This Game of War by Ed Butts

Author:Ed Butts
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Young Adult, Novel, World War I, Time travel
ISBN: 9781553806844
Publisher: Ronsdale Press
Published: 2023-01-30T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Then the ceiling of cloud broke and the ocean surface was awash in moonlight. Teddy couldn’t see any ships. He shook his head to cast off the sleepiness and made his leaden arms turn him around in the water so he could look in every direction. Not a ship to be seen anywhere! The convoy had left him behind. There would be no lifeboat.

Teddy was alone in a vast emptiness of sea and sky with nothing but the moon, the stars and a few passing rags of cloud for company. But not entirely alone. Something bumped the back of his head.

Teddy turned himself around again, hoping it was a piece of debris from a stricken ship he could grab hold of; maybe it would be big enough for him to drag himself onto and get out of the water. But he recoiled at what he saw just inches from his face. A body!

With a surge of strength Teddy hadn’t thought he still had in him, he pushed the dead man away. The corpse was floating face down with only the back visible above the water. In the pale light, Teddy could see that it wasn’t wearing a navy uniform. The drowned man had been a merchant sailor, a victim of a U-boat attack on one of the convoy’s freighters.

“Never had a chance,” Teddy thought. “Just doing a job, and then boom! You’re dead.”

Then the words came to him, the lines he hadn’t been able to remember. It seemed such a long time ago. He said them, spitting out the seawater that sloshed into his mouth. “We . . . are the . . . Dead. Short . . . days ago, we lived . . . felt dawn . . . saw . . . sunset glow . . . loved . . . and were . . . loved, and . . . now . . . we lie . . . in Flanders fields.”

No sooner had Teddy uttered the last three words than he felt himself caught in a whirlpool. It spun him around and around. Then, in spite of his Mae West, it pulled him down into watery darkness. As Teddy whirled about in the vortex, he saw his parents reaching out to him. He wanted to grasp their hands, but his arms were stretched above his head, uselessly reaching for the surface, and he couldn’t move them.

Then his mom and dad were gone, and Paul was there. He grinned and said, “Round and round Teddy goes. Where he comes down, nobody knows. Just joking, Ted.”

Paul disappeared and Valerie appeared. “No cheating allowed,” she said. “Grow up, Teddy.”

Valerie faded away and was replaced by Ms. Potts. “Not all the dead are in Flanders fields, Teddy Nugent,” she said. “The sea is a graveyard, too.”

Then she was gone, and Teddy was shrouded in an inky black abyss of loneliness.

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