24 September 1123

“Goodbye Matilda. Good luck.”

Matilda switched off the radio as the finality of David’s words echoed around the pod. Ever the gentleman, Harry gave a consoling smile and patted her knee. He looked ridiculous crammed into their tiny spherical pod, his head at an awkward angle against a curved strut. Wiping away tears, Matilda forced a smile and tightened her harness before staring through the pod’s porthole to savour her family’s silhouettes. One last time.

A light started to flash in the control room, signalling their imminent departure. Already thundering, Matilda’s heart leapt into overdrive. Her sweaty palms clutched the radio to her chest. Stilling herself, she took a deep breath and waited.

Suddenly, there was a brilliant flash of light.

And then they were falling.

There was a strange feeling of being squeezed all over and a slight change in trajectory as the pod dropped through the wormhole but within several rapid heartbeats the dark interior of the time machine swapped to a sunny blue sky. Matilda looked through the porthole and glimpsed a pristine vista of golden fields and verdant mountains.

She jolted as the pod’s automatic parachute deployed…only to watch on in dismay as the gravity-defying fabric tangled up an instant later, flailing uselessly behind the pod.

Harry peered out the porthole then shot Matilda a panicked look. “Too fast! Come on secondary!”

The earth loomed as they continued to plummet but the pod finally lurched again as the backup parachute took hold. The floor surged upwards as they decelerated.

Matilda’s stomach had only just settled back into place when the crashes started, small at first but quickly growing in intensity as the pod pinballed through the branches of a large tree. The Chronomads and their carefully packed belongings were flung around the cramped metallic ball. Matilda heard something snap.

The pod glanced off the tree’s roots with a final jarring impact, sending a searing flash of pain from Matilda’s left ankle. They rolled a short distance downhill before coming to a surprisingly gentle stop. Matilda felt jostled and disoriented, hanging upside down at an awkward angle. Even through the pain of her ankle, the strange feeling of compression from the wormhole lingered.

Matilda clutched at her boot but took a moment to just hang in sheer disbelief as her heart-rate finally settled.

“We did it Harry! We made it!”

Harry didn’t reply. He never would again.

Unblinking eyes stared up at Matilda from a head bent at an impossible angle.

A wave of icy terror washed over Matilda and settled in the pit of her stomach.

“Harry!?” Matilda screeched.

She clawed at her harness and pried her way free, dropping amongst their jumbled belongings and rushing towards her partner.

Harry’s unfocussed eyes stared upward, unmoving. Matilda checked his pulse. No sign of life.

“No,” Matilda muttered in disbelief. “No way!”

She clambered over to the pod’s hatch, inconveniently angled towards the ground, and wrestled it open.

Matilda emerged from the pod with all the grace of a new-born bird, a tangle of long limbs and curly red hair. She crawled awkwardly from the obstructed opening and out into Twelfth Century England, scrambling on her stomach through the mess of parachute cords.

Not wasting a second, she fought the pod into a more workable position before diving inside to clear space around Harry. Ignoring the pain from her ankle, Matilda tossed their precious possessions out onto the leafy forest floor.

When the pod was mostly empty, she leapt back inside and performed a proper medical examination.

C vertebrae fracture, probable severed phrenic nerve. He was gone.

Matilda sobbed as she closed Harry’s lifeless eyes. A thought struck her a heartbeat later.

She was alone.

A fresh wave of terror hit and Matilda threw up.

She was alone. Stuck in the Past with no way to get back.

Matilda tried to gather herself but hopelessness eroded her resolve. Harry and Matilda had trained together for years, like partners in a buddy cop movie. Him the charming lead, her the scrappy problem solver. They’d prepared for scenarios where they got separated or hurt. Even situations where one of them died.

But never so soon.

Matilda allowed herself a moment to grieve, crying into Harry’s chest.

It wasn’t fair. He never experienced the world they’d fought so hard to visit. He never even left the pod.

The world outside the pod didn’t exist. Inside, with Harry, Matilda was safe. She lay with her dead partner in mournful silence, curled up amongst their possessions until her universe stopped spinning. One final farewell embrace.

Wiping her eyes, Matilda backed outside and, as gently as possible, began to extract Harry’s limp corpse. His muscular frame was heavy, easily double her weight. Each heave felt disrespectful. Excessively rough.

Harry’s head lulled freely as Matilda lay him down upon a bed of decaying leaves. She stepped back and looked down at his peaceful form, almost expecting him to wake up, rub his eyes and crack some clever joke.

Matilda felt a tide of hopelessness rising once again so set about keeping busy. In a daze, she set off in search for the shovel amongst the scattered possessions. But with her first solid step, a flash of pain burst from her busted ankle.

Matilda screamed in frustration and hobbled away. From Harry’s lifeless body. From the pod. From everything.

The dense forest quickly obscured the landing site and Matilda dropped to the ground. Her mind raced with implications and anxieties but it was sheer pain that eventually cut through her turmoil. With difficulty, she carefully removed her boot and examined the ankle with an expert eye. It didn’t look broken but was definitely sprained.

Her loud expletive prompted several nearby birds to flee from their perches.

A solitary tear of pain and frustration rolled down Matilda’s cheek as she calculated the consequences.

Harry was gone, there was nothing she could do to change that. Her ankle was injured. But their mission could still succeed.

She’d worked with Institute planners to craft a meticulous schedule for the journey to see King Henry in London, including a little extra time for potential setbacks. But Matilda couldn’t travel to London with a busted ankle. It would be dangerous embarking out into the strange new world without the most basic means of escape. Without her partner. Yet waiting to recover would consume her entire buffer.

Matilda’s mind was lost amidst a fog of despair. She was absentmindedly brushing herself off when suddenly, she heard it.

Nothing. Absolute silence. Complete stillness.

There had always been some form of commotion in Matilda’s busy life. Her mother crashing around the kitchen, a roommate snoring, engineers arguing or teachers droning. Construction works on the T-Mach – Sam’s precious Time Machine.

But now there was just silence.

Matilda strained her ears and slowly started to make out the sounds of birds and other creatures rustling in the undergrowth. The forest teemed with life.

Despite everything, Matilda took in a deep breath of the fresh forest air and soaked in the unspoilt Twelfth Century landscape around her. Undulating hills sloped down to a riverbed and trees were yellowing in the autumn sun. A tapestry of yellows, reds and greens. Dappled morning sunlight filtered through the canopy and a slight breeze made the scene shimmer.

It was glorious.

Matilda wiped her eyes and set her resolve. The Institute’s psychologists had warned that the transition would be the most emotionally charged period of her journey – little had they known – but they’d prepared her for it.

Time to save the world…

The Chronomad picked herself up and hobbled back towards the pod. She needed a shovel.

Coming up to her waist, the giant metallic sphere was much easier to move when mostly empty. A scent of bile emanated from within.

Matilda reached inside and removed the final contents, carefully inspecting each item before arraying them on the forest floor for a final inventory. Her ankle flared with each step but she soldiered on, carefully retrieving the belongings she had tossed outside and adding them to the collection.

Harry’s motionless frame loomed in the corner of her vision but the purposeful task calmed her mind.

When she was finished, Matilda’s entire eclectic collection of worldly possessions was sprawled out before her. The final remnants of a now-lost world.

There was a jumble of cooking equipment, a tent, a comprehensive first aid kit, the radio, her bow and some arrows. The shovel. A change of clothes, a flint, a box of plant seeds, a hatchet. A pair of magnets, Harry’s spare knife and torch, a telescope, some warm blankets, a small pack of rations, winter cloaks and a case of bottled chemicals. A cracked bottle of acetone leaked an acrid chemical scent but Matilda was relieved that the spill was mostly contained within the case and fortunately hadn’t mingled with any of the more reactive reagents.

Most prized of all was Matilda’s satchel, a simple leather bag stuffed with her most valuable items. Precious metals and spices, but also several sentimental personal objects. A small bottle of champagne from David. One of Richie’s poorly painted toy soldiers. Her grandmother’s engagement ring and a family photo.

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It also contained her most priceless possession, a well-worn copy of the Institute’s standard‑issue Chronomad textbook. Rebound with her own embossed leather cover and filled with a decade of annotations, Matilda called it her bible. The Chronomads had been required to learn its contents by heart but its physical presence evoked a strong feeling of safety. It was rarely out of her sight.

Matilda had worked with Institute planners for months to plan and procure everything she and Harry might need for their mission and yet she remained baffled at how much could fit within the metallic sphere.

Notably absent among their possessions was a firearm. Institute planners had wanted them to bring one for self-defence but Harry had strongly declined, insisting that he and Matilda hoped to create a timeline that skipped combustible technologies wherever possible. It was only after Harry highlighted the difficulties of producing additional ammunition and Matilda demonstrated her proficiency with a bow that their Institute supervisors finally surrendered.

Matilda smiled at the memory. David had often joked about what a wilful young woman she had become, so different to the meek twelve-year-old that arrived at the Institute a decade earlier. He’d asked, only semi‑rhetorically, where his teachings had gone wrong.

Matilda also had the clothes on her back. She had worked with local historians for months to design Harry and her attire. struggling to strike an appropriate balance between the tighter fitting finery that would convey status in King Henry’s court and more conservative rural clothes that would draw less unwanted attention as they trekked to London. Each piece had been expertly crafted by the Institute’s busy seamstress, from the warm fur‑lined cloak down to her wonderfully supple calf‑length leather boots.

Her fancy clothes hid an additional treasure, one that even the King would lust after. The Institute’s parting gift was a vest of titanium chainmail, 3D‑printed to her exact measurements using a remarkably fine mesh. Sam promised that it was sufficiently strong to stop an arrow while still remaining light enough to wear every day. It was an extra security in an unfamiliar world and Matilda had no intention of ever taking it off.

The thought jerked her back to the present, reminding her of the morbid task yet to be done.

Delicately shuffling amongst her possessions, Matilda collected the small shovel and pondered where to bury her companion. The enormous oak that had broken their fall was majestic but burying Harry beneath the tree that killed him would be a cruel irony.

Matilda instead spied a thicket of blackberries nestled amongst a distinctive outcrop of mossy rocks. She hobbled over to it and sunk her shovel into the decaying forest floor.

Matilda worked tirelessly, determined to create a suitable resting place for Harry. Her ankle throbbed and sweat dripped from her brow despite the frigid autumn morning. Each thrust of her shovel was an act of prayer for the partner she had lost. Her companion and confidant. Never anything more.

Hours later, the sun started to fall but Matilda pushed on through rocks and roots, refusing to stop until she had carved out a hole as deep as she was high. She hauled herself from the earthy trench and solemnly approached Harry’s corpse.

The body had its own strange gravity, bending the dappled light of the landing site such that it was the only object in focus. Matilda savoured the view of Harry’s peaceful form one last time. Then, with a sigh, she bent down to move him.

Matilda dragged the body as reverently as possible, lowering it down the narrow steps she had carved into the grave. She held back tears as she arranged the corpse into its final resting pose. Even amongst the bare earth, Harry looked as mighty as ever. Externally unscathed.

A fog of grief hung over Matilda as she clambered up to the landing site to gather items to adorn Harry’s burial site. She placed the radio in his hands and, in lieu of a coffin, used his winter cloak as a shroud. The radio had been fried by the Drop’s electromagnetic pulse but it would forever show that Harry was of another time. That he’d had things to say and people to talk to.

Matilda climbed back out and looked down into her partner’s grave.

“You didn’t deserve this,” she choked. “You were always the best of us. Stronger, more diplomatic. But I won’t fail you. Our mission will succeed. I promise.”

Matilda couldn’t watch as she threw the first shovels of soil into the grave. She sang Harry’s favourite song as she toiled and the hole gradually filled, each shovelful smothering the reality of his demise.

Matilda’s arms burned and sweat rolled down her back, making her tunic cling to her chainmail. The grave was already half full when she recalled Harry’s own armoured vest, prompting another loud profanity. The chainmail was worth a fortune but she lacked both the physical and mental energy required to exhume her partner.

Images flashed through her mind. Carefully digging to avoid damaging his corpse. Delicately scraping the soil from his shroud before revealing a face already stiff with rigor mortis. Avoiding his closed eyes as she undressed him. Pulling the mail over his broken neck.

It was all too much.

After some final soul-searching, Matilda elected to leave the chainmail with Harry. The titanium vest wouldn’t rust so could always be extracted later, if truly needed. The luxury made Harry’s burial worthy of a king.

Exactly as he deserved.

Matilda worked until only a neat mound of dirt remained to give any indication of Harry’s final resting place. Matilda vowed to someday erect a headstone but forced her mind onto her next task – finding out exactly when and where she had landed.

She couldn’t calculate the precise date until the stars emerged but the nearby hill would provide a vantage point to survey the surrounding lands. Matilda knew that keeping busy would stop her mind from dwelling on the enormity of the past hours.

She looked back at the landing site and considered the safety of her belongings but laughed at the absurdity. The forest was pristine, entirely untouched by humans. Excluding the grave, the giant metal sphere and the broken branches hanging from a nearby tree, of course. Matilda judged decided it was safe to leave her belongings scattered across the forest floor. It was unlikely that anyone would stumble across them in the short time she was gone and forest critters would find them an unsatisfying snack.

Away from the mournful landing site, Matilda marvelled at the sheer beauty of the forest and its lack of human contact as she struggled uphill. Despite being almost a thousand years younger, this forest felt much older than any she’d explored during her adolescence. Thick gnarled trees stood where they had for centuries. By Matilda’s time, anything that ancient had been harvested for timber or firewood.

A particularly large oak awaited Matilda at the crest of the hill. It looked perfect for climbing, if her ankle weren’t busted. Still, the hill provided a decent vantage point for inspecting the surrounding landscape and Matilda circled the tree in awe. She could see for miles and marvelled at the pristine Somerset landscape. The only indications of human occupation were a patchwork of cultivated fields and wispy pillars of smoke rising from scattered villages.

The T-Mach and its giant reactor buildings were conspicuously absent as she scanned the horizon, providing the clearest evidence that she had actually travelled back in time. Matilda’s father had been a doctor at the Hinkley nuclear reactor so Matilda had grown up nearby, allowing her to learn more about the region and its history than even her Institute teachers.

Matilda was relieved to recognise several landmarks from her own time: mountains, rivers and even a hint of coastline off in the distance. When she’d found her bearings, even the pillars of smoke corresponded with familiar villages.

Matilda suddenly longed to get moving. She needed somewhere more permanent to store her pod and bulkier belongings. The Institute had recommended burying them – hence the shovel – but Matilda’s family had explored a nearby cave during hikes back in the future which could double as a base camp while her ankle recovered. She plotted a mental course from the landing site and hobbled back to the landing site, collecting wildflowers for Harry as she went.

After laying the flowers upon Harry’s grave, Matilda quickly assessed which belongings she could carry to her new camp before neatly stacking the rest back into the sphere. She struggled to conceal the giant metal pod with forest debris but, realising the futility of the activity, vowed to instead collect her remaining belongings when she returned with Harry’s headstone.

Matilda fashioned herself a makeshift crutch and set off towards the cave, limping along animal trails and river banks. Grief prickled at the back of her mind yet she still managed to appreciate simple joys like dipping her feet into a crystal-clear stream or stopping to watch a herd of deer grazing in a glade.

Familiar landmarks occasionally came into view, though the differences from her own time were jarring. The colony of ancient trees was boundless, rock formations showed reduced signs of weathering and wildlife was much more abundant. Matilda didn’t relish the idea of hunting her own food with a damaged ankle but the forest inhabitants seemed much more appetising than the basic rations the Institute had provided for the initial nights in the past.

The sun had already started to set when Matilda finally arrived at the entrance to a familiar gully. She stared into the gentle depression into the landscape and saw the cave opening at its end, overgrown with ivy but undoubtedly the same cave she’d once explored with Richie. Matilda shambled inside and dumped her belongings on the ground before hurrying to gather firewood while there was still light.

Upon returning, Matilda hastily kindled a small fire to boil water for one of her unappetising ration packs. Her stomach rumbled and she realised that she hadn’t eaten since being loaded into the pod.

Matilda felt another wave of overwhelming loss begin to rise but pushed the feelings down once more. She decided to enjoy the remaining sunlight, hoping it might make her nutritious gruel slightly more bearable. She collected her satchel, telescope and David’s champagne before exiting the cave and hobbling to the crest of a nearby hill where she seated herself among the roots of yet another ancient tree.

A glorious pink sky signalled the end of Matilda’s first day in the past and she devoured her food while the setting sun cast long shadows across the untouched landscape. She popped David’s champagne as the stars emerged and gave a toast.

“To Harry. My family. And a momentous day.”

She took a deep swig. Coming from a world where her every minute had been accounted for by others, Matilda appreciated the chance to finally enjoy things on her own time.

She got back to work when the sun had fully set, withdrawing her telescope and expertly measuring the position of several key stars. She performed familiar calculations in her notebook, working by the light of her hand-cranked torch. After some brief consultations with her bible, she drew a square around a date.

24 September 1123.

The Institute scientists had been confident that Matilda would arrive exactly when and where they had planned but she was relieved to verify it herself.

The date had been deliberately chosen to maximise the impact of Harry and Matilda’s journey. England had been on the verge of a renaissance when King Henry’s only heir died in a tragic shipping accident in 1120. The ensuing power struggle sparked a period of civil war known as The Anarchy, briefly teasing the possibility of female empowerment through the widespread backing of Empress Maud but ultimately extinguishing the flame of progress.

Matilda’s mission was clear. She had several weeks to journey to London and meet King Henry before he departed for a year of campaigning against rebels in Normandy. She would use her knowledge and limited equipment from the future to win his trust and join his campaign, allowing her to rub shoulders with royalty and senior clergy across Europe. This would maximise the number of people exposed to the Institute’s teachings, fuelling the budding renaissance and kickstarting society’s progress to save this timeline from the calamity that awaited their future.

The Long Day.

Matilda shuddered at the memory. She was only ten when she’d witnessed a star’s sheer power, marvelling with her parents as beautiful ribbons of light danced across the night sky. Her memories had faded but fragments of the aftermath lingered. Months without electricity. Missing favourite foods and television shows. Her father tending to an elderly neighbour, savagely beaten for protecting his backyard orchard.

At only twelve, Matilda had volunteered to help the Institute undo the stellar carnage, understanding even then that it would require great personal sacrifice. She’d never really been ready to leave home and her father’s parting words of encouragement had reminded her of what she’d lost. While she had cherished her Institute friendships, they were never quite family.

Matilda was pensive as she lay at the base of the ancient tree staring up at the night sky. The Milky Way was a beautiful band of shimmering stars, unobscured by light pollution and more beautiful than she’d seen since the aftermath of the Long Day.

So beautiful. So powerful. So dangerous.

Matilda’s mission was clear and she knew what needed to be done. But her ankle throbbed, a painful reminder of her own fragility. It would need weeks to recover.

Matilda rankled at the need to stay put but a part of her breathed a sigh of relief. The final weeks of preparation for her journey had been a rollercoaster of stress, anticipation and loss. As her departure loomed, she had increasingly fretted at how much she still didn’t know. She worked to the very end, struggling to cram more into either her head or jotted in the margins of her bible. Only a week earlier, her frustrated Institute classmates had even resorted to hosting her a combined farewell and birthday celebration in the Institute library.

Matilda knew she was on the verge of burnout, even before Harry’s death. Taking time for her ankle to recover meant slightly less time to influence the King, but it also gave her time to grieve. Time to plan. The resulting mental clarity could prove valuable.

Her mind instantly leapt to planning crafts and activities to fill the time. But no, she needed to relax and unwind. To ease into her new life and mourn the one she’d left behind.

Convinced that her revised approach made sense, Matilda pushed back the niggling feelings of loss and loneliness once and for all. She placed down her tools and reclined against the tree, settling in to admire the starry night. A weight lifted from her shoulders, knowing as she swigged her champagne that she could just enjoy herself for the first time since childhood.

The knowledge made it easier to process the enormity of her achievements. In a single day she had gone from a scared young woman afraid to leave her family to the most educated person on the planet.

She was Chronomad One. The first time traveller.

(C) Jay Pelchen 2024. All rights reserved.