He lifted the lid half an inch, then he reached his fingers inside, touching something icy cold, a strange roundish object that popped open like a locket, his thumb slipping inside the locket and over a tiny wheel that turned, and then the object began to tick and whirr, and the locket snapped shut again as his fingers closed around it, round and solid, and what in the world?

The hum grew, became a painful throb, and then Isaac, clutching the cold orb tight in his fist, was thrust into a void.

CHAPTER 9

Isaac in the Ring of Brodgar

Circa 2800 BC

Isaac still clutches the orb, pulling it tight to his chest, as he tumbles and rolls. He sees pictures passing as if he’s watching (no, as if he’s inside) the frames of a film, images of his trip across the North Sea and then across Europe, backward in time.

Then Prague.

The arrival of the Nazis in his country.

His schoolmates, teasing him for reading so much.

The leaning houses with their red geraniums on the streets of Josefov.

His parents, reading and talking softly by the fire.

His grandfather (gone this last year), laughing, sharing a joke with him and the baker.

His grandfather next to him in the Old-New Synagogue.

His grandfather’s cottage high in the cool mountains.

The old bay horse as Isaac fed it apples across the fence, a stack of books, a chessboard with his grandfather’s king in check, a green-stained truck carved from wood with wheels that rolled, a blue ball, stars in the night sky.

Isaac tumbles through darkness and light, the images muddled and confused.

When he finally lands—as if he’s been propelled through a long cannon—he’s stumbling across a spongy-wet landscape in deepest night, the rank smell of the sea and swampy wetlands rising around him. He’s suffering from some kind of delusion or trapped in a vivid nightmare.

The object he still clutches tight in his fist vibrates and hums as it digs into his palm, an orb but with sharp protrusions, and he doesn’t know why but he won’t open his hand and look at it.

Now in the distance are spots of fire—flames and sudden gashes of fire shooting skyward—the cries of men and women and the screams of children. It’s a battle, with figures leaping and falling, shadows against the flames of burning huts. It reminds him of a cave painting, and he believes he’s watching the ruin of a place that died in a war that took place thousands of years before he was born.

Then the same terrifying scream Isaac had heard in the streets of Prague and at the door of the hut. It’s the scream of a monster that drops from the night sky on great wings, with eyes like burning coals.