The World Walker Series Box Set

by Ian W. Sainsbury

  As she rounded the corner of the Keep, Uncle John emerged from one of the wooden buildings. Disused for a long time, he’d taken it over and converted it into a workshop, building tables, chairs, stools, and desks. They were utilitarian items, but beautiful in their way. Simple, strong, functional. The community sold them on the mainland to help pay their few, regular bills.

  “Hey, Joni, what’s up?” Uncle John was Dad’s brother, although they hadn’t even known about each other until they were adults. Stranger still, John said he was sick before he met Seb, that his brother cured him. He didn’t talk about his life before then at all.

  “Hi, Uncle John. You got a minute?”

  “For you, honey? Of course. Coffee?” Joni had recently discovered the joy of coffee, mostly because of John’s passion for it and his almost ritualistic approach to making it. Coffee beans arrived weekly on the boat, he ground them by hand and used a personally modified heater to drip water onto the grounds in a steel cafetière. Even this wasn’t as good as a pressurized system, he’d told Joni. It was on his to-do list.

  “Yes, please.” She followed John into the workshop, and he grabbed a handful of beans, weighing them on an old-fashioned set of scales before tipping them into the grinder. Joni leaned over and grabbed another handful.

  “This is going to be a two-pot conversation,” she said.

  The telling took some time because Uncle John wanted as much detail as possible. He wanted to know everything she remembered from her ninth birthday. Then he wanted to hear how it felt when she was on the train, what was the same, what was different. Exactly what steps she took to make it happen, the reset.

  “So, you’re buying all this, then?” she said, draining her third mug of black coffee. One more than her usual limit. She could feel the buzz.

  John spread his hands and shrugged.

  “Why would you lie? And this kinda runs in the family. Well, not this, exactly, but, well.” He fell silent for a moment, thinking.

  “You don’t remember us taking you to the Thin Place, do you?”

  Joni looked at him, blankly.

  “You were three years old. We had Stuart take us out on the boat. Just me, you and your mother. Mee didn’t want anyone to know what we were doing. She told everyone we were going fishing.”

  Joni laughed at the thought of her mum fishing. She was a vegetarian for a start.

  “Great cover story,” she said.

  “You think? Well, she was nervous. We went out to sea. Funny, people forget this planet is mostly ocean. No one ever looks for Thin Places anywhere but on land.”

  “They’re at sea, too?”

  “You bet. Probably many more than on land. I guess most are difficult to get to. You have to be real close to be able to draw on the Manna. It’s not gonna work if you’re floating a few hundred feet above it in a boat. So we headed for the shallows, kept close to the coastline. After about twenty minutes, Mee had Stuart slow the boat. She could feel it, close. She always was sensitive that way. We got a little further in, then Stuart cut the engine. I guess we were sitting in about ten to twelve feet of water. She leaned out, put her hands in, and the Manna just rocketed up from the seabed into her body. She was fairly crackling with energy. Then she picked you up and dangled you over the water.”

  “What did I do?”

  “First of all, you laughed. You thought it was some new game. Then your mum told you there was something special under the water. You wanted to know if it was a water-baby. Don’t know where you picked that idea up from, but when Mee said, ‘maybe’, you tried real hard to get to it. Mee said if you concentrated, it might come.”

  John took a sip of coffee and pulled a face when he realized it had gone cold. He put the mug on an old table covered in coffee rings.

  “We waited about a half hour. It was getting cold, you were tired. When we turned around for home, you started to cry a little because you hadn’t seen the water-baby. Then when your mum said we wouldn’t be fishing, you fair howled all the way back.”

  Joni smiled.

  “I don’t remember it,” she said. “So, I’m not a User. Mum said so when I asked, but I didn’t realize she had tested it.”

  “Yup,” said John. He fell silent again, waiting. Eventually, Joni spoke.

  “So what am I, exactly?”

  “That’s the sixty-four-million-dollar question, honey. I guess we might have to ask your father when he comes back.”

  Joni looked him in the eye. She had known Uncle John all her life. He was a quiet man, kind, gentle and patient. She had never heard him raise his voice and he had always made time for her, never told her to run along or come back later. And he had never, ever lied to her, answering every question she posed carefully, but honestly.

  “Do you really believe that?” she said. “Do you really think he’s coming back?”

  John nodded slowly, his eyes never leaving hers.

  “I know it.”

  Joni stood up and stretched. It was late afternoon now and she could hear the sounds of food preparation coming from the kitchen.

  “Ok. Ok.” She walked to the door, but John said her name, quietly, and she turned. He looked older in the lengthening shadows. He was in his sixties but had always seemed like a man decades younger. Now he looked his age. A trick of the light.

  “Two things. First, what are you going to do with this power?”

  “I’m going to try to figure it out a little, explore it. See if I can make it happen, rather than wait for these moments. If I practice, maybe I’ll be able to get some control over it. I’m going to try.”

  John sighed and shook his head.

  “Of course. Of course. I guess you have to find out what’s going on. When your mother had that little chat with you about changes going on in your body she had no idea, right? But that’s the second thing. You gonna tell your mom?”

  Joni shook her head. John nodded slowly back.

  “I guess it’s wise. Unless you have to.”

  Joni knew they both wanted to protect Mum. Finding out Joni wasn’t a User must have been a relief - and she knew Uncle John’s refusal to talk about his past had something to do with Manna, Mum had said so when pressed. If Mum thought Joni had some kind of power inherited from her father, she would, inevitably, consider the possibility that she might lose her daughter the same way she had lost her soul mate. Joni remembered Mum’s last episode - what Joni used to call ‘going into the Sad.’ She had laid in bed ten days, getting up only to go to the bathroom, eating almost nothing. Silent, unreachable. Looking at her daughter as if she didn’t know her. It had been almost unbearable. That had been three years ago. Joni wasn’t about to be the cause of it happening again.

  “And Joni?”

  “Yes?”

  “Be careful. This ability may have saved your life once, but I can tell you that true power always comes with a price. I guess this time, you had a taste of that.”

  Joni said nothing, the ache of Odd like a physical knot in her side.

  “I’ll be careful. I promise.”

  She would start practicing tomorrow.

  15

  Joni decided to be disciplined about her attempts to reset. She put aside two hours each morning and asked for privacy, telling Mum she was going to work on her writing. She kept a journal and noted the time before each attempt. In the afternoons, she kept up her solitary walks. She had a lot of thinking to do.

  The first few days were frustrating. It was hard to know how to start. She looked for a link between the fall from the tree and the moment on the train. The only common element she could find—other than the humming and the tingling—was the fact that she had seen a version of herself. A shadow-self. There had been a shadow-self sitting near the tree on her ninth birthday. On the train, she had brought to mind a shadow-self, sitting on the bed, weeks before. Now, though, she couldn’t seem to consciously make it happen. She tried concentrating hard, listening for the low hum, flexing her fingers as she waited for the t
ingling to begin. It never did.

  Dozens of times, Joni got up from her bed and made for the door, turning at the last moment, hoping to see her shadow-self still sitting on the bed. Nothing.

  She joined the community regularly for morning meditation at 6am, much to Kate’s pleasure and Mum’s surprise, taking seriously for the first time the attempt to be fully awake to the moment. To her disappointment, this seemed to be virtually impossible. Her legs hurt as she sat on the cushion, she developed itches in places she didn’t even know could itch and she spent the whole hour thinking about not thinking about scratching them. Or she would think about Odd, and spend sixty minutes indulging in miserable self-pity. She persevered mainly because she knew it was this daily—well, twice-daily for most of them—activity which had kept Mum functioning. Without it, the depression she sank into so rarely would have swallowed her whole.

  Kate put a hand on Joni’s shoulder after one of the early sessions.

  “This is why it’s called practice, Joni. We are not trying to achieve anything. There is no goal here. Stop trying.”

  That just annoyed her for a few more days, until sheer boredom made her stop trying one morning and she suddenly—only for a fraction of a moment—understood what Kate had meant. It was as if something inside her had cracked open to reveal the real person. She carried the knowledge of that into her two-hour reset sessions, logging her failures day after day in her journal.

  The breakthrough, when it came, was laughably ordinary. She was sitting on her bed—her journal documented this as attempt number seventy-three—when there was a quiet knock at the door.

  “Can I come in?” It was Mum’s voice.

  “Sure,” said Joni, remembering at the last moment as the door swung open, to grab her pen in an attempt to look as if she was in mid-sentence. “Hmm?” she said, distractedly, as Mee’s face appeared.

  “Sorry to disturb you, Jones,” said Mum, “but McG is on the roof again.” McG was one of Innisfarne’s five goats and the most adventurous. His full name was Goaty McGoatface, although no-one could remember who had christened him. His occasional forays onto the roofs of the Keep’s various single-story buildings occurred at least once a month, and Joni was the only one who could reliably talk him down.

  Joni hesitated. McG could wait, it wouldn’t hurt him to spend another forty-five minutes on the roof. He might even find his own way down. And she was determined to remain disciplined in her pursuit of the secret behind the reset. She was about to refuse when she remembered it had rained the night before, and McG might slip and hurt himself. She was too soft-hearted when it came to that stupid animal.

  “Ok, I’m on my way,” she said, uncurling her legs from under her and sliding off the bed.

  “You’re a star,” said Mee, then looked at her, frowning. “You all right?”

  Joni was standing stock still. The tingling was there, so subtle she would have missed it if she hadn’t spent the last few weeks trying desperately to make it happen. She closed her eyes briefly. She could feel, as well as hear, the faint hum; such a deep note, it seemed to be heard with the whole body, not just her ears.

  “You ok?” said Mee again. “Jones? You with us?”

  “Yeah, yeah, sorry. Just lost in my writing, I guess.” She headed for the door and turned as she got there, holding her breath.

  Sitting on the bed was a faint shadowy outline of a figure, its legs tucked under itself, holding a journal.

  “That’s good,” said Mee as they walked out to find the recalcitrant goat, who was bleating furiously from the roof of Uncle John’s workshop. “You’re finally getting somewhere with it, then?”

  “Yes,” said Joni, “I think I am.”

  She successfully rescued McG and moved the trellis leaning against the workshop wall which had enabled him to get up there in the first place.

  “Sorry,” said Uncle John, as he moved the trellis to a safer location. “I clean forgot he thinks he’s a mountain goat.”

  He looked at Joni quizzically as she turned to go back to her room.

  “Any luck yet?”

  “Ask me tomorrow,” she said, walked a few paces, then stopped. “Actually, can I come in for a second?”

  They sat in the workshop together. Joni refused the coffee this time.

  “It just happened,” she said. “I think I can reset. I’m going to try.”

  “Now? Here?”

  “Why not?”

  John poured himself some coffee and looked at her, intently.

  “You need to stretch first? Warm up? Seriously, though, Joni, if this works, come straight back and tell me about it. I guess I won’t remember this conversation, right? It won’t have happened?”

  “Yes. No. I don’t think so. Ok, here we go.”

  The tingling sensation had continued ever since Joni had left the room. It had faded a little, but it was easy to relax and let it come back, along with the low hum. This time, it happened fast. The moment she looked inward and focused all her attention on what was going on inside her, the tingling increased, the sound roared and—

  —she was back on her bed.

  There was a quiet knock on the door.

  “Can I come in?” It was Mum’s voice.

  “Sure,” said Joni. When Mee’s face appeared this time, Joni kept her eyes on her journal and chewed her pencil as if she was lost in concentration.

  “Sorry to disturb you, Jones,” said Mum, “but McG is on the roof again.”

  Joni glanced up then. Her mouth dropped open, and the pencil fell out. She was about to make a decision. That’s it, that’s how this works. I’m at a fork in the road.

  “You ok, Jones? Did you hear what I said?”

  Joni took a couple of deep breaths, excited at her discovery and eager to test it. She realized she was flushed and breathing rapidly.

  “Um. Yeah, I heard you, Mum, but I just had a great idea for a story. Let me just get some thoughts down, then I’ll come and take care of McG. Twenty minutes. Thirty, tops.”

  “Ok. Let’s hope he doesn’t eat his way through John’s roof in the meantime.”

  When the door closed, Joni stood up and looked at the bed. The shadow figure was still sitting there. She picked up her journal and made some notes.

  Key element: a decision.

  1. The fall from the tree. I decided to climb the tree, instead of going to the beach or heading back to the Keep.

  2. I decided to ask Mum if I could go on the writing course, rather than stay on Innisfarne.

  3. I decided to help rescue McG, rather than stay in my room.

  Consequences of decisions:

  1. I fell out of the tree and died .(Did I? )

  2. I met the Norwegian shithead, and he stomped all over my heart.

  3. A goat climbed down from a roof.

  Number three seemed a little out of place. No one got hurt. Even as she considered this, there was a bang from outside, shouts, and some very loud bleating. Joni ran.

  McG had found his own way down from the roof. He had chosen the most direct route—straight down, backward, letting gravity do all the work—and had broken a hind leg as a result. The poor creature was screaming in pain. Joni took one look, stopped running and looked inward.

  The reset was practically instant this time. She was back in her room. There was a knock on the door.

  “Can I come—oh!” Mee stepped back in surprise as Joni flung open the door and came out. Mee hurried to keep up with her as she headed for the stairs.

  “It’s—,”

  “McG?” Joni finished her mother’s sentence for her. Mee stopped in confusion, halfway down the stairs.

  “Yes. How did you—,”

  “Intuition,” said Joni as the front door shut behind her.

  Five minutes later, McG was safely back in the yard, and Joni was heading back up to her room to try again.

  16

  The rest of the morning passed extremely quickly, and very slowly. Quickly because now that she had
found the trigger, Joni discovered she could bring on the conditions for a reset at will, so she continued experimenting. Slowly, because each time she reset, she had to live through the same time period again.

  This year is already 375 days long.

  She had been on the writing course for ten days, then lived through the same period on Innisfarne after the reset. She thought about the implications for a while, then shook her head in a futile attempt to clear it.

  She reviewed her notes. The first time she had reset, it had saved her life. The second time had been an attempt to avoid severe emotional pain. In that regard, it had failed. She remembered everything, including the pain, despite the fact that—now—it had never happened.

  “Arse biscuits,” she said aloud. It was one of Mum’s tamer expressions. It felt strangely appropriate.

  The third reset had prevented a goat suffering a broken leg. Not life or death like the first time, not emotional distress like the second (she wasn’t sure if McG was capable of existential angst brought on by a disastrous love affair, but she rather doubted it). The third attempt differed in another key regard: she had not been personally involved. The events she had changed had benefitted the goat, not her.

  The rest of the morning was a series of increasingly successful attempts to trigger a reset moment without a significant event occurring. By the time she went for her walk that afternoon, Joni could make it happen at will, just by making a trivial choice between two inconsequential outcomes. She tested it one last time that night, just before bed.

  The blue pajamas or the cotton T-shirt?

  The blue pajamas won out, and she climbed into bed. As she closed her eyes, she reset and was standing in front of her closet again. This time, she pulled out the old white T-shirt and put it on before getting into bed.