Heretic Heroes

 

The new book arrivals were already at the store, and I was trying to fill one of the racks before customers started coming. My coworker Trish called in sick, so I was left to handle things alone. It was still pretty early, but a customer was already at the door.

More started pouring in soon after, so I had to leave the rest of the new arrivals in their boxes and help the customers. At the end of the day, I locked the door and resumed the stacking. It was getting late, but I didn’t want to leave things for the following day.

Once finished, I turned around to leave when I noticed a book on Joan of Arc glowing. Curious, I touched the cover, only to feel myself being pulled into it. Soon, I woke up face-down in a forest. A woman was standing before me. I quickly crawled back and stood up, looking around. We were alone.

“Wh— Where am I? Who are you?”

“My name’s Ariana; I’m your ancestor. You’re in Medieval France because I need your help to save whom you know as ‘Joan of Arc’.”

“You’re my ancestor? And how exactly am I supposed to help you?”

“You’re a witch, just like I am.”

“What? Is this some kind of joke?”

“You just time-travelled through a book; do you really think I’m joking?”

I sighed and looked at the ground, not knowing what to think, but Ariana seemed serious. I decided to trust her and asked what the date was. She said it was May 30th, 1431, which was Joan’s execution date. She led me through the forest, to a solitary house within it. Once inside, Ariana locked the door and waved her hand at the wall; history unfolded upon it like a cinema screen—it was Joan’s life.

A peasant girl who became a warrior and fought for her king and country while believing that she was guided by divine power, but was ultimately burned alive as a ‘heretic’ despite her heroic deeds. The end was horrifying. I asked Ariana how I could help her when I couldn’t even use my powers, but she said the only reason I was there was because of my powers.

“Your powers are there; they’re just dormant. You arrived here because of your powers. I merely opened the portal; your powers are what reacted to it.”

“Do you think I can control them in time to save Joan?”

“Yes, I believe it.”

I asked Ariana how I could help; she drew a large circle around me and added sigils and symbols around it before stepping into it herself and holding my hands in hers. She began to chant, and I suddenly felt a surge of energy coursing through my veins—through the very fabric of my being. After finishing the chanting, Ariana let go of my hand and stepped back.

“How do you feel?” she asked.

“Like a whole new person,” I replied.

Ariana asked me to wave my hand at the wall like she did before. I complied and, before I knew it, my life story began to play like a movie. She helped me focus my powers during the couple of hours that followed, and afterwards, we devised a plan to rescue Joan. Ariana said she couldn’t do it alone because there needed to be a diversion.

Soon, we were in Rouen, at the execution site. They were preparing to set Joan ablaze when Ariana teleported into the crowd and enveloped them with a blinding light. I teleported right after while using a spell to protect my eyes, as well as Joan’s. I undid her bonds with my magic, and Ariana teleported the three of us out of there and back to her house in the forest.

Knowing that they’d be hunted down and executed sooner or later, Ariana and Joan decided to time-travel with me to my time. It appeared that time-travel itself was more complicated than I had assumed, with Ariana needing someone from her bloodline to be an anchor—and I was the only one who got connected to her spell perfectly.

A few minutes later, Ariana and I cast the spell, and the three of us appeared in my bookstore; we were there at the exact time I was sucked in through the book. I was curious to see whether the information in the book had changed, and it had: it said that Joan of Arc was rescued by two other heretics before she could be burned alive. The three of us laughed about it before arranging the remaining racks and heading to my house. Both Joan and Ariana moved in with me.