Nephilim Quest Book 1: Shadowhunter

18. Diana 1/2

I felt myself swaying slightly with shock. That saying - you could have knocked me down with a feather - that's how it was. He saw me, smiled and bowed his head slightly in recognition. I could only stare at him. He did not come to talk to us, though –people hurried to meet him, and he walked off, talking with them. Before he vanished through a door leading away from the hall, he glanced over his shoulder. His eyes locked on mine for a second and then he was gone.

I realized I had been staring at him with my mouth open like an idiot.

"That is one of the gates." Grandma pointed to the screen. "This place was built around it to protect it. The gate used to be invisible, and moved around the area before it was stabilized – in the past it could be found only by walking through it. If you read the history of this area, you'll find several references to missing people. The most likely explanation is that they happened to walk through this gate - a local road passed close to it, and people stopped just about here, by the roadside, to rest."

"Missing... you mean that once they got in there, they did not come back?" I asked and almost unconsciously moved backwards away from the gate.

This time Professor Rowan answered.

"Not all found their way back. And the fact that there are several gates around the world, explains all the stories of people who thought a day had passed, when in fact it had been decades, even hundreds of years. Some never did find their way back, and you could say they died eventually. But they probably did not even notice it, as they were on the Other Side already. They just moved on and probably wondered why everything suddenly seemed more magnificent and their bodies felt lighter. Obviously at some stage they realized the truth - either on their own or when someone told them that they had died. Their physical body sank back to our physical world while their lighter spirit body continued moving on. This may provide an explanation for the fact that sometimes dead bodies cannot be identified. How could they be? They may have been born hundreds of years earlier."

"So how is it possible for anyone to go through the gate from here and manage to return to their own time?"

"That is what we learn here," Lilith said. "Well - some people learn it, some don't. But we never leave anyone wandering about – experienced travelers take care any of new ones, and bring them back safely. We have good trackers who usually quickly find those who are lost in the buffer zone. Daniel, whom I believe you have already met, is one of them."

She nodded in the direction that he had disappeared. Daniel. So that was his name.

"What happens to them then? The ones who don't learn whatever it is they are supposed to do there?" I asked.

"They remain here in their normal physical life and help the best they can – through research, for example. We gather vast quantities of data about major events as well as daily life in history. Our researchers are storehouses of knowledge," Lilith continued with pride.

She seemed to be ready to give me a straight answer to all the questions that were bubbling up in me directly. My intense curiosity meant that I wasn't too shy to carry on asking, even though my next question was undoubtedly one of the oddest I had ever asked anyone.

"Why? You... time travel?"

Lilith nodded matter-of-factly.

"We do. The timeless buffer zone is connected to every time that ever existed. That means we can move through time there - with certain limitations. It is not easy, and there is a high risk of getting lost, if you don't know exactly how to do it. Another problem is that if you are not careful, you can mess up the past, which may cause havoc in the future. We avoid it at all costs, but the Immortals, the shadows and their... Masters...don't, and it can take a lot of work to put right whatever they have changed. They need to be stopped. If we hear of a major disturbance that they have caused, we travel to the time before it, to try to prevent it from happening in the first place. That may result in physical aggression, when we wait for them at their point of exit from the buffer zone."

"How do you know it has happened, then? I mean if they have changed the past, how do you know it has even happened? And how do you know the changes they have caused are bad?"

The whole concept of changing the past - and altering the future as a consequence - was mind-boggling, but I was trying to keep up. I had glanced round for a clock without finding one, but a surreptitious look at my hand showed that all was as it should be.

"Good questions... usually they kill people, or rob them of their belongings, and we consider that these are crimes that should be stopped. So in the name of humanity we try to do this whenever we can. As for finding out where they have done their deeds, we follow the trails they leave behind. They leave veritable paths in the buffer zone, because they use the same routes year after year. We have our scouts near these paths, and we see them moving there, we follow them, and intervene where we can," Lilith explained. "Also our history researchers know their specific eras so well that they notice right away if a text in a history book suddenly changes. That is how we know something has happened there, and we send a team to investigate. These changes in the past don't erase everyone's memory. What I'm going to say next will probably be no surprise to you. I am sure that you've experienced this - you hear about an event in the news, and then, suddenly, you hear another piece of news that completely negates what you know, for a certainty, that you heard before."

"What exactly... any examples?" I wasn't quite sure that I understood.

"Well, let's say that you knew London had lost the vote for the Olympic games. And suddenly you hear in the news that construction work has started on the Olympic stadium in London. You know there is a glitch. But if you talk to other people, most of them have no recollection of things ever being different. The kind of people we want to work with us are those who can remember and note such things happening. They usually have the skills to move in the buffer zone as well, we have found."

"And so you - gather troops, as the book says."

"So we do gather troops, yes," Lilith nodded, "to stop the crimes done by the Immortals, their shadows and their...Masters."

I made a mental note of her hesitance about naming the Masters of the Immortals.