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I began laughing. Him! My grandfather? No way! He only looked about thirty, and my mother was older than that, so there was no physical way that this was a possibility. I looked at him, still chuckling and waiting for him to join in. He didn't join in.
"Wh… what?" I asked, wondering why he was looking at me in that strange way. "You're not serious, are you?"
"Yes." He replied slowly, as if I was a bit thick and needed things explaining to me at a pace that I could understand. Then he frowned angrily. "Why? Aren't I good enough to be a part of your glistening family tree?" He asked sarcastically, before standing up as if to leave.
"No! No!" I hastily replied gripping onto his arm and pulling him back down onto the sofa. "It's just, how old are you? 30?" I asked. He sank back into the sofa and sighed wearily.
"I'm about that age." He replied, closing his eyes and putting his hands on his head in an exasperated fashion.
"Well, my mother is 45, so you can't possibly be her father." I reasoned, hoping that he would see the logic of this after me carefully explaining it to him.
He sighed again and turned his head to look at me. "Time." He said, as if that would explain everything. "Time hates me."
"Riiight." I stalled. "It's just, time is an inanimate measurement, and it can't hate you."
"It can here. I keep forgetting, you're from Aboveland, aren't you?"
"I suppose so." I replied, guessing that anywhere above the giant hole that I had fallen down was technically 'above' this place.
"He slowed right down in our world, but must have sped up in yours, fast enough for three generations to pass in what seemed like five years down here."
"So you are my mother's father." I clarified.
"Yes." He replied, all of this mess finally starting to make sense to me, even if it did seem a bit weird.
"Well, glad we sorted that out." I said, and stood up. "It was nice meeting you." I turned for the door and walked out of it, towards the Tulgey wood and home.
"Wait!" A voice shrieked out of the windmill, as I reached the table.
"What?" I asked, smiling as I turned around to see what this was all about. I was still happy that I had found out what Grandmother had wanted to say to him, so she could now rest in peace, and nothing was going to burst my happy bubble.
"Where are you going?" Tarrant (I accept that he is my grandfather, but calling him that just seems wrong) asked. He was walking towards me, and looked hurt, in his eyes.
"Home." I replied.
"Why?" He asked. He didn't seem to understand the concept of wanting to get home.
"Well, one, because my mother will be going mad wondering where I am, two, because I'm tired and three, because I miss my home." I reasoned, then turned back and carried on walking.
"So you're just going to leave? Just like that?"
"I was planning on it, yes."
"Your family has no honour. Your grandmother did the same thing to me, five years ago, and she left me here to wait for her indefinitely."
"Take that back!" I shouted, whirling around to look him in the eye. "My grandmother had so much honour that she sent me down to look for you after she died."
"Of course, much more honourable than just coming down to see me herself."
"Shut up!" I yelled at him. I felt hot anger boiling in my stomach and bubbling up towards my mouth. "Just shut up, and walk away!" The anger kept on boiling, and it now came up to my mouth, frothing over and foul words poured out. "Te po Ostrouman, ne Dobro, sukob Zvucan budala!" I didn't quite understand what I was saying, but it felt good.
Tarrant seemed to be losing it too, as his eyes went orange/red, and he was also hurling sharp, ugly words like knives. But my own words seemed to be forming a shield against them, so I felt no pain at the insults. More nonsense words poured out of my mouth, "Vi ste ne više od svinja i sould kažemo ništa drugo o mom baka, Te će žaljenje to!" We continued like this until we ran out of breath, and then we started again, taking a step towards each other with each supposedly hurtful word that we threw, until we were a foot and had no energy left to insult each other anymore.
I was panting furiously and scowling at him, until I suddenly realised that I couldn't remember what we had been fighting about. I looked back at Tarrant, and saw him grinning happily.
"Sorry." I apologised.
"Why are you saying 'sorry'?" He asked, still grinning. "That was amazing!"
"What are you talking about?" I asked. "I thought that I was being terrifying?"
"Well, yes, but your eyes went red and everything!" I touched just under my eye, as if to check that it was still there. It was.
"Why is that impressive?" I asked; if I had been watching that, I would have been scared stiff. "I feel terrible now." It was true, I had a stinging pain in my head, and I felt sick.
Tarrant looked sympathetic slash worried now. "I know, but it goes away in a while. I find that drinking tea helps." He reached out and held onto my arm, guiding me towards the windmill house and sitting me down on the sofa once we were inside.
I went from sitting down to curling up in a ball on the sofa, somehow, trying hard to stop bright, and invasive rays of light from penetrating my vision and burning up my eyes. I heard the loud screeching of steam escaping from a kettle, and clamped my hands down over my ears to stop my eardrums from being ripped. I whimpered in confusion as the world seemed to be closing in on me, every little sound was amplified what seemed like thirty quintillion times, and there was a big white hole in the middle of my vision.
I groaned, and even that sound was enough to make my ears ring. I squeezed me eyes shut more tightly, and then heard a series of loud bangs. They seemed to get louder, until I thought that my head was going to explode from the sheer volume of the noise itself. Eventually it stopped, though my head was still ringing, and my ears felt like they were about to pressed into my head because I was pushing down on them so hard.
"Are you OK?" A loud voice asked, and the words echoed around my skull, eventually making me want to crack my head open to get them out of there. There was then a loud hissing noise, and both noises stopped. There was a quiet muttering noise that was a huge relief from the loud noise that preceded it. I almost sighed with relief, but then considered that that small noise alone could cause my head to fall apart.
I rested on the sofa for a small while, until the white light that had filled my vision had subsided slightly, allowing me to open one eye a small amount, just enough to let some soft colours filter into my vision. I let my other eye also open, just a crack, and let the same colours enter that one too.
I sighed, and allowed both eyes to open fully, taking in the view that was now in front of me.
"Tarrant?" I asked, waiting for the skull splitting pain to invade my head, but all that came was an annoying buzz that quickly subsided.
"Yes?" he asked, coming down the stairs that led to the raised part of the first floor, and knelt down next to me so that I wouldn't have to shout for him to hear.
"Does tea really help?" I whispered, looking him in the eye. I sounded like a five year old, weak and desperate for help that couldn't come.
Tarrant smiled back at me. "Not as much as I'd like it to, but it takes the edge off it."
"Tea, please." I whispered, exhaustion overwhelming me, and making me close my eyes again.
"Of course." He replied, standing up and walking back up the stairs. I relaxed, letting my thoughts drift around inside my head and heal the wounds that the other sharp noises had caused. I heard more footsteps, and Tarrant came back down the stairs towards me. I smiled at him, and held out an arm to receive one of the two cups of tea that he was holding. He gave me one, and sat cross legged in front of me as he drank his own.
I let the many browns and oranges in the clear tea swirl around in the cup before taking a sip. The tea was better than any other that I had ever tasted, and that made me smile.
"What is in this?" I asked, letting the steam slide up my face as it swirled out of the cup and up into the air.
"Ollaliberries, marionberries, sea-buckthorn berries and lingonberries."
"I like it." I said. "Tea is one of my favourite drinks, but not many children my age like it. At least, not in Aboveland."
"Not in Underland either, but I think that you inherited that from me. Like your kaleidoscope eyes." We both smiled at this. Then I asked,
"What were you saying? When you were shouting at me?"
"I'd rather not translate it directly, but I was speaking in Outlandish. It's the language spoken by the resistance, who are the people that didn't want the Red Queen to rule." He sighed, probably remembering something. "Your grandmother led the fight against her, and slayed the Jabberwocky, the beast that the Red Queen had under her control to repress anyone that dared fight back." Tarrant was gazing deeply into his tea. "It killed my clan." He said quietly. "None of them had done anything; it just killed them because she told it to." There was a small silence, and I noticed a tear sliding down his face and into his tea. "I'm the only one left. All my family is gone."
"I'm sorry. I didn't know." I felt my eyes twinge, and suspected that they had gone light blue, like his did. "You have me." I offered, a small girl to replace an entire family. It sounded lousy, but it was all that I could think of.
"Yes." He smiled timidly, as if he was scared to smile while the memory of his family still lingered in the air. "I do." We both drank our teas in silence for a while, until he asked me a question.
"Has anything like this ever happened before?"
"No." I replied, frowning as I tried to recollect anything similar previously happening. "This was the first time."
"I wonder if being in Underland sparked it, or being near me?"
"I don't know, but they both sound likely."
"And, what was it that you were saying?"
"I'm not sure." I replied. "Actually, I think it was Serbian." I had an aunt that lived in Serbia, and what I had said sounded like something that she would say. "Although, I don't know any Serbian, so that would be strange."
"The rants just came naturally, most of the time you don't even know what you're saying. I based Outlandish around what I said when I first… 'lost it', so now it has a meaning." I smiled at him.
"That was clever." My head stung, and I had to lean back against the sofa pillows. "How do you deal with this?" I asked him; if I had to deal with this on a regular basis (and I probably will) I might have killed myself by now.
"Actually, you're dealing with it very well. Maybe the effects have been watered down through two generations, but the first time that I had one of these fits, I fainted for a week."
"I think I might be about to." I joked, but I did feel terrible again. "The tea didn't help at all." I groaned, putting a pillow over my face to block out the light.
"I suppose that different things work for different people." He stated, standing up to go and wash the cups. Suddenly, I jumped off the sofa, ignoring the sudden burst of light that invaded my vision, ran out the front door and threw up into a nearby bush.
"Yuck." I moaned, wiping my mouth on the back of my arm. Tarrant rushed out to help me, grabbing my arm as I almost let my legs give way and fell onto the ground. He supported me back into the living room where I collapsed onto the sofa and immediately went back to sleep, suddenly exhausted from vomiting.
The last thing I heard that day was, "Well, maybe she's more like me than I thought."