Free A Trail Through Time (The Chronicles of St Mary's) by Jodi Taylor

stomach in the warm mud. The air smelled of hot, wet earth and, apart from the frogs, everything was quiet. The landscape was empty of people. Not even the Time Police. I suppose it was too much to hope they’d been eaten. Even the donkey seemed to have pushed off.
    Tomorrow would be a working day, however, and someone would open the equivalent of a sluice and the water would come roaring up – or down – the channel and he’d be whirled away. If I’d managed to hang on to him through the night.
    And if the crocodiles didn’t come.
    I was face down, head and shoulders overhanging the edge, holding on to his wrists with both hands. He kept his head and stopped kicking and flailing around, because both he and I were muddy, and it would be so easy for his own weight to pull him through my grip. To fall into that quicksand of mud and slimy water far below.
    I closed my mind to panic and lifted my head again, trying to see if there was anyone around to help. Anyone would do. Even the two sodding Time Police, whose fault all this was. Where are the bloody police when you actually need them? A part of my mind wondered if they’d been recalled to assist with the Medjay.
    He lifted his head and said calmly, ‘I’m going to try to find some sort of foothold.’
    ‘Gently does it.’
    I could feel him scrabbling around but all that happened was that part of the side fell away and we were worse off than before, because now I could feel myself slipping. His weight, apart from pulling my arms from their sockets, was slowly dragging me over the edge with him, and he knew it.
    He lifted his head.
    ‘Let me go.’
    ‘No.’
    I felt myself slip another inch and tried to will all my weight backwards. That didn’t work at all.
    ‘Lucy, let me go.’
    He’d never called me that before. Leon’s private name for me. My thoughts took this particularly inappropriate moment to wonder when I’d stopped thinking of him as the other Leon . When I’d finally accepted him as my Leon. Because that’s such a useful thing to think about when you’re hanging over the edge of a fatally deep ditch, looking at a prolonged and unpleasant death.
    I said, ‘Shut up, Leon.’
    ‘Lucy …’
    I clenched my teeth against the pain and said, ‘Not going to happen so just shut up.’
    Before he could say anything else, I lifted my head and shouted for help. I don’t know why I did it – I knew everyone was at the festival, but I wasn’t going to let him die and if he was going to die then I wasn’t interested in the future at all. Blood was pumping into my hanging head so I probably wasn’t thinking very clearly.
    I slipped another inch. The edge of the ditch was crumbling. And another inch. I tried wedging my knees into the mud. That didn’t work, either.
    The fiery pain in my arms and shoulders was unbearable. I knew, physically, I couldn’t hold on much longer.
    And then the mud moved. At first, I thought I had imagined it, but no. The mud was moving. Two, no, three crocodiles were working their way up the ditch. The one in front was huge, obviously the alpha male. They didn’t appear to be in any hurry, but they covered the ground deceptively quickly. Half wading, half swimming, they were heading directly for us. They didn’t have to do anything. They just had to wait.
    I shouted again. And again.
    Someone answered.
    I didn’t dare try to twist around to see who it was. I didn’t dare move at all. Because this was it … I was sliding over the edge… and we would both slither down to the crocodiles awaiting us at the bottom …
    I both felt and heard running footsteps. I shouted again. I was desperate now, because I was going. … I could feel myself going … I was slipping through the mud. Leon was shouting at me to let go. I was just shouting. Because whoever was coming was going to be just half a second too late to save us …
    An arm seized Leon. On the other side of me, another arm reached down for him. The overwhelming weight