Globetrotters - Chapter 3

Note: I fixed the edit suggestions from Chapter 2. They won't make a difference to this chapter but the next one will be affected by the changes so maybe someone could look at Chapter 2 and let me know how I did at editing it? I have now also fixed Inspirus's suggestions for this chapter.

Chapter 3 – Vurakan Training

Some menacing clouds were beginning to gloat about their victory over the sun by the time Jonnie returned from his tutor's house. He'd left his horse, Gloria, in the stables that morning: given how nice the day was he thought it would have been a pleasant experience to stroll home on a crisp winter's day. He'd since decided never to trust his judgement again. He was halfway through the ten minute sprint to his house when the first drops began to venture out of the sky. The landed unceremoniously on his face, down the back of his formal shirt that he always wore to the tutor's house, even somehow managing to wriggle through his thick mess of hair to stab cold through his scalp and into his skull.

By the time he reached his front door, he was so wet that he may as well not have run at all. He could literally be no more drenched. He whipped off his sodden jacket and fumbled in one of the pockets for a key. On locating it, he was irrationally dismayed to discover that the door was already unlocked. He nearly howled in frustration but refrained himself because he knew Nanya had been at Vurakan training all day and had probably had to deal with the moans and groans of untalented young boys who were adamant that a girl shouldn't be allowed to compete. Of course, sexism was merely an excuse for the fact that they merely wanted to bar Nanya from kicking all of their snotty little backsides.

Speaking of snot … Jonnie pinched his nose and held his eyes open wide. The sneeze faded, thankfully, for his only hankie was in his jacket and was almost certainly pure mush by now.

Jonnie shook his head and made his way inside the house, turning to head up the stairs to his room – his warm cosy room full of dry clothes and three boxes of hankies. This cold was getting worse – and it was only the start of winter. Sometimes he despised his body, but nobody's was better. Well, maybe Nanya's but that was probably because she was so active.

Halfway up the stairs a girl's voice called up the stairs, “Jonnie?”

He looked down to see the familiar ginger-haired, pale-skinned, tough, sprightly figure that was his – wait, why was she holding her arm like that? She looked nervous. Nanya was never nervous. At least, she was always careful never to let her competitors see that she was, which tended to blend into home life too. And why were here eyes so … bright? Nanya's eyes glimmered. Nanya's eyes had always glimmered. They were dark and knowing with a glint that glimmered calmly to promise him everything was okay. Because everything was always okay. She never needed his help and while he would like her to, he knew she did not. Why therefore, were her eyes alight with fiery mischief. Nanya would never get in trouble. She knew better than that. And her hair was frizzy. Whoever this was seemed to have some sort of roguish delight in her irises. This was so. Not. Nanya.

“Who are you?” Jonnie spluttered.

Amy needed only one glance at the boy's face to know he could never be convinced that she was his sister, Nanya. His face was dripping with rain and his hair was scrunched into clumps from the moisture it had absorbed. His eyes, however, were as clear as an HD television showing a picture of a summer's day in Florida.

“I'm … I'm Amy,” she mumbled.

“What are you doing in my house? Why do you look exactly like my sister?!” Jonnie exclaimed.

“I'm sorry – I'll uh …” Amy mumbled with even less coherency as she stumbled down the stairs.

“Get out?” Jonnie suggested with force, “Get out of my house?”

“Yes, yes, that,” Amy agreed and slipped out the door, which Jonnie had opened wide. He was now gesturing vehemently that she should most definitely leave.

Jonnie swung the door shut and leaned against it for a few moments, breathing heavily. What had just happened? Strangers who trespassed in your house – if they had to exist at all – were supposed to be grubby homeless tramps who demanded food and stole your loose change. They were not supposed to be living doppelgängers of your own sister! He shuddered and proceeded towards the kitchen.

Whenever he returned from a session with his tutor, his first move on returning was always to raid the biscuit cupboard. Today, he found something called a 'Milk Wafer Delight' and three custard cream. He broke off part of the 'Milk Wafer Delight' and … ugh. He concluded that this Milk Wafer was in no way delightful. He bit slowly into one of the custard creams and rolled the smooth, gloopy substance around his mouth.

Once he'd reached the living room, he found a copy of the previous day's newspaper lying folded on his wooden coffee table. As he collapsed into one of the room's couches, he grabbed it and flicked it open to a story about the head of the Mexterians, Karl Trawpf. Apparently, he was planning some sort of demonstration. How could that qualify as news? That was all the idiot ever did. Nobody listened to him anyway. He sipped on a cup of tea he'd brewed himself before he'd come through and glanced out of the window.

The girl was still standing awkwardly on the corner of the street. She was glancing around in every direction and obviously had no clue where to go. But you couldn't just trust people. You couldn't just let random imposters into your house, no matter how clueless they seemed. Jonnie redirected his attention towards the newspaper – for a total of three seconds. Then his eyes had flicked back up to the bay window. She was sodden.

Right. That decided it. Jonnie was not going to leave a poor, befuddled girl stuck in the middle of the street, with no defence whatsoever against that icy, biting rain. He propelled himself up from his couch and strode adamantly towards the door. He thundered out into the rain and sprinted over to the girl. He tapped her shoulder.

“Come on!” he cried over the wind.

“What?” The girl's head whipped around and she almost toppled over from shock.

“We have to go inside!” Jonnie insisted.

“But I'm not Nanya,” the girl argued.

“Yes, but you are extremely wet!” Jonnie shouted, “Now come on!”

Amy allowed herself to be almost dragged up the stone steps to the house's front door. The boy was called Jonnie – she'd spotted his name on a family photograph. He ushered her into the living room and offered her a steaming mug of tea.

“Thank you,” Amy mumbled, sipping the tea.

Jonnie squirmed, as if not sure how to bring something up.

“Who are you?” Jonnie repeated, sounding sterner than he'd have liked to. Under the fire, her eyes contained something of unease – another emotion Nanya never betrayed, “And don't even pretend you're Nanya. You may look almost identical – but you are not my sister.”

“No, I know. As I said, my name is Amy. I live in Scotland with my mum and next door to my best friend in the entire world, Donny. Oh my God, Donny. I … um … he was there when it happened. Only about an hour ago we were playing in a tree on the way home from school, then the swirling loops of light had me, then I was out of them – and not at home any more. And I sank down to the ground and I heard the word 'Nanya' over and over like somebody was trying to give me an answer to something but I hadn't asked and I couldn't acknowledge that I'd got the message and then a woman came over and told me something about cooking spaghetti for dinner tonight and I guess that was your mum and she kept calling me Nanya and when I got back here she said she was going for a nap – she's upstairs by the way – and I was down here and I saw a family picture with the caption 'Jonnie age eight, Nanya age six' so when I heard you come in I thought it must be you and help me I'm so scared I have no idea where I am because I'm getting the notion that it's not Scotland any more please help me.”

Jonnie wrapped a tentative arm around the girl's quivering shoulders.

“You really do look like her, but it hurts that Mum couldn't even recognise that you aren't.”

“Your mum seemed kind of distracted. So I wouldn't blame her.”

“Distractedness is practically a permanent characteristic of my mum. Can we stop talking about that though? I mean, what happened?”

“Well, like I said, my friend Donny and I were climbing this tree. Then these sparks started to fly off me and I got engulfed in this tower of shimmering gold and then something started to tear me apart. First it was my innards. I could physically feel somebody move my kidneys and my lungs away – that was when I couldn't talk any more – and then my heart must have been taken because I conked out and woke up here.”

“And Nanya?”

“I've never even met her.”

“Well, we have to get her back, right. And you have to get home.”

“How?”

“Does that matter?”

Despite herself, Amy chuckled, “I think it might.”

“We'll figure it out. But in the meantime, please, for my mum, just please pretend you're her.”

Amy nodded. She wanted to protest, to say that she couldn't just take this other girl's place, that that wasn't her. She quieted herself though. She had to be compliant for the sake of this poor boy who seemed to be on the verge of tearing apart the banister he was squeezing in his fingertips. If Donny had taught her anything, it was the importance of fading. She'd watched him fade into high school. He hadn't settled – that would imply he'd found his place but he hadn't. He'd found that he hadn't needed a place in the school. So long as he had somewhere to sit, he didn't need to fill a role. He was just Donny, as he'd always been, which was brilliant and bright and wise. But now she had to be Donny. She had to sink down everything she knew about herself, letting herself fade into the other girl's role.

“Have you done anything like this before?” Jonnie called over the wind that whipped his short fringe against his right temple. He indicated a row of long range weapons that were hung along one wall of the wooden shelter to the right of the ring he'd led her into only a moment ago. He was leaning against the outside of the chest-high, green-painted wooden wall of the ring with his arms draped over the top.

Amy clawed a few strands of hair from where they had landed in her mouth, “I've used a bow and arrow before if that's what you mean? They had them at Castle Toward.”

“Well, what about the others?” Jonnie shouted, “Have you ever used a spear, or a crossbow, or a slingshot?”

“Em … Oh! Donny and I used to make slingshots out of snapped elastic bands and plastic bottle tops? If you think our school would trust us with javelins you must be mad and a crossbow?! I've never even seen a real one!”

“Keep your voice down!” Jonnie hushed, “Remember, Nanya has spent her whole life around this stuff.”

“Okay, okay, sorry. What's the ring for?”

“Well it's the combat section of the championships. It comes at the end. I thought I'd let you try to get used to it.”

This was 'Vurakan' training. Apparently there was some sort of national championship every year and Nanya just happened to be the reigning champion. Of course she was. Amy couldn't have just inhabited the life of a mediocre accountant, no? No. She had to take the place of the most famous fourteen-year-old on Earth! … Elsion. Amy rolled the name of the world around in her mind. That was where she was now, where she'd been for the past two days. It had been two whole days since Amy had last seen home, seen Donny. Jonnie had suggested they take her to the Vurakan practice grounds for something to do - but now Amy was beginning to realise that the suggestion had been nowhere near as casual as Jonnie had wanted it to sound. Amy didn't think there was anything casual about the 'Vurakan Championships'.

She righted her sports gloves. Jonnie had given her a whole new set of clothes and hidden her own under her bed – they were too modern, too synthetic for this rural world she'd awoken in. He'd reluctantly handed her a heap of his sister's Championship gear and told her she'd better change into it. Luckily she'd already hidden her phone and iPod and headphones which had been in her pockets when she'd been taken. She'd had to hide them under the mattress of the bed because there didn't even seem to be electricity here, never mind mobile communication, game and music devices that could fit – well, that could fit down the side of a mattress.

Amy was beginning to get the feeling that Nanya was one of those Ninja Warriors from that Japanese game show that was like an actually skilful 'Total Wipeout'. In an attempt to mimic this wonder child, she performed the only ninja move in her repertoire – a cartwheel. Unfortunately, gravity got the better of her about three quarters of the way over and she collapsed into an ungainly heap of limbs.

“Are you okay?” came Jonnie's anxious call from the precise opposite direction that she thought he'd been stood at.

She raised herself to her feet and dizzily regained perception of her whereabouts, and Jonnie's. Somehow, she'd managed to flip over on the opposite two axes that she'd intended to and consequently had turned one hundred and eighty degrees without actually moving anywhere. She brushed some bark off her clothes – Nanya's clothes – and plodded down-heartedly over to where she'd located Jonnie.

“You really haven't done much like this before, have you?”

“No,” Amy laid her arms on the top of the wall and her head on top of her hands.

“You'll get better,” Jonnie assured her, “We'll find your strengths and work from there. What would you say your strengths are?”

“The Standard Grade History syllabus?”

Jonnie was silent for a few moments then, “I will find a way for that to fit into Vurakan Championships but for now we have to focus on more … physical … strengths. Do you do anything sporty back home in …?”

“Scotland. Actually I think I've forgotten the specifics of where I am now. I know I'm on Elsion. I'm in Turntour?”

“Belchest, which is a town in Turntour, which is a country on Elsion.”

“So to you the word Earth means nothing?”

“Probably about as much as the word Elsion means to you.”

“Jeez. Okay lets stop talking about this. We can't fix it. What should we do first?”

“Well, do you play sports?”

“We do badminton at school – but I've always wanted to run parkour – which is when you just run over and under anything that gets in your way. I'm pretty good at that. They have this amazing obstacle course in the play-park at Drumlanrig Castle.”

“Perfect,” Jonnie grinned.

Amy couldn't believe what was in front of her. It was just one giant climbing frame. People trained to do this? She'd been able to do fifteen rungs of unstable monkey bars since she was six. And there was a chute over there, that led down to a cargo net like they have at Go Ape. And a climbing wall! And rope ladders everywhere! Amy didn't know where to look – there was no visible direction to the course, which was completely circular. Anywhere could be the beginning. Maybe she was supposed to do laps.

“Go ahead,” Jonnie urged.

“Where's the start?”

“What do you mean?”

“Which do I do first?”

“You choose. The idea is that competitors get three points every time an obstacle is completed – but you get lose a point for every time you do up to the same three obstacles in a row. Most people stick to their strongest three so this prevents people from only doing the ones they're good at.”

“But it all looks easy. The grips on the monkey bars are enormous and hand-shaped. That rope ladder's tiny and the bar to go over is so big you could stand on it!”

“Why would you go over it? The obstacle is to go up. Nobody ever uses the other side.”

“You mean you just stop? Without going over? Then what's the point in going up?”

“Three points.”

“What's the average score?”

“You get three minutes. People average about one to three obstacles per minute.”

“I'll get four,” Amy muttered, dashing over to the rope ladder.

She was up it in four quick steps, missing out alternate rungs by squishing the rope closer together with her feet and hands. She turned and hurled herself off of it, landing on her feet and sinking into a deep bend of the knees. She sprang up, ignoring a howl of annoyance from her thighs. She could deal with that later.

Next came the monkey bars. They took the form of metal handles that shot out from a single beam supported by a ladder leading up and down at either side. She clambered up the ladder and thrust herself forward onto the handles. She swung out and secured the next handle, keeping the initial momentum until long after the mid-point, at which point she had to twist her body back and forth, kicking in and out, to keep going forward.

In a matter of seconds she was across and heading for the chute. The chute guided her down a few shiny, slippery feet before her toes made contact with the cargo net and she propelled herself upward onto the netting and scrambled back up to ground level where the chute had begun. She reckoned she'd so far spent thirty seconds.

She proceeded, in the next two minutes, to complete a Tarzan swing, the climbing wall, a flying fox that looped out into the trees then back into the centre of the obstacles, a funky ladder with loops that only appeared at alternate sides of the stem, some rollers like the ones at Bilco's play area and then completed the final obstacle, a tunnel that the floor rolled round in like a friendly cement mixer. For the last thirty seconds, she returned to the flying fox, then the rope ladder, then the Tarzan swing and finally completed the monkey bars again.

“Time,” Jonnie called, agape, “How did you do all that?”

“What?” Amy panted, “It was fun. How many did I do?”

“Thirteen. And with no deductions for repetition that gets you sixty-nine points. That's incredible! Nanya's high score here is sixty. How can you hold your own weight for so long? Have you been taking calcium supplements? 'Cause that's considered doping, you know.”

“Uh, no. Just plenty of milk and cheese and stuff.”

“But your bones … they're so strong. You could live until like … wait … how old's your mum and dad?”

“Well my dad left before I was born and mum never talks about him so I've no idea. Mum's forty-two.”

“Oh my God.”

“What?”

“You really really are not from here!” Jonnie exclaimed, “Our life expectancy here, it's thirty. My dad was twenty-six when he died. At best I have about ten years before I develop something that will kill me.”

Amy couldn't process that. It was literally nonsense. Jonnie was in excellent shape for someone who appeared to have no apparent inclination to do exercise. His face wasn't particularly deathly pale or anything and he didn't have a limp. Everything that would normally indicate and early death was missing. But now he was telling her he was halfway through his life, of age to go buy a flash car and get into surfing – everyone's classic mid-life crisis – and that he was doomed to die of a terminal illness. Not just old age – he probably wouldn't age any quicker than somebody from back home, not until at most a few months before the end. She had heard Donny sprout some pretty amusing nonsense – often about whether rebellious ducks were irritated by the nice guy, rubber ducky reputation they had – but this topped her list, above malcontent ducks.

“What are you on about. That makes no sense whatsoever.”

“I think we're finished here for today. There's something I have to show you.”

Jonnie led her out of the play-park toward the exit of the training grounds. He guided her onto the street where he sat her down on a bench next to him and leant back silently.

“Look around,” he mumbled, his eyes closed as if were napping, his head against the wall of the building the bench was placed in front of, “How old is that person?” he raised a finger and half-heartedly pointed into the street.

“Maybe about student age … like early twenties.”

Pointing into thin air again, Jonnie continued, “And that one?”

“A child. Look, I see your point. It's just. I can get on board with the fact that there's no electricity here – and don't even bother asking what that is – and I can live with the fact that there seems to have been no industrial revolution here at all but that this girl, who looks so startlingly like me, who I appear to have replaced, that she'll be dead in about the length of your life. I can't do that. I can't let myself know that. It's like I stole years from her or something. And from you. It's like my entire world is stealing up to seventy or so years from every single person in your entire world.”

Amy turned away from Jonnie and clutched her knees to her chest, compressing herself as far as she could, muffling the tears by putting as much flesh between her head and the world as she could.

“Let's go ho – back,” Jonnie suggested softly, “And by the way, we do have electricity but I doubt it's as common as in your world. Only the rich men with the fancy science grants get to use it.” He wanted more than anything to comfort Amy properly, like the brother Nanya would never let him be. He wanted to rub Amy's back and promise her that everything would get fixed and she'd feel better, like a cut healing under a plaster. But he didn't tell her that, partly because he'd not had good experience in the past with attempting to console Nanya but mostly because he didn't want to lie to Amy.