Time Sight Read online

  “You’re in the Highlands now, lad!” Cousin Elspeth gunned the engine to disperse the staring sheep, and the bells clanked more rapidly as the sheep moved off. The car jerked forward, and Will leaned his head back against the seat.

  The next time he opened his eyes, the car was bumping through a town filled with buildings made of gray stone. And when he opened them after that, they were at the castle.

  It loomed above them, tall and grim, with long square towers and corner turrets, but Will hardly had a chance to look up before he was bundled through the front door, down a cold stone hall, up a narrow stair, and into a small room crammed with trunks, boxes, miscellaneous furniture, and two cots.

  Cousin Elspeth laid Jamie, limp as a rag, on one of the cots and turned to Will. “Sorry it’s so crowded—we use this room for storage, but you can take a kip in here until my Nan gets out of school. She wants to show you the castle herself, and she’ll tell you all about the history.…” Cousin Elspeth trailed off uncertainly. “At least, I hope she will. You let me know if you have questions Nan doesn’t answer!” She straightened and gave Will’s shoulder a brisk pat. “The loo is just down the stairs, and I’ll be at the front desk if you need me. If you get lost, follow the sound of the bagpipes—I play a recording for the tourists. Come, Gormly, we’ll let the boys get some sleep.”

  A kip was a nap, Will guessed, and the loo was the bathroom. Or so he hoped. He tumbled onto his cot and kicked off his shoes.

  But the dog wouldn’t go. She lay between the two cots with her head on her paws and her eyes closed. Cousin Elspeth tugged on her collar, but Gormlaith only shut her eyes tighter and whined.

  Cousin Elspeth straightened, frowning. “We never let the dog sleep in anyone’s bedroom, and she knows it. I wonder why she’s acting like this now?”

  “I don’t mind,” Will said sleepily. “Maybe she wants to guard us.”

  “Could be. Or maybe she knows you boys are a little sad, and wants to stay close. I told you she was special.” Cousin Elspeth shook her finger at the dog, mock sternly. “But just this once!”

  * * *

  When Will woke up, he didn’t know where he was. The afternoon sun slanted through a high window to lay long gold bars of light across the opposite wall, and, disoriented, he watched the dust motes swirling. His gaze fell on a small writing desk and Jamie’s Magic Eyeball book. He caught a glimpse of a turret through the window, and then all at once he remembered.

  Jamie and the big cream-colored dog were still asleep. Will sat up and put on his shoes. When was this Nan going to come and show them around the castle? He didn’t want to sit in the storage room forever. He rummaged in the desk for a pen and paper, and carefully printed a short note to Jamie. I’ve gone downstairs. Be right back. Will.

  On a whim, he picked up the Magic Eyeball book. He would try one more time. Will tiptoed around Gormlaith, down the narrow stairs, and through the door.

  The corridor was long and shadowed. Rough stone walls rose on either side and met overhead in a barrel-shaped arch. Here and there, electric lights shaped like torches burned dimly in iron cages. The windows were narrow, barred with iron, and set deep in walls that had to be three feet thick. Archers had shot arrows from those windows, probably.…

  At the end of the hall was a door with wood so old it had darkened to black, and Will put his hand on the great iron studs and massive bars. Knights had come through this door. They had hung their swords on those hooks, and clanked down the hall with their heavy boots. For a moment Will almost thought he was back in that time.… Faintly, in the distance, he seemed to hear the sound of bagpipes.

  He let out his breath in a little snort. Of course he heard bagpipes. That was the recording that Cousin Elspeth played for the tourists.

  Grinning at himself, Will sat down with his back to the stone wall, stretched his legs out in front of him, and opened the Magic Eyeball book. This time, he would try the third method. He would focus his eyes on something a short distance away, and then slowly bring the book up within view.

  Will concentrated. There! Was something shifting? He thought he had caught a sort of shimmering around the edges of the picture, but he lost it as soon as his focus sharpened. He shut his eyes to rest them before he tried again.

  In the distance, the bagpipes droned their peculiar music, both sad and stirring, and Will thought he could hear children laughing. The tourists must have kids with them.… He hoped they wouldn’t come down this hall, not just yet. He opened his eyes and focused again on a spot in midair, raising the book slowly. There! There was that odd sort of shimmer again, as if a picture was coming clear.

  He tried to relax as the book said and not look directly at the place where the picture seemed to be, but through it somehow. Except the shimmering was only at the edges of the book—no, it was outside the edges. And while the picture in the book remained the same, the air around it seemed to waver, like an image seen through running water.

  The children’s laughter grew louder, and suddenly the gloomy hall was flooded with light, as if part of the wall in front of him had crumbled—

  It had crumbled. Or at least it wasn’t there anymore. Will’s arms sagged down, and the book dropped from nerveless fingers. Before him was daylight, and green grass, and two small children playing a game with something like strings and what looked to be acorns dangling from them. Their laughter filled Will’s ears as they swung the acorns and then suddenly one of the nuts hit the other, came loose from its string, and flew toward him. He ducked instinctively and blinked.

  The children disappeared, the light was gone, and the wall in front of him was as solid as ever. But rolling toward his feet was a single acorn.

  A foot scraped on the flagstone near him. Then a girl plopped down next to him on the floor and curled up her knees. “How did you do that?” she asked.

  2

  THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WALL

  WILL STARED AT HER WILDLY. He had no idea how he had done it—if he had done it. And yet there was the acorn, round and hard and perfectly real.

  “Was it a magic trick, then?” The girl’s cheek dimpled, and her smile showed a space between her front teeth. “You’re Will, right? I’m your cousin Nan. I don’t know any magic tricks except the sliding rope and finding the ace of spades, and sometimes I can do the pencil-in-the-head. But I’m not very good. I’ve never seen a cobnut come rolling out of a wall before. Did you find that trick in a book?”

  Will blinked at his cousin. She had a freckled nose and straight brows and a tumble of reddish gold hair that had fallen in her eyes. She pushed it back and tapped her foot against the stone floor. “Well? How does it work?”

  “It wasn’t a trick,” Will said. “It was—” He stopped. He didn’t know what it was. “An optical illusion?”

  “Of course it was an illusion,” said Nan with something of the same briskness that Cousin Elspeth had in such abundance. “That’s what magic tricks are. What I want to know is, how did you make it seem like that cobnut rolled right out of the wall?”

  Will was silent. He had no idea how any of it had happened.

  “You don’t talk much, do you?” Nan cocked her head to one side like an inquisitive robin. “Are you a bit daft? Or don’t you have anything to say?”

  Will glared at her. “I don’t blab off at the mouth just for the fun of it, like some people I could mention.”

  “Eh, I reckoned that would get you talking if nothing else would,” Nan said comfortably. “Cut a lad’s pride and he’ll talk quick enough, if only to tell you you’re wrong.”

  “You don’t think much of boys, do you?” Will said, annoyed.

  “I don’t think about them much at all,” Nan said, grinning. “The lads I know are mostly dull as dust. But I’m supposed to be nice to you and young Jamie, so I thought I’d get the preliminaries out of the way first. And now we’ve had our first fight, we can start off even, right?”

  Will found himself grinning back in spite of himself. He had
never met anyone quite like Nan before.

  “So, talk to me. I saw that cobnut roll out of the wall. How did you do it?”

  “Did you see anything else?” Will asked cautiously. “Did you see the little kids playing their game?”

  “What game?”

  Will described it.

  “Oh, conkers,” said Nan. “Don’t you play conkers in America? See, you bore a hole through a horse chestnut, and then you push a string through and knot it. That’s your conker. You dangle it from the string, and the other person tries to hit it with his conker, and you take turns until one of the nuts breaks, and that one’s the loser. We always use horse chestnuts, though—I’ve never heard of anyone doing it with a cobnut. They’re too small.”

  “I thought it was an acorn.”

  Nan shook her head. “It’s a cobnut. Or you can call it a hazelnut; it’s all the same.”

  Will turned the nut in his hand. Now that he was looking for it, the hole was plain to see. “That’s what they were using, though.”

  “Who?” Nan asked patiently.

  Will tossed the nut from hand to hand, watching his cousin’s face. “The kids on the other side of the wall.”

  “Right, now you’ve lost me.” Nan frowned and picked at a scab on her knee. “Look, it’s a good trick, that, but if you don’t want to tell me how you did it, then just say so.”

  “It’s not that I don’t want to tell you,” Will said. “It’s that you won’t believe me.”

  Nan scratched thoughtfully under her chin. “You’re my cousin. You’d not lie to me, now, would you?”

  “You’ll think I’m lying,” Will said hopelessly.

  Nan gave him a long stare.

  “Fine, then.” Will looked down, so he wouldn’t have to watch her face grow scornful, and told her what had happened. When he looked up again, the dimple in Nan’s cheek had disappeared.

  “I knew you wouldn’t believe me.” Will shoved the cobnut in his pocket. He could feel the small round holes where the cord had gone through.

  Nan picked up the Magic Eyeball book and turned the pages slowly. “I looked at a book like this once, but I only saw the pictures you’re supposed to see. They print them plain in the back of the book in case you can’t make them out.”

  Will relaxed slightly. At least she wasn’t making fun of him. “I can’t see those pictures at all,” he said. “What I saw was outside the edges of the book. The book got in the way of the thing I was seeing, so I dropped it.”

  Nan’s eyes widened. “Maybe you have the Sight.”

  “What?”

  “Second Sight! You’ve got it!” Nan jumped up. “Plenty of Scots have the Sight, they say. And you’re Scottish. Well, more or less.”

  Will gave her a sidelong look. “I’m American, you dolt.”

  “Dolt, yourself.” Nan tossed her hair out of her eyes. “My mum told me you’ve got Scottish blood going back practically forever. In your genes, you’re all Scot.”

  Will wrinkled his brow. “Isn’t Second Sight about seeing the future? The boys I saw were dressed like they were from the past. The Middle Ages, maybe.”

  “The Middle Ages!” Nan breathed. “Do it again, so I can see it!”

  “I don’t know how I did it in the first place,” Will said, but he took the Magic Eyeball book and held it at arm’s length.

  It was hard to concentrate with Nan there. The edges of the book stayed stubbornly sharp and clear, and beyond them the stone wall was as solid as ever.

  A bead of sweat formed between Will’s eyebrows; the back of his neck ached. He didn’t want to let down the American side, but he felt foolish. He let the book fall to his lap.

  “Are you giving up already?” Nan said.

  “Just resting my eyes.” Will shut them, by way of emphasis.

  Nan scooted closer. “Do what you did before. Do it exactly the same.”

  “Who made you the boss of the world?” Will said grumpily, but he picked up the book. How had he done it, exactly? The book gave different methods, but the first two hadn’t worked—

  The third. He had focused his eyes on a point beyond the book, and then he had slowly raised the book, like this.…

  There.

  “Can you see it?” Will spoke very low. “A sort of shimmering around the edges?”

  There came a tiny noise from down the hall, faint and metallic. Will blinked, and the image fled. The noise came again, sounding like a distant knife scraped on wire, or springs squeaking—

  “I think that’s your little brother, turning over in his cot,” whispered Nan.

  The two children looked down the hall toward the stairwell. Will’s hand slipped into his pocket, and he gripped the cobnut for luck. There was no way he could concentrate with Jamie around. But a whole minute ticked by with no more noises.

  “He’s still asleep,” whispered Nan at last. “Try it again.”

  This time, it was easier. The shimmer appeared, as if there were a different sort of light shining behind the book, and Will lowered his arms. It was just the same as before—sunlight, no wall—only the two children had stopped playing conkers and had picked up sticks, instead. As Will watched, they began a mock battle, whacking the sticks against each other as if they were swords.

  “Do you see them?” Will whispered.

  “I can’t see a thing,” Nan said.

  “Maybe you’ve got to be looking straight at it. Get behind me, why don’t you?”

  Nan’s chin touched Will’s shoulder as she leaned in. Her gasp was loud in his ear.

  “It’s like a wide-screen telly, only better!” she breathed.

  It was like television, in a way, only the edges were not nicely squared, but fuzzy and undefined. All around him, Will could vaguely sense the dark loom of the castle hall—but directly in front, where he was looking, a picture more real than any on TV was unfolding.

  In the distance, a horse and rider trotted under overhanging trees, and three workmen were doing something with a lever. Closer in, the two children chased after each other, laughing.

  A girl with a basket on one arm walked into the picture. Her hair was reddish and tumbled, like Nan’s, but she was dirtier, and if she had a dimple, it wasn’t showing. She looked straight at Will, frowning.

  Will’s heart bumped in his chest. But the girl’s face kept its bored expression. She walked past them and out of the picture.

  Nan’s breath tickled Will’s ear. “She didn’t see us!”

  Will nodded. His heart was still racing.

  “Try turning your head. I want to see where she’s going.”

  Will turned his head, slowly, and the scene changed. The girl with the basket was still walking, but now there were tall yellow flowers in the foreground and something that looked like a long hammer lying on the turf. Sounds came through, too—voices speaking a language that was almost familiar, yet not quite.

  “Can you understand them?” Will asked.

  Nan shook her head. “I wonder if they can hear us?”

  “They can’t see us, so maybe they can’t hear us, either.”

  “We could shout,” Nan suggested.

  “Don’t,” said Will forcefully. “If a hazelnut could roll through, then maybe one of them could come through, too.”

  “If it was the boys, we could ask them what year it was,” said Nan.

  “Yeah, but what if it was that guy?” Will pointed as a huge, hairy man came into the picture, hefted the hammer onto his massive shoulder, and lumbered out of the scene.

  Somewhere, a horse whinnied. There was a clink clink of tools on metal, a grumble of voices, and a sound of soft footsteps. Will and Nan, intent on the picture, waited to see who would come into view next.…

  The footsteps grew louder. Jamie pushed in close to his brother. “What are you watching?” His voice was clear and high. “Wow, it looks real!”

  Jamie’s small hand reached into the picture, grasped the stem of a tall yellow flower, and yanked.

&n
bsp; “Wha—?” Nan said.

  “Don’t!” cried Will at the same time, a half second too late.

  Pop! went the stem as it gave way, and Jamie tumbled backward. Will threw out an arm to catch him, and the hallway grew suddenly dark as the picture disappeared. The three children stared at one another, wordless. From down the hall Gormlaith appeared, nails skidding on the stone floor as she rounded the corner with a welcoming bark. Cousin Elspeth’s slightly plump figure was close behind.

  “Well! Did you have a good sleep, then?” Cousin Elspeth hauled Jamie to his feet and dusted him off. “Let’s be off home. It’s near suppertime, and I’ve got Callum at the desk to mind the castle. Do you fancy grilled sausages?”

  * * *

  Jamie babbled in the car about a new kind of TV, where you could put your hand right into the picture. He showed Cousin Elspeth his flower by way of proof.

  She glanced at the flower, limp now in Jamie’s fist. “It sounds as if you had a good game. Did Nan show you the castle?”

  “Jamie slept too long,” Nan said from the back seat as she scratched Gormlaith’s ears. “But,” she added, smiling brilliantly at Will, “I’ll show them everything tomorrow. It’s Saturday, and I won’t have school.”

  Supper was fat, sizzling sausages, splitting their skins from the heat, with potatoes that were brown and crisp on the outside and hot and mealy on the inside. Cousin Elspeth called them “bangers and tatties,” and Will ate until he felt like a stuffed sausage himself. Even Jamie stopped talking in order to eat.

  “I can’t finish,” Jamie said at last, looking down at a half sausage.

  “Eh, well, take it out to the dog—she’ll be glad of an extra bite,” said Cousin Elspeth. “The kennel is just outside the back door, laddie.”

  Will rolled onto the couch and wondered if he would ever be hungry again. He felt his stomach tenderly. Nan bounced onto the cushions next to him, and he groaned faintly.