For a moment, I stood there with my mouth hanging open, then I leapt for Kevin at the same time as Marie. We bumped heads and bounced off each other. She looked straight at me – I suppose hitting your forehead on someone makes you notice them – and said, “You check that he’s OK, I’m going to open a door.”<\/p>\n
I knelt down beside him and checked his breathing, which he still had some of. That was about all the first aid I remembered in the heat of the moment. Meanwhile, with the hand that wasn’t clutching her bruise, Marie flung open the nearest door, the one we’d just come through. As I probably should have expected, it now led to a small sick bay with a cot (complete with blankets and pillow) and a large first aid kit on a shelf.<\/p>\n
Kevin is bigger than either of us, and it took a determined effort from us both to haul him into the room and up onto the cot. I noticed a first aid manual in the kit and was just paging through the index looking for “fainting” when he stirred and moaned.<\/p>\n
“Kevin,” I said, “what happened, mate?”<\/p>\n
He squeezed his eyes shut and then opened them wide. “Ow,” he said. “Headache.”<\/p>\n
I fished some pain pills out of the kit and looked around to see that Marie had run a glass of water for him to take them with. He sipped and swallowed. His colour was rapidly improving.<\/p>\n
“Not like you to pass out,” I said.<\/p>\n
“Nah,” he said. “I think it’s the distance. How far did you bring us, anyway?” he asked Marie. She shrugged with one shoulder, turning her hands up in the “who knows?” gesture.<\/p>\n
“I don’t pick the destinations,” she said. “I don’t even know where you guys are from. I’m guessing not Toronto.” So she was Canadian.<\/p>\n
“Auckland,” he said. “New Zealand,” I clarified.<\/p>\n
“That’s… a long way,” she said. I noticed she was wearing a winter uniform, not a summer one. “I didn’t know I could do that.”<\/p>\n
“Yeah, and we’re a long way from there again,” said Kevin. “I think that’s why I passed out. My talent, knowing where things are? I think I… sort of reach out to them in my mind. When I’m away from school in the holidays, I can tell where people are and where the school is, but it’s fainter, like a radio station that’s based a long way away. Auckland is that<\/span> way,” he said, and pointed through a wall, not in the direction we’d come from, “but it’s fainter than I’ve ever felt it.”<\/p>\n “So, you kind of got disoriented?” I asked.<\/p>\n “Something like that. Your talent seems unaffected,” he pointed out – Marie had just started again when I spoke. “She forgot you were here in what, twenty seconds?”<\/p>\n “Great,” I said in a that’s-not-great voice.<\/p>\n “Sorry,” she said.<\/p>\n “Not your fault. I put out some kind of damper wave, I think. There’s a part of the brain which people use to tell where things are, and if you damage it, you can still navigate round them but you’re not conscious that they’re there. I think I shut that part of the brain down in everyone except Kevin, but only for noticing me. They notice everything and everyone else.”<\/p>\n “I always thought mine was just magic,” she said, and turned back to Kevin. That’s the other thing – people’s tolerance for listening to me talk seems to stop after two or three sentences, at best.<\/p>\n “How are you feeling now?” she asked.<\/p>\n “Better,” he said. “The headache’s passing off. At risk of getting another one – can you tell us why you hurried us through the wardrobe like that?”<\/p>\n “That man,” she said, “Mr Brown. He came for me as well. I actually went with him, too, but something didn’t feel right, he wasn’t answering any questions, and I opened a door and escaped.”<\/p>\n “How long ago?”<\/p>\n “Yesterday.”<\/p>\n “Where did you sleep?”<\/p>\n “I don’t know, I opened a door and there was a bed.” There was a certain element of “Haven’t you got it yet?” in her tone.<\/p>\n “Must be convenient.”<\/p>\n “Sometimes. I usually try to let other people open doors instead of me, though, because I don’t want to suddenly end up somewhere else or have someone see and freak out.”<\/p>\n “Yeah, I know what you mean,” he said. We shared a reflective silence, reviewing various incidents in our minds – I was, anyway, and I assume they were too.<\/p>\n “OK,” Kevin said after a while, “I think I’m all right now.” He put his bare feet down on the floor and winced. “We’ll need shoes if we’re going to stay here. I think we must be back in the Northern Hemisphere.” He stood up, a little cautiously, and took the two steps out the door – where he stumbled, and caught himself against the wall as he passed through.<\/p>\n “Wah,” he said. “Mental compass just spun again. I don’t think the sick bay is in the same building.”<\/p>\n “Probably not,” I said, “it looks abandoned here, and the sheets on the cot were fresh.”<\/p>\n “That is one strange<\/span> power you have,” he said to Marie, but his tone was more respectful than complaining.<\/p>\n “What happens if we don’t close the door?” I asked. “Do the people who own the sick bay now have a door that doesn’t lead anywhere?”<\/p>\n Marie did her one-shoulder shrug again. “I always close them when I’m finished.” She did so, and we stood in the dusty hall in front of a chipped plywood door that could lead anywhere in the world, as long as Marie was the one opening it. I shivered, not entirely from the cold – we were definitely in winter here.<\/p>\n “Come on,” said Kevin, “let’s poke around since we’re here. Maybe you can open a door and find us some wooly socks.”<\/p>\n “And a vacuum,” she said, and sneezed. “And some food, and a microwave. It’s dinnertime.”<\/p>\n “It’s ten in the morning,” I said.<\/p>\n “Not in Toronto it isn’t.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For a moment, I stood there with my mouth hanging open, then I leapt for Kevin at the same time as Marie. We bumped heads and bounced off each other. She looked straight at me – I suppose hitting your … Continue reading