Read Chaos Quest for Free Online Page B

comb her hair so that she looked less as though she’d blown in with the last high wind.
    That was another weird thing, Kate thought, for as soon as she’d explained it, Erda was able to draw the comb smoothly down the length of her waving, dark red hair as though it had last been combed moments before.
Or as though she’d told it to unt
…
    Don’t be stupid, Kate thought. As if anyone, however odd, could think their hair out of tangles.
    Still …
    She and David had been so taken aback when Erda had said she remembered seeing them before that they hadn’t really pursued it at the time. Now, as she sat teaching Erda to play snap, she brought the subject up again.
    “Remember when you said you’d seen us when the man pushed you out of that shop?”
    “Yes.” Erda put down a seven.
    “How long ago was that?”
    Erda waited until Kate put down the Jack of Hearts before she answered.
    “I don’t remember.” Three. “Last week sometime.”
    Eight.
    “Soon after you came to the garden?”
    Eight.
    “Snap!” Erda picked up the cards and added them to her pile. “Two days after, I think. I don’t remember well.”
    Kate was running out of cards. She put down the Queen of Diamonds.
    “To David and me, it was much longer ago.”
    Erda looked at her, head tilted to one side.
    “Maybe,” she said finally, putting down a two.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Sometimes, when I go out, it is different.”
    Kate put a four on the pile.
    “Different how?”
    “Different words, different clothes. Different houses.”
    Kate’s heart thudded heavily against her ribcage.
    “Different … time?” she asked slowly.
    Erda tilted her head and thought again.
    “Don’t know. Time…” She thought about the word while she put down a ten. “I don’t understand time. The words are not in my head to know it yet. But maybe … maybe I come out in different times.”
    Kate put down her last card. Ace of Clubs.
    “I win,” said Erda happily.
    ***
    After Kate had gone, Erda made a sandwich with jam and bread and raisins and went over what she and Kate had said in her mind as she enjoyed the sweet tastes.
    She decided to go out in search of words that would tell her about time. She finished the sandwich, pulled on her shoes and tied the special strings.
    As she did so she was aware of something new. It pulled at her, urging her to go out of the house. Since it was what she wanted to do anyway, she let it tug her towards and through the front door.
    Outside lay a bright morning that smelled of spring and green things growing. In front of her, where the street usually was, lay a grassy slope and off to the left a wood, the wind whispering among the tender new leaves.
    When she turned around the house was still there, shimmering as though it lay underwater.
    “Stay there,” she said to it and set off towards the wood, letting the odd sensation inside her draw her forward. There was a smell from somewhere that she recognised as woodsmoke.
    She listened to the soft sounds of the wood: birdsong, leaves growing, the tiny noise of mice breathing in their sleep, the clatter and whirr of a startled woodpigeon.
This way
, said a voice in her head, tugging her onwards.
    ***
    Kate phoned David as soon as she got home.
    “Maths again?” he said, answering.
    “No, listen. I’ve just been talking to Erda. I asked her if she was sometimes in different times and she wasn’t sure she understood, but she thought she might be.” There was silence on the other end of the line for a few seconds. “David?”
    “I was just thinking it through. It doesn’t sound very definite, does it?”
    “No, but …”
    “Do
you
think she understood you?”
    “Yes. Maybe not exactly, but yes. David, I think that maybe she did have some sort of accident and she’s come unstuck in time, or got stuck in the wrong time.”
    “
David
!”
    “Yeah dad?”
    “
Christine’s been calling you for tea
.”
    “Sorry, I didn’t hear.”
    “
Come