Chapter 18
“Wake up, wake up!” A thin stream of air and sound funneled into Elanora’s ear from Pin Pot who stood stomping up and down beside her head. “We’ve got to get you home.”
“Let her get her wits about her, Pin Pot, she just had a nasty faint. You always think we’ve got no time. We always have the time.”
“Wake up!” he blasted once more before frowning at Petsy and stomping defiantly near her head.
“It’s fine, I’m awake. Did I faint?” she asked.
“And slept! There was no stopping you, there really wasn’t.”
“Now, Pin Pot.”
Elanora soaked up the warmth and light until they settled deep into her skin before bouncing out at the recollection of home. Of Ash.
“Jolly good. Now I do apologise for the rush, but Pin Pot assures me the tunnels are darkening and it would be best to get you on your way.”
“What, they’re coming here? I’ve got you into real danger, haven’t I?”
“Oh, there’s always something going on in these parts. It hasn’t been safe for the longest time. We don’t pay any mind to it,” Petsy reassured her.
“Yes we do!” Pin Pot squeaked. “Hurry up!” He stood at the edge of a new hole they had dug while Elanora slept and pointed his trunk into it. After taking a quick swig of blue liquid offered by Petsy, she stepped in. What they had dug was a short connecting branch into an existing tunnel. Like last time, Petsy plastered up the access point behind them, daubing it with tainted water.
“These tunnels are quite safe. They lead to some of the places we need to get to in secret. The beasts don’t know about them.”
“Yet!” said Pin Pot.
As they walked, Elanora filled them in on her misadventures in the Timefold. They shook their heads at Ashden’s failure to explain the dangers and spoke with certainty about his attempts to rescue her. “There must have been a very grave danger indeed that kept him from such a lovely young lady as you. You’ll see. He has not abandoned you.”
“He might’ve been killed. And that’s why he didn’t come,” suggested Pin Pot.
“You’re not helping,” whispered Petsy.
Elanora stopped still to grapple with a thought. “Or maybe he won’t even notice I’ve been gone. As far as he’ll know I’ve just reappeared beside him the same second he gets back!” she slapped her palm to her forehead. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that earlier.”
Petsy and Pin Pot came to a halt. “Did you and your friend enter the Timefold together?” Petsy asked.
“Yes, he was holding my hand,” she replied. Petsy and Pin Pot glanced worriedly at each other.
“You came in at the very same time holding hands but he left without you?” Pin Pot asked, ears flared.
“He didn’t leave me on purpose, but yes. Why? Why are you looking at me like that?”
Petsy rubbed his stomach under his suddenly tight vest.
“Didn’t anyone tell you?” Pin Pot blurted.
“Tell me what?”
“If you enter at the same time as another, you have to leave at the same time as the other,” Petsy said as if repeating an age old warning.
“Otherwise you’ve blown it!”
“Pin Pot, hush!”
“What do you mean? Please just tell me what you mean!” Elanora begged.
Petsy reached out his paw and put it into her palm. “If you enter the Timefold while touching another, then you must leave in exactly the same way. Otherwise you destroy the delicate balance of things and can never go back to that time with that person ever again.”
Elanora’s mouth trembled. Heat flared from her heart to her fingertips. “I can’t go home?”
Pin Pot stood on her shoe and wrapped his trunk around her ankle, shaking his head.
“Ever?”
Petsy put his other paw in her other hand that hung tingling at her side.
“My parents?”
Petsy and Pin Pot shook their heads. They didn’t look at all like toys anymore.
“So, I’ve died?”
“The Timefold has its rules. It folds in all directions and every crease marks a new design.”
“Like origami!” Pin Pot chimed.
Petsy nodded, “There is now a new shape created and what has been has refolded to fit.”
“I do like those paper cranes...” commented Pin Pot seriously as Petsy sidestepped him to continue.
“With toys there is no changing shape. The outer world isn’t wholly ours. But for you humans, that world is yours and you are important to the way it turns and the reason it exists. But when you dabble with time it is up to a greater force to smooth the creases and fold the corners before it all falls apart for everyone else.”
“I don’t know why you people are let loose without knowing the rules!”
“Pin Pot, please.”
“I’m just saying that everything revolves around them. It’s a little bit self-important, don’t you think, jumping in and out of time, expecting everything to be just the way they want it even when they go off and break the rules!”
“Pin Pot, that’s enough. If nobody tells you the rules, how are you supposed to know the rules?”
The two of them were so engrossed in their banter that they didn’t notice Elanora’s tears. Nor did they notice the steely eyes that shed those tears and the tight balled fist that wiped them away. She walked trance like towards the gateway.
The two friends exchanged another worried look and raced after her. “Don’t mind Pin Pot, he’s very rude and doesn’t mean any of it.”
“No, I’m sure I don’t. And if it helps, it’s not like you’ll have died back home, it’s just that you never existed,” Pin Pot offered.
“Oh that helps!” Elanora said. “Don’t worry about it. It’s my own stupid fault. And you know what?” she spun around, hair whipping her shoulder. “They won’t miss me anyway.” And she marched ahead to wherever it was she was now going. It wasn’t home, but what did it matter.
Accommodating talking animals in a Timefold was one thing, trying to get your head around never existing was another. Elanora’s gut was a cyclone rising to choke her. She gritted her teeth and swallowed the debris. Four steps forward then rubber legs ready to buckle. She paced faster to pound them into action. Her vision blurred and disorientated her. The caramel walls smeared like wet clay under her feet. The soulings rushed to her side as she stumbled.
“It’s going to be all right, Elanora. Stay here with us,” she vaguely heard one of them say as she righted herself with their help.
“I can get home,” was the last she uttered, pushing away from them and stepping into the gateway.
Lights showered around her once more. She didn’t notice her stomach fall this time, cyclonic as it already was. Elanora heard the sound of children, but with her face down in the dirt and the swell of cicada calls in her ears, she couldn’t identify them.
“…and bring that girl over to me!”
She lifted her head.
“Move it! Stand up here and show everyone what a liar looks like.”
A young girl of maybe fourteen stood shamefaced on the veranda of the school house. The teacher buttoned up in a skirt and jacket scowled down at her. Assembled in front were nearly twenty young girls in long dresses, bunched together like a knotted sheet. The dust settled on their boots as they watched the denouncement.
“Liars are always found out, and liars are always punished. You will receive fifteen cuts Miss Sallyanne Milkthwaite, then spend the remainder of the day on the block because we don’t want liars in our midst, do we girls?” There was a murmur from the knot. “Do we girls?”
“No Miss Barton,” they chorused.
“Now all of you, back to work.”
The girls scattered like a puffed out dandelion and Elanora crawled behind a bush to hide. Well, I certainly haven’t made it home, she thought.
She rolled onto her back and a thin sheet of sweat prickled her fa
ce. Skinny gum leaves crosshatched the sky where the fat leaves of the fig should have been. There was no doubting it. The fig was nowhere to be seen.
“Now, don’t move, don’t even swat the flies. I’m watching you, Milkthwaite,” warned Miss Barton before leaving the red-eyed girl posed like a statue on the sandstone block. She stood with her back to the bush and her face to the schoolyard Elanora recognised as her own, although newer, as if it had sprouted out of an empty paddock. Farmland rolled like turf between patches of bush, past the school gate without sign of house or road or telegraph pole. What had Scrubstone been back in the old days? Elanora racked her brain for a long forgotten fact. As far as she could remember it was an offshoot of a mining town. When the gold had disappeared the people left behind took up farming. Judging by the girl’s fashion and the newness of the school she thought it must be close to the turn of the twentieth century. But if I ask, I’m going to sound like a real idiot, she thought.
The girl on the rock discreetly inspected the welts on her hands when the undergrowth rustled. Her face paled. She shut her eyes and clenched her hands in prayer.
Seeing her shaking legs from where she crouched behind some shrubs, Elanora whispered as gently as she could, “Hello.”
The girl jumped and lost her footing. Which was worse? Being dragged into the bush by a bunyip or being dragged before Miss Barton for losing your balance? There wasn’t time to decide but she stood stock still hoping to appease both.
“Don’t panic! I’m behind you.”
“Who is?” the girl asked.
“Elanora.”
“I thought you were a snake. Or worse. Why are you hiding there?”
Why am I hiding, she wondered. What do I say? I can’t go home. I have no home. “I’ve run away. I’ve got nowhere to go.”
“So you came here? That is a most foolish thing to do. Please. I mustn’t talk or Miss Barton will see and I’ll be done for. Again.” Sallyanne’s teeth clenched as she tried not to move her lips. But she was no ventriloquist.
“What’s your name?” Elanora asked.
“Sallyanne.”
“How long have you got to stay there?”
“Till sun down. Then I’ll be sorting laundry in the lean-to. Meet me there while the girls have supper.”
“Okay. Will you be all right out here?”
“It could always be worse. Now please go before it is!” Sallyanne pleaded.
Elanora shrank back into the bush.
As dire as her situation was, she couldn’t help but spin on the spot with arms outstretched, exhilarated at having actually traveled through time. She was in the past, and even that was better than being a prisoner.