Read History Keepers 1: The Storm Begins for Free Online Page B

lay a mysterious landscape of mountains and castles over which ominous storm clouds were gathering. Topaz reminded Jake of this figure: mysterious, beautiful, brave.
    Brave ? Jake wondered; he had never given a thought to whether someone looked brave before. As he watched Topaz chatting to Charlie, he lost himself in her blue eyes. They seemed to sparkle and shimmer with a thousand emotions at once: excitement, happiness, impatience and wonder. At one point, her concentration drifted and her eyes seemed to darken from indigo to deep ultramarine, filled with the deepest sorrow. A second later, she was roaring with laughter at Charlie’s impersonation of a one-eyed parrot-whisperer he’d once met in Tangier.
    During the conversation, expectant eyes would occasionally look up at the glistening Constantor that hung over the table. The golden rings were moving ever closer to their point of alignment.
    At the end of the meal, Jupitus stood up and headed over to the sideboard. Everyone went quiet as he opened the veneered box that Jake had seen him remove with such care from his safe in London. He extracted first the gleaming silver device of gauges and dials; then the plain bottle of grey liquid; and finally, carefully, the fine crystal vial of golden fluid.
    ‘What’s going on now?’ Jake whispered to Rose, wondering why everyone had fallen quiet.
    ‘The little machine there is called the Horizon Cup’, his aunt replied.’
    Jake watched as Jupitus carefully moved the device’s gauges and dials to precise settings.
    ‘He’s entering the exact date we are travelling to,’ Charlie explained. ‘In a moment he will deposit a drop of each liquid into the cup. The cup then fuses the liquids at a certain ratio – an incredibly specific ratio. Then we drink it and it’s hello, history.’
    ‘It fuses the liquids?’ Jake was struggling to understand.
    ‘On a molecular level, naturally,’ Charlie went on, pushing his spectacles up his nose. ‘A certain percentage of the gold liquid will take you to 1750; quite a bit more, and you could be having breakfast in ancient Rome. That is, of course, providing you have the valour in the first place – that’s the ability – the strength – to travel to history. Don’t think just anyone can drink it and go tearing off into the past. Just a very select few of us, those of us with shapes in our eyes, diamonds or rectangles. An even smaller number can voyage any significant distance, to BC and beyond.’
    ‘And what are those liquids?’ Jake asked as Jupitus unscrewed both bottles and deposited a single drop of each into a funnel at the top of the device.
    ‘The grey one is just some common tincture, but the golden one—’
    Rose finished Charlie’s sentence, speaking with profound reverence: ‘– is atomium.’
    ‘Atomium?’ asked Jake, fascinated.
    ‘One of the rarest substances in history,’ said Charlie. ‘We couldn’t operate without it. But be warned: it tastes like something you put in a car.’
    Jupitus took a step back from the Horizon Cup. Everyone took a step back. Oceane Noire went so far as to shield her head with her porcelain-pale hands. Jake was utterly baffled as Rose guided him away.
    ‘The Cup gets very hot!’ she explained.
    Then Jake noticed that it was changing – glowing red like molten metal; even from the other side of the cabin he could feel the intense heat coming from the tiny egg-sized machine. It rattled and whistled slightly as it returned to its normal state.
    Jupitus waited a good three minutes before he returned to the device, using a napkin to pick it up. He unscrewed the top half (inside, the metal dazzled the eyes like sunlight) and deposited its contents, a dash of shimmering solution like a liquidized diamond, into a jug of water. This he stirred with a long spoon, then filled seven small crystal glasses. Norland put them on a tray and started handing them round.
    ‘To the voyage!’ Jupitus toasted, lifting his glass.
    ‘To