Chapter 3

I glance over my shoulder as I run, just to see that Aidan is not only behind me but catching up to me. I pump my legs even harder, thanking the day I decided to start running the last three blocks back home from work during the summer instead of taking the bus all the way...it saved a bit more money towards my scooter fund.

 

I run into the forest, the trees thickening around me and providing some cover, although Aidan’s pace definitely has no problem getting better to match my increased speed.

I dodge under low hanging branches, twigs catching at my clothes and hair as the trail becomes more obstacle ridden the further I run. I start having to dodge left and right to avoid the ever increasing tree trunks and watching where I step to avoid twisting my ankle on rocks.

 

He’s getting closer to me, the sound of his breathing nearer to me than before. I can’t move my legs any faster than they’re already going and my heart only beats faster when I hear the sound of a sword being drawn. I glance back behind me to see Aidan wielding his steel weapon and my mind begins to flash with terrifying images of the things he could do to me with it when, and not if, he catches me.

 

 At this oh so very well timed moment, fate decides to do me a small favour when my foot catches in the loop of a root sticking up from the ground and stops me running any further. At least now I’ll die quickly, I think with a sick sense of humour.

 

I soar head first through the air, doing a tumble turn which should be solely reserved for when one is in a pool filled with water. I land, my face feeling as if it catches every stone and pebble it can find as I skid along the ground. Putting my hand to my head once I’ve stopped falling over myself, I feeling the warm trickle of blood on my fingertips from a cut above my eyebrow. I also taste it, and touching my nose next I realize that it too is bleeding from its contact with the ground.

 

I barely have any time to respond to this before the dust around me settles enough to silhouette a frightening figure looking down at me on the ground. I stumble to me feet, slipping as I try to reverse away from him but rather finding myself backed up against a tree.

 

 Aidan takes another step forward, his eyes the colour of the sea in the middle of a storm and filled with fury. I’m trapped against the tree, pressed so tightly against it that I can feel the rough bark grazing my skin through my thin shirt. The man in front of me is standing like an avenging angel, his mouth forming a thin line as an almost primitive growl can be heard coming from his throat. 

 

I’m paralyzed with fear, unable to move or try to escape as I know that my attempt would be futile, probably pathetic to him.

 

I say my last prayers, shaking like a leaf in a hurricane wind and staring at the ground as I wait for the inevitable swift swoosh of a his blade as it ends my life. I watch as Aidan extends his hand, raising his blade as his hands close around my neck and pushes me up against the tree. 

 

My throat begins to tighten and my lungs protest at the lack of air as he closes his fingers tightly around my windpipe. I lift my gaze from the ground and look into his lovely eyes, finding it ironic that the last thing I will see in this world will be something as beautiful as them, even if they show nothing but wrath towards me now. 

 

What people say about seeing the light at the end of the tunnel as they die is all wrong, all I could see was a brilliant turquoise ringed with gold as I felt myself fading into oblivion.

 

Then, oblivion ceased to descend on me, the leaden feeling in my body which had been creeping in as well as the pressure on my neck stopped too. The canopy of sunlight speckled trees came back into my fuzzy view, but I was more concerned with the face of Aidan standing above me etched with a look of complete horror.

 

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My breath was coming in short gasps, my neck felt raw and I was sure to see bruises developing soon. Aidan continued to just stand there with his sword sheathed, the sight of him becoming blurry and then clear again. It seems he feels incapable of moving.

 

I rub my now aching neck, coughing and sputtering a few times and I realize I'm lying on the ground amidst all the creepy crawlies. I lean up on my elbows and rapidly open and close my eyes, rubbing them lightly too with my grubby hands trying to clear my vision some more because right now it feels like I'm looking through unfocused binoculars.

 

My breathing evens out and now that my basic necessities of being able to see and take in oxygen are sorted out all I can feel is blinding rage and an abandonment of all sense of self-preservation. Instead of running while I had the chance, I looked upon Aidan with a sneer pasted on my face.

 

"What the frikken hell do you go running around after people and then trying to suffocate them for huh? Are you always this much of an a*****e or is this just an off day for you?" I stumble to a standing position, needing to support myself by leaning against the tree before I walk towards Aidan with fisted hands at my sides.

 

He stands a bit taller but has an incredibly guilty look on his face as I carry on with my raving. "Have I done something to offend you, because most normal people talk about things instead of trying to strangle the person getting on their nerves! Should someone knock some sense into that thick head of yours?"

 

I'm shouting, and I shove him as hard as I can when I've walked close enough to him but the push doesn't even move him an inch and this infuriates me even more.

 

"Say something d****t! You don't get to almost kill me and then not provide some explanation!" I punch him in the stomach, seeing him grunt slightly as if the force was more an annoyance to him than painful. I punch him again and again, venting my rage until he surprises me by catching both my fists between my strikes and shifting his body.

 

He spins me around and traps me by pinning me to his chest with my arms crossed over my chest with my back to him, and this earns him a war-cry scream from me that would make banshees cringe.

 

I struggle to release myself from his grip although it becomes apparent that my efforts are about as effective as a toothpick against a lion, but this doesn't lessen my escape attempt.

 

"Elena, will you stop wriggling around and give me a chance to explain?" His voice is lovely, full of rich tones and an almost lyrical note to it now that he isn't threatening me like in English today...but I wasn't about to be subdued because the guy had a voice which I imagine could cause birds to be green with envy.

 

"Why should you get any chance at giving an explanation when you were wringing my neck like a wet towel a little earlier ago?  Right now, you are so lucky my arms are stuck to my chest or I would be rearranging your face! Give me one good reason why I shouldn't have you arrested for attempted murder you absolute jerk and waste of skin and bones, or maybe I should run you through with your own sword! How do you even know my name?"

 

I could hear the blood roaring in my ears and perspiration begin to break out on my forehead from how worked up I was getting.

 

"Well firstly, I'd like to see you catch me let alone take a pathetic whack at a killing me with my own weapon. Secondly, I will explain everything to you if you would allow me to put you down without you raving like a lunatic and injuring your weak knuckles punching my armour. Thirdly, your name was on the class list I was given...circumstances led me to look you up today in the student directory."

 

I grit my teeth and clench my jaw but nod my head in agreement, not trusting myself to say anything else until he's finished speaking. He puts me down on the ground and I take the opportunity to look down at my hands and notice that I have in fact hurt them. Some are scratched and bleeding from my fall, while others are bruised and swollen, probably from my brilliant idea of punching someone with stuff on that's meant to handle arrows.

 

Thinking of the armour, I look back up and see that Aidan has removed most of his defensive covering and has stepped behind a cluster of high bushes with a small bag slung over his shoulder.

 

I can hear the sound of clothing being removed so I hastily turn myself around, flicking my hair over my shoulder irritably and rub my temples. He returns shortly, wearing a tattered pair of jeans and a grey shirt.

 

"Sorry, but the clothing of this time is not really my speed...I always go to bed holding an extra pair of clothes."

 

"Um, can we cut with the polite conversation until you tell me why you're in my dream and why you tried to kill me?" my voice is quiet now, I'm so confused and stressed about what's going on that I don't have the energy left to put any effort into being angry anymore.

 

I'm starting to think that maybe this isn't a dream as I previously thought, but something much, much scarier. This is all too real to be something produced by my subconscious, and I

 know for a fact that when I ran out of air earlier I would have woken up if I was dreaming and the fact that I didn't has me really worried.

 

"Um...you think you're dreaming right now?" Aidan responds back to me, then rushes forward to catch me as my knees buckle beneath me. The adrenaline that had been coursing through my veins, keeping me going has officially become depleted and I fall to the ground.

 

He picks me up and sits me down on a log nearby before kneeling in front of me. So I was right then, I really and truly have gone insane.

 

"Elena, why do you think you're dreaming? There is no ways you wouldn't know...." He pauses, a range of emotions flitting across his face.

 

"Know what?" I ask. I am almost scared to hear the answer, but I know that my sanity hangs in the balance...I figure that not knowing will eat me alive until I go crazy anyways, so why not speed up the process by knowing straight out.

 

“You’re seriously telling me that you don’t know anything about the Clepsydra?” his body is angled towards mine, and his hands are palm up and rested on his bent knees.

 

I squint my eyes at him and I’m pretty sure I look more lost than a vegetarian at a beef festival. “The what?”

 

He takes a deep breath and he stands up, running his fingers through his hair before he begins pacing back and forth in front of me. “You really have no clue whatsoever, do you...”

 

“No, and I’d appreciate it if you would slow down the nervous pacing and get with more explaining! I’m supposed to be the one asking questions here, not you...and you still haven’t explained to me why you tried to kill me and are now NOT acting like I’m a piece of gum under your shoe like you’ve been treating me all day!”. 

 

Aidan stretches his arm over his head, rubbing the back of his neck whilst looking at me sceptically. I cross my arms over my chest stubbornly...I am determined not to leave him alone on this issue. I seriously need to know why I am seeing people from history in my dreams and feel like I have a chainsaw hacking my brain when he looks at me in a certain way. I am tired of being ignorant when he seemed to have all the answers, and I won’t be giving up until I get them.

 

“I should probably start from the beginning...ever heard of time loops? Or the phrase ‘history repeats itself’?”

 

He stops pacing now, choosing to rather to sit on the log with his legs on either side of the fallen tree and his torso facing me.

 

I swivel and face him too, crossing my legs and giving him an incredulous look and saying

 

“Yeah, its like a constant theme in most sci-fi films...”

 

“Well, that concept has been going on for way longer time than science fiction films have been around talking about it...in fact it was first recorded in the ancient world in places like Greece, Rome and Babylon. They had this thing about time and seeing it as cyclical, meaning it goes on in cycles and everything repeats itself. This theory was first tested out by using water flowing through two clay pots with holes, where the water would go from one pot to another. They measured how long it took when the sun reached a certain point for the water to flow out, and then did the same thing the next day. This is how they got the whole thing about time repeating itself when the time taken was almost the same for the pots to empty, and then this pot-emptying system could be used to measure time and the time keeping device was known as a Clepsydra.”

 

I put my head in my hands and rubbed, feeling a headache becoming more and more prominent. “So, what has that got to do with me and my near-death experience?”

 

“There’s 3 different types of time as we know it today: the past, present and future... all of which are supposedly constantly repeating on each other, replaying the same events but with different characters and situations so to speak. Wars are started over the same land problems, conflict arises over love and friendships today start and end because of human behaviour same as they did a thousand years ago. What people don’t know however, is that through the space time continuum all these different sections, past present and future, overlap...”

 

He picks up a stick and draws  3 circles in the dirt, each circle with a small section overlapping into the other two circles.

 

“...at one point, and we call this the Crossover. Most people don’t know about it let alone sense it, but there are a select few who have the ability to access it, and these people are the called the Clepsydra. Almost all of the Clepsydra are able to access the past through its loop with the present, and are given this skill on the condition that they will be custodians of the historical events which shaped history by helping to make sure that things go exactly according to the history books and preventing history changing and therefore changing the present as we know it today.”

 

Ok, this is DEFINITELY headache material.

 

I moan slightly, clenching my hands into fists. Aidan looks at me again, and I roll my eyes before saying “Don’t stop now; it’s just a lot to take in all at once. You still haven’t gotten to the part about why you were about to cut me down with your sword like a weed in a rose garden.” I arch my eyerows at him, willing him to continue.

 

“Ok...just tell me to stop if you don’t understand....like I was saying though about the whole condition thing. The responsibility of keeping history in order causes divisions between us, because not all of the Clepsydra agree on it. There are the Equilibrants; people who are suited to help important figures of history accomplish what they were meant to do even if they don’t get any recognition of it but fully accept the responsibility and so keep history in equilibrium. Have you heard the name of the girl who used to help sew the dresses which went on Marie Antoinette’s dolls and kept her happy? You wouldn’t have, she isn’t mentioned in any history books because she was insignificant but she carried out her purpose which having the gift of the Clepsydra bestows on you. The next kinds are Alterates. These Clepsydra believe that the gift is meant for them to be able to try and change history, whether for personal reasons or not. This kind is exceptionally dangerous as they are willing to do anything to get the outcome they think they will achieve by changing the parts they want to manipulate...”

 

“And what type are you?” I cut in, starting to realize the enormity of this all and struggling to come to grips with it. What part do I play in this big stinking mess?

 

I hug my legs to my chest, and lay my forehead on my knees. “I form part of the third group, the Fatalists. They believe that we should accept what comes with being part of the Clepsydra, but unlike helping people like the Equilibrants do we are determined to keep the Alterates from influencing or altering the past..”

 

I shoot my head back up again, making eye contact with him as he sits across from me.

“What about the reason why you were choking the life out of me?”

 

I’m getting impatient now, but he just chuckles quietly and says, “I’m getting to that part, but it’s taking a while since you keep interrupting me. Since Clepsydra have a slightly more developed part of their brains sensitive to dealing with other humans and human emotions in order to carry out the purpose they have been given, they are able to pick up on what people are feeling as well as other Clepsydra. This makes my job easier as I can mentally sense the Alterates since they have this particular aura around them. I can only describe it as a mix of colours and emotions I can pick up on. All Clepsydra can do it.”

 

So that explains the blue mambo-jambo I was getting off everyone during the science test.

 

“Equilibrants have a white, pure energy whilst Alterates are the opposite and have more of a charcoal, thunderstorm black and grey feeling they give off. I’ve been trained to pick up on this aura and destroy any Alterates I come across just as my father and his father before him did, although this can be difficult at times since younger Clepsydra only start being able to go into the Crossover between the ages of 15 and 17 and then only choose which division they will be part of once they come of age at 18...until then they give off the aura of their father, the main member of the family. When I first walked in today, I sensed your aura a passage away, it was so strong. I had no weapons with me at the time and I was a little confused, so I did the only thing I knew I could which was to attack you mentally.”

 

 Ok, that explains a lot. It’s nice to know that I’m not being targeted because of absurd reasons at least, but the problem is if I ever tell anyone I’m being hunted by someone who sees black mist swirling around me I would probably be thrown into a nutters house sooner than I could blink.

 

“Wait a second...back it up a bit. You said you were confused a little...why?” He shook his head a bit before continuing.

 

“With most Alterates, their auras are definite ‘colours’ but yours were diluted, hard to define. Instead of being black, yours were more of a dove gray, with streaks of silver and iridescent colours like the ones you find on the underside of shells but definitely not white like the Equilibrants. I’ve never seen anything like it, which made me hesitate a bit. That’s why I had to repeat the mental assault a few times, to see if you responded in the same way as any Clepsydra.”

 

I relax a bit, starting to see the full weirdness that is my life.

 

“That explains why I felt that pain again during Science and at waterpolo trials. So it really was you then the whole time?” I feel angry again, but I won’t launch a full out physical attack on him until I’m certain he’s checked off all my questions.

 

“Yes, it was me...the way you fought it made me wonder if you were even Clepsydra at all. That's why I Drifted tonight to find you and...um...finish you off, because I was certain that you must be a pretty powerful Alterate to be fighting my assault.”

 

I was puzzled again, and the fact that this whole thing has just been one big question mark for me was starting to get on my nerves.

 

“Drifted? As in made yourself apart of another person’s Crossover?” he nodded, and so I asked another question. “I’m STILL wondering the reason why I’m alive then if you were so intent on annihilating me...”

 

He struggles with this, he looks as if his very insides are twisting into knots when he answers me.

 

“When a Clepsydra die or are near death, their very true essence can be seen by looking into their eyes. When people say that ‘the eyes are the windows to the soul’ they don’t know that it’s a saying which originated with us. When I felt the last of your life slipping away beneath my fingertips, and you looked up at me I saw the real you. What I saw I can’t be described but I can say that it wholly convinced me that there was no way you could do anything that would intently harm another person and therefore that you could not be an Alterate. I stopped strangling you immediately and hoped with all I am that it wasn’t too late and I had killed you. When you opened your eyes again, it felt like I had a chance at redemption. Clepsydra are charged with looking after people, so murdering someone who is innocent can literally tear our souls, our very beings apart.”

 

I did a bit of a recap of all of this information in my head, trying to review every detail so I knew exactly what was going on. A very obvious thought occurred to me, and I’m pretty shocked I hadn’t asked about it until now.

 

“You said something about having our fathers aura’s until we’re 18 and you picked up on a dark aura in me and seeing as I’m only 17 I would have to inherit my father’s Division he has chosen... problem is there’s no ways my father could be an...what were they called? Alterates?...yeah, he couldn’t be that. He wouldn’t be able to hide it from me or my family.”

 

He met my curious gaze again, and said in a rather restrained tone, “Elena, since you also didn’t know about the Clepsydra until now I’m assuming that your parents don’t either since every family of Clepsydra pass on their skills to their children and also according to you, you’re father isn’t an Alternate which leaves only one option...you must be adopted.”

 

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Thank you to the person who is reading this authors note. Please feel free to given any commentary or advice if you feel like it or just make me aware of any punctuation/grammatical errors I can fix. Thanks once again for trying out my novel, I really appreciate and will try to post updates as often as possible.

From: MK x

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