The Time-Dragglers’ Extravaganzas

The dogs barking woke Lisa up; at first she assumed she had woken up disorientated and disgruntled because of that, but then she recalled all the screaming, no, more like bellowing, she’d been doing in her dream. Intense passionate bellowing howls, like an expulsion of pained frustrated energy, of outrage. Frustratingly, she recalled no details. There had been a similar dream the previous Easter when she was sick ~ the same kind of howls, and she had felt much better afterwards, but she wasn’t sick now ~ in fact, she had been feeling better than she had in a long time.
Sipping her tea and still feeling cranky at being woken up, Lisa recalled the strange phone call she’d received the night before, and had a feeling it might be an element of her dream. One of her neighbours from just outside the village phoned, Clarissa. Clarissa was a young widow; since her elderly husband had died some months ago, and she had lived alone with her eight dogs. There had been nobody to ensure she took the medication she needed for her condition, which had resulted in a series of challenging episodes, alarming the locals. A few weeks ago, one of Juan’s sheep had been talking to her and wouldn’t stop, so she killed it in the lane outside her house. The sheep kept talking to her, so she cut it’s head off (a gruesome struggle by all accounts, although thankfully Lisa hadn’t witnessed it herself). The severed sheeps head continued to talk to the troubled Clarissa, so she kept the head on her verandah. That was the last thing that Lisa had heard when she received the unexpected phone call.
Clarissa was polite and friendly on the phone, inviting Lisa and Jack over for drinks ~ insisting really with an edge of desperation in her voice. Lisa declined the invitition, and omitted to mention that Jack was out playing poker. If it had not been for the sheep incident, Lisa might have responded differently, but her sense of responsibility to her own animals made her cautious. Then, to her horror, Clarissa offered to come round and feed Lisa’s dogs.
As soon as the long and insistent phone call ended, Lisa gathered all the dogs up into the gated top patio; a little later she was gratified to hear a noisy game of football going on in the street outside. Had she over reacted? Should she have had more compassion for the distressed young woman? Lisa lit another cigarette, feeling confused. She had only met Clarissa once, many years ago, and had no idea why she had called her, or where she got her phone number from. She knew of her because of the convoluted connecting links between them ~ Clarissa’s husband had been her own friends father. And she had heard about the various incidents since he had died from other neighbours.
Lisa had the unsettling feeling that she had refused a call for help. On the other hand, she felt that she had responded to the call for help in merely speaking to Clarissa on the phone. Lisa had been kindly towards her, although not encouraging of any physical contact.
Lisa sighed. She felt a stronger connection to Clarissa now, but was unsure what it would entail.

“This stuff’s worth a fortune! We can sell it on Eplay. It’s ambergris, whale vomit “
“What?!”
“Sells for astronomical amounts, it’s very rare, and this piece must weigh close to five kilos, we’ll be rich!”
“I can’t believe you stole it, Frank” said Molly, “From those nice people we met last night.”
“Oh, they’ll never notice it, did you see how many rocks and bits of driftwood on that patio? Nobody will miss it. If they knew it’s value it wouldn’t have been sitting there on the patio, would it?”
“I suppose not” Molly replied doubtfully. “There were so many people there than nobody would suspect us anyway. How much did you say it was worth?”

“Raining?! At this time of year?” cried Lisa in alarm. “I will have to rethink my packing now!”
Using her telepathic skills, Lisa was pretty certain that Frank and Molly were in Lisbon ~ and that they had been the ones who had stolen the whale vomit tile. Packing her case quickly and booking a flight, she was almost ready to set off to track them down. She remote viewed them again before setting off, and spotted them on a bridge near the Belen Tower, slick with rain.
“Mirabelle, grab an umbrella, and get in the car. A change of scenery will do you good. No arguments!”
What a bossy cow, thought Mirabelle, and they call ME a bossy tart!

By the time Lisa and Mirabelle arrived in Lisbon, it was too late. Frank and Molly were already heading south in a stolen car, the whale portal tile on the back seat, next to an assortment of other tiles of various colours and sizes. They were approaching a small town not far from the coast when Madam Li the navigation robot said turn left at your peril in Chinese. Frank hadn’t mastered the arts of intonation fully in his efforts to learn the language, and merely heard “turn left” and something else as incomprehensible to the ear as any other Portuguese town, and besides, the narrow goat track looked marvelously less traveled and enticing.

“You look just like your father” was Lisa’s mother’s only remark when Lisa had thoughtfully sent her a couple of photos from Portugal. No compliment coming from her, thought Lisa, rolling her eyes. And it wasn’t even true ~ she looked nothing like her father, something else must have triggered her mothers comment, some other association.
“Remember your new policy, dear, don’t take it personally” Mirabelle reminded her. “Just another cranky old crone stewing on an old trigger. Besides,” she added, “What about Frank and Molly? Can you get a more specific remote view? Stuck in a carob tree could be almost anywhere.”
“You’re rather sweet for such a bossy tart” replied Lisa with a grateful smile. “Shush now then while I access their location.”
Lisa closed her eyes and waited for the images to appear. There was an explosion of purple and a great deal of static before an image began to appear of carob pods on a car windscreen. As Lisa viewed the glass a strange thing began to happen and she started to focus on the reflections. There were dozens of people approaching, all wearing brilliant white robes trimmed with gold. The robes were short, and revealed a considerable amount of tanned muscled leg, and a murmur of appreciation escaped her lips. What handsome fellows, she thought, but there’s something odd about them. Either this is a fancy dress party on a dry dusty hill, or another time zone.

The early morning sea mist was evaporating as Fanella strolled around the village picking up dog shit. She reminded herself to fully appreciate the damp coolness, before the scorching summer sun enveloped them in a bone warming blanket, and then reminded herself to appreciate the bone warming effects of the full sun later. As she retraced her steps she noted how differently everything looked on a return journey, how piles of dog shit had escaped her notice while going one way, but were obvious on the way back. It reminded her of something she’d read recently in one of the books that Lisa insisted she read to improve her English ~ A Field Guide To Getting Lost . Hah! Had there been a cruel irony in that choice of book? Fanella had felt lost ever since she arrived in 2020. But according to the book, getting lost wasn’t a bad thing, not at all.

To be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery.

Fanella sighed. All sounds very philosophical, but I’m still stuck in the wrong time zone.
Another passage from the book popped into her head:

We treat desire as a problem to be solved, address what desire is for and focus on that something and how to acquire it rather than on the nature and the sensation of desire, though often it is the desire between us and the object of desire that fills the space in between with the blue of longing.

Fanella gazed up at the sky ~ the blue of longing was taking over, as the white wisps of clouds dispersed.

The people thrown into other cultures go through something of the anguish of the butterfly, whose body must disintegrate and reform more than once in its life cycle…. how often the early stages of change or cure may mimic deterioration. Cut a chrysalis open, and you will find a rotting caterpillar. What you will never find is that mythical creature, half caterpillar, half butterfly….No, the process of transformation consists almost entirely of decay.

Charming, Fanella thought, just bloody charming. Rotting soup of change, that just about sums it up. No wonder I wake up every morning with my bones feeling like mush.

But Lisa didn’t hear Mirabelle’s tart retort. Another image was appearing, of a man with a bright orange wig. He was smiling widely, and dancing up a storm (so to speak), and another fellow was gyrating wildly next to him, wearing a top hat and a long curly black wig. Another fellow in a big blonde wig appeared in the scene, and the dancing stopped. “Call out to 2020, emergency mission in the Algarve” he said, tossing his bright pink feather boa over his shoulder.

“But we’re on vacation!” exclaimed the fellow with the bright orange wig. “You can’t send us on a timedraggling mission while we’re on holiday!”
“I’m sorry but there really is no option. The other team is fully occupied in 2222. I did send them a message but they completely ignored it, they seem to be engrossed in a sub aquatic adventure,” replied the one in the blonde wig. “You will receive extra timetravel over timeslip, though” she added.
“And an extra wig and clothes allowance?” asked the cheeky one in the top hat.
“Oh, alright then! Now, here’s the situation. You’re to track down the Belen portal tile, stolen by Frank and Molly ~ last seen stuck in a carob tree down a goat track not far from Tavira. You will have to get there before Lisa and Mirabelle, which might not be difficult as they seem to have become sidetracked in the pursuit of Frank and Molly. If they get too close to the tile, send them on a wild goose chase somehow. I will leave the details to you ~ they are not hard to distract. Once you have located the tile, you’ll have to cloak it in the blue of longing, otherwise Lisa will pick up the trail again. Any questions?”