“Hi!” he yelled. Running up to him he asked, “Someone told me that a white gate has been put into the school yard and, as I was passing, I thought I would check it out. As a former pupil, like.”
“White gate? New white gate, you say?” Jack nodded. The man was looking straight at it behind him. “No new white gates here, no new gates at all!”
“What about a cottage?”
“Cottage! What cottage? You’ve got the wrong place mate.”
“OK,” said Jack. “Sorry to bother you.”
It hadn’t surprised him at all. The whole thing was so strange. “Perhaps it’s the entrance to a ‘worm hole’,” smiled Jack to himself, “like on the Startrek TV series where they travelled around in space from one ‘quadrant’ to another with ease. The cottage is in the ‘Delta Sector’!”
He decided he would go to the library the next morning, and then check out the cottage again!
“Had a good day?” called his mum as he stomped into the house.
“Cool,” he replied. “Got better results than expected.” And before his mum could respond and get on to what he was going to do with his life (which would not be long in coming beyond the expressions of delight), “I’m going to the library first thing tomorrow to see about a gap year and research career options. Now I know what I have got, the options should be easier to research.”
Matilda was genuinely pleased. And it pleased her even more to see her son in such a good mood. “Perhaps things will get better,” she hoped to herself. “I do wish he would stir more enthusiasm to sort out his future though.” But, somehow, his present demeanour urged her to be patient – at least till he had been to the library.
5
The following morning Jack was “up with the birds”, as his mother would have said. He ate a good breakfast and shoved an apple and a bottle of water into his shoulder sack, and was out of the house before his mother could shout, “Mind how you go!” in her usual way. She’d never seen him so positive! It was even lifting her own mood as she set about the washing. She noted that Jack had not put on his scruffy jeans either.
Jack passed the kicking tree and realised he didn’t feel like kicking it. It occurred to him that it was trying to live – just like him. Before, it had been some annoying thing that needed kicking. So Jack strode off towards the library. He arrived almost as soon as it opened. He was directed to several pamphlets about different options for a volunteer gap year. Only one did not require him to pay them a lot of money before he got there. Then, they all expected him to find air-fares which were quite high in some cases. After that he glanced at the university prospectuses. There were quite a shelf-full of these and he didn’t quite know where to begin. He thought about the Internet, but the computer stations had been quickly commandeered by some young lads engaged in what looked like a bloody on-screen battle but must have had something to do with school research or it would not have been allowed in the library. This was going to take a long time, at least a day, and he was impatient to see if the white gate was still there. There was no urgency, he concluded as he put some free leaflets into his bag.
He stepped outside the library, took a drink from his water bottle and made his way up the hill to St Paul’s school. He reflected that he must get a job and earn some money, whatever he was going to do in the end, so he found himself getting a bit impatient again.
But not for long. When he got to the top of the hill he looked towards where the white gate had been. It was still there! He glanced around him, decided no one was in sight, pushed the gate open, and slipped through the hedge.
***
In Wanulka, Jalli was eager to get to the city centre and check out the white gate again. “Her white gate” she was calling it because no-one else seemed to see it.
On the way she contemplated how likely it was that it would still be there that day and was deciding how disappointed she would be. To be honest, “very” was the answer. So, as she approached the place and looked across the road to see her bright little gate clearly visible in the Municipal Gardens wall exactly where it had been the day before, she was elated. The street was quite busy. She was conscious that someone might see her go in and try and follow her. So rather than crossing the road and walking straight up to the gate, she decided to cross further up and slide in the way she had done the first time.
The gate opened under her hand and she stepped into the channel through the hedge. Bending to remove her shoes she looked across the lawn. “Someone else has been here,” she thought. She immediately noticed the dents of large shoes across the lawn leading up to the front door. She thought of retreating – she must be intruding. She felt both welcomed and uncomfortable at the same time. While she stood barefoot on the edge of the lawn, she heard someone call from her left, “Hi! You live here?” It was Jack who had just arrived himself.
“N…No,” she stammered, “I…I’m sorry I just found this place yesterday and thought I would come back and see if anyone was here today.”
Jalli was standing on the spot where Jack had found the footstep the day before.
“How did you get in?”
“Through that white gate here,” she explained.
“It wasn’t there yesterday,” stated Jack, noticing a new white gate behind her for the first time. “I came through one too. Over there.” Jack pointed to the gate leading to Persham.
“You’ve come through a white gate too! I didn’t see yours yesterday either. I just liked this place so much that I wanted to come back today. I hope that is alright.”
“It’s alright by me,” replied Jack, “but it’s only my second time here myself. It isn’t my place. Have you met anyone else here?”
“No-one,” stated Jalli. “Have you?”
“Not a soul. No-one in the garden and no-one anywhere in the house.”
“You’ve been inside?”
“I just thought I would try and find someone. There was no-one in the cottage, but its seems lived in.”
“What did you call the house? Cot…” asked Jalli.
“What? ‘Cottage’? It’s a country cottage.”
“I don’t know that word,” explained Jalli. “…and I’ve never seen a house like this before.”
“True, you don’t get them like this in Persham. You have to go out into the country a bit…usually,” he added, looking at the very real cottage.
“Where did you say?” marvelled Jalli.
“Where? Persham? The town out there.”
“It’s not out there!” stressed Jalli, pointing to the gate from which she had come. “Out there it’s Wanulka. The Municipal Gardens to be exact. Come and look.” Jack walked across to Jalli’s gate and looked over. There, beyond, was the busy street in Wanulka.
“Astounding!” exclaimed Jack.
Then they went together to Jack’s gate and beyond it they observed the road outside St Paul’s school in Persham.
“Mind-blowing!” announced Jalli.
Somehow they had both found a white gate that no-one else appeared to see in their own lands. Those gates had taken them both through to an isolated garden and cottage that appeared to be lived in, yet deserted apart from themselves. Just what were they to make of all this?
“Look let’s sit over there under the tree on that bench and compare notes,” suggested Jalli. She tip-toed across the lawn to the bench.
“Why do you take your shoes off?” Jack inquired.
“Because this lawn is so perfect. You dent it with every step.”
“Like I’ve done?”
“Well. Yes…”
“Perhaps I should…”
“No. It’s me,” interjected Jalli. “I was afraid of making any impression on this place. It wasn’t mine.”
“But you’re not so afraid of doing it now?”
“No. No, I’m not. I feel this place has welcomed me.”
“So do I!” exclaimed Jack. “It’s as if, well, somebody wants me here.”
“Exactly!”
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“Somehow I feel I ‘belong’ here in some strange kind of way. But I didn’t discover it till yesterday. And to tell the truth I could not wait to come again. It’s a very beautiful place, but it’s more than that.”
“I know just what you mean. I felt really drawn to come back. I was so worried the gate wouldn’t be there today.”
“Just the way I felt. And I was so glad it was. I opened it, stepped in, and then you appeared.”
“Perfect timing! Perhaps we were meant to meet.”
“Do you think, all this is some kind of ‘plan’?” queried Jack.
“Well. I do believe that God looks after you and has a ‘plan’ for each one of us. But I never thought it would be in a strange new garden with strange white gates. It’s like in a new world. There’s nothing like this anywhere near where I live. The air is different, the trees, the birds. It is as much about how it feels as how it looks and sounds. And yet, at the same time I like…kind of…know…” Jalli weighed her words, “It’s as if I’m at home.”
“I’m not sure what I think about God…” said Jack, “I’ve never given him much thought. Mum always reckons He exists but she never calls on him or anything. But I agree about your ‘another world’ thing. Yet I just cannot understand how it works. I mean, it is not in St Paul’s school yard and not in your…what did you call your park?”
“Municipal Gardens. But where is it then? Where are we?”
“I really don’t know. This cottage could be England but the plants and trees are not quite right. It’s definitely not Persham. It could be some virtual reality but it is extremely advanced if it is. One possibility is that we are on board some kind of alien spacecraft with technology so advanced we can’t detect it beyond the sensory experiences the aliens give us to experience.
“Aliens. You mean people who are strangers?”
“Yes. People from other planets. There could be more advanced civilisations than ours who could travel without being seen and land on Earth and take us over without us knowing it. At school we learned about Plato talking about the world we know being mere shadows projected on the wall inside a cave. The people in the cave can’t see reality, only a shadow of it. But they could not know what it was truly like outside the cave in the real world. They weren’t even aware that there was a world beyond what they could see. Coming here might be like stepping outside Plato’s cave and seeing the real world for the first time…
“Then I was wondering about wormholes, but I think that is only fiction.”
“Wormholes?” quizzed Jalli.
“Yes. Passages through space and time that lead from one universe to another. But that would mean we would have had to have travelled millions of light years.”
“Do we have to work it out? I mean, must we know how it happens? Perhaps we should just enjoy it and explore it as it presents itself. All I know is that, in one way it is all very different, but in another way I do feel so at home.”
“I feel like that too. That’s a good way of putting it.” Jack studied, a thoughtful expression on his face. “At home”! Jack pondered the words. This belonging thing was probably the strangest thing about the whole experience.
“At one time I thought I could have died and gone to heaven!” stated Jalli. “But quite clearly I haven’t, because my grandma seemed to think I was normal enough and people in Wanulka all treated me normally.”
“Tell me about your place,” asked Jack. He was beginning to like this girl. She was different from any of the girls that went to his school. She wasn’t like anybody he knew. All at once it came to him. She belonged in that bedroom he had been so ungentlemanly in inspecting yesterday. Those were her things. She did belong! Wasn’t she wearing a green T-shirt with the same sun face on it?
Jalli started to tell him about Wanulka. She told him how it was hot and dry at the moment, how the suns were at their brightest and the rains were not due for another month. She told him about the Municipal Gardens and how the white gate was not visible to anyone else, even to the gardener who had worked there for years.
Privately, Jalli thought of Maik Musula and how he had made her feel about men. Perhaps she was being naïve all over again? But Jack seemed great – she had only just met him, but everything he did, and everything he said, seemed to dispel any doubts she should have had.
Then Jack explained about St Paul’s school yard and the hill on which it stood with roads leading down into the centre of Persham. He told her about how he had just finished high school forever, and about his exam results yesterday. Then he explained how he had discovered the gate on his way to the library. He was also convinced that no-one else could see his white gate.
“Except me,” remarked Jalli.
“Except you! So, hi! I’m Jack.”
“Jalli, Jalli Rarga.”
“Jack Smith.”
“Jack Smitt?”
“Jack Smith.”
“Smitt,” she tried.
“No. Smith. Put your tongue between your teeth. You must be able to say it because you’re saying all the other ‘ths’ perfectly.”
“I have never said a strange word like that, Jack Smitt…Sm-i-ss.” She laughed.
“Oh. Jack will do! Jalli Raa-ga?”
“Perfect!”
“But look. Your Wanooka…”
“Wa-nul-ka.”
“Wa-nul-ka. You said ‘suns’ – more than one?”
“Yes, of course, there are three.”
“Wow! You’re kidding! We only have one sun. I mean on Earth we only have one. That must put us in a different part of the sky. No, I don’t get that. How could we have travelled across millions of miles by just walking through a hedge? You’re having me on!”
“Having you ‘on’? What does that mean?”
“It means you’re teasing me. You can’t have more than one sun in your Wanulka!”
“But we do,” retorted Jalli, concerned that he thought she was not telling the truth. “Why should I tease you?”
“I don’t know. I mean…I’m sorry. It’s just too fantastic.”
“It’s a mystery. God’s mystery. But like lots of things He makes, it’s…”
“But that makes it all too easy. I mean the universe just doesn’t work that way.”
“Maybe not the universe you know about. But the universe is very, very big. Many things could happen that we don’t understand yet… And I don’t think this place, and you, are just in my imagination, a sort of dream… It’s not like anything I’ve ever imagined before. It’s far too real and different to be a dream.”
“No. I agree. I think it’s real alright.”
“Then, perhaps it is one of your ‘wormholes’.”
Jack did not know what to say next. They both had to try and get their heads around this. The only thing that made sense was that they had somehow transported through space-time. This was indeed mind-blowing as Jalli had said.
They sat in silence for a bit. Everything was surreal and fantastic, yet everything about it was so cool. After a few minutes Jack said:
“Three suns. I like that idea. What do you call them?”
“Jallaxa, Suuf and Skhlaia.”
“Jallaxa, Soof and Claya?”
“Suuf and Skhlaia.”
“Whatever. You only have one sun on your T-shirt.”
“That’s Jallaxa. The biggest and brightest.”
“Jallaxa! I can say that one!” They laughed.
“That’s good. I’m named after it, Jallaxanya. It means ‘little Jallaxa’. They call me Jalli for short.”
“That’s a nice name. I like it.”
“Thank you kind sir!” They laughed again.
“But,” continued Jack, “if you live in a different world you must speak an entirely different language to me. So how come you’re speaking English? Where did you learn to speak it so well?”
“English? What’s that language? I speak Wanulkish.”
“So, you’re not speaking English…now?”
<
br /> “No! I am speaking Wanulkish.”
“Am I speaking Wanulkish?”
“Yes. But some of the things you say are a bit strange. And sometimes you use odd words like…What did you call the house?”
“Cottage.”
“Cot-tage. Things that I don’t know the name of. And there’s a slightly different sort of accent to your voice from what I am used to.”
“Your English sounds like that to me. I like the nice way you pronounce it though…”
“Do you know what I think? I think we are talking, each of us in our own language, and ‘He’ or ‘She’ or ‘It’ – whatever it is that has brought us to this place – is doing some kind of dubbing. You say it in English and I hear it in Wanulkish, and vice-versa.”
“That would have to be so, because I have never heard of Wanulkish, and it would be strange coming from different planets if we spoke the same. If you’re from a different planet that makes you an alien!”
“Me, an alien?”
“Yes, from outer-space. But when people in Britain draw pictures of ‘aliens’ they usually have odd shaped bodies and funny faces. They’re often thought of as ‘little green men’.”
“Green? Are you saying I look green?” Jalli was almost horrified.
“No. That’s the point you look…human. Like you come from Planet Earth… Look, I wonder whether what is true for our language is also true of our appearances as well? What I mean is, if our speech is being translated, is the same thing happening to what we see? I mean, you may not have three arms and two blue heads like me!” Jack found himself enjoying talking about appearance to this girl whom he thought was quite attractive. He also liked the way she laughed.
“You do not have three arms and two blue heads!” giggled Jalli.
“That could be quite offensive if I had!” exclaimed Jack. “But you’re right I don’t. I have two arms and one head and it is not blue! Let’s test this further! Describe yourself to me, and I will say if what I see is what you think you are.”
The Kicking Tree Page 4
