A/N
If you think Treasure Island inspiration worked its way in here, this is true.
3. Matrixed
- Gotcha!
If aluminium snakes could hiss in reply...
Abby Maitland felt good. A little tired, yes, but her silly little quest was nearly over, and that called for a celebration. She left the snake pendant by her kitchen sink.
- Don't crawl anywhere.
Now, for the phonecall...
- Got a pen? Right. Jack, I'm looking for G-U-N-N. Ben Gunn. You know, dad's old friend. The one who makes costume jewellery. Yes, Jack, it's important. Like... One of your scholarship applications, in triplicate. Seriously.
That pendant mission had to be accomplished, and then... Then she'd have a perfectly legal chance to squash a nasty little voice. Confusing, persistent! Whispering about time travel and the anomalies.
And snorting, yes, snorting about the wicked desire to get serious with a man who could... no, couldn't, Abby had to remind herself, couldn't be her own son of all people.
On that hospital bed, only a dropped book and an aluminium snake pendant between them... Abby gripped the receiver tighter.
- Great. So he really didn't move anywhere? Jack, you're my favourite baby brother. See ya soon!
...Benjamin Gunn didn't change. Much.
If you wanted to be generous enough and forgot to count all the folds of fat he sported. And was it a bald spot or a?.. He still had the Ben smile, though.
- Hi, Abby.
And the voice, melting every girly heart in a radius of a mile or eight. Good old Ben, among inexpensive, but nice treasures he imagined and then created... or vice versa, she didn't know for sure.
- Good evening, mister Gunn. Do you mind if I come in?
Of course he didn't.
- Look at you, young lady. My, you've grown! Why, only yesterday...
How true.
She was all grown up. Different. Not the little girl he remembered, and yet – she came back to this little town, breaking every speed limit there was to break. Looking for something definite. Solid. Something to lean onto. Something... reliable.
Abby returned the smile.
- And you haven't changed a bit, sir. You, or the shop. Everything's wonderful, just like it used to be.
Mister Gunn chuckled.
- O, fair lady, so flattering and...
Abby shook her head. The poem he recited to her, when she was an awe-struck five-year-old. Yeah, the very same.
- But it's true! Nothing changed.
The shop was exactly what Abby remembered it to be, when she was a little girl.
Bright and metallish at places, with a sparkle of a semiprecious stone here and there, and incredibly warm altogether, like the old, polished counter of just the right sort of wood, drinking in the last sunrays of the day.
As for the kind ageing man behind that counter... The voice, the eyes. That's all she really needed to know.
She was safe there, in his shop.
- A family visit, Abby, eh?
- Yeah, sort of.
If that's what they called it these days. Oh, Abby intended to drop by her mum and dad's house, too. Of course she did. Later. After finding out the things she came for.
The man asked of her job. Reptiles, mister Gunn, never stopped loving 'em. Speaking of which...
- Remember this pendant? You gave it to me, for birthday number six.
Mister Gunn most certainly didn't forget.
- Ah, yes... A curious little thing.
- Oh, I loved it, sir.
Abby made a show of twirling in front of his counter, slowly, and rays of the evening sun filtered through the shop window upon her and the little snake on a chain she put round her neck. Her father's old friend chuckled again.
- I've never made anything like it, you know. Before or after.
Abby slowed down the twirl. Now, why didn't his words sound good? And why, why did hairs begin to stick up on the back of her neck?
- Why, mister Gunn?
He looked at the counter.
- Mould, Abby. That snake mould. I tried it for the first time ever, on your present, and Mrs. Gunn, er, crept up on me in the workshop, and...
He was blushing. Or not. A bit of colour change had more to do with the sunset, pouring through mister Gunn's shop window, really. Like in one of those huggy-kissy books she vowed to stop reading. Very soon!
- I cracked it, Abby. Damaged the thing beyond repair.
...Slowly and carefully, she had to drive slowly and carefully. Right?! She was jolted up thanks to a new hump on the road, and so was her snake pendant.
Abby sped on.
- Damn!
A cat jumped out of her car's way and up a tree.
Abby didn't want to slow down, not yet. The speed... calmed her. A little.
The day was dying spectacularly, just like in those trashy books. She almost reached the house of Amy and Stephen Maitland, her parents, could see it already. Wait a sec. Amy and...
- Stephen! No way, no bloody...
But he was called just so no matter what.
Abby kept driving, slower this time. O.K., names and snakes, and who knew what else... She touched the pendant.
- Think, think... Right.
Probably she got the blasted thing lost, and some other woman found it and then ended up in the past, so she, Abby, wasn't related to Stephen Hart! Yes, very probably.
Carefully, slowly she pulled over and undid the clasp on her chain. Fisted the snake. Got out of the car, raised her arm in the air...
Just then somewhere in London another woman, somewhat older then Abby, took a mobile phone out of her bag. The woman was more than a little tired, but this couldn't wait.
- Hi, Stephen. Uh... Am I interrupting anything?
Abby Maitland waved hello to her father Stephen.
She didn't know that a different, younger Stephen shrugged, listening to the woman's voice, and thought of her, Abby Maitland, and the way she left in such a rush in the afternoon.
She didn't know that he looked out the hospital window, and then focused on his mobile.
- Not really. How are you, Alison?
