Guardians of Time by Sarah Woodbury Page A

“It’s quite another when we do it deliberately. I’ve
actually never done it on purpose before.”
    “Your brother has, however, and is a
madman,” Math said, more calmly than he actually felt.
    “I heard that,” Dafydd said, though he
didn’t turn around. He was bent over beside Jane at the front of
the bus, peering out the windshield. Snow fell in fat flakes, which
the wipers flicked away.
    “What about the time it doesn’t work?” Anna
said.
    “O ye of little faith,” Dafydd said.
    “We will cross that bridge when we come to
it,” Meg said, glancing at Dafydd and then back to Anna. “Let’s not
borrow trouble.”
    Dafydd spun on his heel to look at his
mother. “You need to call Aunt Elisa.”
    “I do, but I kind of wanted to know a bit
more about what we’re doing first.” She gestured to the others,
most of whom were focused intently on the screens on their
phones.
    “Give us another minute.” Callum craned his
neck to look at something on Cassie’s screen.
    Math had glanced at Anna’s phone, but
nothing about it made any sense to him. If, for some reason, they
had to stay here longer than Dafydd intended, he’d learn how to use
one. But until that day, he’d rather focus on his surroundings.
    He’d grown familiar with the bus over the
last year, such that it had ceased to be more than a curiosity, but
its low growl as it moved along the road had him rethinking his
complacency. When he’d ordered the road to the cliff built to
Dafydd’s specifications, he’d been unable to picture exactly how
Dafydd’s plan was supposed to work. Now that he was here, Math
could understand why it was necessary to make the road as smooth as
possible. They were moving faster than Math had ever moved in his
life, and yet he was sitting still, holding his wife’s hand. The
bus hardly rocked.
    The lights and trees beyond the bus flashed
past. Math felt a little queasy, in fact, looking at them, and he
bent forward to look out the front window instead. Red lights from
vehicles in front of the bus shone in the darkness. He sat back,
shaking his head. “I am a stranger in a strange land.”
    “Funny you should say that,” Meg said. “It’s
the title of a book about a human raised on Mars who comes to
earth.”
    Math smiled. “I was quoting Exodus.”
    Meg laughed. “Of course you were.” She
tipped her head to Dafydd. “Do you know where we’re going,
kiddo?”
    “The hospital first,” Dafydd said. “It’s
nearer to Bangor than Caernarfon and on the way to Rachel’s dad’s
clinic.”
    “I can’t believe we’re finally home,” Jane
said from the driver’s seat. “It’s like a dream come true.” She
glanced at Dafydd. “Thank you.”
    Dafydd bent his head in silent
acknowledgement.
    “I would agree that it is like a dream,”
Math said. “I keep waiting for the moment when I wake up back in my
own bed in Dinas Bran.”
    “Let’s hope it doesn’t turn very quickly
into a nightmare,” Anna said.
    Meg pulled out her own phone from the bag at
her feet—a backpack Anna called it, for good reason as it
had big wide straps that fit snugly over the wearer’s shoulders. It
was the same bag Dafydd had retrieved years ago from where Meg had
left it near Hadrian’s Wall. She took out a ‘phone jack’, which
Math knew about from a primer Anna had given him as she’d packed
her own phone into her pack, and plugged it into the side of the
bus.
    Then she looked at Dafydd. “Are you sure our
phones are untraceable?”
    He raised both shoulders in an exaggerated
shrug. “You’re asking me? I wasn’t here last time. You bought them
in Oregon a year ago, barely used them, and then disappeared. If
the US government wants us, and they are willing to put effort into
tracking us through those phones—and leaving a trace on them that
could be picked up a year later—then more power to them. We’ll see
who’s awake on Christmas Eve.”
    “MI-5 may be aware of us too,” Callum said,
somewhat