Tick Tock Time Travel

“Hey, Jeanine, I need to take a couple of weeks off. Can you hold down the fort while I’m gone?”

“What’s up?” Jeanine asked. “And who says ‘hold down the fort’ anymore? This is a zoo, not the Alamo!”

Maggie rolled her eyes. “My eccentric great aunt Delilah passed away and left everything to me. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I was the only one who listened to her ‘adventures,’” she said, using air quotes for adventures. “I think she lived in a different world in her head, but I did like her.”

“Where did she live - physically, I mean?”

“My hometown - a small town in Vermont. I figure I’ll go, sort some stuff, and put the house on the market. It shouldn’t take too long. I hate to take time off with Harvey Hippo waiting for Harriet to go into heat and Geraldine Giraffe’s throat problems.”

“Hmmm,” Jeanine mused. “You’re going to a small town in Vermont to handle your great aunt’s estate? Sounds like a Hallmark movie to me. You’d better not run into an old boyfriend and decide that Podunk, Vermont, needs a veterinarian more than we need a zookeeper.”

“Hah! Not gonna happen! Cindy Morrison is writing this story - not Nora Roberts!”

“Since Cindy isn’t sending me along as your quirky-smart-mouthed sidekick, I guess you may be right. I can deal with Harvey, Harriet, and Geraldine. You go and do your thing… and don’t forget to fan through all the books - I bet there’s a fortune hidden in them!”

A week and four thousand books later, Maggie sat in the middle of the library of her great aunt’s dilapidated “Paranormal, Caught on Camera” hoarder house and sighed. “Why did I listen to Jeanine?” she said out loud.

“There’s one more book,” came an answer from nowhere and everywhere in the room.

Maggie jumped up and looked around. “Holy crap! Who’s here?”

“It’s the ghost of your great aunt Delilah,” the voice answered.

“Seriously, Cindy?” she thought. “You couldn’t do better than that?”

“Just wait,” Cindy typed.

A light appeared in the upper corner of the room. It danced and bobbed and roamed the shelves, finally landing on the grandfather clock against the wall. The light became a giant finger pointing to the lower door. Maggie turned the key and opened it, expecting a clown to jump out because Cindy would write something like that, but it was just an open door that showed her nothing.

“So… no book, Aunt Delilah. What now?”

“It’s taped to the back of the pendulum,” Ghost Aunt Delilah told her. “The damned clock never kept time after I did that.”

Maggie reached behind the pendulum. “NOW a clown is going to jump out - or a tarantula,” she thought, but all she found was a small journal taped to the pendulum, just like Ghost Aunt Delilah said.

She opened the journal and fanned it, seriously expecting money to fall out, but instead, it was empty except for one page. On it, she read:

“One to go forth and midnight for back. Adventure awaits if you have the knack.”

“How corny can this get?” Maggie said.

“Hold my beer,” Cindy wrote… or did that come from Delilah?

“Nope. I’m not gonna do it,” Maggie stated, but the big finger-pointing light reached down, grabbed her hand, and put it up to the clock face, waving it back and forth like a metronome.

“Forth or back, forth or back, forth or back… which one?”

Just when Maggie had had quite enough, the finger light forced her to change the clock dial to midnight. “Back it is!” Ghost Aunt Delilah exclaimed.

Maggie swore she heard “bibbity bobbity boo” as she dissolved into a mist and reappeared on a sandy beach.

Maggie surveyed her surroundings. It was a perfect day with perfect weather, perfect chirping birds, and perfect waves lapping at the beach. She had never smelled air so sweet and pure. “So where am I?” she asked.

She watched a stick from the beach come to life and draw in the sand. “Y.O.U. A.R.E.” the stick slowly wrote.

“Oh, come on. Just tell me,” Maggie said impatiently.

“You’re no fun,” Ghost Aunt Delilah said. “You’re on an island in the year 1023. You're here to heal a Vorombe Titan.”

Maggie searched her mind. “Isn’t that an extinct bird?” she asked.

“Not if you heal it,” came the answer.

Through the palm trees, a huge bird bounded out, hopping on one foot. It looked like the King Kong of ostriches - ten feet tall and weighing at least 1500 pounds. It stopped before mowing her over and plopped to the ground in pain.

“How can I heal this?” Maggie said, exasperated.

A medical bag appeared next to her. “This is impossible!” Maggie shouted.

“Nah,” Cindy typed. “Super easy. Barely an inconvenience.”

Maggie treated the infected wound - the Vorombe Titan accepted it as if it understood modern-day medicine. “I think I’ll name you Volare - Volare Vorombe Titan. Do you like that?”

The bird cocked its enormous head. When Maggie finished, Volare booped her on the head with its beak and hopped back to the palm trees.

“Won’t this mess up the cosmos or something?” Maggie asked.

“Nah, I don’t think so… well, maybe. I dunno,” Ghost Aunt Delilah replied.

“OK, so how do I get back to Vermont?” she asked.

“Look to the ocean,” came the reply.

Maggie saw a gorgeous man and a grandfather clock emerge from the water, coming closer with every wave. When they were close enough, the man said, “Maggie? Is that you?”

Recognition hit her. “Horace? Horace. the nerd from high school?”

“Well, I’m Horace the Hunk now. Cindy made me work out after high school so I could be a decent love interest in this story.”

“O.M.G. is this a Meet/Cute on an island in the year 1023? Cindy, how could you?”

Cindy smiled from her computer and typed:

Not the End.