Globetrotters Chapter 8, Globetrotting

They'd decided to stay behind. Celia hadn't expected any other outcome but she'd certainly hoped for one. She'd led Amy and Donny to the spot where the link had let them pass into Elsion before, with the intention of waiting with them until they'd gone. They'd shrugged her off, clearly none too happy about spending excess time with her. Donny especially had wanted as little as he could to do with her. His loss of faith in her had been almost as much of a loss as Amy's would have been, had she had such severe experience with the bad parts of her mother's life. Donny had independently decided he wanted to trust Celia and that he could. As her daughter, Amy automatically had to trust her – that was how parenting worked. Donny though, had made the conscious decision that she was reliable and had been proven horrifically wrong.

For all people complained about cars, Celia doubted any of them would have wanted to revert back to a world on horseback. Everything from her waist down was riddled with hurt and her joints were so stiff that she did not doubt that her legs would be permanently bandy by the end of the journey to Asion. Her horse, Flyrider, whom she'd rented from a stables in Belchest town centre, seemed somewhat liberated by the relief from the restraints of tight-packed buildings that limited the speed she ran at and meant she had to keep her eyes focussed on the road ahead. Celia liked to imagine that the scenery of the wider, less paved roads – which were basically just dry, dead grass that had been run from repeated stamping – provided entertainment to the horse, allowing her to feel far less guilty about expecting her to do her bidding, without even asking. It had always seemed rather rude to her. What did they expect? That horses were desperate to ferry everyone around?

She reckoned the journey would take roughly an hour and a half, provided she set aside her qualms about working the horse hard. By the sounds of her name, she'd been bred to run fast so that was what she would do. Celia patted Flyrider's mane, hoping to lend some sort of encouragement to the poor, galloping animal. Whether this had effect or not, Celia could not tell, since Flyrider made no move to stop in alarm or race ahead with newfound fondness for her rider. She simply glided on, occasionally stumbling woodenly over a stray tussock that found its way onto the path.

Darkness was beginning to seep ominously into the royal-blue sky by the time they began to near the city. Celia at least hoped that the sudden efflux of horses and carts suddenly rounding a bend to the north-west meant that the city gates were near at hand. Her hands were stiff with the effort of keeping them taut on the reigns and she hadn't any gloves. She'd told herself that there'd be no way around this but it seemed obvious now that Nanya would have been happy to lend her a pair of gloves, although this could possibly not have also been something that pleased Jonnie quite so much. Celia could hardly blame Michael for returning to his son and she was beginning to come to terms with the fact that Nanya would never be her daughter – would never be Alicia – because Jonnie deserved to have her as a sister. He was probably a far better brother to her than any of her, Michael or Elayna had been as parents. Well, maybe not Elayna. Who knew what kind of reaction they'd have if landed with the product of your spouse's affair and asked to raise the child as their own?

She'd been right about the city. Here was Asion, or at least its wall. The wall had originally been stone, according to Michael, but evidently it had since been given a wooden panel 'jacket' as the council had ruled that its appearance was far too close to that of the fortified armour to the city which it was originally built to be. The wood itself was looking both worse for wear and sprightlier since she'd last seen it. It was rough in the sense that when she'd first set eyes on it, it had been a work of modern art, which swooping arches and windows that peeked through to the other side, which the glowing murmur of gas lamps and candles sneaked through to invite passersby in for a drink or two.

Gladly, she thought. She spurred Flyrider on the last few metres with a gentle nudge of the knees and was submerged in the straggly queue at the gate a few minutes later. Most travellers had come from afar for the Vurakan agility stage. Asion was the only city large enough to even merit having a wall for dozens of miles in each compass direction. Not to mention Nanya, who sounded to have made quite a name for herself. People were desperate to see this girl, said to have beaten the scores of multiple senior females and junior males in the agility stage last year. It was whispered that she'd even beaten a couple of senior males but nobody was confident enough to place any bets on this being the case again this year, if it ever had been.

She was guided through a few quick pat-down searches that seemed only to be completed by the porters in case their bosses had some secret spy employed to test their dedication to the safety of Asion. She was waved away with the grins of young boys and girls in their late teens, although this was further than halfway through their lives come to think of it, who had only five or ten minutes left of their shifts before they could go heat up in their homes. Celia nodded and smiled, wishing she could share in their hopes of a hearty beef stew for dinner. First she had to find Samael, then she could relax and let her mind trot away to thoughts of soft potatoes and tender chicken.

As far as she could remember, he'd seemed comfortable in his home, with no immediate plans to move. That had been fourteen years ago, though. His house had been out of the way and fairly small … What if he'd met a girl and suddenly realised just how shameful his house was. Perhaps he'd wanted to be closer to the city centre. She nudged Flyrider onto Trunk Road, so named, apparently, because all the smaller streets branched off of it. It was sort of more the trunk road, like a category because there were lots of bough level streets, a fair few branch streets and a few wiggly leaf streets that never really led to anywhere useful. Samael's house was somewhere down one of the leaf streets, a leaf street called Duke's Hideout. This made some semblance of sense in that it was somewhere nobody would ever expect to find a duke but Celia guessed that this was not the sense in which the name had been intended.

Flyrider clip-clopped through the traffic, her head bopping as she passed through the crowds. Her so far mild disposition was challenged by a three rowdy pub-crawlers who had somehow gotten a hold of two horses each and were sort of, collectively straddled across the lot, weaving doggedly through the crowds. It was Wednesday! Celia had thought the streets would have been close to deserted but this always seemed to happen with the Championships. There were three sections, agility and speed, strength and stamina, combat and strategy, one each for three of the four seasons, with the season of autumn taken as leave. The agility season was always medium in terms of spectator appreciation. Predictably, the combat section satisfied a large portion of the population – and the strength stage mostly consisted of people climbing up and down ropes until they passed out which most onlookers couldn't sit through ten minutes of. The agility section was entertaining in its variety and it was the first section of the Championships so it attracted the initial buzz that the Championships were back from their three month hiatus but since everything took place outdoors in winter, spectators were often weak in numbers.

Celia spotted an overnight stables and barely had to move her heel to suggest to Flyrider that she go get some sleep. The horse gratefully swerved off the branch road and into the registration aisle. Celia dismounted in the area she was designated and paid for a night of shelter and food then set off to find Duke's Hideout.

“Celia?” a bemused voice called from across the street, “Is that you?”

Celia scanned the few faces scattered about around the cobblestone pavements and the road, a fairly crystal picture of who it belonged to forming in her mind. She wouldn't have thought he'd have changed very much … surely she must still be able to recognise him. But if it wasn't him then who –

She felt a calm tap-tapping on her shoulder. Whirling round, she didn't see the man who'd casually flipped her twin daughters around and swapped them like playing cards. She didn't see the man who'd allegedly murdered two nights previously. She didn't even see the man she'd once watched slap a woman until he was red in the face for no reason other than she was too busy to see him. In fact, if anything, she saw the man who'd cried about seventy per cent of his body's water into her hair as he'd held her close and wept himself into a breakdown. She saw the man who'd always tagged around her and Michael, trying to gleam information about where she was from, when all they'd been trying to do was go on a date in the city, where nobody knew Michael and word could go nowhere. She saw the man who up until a few days ago had been the only man in any world who had been aware of the technology she'd made possible. Here was Sam, his dark hair whooping up into a thick lick that looped around the side of his head. His face was pale and his manner was laid back and she had to restrain herself rigidly from wrapping her arms around him in a greeting hug.

What you saw, she must remember, was not always what you got. She may see Sam – but the man in front of her was Samael Drafson, who must have done something drastic, properly heartbreakingly drastic, to still be here in front of her. He would be thirty-eight. Was that a rash on his temple? Maybe his face was permanently pale and it wasn't just the cold. Frankly, she was surprised he hadn't lost his hair.

“Sam!” she blurted, her cheeks flushing with excitement, having excepted long ago that she'd never see this friend again, “How are you? Well, in terms of anyone here.”

“Better and worse than most but let's not talk about that here.” The words had a habit of just cartwheeling out of his mouth, somehow sounding as if every rough edge hadn't been sanded off, necessarily, just … down. The edges were all there – he wasn't a cat or anything – but every hard consonant seemed to come out somewhat deprecatingly, as if there were some fun to be made in how seriously the syllables took themselves.

“Are you still down on Duke's Hideout?” she lowered her voice even while switching topics.

“Yeah, but they made it better! I mean, it actually fits its name!” Sam's eyes flashed with fireworks of his customary over-excitement, “They were renovating the city because they were anticipating a rise in Vurakan spectator tourists this year. It seems some have come up from Lairham just to see your daughter in action.”

Amidst the rush of pride this invoked, probably unjustified in Celia given that she'd never even spoken to Nanya until five days ago, she realised that Jonnie hadn't even known Nanya's true origin. When she'd gotten pregnant, it had been almost exactly the same day as when Michael's Gullion diagnosis had been delivered. They'd fled to Earth to first of all hide the pregnancy but also to hopefully get Michael some treatment. They hadn't told anyone about it, not even Sam, Michael's most faithful and loyal friend since Earlier School. How could he possibly know there had even been a child, never mind two? No, this would lead to more questions that he'd advise weren't answered here.

Sam was gazing down at her from the couple of inches he had on her. He searched her face then prompted, “You must be proud of her.”

“No,” Celia lied, “She's Elayna's daughter, not mine. Look, can we go somewhere where I can ask the question that you probably know I'm thinking and are probably thinking of the answer to right now?”

“Yes, of course,” Sam smiled meltingly, “Of course.”

Despite the truth in Sam's telling her that they'd redone Duke's Hideout, Sam's house itself was as much of a shrine to structured clutter as it ever had been. Books were not scattered on the floor, they were piled neatly into categorised columns that just happened to rise out of the centre of his living room. Actually, since she'd last been here, notebooks had been added to the stacks. Some were lain in a grid on one of the couches, appearing to be maintaining the composition of a drawing that spanned all six of them. Carefully, Sam lifted four of them one at a time and placed them tenderly into a partial replication of the original formation on the floor. He gestured for her to sit, apologising for the mess and offering tea.

“Yes, please,” she nodded, “Touch of milk in it, please.”

“Sure, sure,” he nodded.

As he turned, she spotted a large rift in the skin of his nape – an angry red crack that shone menacingly in the lamp from the living room oil lamps. On his return with her tea, she sprung to ask him about it.

“It's from the herbs and plants and stuff I use to keep my heart and brain and lungs and so on going. Had to stay alive somehow, didn't I?” he muttered, “So I could find out how you'd globetrotted your way into Elsion.”

“Globetrotted?”

“That's what I'm calling it,” he sipped his own mug of tea, “I got as far as creating the gap but I couldn't figure out how to get into the gap.”

“So what? You just dragged my daughters through and swapped them?” Celia nearly crossed the room to his couch and punched him. She hated talking to him like this. Sam wasn't the enemy. Why was she so angry at him? He was only Sam. He did what he thought was right and sometimes just got a little … carried away in his methods.

“So you do see Nanya as your daughter?” Sam's eyes glinted with the ghost of mischief past. Now he was just trying to annoy her, to wind her up. Normally she loved to rant at him when he did this, as payback but today she simply replied, “I do when it helps me make a point.”

“Fair enough,” Sam raised his hands, “But I only did it to get your attention – and I appear to have succeeded.”

“What do you want, Sam?” she groaned.

“I want you to remember that we're here! I always presumed that when you left it was because you were going to bring us back remedies and cures and vaccinations but no, you were just off dealing with the messy consequences of what you and Michael had been doing.” Spittle was on the cusp of his lips as he spoke, not quite leaping off them, but Celia reckoned it wouldn't be long until she needed a pair of goggles.

“Do not call Amy and Nanya a mess, Sam. Stop. It's time to stop now,” Celia adopted the even tone she always put on when trying to calm him out of a rage.

Sam hesitated then exhaled explosively, “I'm not sorry about what I say; I'm sorry about how I say it.”

Evidently Michael had come up with that mantra when Sam had started almost having convulsions any time he didn't agree with somebody. The teachers had all practically suggested that he just quell his opinions, though none had openly voiced this. It had fallen to Michael to lift his friend out of this magnanimous hole of rage he'd drilled himself into.

“So all this is about finding cures and getting medicines. A boy nearly died today! And to be honest he came fairly close on Friday when Amy … when you took Amy!”

“I can't believe I'm saying this,” Sam smirked, “But please calm down.”

“Yes, okay, fine,” she breathed, “But you can't just go … taking people. This is the reason I don't want everybody to know about the dimension link – because people will all want a go and will end up doing even more stupid, even more dangerous things than this. I haven't used it in fourteen years! I'm still not even totally sure how it works … I'm really quite scared of it.”

“Then let me help you,” he leaned forward and his eyes pleaded with hers, “Together we can understand how it works and we can perfect it and my world can finally have access to what it needs to stay alive. I mean, you're older than me, right?”

“I'm forty-two.”

“Wow.” For a moment his anger and his longing dissipated and his whole face was invaded by wonder and marvel, “That's the oldest I've ever seen a person. I'd have expected your face to look like the underside of a beetle by now. But it really doesn't.”

“I think I'll take that as a compliment,” Celia raised an eyebrow, “But it's definitely open to interpretation.”

Sam's amazement clouded over and his frown returned. Celia cringed inwardly at what she'd just ruined.

“Sam, I'm sorry but it just isn't that simple,” Celia was straining herself with desperation to get through to him, “People will take advantage of it. If you go through and perhaps find a cure to say … Gullion. Yes, I know that's what killed him but it was the first thing that popped into my head. If you find a cure to Gullion, which we don't even have by the way, and you brought it back here, then everyone would want to know where you got it.”

“I'm a scientist. People would know I'd been researching stuff like this,” he pouted.

“There have been scientists for centuries, Sam. What makes you believe they'll think you're special,” she noticed the instinctive hurt on his face and hasted to right herself, “I mean you are, Sam. Oh my God, you are so special. Honestly, if anyone here was going to live an extended life I am so glad it was you. But that's not the point. Why would anyone else believe that? They'd ask you where you'd got it and eventually you'd have to tell them about … globetrotting. Then they'll pester you until you reveal how it's done and an entire world's scientists will flood into Earth. Next, Earth will notice and will in turn they'll be told how it works and then, knowing my world, we'll probably invent some sort of dimension-jumping terrorism. I'm sorry, Sam but it just can't work.”

He emitted a low growling, which rapidly rose into a howl of frustration as he lunged clumsily at her, reaching messily for her neck.

“Sam!” she screamed, flapping away his arms, “Stop! It's time to stop!”

But he paid her no heed. He launched his entire body onto the couch, his thick walking boots crumpling the pages of the two notebooks that had remained on the couch. He grappled with her, squeaking with rage and sorrow and garbling something about injustice. His eyes were raging lagoon of fire and lava that had no hope of being doused or quelled. Celia realised she would have to act, that on this occasion Sam could not be calmed. She slid her right leg in close to her torso. Sam was oblivious as he'd finally gotten a grip on her neck and was beginning to squeeze – THUMP.

Celia lowered her knee from crashing into his forehead, an action which had torn his hands from around her throat. He straightened himself suddenly and rigidly, his eyes returning to their normal bright jewels of blue. He thundered from the living room and hurled himself up the stairs, slamming his bedroom door.