Chapter 18

The soldiers rode into the gypsy camp at midnight wielding torches and swords. Whooping and yelling with battle fever, they cut down everyone who tried to escape. They set fire to the wagons. The old woman noticed that the soldiers were putting the sword to the men, but were running down the women with their horses. She knew that the women who survived the heavy hooves of the horses would later wish they had died here.

Katrina's wagon was at the far end – nearest the trees. She and Maria, her adopted granddaughter, hid inside, whispering furtively at each other.

"You must go, quickly!" she told the young girl. In her mind, she showed Maria the quickest way to escape the besieged camp. "You go to the creek and travel up the creek until you can no longer hear what is occurring here!"

She cleared out the center of the wagon and pulled back the thick, warming carpet. Underneath was a trapdoor. Next to the trapdoor was a separate latch. The old woman pressed and pulled on it, trying to make it release.

Then Maria helped her, and they both heard a loud thump as the false flooring, hinged on one side beneath the wagon, fell away. Now they could slip out through the trap door and not be noticed by the soldiers. All that could be seen was the false bottom hanging down, protecting anything behind it from being seen in the flickering light of the burning wagons.

Maria dropped down to the ground, then reached up for her grandmother.

"Presura, Bisabuela!" she whispered loudly. "They are right next to the wagon!"

"Vaya! Para me no espera!" her grandmother hissed back at her. Go now! Don't wait for me!

Maria stood her ground, silently pleading with her eyes. There was a loud noise as someone crashed right into the side of their wagon. Men were shouting. There was a sickening sliding sound, like metal rubbing against bone. Maria realized that someone she knew had just been killed – not a body's length away from her!

"Déjeme! Sea seguro!" Grandmother hissed. Leave me! Save yourself!

Maria looked around in terror, then disappeared from sight. The old woman could hear the young girl flee as her bare feet pounded away on the hard ground. Then she was alone.

Katrina could hear the cruel men outside, rounding up the women who had survived that assault. The men who weren't dead were killed – run through by the swords of the butchers who wore the royal colors. They also killed the women who were not favored with youth or beauty. The men didn't belong to the King of Spain – they belonged to the Church – they were...

Incuisitores!

The dungeon wagon arrived at the gypsy's flaming campsite a few minutes later. The surviving women were loaded up or thrown into it, crying and wailing to no avail. Those who were injured too badly were cruelly cut down and left for dead. The soldiers set fire to the rest of the tents and wagons as they prepared to depart.

The wagon Katrina was hiding in caught fire quickly. As she watched the flames spring up around her, Katrina's long and tortured life flowed through her mind one more time. She knew that death was near and that she had learned God's lessons in humility well. Now she could die and return to her rightful place in heaven.

Welcoming the flames as they leaped up around her, she stood in the center of the wagon with her arms lifted to heaven and sang.

Katie looked down at the fiercely burning wagon. She felt confused.

'Why am I always being burned to death?' she thought to herself, then wondered why she thought that.

'Holy K-rap, I fucked up Royal, this time!' Katie thought to herself. 'I'd better get home. Mom's gonna be worried sick about me!'

She knew where she was – what had happened to her – and most importantly, when she was! Late fourteenth century, she believed. She concentrated on moving forward in time – to the twenty-second century and home.

The landscape beneath her changed rapidly. A small town grew up nearby, then was burnt to the ground. There was cannon fire, and several thousand soldiers fought and died nearby. She flashed past their souls as they floated over the battlefield, lamenting the loss of their bodies and their lives. A modern city grew up, then thousands of huge aircraft whipped by and blew it all up, only to have the city grow up again.

Katie was suddenly surrounded by white fire – a solid wall of nuclear energy! It was scorching, burning. She leaped out of it and discovered that she was in normal time, again.

'This is just like dream walking, ' she thought to herself. 'I just don't have a body to go back into so I can wake up. I wonder where I am. I wonder 'when' I am... '

There were some people walking by. They were wearing regular business suits. Katie stepped in front of them. "Hello, can you help me?" she asked. They walked right through her, scaring her half to death.

"Holy K-rap!" she exclaimed. "I'm a fucking ghost!"

'Yes. Of course you are. It happens to everyone.'

Katie looked around. She didn't see anything. Then she noticed something was watching her – A shadow?

"What are you?" she asked it.

'I am your spirit guide. I will help you to acclimate to your current status and aid you in continuing your existence.'

"What?" she replied, totally confused now. "Just think at me. I'll get it, okay?"

'If you insist. You humans are not generally that evolved.'

"Humans?" Katie asked. "What are you?"

'I am your guide. I believe I mentioned that before.'

"Alright, so, guide me," she challenged. Images of possible choices appeared in her mind:

She could stay as she was, and eventually become a guide, herself. She could return to her family, wait for the next child to be born, and reenter her family's history. That was what most opted to do. Another choice was to pick out a pregnant woman, and then just wait for her new body to be born.

"That's not my problem," explained Katie. "I have a body – I just have to get back to it."

'All right, smarmy pants, where is your body?'

"Where is not the problem," she told the guide. "It's when! It's in the year 2083."

'2083 hasn't happened yet. This is 2067. You have sixteen years to go. Please explain how you lost your last body and where it is. I don't see where you came from.'

"I think I was in the fifteen century," Katie told it. "I was thrown back in time from 2083 to around three hundred – maybe four hundred a.d. by a nuclear explosion."

'You have a very inventive mind, human. However, you must understand that many of you often have incredible 'explanations' as to 'why I'm not really dead, ' don't you? You claim your body is in the future. Then how is it that you are where you are?'

"I told you!" Katie insisted. "There was a nuclear explosion in 2083. It threw me into the past. It's also creating this big fireball in the teleportation zone that is preventing me from returning home!"

'You know about teleportation?'

"Of course!" Katie exclaimed. "It's how the aliens get around. One of them taught it to me." 'Before she blew herself up... '

'You have an explanation for the energy that keeps us from moving from place to place?'

"You noticed it too?" Katie asked. "Is that how your ... um ... people get around?"

'Yes. It began some time ago – perhaps ten of your years. It wasn't so bad, at first. Now, the energy is so intense that we are vaporized when we attempt to move. You say the source of this energy is a nuclear explosion that occurs sixteen years from now. Is the world destroyed then?'

"No," Katie explained. "It was an accident. Beth teleported some guy into a wall. Two solids can't occupy the same space and all that stuff, you know? So Albuquerque blew up."

'How do you know this?'

"Because it was me that took Beth back in time and made her fix it!" Katie told the wraith. "She pulled the guy out of the wall and put him into the teleportation dimension. I got trapped on the wrong side of the explosion and it threw me back in time."

'Your explanation actually sounds plausible. Most unusual for a human. Are you the only human in the future that can travel from one time to another?'

"Well, right now I am," Katie admitted. "You've probably noticed that most people aren't very fast learners. I was over eighty years old when I learned how to teleport."

'You were an old woman then?'

"No, actually, I wasn't," Katie said. 'Jeez! How can I explain this?'

'You could make an image, like you suggested to me. I would see it. Our minds are more evolved that you humans... '

"Okay." Katie called up the memories of her first eighty years and displayed them in her mind for the wraith to see.

It was silent for a short time. Then it commanded her attention, again.

'I understand. Your entire family is long-lived because of the alien's influence on your parents. You are also at least partially to blame for the energy barrier that prevents us from moving forward from this point in time. What do you propose to do?'

"I want to go home," she said, simply. "That's what I want to do. I can't do anything about the 'energy barrier', as you call it."

'The fact that you are here and now demonstrates your inability to return to your own time. If you attempt to move from here, your lifeforce will be vaporized and lost forever between the dimensions.'