Guardians of Time by Sarah Woodbury

a
down coat, which she’d made herself. But even boiled wool, which
was remarkably waterproof with its natural lanolin, couldn’t keep a
heavy rain from soaking through eventually. At that point, instead
of a nice warm insulating parka, she’d just have wet feathers.
    She and Peter returned to the stable so
quickly after their arrival at Dinas Bran that the long-suffering
stable boys had hardly had time to brush their horses. Still, one
of them lifted Bridget’s saddle from its rest and placed it on the
back of her horse. Bridget stood patiently waiting until he
finished strapping it to the beast’s back, and then, once both
horses were ready, mounted with a boost up from Peter.
    She held her tongue until they had actually
passed underneath the gatehouse before asking the obvious question.
“Why are you letting me come with you?”
    Peter glanced at her. “I need a partner,
someone I can bounce ideas off. You do realize, except for Bronwen,
that we’re the only twenty-firsters left in the Middle Ages?”
    Bridget stared at him for a second. She’d
just been thinking about the bus passengers, of course, but— “I
hadn’t thought that far. What with Lili and Ieuan—”
    “I know they both can speak American, and
Ieuan’s been to Avalon, but when it comes to it we’re the only ones
who are really in this together. When David said he was taking
everybody back, he meant it.”
    Bridget’s gaze went to her gloved hands,
which were clenching the reins tighter than necessary. She couldn’t
say that she’d loved every minute she’d spent in the Middle Ages,
but she’d stayed because what she had here was better than what
she’d left in the twenty-first century. Like Peter, before she’d
stepped off the bus, she’d had to ask one of the other passengers
to let her mum and dad know she was okay. It wasn’t that she never
wanted to see them again. She was concerned about them and knew
they’d care that she was missing.
    But she hadn’t ever been convinced that they
loved her all that much. She’d been born long after a much older
brother and sister, both of whom had children of their own before
Bridget herself had come along as a surprise to her mum, who by
then was already past forty. Another child—perhaps pretty or less
prone to dreaming—might have been doted on, but Bridget had always
felt like her mother did nothing but sigh over the inconvenience
Bridget had brought into her life. And her dad spent every evening
after dinner (which was eaten in front of the telly) down at the
pub. Growing up, Bridget had been put to bed most nights before he
came home, or put herself to bed when her mother couldn’t be
bothered.
    From the moment David had explained his plan
to her, Bridget had entertained two opposing fantasies about what
would happen when she showed up on her parents’ doorstep on
Christmas Eve. In one, her family cried tears of joy to see her,
asked about her adventures, and sat riveted through her tale of
life in the Middle Ages. In the other, after a perfunctory hug from
her mother, her father told her not to make up stories and went
back to watching his programme.
    Maybe it was a failure of imagination on her
part, but she had little doubt which of the two scenarios was
genuinely more likely.

Chapter Seven
    Math
     
    T hough darkness had
fallen, hiding the world outside from his immediate view, Math was
still recovering from the crash that wasn’t. In his mind’s eye, he
could see the bus hit the cliff wall, which he knew, as surely as
he knew his own name, would kill the woman he loved most in the
world, only to have it vanish as if it had no more substance than a
puff of smoke.
    As Jane directed the bus down the road,
having left the other bus passengers to their own devices, Anna sat
with her hand in his. “You okay?”
    “Ach. I’m fine,” he lied boldly. “It’s you
I’m concerned about. You’re still shaking.”
    “It’s one thing to time travel by mistake,”
Anna said.