22. Thin times at Avalon

43


Part of the calculations Kenneth worked on that January had to do with calendrical problems. He had not, when he first arrived in 1704, thought much about the fact that the English would not adopt the Gregorian calendar for nearly half a century. To save electricity, he had turned off the date and time function of his phone and other computers, and had been keeping count of the days the old-fashioned way, with marks on paper. There had been no calendar hanging on the wall of the porch he had visited in Pengenffordd, so he had never really thought about  calendars. But as he was thinking about the upcoming ‘thin time’ of Imbolc, he did. Ancient celtic calendars had not been printed. They were sun dials. Huge sundials, Stonehenge being the most famous. The modern (i.e., 2039) version of the Gregorian calendar, with leap years and leap centuries and occasional adjustments of a few seconds as necessary meant that his devices were pretty close to the time-keeping of Stonehenge. Which meant that if they were going to make a leap this Imbolc, they needed to be ready on 20 January.

Aidan asked how Attila would help them ‘catch a wave’, since he and the other companions of Owain Lawgoch had had nothing like an automobile.

‘I suppose anyone or anything anywhere could be caught up on a time wave. But the special painting on the top of the car lets me see a wave and try to catch up to it. In ‘my time’, there are people who ‘surf’ on sea waves, and they use fast boats to take them to catch waves that are still far from land. Attila helps me try to do the same thing.’

So it happened that an hour  before midnight on Tuesday, the 19th of January, Kenneth turned on all the systems of Attila the Hyundai as he and Aidan squeezed into it to try to catch a time wave. Everything seemed to work fine. Aidan had never before seen all of the displays that Kenneth had at his disposal, but he had long been convinced that this beautiful man he had seen walking through the mists was the greatest mage of all time, so he was amazed but not surprised. The clock clock on the display read 31 January, just as Kenneth had expected. As midnight approached, they drifted off to sleep.

44

Nora’s parents had taken the news of their grandson’s ‘trip’ with little surprise. They had always thought that the boy would go far. Blanche Davidson was almost smug that someone still took her old stories seriously. Min-seo and Rafael had called from Chandigarh to share that they were engaged, and thanked Nora and Marcus for giving them so many excuses to get together, something they probably would not have done on their own.

With everyone gathered around their Duo screens at once, it seemed like a good time to plan for their next trip to Pilton and Glastonbury. The Davidson’s thought that they were a little old for such a field trip, but were happy to have been included in the secret, and asked that Kenneth call them as soon as he returned. Min-seo and Rafael hoped that Kenneth might make an appearance again so they could invite him to their wedding, since his project had been so important in their getting to know one another.

And so it happened that the four original time-travel detectives and Yanto Owens stepped out of one of the Apple Tree’s Volvo Estates into the thick mist of Avalon about an hour before midnight on 31 January 2040 with a piece of kit that looked like a medieval shield made of black carbon fibre. They were in the parking place next to the one where/when Kenneth Owens’ Hyundai had last reported its location to House.  Marcus Rutschman opened a kick-stand on its back, put it on a firm bit of turf, and ran his finger along one edge. It began to glow slightly with a pale green light. Patterns began to be displayed in blue and red and white lines on it’s glassen surface. Occasionally one of the patterns would glow in orange.

‘That one!’ Marcus pointed to a particularly bright orange line that crossed Merlin’s display as a diagonal sine  wave. That’s exactly what Kenneth had hoped to use. If it is, and if he’s trying to return, he might be on it. We need to be ready to move if we’re in his parking place.

They waited. There were some other of the orange waves, not quite so strong, but still hopeful. But nothing came to occupy the parking space they kept open. After about an hour, with only blue and white lines on the display, they decided that perhaps they should try again at Beltane. Or that maybe Marcus should start coming to stay in House more often and monitor the area on a regular basis. Maybe they had put too much faith in ley lines and thin times.

Next morning, they all returned to their scattered homes, Marcus and Rafael and Min-seo with USB drives of the data gathered by Merlin, Nora and Yanto with disappointment.