The Knights of Time and the Forgotten Book

Chapter 6: Firenze

“Now don’t forget,” Holly said as she handed us our equipment. “You cannot spend more than two weeks in the past, so when the two weeks finish, come back immediately. The Keeper should have an automated timer to remind you when you need to come back.”

I fiddled with the tie of my school uniform as I did whenever I was nervous. I couldn’t believe that I’d be going to the past. At the same time, I was extremely scared. I knew what the Dark Arrows were capable of, since I had witnessed them murdering my mother. I was scared we wouldn’t be able to handle them because we were just three teenagers and they were so much more in number, strengths and age.

“How do we communicate with the people of that time? Won’t the people all speak in Italian?” Brandon asked. “And we all know how bad I would be at doing that.”

“You’ll probably end up asking a woman if she’s seen a dancing moose,” Jeremy told him, laughing.

“You don’t have to worry about that,” Philip said. “The Keeper translates their language so you understand what they say and they understand you.”

“Whoa, mate. That’s some freaky Doctor Who magic,” Brandon remarked.

“How does it do that?” I asked.

“Well... it’s a bit complicated, but besides being a connector of time energy the Keeper translates brain wave signals into a general neuro-language which every single brain understands. So basically they’ll think they’re speaking Italian but they’ll be really speaking another language which the brain camouflages. Because of the camouflage you’ll hear English when they speak Italian and they’ll hear Italian when you speak English.”

“What?” Brandon asked.

“I’m sorry, but I didn’t understand a word,” I said.   

“I told you it’s complicated. It also disguises your clothes with basic psycho-hypno mind tricks so you don’t have to worry about that either. I made sure there’d be no glitches myself,” Philip said. “Now, back to work.”

“You invented the Keeper?” Jeremy asked.

“No. I wish I’d have been that much of a genius, but no. Although I added those little modifications to it; the language thing and clothing disguise.”

“I’m really impressed. I didn’t know you could do things like that,” Jeremy said.

“Jeremy, my friend, anything’s possible if you put your puny, insecure mind to it,” Philip said.

“I also found a way for us to communicate with you three through dreams. It will be off-time-stream so it wouldn’t have really have happened, but it would’ve been something we wanted to do and we’ll know that it happened. So don’t be taken aback if we hijack your dreams.”

“I’d be actually happy if you hijacked my dreams. I’ve been getting really horrible ones lately,” Jeremy said.

“Were they prophetic or anything?” I asked him.

“No. They were really distorted, confusing and plain horrible,” he told me.

“So whenever you’re in a dire emergency, open the locket and press the ‘panic’ button,” Philip said. “Don’t press it for nothing though. We wouldn’t be too happy if we rushed to help you for nothing.”

“Yeah, what Philip actually means is that we’ll basically kill you,” Peter told us in a mock-like seriousness.

I put emergency supplies along with other useful weapons and items in my backpack. Around the school uniform skirt that I was wearing I wore the belt which held my sword in its sheath.