The Messenger: Mortal Beloved Time Travel Romance, #1 by Pamela DuMond

middle, and a narrow, wooden pulpit about two steps up in the front.
    Reverend Wilkins was waiting to interview me. He was that tall, skinny guy with the silver, greasy hair I nearly took out during my escape attempt in the garrison’s commons.
    “Come here, young lady,” he commanded, and gestured briskly toward him.
    “Yes, Reverend Wilkins.” I looked at Elizabeth, who nodded.
    I walked up the short aisle. We stood face to face. Not good because he had really bad breath. Did they even have dentists here?
    He pushed my hair back and examined the pink scab on my forehead. “Hmm,” he said. “Your gash heals. What is your name?”
    “Abigail Endicott.”
    “What year is it?”
    “1675,” I said.
    He frowned. “Who is our sovereign King?”
    “Our King is…” Oh dang, I didn’t know that one. “King Simon Cowell the First.” The former American Idol judge was English after all.
    Reverend Wilkins glared at me squint-eyed. But I had answered two out of his three questions correctly. “King Charles II,” he said.
    “King Cowell, King Charles. I’ve been mussed up a bit lately. You are so smart, Reverend Wilkins. You knew what I meant to say.” And for some reason—I curtseyed.
    Elizabeth pinched my arm and covered a smile. Then she frowned and composed herself into a proper, uptight, colonial woman.
    The Reverend harrumphed. “I am keeping an eye on you, Abigail.”
    “Yes, sir, your holiness, sir,” I said.
    His eyes narrowed. “We are not those unholy Catholics.”
    Elizabeth’s eyes practically rolled back in her head. I’d screwed up again, as my parents raised me in the non-denominational church of God Loves You whoever your God is.
    “What’s a Catholic?” I widened my eyes innocently.
    Reverend Wilkins looked constipated and mumbled something. “I trust you will be attending services this Sunday?”
    Elizabeth and I answered in unison, “Yes.”
    “Thank you Reverend Wilkins,” she said and took my arm. “Thank you very much for your time.”
----
    W e exited the church ladylike and proper. We held our heads high and walked so slowly that all we needed was a casket to complete our funeral procession.
    As soon as we were out of his sight, Elizabeth grabbed my hand. “Follow me.” We tromped around the back of the church, passed some tiny houses, and entered an area lined with rickety, lean-to stables and small muck-filled pastures occupied by a few thin cows, chickens, and some goats.
    She dropped my hand and peeked around—there were no people in sight. She lifted the bottom of her skirt up several inches off the ground. “If there are no persons present, I usually lift my dress up a little when we go through this part of the village,” she said. “That way, I do not have to wash it soon thereafter.”
    “Got it.” I hiked my skirt over my knees and followed her.
    Elizabeth glanced back at me, looked horrified and stifled a giggle. “No! Not above your knees, above your ankles. You are not allowed to show your knees.”
    “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
    “No. Was all the sense knocked from your brain during that attack?”
    “Maybe some sense got knocked into Abigail’s brain,” I said. “You colonial people need to lighten up.”
    “Right now you are a colonial woman ,” she said. “I don’t know if the Abigail I knew will ever come back. But the Abigail that you are now needs a place to relax. Where you can think, breathe, and escape from all the eyes that stare upon you.”
    She led me to a dilapidated barn. A bigger barn door was closed and latched. She pushed open a short, tiny door next to it, and we ducked down to enter.
----
    I t was pretty dark inside , and it took a few moments for me to see clearly. The barn was a small, earthy, musty space filled with a few, thin bales of hay, some stalls, a horse, and a goat.
    She stuck her hand in a bucket and then walked over to a stall halfway down the only aisle in this shack. She petted the head of a large,