Two Months in Atlantis

Book 5 in the Willy and Tommy Series

ZACHAR

Wilhelmina Snodrgrass found herself falling through the sky with her best friend, Tomasina Andretti and the hateful, Zach Grimstein. When they landed on the ground, all three of them let out a loud, oooomph! sound as the air was forced out of their lungs. Willy rolled onto her back to catch her breath when she noticed what was happening in the sky above her. The time portal she had just fallen through was sealing shut.

“Noooooo!” Willy screamed. “Open up,” she begged, “I want to go home!”

Tommy saw what her friend was screaming at and demanded, “Why does this stuff keep happening to us?” Then she turned to look at Zach Grimstein and accused, “This is your fault. If you weren’t so worried about getting your precious crystals, we wouldn’t be the new residents of Atlantis.”

Dripping with sarcasm, Willy added, “And in case you’ve forgotten, that’s not Atlantis, Texas. That’s Atlantis, thirteen thousand years in the past!”

Zach’s story was very convoluted. From outward appearances, he seemed to be a nice enough man in his twenties. You’d never guess that he was born on the island of Atlantis over thirteen thousand years in the past. Which just so happens to be where he discovered the opening in time that led him to the future. The rip in the space-time continuum was located in a field right outside of Atlantis’s capital city. And Zach, or Zachar, as he was known on Atlantis, was always one for adventure. One day, Zach discovered that five strangers had mysteriously appeared on their island claiming to have come from different times in the future. No one on Atlantis believed the story the newcomers told, except for him.

Atlantis had been at war with itself for years. The island had been divided into two opposing sides. The Brigat’s were the side Zach was on, as his father was their commander. The Brigat’s had righteously protested the greed and gluttony of the king of Atlantis. But instead of staying and helping to change the society from within, they became outlaws. They left the capital city and began their campaign to change Atlantis through acts of terror. They were the faction that captured and imprisoned the men from the future, thinking they were spies sent from the king.

The other side was known as the Glutanas. Their leader was the king, himself. They lived only to amass riches. The Capitol City, which was once so beautiful, had become almost painful to look at during mid-day. There was so much gold and polished silver everywhere that the glare was nearly blinding. In their pursuit of greater wealth, the Glutanas even cut down the trees so there was more room to build their palaces.

Zach was tired of fighting this war at his father’s side. So when the men came from the future, he made sure to visit them everyday and learn as much as he could about their time. They told him the most glorious stories about their lives. Even though their ways seemed almost primitive compared to Atlantian society, Zach longed for that kind of simplicity.

Atlantis was a very technologically advanced society and from what Zach had learned from the prisoners, the future wasn’t. He wondered how that could be. One would think that the future would be exceedingly more progressive than the past. When Zachar asked his friends from the future about this, he learned that Atlantis had been destroyed in an enormous flood. They didn’t know anything more though, as in there time, Atlantis was only a myth. The destruction had been so devastating that no signs of the original civilization remained for future generations to study.

The prisoners from the future marveled that they had lived so many years apart in modern days, yet had all landed in the same time in the past. As much as they discussed the science of it all, none of them were able to figure out why that was. This discussion got Zach to wondering what year he would arrive in if he journeyed through the tear in time. He began obsessing about living in another time, until one day, he borrowed the clothes from the prisoner who was closest in size to him and ventured out to the deserted field just outside of the Capitol City.

Zach knew that none of the other Brigat’s had ever seen the rip in time. He also knew the only reason he was able to see it was because of the magical purple crystals that his mother had given him when he was a boy. His mother was not from Atlantis. She was from a neighboring Island called Lemuria, where the people were only half human. Their other half was pure, magical, angel.

The purple crystals were a powerful tool that the Lemurians used for a variety of purposes. But being that Zach was only half Lemurian, the rocks didn’t do that much for him He primarily kept them out of sentimentality as they were the only thing he had left from his mother. However, when he went out to the field where the prisoners arrived, Zach discovered that the crystals enabled him to see the entrance to the other world; a world that existed thousands of years in the future.

Once Zach learned about the flood that would destroy his home, he decided to travel through the tear in time for himself. His intention was to merely visit and then return to Atlantis before making his final decision about whether or not he wanted to stay. That was why Zachar only had the clothes on his back and the six purple crystals his mother gave to him the day he left Atlantis. He didn’t think he’d need anything else because he wasn’t going to stay permanently.

But Zach did stay. He walked through tear time and found himself in the year 1940. He was in a very small town called Watusi, in the state of Texas. Zach was enchanted by the quaintness of the people and the simplicity of their lives. But he soon learned that he would need modern currency in order to survive in this town. That didn’t turn out to be a problem though. His mother’s crystals, that didn’t do much for him on Atlantis, worked very well in the future. Every night when Zach went to bed, his shoes would fill with money. And after a week, he decided that he never wanted to see Atlantis again. Watusi, Texas was his home now.