,” Vicki said, deciding to approach them. “My name is Vicki Trudeau and I think you might be able to help me.”
The five children turned to look at her startled.
“Who are you?” asked the younger of the two boys, a boy around her own age.
“I told you my name is . . .”
“That’s not what Brian means,” Katherine interrupted. “We don’t have any way of getting out of here, or we’d have left a very long time ago. Why does thou think we can help thou?”
“Because you’ve been here so very long,” Vicki replied, “and you know what happens when he finishes . . . hunting us and capturing us. Maybe you know why he chooses who he does. Maybe you can tell me anything useful that will get all of us out of here, but it only matters until this phone’s battery dies.”
As Vicki held the phone up, five sets of eyes stared at it with various levels of stunned. It was Brian who spoke. “That doesn’t look like any phone I’ve ever seen.”
“And when were you born,” Vicki asked, regretting it the moment the words left her lips.
“1913,” he replied without hesitation.
“Wow, that means you’re older than Uncle Leo,” she responded. Even as the words left her she looked at the four other children. “You’re the youngest of this group, aren’t you?”
He nodded. “Brian Scott of San Francisco.”
“Boston,” Vicki informed him. “I’m from Boston. Most of my family’s from San Francisco though. Both of my parents were born there and apparently both of my parents died there, too.”
“You lost your parents?”
She shook her head. “No. All of that happened before I was born. My parents were high school sweethearts, but when they finally married Dad had died and became a whitelighter.”
“Your father is whitelighter,” Katherine asked, stunned. “That’s forbidden.”
“Yeah, tends to run in the family I guess,” Vicki admitted. “Uncle Leo was a whitelighter when he and Aunt Piper married and I guess their mom, Mom and Aunt Piper’s had an affair with her whitelighter that resulted in my Aunt Paige. I also have another aunt, Phoebe, but I’ve never met her. See in my reality, she died before I was born and in this one my mom died, but Aunt Phoebe is missing. In my reality Mom never died, but here, everyone in San Francisco that knows anything about her, knows she died. When we came to this reality Dad was given a choice of keeping his wings or keeping us. He chose us.”
“I should hope so,” the as yet unidentified twin announced. “T’would be a shame to give up on one’s family.”
Vicki smiled. “I can talk to my family with this phone, but I don’t have anything useful to tell them. Can you help me?”
“I don’t know,” admitted Charles, which garnered a look of victory from Katherine. “I’m Charles Lancaster. I’m from around what is now Victoria.”
“Victoria?” Vicki grinned at that. “Then, we’ll get along just fine, because that is exactly my name.”
Charles stared at her for a moment and then smiled. “Sounds nice.” He nodded in the direction of the other children. “Brian’s already introduced himself. He was taken in 1927, in case that wasn’t clear. I’d been here one hundred years at that point. I was born in 1811.” He shook his head at Katherine. “This lively girl is Katherine Roosevelt. She’s from Salem in 1727. I believe she was born in 1716.” He glanced at Katherine.
Katherine nodded.
Charles looked over to the twins. “And these are Faith and Charity Goodwill. Charity is the one most likely to be smiling, though I’m not sure why Faith doesn’t smile as much. I think perhaps it has something to do with Faith being the older twin. They are from a small village that was destroyed in 1627 by James Thomas a former resident and the one behind all this. They were born in 1619.”
Vicki smiled at each in turn.
“Now that you know who we are,” Charles continued, “what do you want to ask, because if something we know really can help you, then we want to help.”