Free The Accidental Time Traveller by Janis Mackay

I’d already wished. I could wish again.
    Agatha looked relieved. She patted me on the shoulder. “Oh, dear Saul. I always longed for a real friend. Is it not amusing that I must travel two hundred years in order to find one?”
    I didn’t know what to say. I smiled at her. At the same time my stomach rumbled. “Hey, Randolph, have you ever heard of bacon and eggs?”
    “As a matter of fact, Saul,” she said, laughing, “I have.” Then she dashed up the garden and into the den. I ran after her and stood in the doorway, watching as she bent over the fire and scooped up grey ash, scattering it over the glowing embers. “This is smooring,” she explained. “It saves the warmth and makes fire safe, in case yea – I mean
you
– are interested.” That done, she skipped out of the den.
    I scratched my head and wondered whether Agatha, as well as being a time traveller, was also a mind reader?She was always answering my thoughts. “Come on!” I shouted, “I’m starved,” and dashed through the gap in the hedge. Agatha followed.
    As we sped over the snowy field I struggled to keep up with her. She was a girl. She was skinny. And she was fast. She clambered over the wall like she was mounting a horse. Panting hard I suggested she keep her voice lost for a wee while longer, until she got used to twenty-first-century speech.
    “Certainly, I will remain mute if that makes everything smoother,” she said, running up the lane, not out of breath at all.
    As I ran, puffing and panting, I wrote the next few essay sentences in my head.
    Scottish children two hundred years ago were fast runners. They had no cars of course so they used their legs a lot. And they said words like dreary and afeart and well-made buck, which means a fit guy, and some of them even had monkeys as pets. And they didn’t travel much. The girls I mean, not the monkeys. Again this was because of cars.
    I was going to win. I was sure of it. I could practically feel the £200 in my hands. We reached my street. I hurried towards the house with Randolph at my side. At the garden gate I could smell crispy bacon waiting for me. I glanced at Agatha and saw her little nose twitch. But then her face clouded and she reached out and took my hand. “Do yea not hate as I do how the swine squeal so when we are obliged to kill them?”
    Squealing swine? I pushed opened the gate. “Yeah, sure,” I quipped, panting. “We’ve got a whole pigstyround the back. And a monkey in the house swinging from the light bulbs.”
    Her eyes lit up. “How delightful,” she trilled. “I miss my pet monkey so much. But yea have one too! Yea didna say.”
    “Only joking, Randolph. You only get monkeys in the zoo nowadays.” Her face fell. She really did miss her pipe-smoking Pug. “Right, Randolph,” I said, my hand on the door handle and my heart skipping a beat, “here goes, and remember, leave all the talking to me.”

12
    I pushed the front door open, muttered, “Hey-ho, here-we-go,” and stepped onto the Welcome Home mat. Agatha was kicking her boots against the front step to shake the snow free. “I’m back,” I shouted, pulling her in. Agatha, her eyes wide as saucers, gazed around the hallway. She reached out to touch the photograph on the wall of five-year-old me, first day in my school uniform. Then she jumped in fright at a large plastic rose in a glass vase. She shuddered at the whiteness of the light bulb above her head. “Agatha,” I hissed, “don’t look so surprised at everything, ok?”
    Agatha bit her lip and nodded, her blue eyes like a rabbits in headlights. “Ok,” she whispered back.
    “Right. Just do what I do.” I nudged the kitchen door open with my elbow, a big smile ready and heart beating fast. Mum was sitting at the table with a crying Esme in one arm and Ellie in the other. She was about to say something, when I leapt in with my next storytelling performance.
    “Hi, Mum. Sorry I’m late. You’ll so never guess what happened. I