Mount Emily

by Low Ying Ping

  chapter three

  radually, Patsy found out from Elena what had happened. Elena had fainted soon after Patsy and, upon regaining consciousness, was puzzled to find an unfamiliar girl lying by her side. Then, she started noticing other oddities. Her uniform, for example, while still of the same blouse-and-pinafore design as what she had always worn, was made of a thicker fabric. The sleeves of the blouse were slightly wider and the skirt of the pinafore much longer.

  Elena had felt in her pocket for her wallet and mobile phone, but instead found a purse that contained, among other things, an old-fashioned bus concession card with her mother’s name and photo, and a compact mirror. The year on the card was 1987. That was when she had the shocking realisation that she now inhabited the 13-year-old body of her mother.

  “What does this mean?” Patsy asked. The girls stared at each other.

  Suddenly Patsy remembered something. “Where’s the marble?”

  The girls looked down. The soil beneath them was untouched. There was no trace of any digging at all. Their tools were gone. There was no marble.

  “I think we may have gone back in time by 28 years, to when our mothers were our age!” Elena said, her voice quivering slightly in excitement.

  They looked around them. Everything was familiar, yet strange. The school building looked exactly like they remembered, yet the walls seemed whiter. Patsy had thought the past would have looked greyer, but she realised that was probably just the impression she got from looking at old, faded photographs.

  Patsy glanced at Elena and saw the grin on her face. “Oh no, you’re not…” she began.

  “Let’s explore!” Elena said enthusiastically.

  “No. I just want to go back to our own time!”

  “Come on, we’ll never get this chance again. Since we’re here, we might as well go and see what the past was like 28 years ago! Who knows how this magic thing works? We might get transported back any time. Quick, let’s explore before it’s too late!”

  Reluctantly, Patsy allowed herself to be dragged down the slope. After all, she didn’t seriously think any harm would come out of it since all this was probably just a dream.

  The girls were deliberating which way to go when Patsy felt a nagging thought at the back of her mind. “Isn’t lunch break nearly over? We should be heading back to class now.”

  “That was in 2015, you mean,” Elena said. But even as she said it, she glanced at her watch—her mother’s watch—and added, “But you know what? You’re probably right.”

  Patsy looked at her watch too. It was half past 12. It did make sense that lunch break would be ending, even 28 years ago.

  And then, oddly enough, the two girls instinctively knew exactly which class their mothers had belonged to, and they knew exactly how to get to their classroom.

  When the girls reached the classroom, they stood at the doorway tentatively. The room was filled with girls, milling around in the usual chaos before lessons. Remember, your name is Mabel Seng, your name is Mabel Seng, Patsy repeated her mother’s name nervously to herself. For good measure, she repeated Elena’s name is Joyce several times too.

  “Mabel, Joyce, did you manage to get the soil?” a fair, petite girl with shoulder-length hair called to them.

  To her surprise, Patsy immediately knew who the girl was and what she was talking about. “Oh, Charlotte, we forgot,” Patsy replied. “We’ll get it during recess tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow’s Saturday,” Charlotte complained. “There’s no school tomorrow.”

  “We’ll get it on Monday, we promise,” Patsy said.

  Charlotte Pang, Mabel Seng and Joyce Teh formed a team working on a geography project. They were supposed to collect different types of sand and soil to analyse and display at the upcoming National Geography Fair. As all this information seeped from her mother’s brain into Patsy’s consciousness, she realised with awe that both Mabel and Joyce excelled in geography. She could feel her brain (or rather, her mum’s brain) awash with all sorts of geographical knowledge that put her own lazy learning to shame.

  Mabel and Joyce sat together in class, so Patsy and Elena took their seats accordingly, both feeling a little weirded out at the ease with which they were assimilating their mothers’ identities.

  “So that’s what our mothers were doing at the slope,” Elena whispered as the teacher walked in. “They were collecting soil for their geography project! I did notice the soil there is redder, probably from the iron deposits.”

  “Iron deposits,” Patsy repeated, rolling her eyes. Elena had never been very interested in geography. It was so unlike her to know about iron deposits. It was obvious the information was from her mum’s brain.

  “Good afternoon, girls,” the teacher said. At the sound of the familiar nasal voice, both girls looked up in apprehension. For a moment, Patsy thought that they had been magically transported back to their own time without realising it!

  Mrs Kwek, only a much younger version, stood in front of the blackboard. Her hair was still done up in a beehive-like bun, except that it was stacked even higher than what Patsy remembered. Her eyes were framed by dark, horn-rimmed spectacles and she squinted at her students through the thick lenses. Mabel’s brain informed Patsy that Mrs Kwek’s maiden name, the one she went by in 1987, was Miss Yoong.

  Patsy groaned inwardly. It looked like she and Elena had been transported 28 years back in time only to have to suffer through the same teacher’s science lessons.

  When they were finally released from Mrs Kwek/ Miss Yoong’s tyranny of boredom, it was already three in the afternoon. Patsy and Elena said a hurried goodbye to their mothers’ classmates and rushed out of the classroom to find a quiet corner in which to confer. With students milling around everywhere in the classroom block, they decided the now deserted science corridor was their best bet.

  When they were finally alone, Patsy said, “Okay, you’ve had your adventure. Let’s go home now.” She eyed the skeleton that appeared to be ogling back at her from the chemistry lab. Just how long has the fellow been living there? she thought with a shiver.

  “Isn’t this amazing?” Elena exclaimed. “It feels so odd and natural at the same time. I feel like I know everything my mum knew at this point in her life, and yet there’s this other compartment in my brain that’s my own. I’m both me and my mum!”

  “I feel that too, but to me it’s totally weird. Let’s go home before anything weirder happens!”

  “Come on, we’ll never get to do this again,” Elena pleaded. “It might even be just a dream one of us is having. Let’s just enjoy it for a while more.”

  Patsy threw up her hands in exasperation. “What if we don’t go back now, and we end up being stuck here forever? You remember those time portals in movies? They’re always only open for a short time.”

  “Please, let’s stay a bit longer. This is too fun!” Elena begged.

  “No,” Patsy said, surprising herself with her uncharacteristic firmness. She could see from Elena’s expression that her friend was also a little taken aback by her rare display of assertion. “I’m going back to the slope now. I’ve had enough of this scary nonsense. You can stay here if you want.”

  But of course Elena didn’t, so the two girls soon found themselves back at the slope. They climbed to the top, then Elena said, “All right, so how do we get back?”

  Patsy didn’t know either. She had just assumed that coming back to this spot would take them back. She had not thought about how to engineer the actual process.

  “Let’s see,” she said, trying to sound more confident than she felt. “We dug, found a marble, got transported here. We do the same to get back.”

  She touched the soil. It was softer, not yet compacted and hardened by the passing of time. If this is a dream, it sure is filled with lots of realistic detail, Patsy thought. She opened her mother’s wallet and searched among the cards. Selecting a fairly firm plastic library card, she prodded the soil with her makeshift tool. The soil yielde
d easily. With a sigh, Elena took out Joyce’s wallet and found a similar card. The girls then began digging in earnest. After an hour, their blouses were damp with perspiration and the edges of their pinafores grubby with soil, but there was no sign of any marble or blue fumes.

  Elena sat back on her heels in exhaustion. “Now what?” she asked.

  Patsy felt tears welling up behind her eyelids. “Look what your adventuring has done to us,” she complained. “You and your stupid ghost mystery. Now we’re stuck here!”

  Elena looked glum. “I’m really very sorry. I didn’t know it would turn out this way.”

  Just then, they heard a voice call up to them, “Are you two digging?”

  Patsy and Elena stared at each other. Patsy could feel her arms tingling with goose bumps. Had they just gone back in time and was everything going to happen again?

  chapter four

  his time, however, it wasn’t a prefect. The cute, round face that looked as if it still retained its baby fat belonged to Maggie Lim, their mothers’ classmate. She had climbed over the railing and was looking up at the two girls.

  “Um, yes…no…” Patsy began, confused. She instinctively trusted this girl; her mother’s brain told her that Maggie was one of her mother’s best friends. She wondered if she should confess all that had happened, but she feared Maggie would think she was crazy if she started talking about time travel.

  Maggie had climbed up the slope to the girls and was staring down into the hole the girls had dug. She looked from one girl to the other, then sat down heavily. She sighed and reached out her hands to hold Elena’s and Patsy’s. “Look,” she said. “The three of us are best friends, right? Why are we keeping secrets from each other?”

  “Erm, Maggie,” Patsy said nervously. “What are you talking about?”

  Maggie sighed again. “You two have obviously been digging here. Don’t try to deny it. That means you know about the problem with the time stream, right?”

  Patsy stared wide-eyed at Maggie. “Time stream?” she mumbled. She thought this must be confirmation that she was dreaming. It was simply too strange to be true.

  “I didn’t know anyone else knew about it,” Maggie continued. “I thought my family were the only people who knew the secret. And now that my parents are gone, I’m the only Keeper of Time left in the world. By the way, how did you find this spot? Can you sense the power too?”

  Elena looked at Patsy for a moment, then said, “Okay, Maggie, either you’re crazy or I’m crazy, or maybe we all are, but since you seem to know so much about time and stuff, maybe we should tell you the truth and you can help us.” Before Patsy had even decided whether to trust Maggie, Elena blurted out their whole story.

  Patsy thought Maggie would laugh, or walk away in disgust at such a tall tale, but instead, she looked very solemn. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a plain, black box. Drawing up the lid, she said, “Did that marble you found look anything like this?”

  Elena and Patsy looked hard at the shiny, round object that glittered in the dim light. It was pristine in its brilliance, not at all like the dull-looking thing they had found buried in the soil, but there was no doubt about it. The same blue patterns swirled quietly within the glass casing.

  “What does this mean?” Patsy asked in awe.

  “I don’t know,” Maggie said, puffing out her cheeks so she looked chubbier than ever. She paused for a long while, then said at last, “All right. I don’t know if I’m supposed to tell you this, but since you were sent back in time, I guess you’re already somehow tangled up in the whole affair. The truth is…there’s a crisis in the time stream. Barriers between different points in time are breaking down. Things have started moving across time, and now I see that even people—or at least their consciousness, if not their bodies—are doing so too. As the last remaining Time Keeper, it is my duty to seal the time breach by burying this Crystal of Time in a centre of time power. This spot is one of those centres. That’s why I’m here.”

  There was a silence.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Patsy said at last. “You expect us to believe that ridiculous story?” She hated the mean way she was talking, but somehow she couldn’t help herself. Her resentment at letting Elena lead her into their current situation seemed to be spilling over, making her want to lash out at anyone and everyone.

  But Maggie smiled, looking not at all offended. “You don’t have to. But when you’re back in your own time, come and visit me! You can call me Auntie Maggie!” She laughed a bright, tinkling laugh, then placed the blue marble into the soil. “Once the magic diffuses into the ground, the time stream will be repaired and you’ll be sent back to your own time.”

  Patsy said sourly, “I hope you’re right.”

  Elena, apparently having no trouble believing Maggie at all, said cheerily, “See you in 28 years, Auntie Maggie!”

  The girls sat and looked at the crystal, and waited.

  And waited.

  And waited some more.

  Finally, Elena asked, “Er…how long does it take for the magic to happen?”

  Maggie looked confused. “It should have happened right away. At least, I think so. The magic should have diffused the moment I placed the time crystal in the ground. Unless I got the date wrong?” She frowned, puffing out her cheeks again.

  “What date?” Elena asked.

  “The Liminal Date,” Maggie replied, then seeing that the term meant nothing to the two girls, sighed in resignation. “You two really don’t know anything about time magic, do you? Okay, here’s the classic explanation of Liminal Dates. Imagine there are two farmers…”

  “Farmers? You’ve got to be kidding me,” Patsy interrupted in exasperation. “I just want to go home. You said you have a time crystal that can help me get home, and now I have to listen to a story about farmers?”

  “Look, it’s a story from long ago, when farming was a lot more common, you know?” Maggie said patiently. “It’s the story my ancestors have used for generations to explain Liminal Dates to their children.”

  “Let’s just listen first, all right?” Elena urged, nudging Patsy. Elena’s face was bright with excitement.

  It’s all just part of the adventure to her, Patsy realised. She doesn’t care whether we get to go home or not.

  “So, there are two farmers…” Elena prompted Maggie.

  “They own two pieces of land side by side,” Maggie continued. “They build a fence to mark their territories. The fence is a thin, wire fence, so it doesn’t take up much space, but still, it has to take up some space, right? So whose land is the fence on?”

  “Hmm…nobody’s?” Elena guessed.

  “It can’t be nobody’s,” Patsy objected, intrigued by the puzzle despite herself. “The farmers must have bought the land from somebody, and that somebody can’t have left that strip of land unsold.”

  “But it can’t belong to both farmers either,” Elena said. “When each farmer bought his land, their boundaries must have been clearly drawn out. Surely the seller couldn’t have told them they need to share that strip of land?”

  “Bingo,” Maggie said triumphantly. “That fence is a liminal space, occupying both sides of the land, yet not quite belonging to either side. It’s the same with the Liminal Dates. On a Liminal Day, the boundaries of time are blurred, and time can occupy past, present and future all at once.”

  “Okay,” Patsy said slowly. “Let’s assume this is true, which it most probably isn’t, but just assuming for a moment it’s true, how do you even know about all this?”

  Maggie sighed. “I guess I’ll have to explain from the beginning.”

  This friend of her mother’s seemed to like sighing a lot despite her cheerful demeanour, Patsy noticed with amusement.

  “We’re listening,” Elena said eagerly.

  “Hundreds of years ago, my ancestors in China belonged to a secret group that protected the time stream using ancient astrological knowledge. To make their work easier, the
y distilled some of their time magic into a special stone called the Crystal of Time. The idea was that the power in the crystal could enable even the weaker members of the group to heal any breakdown in the time stream. When the imperial court found out that they had a special sensitivity to time power, my ancestors were appointed the official Keepers of Time.”

  “Keepers of Time?” Patsy repeated. “I’ve never heard of that before.”

  “It was a secret appointment,” Maggie replied. “The imperial court knew that it would be disastrous if the common people found out about time power. In fact, at that time, the members of an underground cult that called itself the Midnight Warriors were already trying to steal the time power for themselves, so that they could manipulate the time stream and control the world’s events,” Maggie said. “My people were given the secret task of defeating the Midnight Warriors.”

  “And did they?” Elena asked, looking entranced.

  “Of course they did,” Maggie said with obvious pride. “It took my people many generations, but eventually, they succeeded in wiping out all the Midnight Warriors from the face of the earth.”

  Patsy grimaced. “That’s so violent.”

  “Oh, you must remember that all these happened years ago in China,” Maggie said. “In those days, people were constantly going to war.”

  “Go on,” Elena urged.

  “After the Midnight Warriors were defeated, my people carried on being the official Keepers of Time,” Maggie continued. “Then, about a hundred years ago, China became a republic and the imperial system was dismantled. My ancestors went underground with their knowledge and continued to use the Crystal of Time to protect the time stream in secret.”

  “What do you mean ‘protect the time stream’?” Elena asked. “Protect from what? I thought the Midnight Warriors had been defeated years ago?”

  “Protect the time stream from time breaches,” Maggie explained. “That’s when the time barriers start breaking down and people or objects go backwards or forwards in time. That’s how you two got transported here, through a time breach.”