The Christmas Scene- Chapter 3 (A Beginners Guidebook: Zack)

After getting captured, Pepper was freaking out. “What witchcraft? All I was doing was playing on my phone! It’s the most popular thing in this universe,” she was screaming out. “Would you shut up already,” I yelled at her. “We are in XXXX BCE! We’re not even in the CE! They don’t know what a phone is!” “Fine, but how do we escape?” “I’ve got an idea. We’ll prison break. These dresses have more layers than you can ever imagine.” 

We reached the prison yard. It was sort of open, with no roof and four walls. I smiled. My plan was coming along nicely. They shoved us inside a cell. I made sure Pepper’s veil was caught in the lock when they locked it. That way the door wouldn’t lock properly. Once they left, we waited around till sunset. Our hanging was at dawn the next day. So we had to act fast. Now, it was time to put the plan into action. “Has Tamara taught you anything about sewing,” I asked. “Yeah, I guess,” She said. “Great. Now it’s time to show what you’ve learned. Start by turning your tunic and veil into a shirt and skirt. Leave as much scrap material as possible.” In an hour, she was done. “Great. Now we use the scrap material to make a rope, and paint ourselves black,” I said, holding up a can of black paint. “Great.” 

We began braiding the scrap material, belts, random twigs and leaves (Hey, it was XXXX BCE, Noble didn’t exist), and all sorts of stuff we could find, and there it was, our rope. We threw it over the roof and waited for the reaction. As soon as the guards began running I opened the door, and we ran out. By now the sun was rising. It would be easy to follow our tracks from the previous day. 

As soon as we got out, we realized how much trouble we were in. All our tracks had been washed away. How were we going to find the others now? We got breakfast from a lady who was making cheese and decided what to do next. “Let’s go east,” Pepper suggested, taking a bite out of her cheese. “Yeah, I agree, because when we went to the prison yard, we went west,” I said. We began hunting for our cart. We found the yard where we stopped. Our cart was gone, but Mary and Joseph’s was still there! Then we realized: it was broken and empty. “Great. Now how do we find them,” Pepper asked. “Simple. Wait till nightfall, then follow The Star Mary and Joseph did, which took them to the barn. We’ll get our heading by morning and can continue in that direction.” “You know, you really are a genius,” Pepper said. “I know.”

 As we were repairing the cart, Max and the others were trying to stay behind Mary and Joseph, who were now on foot

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. “I wonder how Pepper and Zack are holding up,” Tamara said. She was awfully quiet. Rachel was sewing up a tunic, out of veils. “I wonder if we could go back and get them out somehow.” “Rachel. Trust your sister and Zack. Between the two of them, they will probably get a solution. If we lose track of these two again, we might change history, and mess up the future. What about that,” Mrs. Lavigne (Max’s mom) said. The mood there was obviously grim. If only they knew we were alive.

But trouble was brewing. They took an inn for the night. The next morning, Mr. Smith repeated what he did in the future, at that restaurant (Read: Uncle Percy at the Restaurant). He went up to the innkeeper, and said, “I am not paying for that room. There was a rat in it. And the mattress was missing.” Tamara and Rachel stepped away. “We don’t know him,” Rachel whispered to a few other travelers. The sidled away from her. “Yo, King Kong, cut it out,” Mrs. Smith yelled from the other end of the room. “We don’t know her either,” Tamara said, sidling out the door… right into the waiting guards’ hands! “Hey, you’re from that family who refused to pay tax.” One of the guards recognized her. He snapped a pair of handcuffs on her hands. “You are under arrest,” he said. “Tamara,” Rachel called out, then saw what was happening. She ran to get the others, but by then it was too late. Tamara had been taken away. Rachel broke down crying. Tyson tried to run behind Tamara, but Mrs. Smith was having none of that. “We have to keep moving. If you trust Tamara, then you’ll trust that she can escape. Let’s go”

After a few hours of walking, Tamara saw us. We saw her too. She was super easy to identify, with all the copy-pasting done on her tunic. All of a sudden, she began squirming. After a vigorous struggle with the guards, she produced her needle and poked both the guards with it. Then she ran away and we followed her. She hid inside a cart and the guards passed. At least now we had someone stubborn with us. It was night by now. Pepper and Tamara silently got into the cart. I took the reins, and we sped off, in search of The Star.

The mood was quite grim. Tamara hadn’t even had breakfast. Pepper gave her a block of cheese and some milk. Then the two of them went to sleep. I looked at these two, the sisters who fought every second of the day. Right now, you could see how strong their bond was and how much they needed each other to survive. 

By morning, we used some more ‘witchcraft’ (the compass on Tamara’s phone) and had our heading. We had breakfast and headed on.