Free The Turnarounders and the Arbuckle Rescue by Lou Heneghan Page B

they recognise me? If what you say is true they ought to know me too!’
    ‘No, Wolf, because they’re not Turnarounders. They’re Echoes. People who have lived before but don’t remember it. Only Turnarounders have the ability to recall their other lives, and even you needed a prompt to get your cogs whirring. Everyone else thinks this is their first time.’
    ‘No. The knowing thing happens to other people too. There’s even a name for it – ‘Deja vu’ – already seen. It’s a trick of the mind.’
    ‘Is it a trick of the mind or is it a memory?’ Ambrose asked with a smile. ‘Things get through for all Echoes but not in the same kind of detail as they now will for you.
    A case in point: How do you explain the fact that we’ve been having this entire conversation in a language that’s been extinct for nine hundred years?’
    ‘Don’t be –’ Even as the denial sprang to his lips Ralf knew that it was true. They’d been speaking another language – one he had no idea he knew. He wanted to laugh. That day at school he’d asked for ‘Taten ha wy’ – Potatoes and egg!’
    Valen’s eyes shone. ‘It’s true!’ She stared at Ambrose in delight. ‘What are we speaking – what language?’
    ‘A much older version of what you would call Welsh. If it’s bothering you we could speak Gaelic? Cornish perhaps?’ he suggested, flitting from language to language as easily as you would change stations on a radio. ‘Or Breton we could talk, if you’d prefer? You understand me.’
    ‘This doesn’t make sense,’ Seth murmured, struggling with the logic.
    Ambrose pushed on relentlessly. ‘Or Latin? Wouldst thou find this tongue more comfortable?’
    Ralf was reeling.
    ‘You’ve known things you couldn’t possibly know, unless everything I’ve told you were true. You are Turnarounders. Over the past year your subconscious minds have been waking up to that fact, even though you’ve tried to fight it. Those were real Saxons you saw earlier. A real dinosaur. Only you five could see them because only you are Turnarounders. And only you would have been able to save Georgia Hayward, Wolf. Only a Turnarounder would have known what was going to happen.’ Ambrose leaned forward. ‘And what of the Prince, Wolf?’ he asked. ‘What of Scathferox!’
    Ralf gasped. The name hit him like a punch in the chest. His guts twisted, his breathing quickened and a wave of nausea left him feeling ragged and weak. He couldn’t deny that he knew the name, or that the feelings attached to it were bad, bad, bad. But then another, more recent memory buffeted him.
    ‘It was you! In the kitchen, with Gloria that time! She said the name Scathferox!’ he cried. ‘It must have been you! You were talking to her, but I – I couldn’t see you.’
    ‘I was still invisible to you then, like I am to everyone else. Your abilities are only fully mature when you come of age.’
    ‘Come of age?’ Valen cried. ‘I’m twelve years old!’ she snapped. ‘In what universe does that make me ‘of age’?’
    ‘The ancient Britons would have considered you an adult from the day of your twelfth birthday.’
    ‘Ha!’ said Seth. ‘What about Alfie, then? He’s just a little kid. He won’t be twelve for years!’
    ‘I am in the room you know,’ said Alfie. ‘And I’ll be twelve in eighteen months, as it goes.’
    Ambrose’s eyes twinkled. ‘Alfie is different, yes. The Brigantes tribe considered people adults from the age of ten.’
    Alfie smirked at Seth. ‘You alright with that, mate?’
    ‘Forget all that!’ said Leon. He took a couple of shaky steps forward and grasped Ralf by the arm. ‘You remember Scathferox, now! Do you remember our promise?’
    Ralf froze. There was something, voices echoing in his head, speaking as if over a long distance ‘I vow by the blood of my Father, my Mother, my sisters and brothers and all their generations…’
    Yes. He did remember that. The wall inside his head began to crumble.