Chapter 1

A Chapter by Margo Roman

Hilda runs from the Huns and end up in a Starbucks.

When I was running away from the Huns, I wasn’t thinking of danger or fear, or even my task at hand. No. I was still thinking about the historical inaccuracies in How to Train Your Dragon. Everyone should know that vikings don’t act like that. We are not war crazed people. I mean, C’mon!

But oh right, the Huns were on my tail.

Think Hilde! Think! Why was I here again? Oh right the artifact! The artifact, in the other direction. I grabbed the long handled ax hanging at my side. Screaming loudly to confuse the huns, I ran towards them. Oh dear Odin, please let this work. Just as I was about to be shot down by their deadly, though very crude, arrows, I jumped up as far as I could towards the wall, swinging my ax out in front of me. I lodged my ax into an outhanging window sill, before swinging off and jumping over the mass of Huns, my weapon in tow. I landed on the dirt before taking off once again in a sprint through Mongolia. The Huns, though confused decided to continue pursuing the crazy girl.

Finally I reached the temple. I ran inside and quickly bolted the doors behind me. They rattled with the force of warriors trying to break through. There it was. The bronze cauldron. Made in the early B.C ages, its been kept here for many centuries. It was rumored that if you brewed a stew inside of it, and then ate said stew, you would gain unimaginable strength. Of course, that wasn’t true. Magic’s the least real thing in the world. I grabbed it and ran into the center of the room. It was time to go back to the year 3000. What? I said magic wasn’t real, not time traveling.

The hub was filled to the brim with people when I landed. Thank god my favorite landing capsule was free. It’s in-between Starbucks and the entrance to Headquarters. Now I can report my mission while sipping on a latte. I was waiting for my order to be called when a familiar voice began talking to me.

“Hey Hilde, where in time did you pick that up?” my friend Amelia said to me, gesturing to the large metal cauldron I still had hanging off my shoulder.

“Oh you know, just 2nd century Mongolia” I said.

“I’m never going to get used to that” she chuckled.

“Yeah neither am I” I say with a grin.

Me and Amelia met in traveller training. You see, you don’t know about traveling until you’re chosen. The way me and Amelia became travelers is that in our own separate times, we exhibited curiosity for history, sharp minds and the skills needed to be a traveller. If you’re like us, a recruiter will appear to you, as if in a dream, asking you to join them. If you say yes, you’re erased from your time period and brought to now, the year 3000. Here most travelers go through time collecting artifacts and viewing history to better record it. By the year 2500 accounts of history became so skewed and biased from people destroying records and papers, to better support their view of the world. And so, the society of infinite historians was founded, choosing people from history to be travelers and rediscover history. Of course there are those who time travel for other purposes, but as a society they are so low on our scale we don’t discuss them.

I was plucked from 900 A.D when I was sixteen. That was two years ago. Sometimes I regret having never seemingly existed in my time, but back then having more than one kid was a burden on your family, another mouth to feed. I was a girl who was also the youngest of four. My family’s much better off without me.

Amelia was taken when she fell asleep in her town’s mosque in the 21st century. When she was visited she thought that it was a vision from Allah. It took a while for the recruiter to convince her otherwise. Amelia was already applying to colleges to study world history at the time. What’s better than reading about history? Living in it.

The barista called out “Hilde!” and I went to get my coffee. Seeing that I got a latte, Amelia said “Hey! You got one of me!” It’s been a long joke between us that since her skin is the soft color of a latte, she’ll relate herself to them.

“And like lattes, I am hot, hot, hot!” she exclaimed “I have a date tonight!” I almost spit out my coffee.

“Wow, you need to tell me everything later. But I need to get this in” I say hefting the cauldron higher on my shoulder.

“Alright, I need to get to Obama’s inauguration anyway. I’ll see you later” she replies, as I leave the coffee shop, and walk right through the dark doors leading to headquarters. Now, how am I going to explain how I ended up in a wild chase with a pack of Huns?