Evan picked up his book and gave Joni a rueful grin. “She’ll come back dressed as a mermaid,” he said. “She’s always a mermaid. Meet you back here in half an hour.”
Joni smiled and waved as he walked out of sight. Half an hour was enough time to climb a tree, or take a quick swim in the bay. A grownup, keeping the sea in sight on their right side, could walk the perimeter of the entire island in under three hours. But, as far as Joni was concerned, Innisfarne had everything she could possibly want. Well, nearly everything. It had the sea for swimming in, the forest to explore, trees to climb. She had friends who came back year after year with their parents to be part of the community for a few months. And she had Mum. And Uncle John. And Kate.
She chewed her lower lip and wondered if Mum would let her dye her hair green as part of a costume. It was a long shot. Mum always said she looked perfect as she was. Joni wasn’t too sure. Her hair never did what she wanted, sticking out at funny angles, although Mum had fixed it into a plait today. And her eyes weren’t deep brown like Mum’s, they were gray, which she thought looked a bit weird in her light brown face. But she couldn’t talk about her eyes to Mum. Mum said she had her dad’s eyes.
She’d have to fetch an adult if she wanted to swim. Mum always looked sad when they went down to the best beach for swimming. She didn’t like to go there. Uncle John might come. Joni already had her outfit in the backpack at her feet: a long dress made of green and brown rags sewn together, complete with a matching headband. She was going to be a dryad, a tree-spirit. Joni wondered if she was cheating, as dryads weren’t imaginary. After a few seconds thought, she concluded that since everyone else thought they were imaginary, it would probably be ok. It was her birthday, after all.
She decided to climb the oak tree.
As soon as the decision was made, the tingling started. It was a bit like pins and needles, only this was in her head. It had happened before, every now and then, for as long as Joni could remember. It always went away after a few seconds. She was about to start climbing when she hesitated, one foot already in the first knothole.
The tingling sensation was so insistent this time. And she could hear something, too. If Joni had known what tinnitus was, she might have blamed that for the cause of the constant sound. But the hum she heard didn’t have the high-pitched tone familiar to tinnitus sufferers - it was, instead, a low whispering rumble deep in the bass end of the frequency range.
There was also something happening to Joni’s vision. She blinked a few times, but the strange sensation remained. It was as if the area directly in front of her was normal, but everywhere else was darkening. Slowly, Joni turned her head. A bright area stayed in focus around the tree. Everywhere else, colors were muted and faded, becoming a twilight monochrome. She looked back at the oak and up into its branches, following the path she would climb. It, at least, was still perfectly lit by the early-afternoon sun.
Although the day had suddenly—magically, thought Joni, as excited as she was nervous—become twilight, some areas were far easier to see than others. There were two slightly brighter paths leading away from the clearing and a patch of clear daylight. One path led toward the bay, the other back to the Keep. The clearest path was where Joni had been sitting while talking to the twins. What she saw there made Joni let go of the tree and gasp.
“Oh, frogspawn,” she said. Although Mum cursed more than anyone else on Innisfarne, she wouldn’t let Joni do it, which was totally unfair. So Joni had developed her own swearing lexicon.
She chewed her lip again as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing. There was someone else sitting exactly where she had been sitting less than a minute ago. There was no way anyone could have crept up that quietly and quickly. Joni was the only one on the island who could move around without a sound. She’d had her whole life—nine years, she reminded herself proudly—to learn every rock, every bush, and every tree.
The figure she was staring at was strange and maddeningly familiar. Joni squinted. The reason it seemed so strange was easy enough to pinpoint. Joni could see right through the figure to the rough grass beneath where it was sitting. It wasn’t exactly transparent, though. It was more like it was there and not-there at the same time. Joni knew this didn’t make sense, but she also knew it was true, the same way she knew this was happening in her head; real and not-real.
Maybe it was a fairy. It was her birthday, after all. And Joni suspected she was half-fairy. Faerie, Joni corrected herself. In the grownup book she’d found in the library, it had been spelled that way, so that was probably how real faeries spelled it. Joni didn’t know much about her dad, but it was certainly possible he was a faerie. King of the faeries, Joni corrected herself. Joni knew her dad wasn’t dead, that he loved her very much, that he would come back if he could, that Mum would tell her more when she was older. Old enough to understand why he wasn’t here now. Joni didn’t think Mum really understood why her dad wasn’t here, but she didn’t dare say so, especially because Mum might admit it was true.
If Dad was the king of the faeries, who only left his magical kingdom for one night every hundred years, he might have visited Innisfarne and fallen in love with a human woman. Which would make Joni half-faerie. It would certainly explain a lot. Including, perhaps the presence of this magical creature sitting a few feet away from her. Joni looked more closely, trying to take in every detail in case it suddenly disappeared.
It was definitely female. Although the figure had its back to her, the part of her face that was visible looked like a girl’s features. Her hair was styled in a plait like Joni’s. Joni was thinking of asking Mum if she could have a pixie-cut. Would a faerie call it a pixie-cut? Did that mean pixies might have a faerie-cut? Joni wondered what that might look like.
The figure even had a T-shirt like Joni’s. White, with sunflowers. Wait. Joni took a long look at the weird, indistinct shape. It wasn’t a faerie. It was something even stranger. It was her double. Then she realized she knew better than that. It wasn’t her double, it was—somehow—her.
The other Joni was frozen in exactly the position Joni had been sitting when she had decided to climb the tree. When she had thought about swimming instead. Or going home. Joni realized those two possibilities were the two paths that were still lit in the semi-darkness.
Whatever was going on, it was probably important, almost certainly magical (faerie magic, Joni reminded herself). She should probably go and tell Mum, or Uncle John. But…the oak was such a great tree to climb. And Joni was such a great climber. And the view from halfway up was amazing. One day, she’d make it all the way to the top, but Mum would have a complete fit if she saw her and it was a bit scary when you got that high, so maybe not today. Maybe when she was ten.
She turned away from the other Joni and started to climb.
2
The lower part of the trunk was massive, but it wasn’t smooth. It looked like hundreds of arms were stretching around the trunk, trying to grasp something on the other side. Joni stood on these arms and quickly clambered up to the first branches. Progress after that was easy, and the ancient oak was so huge that it was possible to climb near the center and remain totally invisible from outside. Of course, anyone close enough would have heard what sounded like a giant squirrel making its way up the tree. Joni could climb quickly or quietly. Just not both at the same time. Joni was in the mood for speed today. She reached her marker within three minutes. She knew she was now halfway up the tree because of the piece of yellow rag a few feet out on the branch. The rag marked the furthest point she’d ever climbed. She looked at the scrap of yellow cloth. She hadn’t been able to see it from the ground today. Probably because she’d tied it there in Fall, and now new leaves had unfurled in their thousands, obscuring her marker.
Joni decided to move it further out so she could see it from the ground again.
She started her journey along the branch, crawling carefully, and soon came level with the rag. Quickly untying it, she looped it aroun
d her wrist before setting off again. As she inched away from the trunk, her weight caused the branch to dip. Her stomach lurched and she hissed out a surprised breath. She stopped for a few seconds, her heart beating rapidly. She looked down. It was a very long way. Much higher than the main building, which was two stories high. Twice as high as that. Joni looked at her fingers - white and shaking slightly due to the grip she had taken on the swaying branch. This was no way for the daughter of a faerie king to behave. Joni pushed herself upward and bounced on the branch experimentally. It bounced with her, flexible but strong. She realized it would take a lot more than her slight weight to break a branch this big and strong. She decided to go on.
The branch was now getting too narrow to crawl on, so Joni latched her fingers together, crossed her ankles and let herself slide off the branch and dangle beneath it like the baby orangutan had done on the TV program Mum had let her watch. She hung there briefly, almost losing her nerve, before resuming her progress along the branch, now upside-down. Hand over hand, foot over foot. It was easier than she had expected, and Joni looked up as more and more of the sky appeared through the branches above. The sky was a pale blue, and wispy clouds were moving at different speeds across it. The effect was almost hypnotic, and Joni began to feel as if none of this was really happening. Her thoughts slipped and slowed into a daydream.
“Hey, Joni, where are you? I’m a mermaid.” It was Hattie’s voice from below. Joni let her head hang down so that she could look directly beneath her. A bizarre figure was hopping across the clearing. Hattie had used sticky tape to cover her body and hair with shells and had fashioned a rudimentary tail out of a blanket, a shopping bag, and a great deal of industrial-sized aluminum foil. As her legs were stuck together (more tape), Hattie couldn’t walk properly, so her progress toward the oak was awkward and—frequently—painful, as her costume made it hard to remain upright for long. When she crashed to the ground for a fourth time, she called more loudly.
“Ow! Joni!? Where are you? Come and see my costume.”
Joni realized her earlier thought had been correct - Hattie couldn’t see the strange darkness, or the second Joni. Only she could see it. She knew this was a secret she would be keeping to herself. One day, she would be able to tell the fairy king, he would smile and explain and it would all make sense.
She took her right hand from the branch to wave at Hattie, and that’s when it happened. The piece of bark under her left hand suddenly sloughed off from the wood underneath, and her upper body fell away from the tree. For a quarter of a second, she still had the hope that her crossed feet might bear her weight, but that hope disappeared as her feet were wrenched apart and away from the branch, one sneaker sent spinning away.
She fell.
And that’s when the first impossible thing happened.
She wasn’t there any more. She was somewhere hot. Really hot. But the flames weren’t burning her. She looked around and didn’t understand what she was seeing. It was night-time. There were three moons in the sky. Two really scary looking people—goblins, maybe, they were ugly, ugly, ugly—were having a fight. There was a lot of blood, which was really yucky. Then lots of things happened quickly and it was like her brain couldn’t make sense of it. The goblin on the floor looked right at her and smiled and it wasn’t a goblin at all it was her dad but how could it be her dad? he was a fairy king not a goblin. She felt a big rush of love and happiness all the same and wanted to go to him even though she didn’t have a body and he was a goblin then suddenly -
- she was back on Innisfarne looking at the branch she had just fallen out of.
She didn’t scream, she didn’t breathe, she didn’t think.
Her body relaxed all on its own. Joni was passive. The fall was something that was happening to her. She had no say in what was coming next, no control over it. The fall was going to continue whatever she did. As would, of course, the end of the fall. Which was the next thing that was going to happen.
It happened. Her body had twisted slightly as she fell, but she was still traveling headfirst, as her hands had slipped half a second before her feet. So Joni’s head hit the ground first, about seven feet away from an open-mouthed Hattie, who didn’t have time to shut her eyes before her friend’s neck snapped loudly on impact. More than a dozen other bones were shattered in the fraction of a second that followed, many of them piercing various internal organs including her spleen, liver, and one of her lungs. Any of which may have led to her death. None of which did, however, as the fragment of skull which had been driven through Joni’s brain like a badly designed but extremely effective bullet, was already doing the job.
Joni held on to a tiny shred of consciousness and—before it winked out of existence—saw, clearer than any hologram, an image of herself. It was her as she was just before she had decided to climb the tree. Joni desperately tried to reach out to it. There was a humming sound and she felt pins and needles all over.
Hattie saw the life fade from the eyes of her friend, whose head was now stuck onto her body at completely the wrong angle. She opened her mouth to scream.
That was when the second impossible thing happened.
Joni was sitting at the base of the big oak tree. She looked up to see Evan smiling at her.
“She’ll come back dressed as a mermaid,” he said. “She’s always a mermaid. Meet you back here in half an hour.”
3
The party was fun. There was jello, hot dogs, ice cream, chips, cookies, soda, milkshakes, sandwiches, party games, hide-and-go-seek, apple bobbing, pass the parcel, dead lions, L-O-N-D-O-N London (which was the same as What’s The Time, Mr Wolf) and gifts. The gifts were all books, of course. Joni was a reader. One day, she was going to be a writer.
Mum had half-hoped Joni might turn out to be a musician, like her. She’d even named Joni after some ancient singer. The birthday gift last year had been a half-sized acoustic guitar. It was in her room now. It was useful for keeping the door open in summer when it was hot.
“Everything ok, Jones?”
Only Mum called Joni Jones. It didn’t sound right when anyone else said it.
Joni had been thinking about her fall. Trying to puzzle it out. She rubbed her neck, remembering the sensation when it had snapped. She smiled at her mother.
“Yes, Mummy. Just thinking about a book.”
Joni couldn’t have articulated clearly to anyone, even herself, why she lied at that moment, but she did it without hesitating. Something inside her suspected that telling Mum what had happened would make her go into the Sad again. Mum hardly ever went into the Sad these days, and when she did, she was usually back the same day. Since Joni’s last birthday, Mum hadn’t been to the Sad properly. Not like that time when she couldn’t get out of bed, and Kate and Uncle John looked after her for two days.
“You and your books, Jones. Never thought I’d produce a bookworm.”
A fit, lean man in his fifties appeared at Mum’s shoulder, holding a wrapped gift which was obviously a book.
“Uncle John!”
John shrugged mock-apologetically as he handed the book over.
“Happy birthday, honey,” he said. “Here’s another one for the collection.”
He winked at Joni.
“It’s a good thing, Mee,” he said. “Some kids don’t read at all. If I hadn’t had books when I was growing up…” His voice tailed off. His childhood had ended with him killing his father and becoming a violent criminal mastermind. Possibly not the best advertisement for encouraging kids to read.
Mee smiled at him. “Well, you turned out ok. Eventually.” She turned to Joni. “He’s ok, isn’t he?”
“Best. Uncle. Ever.” Joni finally managed to squeeze a finger under the paper and free the book from its wrapping.
“A Wizard Of Earthsea,” she said, looking at the cover, her eyes wide. “Wow! Thank you, Uncle John.”
She jumped up from the table and hugged John hard, squeezing him tight until he pretended he was struggling
to breathe and had to cling onto a chair to stop himself falling over. Joni giggled, then released him and skipped away to the corner of the communal dining room, flinging herself onto a well-worn beanbag and beginning to read. Within seconds she was lost to the world around her.
Mee and John cleared up dishes and started to wash them as the other children and the few members of the community who had come to the party began to drift away.
“A book about a wizard?” said Mee, quietly, handing John a plate to dry.
“It’s a beautiful book,” said John. “Joni loves fantasy - well, she loves every genre of book as far as I can tell. But give her a choice and she wants fairies, goblins, giants, dragons…and magic.”
“I know, I know,” said Mee. “But I’ve decided I’m going to start telling her a little bit about Manna, and I’m just worried she’s going to get confused. Reading about wizards, dragons, all that Middle-Earth crap.”
John flinched a little to hear Tolkien’s opus dismissed so casually, but decided this probably wasn’t the time to defend the Lord Of The Rings. Instead, he put the plate away and held out his hand for another.
“She’s a very bright kid,” he said. “And A Wizard Of Earthsea will teach her more about responsibility than magic. Don’t underestimate her. I’m glad you’re going to talk to her, though. She won’t be on this island forever.”
Mee sighed. “I wouldn’t want her to be,” she said. “Ten years ago, I’d have been horrified at the idea of living in some weird hippy community on a three-mile by two-mile island. Now, I can’t imagine living anywhere else. But Joni has her whole life ahead of her. She’s going to want to get out there, explore, see the world.”
The World Walker Series Box Set Page 68
