One night, I awoke by the sound of distant thunder. As I opened my eyes, I saw a door-like shape glowing with silver-blue light in the darkness. I blinked my eyes and pinched myself a few times to see if I was dreaming. I wasn’t. Then, I looked out of the window. The night was calm and silent. There was no sign of a storm. I switched my gaze back to the portal and used my mind to call out, ‘Lizzy, Stella, come to my bedroom quickly! Also change into some suitable clothes for going out and bring some weapons.’
We had the ability to speak with our minds and read them. We were born with the power, though we only found out that when we were five. By then we were friends. Of course our lives changed after we found it out. We could also walk through walls, talk to animals and stuff. It was cool apart from the fact that everyone, classmates, teachers and even our parents, thought we were freaks.
They didn’t exactly know we had powers, just that sometimes when we were careless, we let slip some of people’s secrets we shouldn’t know and once a classmate saw us healing and injured bird. By the end of the day, everybody knew about it.
A few minutes later, they burst in, each carrying a backpack and saw the portal. A grin formed on Lizzy’s face. She loved adventures. Stella was silent. Probably she was trying to figure out what the portal was. She was ‘the brain’ of our group. She usually got us out of tight spots when we went on adventures. We went on many adventures before, it seemed that having special power attracted danger.
After a long minute, Stella said, ‘It should be a time portal.’ Stella reads a lot and she loves reading the books in our tree house that we used to talk about supernatural stuff. The books had just appeared the day we learned that we had powers. A woman had also appeared and told me I had to be leader. Not cool.
According to Stella, time portals always appear somewhere in the past, present or future and no one knew how many would appear when there’s a full moon.
Lizzy interrupted, ‘OK. We know what it is now Miss Know-It-All, can we go now?’
They both stared at me. I hate being leader. It was so frustrating to make decisions that might kill us. I wish I could have been gifted with the power of fighting like Lizzy, which makes her the best fighter among us and almost impossible to defeat.
‘Sure. You guys got everything packed?’
Stella nodded.
Lizzy said, ‘If we left anything, we could just teleport it there.’
True enough.
‘Well, then let’s go!’
‘It’s raining!’ Lizzy exclaimed. So it was where the thunder came from.
Stella formed an invisible umbrella with a wave of her hand and we dried ourselves by summoning a fire. Then we made some torches and looked around.
It was dark with only a full moon in the sky. We were in the middle of a square with stables filled with sleeping horses and large wooden buildings filled with sharpened weapons and polished armours around us. Further away were some white pillars that looked familiar…
‘Look,’ I whispered, ‘what’s that?’ I pointed to the white pillars.
They turned and we tip-toed quietly in that direction. Too bad we hadn’t perfected the skill of seeing in the dark. When we got close enough, we saw that it was Greek architecture.
‘OMG! We’re in ancient Greece!’
Lizzy whispered excitedly, ‘I’ve always wanted to come to Greece!’
Suddenly, Stella squeezed my arm tightly and said, ‘the portal is gone!’
I whirled around. We were stuck.
‘Oh, great! Now we can’t …’ Lizzy was saying until I clamped my hand over her mouth.
‘Listen.’ I breathed.
There was the sound of quiet footsteps in the darkness. We crouched behind boxes that might be used to store wine.
A man’s voice said, ‘I closed the portal, but someone triggered the alarm.’
Another man with a deeper and commanding voice spoke cautiously, ‘How many came through?
A woman with a sweet voice replied ‘Three people David.’
David said urgently, ‘Quickly search the place, they shouldn’t have gotten too far. Natalie have you got night goggles?’
‘Yes.’ A woman with an Irish accent replied.
‘Give one each to Josh and Ashley.’ He commanded.
Suddenly, Lizzy sneezed.
Footsteps were coming our way. We were terrified but kept a cool head.
Stella said with her mind, ‘Lizzy go through the boxes to attack them. Cassie and I’ll blast them with water to distract them. Be careful, they may have guns.’
Then, Stella hissed, ‘Now!’
Lizzy jumped through the boxes. I jumped left and Stella right. We blasted the group with water while Lizzy attacked them with inhuman speed. Soon they were all unconscious and drenched. We tied them up with ropes conjured from thin air. Then we pulled them into the armoury and waited for David to regain consciousness.
After fifteen minutes or so, he woke up. ‘What… Where am I?’ he asked groggily. He looked up. ‘Who are you?’ he questioned sharply. Then, he noticed the ropes bounding them. (Finally.) ‘What do you want?’ he growled.
You’re the one who’s supposed to answer questions. Who are YOU? What year is this? Why and how did you close the portal? Also what alarm did we trigger?’ Stella demanded.
David looked at his companions.
‘They’re not going to wake until you answer our questions,’ I said ‘We put a sleeping spell on them.’
David gasped. ‘Spell?’
‘Yeah. Do you want them to wake or not? If you do, I suggest you answer our questions.’ Lizzy said coolly.
David sighed in defeat. ‘OK.’
He told us his name and that of his companions. (Which we already know, of course.) He told us that they were Portal Keepers, people who kept the portals a secret from the world. If anybody found out about them or the portals, they would have to wipe their memory.
They were people who were supposed to be dead in some kind of accidents but were rescue from their death in the last second by another Portal Keeper because they had already agreed to be a Portal Keeper the day before. They were rescued because they had some kind of special abilities. For David it was his natural skill of leading and could catch onto anything fast.
They could live forever and would never get sick, but they can be killed by guns and stuff. They also have the power to open and close portals. He told us that we were in Greece in 323BC and that apart from closing the portal, they were also going to recruit Alexander the Great. He said Alexander would be asked if he wanted to be ‘one of them’ three days later.
‘Right,’ I said ‘We should probably wake them up now.’ I snapped my fingers. They opened their eyes.
‘David, where are we?’ Ashley asked.
‘You’re our captives.’ Lizzy replied smugly.
‘What!’ Ashley gasped, astonished.
‘Who in the world are you?’ Natalie asked narrowed-eyed.
‘They’re teenagers from the 21st century. They apparently have special, or should I say, magical powers.’ David replied wearily.
‘Magical… magical powers?’ stammered Josh wide-eyed.
‘Yeah,’ I replied casually ‘Where’s your base? We shouldn’t stay here, the Greek might discover us.’
They hesitated.
‘You really should tell us, we could just read your mind, but it’ll be more convenient if you just lead the way.’ I said cheerfully.
They gaped at us. I raised my eyebrows.
‘OK.’ David agreed, after a while.
We got to their base. Wow! They had technology we’ve never seen before. They were able to go to the future too. Neat.
‘So, this is our base. Can you untie our wrists now? They’re seriously starting to hurt.’ Ashley said.
‘Wait. Is this where you live permanently? I can’t see any food or beds. Or are they in another room?’ I asked curiously.
‘No. We live in the main base which is in another time. Like I said before, we only came here to recruit Alexander and watch out for portals, since there’s a full moon.’ David replied.
I nodded to Lizzy.
Laser beams shot out from her finger tips and sliced the bonds in half. They rubbed their wrists and looked warily at Lizzy who beamed at them and said, ’Nice to be of service.’
Then David took a step to the machines, to be stopped by Stella’s icy stare.
‘I’m just going to talk to our boss, the person who first discovered the time portals and learnt all about them. I have to tell him about you guys. With the powers you have, you should consider joining us. You’d be invaluable to us and we don’t have enough people anyway.’ He explained nervous.
We checked his mind. Truth.
‘OK.’ I said. In my mind, I commanded, ‘Lizzy, watch him.’
David spoke for about five minutes.
He said to us, ‘Our boss should be here in about a minute.
We waited for some time and suddenly a man with long white hair appeared in the middle of the house. The machines must’ve bought him here. He turned to us.
‘Grandpa?’ I gasped
‘Cassie, it’s really you. I suspected that it was you and your pals when David told me about people from the 21st century with magical powers.’ His face crinkled into a smile and his eyes twinkled.
‘Grandpa!’ I threw myself into his arms. ‘I thought you were dead! I missed you so much!’
Grandpa laughed ‘I missed you too. We want you guys to become Portal Keepers. It would also be great if you could help with Alexander’s recruit.’
I looked at my friends. We all had the same thought. Should we go back to being freaks or should we accept this offer and go to where we belong to. The answer was obvious. We all nodded.
‘You’ll have to fake your deaths and sometimes your missions might be dangerous. Your lives would be really different and not at all normal again. Are you ready to lead this life?’ Grandpa asked.
‘Our lives are hardly normal,’ I said grinning ‘So yes, we’re definitely ready.’