Kate stepped in as mediator.
“Please, Paula,” she said. “Mee’s stressed. We’d be very grateful if you could help Joni.”
Paula lit a joss stick and reminded herself to reject the negative and replace it with a positive. Her interpretation of that particular psychological technique meant that she allowed herself cake whenever anyone was mean, narrow-minded, or sneered at her spiritual beliefs and practices. Which had resulted in a slight weight problem.
“Thank you, Kate,” she said, ignoring Mee. She bent over the bed and laid her right hand on the child’s head and her left on her solar plexus. These, as she had been taught in module four of Chakra Consciousness: Awakening The Shaman Within (internet-based course, £699), were the seats of self-healing within the body. She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath through the nose, releasing it through the mouth with a long, “OM…”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” said Mee. Paula promised herself a Bakewell tart. She took another breath, then let the Manna flow out of her as she released it. She always pictured Manna as a healing stream of tiny blue crystals, entering the body and stimulating the chakras with their life-giving energy. She could feel the flow leaving her fingertips. She looked up at the other two women, unable to stop a slightly triumphant smile appearing on her face.
Mee nodded curtly.
“Thank you,” said Kate. Paula took a step backward from the bed. As she did so, Joni groaned in her sleep. Paula looked at the little girl’s face. Manna did its work pretty quickly. She expected to see signs of recovery within a minute or so. Back to full health in a couple of hours, no more.
Suddenly, Paula leaped about three feet into the air - a surprising maneuver for a woman of her age and size. Mee stared at her in consternation.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
Paula looked at Mee but felt unable to speak for a few seconds. She had never experienced anything like it. The Manna she had released had been restored to her. Not gently, either. It was as if it had been fired out of a canon back through her fingertips into her body. Which explained the gymnastics. It was unprecedented. Manna was never rejected; it adapted itself to every task, it was unstoppable once released. Paula shook her head firmly. First there was Year Zero. Now this. The world was surely ending. She made a mental note to send off for the prayer wheel she’d seen on discount.
“It’s no good,” she said. “The Manna - it came back again. Her body won’t take it.”
Kate stepped forward and looked at Joni, who had opened her eyes and was staring at them. She took the child’s hand and looked up at Paula.
“That’s impossible,” she said, flatly.
“I know that,” said Paula. Kate held up the hand she’d burned on the stove that morning.
“Try this,” she said.
Paula, still shaking a little, touched the burn with one finger. Mee noted—with a snort—that she didn’t bother with the runny-nosed chanting this time.
The burn shrank as they watched, disappearing as the shiny skin was replaced by fresh new cells.
“Humph,” said Paula, feeling vindicated. She could still channel the healing power of the universe. The problem obviously resided with the rude woman’s daughter. Probably some kind of karmic judgement regarding her mother. She picked up her joss stick and swept out of the room in a cloud of purple and yellow garments.
“More ice-cream, honey?” said Kate. Joni nodded feebly. She tried to push herself up on the pillows, but couldn’t do it. Mee and Kate propped her up.
“Back in a sec, Jones,” said Mee.
In the kitchen, Kate put a hand on Mee’s arm.
“If she can’t be helped with Manna…” she said.
“I know,” said Mee. “What choice do I have? I’ll call Stuart, see if he can come right away.”
While Kate took a bowl of ice cream up to Joni, Mee used the island’s only phone—an ancient landline device—to call Stuart, the retired fisherman who ran the daily ferry service between Logos Bay and Innisfarne on his old trawler.
Her hands were only shaking slightly as she replaced the receiver. She hadn’t left Innisfarne for ten years.
6
Berwick-Upon-Tweed
The hospital on the mainland was on the outskirts of a city. A city! Joni had read about cities, seen some TV shows that showed them, but the reality was markedly different to a moving picture on a twenty-inch screen.
For one thing, there was the noise. Joni and Mee had arrived in the back of Stuart’s car, and—as it was rush hour when they reached the city—the roads were packed with vehicles: vans, trucks, motorcycles and buses, most of them electric, but some still pumping clouds of smoke into the sky. At one memorable point, they drove under a bridge at the same time as the silver-blue streak of a train passed overhead.
Joni would have had her face pressed against the window, drinking in every last detail, if it hadn’t been for the fact that her head was lolling against Mee’s shoulder and she couldn’t summon enough energy to move it. Before they reached the hospital, she had fallen asleep again. Asleep! In a city!
When Joni finally woke up, it was night-time. There were soft pillows under her head and an unfamiliar smell in the room. She moved a little. Her back hurt. She managed to reach behind her and found a dressing covering the skin just above her butt. She flinched when she touched it. Her throat felt much better, and she was thirsty. The room she was in wasn’t completely dark, She could see Mum sleeping in a big chair next to her. Joni really needed a drink, but didn’t want to wake her. Mee was twitching and mumbling in her sleep. She looked exhausted, her skin gray, her dark black hair lank and uncared-for, a few streaks of white coming through in places.
Joni could see a glass of water on a table next to her. She reached out her hand for it. Her arm still felt heavy, but it wasn’t as bad as it had been back on Innisfarne. She closed her fingers on the glass. It was still cold. Joni guessed Mum must have been refilling it with fresh cold water every so often ready for when Joni woke up. She was about to pick up the glass when she saw the tube on her arm. Pieces of tape attached the tube to her skin. There was a clear liquid inside the tube and, when she looked closely, there was a needle at the end of it going right into her flesh. Joni jumped in shock, and the glass slipped out of her hands, smashing on the hard floor.
Mee’s eyes opened, and she was on her feet instantly, ignoring the glass and taking Joni’s hand. She saw the expression on Joni’s face as she looked at the tube going from her arm to the transparent bag hanging at her bedside.
“It’s ok, Jones, it’s there to make you better. You were dehydrated—you needed fluids—and this is how they do it in hospital. It means your body can have a drink, even when you’re asleep.”
Mee perched on the bed and stroked Joni’s cheek.
“You’re going to be fine. The doctors and nurses have taken good care of you.”
“What’s wrong with me?”
“It’s called glandular fever. It gave you a sore throat and made you very tired, but you’re on the mend now. We’ll be able to go home in the morning.”
Joni smiled and pushed herself up a little on the pillows.
“Can’t we stay a bit longer?” she said. “In the city, I mean. Just to see what it’s like. Just for a little while.”
She looked up at Mee’s face. She was frowning.
“There’s nothing for us here, Jones. We have everything we need on Innisfarne.”
“But, Mum-”
“But nothing, lovely girl. I have medicine for you, and the doctor said you’re going to need plenty of rest for the next week or so. Home is where you need to be.”
Mee smiled at her daughter, but the smile didn’t look right.
“I’ll get you some more water.”
As Mee poured the water, a nurse came in and started picking up the pieces of broken glass. Mee’s thoughts were whirling. She hated being away from the island, and a decade of self-imposed exile had made her feel like a stranger
on the mainland. Even the small town of Berwick-Upon-Tweed (which Joni had insisted on calling a city) where the hospital was located seemed overwhelming, despite the fact that Mee had grown up in north London.
She had already called Stewart to arrange transport back to Innisfarne in a few hours.
She couldn’t tell Joni the truth. Not yet. How do you tell a ten-year-old child that her father was some kind of super-being? That most of the Order thought he was the Messiah? That plenty of other Users wanted him dead? And that if anyone found out that Meera Patel—Seb’s girlfriend—was alive and well, there would be plenty of interested parties who might track her down, not all of which who would have harmless intentions. And what happened when they found out about Joni? The Messiah’s daughter? The biological offspring of the most powerful being on the planet?
And how could she ever leave Innisfarne? That was where Seb had spent the last few weeks before he disappeared. That’s where he would come back to. She would need to be there if he returned. When. When he returned.
Joni was given a wheelchair for her trip back to the car the next morning. That was kind of fun, but it also meant she couldn’t explore some of the places they passed which looked interesting. She was curious about the rest of the children’s ward. There were sixteen children in there—Joni counted—and, as she’d never been in a room with more than four other children before, that in itself was pretty amazing. Some of the kids were in bed, some were wandering around in their pajamas, three small boys were taking turns pushing a wooden train around a track. Two of the children—one of them a girl a little older than Joni—were bald, which was a little strange. Joni didn’t know if this was because some girls just didn’t grow hair or if it was the fashion in the city. She self-consciously gave her own curls a little tug just to reassure herself her hair was all still there.
The lobby of the hospital was a big, open room, with balconies on two levels above them, lots of glass letting in the sunlight, and an amazing machine which gave people drinks whenever they held a plastic circle up to it. Joni watched this process with fascination, while Mum spoke to a doctor.
“I’m glad I caught you, Ms Patel,” the doctor said. He was young, bright-eyed and remarkably presentable considering the two hours sleep he’d managed to snatch while on duty the previous night.
Mee was glad her name was not an uncommon one in the UK. As far as hospital records were concerned, they had treated Joni Patel. Mee knew her caution bordered on paranoia at times, but she also knew how easy it was to track someone in a hyper-connected world. She wanted to leave as little of a trail as possible, should anyone made a real effort to look for her. She left Joni looking at the vending machine, and stepped out of earshot.
“What can I do for you?” The doctor flicked through some notes until he found what looked like a computer-generated image of a human skull, with a solid black blob representing the brain.
“Your daughter—,” his eyes flicked down to the chart, “er, Joni, presented fairly serious symptoms when she was admitted. We needed to rule out meningitis.”
He noticed the look on Mee’s face. “We did rule out meningitis.”
“The lumbar puncture,” said Mee. That was an experience she never wanted to go through again. Even though she knew Joni was anesthetized and could feel nothing, the sight of that needle going into her back was something Mee was going to live with for a long time.
“Yes.” The doctor held his chart up a little higher. “We also took a CT scan of Joni’s brain.”
“But she’s ok?”
“Yes, yes, she’ll be fine. Make sure she completes the course of tablets, and she’ll be up and about in days. It’s just…well, we weren’t able to complete a proper scan.”
“What do you mean?” Mee gestured toward the image he was holding. “What’s that, then?”
“I think it’s some kind of malfunction.” The doctor tilted the image, as if it might impart its secrets more clearly if held at an angle. “Instead of a clear image of Joni’s brain, we got this. It’s weird. Like her brain is covered, or shielded.”
“You just said it was a malfunction.” Mee turned her body, signaling clearly that she wasn’t going to be staying long.
“Well yes, yes, of course, what else could it be? So, naturally, we reset the machine and tried again.”
“And?” Mee tried, and failed, to restrain her curiosity.
“And this time, the CT scanner shut down. Completely. All the computers turned themselves off. At first, we thought there had been a power cut. But it was just that room - and all the lights stayed on anyway. The machine was dead. We sent out for specialist maintenance, but they weren’t needed. The scanner turned itself back on before they arrived. They checked it and could find nothing wrong. To be honest, they thought I was wasting their time.”
“And why should I be interested in your computer trouble?”
“It’s just the timing, Ms Patel. That’s what was strange. I came in to see Joni yesterday evening and told you my diagnosis. When I left the room, I had a call. The scanner had just come back online. That very moment.”
Mee lifted an eyebrow and gave the man her best withering look. As withering looks go, hers was world-class. The doctor blushed and stammered under its glare.
“So, what are you suggesting? That my daughter broke your machine, then magically restored it to life? While she was unconscious?”
“Well, well, no, but, well, with this Manna stuff out there I just wondered…”
Mee sighed. She had forgotten how the world had changed beyond the island since Year Zero. Manna users weren’t in the shadows any longer, and those who had emerged were feared, mostly with good reason. She shook her head.
“She’s just a sick little girl, doctor, that’s all. And I need to get her home.”
“But, Ms Patel, if we could just try the scan again, we might rule out any possible—,”
“No,” said Mee. The doctor saw the look on her face and backed away. It probably was just a malfunction, anyway.
“Time to go, Jones,” said Mee as she helped Joni out of the wheelchair.
“Mum, can I ask a question?”
Mee braced herself. How much had Joni overheard?
“Sure, Jones, what is it?”
Joni twitched her thumb toward the vending machine.
“Can I have a hot chocolate?”
7
Six Years Later
Innisfarne
A few months after her sixteenth birthday, Joni met a boy, fell in love and had her heart broken. Then she unmet the boy, thinking that would mean she could unfall in love and unbreak her heart. She was disappointed, but not entirely surprised, to discover love didn’t work that way.
The boy’s name was Odd, and Joni met him on a creative writing course. The course had been advertised in one of the free local newspapers that occasionally reached Innisfarne on Stuart’s boat. It wasn’t cheap, it was nearly a hundred miles away, and it was residential - nine nights in a remote hotel just outside Haltwhistle on the southern edge of Northumberland National Park.
When she’d finally found the right moment to ask her mum, Joni had discovered a universal truth which came as a complete shock to her, just as it had to countless other teenage daughters since the beginning of time. She had discovered her mother was capable of doing something utterly surprising, something that completely confounded her expectations. Joni had gone to Mee expecting a huge argument, involving Joni having to point out that she was nearly an adult, that—although she appreciated that Mum was just trying to protect her–she couldn’t be expected to live out the rest of her life on a tiny island, that she had ambitions of her own, she wanted to be a writer, dammit, this was her dream, it had always been her dream, couldn’t anyone understand that, and if Mum stood in the way of her dreams, what did she think would happen, that -
“Yes,” had been Mee’s initial response, while folding laundry. When Joni, uncertain she’d heard correctly, had asked for clari
fication, Mum had handed her a basket of bedclothes and smiled. “It sounds great, Jones. I think you should go. I’ll call the bank tomorrow. Who do I need to transfer the money to?”
Joni was happy—very happy—but for about thirty seconds, she couldn’t feel it. She had been so ready to be disappointed, angry or wretched that these emotions still hovered around her like ominous storm clouds. Finally, she saw them as the illusions they were, they evaporated, and she hugged her mother.
“Thank you, Mum,” she said, “thank you, thank you.”
“Of course, Jones,” said Mee, stroking her daughter’s hair, inhaling her scent and marveling that the smell of her daughter was still as uniquely hers as it had been when she was a baby.
Mee knew daughters rebelled. She had done it herself, spectacularly, when she was only a few months older than Joni was now. She had discovered boys, alcohol, and marijuana during the course of a single ill-advised party lasting most of a weekend. Following that, she had bunked off school for half a year, failing every exam when her mother had finally forced her to return. It had taken years to bridge the distance between the two of them. She wasn’t going to let that happen with Joni, however much she wanted to protect her, however scared she was.
Joni kissed Mee and ran back to her room to get the newspaper ad. So far, her education had been taken care of by the steady flow of teachers who regularly spent periods of weeks, or months on Innisfarne. Now she was going to sit in a room full of people her own age. People who wanted to write! People like her! She danced around the room, then headed for the door.
The World Walker Series Box Set Page 70
