5. Clock Recovery

Zeze, a gray-haired, scarred she-wolf, led both the wolves and lions. They pushed their shields into the ground to make a high wall. Foxes jumped on top, growling towards the intruder coming their way. The ape general hung upside-down from his tree.

“That’s no enemy. That’s a badger! What are they doing here?”

Even in the Second Conflict, dear reader, the Apes were the only split animal species, with Half-Apes joining the enemy ranks. Any other species was fully behind one side or the other. All wolfs with the apes. All ferrets with the hyenas. The only reason Didrik wasn’t shot down immediately, was because badgers declared themselves for the Apes.

The wolves lifted their shields and Didrik slid to safety on his belly. He remained flat on the ground, panting.

“I have to,” he took a big gulp of air, “get to the bushes.”

“Why?”

“I have to meet someone there, at the right time.”

“A spy! He’s a spy! Grab him.”

Before Didrik could react, lions seized him.

“This is a misunderstanding! I’m not meeting any enemy. Far from it. I’m meeting someone who will help you.”

“Erm, general,” a fox said. “A black cloud comes our way. Is that normal?”

“That’s no cloud,” Didrik yelled. “Those are arrows! Take cover!”

Everyone followed his order, maybe because he spoke so convincingly. The lions loosened their grip and he took shelter under a wolf shield.

They waited for the arrow storm to pass. When the air cleared, the ape general jumped beside him, curious but still apprehensive.

“How do you know so much? Who are you meeting?”

“I … this will break your brain. I met a time traveler, but we accidentally went back in time, so I have to meet her again at the same moment.”

A majestic deer pranced out of the bushes. Didrik recognized her and knew exactly what she would say. What she would have to say.

Now, however, she waited for the ape to finish with Didrik. This changed the timeline! The deer would never warn the ape of danger in time.

Didrik nodded at the deer. “Did you already check the left flank?”

“That’s what I wanted to say, Ape General,” the deer replied. “There is absolutely no one to be found.”

Didrik laughed. “But did you look for pigeons too? You never know with those devils.”

The deer hung her head in shame. “No. I’ll get the owls right away.”

Didrik ran off, but the ape held him back. “So you know the future? Tell me everything! For what dangers must we stay vigilant? How many enemies can we expect?”

“Sorry, I only know the near future, because we only time traveled a tiny amount.”

The ape stroked his chin and nodded pensively, but didn’t let him go.

“Listen. Find that friend of yours and go back even further in time. Then come back and tell me everything you know about the enemy. Then we can stop them before they reach Baroke.”

The air turned black again, but not from arrows. A swarm of owls flew just above the treetops, on their way to intercept dozens of pigeons.

“I’m a Comrade Without a King. I don’t take sides.”

“Then why are you on this side of the battlefield?”

Didrik stayed silent. He ran off, searching for the exact spot where Ismaraldah would make her time bubble.

He waited. A long time. An extremely long time.

The pigeons were already defeated before they arrived and no time bubble ever appeared.

The sun set. His head now rested on a low-hanging branch and his strong legs dangled limply. He grew tired; nature quieted down.

Ismaraldah didn’t show up and all the other beasts had moved on by now.

He saw a campfire behind a rare tree in the middle of the heath. Wolves and foxes ate and drank together. He wanted to go there, but hesitated. The general would probably get very angry, or laugh at him. His eyes fell halfway shut.

Of course! he thought. His eyes opened again. Ismaraldah won’t come anymore. Because I told the apes about the pigeons, I changed history, so now she’s somewhere else too.

His face scrunched up. Time travel stays strange.

“Waiting for someone?”

His body tensed. His head broke through the branch and he fell flat on his belly. Where was that voice? He saw no movement. With my dark fur I must be camouflaged in the bushes, he thought. How can anyone see me? They must be a tremendous spy.

“Yoo-hoo, still alive? No, don’t run away. Stay here, I don’t mean you any harm.”

“Show yourself!”

A bright white glow appeared and threw strange shadows into the dar night. “Peekaboo!”

A soft paw pushed his head until he lay on his back. He looked up and saw a white panda.

The tension flowed from his body.

“Great! I really need you right now. Jacintah, right?”

“Okay, a bit creepy that you know my name. I’ll allow it, because I also know your name—Didrik. Ismaraldah just won’t stop talking about you.”

“But—you haven’t even met her yet, since she met me? How—”

“Little perk of time travel: you can gossip about someone you haven’t met yet.”

Now that blew Didrik’s mind. Jacintah rattled on. “Come on, up you get. Where did you leave her?”

“We were together on the enemy side, when she sent me away.”

“Excuse me?” Jacintah knocked against both his shoulders in turn. “You left her behind? All alone!? Pff, you’re not worthy of our services.”

“I am, I am! She sent me away because I would die from a paradox. If I didn’t replay the past and met her at the right moment.”

Jacintah’s eyebrows hung low. “That’s … not how it works. Why would she say that?”

“Wait. How does it work?”

“We’re not sure. Ismaraldah thinks that whenever she changes something significant, the entire timeline is rewritten. So there is no past to replay. The moment you time traveled and changed something, the entire history of the world was altered to incorporate this change.”

“So … I can time travel to before my birth?”

“Sure. But in doing so, you’d be born to an entirely different mother, and thus be an entirely different badger, in an entirely different world.”

And that’s also why the egg in the Timecore changed, he realized.

His brain was, successfully and utterly, broken.

The white-furred Placefolder leaned against the tree. “Still not sure why she’d lie about that. To you of all beings!”

Didrik had trained for this. As a comrade, you had to gain trust and get information from other creatures every day. “Yeah, that’s what I wonder too. So weird. I totally understand you! She never showed up and I’m still alive, so why would she say that?”

Jacintah nodded, as if they had agreed on something important.

He shook his fur. “Now let’s save Ismaraldah together. Sound good?”

Two strong paws grabbed his belly. The trees around him seemed to spin and the world went black.

Where were they going now?