The Unlikely Time Traveller, page 11
“That’s some muckle weapon,” Robbie muttered, giggling.
It was too lethal to slip into my back pocket so I held it carefully, rolling my sleeve down over it. I couldn’t stop laughing. Now I really did look like Captain Hook. Then we sat on the steps of the cathedral, listening to strange music as we munched away on the super-tasty dried meat.
“I could stay here forever,” Robbie mumbled, his mouth stuffed with meat.
“And live in a tree house with wolves prowling about?”
Robbie just shrugged, as if he wasn’t afraid of wolves any more, like that whimpering boy last night wasn’t him. He tore into another meat strip, saying how it reminded him of chorizo. When he polished that off he said he couldn’t wait for his new clothes. “And I want a proper I-band,” he said, staring longingly at mine. He patted his head. “No offence, Saul, but I’m not too keen on wearing a ripped-up bit of your old T-shirt. Let’s find an I-band shop.” He looked around, as if one might miraculously appear. Then, feeling, I guess, all confident and well fed, he called out to a man nearby who was gazing up at the cathedral. “Excuse me, where’s the nearest I-band shop?”
The man looked us over suspiciously. “The hospital is on the outskirts of the city,” he said. I steered Robbie away from the cathedral steps and the Royal Mile. “I get the feeling, Robbie, there are some things in 2115 you can’t buy in shops. And anyway, we really need to head back. Ness is probably worried about us.”
“What do you reckon she wants to give us to take back?” I shrugged. I had been thinking about that too, but had no idea. “Reckon she’s going to give us I-bands, Saul?”
“Na, something historic probably.” I took Robbie by the arm and steered him towards the station, thinking it would be a clever move to stop our Edinburgh excursion while we were ahead.
“Shame,” Robbie said, looking wildly about as we hurried through Waverley Station, “that there’s nowhere to charge my phone.”
“Dream on Robbie.” I hauled him straight into a waiting train bound for the Borders.
We had survived futuristic Edinburgh and nothing terrible had happened. I plonked myself down in a soft seat and stretched out. “Maybe,” I said to Robbie as we clicked ourselves in and the train sped off, “when I leave school, I might go to drama college.”
“Good idea, Saul.” Robbie patted me on the back. “Cause you were brilliant.”
30
We made it back to Peebles without any major trouble. “First,” I said, “let’s run back to the tree house and open the tin.”
Robbie’s eyes lit up. “Then we can have a rest.”
“Then we can work in the field, actually. Helping to produce the food.” I waved the hook in the air.
“Ok,” he said, dodging backwards, “chill!”
We hurried through Hay Lodge Park, feeling buoyed up after our Edinburgh trip. I put the hook in my back pocket and climbed the oak tree carefully.
“Can you remember if we put any chocolate in the time capsule?” Robbie yelled, clambering behind me.
We slid into the tree house. Funny how a place can feel so quickly like home. “Na, we only put in things that wouldn’t rot.”
I snatched back the blankets. Robbie grabbed the tin, shook it and whatever was in there clunked about. I suddenly remembered how, only a few days back, I had added the picture of the Northern Lights.
“Amazing to think this is one hundred years old, eh?” Robbie said, brushing dirt off the sides.
I brought out the hook and sunk to my knees. “Right Robbie, you hold the tin tight and I’ll lever it open.”
He held it down and I jammed the edge of the hook under the lid. It didn’t take long. “It’s budging!” I yelled, and next thing I fell back as the lid sprang open.
So it was Robbie who got a first view in. I was on my back trying not to stab myself. “Wow, my hair is still here, and there’s a photo of all of us, a pencil, and a pound coin, a tiny jar of honey, and a wee bottle of perfume. Hey, there’s a photo of the den, and a CD, a picture of fireworks, and a letter…”
“Not fireworks, and not perfume,” I said, now peering into the tin. Carefully I lifted out the bottle and showed him its little label. Petrol from 2015.
“Cool!”
I brought out the picture of the Northern Lights and showed him that too. “The Aurora Borealis, Robbie.” I nudged him and grinned. “I meant to show you this a hundred years ago but you ran off. Sleeping out with the gang will be a walk in the park after what we’re doing now, eh?”
Robbie shrugged, like he still wasn’t convinced, and changed the subject. “What’s that?”
It was the letter from me and Agnes, written to the unknown people of the future. I fished for the time-capsule pencil, which, amazingly, was still sharp. I remembered how Agnes had sharpened it before she put it in. “You can add a wee bit,” I said, handing it to him. I unfolded the paper. It was crinkly and yellow but you could still read the words:
… What we really love doing is hanging out in our den and having adventures and even though we are going to high school now (Monday to Friday) we’re still young, and can do stuff that adults don’t, like climb trees, go biking and make fires and talk. Sure adults talk, but not like we do. We talk about what we’re going to do when we grow up, and what the world is going to be like, so this is a letter to you in the future so you know what it was like in the past. We’ve got this brilliant den (an old shed – we call it Pisa – after the leaning tower of Pisa in Italy – cause it leans over a bit) and wilderness garden. It’s our secret, our wild place to play and hang out. We’ve got bikes and skateboards and loads of folk near Peebles go mountain biking and we listen to music on our I-pods (except some people play fiddle on the street!!) and loads of people watch TV and go on social media and play on their phones. It is a shame but some people don’t have fun. Some people don’t get enough to eat, and then there’s wars and bombs and people begging on the street. Agnes’s dad (the one who plays fiddle on the street) says it’s because some people are greedy and lazy. Robert Burns is our national poet and Christmas is our biggest day, then comes your birthday. The weather is ok, nice sometimes and cold sometimes. But when you’re having fun you don’t notice it too much. The best thing is having friends…
This was Agnes’s handwriting. I had chipped in with stuff and she had written it down. I handed the letter to Robbie. “The paper is pretty fragile,” I said.
There was a small space at the bottom of the letter. I could see Robbie chewing his lip the way he does when he’s thinking hard. Then I couldn’t believe what he wrote:
We’re gonna sleep out in our wild garden and watch the Northern Lights. And it’s gonna be ace.
From Robbie the Brave!
I felt like hugging him when I read that. “Brilliant Robbie,” I said, folding the letter up and putting it back into the tin. I looked at him in the dim light of the tree house. “What I’m thinking is, we give this to Ness. So she’ll have something to talk about when she has to make her big speech. It’ll be like a present from our gang. Are you ok with that?”
For a while Robbie didn’t say anything, then he unstrapped his fancy watch and dropped it into the tin. “She might like that too,” he said and laughed. “Ideal present to get from a couple of time travellers, eh?”
31
We left the tin in the tree house cause we reckoned work time alongside loads of other folk was not the moment to hand over our present. We tucked it under the blankets and set off. I didn’t need to use the disc; I actually knew my way about.
When we got there, Ness spotted us right away. “You arrive in good time to gather brambles,” she said, handing us large baskets. She led us to bushes that ran along our side of the field. “They are best eaten close to picking,” she told us. “Then for the party we will mash them with cream. When the community power supply switches on at dawn, they will go into the ice chest to make ice-cream.” She picked a fat berry and held it up. “Purple jewel ice-cream!” She licked her lips. “Muckle delicious.” Robbie brightened up at the mention of ice-cream. He plucked a bramble and tossed it into his basket.
“Totally muckle delicious,” he whispered in my ear, doing a pretty convincing imitation of Ness.
As we picked brambles, Robbie sidled up to Ness. I heard him going on to her about getting him an I-band. She, I saw, just shrugged, saying perhaps for the kind of travellers we were it wouldn’t matter. “For I-bands are not suits of armour,” she said, laughing. We were halfway down the line of bramble bushes when she explained, glancing about and making sure no one else would hear her saying something so obvious, how I-bands worked. “It uses knowledge from Chinese medicine,” she whispered.
“What’s that?” Robbie whispered back.
Ness grinned. “The energy health flow of the body. The I-band blends this with our DNA.”
Before Robbie – or me – had a chance to say ‘And what’s that?’, she told us. “DNA is the code in each of us that does tell our cells how to grow, and also the science of the nerves in our bodies. We do learn the healing arts in the Bacca. In the hospitals the I-band makers use the wisdom to protect and mend. Some people say the ‘I’ stands for immunity. Others say it means I.” She pointed to herself. “For it helps us remember ourself. Not in a selfish way, more to remember who we really are, and why we are here. I-band does remind each of your cells who they are meant to be.”
“Wow!” That was me and Robbie at the same time.
“That’s incredible,” Robbie said, staring at her I-band. Ness laughed and imitated us.
“Yes incredible,” she said. “And wow! But of course we become used to what is incredible when it is with us all the time. So, you do understand, we are shocked to see a person lacking an I-band.”
Robbie nodded like he understood. It was hard to tell with Robbie. He wasn’t all daft. Sometimes he got really good marks in school. “But you don’t need a band round your head to remember who you are,” he said, plucking at brambles and dropping them into his basket.
“True,” Ness said, “you don’t. The jewels around the I-band align with the body’s vibrations, and the tweed fabric is woven with sphagnum moss, which gives protection against many diseases. But you speak true, Robbie, you don’t need one. And they are almost impossible to replace. When we reach the age of nine we are told about the green guardianship and the healing arts. Then we do learn to help make our I-band.”
“How come I got this?” I pointed to my head.
A sadness shadowed Ness’s face. “We have a spare I-band, my mother’s earlier one. Mother became ill after drinking contaminated water. There are places where earth does suffer, after much mining, and water from these places carries illness. Mother was hiking in such a landscape. Now she does grow tired, and flustered. Also her muscles are weak. With the help of the hospital students she was able to create a new I-band, with more strength.” Ness shrugged and dropped a handful of berries into her basket. “Yet the I-bands are not able to cure everything.” She looked up at me and smiled. “Ma’s DNA was removed from that band, worry not. It is head style you sport, but with mickle protection. Anyway,” she smiled at us both, “if I may carry off a fine speech tomorrow Ma will be better.” Ness sighed, like she was none too hopeful about making a fine speech. “Aye, tomorrow is the harvest festival.” She managed a smile. “Fine speech or not, we are going to eat ice-cream!”
Now that she seemed happy to talk, I asked her about flying wheelchairs.
“Yes, ones struggling to walk, they with the free-chair licence, are permitted to travel low-level sky space. They fought long for this right. Too many accidents with horses, and too many bumpy walkways.” She popped a berry into her basket.
Then she looked over at Robbie. He had given up picking brambles and was busy studying the sky for wheelchairs. I watched as Ness, with a mischievous look on her face, picked a fat bramble. “Robbie!” she called. He swung round just as she flicked it and it landed – SPLAT! – on the end of his nose!
“Good shot,” I cheered.
Robbie looked stunned. He licked off the bramble with his tongue, but didn’t flick one back. I knew Robbie; he wasn’t a great shot.
“I could not resist.” She laughed like it was the biggest joke ever. The way her shoulders heaved, I got the sense that a muck-about was a great tonic for Miss Green Guardian, hard worker, high-honours taker, worrier, carer of old horses and picker of veg and plums.
“See when we’ve filled the baskets,” I said to her, “could we take a boat down the river?”
“So much work yet,” she said, but twitched her nose. I could tell she wanted to.
“Yeah, but,” whined Robbie, cottoning on and always up for fun stuff, “we could just go for a bit. Pleeeeease. It’ll be awesome. Back in our time we don’t have any boats on the river. It’s sooooo boring. We don’t have anything.”
“Really?” She stared from him to me. “Nothing?”
“That is so not true, Robbie.” Somebody had to stick up for 2015.
“Is true,” he snapped back, then did his list thing. “No high-speed train. No train at all come to that. No outdoor swimming pool. No diving boards. No skate park. No multiplex cinema. No flying wheelchairs. None of these speak-and-seek disc things. No boardwalks. No I-bands. No boats on the river. No amazing intelligent clothing!”
“Yeah, but you’ve got a phone,” I reminded him, “and a bike, a car – no, your parents have got two cars – and you’ve got a Playstation, TV, laptop, iPad, crisps, chocolate and sweets.”
“You forgot something,” he said.
Ness looked from me to him, like she was at a ping-pong match.
“What?”
“Cluedo!”
Robbie can be so random sometimes.
Ness laughed. “Half an hour on a boat,” she said, “no longer.” Then, unbelievably, she added, “We have Cluedo also. Ma and Pa love Cluedo!”
We were so stunned we didn’t speak.
She laughed at our falling jaws. “And we have sweets!” she told us proudly, though I doubted her sweets were anything like ours. I doubted the promised ice-cream would even have sugar in it. Because that was something major I had worked out about the future – folk ate food from near where they lived. Mrs Flynn back in school was right about her clothes-label thing. From what I had seen of 2115 people didn’t transport stuff halfway across the world. So sugar, in the future, was a thing of the past!
Ness was grinning at me and looking excited about a little boating escape.
“Ness,” I said, lowering my voice, “something else. We’ve got a present for you!”
“Present?” She shook her head. “I do not understand.”
“You know…” I rummaged around in my brain for another word, “a gift.”
Her eyes lit up. “And remember I also have something for you to return to your time. You must not forget it when you go.”
I was going to ask what it was, when there was a call from the field for the last break of the day. Our baskets were nearly full.
While everyone else drifted off home or to shady trees nearby, Robbie, Ness and I grabbed some chunks of cornbread and cheese and slipped through town to the river.
32
Being by the water was nice and cool after our hours of picking. We jumped into a boat. “Let’s go!” I yelled. And for the next half hour Robbie and I did what we are good at: we cracked jokes, Robbie shouting out random stuff like “Fish and chips!” and creasing up laughing trying to tell Ness about deep-fried Mars Bars. She didn’t understand, even when I showed her the wrapper I had picked up, but she thought it was funny anyway. We all took turns at rowing. Me and Robbie made out like we were seasick, then flicked water at each other.
“This is awesome,” Ness said, dipping her hand over the side of the rowing boat and flicking water straight into Robbie’s face. Robbie used my ripped T-shirt to wipe it off.
“Oi, Robbie!” I yelled. “You can’t do that with an I-band!”
“Seeing as it’s only a bit of your hundred-year-old T-shirt,” he said, flicking water at me, “I can do what I like.”
I knew me and Robbie were hamming it up, putting on a show for Ness, but it was also a relief being out on the River Tweed and not having to pretend to fit in, just for a while. And Ness looked more chilled than I had seen her. This speech-giving ceremony was really chewing her up. Hopefully the contents of the tin would give her plenty to talk about. “Tell me, time travellers,” she asked, shaking back her long hair and laughing, “is it always so awesome back in your time?”
“Yeah, all the time,” Robbie said, changing his tune after just saying how our time was totally boring.
I thought of Agnes helping her gran. I thought of Agnes not having a mum, and since she and I went back to 1914, not even having the necklace that was given to her by her mum. Agnes didn’t even have a proper house. I thought of Will cutting the grass, and me looking after the twins, and the twins crying and Mum saying how she was exhausted and Dad always driving his taxi, and how school definitely wasn’t always awesome. Max bullying Robbie wasn’t exactly great either. But by the look of Robbie, whooping and rowing down the river, he had forgotten all about Max. He had forgotten he had ever been dough-ball Robbie.
“It isn’t always awesome,” I said to Ness, “but lots of the time it is.”
“Then perhaps one day,” she said, “I will find out.”
“Yeah,” Robbie piped up, “you should come and visit, Ness. It’s actually pretty easy to time travel.”
Ness just shook her head and smiled. Then it was her turn to row. I knew she’d be good with her strong shoulders and big hands. And as the sun got low she rowed and the River Tweed swished, and in the distance the church bell rang, and I realised I liked the future. I wasn’t afraid of it any more.
Too soon we had to row the boat back and moor it. We jumped onto the riverbank and Robbie tied the rope round a bollard. “That was fab,” he said, his face all flushed and still a bit wet. “Maybe we should just stay here forever.”
