Chasing Stars

Chapter 1

Cornwall – June 2012, three days later

It was no ordinary cemetery. There were no white granite headstones sparkling in the diffused light, no ancient cracked tombs, no parish church. Just a deep, green woodland tumbling down the steep side of a hill to a stream.

‘First she had you cremated and then she buried your ashes next to a tree down by the stream.’ He looked at me. ‘An apple tree.’

‘My favourite. Blossom in the spring, apples in the autumn.’ I couldn’t keep the shakiness from my voice.

Three days ago I had been dead. Three days ago I had drowned in the swollen waves of the harbour during a storm. Three days ago, Travis, my aunt’s boyfriend, had pushed my head under the water and held me down until my lungs burned and I opened my mouth to let the water in. But now I was alive.

‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ Ryan asked.

I nodded.

We made our way down the hillside, stepping over gnarled and twisted roots, past hawthorn and beech trees, plums and cherries, to an ancient apple tree whose knotted, weather-beaten branches reached across a small stream.

I ran my fingertips down the rough bark of its trunk. ‘So this is where I was laid to rest.’

‘Yes. She buried your ashes next to this tree. I saw it in your file.’

The nearby stream gurgled and the air was sharp with the scent of English apples. As final resting places went, this had to be one of the best. Miranda knew me well. I wouldn’t want to be buried in the ground, trapped under the weight of a granite tombstone. But my ashes nourishing the earth was a cool way to end up.

‘I should be dead,’ I said. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was living on borrowed time, that eventually Fate would catch up with me and it would all be over.

Ryan reached for my hand, twining my fingers through his. ‘No, you shouldn’t. That should never have happened. And now it didn’t.’

We left the darkness of the trees behind and followed the stream until it emerged into the sunshine. We were less than a mile from the sea; I could smell the salt on the air.

‘I just worry about the future,’ I said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You coming back and changing time works out great for me. I get a second chance. But what if you coming back to save my life sends ripples of change through time? What if we bring death and destruction to the future? What if the price of saving one life is too great?’

Ryan smiled. ‘You’re talking about the butterfly effect. When a butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazon, it helps to create a hurricane on the other side of the world. Small actions lead to great consequences.’

I nodded.

‘It’s a beautiful theory. I studied it in pre-college science and philosophy class. Completely wrong, though.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s just not helpful when applied to time travel.’

‘When you visited 2012 for the first time, you stopped Connor from discovering Eden and saved the future of the Earth. That was a pretty massive change.’

‘How can I explain?’ said Ryan, half to himself. He pointed at the stream trickling through the orchard. ‘OK, where do you think this stream runs to?’

I shrugged. ‘Probably to a larger stream or a river. And then eventually to the sea.’

‘Right. And there are millions of little streams just like this all running into the sea.’

‘What does that have to do with time travel?’

‘Think of the timeline as a giant ocean. It is fed by millions of tiny streams. If one of those streams runs dry, what impact do you think that will have on the size of the ocean?’

I shrugged. ‘Not much.’

‘Exactly. But if the Amazon or the Nile runs dry, it will have a significant impact on the ocean. Connor was an Amazon. His life changed the course of human history. But you’re just a little stream, Eden. No one in the future will notice whether you run dry or carry on.’

‘I guess.’

‘In any case, Travis changed the future when he killed you. If you’re concerned about the integrity of the timeline, I’m just putting the future back on course.’

We reached a wide section of the riverbank, where the ground was green and mossy. Ryan stopped suddenly.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘I want to dance with you.’

I looked around. ‘Here?’

‘What’s wrong with here?’

I laughed. ‘Well, there’s no music.’

‘I don’t care about music.’ His voice was quiet.

He opened his arms and I walked into them, resting my head on his shoulder as he held me. I’d never felt so alive. I felt the thudding of his heart against my chest, the blood racing through my veins, the mad tingle of electricity in every place his skin touched mine. I’d never felt so aware. Of the stream gurgling and sloshing alongside us, the honeybees, slow and drowsy, buzzing around like sleepwalkers, the soft ground yielding beneath our feet. I’d been given a second chance at life and I was going to make it count.

‘I’ve been waiting for so long to dance with you again,’ he said.

I laughed. ‘It hasn’t been that long. You danced with me last Saturday night at the Year Eleven Ball.’

He shook his head. ‘It’s been four days for you; it’s been nine months for me.’

I knew that of course. He’d already explained to me that he had left me four days ago, after the Year Eleven Ball, and portalled back to his time. It had taken him nine months to find a time-ship and enough fuel to get back to 2012. But he had come back just one day after he had left. Nine months for him. Four days for me.

‘I want to dance with you at night, under the stars,’ he said.

‘We can do that.’

He pulled me closer to him and then we were tumbling slowly backwards on to the green moss. I fell on top of him, our legs tangled together, my head against his chest. His fingers were in my hair and the sun was warm on my skin. I breathed in his scent, the lemony soap he always used, the metallic smell of his jacket, the warm, clean smell of his skin. Things were going to be different between us now. We hadn’t even kissed until the night he left. Because we knew he would leave and we would never see each other again. Because we knew we couldn’t be together. Because we knew how much more it would hurt if we allowed ourselves to fall in love.

But now he was here. For ever.

And he was here because of me.

He kissed me, his lips brushing mine softly, as though we had all the time in the world. This was for ever. Limitless. A slow, lazy kiss, our lips and tongues slow-dancing. He rolled on top of me and I slipped my hands under the hem of his T-shirt on to the smooth, warm skin of his back, feeling my way up to the wings of his shoulder blades. He lifted his lips from mine and kissed my chin and my jaw and then my neck. I shivered although my body was filled with warmth.

This was what it felt like to be alive.

By the time we stopped kissing, my lips felt bruised, my face rough from the faint stubble along his jaw.

Something occurred to me. ‘You turned eighteen while you were gone.’

‘Am I too old for you now?’

I pushed myself up. ‘Did you have a party?’

He sat up beside me and laced his fingers with mine. ‘I wasn’t much in the mood for celebrating. But my friends insisted. They rented a party boat and dragged me out for a night on the lake.’

‘That sounds fun.’

‘I spent the whole time wishing that you were there with me.’ He glanced at me. ‘I think you’d have liked it. I think you’d like Lakeborough.’

‘What’s it like?’

He described it in detail, from the shape of the landscape to the best place to eat. The last time he had described his home, it had been a small town bordered by miles of wasteland. Now it was a vibrant city surrounded by miles of forest-covered mountains.

‘It sounds beautiful,’ I said. ‘I wish I could see it.’

‘One day we’ll go and see what it’s like now. In my time it’s one of the wealthiest cities in the country. It’s where the Guardians of Time are based. My favourite part, though, is the waterfront. There’s a boardwalk by the lake with a statue of my great-grandfather, Nathaniel Westland, smashing a huge clock. And my favourite bar – the Watering Hole – is there. It’s too bad I can’t take you there. I think you’d like it.’

‘It sounds like you miss it a lot.’

He shrugged. ‘I miss my family and friends more.’

‘What were they like?’ I realised I was using the past tense, as though they were dead. In a way they were – even though they hadn’t been born yet.

‘I’m not supposed to talk about the future. I’ve already said too much.’

I nudged his shoulder with mine. ‘It can’t be dangerous to talk about the people you know. We’ll both be dead long before 2123, so it’s not as though . . .’

His face stopped my words in their tracks. I wished I could take them back. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean . . .’

‘It’s OK. I know I’ll never see them again.’

‘That must be so hard.’

Pain flashed across his face, but he forced a smile. ‘I have some photos. You want to see?’

I squeezed his hand.

He pulled out his wallet. Inside were several photos, slotted into clear plastic sleeves. The first photo was of a man and a woman, sitting in a restaurant, smiling at the camera.

‘My parents,’ said Ryan. ‘This was taken on their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Just a couple of weeks ago.’

I stared hard at them, trying to find some resemblance to Ryan, but he didn’t really look much like either of them. His dad had the same colour hair and his mum had the same smile. He was a mishmash of the two of them.

Ryan flipped the wallet to another photo; this one was a group of friends sitting laughing on a dock on a lake, their feet dangling in the water. Behind them was a sign that said The Watering Hole.

‘My friends,’ said Ryan. He pointed to a tall, dark-haired boy with a manic smile. ‘That’s Pegasus, my best friend. Best pilot I know. Far more courage than common sense. If you want someone to do something crazy and stupid – like help you steal a time-ship – he’s your man.’ He pointed to the other people in turn. ‘That’s Antoine and his sister, Belle. And that’s Lyra. We all grew up together.’

‘They look like fun.’

He nodded and turned to the final photo, one of three boys. ‘Me and my brothers.’

I took a closer look. ‘You’re the youngest?’

He nodded. ‘Jove is twenty and Jem is twenty-two.’

‘They must miss you so much. Where do they think you are?’

‘I don’t know. I couldn’t tell them I was moving time.’

He snapped his wallet shut and pulled me close to him.

‘You’ve given up so much to save me,’ I said.

He drew back far enough to look into my eyes. ‘I’d do it ten times over. And I think you’d do the same for me.’