The Reluctant Time Traveller

by Janis Mackay

  “Quit the scary stuff,” Robbie elbowed him. Shoulder to shoulder we stepped over the barbed wire. I tried not looking at the sign:

  DANGER

  KEEP OUT

  To get into the ruin we clambered through a window that had no glass. A bird inside screeched and flew over our heads out the window. Will yelled and grabbed me.

  “It’s only a pigeon,” said Robbie, panting. “Calm down.”

  The three of us stood in the ancient hallway, getting used to the dim light, and taking in the place. No way would I have come into this ruin before. But actually it was starting to feel pretty adventurous. Cobwebs hung from what was left of the ceiling. Bits of the garden had come into the house. Weeds pushed up through the floor tiles. You could see patches of blue sky alongside the broken oak beams above. Heavy wooden doors hung from hinges. Bits of wallpaper curled down from caved-in walls. We inched forward and peered into a room, lined with shelves, all falling down, the books on them rotting. “Maybe this was a study,” I whispered. A big leather armchair looked like it was now the home to dozens of mice. An old-fashioned gaslight fitting teetered above the massive marble mantelpiece.

  The room was full of bird poo. It stank. We side-stepped around the edge of the floor, I pushed another door and we found ourselves in what must have been a bedroom. You could see the fireplace and the remains of an old iron bed. We kept nervously glancing up, like the ceiling could cave in any minute.

  “Agnes isn’t in here,” I whispered.

  But then it was like we forgot we were in a creepy old ruin and started having fun. If the ceilings hadn’t completely caved in yet it would be a sad coincidence if they did now. Will ran around squawking like a mad bird and me and Robbie pretended to ponder the rotting book titles. In the hall there was the bottom of a huge sweeping staircase but half the stairs were broken and the banister had fallen over. After mucking about, I felt more confident; I pushed open a couple more creaking doors. There were cupboards with broken plates on the floor. Another cupboard had a broom and an old tin bucket in it.

  W. C.

  Robbie pushed open a door that said

  “Somebody’s initials,” he whispered. “Will Calder, for instance…” Will giggled, “…or Winston Churchill.”

  “It’s not anybody’s initials, stupid,” I said, “it means ‘toilet’.” Robbie kicked the door and we snuck in. A cast iron bath lay on its side. There was a cracked old toilet in the corner. What a dump.

  “Right. That’s ten minutes,” Robbie whispered, urgently. “She’s not here. Let’s go.”

  He was backing out and dragging me with him when I heard a giggle. The bath moved slightly. Will gasped. Robbie grabbed me, and Agnes Brown clambered out of the old bath, brushing herself down. Dust puffed off her clothes.

  “I thought you’d never find me,” she said, then looked up and grinned at us. “What took you so long?”

  Then a mouse or rat squeaked right there in the room. We all yelled and bolted out past the study, along the hallway and practically leapt out the window. We scrambled over the barbed wire and didn’t stop running until we reached the den. “That – was – gross,” Robbie panted.

  “Totally vile,” said Will.

  “Are you so desperate to have a bath, Agnes?” I said, though right away I felt bad, because Agnes didn’t have a bath, or a shower. She lived with her dad and granny in a caravan behind the petrol station. She’d told me that to have a bath they all trouped off to a friend of her gran’s twice a week with a bar of soap and towels.

  But Agnes just laughed and that set us all off, out of relief probably, after being in the creepy old ruin.

  “What’s that?” Agnes stopped laughing. We all froze. It sounded like someone was pushing their way through the hole in the hedge. “Somebody’s coming,” she whispered.

  5

  It was like we were turned to stone. The four of us just stared at the hedge. Someone or something was pushing through the hole at the bottom of it. Next thing a man in a high vis yellow jacket appeared, puffing and patting himself down.

  “You shouldn’t be playing around here,” he said, looking taken aback at seeing us. He stood up tall and waved us away like we were annoying insects. “This is a demolition site. Off you go.”

  I stepped forward. Actually Robbie pushed me forward. “No, it’s not. This is our gang hut,” I said. My heart was racing. “We don’t go near the demolition site.” That was a whopper. We had just come from there. I nodded to the shed. “That’s our den. We’ve had it for three years.”

  “It’s the best,” Will added.

  “Totally,” chipped in Robbie. “It’s called ‘Pisa’.”

  The man looked at him like he was crazy.

  “Please don’t take it away from us,” Agnes said.

  The man was already fishing gadgets out of his pocket. “We’ve to measure up this dump. So kiddies, it’s time to say bye-bye to your playpen. Work starts here in a week. We’ll get this mess sorted.”

  “It’s not a playpen, it’s a den. And you don’t know who owns this land,” Agnes piped up.

  “Well little madam, I know one thing,” the man said, “you don’t! Now scoot!”

  Then he marched past us. I couldn’t believe he was striding into our garden like it was just anywhere.

  “But – you can’t!” Agnes shouted after him.

  The man stopped and looked back at us over his shoulder. “I’m not saying I don’t feel sorry for you, kiddies, but the law is the law.” He strode on through the garden. Agnes pulled my sleeve.

  “We really have to go back in time now, Saul. Even if we’re scared. Even if it’s dangerous. We have to.”

  “She’s right,” Robbie said, “you’re the gang leader, Saul. You can’t let them just march in here and wreck everything.”

  I didn’t like leaving the den with a stranger snooping around. The four of us walked back across the field, down the lane and into the town. We were all silent and you could feel this sadness sitting over us. It was Will who broke the silence. “A week is a week.” He was trying to sound upbeat. “I mean, maybe we’ve got time to save the den.”

  “Yeah, all the time in history,” I said, sarcastically. “And what if we disappear to 1914 for more than a week? We might be too late: even if we can find out who owns this land – which is unlikely – what difference will it make? It will all be bulldozed when we get back.”

  “I think what happens,” Will said, still trying to sound all positive, “is that you go into a time warp. So even if days go by in the other time, only seconds have passed in your normal time.” Will was the most scientific in the gang. He thought about these things. And when he came up with these wee lectures, we usually listened.

  “That would come in handy,” I said. “To be away for a week and back in a minute. Best of both worlds: go and not go! Or is that best of both times?”

  We were coming to the corner in town where we usually split and go our separate ways home. We slowed down and waited for Will to come up with more lecture. He did. “It’s like, you’ve got this ancient formula that cracks open time and lets you slip through. The time you go back to has already been, so you can visit it. But the future hasn’t. You don’t lose time. Get it?” Robbie looked perplexed. Agnes looked curious. I was beginning to look hopeful. “It’s like,” Will went on, looking excited now, “you could be gone into history for ages, except it won’t be ages. It’ll feel like it, but it won’t be any time at all! You’ll be there and back in no time,” he grinned. “We won’t even miss you!”

  The next morning I gave Mum a hug and she looked at me strangely because I don’t usually go round giving her hugs. Then she laughed and kissed me on the nose. I stood waving to Dad for ages when he went off in his taxi. Then I wanted to help feed the twins, but Mum said why didn’t I run off and enjoy myself. “Have a good time,” that’s what she actually said, “it’s the longest day of the year – make the most of it!”

  So Agnes and I wer
e by the yew tree. The man with the high-vis yellow jacket was, thankfully, nowhere to be seen. There was a bulldozer parked up by the wall, waiting to charge in and flatten everything, but Will said by law they had to wait six days. I’m not sure how Will could know that. I wasn’t sure about anything.

  Agnes though looked sure about everything. She was really well prepared. She had a rucksack with her; an old smelly thing. Probably her dad’s for tramping the hills. Agnes, all proud, told me how she’d got up early that morning and filled it with everything we might need in 1914.

  “Like Irn Bru?” I said with a laugh. “Or bandages?” I stopped laughing, hoping we wouldn’t need bandages.

  “Bandages, definitely, and a torch and chocolate, and paper and pen and,” she giggled, “toilet paper, and a book to read, my diary of course, because I will want to take notes, and my old teddy bear and a hair brush, and an old dress and—”

  “Great,” I interrupted her, “anyway, if we’re going to do this, we better do it.” I chewed my lip and shrugged. “Of course, we don’t have to.”

  “Oh, but we do.” Agnes was concentrating. “The earth is in place,” she announced, “and the candle is lit.”

  I smiled weakly.

  “Ok, turn the glass globe so it reflects the sun and throws off rainbows,” I said, trying to sound bossy. The glass globe hung from a branch. Agnes winked at me, reached up and gave it a push and, sure enough, the coloured rainbows started to flash. With the glass globe swinging, Agnes played an old tune on the tin whistle. Then we pressed our left hands one on top of the other. Because she was wearing the gold ring, she touched the bark of the yew tree and my hand pressed over hers. Behind us the bonfire was crackling. We had put a pan of water over the flames. “Let the steam rise up into the rainbows,” I shouted. There was a wobble in my voice. I couldn’t help it. And there was a sinking feeling in my stomach. I couldn’t help that either. Will and Robbie were in the den. That was the deal. They were to look after things in 2014.

  “It’s going to work,” Agnes said, with no wobble in her voice. She looked round at me, winked, then closed her eyes and started singing the haunting old song.

  The sun was climbing the sky on the longest day of the year. We had earth, air, fire and water, rainbows, vapours, and the antique song. We had gold. We had the ancient yew tree. We had both done this before for Agatha Black. We were trusting. Believing. Wanting this to work. At least, Agnes was, and I was trying hard. Everything was in tune, wasn’t it? We imagined the time we were going to. The start of the First World War. We were going to save the den. We had faith. Agnes did, that was for sure. Her face looked totally focussed. I was working hard to have faith. If I didn’t I could end up stuck in some in-between time, hovering forever. I tried to stop thinking of everything that could go wrong. Agnes, who was still singing the old song, had her time-travel kit on her back. I was pushed up against that smelly old rucksack. I kept opening my eyes, even though they were supposed to be shut. I was so close to Agnes, I could smell her shampoo. I had this random thought that last night must have been their bath night. I imagined them trouping off with their bars of soap and towels. Then I thought about going to Paris, even though I was supposed to have my mind completely full of 1914. Do French people really eat frogs’ legs? How do you say ‘No thanks!’ in French?

  “See… you… in… 1914…” Agnes murmured.

  Then she vanished.

  And I was left, touching the old bark of the yew tree murmuring, “Non… non merci.”

  6

  I blinked. Maybe this was 1914? I was expecting weird sensations. But I felt fine. I blinked again and stared at the bark of the yew tree. Maybe it was a walk in the park, this time-travel romp? Maybe there was nothing to it? I swung round, expecting to see folk in strange clothes cutting the grass with scythes and pruning the rose bushes and smoking pipes. And maybe a few soldiers marching about. Where was Agnes? I heard a crackling sound and glanced over my shoulder, hoping it might be her. But it was a twig crackling in the fire. The fire was still going, still making coloured vapours. It would be a big coincidence if a bonfire happened to be burning in this very spot one hundred years ago. I had to check. I bolted up the garden to the den. It looked exactly like normal. There was that old stone at the door that I had carved SAULS GANG into with a piece of flint. And the bulldozer was still parked up behind the wall. I was not in 1914. I hadn’t time travelled. I’d pressed my hand on a tree and gone nowhere.

  I hovered at the den door wondering how I was going to explain this. Hearing me, Will and Robbie looked up from fiddling with their phones. They were pretty calm about their pals’ time travelling just outside.

  “Back already?” Will asked.

  I shook my head. “Na,” I muttered, “not gone yet.” I didn’t want them to know that Agnes had travelled on her own. “Just need something.” And I hurried back outside. Courage, that’s what I needed. I leaned against the den.

  I had to face it: Agnes had gone and I had not. She was in 1914, trying to save this den, and find out about the war while she was at it. And here I was, the great gang leader, in the plain old twenty-first century. What was she doing? Probably looking for me. She might need me, and I was a hundred years away! The old time-travel formula that I had discovered on the internet was right: you had to fully, one hundred per cent want this to happen. Sounds simple enough, so the old scientist had written, yet in reality almost impossible.

  But leaning against the den, wringing my hands together, something in me changed. My reluctance vanished. I stepped forward. Agnes might really need me. After all, I was the gang leader. Maybe we wouldn’t lose the den. I felt this excitement pulse through me. Agnes might get into trouble with the war. I had to help her. I stared at my fingers. If I was going to travel back in time and catch up with Agnes I needed gold.

  Next thing I was speeding over the fields and down the lane. Mum was out with the twins. Dad was out in the taxi. I burst into the house, ran up the stairs two at a time then there I was, in my parent’s bedroom and lifting the little box that contained Mum’s wedding ring. Since having the twins she never wore it. Said her fingers were too swollen. Good thing for me. I told myself this was borrowing for a good cause. She wouldn’t miss it, because I’d be back in no time. I slipped it onto my pinkie, turned and ran.

  Panting like mad, I made it back to the den and down to the yew tree. The fire was getting low, but still going. I just needed to reach up and push the glass globe. It swung out, catching the sun’s rays and flashing rainbows around. The water in the pan was still steaming, enough to make pale vapours. I had earth, water, fire and air. I had coloured vapours and gold. I stood by the tree and glanced down at a patch of moss. I placed my feet on this small cushion, as though that might make a difference, and with my hand pressed against the tree I started to sing. It didn’t sound too bad even though I was making it up as I went along. And this time I had faith. I really, one hundred per cent wanted to travel back in time. I wanted to catch up with Agnes Brown.

  Then I really did get a buzzing in my ears. I kept singing but my voice didn’t sound like my voice. It sounded as though it was coming from a long way off. The ground under my feet felt soft, as if the moss was dissolving and I might slip. The gold ring on my pinkie was burning. The air seemed to turn to gale-force wind and it was scary but still I wanted to time travel… and the buzzing grew louder… and my throat felt squeezed… and I was spinning… or being sucked down a long dark windy tunnel. But still I wanted to go.

  It was dark.

  “Help!” I cried, but ‘Help!’ stuck in my mouth.

  7

  The rest, you could say, was history. I ended up in a broom cupboard begging for a wee maid to set me free. I kicked her bucket. She flung open the door and out I stumbled, blinking, my heart pounding. I pelted along a gloomy corridor with that same wee maid yelling how she was going to set the housekeeper on me.

  I could see ahead that the corridor opened onto a hall under a bi
g sweeping staircase. Would Agnes be somewhere in this house too? I wanted to call out her name, but couldn’t risk anyone else here knowing where I was. The wee maid had gone, probably to get the giant housekeeper she’d talked about. I was running past closed doors towards the lighter hall ahead. I didn’t know if it was day or night, winter or summer. Maybe it was 1914, maybe it wasn’t. I didn’t know what the Hun was. I didn’t know anything.

  Before the hall, the corridor widened a bit and there was a small high window in an alcove. I stopped, stretched onto my tiptoes and looked out.

  Then I knew something. Out there was the garden of our den and in the middle stood the yew tree. That was our yew tree, and our garden! The garden looked much neater and more flowery and not an overgrown total wilderness, but it was still the same place. The yew tree was exactly the same. A shiver crept over my skin.

  Seeing the yew tree, I remembered the feeling of pressing Mum’s gold wedding ring against the bark. I glanced down, worried I might have lost the ring time travelling, but there it was, dangling on my pinkie. I pulled it off. It was bad enough that I had ‘borrowed’ it; it would be ultra-bad if I lost it in history. I stuffed it deep in my jeans pocket for safety.

  Where now? Up the stairs maybe? The door behind me had initials on it:

  W. C.

  I had been here before – in the future. Playing hide and seek. It had only been yesterday for me, I think, but already time was feeling too messy to be sure. I shuddered, remembering how the house was a ruin then, with craggy bits still standing – like this room. Different time, same place. I pushed open the door and looked in. There was the cast iron bath. But it wasn’t rolled on its side like it had been last time I saw it. It was upright and had legs like claws. And the place wasn’t thick with dust. The toilet wasn’t cracked, and there was no gap in the ceiling.

  I took a hesitant step towards the bath, thinking ‘This is crazy.’ But then I heard a giggle. I knew that giggle. This enormous relief flooded through me. Agnes lifted her head and peered out over the rim of the bath.