Mee sighed heavily.
“Okay. Okay. I trust you, Jones. If this is the only way…?”
“It is.”
“Then do what you have to do.”
Seb looked up sharply. “But…you haven’t heard the rest. I need to tell you the rest. Especially about the fire because I think that was—”
“I know. I don’t need to hear every gory detail again. I know the whole story.”
“All of it?”
“All of it.”
“But I—”
“Dad. Please.” She paused a moment. She was deliberately calling him Dad as much as possible. She could see he loved hearing her say it, but for her, after the day she had just reset, it carried even more of an emotional heft than he or Mum could possibly imagine. She felt suddenly dizzy. She hung onto the door handle, trying to look as if she were thinking. After a few seconds, she recovered enough to find her voice.
“Dad? Is there…” She hesitated, trying to think of the right way to ask. “Is there….someone at the cottage right now?”
Seb hesitated for a moment.
“Yes,” he said. Mee shot him a curious look.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll be back before dark.”
Joni could see that her mother was still undecided about letting her go. She needed to appear more confident about what she was doing. Before the door closed fully, she stopped it with one hand and popped her head back into the room.
“And no hankypanky until after the wedding.”
The door shut. Mee and Seb looked at each other.
“Lame joke,” said Mee. “Normally she’s funnier.”
Chapter 37
Joni’s first meeting with Fypp went on far too long, was incredibly frustrating and eventually ended with an offer from Fypp to teach her how to do cartwheels without touching the floor. Joni resisted the urge to burst into tears, instead opting to reset. Considering the way her dad had described Fypp’s maddeningly inconsistent ways of communicating, Joni braced herself for a series of resets, assuming it might take a number of tries to get the alien to take her seriously. It came as quite a surprise when she succeeded on the second attempt.
She came back to the reset point she’d created about hundred yards away from the crofter’s cottage.
Armed with more information after her first visit, she picked up her pace.
As Joni got closer to the cottage, she felt a strange sensation - neither purely physical or mental, but something bizarrely in-between. It was as if a stiff breeze blew up against her - suddenly, with no warning. And the breeze seemed to push against her mind, rather than her body. The feeling continued as she reached the cottage. She had felt the same thing before resetting, and, in another version of the multiverse, she had felt it later on in the day she was currently reliving. Her unique ability often led to a slightly confusing relationship with time.
When Joni pushed open the door and saw Batman hanging upside down from the rafters, she hesitated for a moment, one foot poised above the lintel. Then she swallowed hard and walked in.
The inverted superhero was snoring loudly. A line of drool descended from the corner of his mouth and made a track across his square, unshaven chin before making a small pool on the floorboards.
Joni folded her arms and tried to mentally prepare herself for the upcoming encounter. It was impossible. How did anyone prepare themselves to meet a billions of years old being who was currently posing as Batman?
Although I already will have met her twice.
Resetting made a real mess of tenses in the English language.
“Fypp,” she said. As there was no response other than a slight deepening of the snores, she stepped forward and pulled the hanging cape.
“Fypp!”
“Wassup?” The figure’s eyes opened and fixed on Joni, before comically widening in an over-acted expression of surprise.
The dark, caped figure dropped to the floor and landed on its head.
“Ow.”
As the body hit the floor, it turned into a viscous liquid, black, oil-like, which formed a pool about three feet across. Joni skipped backward to avoid touching it. It formed a perfect circle. Joni realized it was highly reflective, showing the wooden beams of the ceiling above. She leaned over cautiously and looked at her reflection.
Instead of her own face, she saw that of a child—Thai, perhaps, or Vietnamese—with a shaved head.
“Boo!” said the apparition.
Joni couldn’t stop herself shrieking a little. She’d known what to expect, but that didn’t stop her being freaked out.
Joni, Seb, and Mee had already spent a few hours with Fypp, but as that was later, in a universe which had either branched away separately or collapsed into non-existence ever since Joni reset. She’d also seen all of this twenty minutes previously. Joni had slightly more of an advantage than the T’hn’uuth staring up at her from the oily puddle could possibly know.
The pool began to move then, shifting and writhing like a living shadow. After a few seconds, it began to solidify and grow upward from the old, split floorboards, taking on the form Seb had described.
A few seconds later, the small, Zen nun-like child in saffron robes stood in front of Joni, looking up at her with an expression of frank puzzlement.
“Yes,” she said, “I’m Fypp. You seem to have the advantage of me, which is, in all practical terms, impossible.”
Again, Joni felt the strange sensation of something pushing against her. She knew it was coming from Fypp, as she had tried it at their other meetings. It reminded her of the time she was sick as a child. Manna had been used to try to help her, but her body had rejected it. This was a very similar sensation. Her body was throwing Manna back at its source. Whatever was trying to get through to her was being met with a firm, impregnable resistance.
“Well…” Fypp, for a moment, seemed to struggle to express what she was feeling. If Joni had known it was the first time in over eleven million years that anything like this had happened, she might have been more convinced by Fypp’s air of puzzlement. She was about to speak when the diminutive child stamped her foot.
“Shh! Let me just…” Again, the sensation of being pushed, even more insistent this time. Again, her body’s automatic resistance.
“Astonishing,” murmured Fypp. “What are you?”
Joni decided the occasion called for short, factual answers and absolute honesty. She needed this alien to focus. She needed her help. So she simply repeated the words Fypp had told her to say once she had reset and was meeting her again for the first time.
“I’m Joni, Seb’s daughter. I was conceived when his body was still partly human. This may account, in part, for the fact that I am protected from all Manna - whether the intent behind it is good or bad. We’ve had this conversation already. I am the only being you’ve ever met who could reset the multiverse. You once encountered a species which could detect points at which the multiverse was about to branch off significantly. They used their knowledge to avoid danger and to help them in trade and political negotiations, but that planet is long since gone. When you last visited, you assumed their ability must have finally failed them, as their world had, apparently, been eaten by some sort of trans-dimensional space-snake. At least, that’s how you described it to me.”
“When did I describe it to you?” Fypp was utterly unused to being surprised. The grin that had appeared on her face suggested she was rather enjoying it.
“When I first met you.”
“Which was when, precisely?”
“Now. And twenty minutes ago. Which was also now.”
Fypp took a moment to process this.
“Oh,” she said. “Oh. This is going to be fun, isn’t it?”
“Fun? Not really,” said Joni, “no.”
Chapter 38
Joni, Seb, and Mee walked from the Keep to the cottage. Joni had timed her return to the Keep to match, as closely as she could remember, the moment when the three of them had visi
ted Fypp first time around. The enormity of what was about to unfold weighed heavily on Joni’s mind, but she tried to keep her features neutral and her voice level as they made the trip through the snow.
The last time Joni had made this journey with them, it had ended with her dad dead, her mum crippled and she herself about to die at the hands of some kind of space witch. And, if Joni and Fypp’s plans proved not to be up to the task, it would all happen again. Joni’s last reset had been made just after leaving Fypp and coming back to the Keep. In theory, assuming she didn’t get fried by Kaani, she could come back and try again, and again, and again, but each window of opportunity would get smaller, and the time she would have to make changes would get tighter and tighter. And, of course, if Kaani killed her first, there would be no more opportunities.
In her gut, Joni knew that this was their best, possibly only, chance. She felt sick.
As they rounded the final bend and the crofter’s cottage came into view, Seb stopped walking. He turned to Mee and Joni, shrugging off the backpack and placing it on the ground.
“I’ll leave this with you. Just give me a minute.”
Mee raised an eyebrow. “That alien twonk took you away from me once before. I won’t let her do it again. We should go together.”
Joni let the scene play out exactly as it had before. She listened to her dad, careful not to allow her face to betray any of the fear flooding her body. She was very glad that Manna couldn’t uncover any of her secrets.
“She won’t do it again,” said Seb. “She’s billions of years old, Mee, she had no idea such a short period of time away—as far as she understands time, at least—could cause us such pain. But I need to speak to her alone.”
Mee looked unconvinced. An unconvinced Mee was a dangerous thing. Seb took her hands in his.
“Trust me. Please.”
Finally, Mee nodded. “If you’re not back in five minutes, we’re coming in. And I’m going to give her a piece of my mind. Arsing alien shitburger.”
Joni fought the urge to tell her mother how much she loved her.
We’re going to get through this, we’re going to get through this.
Seb disappeared into the cottage.
Four and a half minutes’ later, Mee grabbed Joni’s hand and they walked down the slight slope, across the yard, and into the cottage.
“Right, you, sling your hook. You lot love the final frontier, right? Well, boldly bugger off back to it.”
Mee wasted no time, fixing Fypp with her scariest look. Brave men had felt their testicles spontaneously shrink under the weight of that glare, but Fypp seemed not even to notice it.
“You must be Mee,” said the alien. She flicked the yo-yo back up her sleeve and held out her hand. Mee looked at it, slightly thrown by the polite gesture. Then, after a brief, but obvious, internal struggle between her feelings and her upbringing, her upbringing won. She shook the tiny hand, scowling.
“Hi, Joni.” Fypp repeated the handshaking procedure, giving Joni a nod.
Mee couldn’t hold it in any longer.
“Are you two going to tell us what’s going on, now, or will I have—”
Fypp held up a hand, and Mee’s voice vanished. She was still speaking—shouting, if her demeanor was anything to go by—but no sound at all came out.
Seb looked at Fypp. “What are you doing?”
“Shh.” Fypp held a finger up to Mee. “You ‘shh’ too.”
After a couple of expletives which even a novice lip-reader would have blushed at, Mee stopped speaking.
“No more, please,” said Fypp. “I know Joni has asked you to trust her. I assume you said you would. I am telling you now that you must. Whatever happens from now on has to happen as if Joni has been with you all afternoon. Remember, I’m not asking you to trust me, I’m asking you to trust Joni. Right?”
Joni nodded. “Please, Mum. Dad.”
Mee’s shoulders slumped, and she nodded. Fypp pointed again.
“Got it,” said Mee. “Sorry, Jones.” She closed her eyes for a moment as if settling herself, then opened them again. She stepped forward.
“Right, here’s your sodding Egg. Show us what you want to show us. But don’t take all day about it, we’ve got some more catching up to do.”
Chapter 39
Joni and Mee watched Seb talk to Fypp in the yard. Their voices were low, and Joni could only assume Fypp was trying to repeat what she would have said if she had hadn’t been aware that a traitorous World Walker was hidden close by, waiting for her to Walk. And knowing that if she Walked where she originally intended, she would never arrive.
Fypp looked over at Mee and Joni in the cottage doorway, then back at Seb, who was shaking his head. Over Seb’s shoulder, she gave Joni one last trademark wink.
“I’ll be back sometime - this planet is just too interesting to stay away from.”
Joni unconsciously gritted her teeth at the slight change in what Fypp had said. She just couldn’t be sure how each tiny alteration in what they did or said might alter the outcome.
Without another word, Fypp turned and stepped into nothingness, leaving the yard, Innisfarne, and the planet behind.
The silence that followed Fypp’s departure seemed to last longer than Joni remembered. She had been as specific as she could about timings. If Kaani didn’t come at the same time…she felt the beginnings of panic, a hard lump in her stomach. Then Mee pulled her closer and called to Seb.
“Come inside,” she said. “Quickly! Something’s wrong. Something’s—”
The elm burst into flame.
When the tree was reduced to a blackened silhouette, and her eyes had recovered from the burst of light, Joni was slightly surprised to discover the witch was just as terrifying the second time around.
Kaani’s short conversation with Seb may not have been word-for-word the same, but Joni wasn’t sure she noticed any difference. It was hard to focus as she was counting in her head.
sixty-four, sixty-five, sixty-six
This was the crucial part, and it was all down to how well she had remembered this scene. She had helped Mum work with some of the domestic abuse sufferers who had come to Innisfarne for counseling, so she knew that extreme duress could mess with someone’s perception of time.
seventy-nine, eighty, eighty-one
Watching your father being murdered by a witch must count as pretty extreme duress. Kaani was moving forward now. Fypp had said their best chance was to wait until she was at her most vulnerable, which would be the moment she attacked Dad. Too early, and she might escape. Too late, and Dad died.
hundred and six, hundred and seven, hundred and eight
Joni had guessed it had been just over two minutes between Kaani’s appearance and her attack on Dad. She had gone over the scene again and again in her mind until she was confident her guess was as accurate as she could make it.
That afternoon, she had been sure it was a pretty accurate guess.
Fairly sure.
But it was still a guess.
a hundred and fourteen, a hundre—
Kaani changed into the crackling purple lightning-rope, the atmosphere in the yard changing, getting hot, buzzing with unnatural, powerful energy.
Joni and Mee were slammed back against the cottage wall.
no
Joni fought through a wave of nausea. Her vision was blurred, and her hearing was muffled. She knew she was only stunned, and she fought to bring the scene into focus.
too early, she’s attacking too early
Her father’s scream was a distant sound, her head full of cotton.
she’s killing him
The distant screaming suddenly stopped, and there was a thud as Seb’s body hit the snow.
Joni made a huge effort and managed to push herself up onto her hands and knees before looking into the yard, blinking her vision back into focus.
Fypp was back. And she was formidable. She stood, arms by her sides, her expression serene and peaceful - compl
etely at odds with the devastation she was wreaking. Her tiny body was surrounded by a corona of energy, the snowy forest scene behind her looking distorted and surreal.
Kaani’s rope-like form was blackened in places, and there was a smell like the aftermath of an electrical fire. A powerful hum was not only audible but could be felt through the ground and in Joni’s body as the vibrations rose and fell in intensity.
Joni looked back to where Seb had fallen.
oh God, is he dead?
Her father’s body lay on the ground. Intact, but covered in raw, bleeding lacerations as if his body had stretched and split, every visible patch of skin marked by terrible wounds. He wasn’t moving. This wasn’t how it ended the first time, but Joni knew it was all for nothing if he died anyway.
She looked over at her mother. Mee had already turned toward her, desperately checking that Joni was unhurt. Her expression filled with relief when she saw Joni’s face. Joni looked back at her, deliberately avoiding making the mistake she had made at this point the first time: that of looking at her mother’s twisted, mangled and broken back, horribly twisted and useless.
Mee must have seen something in her peripheral vision, because she turned abruptly away from Joni, looking back toward the battle in the yard.
The witch had been forced to turn her attack toward the last being she had expected to see. Standing next to the fire-scorched elm, Fypp was throwing everything she had at the renegade T’hn’uuth. Fypp still kept the appearance of the child nun, but there was a confusion to her presence, the space occupied by her physical body also seeming to hold another entity. Joni’s human senses could make little sense of it - her brain interpreted it as a constant rolling, coiling movement of green-blue streams constantly moving in and around each other like liquid snakes. At the same time, the child’s saffron and red robes whipped around her rigid humanoid body as if she were caught in a gale. Her features looked utterly calm, yet the energies that filled the air between the warring World Walkers were causing some kind of disruption that spread over an area far larger than the yard, as if Innisfarne was flying through the biggest electrical storm in history.
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