Globetrotters - Chapter 2, Nanya

Chapter 2 – Nanya

The swirls were suffocating her. She could hear Donny, the pain, the anguish in his voice. She couldn't let him do what he tried to though. Holding a door open for someone was kind but sacrificing yourself on their behalf – that was stupid. Besides, it genuinely hadn't hurt at the time. It was only when she got to the ground, it was as if someone was reaching in and taking handfuls of her body away and she was collapsing in on herself like a finished with Playdough sculpture. Then her leg, that was when she'd lost consciousness – presumably whatever was yanking her apart didn't need her to be awake to do it.

But now she was awake again. She was standing up straight, all limbs and innards in tact, when she flicked open her eyes. First of all, it was earlier in the day so she must have been out for hours. She glanced frantically around for Donny but he was nowhere near. In fact she couldn't see anyone she recognised – or anything that she recognised. The buildings of the town were gone and replaced with woodland but she wasn't in the forest past the tree they'd been climbing. She doubted she was still in Scotland.

But she had no time to collect what was left of her awareness before she was squashed into the ground with a realisation, an obvious, mundane, total realisation. She collapsed into a basket sitting position and let her head flop in her hands, frizzy ginger strands flopping through her fingers with a single word rippling through the torrent of thoughts sloshing around inside her mind.

Nanya.

Donny stared in wonder and puzzlement at the Amy shaped form stood before him. Her wild, ravaging frizzy hair had been replaced by a tight ponytail jutting out from the base of her skull. It was still its vibrant ginger shade, but knew nothing of warmth or joy. Her pale skin no longer made her relatable, friendly. It made her cold and distant. This Amy was dressed for P.E. and Amy despised P.E. with every spirited fibre of bone or hair that made her up, always complaining that while the concept may have been superb, the school's execution of the subject was atrocious, allowing people to skip it just because they couldn't be bothered, or because they'd 'accidentally forgotten' their kit. She was dressed in a sort of bizarre leather suit made of supple looking fabric that looked flexible enough for a gymnastics meet but was plated with leather as if to guard from punches. He knew Amy had had a few problems with girls in her class before but this would have been far too extreme, too direct for Amy. This was not Amy.

“Amy … ?” Donny croaked in a voice exhausted by grappling to keep hold of her, more enquiring of her whereabouts than if she was here in front of him, for he was certain that she wasn't.

“Nope,” not-Amy gulped, “But, um, whoever that is, those swirl things of energy, they told me her name. They whispered it in my head,” tears brimmed on the girl's face, “It was like they were telling me an answer to a question they knew I would ask later but … I'm afraid the only question I'm asking is in fact who she is.”

“Amy is the most beautiful and intelligent and wonderful girl I've ever been friends with – which isn't many, I'll admit – but I need her back. It's like I'm missing an arm.”

“I've seen plenty of Champions with one arm. Multiple limbs are lost during summertime where I'm from.”

“And where's that?” Donny sighed, running a skinny pale hand through his blonde hair, his frustration beginning to ramp up.

“Belchest. It's in Turntour,” the girl searched his blank expression, “On Elsion…?”

She extended a hand for him to shake, “I'm Nanya.”

Donny squinted. How could he be sure that 'Nanya' – ridiculous name – hadn't been the cause of the switch in the first place? If people lost arms every other day in this world, he certainly wouldn't mind moving to another. And besides, there was such thing as a prank. What if he got halfway through an explanation of what 'The Middle East' was only to have a camera peep out from behind a tree and an excitable presenter tell him he'd just been pranked by the Prank Patrol.

“Donny,” he replied, gripping it tentatively, “We better get you home.”

“I doubt we can.”

“Well, I'm sure we'll find a way, in the long run. I meant for now though. We should take you to Amy's home. She's probably on her way to yours right now.”

She wasn't Amy. Amy was gone. Donny turned his head from Nanya to build a dam around a stream of tears that threatened to build up and flood his face. They reached his own house. He resisted the urge to sprint up the stairs into his bed and cry into his pillow. He couldn't just leave this poor girl, though. She was obviously missing the people she loved too, just doing a better job of concealing it. He couldn't condemn her to deal with the wrath of Amy's bereft mother by herself.

“What's Amy's mother like?” Nanya offered.

“She'll know you aren't Amy. I mean, I knew. I'd have known without all the sparks and swooshes and swirls,” Donny replied morosely.

He could force brighter, more productive thoughts into his head all he wanted but nothing would not evict that particular train of thought. Gone. No more Amy. No more graceful tomboy who was somehow a living oxymoron. No more tree-climbing lessons. No more being allowed to make a fool of himself, Amy actively encouraging his intrinsic idiocy. There was no Amy. She wasn't dead – probably. But she wasn't here.

“Why?” Donny wondered aloud.

“Why … am I here?”

Donny nodded.

“I don't know.” Nanya shrugged.

Donny wasn't sure he was convinced. Nevertheless, it was his duty to Amy to do as much as he could to solve this most ridiculous, unthinkable problem. For this, it was undoubted that he would need to keep Nanya close. He ignored his reservations and continued to swing around the front gate of Amy's house, as he'd done for so many years of waiting for her to be ready for school – Amy liked to intersperse dressing with drawing. He placed a hand on the door-handle to swing open the stained glass front door, as he'd been welcome to do since primary school – then withdrew it. Normally, in this situation, either he was going into the house to find Amy, or he and Amy were entering the house together. He had never been alone with Celia – unless he'd been waiting on Amy. But now no amount of waiting was going to be any use to anyone. The problem was that this was not his house and not Nanya's and so for the first time in about a decade, Donny pressed his finger to a squishy button embedded on a relay and battery pack – and rang the doorbell.

He noticed Nanya shudder as a shuffling began to amplify from within – probably Celia tidying up a little. He idly bent to the side and slid a leaf into the shrubbery that lined the front garden in an attempt to maintain Celia's careful flower arrangement on the top step. He then rapped a knuckle against the glass of the door, bruising the tips of the bones in his desperation to hook Celia's attention.

“Celia?” he called.

The door swung open to reveal a moderately short woman with shoulder-length wavy brown hair that always bounced as she nodded. Her face was pointed like a rat's but her eyes shone with enough kindness to alleviate the rodent impression one might get from a more sullen expression on this shape of face. She wore a flick of make-up and a long white cardigan to her knees over a black and grey blouse and formal trousers. When her eyes clicked onto Donny's, her eyebrows burrowed into the slight crevice of newly-developing wrinkles just above her nose.

In a flurry of flummoxed speech, she greeted Donny, “Donny Patrickson you've not rung that doorbell since you've been able to reach it,” then with less bravado, “Is there something … wrong?”

Donny had not planned to actually say the words out loud. Saying them confirmed what was now only numb disbelief. Saying them would bring down a adamantine blow of realisation and knock the wind out of them. He couldn't fathom telling this woman – this wondrous woman who'd explained to him in primary school why his parents sending him to bed at nine every week night meant that they loved him. She'd told him that every time they punished him for making stupid mistakes, for putting himself at risk, this meant that they were simply terrified that one day it would amount to something. Donny wondered what his mum and dad might have to say about the fact that he'd attempted to die for somebody's life tonight.

Somehow, though, Donny's mouth decided to disregard his brain, as his body so often did and he could hear the words starting to burst out from his throat, “It's Amy! She … um …”

“Fell out the tree again? Tripped over a kerb? What happened? It can't be any worse than the time you two got too close to algae at Strathclyde.”

Donny shuddered away the memory of the gaping hole the rock had left in his shin and the oceanic green the algae had turned it. He made to attempt to explain again but was halted suddenly by Nanya, who stepped out from behind him and brushed past him. She tilted her chin upwards and locked eyes with Celia. Celia blanched and stepped backwards slightly.

“Oh my God. I um – uh, Donny, please go home,” Celia muttered, not meeting his crestfallen gaze.

How could she be sending him home? She must have recognised that Nanya as not being Amy so … why was she trusting her? She'd known Donny for about ten years, Nanya for about ten seconds. Donny still had his reservations about Nanya. The world she'd come from so far sounded like a particularly reactionary nation in the middle ages, which Donny would no doubt have eagerly escaped at his first opportunity.

“Celia …” he groaned, “Can't I just –”

Celia trembled a little but set her jaw and replied, “No, I'm sorry. Please, just go.”

Donny nearly punched the wall of the house.

“Whatever you say,” he grated.

He sombrely clambered over the fence separating his front garden from the Oswald's, kicking some plant pots out of Celia's precious symmetrical formations as he dragged his back leg up over the wooden trellises. He hunched his shoulders, with the vague hope of inciting some sympathy in Celia. Swinging open the door, he called a greeting to his mum and sister and was gladdened a little by the faint scent of something oriental cooking in the kitchen.

Back on the top step of the Oswalds' house, Celia turned to Nanya.“Come on, let's go inside.”

It had seemed cruel to Nanya for the woman, Celia, to discount Donny from … whatever was about to happen. He seemed to genuinely, truly care about Amy, not just because she was in serious danger but just because she was absent. Without her being present, it was as if something had begun to ring within him that could not be muted, could not possible be clamped out, until he had her back. The mother however, seemed far more obsessed with Nanya, however ridiculous this may be, and seemed also to be have a sound understanding of what had happened.

Celia had left her on a knit-wear couch while she went to collect some snacks but now she was back with some curious squarish flakes that smelled strongly of bacon.

“Oh, right,” Celia seemed to notice the curiosity that blanketed Nanya's features, “I guess you don't have crisps back in Elsion.”

Nanya's curious expression erupted into one of shock, perplexity and relief.
She was not alone. Somebody knew of her homeland. She almost let everything that had happened out, in sizzling streams of lava that would scald acceptance of a fantastical world into even the most adamant of cynics. But she stopped herself. As much as this woman was familiar with her, she had not meant what she'd said to Nanya by the door. This was not her mother. Her mother was Elayna Carrater and her brother was Jonnie and her home was Elsion and her world was Elsion and she should just keep her mouth shut. She must not trust a stranger.

“How do you …?” was all she would emit.

“Are you okay? I hope the process wasn't too painful?”

“Process?”

“When it first happened to me, I thought I was about to die. What a brutal way to go, at your own unwitting hand.”

“Who are you?! What are you talking about? Did you do this?”

“No, but it's my fault I guess.”

Nanya curled her pinky finger in with her thumb, releasing along the nail and watching the finger defy momentum to twinge her hand muscles and halt it in its tracks. In and ping, in and ping until her surroundings fell away and there was only the familiar sensation of thoughts running through her head.

“Alicia?”

“My name is Nanya. I'm not Ali – Wait, who's Alicia? Amy's the one who's missing. And I'm Nanya so who's Alicia?”

“Oh, right, I guess Michael would have given you an Elsion name. How – how is he? Did Elayna take him back? Does Jonnie know anything about it?”

A retch rose in Nanya's throat. This made no sense. How could this stranger know the names of every single one of her family members? She wished she could stop the world turning, just for a second, just to catch up with everyone else. Maybe it was good that Donny wasn't here. Maybe it was better that he was just as content as he could be in the knowledge that alternate dimensions did appear to be real. There were other worlds out there. Was that not enough of a mind-boggle for one night.

In an attempt to varnish the situation with even a pretence of normality, Nanya asked calmly, “How do you, uh, know my father?”

Celia frowned, then her eyes widened and she stepped backwards.

“How could I let myself say so much?” she mumbled.

“What? What's going on?” Nanya groaned, realising she was utterly on this woman's hook and had let herself become desperate for answers.

“No, I'm sorry. I can't say more. You can stay here until we fix this but – I can't tell you any more.” Celia shook her head defiantly and moved to show Nanya upstairs.

Nanya, realising that she wasn't going to be presented with anything that resembled an answer any time soon, sighed and followed Celia, who had already scampered halfway up the stairs. Nanya guessed she would have to settle for a good night's sleep which, at this point, began to seem far more desirable than answers anyway.