The Unlikely Time Traveller (4 page)

“Right, Ness, I’d better go and look for Robbie,” I said lamely, lingering by the tree, looking around at how everything had changed. The garden where Robbie, Will, Agnes and I have our den is right next to a big old ruined house. As far as I could tell, here in the future (if this really was the future – how could I find out?), the ruin had been rebuilt as stables. To the side of the stables there was a round building made of glass and wood that could be a house. Maybe Ness lived there?

I doubted the old shed that was our den would have survived another hundred years, but I wanted to see. I edged out from the tree to get a view up the garden. No den. There was some kind of bench. I wondered if the buried time-capsule tin had survived, and glanced down, but couldn’t see any patch under the yew tree that resembled Astroturf. The stone wall around the garden wasn’t crumbling any more. Someone had repaired it. Against the wall, spread-out trees dripped with small orange plums. Now that the horses had stopped stamping it felt calm in the garden. Ness seemed to be the only person around. Birds sang in the trees. I would tell Agnes she was right – it seemed peaceful in the future and her wild overgrown garden had turned into some kind of old folk’s home for horses! Agnes would love it. But Agnes would have to wait. I couldn’t go home without Robbie.

“You are strange.” Ness cut across my thoughts. “You speak strange. You dress strange. I do wonder perhaps if you make mirth of me and my old horses.” He pulled a carrot from his pocket and crunched into it. “And it is poor skill to lose a friend.”

My jaw fell open – like this was all my fault! “Actually,” I started, “
he
lost me. Robbie can be pretty stupid, you know.”

Ness just raised an eyebrow and stared at me. “Pretty?”

“Yeah, like, seriously stupid.”

“Really?”

I didn’t miss a beat. “Really.”

“Though I do feel pity for your… friend,” he said, patting one of the old horses.

If he met Robbie he’d change his tune. “Anyway, I’m not strange,” I told him. “Actually, I’m quite normal. Just a traveller.” And I waved my hand, like I was vaguely gesturing towards London or Inverness or somewhere. “From, um… quite far away.” I pulled the zip of my hoodie up to cover my skateboard Made-in-China T-shirt.

Ness stared and took another small step back at the sound of the zip, but he nodded. He gave the uneaten half of his carrot to the rubbery-lipped horse, and said to it, “This, Tinder, is traveller Saul, who is sorry for the disturbing.”

“We already met,” I said. “Yeah, sorry,” then I laughed. I laugh when I’m nervous, I can’t help it. Thankfully Ness, who had been all upset and serious till then, laughed too, and the way Tinder was neighing and baring big yellow teeth, you’d think it was joining in as well.

“Tis muckle good to laugh.” Ness rummaged about in one of his many pockets, brought out another dirty-looking carrot and offered it to me, but I shook my head.

“Thanks,” I said, “keep it for Tinder.” Then I plunged my hand in my pocket and brought out a few peanuts. I held out a palmful, but Ness just gaped at them.

“What is this?” The way he was staring, you’d think I was offering him fossilised animal droppings.

I quickly put the nuts back next to the torch, the toffee, the Mars Bar wrapper and my dead phone. It was getting busy in there. “Um, nothing,” I muttered. “Maybe this?” I pulled out the pack of cards.

Ness stared at it. Shaking his head in what looked like amazement he took a step back, then a step forward. He gasped. He clapped his hands, then bowed. Acting like I had offered him a thousand pounds instead of a pack of cards, he finally reached out and took them. He looked so delighted I thought he might cry.

“They’re just an old pack of cards,” I muttered, feeling a bit embarrassed at how touched he was.

“I do thank you,” he said, running a finger across his sleeve then slipping the pack carefully into the pocket that suddenly appeared. “Traveller Saul, you have lost your friend, and your I-band, also your way, but you have not lost your kindness.” I was beginning to relax. There was something about this guy I liked. “I would do better to forget this awful speech,” he said, suddenly grinning at me. “Your arriving with muckle clatter has assisted me to put it by. I was tangled in nerves.”

“Glad to help,” I said, guessing he had to give a speech somewhere and was dreading it. “Anyway, Ness,” I said, speaking slowly so he would understand me, “I’d better go.” Then I did the little bowing thing again, and was turning away, when he lifted a hand.

“Wait Saul,” he said. “Two can search better than one. I, a found friend, will help you find the lost friend.”

So I nodded, smiled at him, and felt relieved that I had someone from the future to help me look for Robbie. Who was a prat and a numpty sometimes, but I needed to get him home.

“Thanks a lot, Ness,” I said, thinking we would head off and search for Robbie right away. But Ness just stood there, frowning at me.

“You can’t wander hereabouts like that,” he said. “Perhaps where you come from it is different, but not here. Wait one moment.” Then he turned, leaving me under the yew tree, and sprinted down the garden. I thought I was a fast runner, but Ness was way faster. Maybe he had super-springy shoes on? He reached the building and I heard a door swing open. While he was gone I quickly dropped to my knees and patted around under the tree for anything that felt like ancient Astroturf. Could our time-capsule tin have survived? Next moment I heard Ness pounding back up the garden. I got to my feet in time to see him running towards me with a green band flapping about in his hand.

Not even out of breath, Ness stopped a couple of paces in front of me – he still didn’t look too comfortable being close – and tossed the green thing towards me. “It is an old I-band,” he said, “but has power in it still, and immunity.”

“I-band?” I mumbled.

“Of course. If you want to avoid the viruses and not have people thinking you are unnatural and infectious.” He laughed, like he couldn’t believe anyone wouldn’t know what an I-band was.

I laughed too, in a nervous ha-ha kind of way.

I knew about dangerous things that could happen to time travellers, and I’d thought about dangerous things that might exist in the future, but viruses hadn’t even crossed my mind. Maybe colds and flus had got out of control during the twenty-first century. Maybe I was going to catch the worst flu ever here in the future, and sneeze my own head off! What a way to go. Ness seemed pretty definite about this I-band thing so I took it, thinking probably humans had invented a better kind of protection than flu jags.

I tied the band round my head expecting the Northern Lights to explode behind my eyes, but didn’t feel anything, except, after a moment, the last bit of time-travel shakiness leaving me. Maybe I was stronger too. The weather was summery: warmer than I’m used to, and I’d been a bit hot and sticky without noticing. Now I felt more comfortable.

“Come,” said Ness. We ran down the garden to a large gateway. With the I-band on, my vision seemed sharper. I noticed birds in the trees, some I’d never seen before, and herb bushes around the verges. I even spotted a bee!

Beyond the garden I expected to see the huge stubble field; the one I had cycled over on the way to the den a thousand times. Back in 2015 it grew nothing except weeds. Now I couldn’t believe my eyes. There were about thirty high-school-age kids in that field, down on their knees or bent over, all working. And there were loads of things growing in rows – veg I guessed.

Ness waved at the others, who all had long hair, and most of them wore the onesie suits. Some of them glanced up at me, smiled, and did the little bowing thing, so I smiled and bowed back. I wished I had long hair. I wished
I was wearing a fancy onesie. I put my hood up, hiding my short hair, and cast my eyes about for Robbie, but couldn’t imagine him down on his knees pulling up carrots.

“I have not field duties today,” explained Ness, “for I tend the old citizen horses and must practise my speech for the honours. The others, you do see, are busy picking for the harvest ceilidh.” Ness’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Where I must speak. Aye, but two more suns,” he said. Then, perking up, he went on, “What feasting we’ll have at the celebration. Butter-soft parsnips and plum jelly!” He rubbed his belly like he’d just said, “Three-layer chocolate cake and ice cream!” Food was definitely done differently in the future. If this
was
the future. I really needed to check.

Ness was a bit taller than me. So I just stopped and asked him straight out: “Ness, I’m guessing you were born in the year 2099? Or 2100? Am I right?” I was out on a limb. If I’d come to completely the wrong century or they named the years differently now, he was going to think I was a total nutcase.

He laughed. “You almost guess correct. 2101. I am fourteen summers in age.”

Hey, we were the same age! Well, except I was a hundred years older or earlier or something. And not as tall as him.

“I’m fourteen too,” I said.

So it had worked! It had really worked. This was 2115, the twenty-second century. Where people grew their own vegetables. Let’s hope Robbie was here too.

Me and Ness stood on the edge of the big field. I felt a bit lazy seeing all these people digging and me just standing there, but I really needed to get searching. I spotted the rooftops of Peebles ahead. Amazingly the
old steeples were still there. Some of them anyway. The town seemed sprawled out and much bigger. There were definitely way more buildings.

“Into town?” I asked Ness. He nodded and we set off round the field and down a winding lane. As we strode along – fast – I racked my brains trying to guess where Robbie might have gone. If he had come from the yew tree, like me, would he try to find his old house? Or check out the supermarket? Or see if the school was still there? He’d probably head for the High Street. Maybe track down the cinema.

But the old lane that wound down to the High Street wasn’t there. That was weird, streets just vanishing. How can a lane disappear? Where was I? I tried to get my bearings from the River Tweed. Usually you can see it from the top of the town. But there were new tall buildings that blocked my view. “Maybe this way,” I said to Ness, nodding vaguely down a street I didn’t recognise.

Everything felt so strange, and next minute a man’s voice behind me shouted out, “Move to the side! I did say before, this is a shared path.” I swung round and the man trotted by on a black horse, just missing me. “Walkers keep to the left!” he snapped and clip-clopped past.

In a jitter I slumped down at the side of the path. Ness sat down next to me. “Saul, are you ill?” he said. “You wandered into the rider’s lane. I called out. You seemed not to hear.”

I did feel a bit dizzy. We sat for a while.

In the distance I heard a screeching, whizzing sound and I glanced up, looking for flying cars. But the whizzing sound faded. It could have been a low-flying plane.

“Too fast,” muttered a woman who was walking past us carrying a huge pumpkin in her arms. “Is it vital for the
train to gain Edinburgh in under ten minutes? Is it? And the birds. What of them?”

So it was a high-speed train I’d been hearing, not a plane. Ten minutes to Edinburgh seemed like a good idea to me, thinking how long the bus took to get there, but I just shrugged. The woman adjusted the pumpkin, shook her head again and wandered off.

Ness stood up. Unsteadily I did too, scared I was going to get trampled down by more horses. But that man on the horse had said he had told me before about the shared path. Did that mean he had told Robbie, and was mistaking me for him? I quickened my pace.

Agnes

Saturday morning – early

I am sooooooo excited. I stayed up reading until 2 a.m. and I would have read more if the torch battery had not run out. (I need a torch, because otherwise I’ll wake Dad and Gran. We all live in a caravan. It’s much cheaper than a house and Dad says it’s better because you’re closer to the air.) Anyway I am a bit tired now, but more excited than tired. I can hear Dad sitting on the front step of the caravan practising his tunes. Saturday is his busiest day for busking (apart from Christmas Eve). Gran is padding around getting everything ready for her outing to the supermarket. Our outing. Though I wish I could just go straight to the den and tell them all about the things I read in the book I borrowed from the library. The book I was reading until 2 a.m.!!!!! The book about…
the Northern Lights
. This is now my favourite subject.

Next Friday night the Northern Lights are due to turn the skies of southern Scotland red and green and yellow and they are going to flash and spin and dance in streamers and bands. And we are going to watch!!! My gang that is.

In my book it says the old Scottish name for the Northern
Lights is the Merry Dancers. The Latin name is Aurora Borealis. Wait for this: Aurora is the Roman goddess of dawn. I love that! Plus I found out how some Native American people believe the Northern Lights is the dance of spirit animals, like deer, wolf, salmon and seal. How beautiful is that!

I also read some stuff that I don’t think I will actually tell Saul and Will and Robbie. This is strictly for the diary!!! In Japan, couples who are newly married (and I guess who can afford it) go to the north of Finland for their honeymoon and stay in little glass-roofed houses – so that the Aurora Borealis flashes down on them and blesses them and the child they are going to have!!! I suppose the Japanese people believe an Aurora child is very special.

Gran is calling me. Have to go. Supermarket time. I must ask her to buy batteries for my torch.

I walked along the strange lanes, keeping close to Ness and feeling pretty shaken by my near-miss with the horse. Ness pointed to the lanes on the road for horse riding and bike riding, and the one we were supposed to be in that had a picture of somebody walking. “Here,” he said, “is our place.” People streamed past us on horses, on amazing-looking lightweight bikes and some, like the pumpkin lady, walking. They all stared. I seriously needed a wig. Everybody, like
everybody
, had long hair.

There were no cars. No buses or lorries or vans. That was the confusing thing about the roads. There was all this space to walk in, but you could only walk in the walking lane. People were moving quite fast, but not shut in their own little car. We were all out in the open where you could really see people. And it was much quieter even though it was busy.

I made a list in my head of all the things I would tell Agnes. Children work in the fields, I would tell her, but they seemed happy about it. And you can get to Edinburgh in under ten minutes. But there’s no cars. And I saw a bee. Peebles was warmer. Actually it was so warm I really wanted to take my hoodie off, but then everyone would see my short hair, and my skateboarding T-shirt – the one I thought was so cool back in 2015. Probably
in 2115 I looked like I was dressed up for some “Let’s pretend we’re old-fashioned” party! I was lost in all these thoughts and must have wandered again onto the wrong side of the path. Whatever happened I didn’t hear the bike behind me.

“Saul!” Ness yelled. “Wake up!”

Too late.

A boy screeched. I felt the front wheel of his bike wedge into the back of my legs. My knees buckled, I crumpled and he flew over my head. I heard a horrible snap sound as he landed. I groaned and felt this hot throbbing pain in the back of my legs. But compared with the boy I was fine. He was lying at the side of the path moaning. It was worse when he stopped moaning. I staggered to my feet. Nothing felt broken, I was just going to be seriously bruised. I hurried over to the boy on the ground, really scared I might find him dead.

His ankle was twisted in a weird shape and it looked like he had fainted. His I-band had fallen off and his long hair fell over his face. Ness was already by his side. I groaned, bent down and touched the boy’s wrist, feeling for his pulse the way we were taught to at school. There was a flutter of beating life. He wasn’t dead. Though I was no doctor, I could tell his ankle was badly twisted, maybe broken. I saw his eyelids flicker. Then he opened his eyes and looked at me. “Sorry,” he whispered. I followed his gaze to where his crumpled I-band lay on the ground. Ness was already on his feet. He grabbed the I-band then ran back to the injured boy and carefully put the I-band round his head. Right away the boy looked better. He breathed deeply.

By this time more bike riders had appeared. I sat back amazed. They were like Formula 1 tyre-changers the way
they worked on the injured boy. They got off their bikes, put their hands on his legs, and somebody moved his bike out the way. Ness touched the boy’s arm. The boy put his hand up to his I-band. In about one minute, even though I was pretty sure he’d had a very badly sprained ankle, he stood up. He gave little bows to all the other bikers. He bowed to Ness and Ness bowed back. Then he bowed to me, picked up his bike, got on it and rode off.

The throbbing pain in my leg had gone too. And there were no bruises. Weird. Very weird. But after that I kept to the part of the path with a picture of people walking on it. And I wondered how people in the future could heal themselves. Or heal each other. Was it the I-band? Or could they somehow make each other better?

“Impressive,” Ness suddenly said.

“Yeah, seriously,” I agreed, thinking of the miracle I had just seen.

But Ness was talking about old-fashioned me: “You were feeling for his life pulse?”

I nodded. It wasn’t exactly rocket science. “It was nothing,” I muttered.

“Like the uncommon foodstuff in your pocket?” he said, and winked. “Nuts don’t grow in Scotland. To import them costs muckle.” He raised his eyebrows then nodded, as though he had just figured something out about me. “You are rich. That does explain!”

I shook my head. Was this the moment to come clean about where I was really from? But then Ness ducked behind a palm tree and beckoned for me to follow. Between the tall glass buildings were lanes and next minute me and my new pal from 2115 were sauntering down one.

We came out of the lane, and, if I wasn’t mistaken, we had reached the High Street. There was bustle,
people moving about and lots of chatter. And some trailer things, like silver pods, that could be modern market stalls. And a huge bike parking lot. Some of the old stone buildings were still there, up against new tinted-glass ones. Still no cars. Where were they? Surely they couldn’t all have disappeared, could they? Had the future run out of petrol, like Agnes imagined it would? All the engine noises had gone, and the smell of exhaust. There was a whiff of horse poo in the air, but apart from that everything felt clean and smart.

All except one plastic bag floating in the breeze. That wiped the smile off my face. It looked so out of place in this clean, unlittered world. I recognised the words on it, swaying in the air in front of me –
Helping you spend less
. Robbie must have been here! He had probably polished off a whole bag of snacks by this point. Knowing Robbie, he’d have a few more to keep him going. The bag puffed out and swung towards me. It was like he was leaving signs.

Ness saw it too. “What is this, Saul?”

The wind dropped and the stupid bag floated down. I snatched it and shoved it in my pocket, along with the wrappers and everything else, feeling embarrassed about the litter. “Robbie is leaving stuff about the place; I’d better follow his trail.” I forced a smile. “Might be fun,” I said.

“Fun? What is ‘fun’?”

I remembered the word he had used and explained, “Like a celebration.”

Ness grinned. “Then, rich boy,” he said, “let us follow the trail to the celebration.”