Prince of Time by Sarah Woodbury Page A

He has two broken ribs and the wound where the object entered, but we’ve bandaged it and are giving him IV antibiotics. We’ll keep him overnight, but by tomorrow or the next day he should be well enough to go home.”
    “Thank you,” I said again. I turned to Bronwen. “You should go home. I can come find you tomorrow, after you’ve slept.”
    “That’s okay. I’ll come with you,” she said. “As it’s tomorrow already, I might as well see this through. I would like to see for myself that your friend is okay.”
    She walked forward to follow the nurse and I gaped at her retreating back. My statement hadn’t been a question or a suggestion at all—if I’d spoken that way in Wales, everyone would have known that it was an order. I shook my head. I’d clearly lived in the Middle Ages too long. I expected people—and especially women—to do exactly what I said, when I said it, and not ask questions. How Anna and my mother must confuse the men around them.
    Bronwen signaled to me from the elevator. “ Come on! ” She mouthed.
    I obeyed her. How cool is that?
     
     

Chapter Five
    Ieuan
     
     
    I awoke on my back in a bed under white coverings with a soft pillow beneath my head, in an unfamiliar room. And what a room! I stared at the ceiling. It was composed of white, gridded squares, with tiny holes speckled all through them. They occupied my attention for a time, and then I started hearing sounds: one was rhythmic and high pitched, but unlike any bird call I’d ever heard; another went ‘wump, WUMP; wump, WUMP, also rhythmically. The sounds were coming from some— I don’t even know what to call those things —to my right. Little lights went on and off in the boxes and a wavy line skittered up and down on the face of the— thing .
    A third sound penetrated. Voices talked softly beside me. English voices. I turned my head, and there was Prince Dafydd, smiling at me, with a beautiful girl beside him.
    Trust him to find a beautiful girl!Some men have all the luck.
    She and the Prince were seated in front of an enormous window, so clear it was almost as if it wasn’t there. The window coverings had been pulled back and bright lights shone from the tops of long posts. Further along, chains of lights moved in rhythm, some white and some red. There were even lights high in the sky. They weren’t stars, or at least looked like no star I’d ever seen or imagined.
    The girl had dark brown hair, blue eyes, a short stubby nose, and a wide, full mouth that was made for laughter. Or kissing . She was laughing now at something Dafydd had said. I found myself staring at her and couldn’t stop.
    Dafydd noticed. “May I introduce you to Bronwen ferch Llywelyn, Ieuan,” Prince Dafydd said. “She helped us find someone to treat your wound.”
    “I’m pleased to meet you, Ieuan ap Cynan,” she said with a smile. Her Welsh was accented strangely, but had a lilt I liked.
    “It is my honor, my lady,” I said.
    Bronwen laughed. “I’m no lady! Don’t even think it. I’m glad you’re awake.”
    Dafydd had been staring at her during our exchange, and now found his voice. “You speak Welsh! How is it that you speak Welsh!”
     “As you pointed out earlier, my last name is Llywelyn. I’m Welsh, though I haven’t lived in Wales for many years.”
    “We’re...not in Wales, my lord?” I said.
    “What do you remember?” Dafydd said.
    “I remember being chased by English soldiers, and being hit by an arrow, and falling from my horse. You picked me up...and then you jumped! You jumped off the cliff!” I tried to sit up in my excitement, and pain shot through my back. I moaned, and Dafydd and Bronwen scrambled to their feet to settle me down again.
    I looked up at Dafydd. “I saw the cliff rushing by, and then a blackness came over me. I remember nothing after that. How did I get here?”
    “English soldiers?” Bronwen said. “He thinks English soldiers shot at him?”
    “They did,” David said.