Just Your Average Time Traveller

An illusion.

I simply stood there for a few seconds, wondering what on Earth had just happened to me. I was in a daze, my brain seeming to throb while I tried to figure out what had just happened to me. I tried to think:

I was in Rome. I looked at a tapestry. I counted some seconds on an antique pocket watch. Suddenly, I'm in ancient Rome, and I'm in the tapestry itself. But, it's all real. Everything has to be real because there's a signal on my iGlasses and my iGlasses just said I was in ancient Rome. These smells, sounds, sights...they can't be fake. That honeyed dish - it occurred to me that it was honeyed dormice. I was half glad that we had covered it in primary history. 

I didn't have long to think. I saw a small shadow rounding the left corner, just like in the tapestry and suddenly a girl burst into the dead end. She was short but around my age, elfish, with a thin face and heavy lidded eyes. Her hair was close cropped, badly cut and a deep shade of brown. She had butterscotch coloured eyes and was wearing a simple white cotton dress, like some of the girls in the market square. She held out a chicken leg, as if it were a dagger. The girl advanced towards me, and I pressed myself back, into a sack of flour lying unattended in the street. 

She looked at me questioningly and I simply stared open mouthed. She was about to say something but before I knew it, two men rounded the corner too and she squealed and backed away from them. One was tall and thin and quite young, the other fat and short and menacing. They smelled of blood and rust, and their slave-clothing was stained. I guessed that these were butchers. 

They were both distinctly greek looking, with tan skin and goatee beards. But the short one had no hair, and sweat was beading his forhead, his hands clammy, and gripping a large, hot poker. 

"There you are you little thief," the fat one sneered, his face twisting with malice, "Now, why don't we just give you a little beating to set you straight?"

"Yeah," the tall one shouted in a flighty voice.

"Go away! I'll call my uncle," the girl said threateningly, waving the chicken leg, despite the men having the upper hand. The girl put her hands on her hips defiantly, which sent the men into a rage. They thundered towards her but she refrained from squealing this time, sending a kick into the fat man's belly with a carefully sandaled foot. Then, she ran towards me. 

I once again felt the irrational urge to help this girl. I swung my backpack from my shoulders and my hand dived into it, rummaging around for anything to attack them with. The girl was pressed in the corner now on my right, probably thinking I was trying to keep out of the situation, and the men were advancing slowly, laughing. I realized that they hadn't even acknowledged my existence yet. 

I hissed in desperation. I was sure I had some pepper spray in here...I felt a cylindrical tube and whipped it out. Without even looking, I stepped forward, ripped off the cap and sprayed into the two men's eyes. 

They weren't screaming after a while, but sniffing. They weren't covering their eyes or running away. They were looking at the can in awe, and back at me. The can. Me. The can. Me. Slowly, their eyes widened, and they started jibbering to each other.

So I looked down at the can and realized I had just sprayed them with....

Deodorant.

There seemed to be a huge pause as the girl frowned at the cap and sniffed once too. I don't know why I got so lucky, but a few seconds later, the men were turning and running, screaming "BEWARE THE FLAME BOY! HE POSSES MAGIC! HE IS A MESSENGER FROM THE GODS!" in the market square. More confused than ever, and a little insulted that they had commented so rudely on my hair colour, I thanked my lucky stars we always had aerosol deodrant to rely on. Apparently.

I saw that the girl was staring at me incredulously, a smile playing on her features. I grinned sheepishly and began to walk away.

"Wait."

I turned around to face the girl.

"How did you do that? I mean, why did you help...? Where do you...?" she floundered with her words. Finally, she took a deep breath and looked into my eyes.

"Who are you?"

I opened my mouth to speak but decided to put my deodorant back first, stumbling with the confusion and shock I was currently experiencing. I still felt like I was going to be violently sick, the ghost of the feeling I had just endured coming back to haunt me. Crashing waves, compression, like my body was scattering and joining back together in a millisecond.

I composed myself and greeted the girl how I would introduce myself to anyone. "My name's Sam. I'm from England."

The girl made a face. "You come from England?"

I nodded blankly and she shook her head. "What are you wearing? I've heard of the barbarians. They don't wear such strange clothes." She sounded like she was purposely trying to be polite. Well, if calling my clothes strange was her 'polite' I shuddered to think what her 'rude' would be.

I realized she knew about as much as I did about how I had ended up here. So I decided to be as vague as possible. "Well, it's complicated. I'll tell you if you can get me somewhere to stay." I held my breath, crossing my fingers behind my back.

She blinked her big almond eyes a few times then suddenly marched forward, grabbed my wrist and ran around the corner.

The sunlight was even more bright than in 'future' Rome. I saw that the market stretched on for half a mile or so and this girl criss crossed through stalls like she knew them by heart. It was dauntingly wide and loud, hugging a fountain, the majestic Trevi fountain, closely. We were going so fast and I was so dazed that most of what I was seeing was a blur. Soon, we were walking down a quiet alleyway away from the market. We stopped at another dead end, with a little wooden shack draped in assorted fabrics at the end. All of the buildings here were either marble, or made of bricks or limestone. I remembered the girl was still holding my wrist like she planned on relieving me of it and pulled it back awkwardly. She simply looked at me absent mindedly, before bolting towards the shack.

She knocked on the door three times. There was a long wait so I decided to ask questions. 

"So," I began with no real enthusiasm, "What's your name?"

She looked at me intensely and opened her mouth to speak. But before she could, the door opened and a voice from inside called "Cassia! I was expecting you today."

The girl walked in. I followed and my nostrils were hit by the smell of sandalwood. It was very dark in the room and I couldn't even tell who had opened the door for us. A chill went up my spine as I saw the shelves and cupboards lining the small room. They had books, phials of liquid with uneven consistencies and even skulls and bones on them. 

The cupboards covered the walls completely and I realized there was only one room. 

"You always expect me, Cassandra," the girl, Cassia, was saying. In the middle of the room was an old wooden table and two chairs; one on either side. On the left was a gnarled old woman, who when she was young might have been beautiful. But now, her hair was grey and in a tight bun atop her head and she was clothed in fabric like the ones that the shack was covered in. Her eyes were a piercing green, and as I watched they changed to an unnerving blue. Her face betrayed something for a split second but it was gone before I could look into it.

Cassia went and sat on the other chair and spoke hushedly to the woman, when I noted something. 

They had been speaking in English.

But that was impossible. English didn't exist in 49BC. They should be speaking in Latin. Unless...no. This couldn't be real. I-I'd fallen asleep in the museum. I was dreaming. Yeah, just dreaming. I prayed it would be over soon.

I noticed the two Romans looking at me expectantly, the old woman grinning as if amused by my very essence.

"Come child," she told me in a weathered, yet stable voice. "Let's find out who you really are."