Footsteps in Time Read Free

and
Anna faced forward again. They rode across the meadow and down the
hill, reaching the bottom just as the wounded man got a boost onto
a horse. He gathered the reins while glancing at the van. Anna
followed his gaze. The van sat where she’d left it. It was hopeless
to think of driving it, even if they had somewhere to
go.
    The company followed a trail through
the trees. A litany of complaints—about her wet clothes and hair,
about her aching neck and back from the car crash, and most of all,
her inability to understand what was happening—cycled through
Anna’s head as they rode.
    Fortunately, after a mile
or two (it was hard to tell in the growing darkness and her misery)
they trotted off the trail into a camp. Three fire rings burned
brightly and the twenty men who’d ridden in with David and Anna had
doubled the number of people in the small space. The man behind
Anna dismounted and pulled her after him. Although she tried to
stand, her knees buckled, and he scooped her up, carried her to a
fallen log near one of the fires, and set her down on
it.
    “ Thanks,” Anna said
automatically, forgetting he probably couldn’t understand English.
Fighting tears, she pulled up her hood to hide her face,
and
    Then David materialized
beside her.
    “ Tell me you have an
explanation for all this,” Anna said, the moment he sat
down.
    He crossed his arms and shook his
head. “Not one I’m ready to share, even with you.”
    Great.
    They sat unspeaking as men
walked back and forth around the fire. Some cooked; some tended the
horses staked near the trees on the edges of the clearing. Three
men emerged from a tent thirty feet away. Their chain mail didn’t
clink like Anna imagined plate mail would, but it creaked a little
as they walked. Someone somewhere roasted meat and, despite her
queasiness, Anna’s stomach growled.
    Nobody approached them, and
it seemed to Anna that whenever one of the men looked at them, his
gaze immediately slid away. She wasn’t confused enough to imagine
they couldn’t see her, but maybe they didn’t want to see her or
know what to make of her. Anna pulled her coat over her knees,
trying to make herself as small as possible. The sky grew darker,
and still she and David sat silent.
    “ Do you think we’ve
stumbled upon a Welsh extremist group that prefers the medieval
period to the present day?” Anna finally said.
    “ Twenty miles from
Philadelphia? Bryn Mawr isn’t that rural. Somehow I just can’t see
it.”
    “ Maybe we aren’t in
Pennsylvania anymore, David.” Anna had been thinking those words
for the last half hour and couldn’t hold them in any
longer.
    He sighed. “No, perhaps
not.”
    “ Mom’s going to be worried
sick.” Anna choked on the words. “She was supposed to call us at 8
o’clock. I can’t imagine what Aunt Elisa is going to tell her.”
Then Anna kicked herself for being so stupid and whipped out her
phone.
    “ It
says searching for
service ,” David said. “I already tried
it.”
    Anna doubled over and
put her head into David’s chest. Her lungs felt squeezed, and her
throat was tight with unshed tears. He patted her back in a there, there motion, like
he wasn’t really paying attention, but when she tried to pull away,
he tightened his grip and hugged her to him.
    Eventually, Anna
wiped her tears and straightened to look into his face. He tried to
smile, but his eyes were reddened and his heart wasn’t in it.
Looking at him, Anna resolved not to pretend that all was well.
They needed to talk about what had happened even if David didn’t
want to. How many books have we all read
where the heroine refuses to face reality? How many times have I
thrown the book across the room in disgust at her
stupidity?
    “ What are you thinking?”
she asked him.
    He shook his head.
    “ We could leave right now,
follow the trail back to the van,” Anna said. “It couldn’t be more
than a few miles from here.”
    David cleared his throat.
“No.”
    “ Why