Ashes of Time (The After Cilmeri Series) by Sarah Woodbury Read Free Book Online Page B

herself. “If we ever get home, I won’t make that mistake
again.”
    “ I, however, have
something.” Anna loosened the strings on her purse, which was tied
to the belt around her waist, and pulled out a piece of paper that
had been folded into a small square. Unfolding it, she waved it at
Meg, triumphant.
    “ Is that David’s list?” Meg
said, unable to keep the incredulity out of her voice.
    “ Yup,” Anna said. “I
started carrying it everywhere last year, just in case.”
    Meg’s eyes had deteriorated enough since
she’d turned forty. While many people her age couldn’t see anything
without reading glasses unless it was three feet or more away from
their face, Meg had the opposite problem. She couldn’t read (or
see) anything clearly unless it was ten inches from her face. This
low light didn’t help at all, but half the time broad daylight
wasn’t much better. For the first time in her life, reading had
become a chore. She never had enough light, and she ended up
leaning closer and closer, trying to see what was on the paper.
    She had acquired a pair of glasses for
seeing distance, but they never felt comfortable to her eyes or on
her face, and they couldn’t correct the way she needed them to. She
hadn’t been wearing them to the dinner anyway.
    “ I’m glad one of us was
smart enough to plan ahead,” Meg said. “Or maybe you really do have
the sight, like the
legends say.” In the Arthurian mythology that David existed within,
Anna was Morgane to David’s Arthur.
    Anna shot her mother a disgusted look but
didn’t reply, turning the paper this way and that. She was trying
to catch a bit of light so she could read it. “Some of what’s on
here isn’t going to be easy to get.”
    “ We’ll do what we can, and
David will forgive us if we fall short,” Meg said.
    After David had returned from modern Cardiff
two years ago, he’d enumerated a list of items that he would have
liked to procure if he’d had the chance and if he hadn’t been
incarcerated the whole time he was here. He’d come home with a
stack of papers, which was useful, but consisted only of what he
could discover in an hour on the internet. He’d asked for two
telephone calls: one to his Uncle Ted and one to an employee of the
CDC (Centers for Disease Control)—and been denied even that.
    Meg knew, even if she couldn’t read it at
the moment, that the list went far beyond the CDC and Bronwen’s lip
balm. It included heirloom seeds for foods like pumpkins,
chocolate, and tomatoes; a couple different varieties of potatoes;
vaccines for the children as well as other medicines, specifically
more sophisticated antibiotics than the rudimentary penicillin Anna
had developed; and maps of Great Britain.
    David’s most pressing request, odd as it
sounded, was for a geological survey showing where minerals and
resources were to be found throughout Britain and Ireland. He
wanted a better map than what he’d downloaded off the internet when
he was sixteen. Though David hadn’t mentioned it today when he was
talking about either the rebellion brewing in Wales or his grand
plan for a United States of Britain, minerals meant wealth. No
state—whether kingdom or republic—could succeed over the long haul
without them. David had gone as far as he could with what he had.
Unfortunately a map to the level of detail he wanted was
classified.
    Which meant they needed Callum—for that and
for everything else.
    “ It feels like we’ve been
walking for hours.” Anna cinched her cloak tighter under her chin.
“I was hoping I’d warm up, but I haven’t.”
    She was right that they’d been walking
downhill for a while now, and as they neared the bottom of the
current slope, a prickling sensation started at the back of Meg’s
neck that she not only knew where she was, but that she’d been here
before. Well, not here-here, but in the vicinity.
    “ What’s up, Mom?” Anna said
when Meg didn’t respond to her complaint. “You’ve