(We arrive at each period in our lives as novices and we lack experience no matter the number of our years.)
- François Duc de La Rochefoucauld
„Moving from Leviathan to the Villa Atterton took us several weeks“, Mr Tuniak told me. “There were times when we thought we had finally gotten everything we needed, only to discover on the next day that we were wrong. My mothers travelled from Leviathan and back a countless number of times. The time machine was the only way to get things from the island and to communicate with it.”
I nearly asked him why they didn't have a telephone, but stopped myself in time. I would have looked quite stupid since it was impossible to connect the moving island to a telephone network.
“Philip was a big help, again”, Mr Tuniak continued. “Really, I can't say it often enough that my life would have been far more complicated and difficult if I had never known him.”
It was a house built for children and teenagers. When they saw the villa for the first time, they (Sarina, Alice, Mowgli and Alexander) dropped their suitcases in the drive way and ran towards the main entrance. They spent the whole afternoon looking at all the rooms and at the garden, but when evening came they still hadn't seen everything. They'd found three secret rooms – one below a staircase, one behind a mirror (a one way mirror, one could look through it from the secret room) – and one behind a big painting. They were of course wondering if there were any more.
“Did you see the balcony on the second floor?”, Mowgli asked. “I couldn't find any door to get to it.”
“Didn't you read the history of this building?”, Sarina asked.
Mowgli shook his head, while Alice and Alexander suddenly had to concentrate very seriously at their meals. Except for Sarina, none of them had read the book which Philip had presented to them as a gift and which told the history of the villa and its most famous inhabitants.
“The balcony is only built for ghosts”, Sarina explained. “They can walk through walls. So they can get there, but no living humans can. By the way: I believe there is another secret room with no entrance behind the wall over there.”
Mowgli immediately jumped from his seat and ran to the wall to knock at it. It sounded hollow.
“Have you chosen your rooms yet?”, Philip asked. He and Miriam had decided to stay at the villa for the night.
“Yes. Mine is directly under the roof”, Alice said. “Have you seen it? It's got a huge window looking right over the forest.”
“Mine's...”, Mowgli began, returning to the table.
“...up the spiral staircase and then at the of the corridor to the right”, Alexander finished for him.
“Yes. How did you know?”, Mowgli asked in surprise.
“Because it looks like a cave”, Alexander answered, laughing. “It's the only one with stone walls. Except maybe the cellar. Has anyone been to the cellar?”
No one had been and like one person they all left the table and ran out of the room.
“Whoever finds the way down first, calls the others”, Mowgli shouted.
“We had a lot of fun at first”, Mr Tuniak said. “It took a few months, I think, before we could really say that we knew the house.”
“I can believe that”, I said. I thought back to last week and the little tour Mr Tuniak had given me of the villa. I had probably only seen a small percentage of the whole building.
“But then the problems of everyday life started”, Mr Tuniak said. “We thought we wouldn't have any problems, but we were wrong. Until then we had basically spent our whole lives on Leviathan and thought life close to London would be easy compared to that.”
“I guess it was quite a culture shock for you”, I said.
“You can say that”, Mr Tuniak agreed. “Philip lived with us for the first few weeks, but not any longer, because we wanted to prove that we could live on our own. Mowgli adapted the fastest. He made friends with a few neighbours and soon everyone thought that he was the son of an Indian noble man. Sarina and I were thought to be his siblings and Alice... They saw Alice very rarely, so I'm not even sure if they knew that she was living with us.”
As Mowgli was entering the garden behind the villa, one could see wrinkles on his brow. He was holding a letter in his hand which he had just read and which was obviously responsible for his current mood.
“What is it?”, Alexander asked. He and Alice were playing croquet, while Sarina was reading a book on the patio.
“I was invited to join a hunting party”, Mowgli said.
“Is that good?”, Alice asked.
“I don't know”, Mowgli admitted.
“What's the problem, you started hunting when you were still a child”, Alexander said.
“With your bare hand and teeth”, Sarina shouted.
“Yes, but sitting on a horse with a rifle... it seems unfair”, Mowgli said.
The hunt wasn't scheduled for another three days. Mowgli decided to go. He told the others that he would be back in the evening. Tough to everyone's surprise his car could be heard coming up the drive as the sun was just touching the horizon and the first stars were coming out.
Sarina and Alexander came to him, as he was getting out of his car. “How did it go?”, Alexander asked. But he recognized the face of his friend. Things hadn't gone as he had planned.
Without a word Mowgli opened the back door of his car. Sarina and Alexander saw a wounded fox lying at the back. The animal was bleeding from two wounds, one on his leg and one near his tail. Mowgli wrapped the fox in a sheet and carried it into the villa. It was the last time he would ever join a hunting party.
“Mowgli has a complicated relationship with animals”, Mr Tunia explained. “In general, he is not opposed to kill them, provided it was a fair battle. For instance: He would catch a rabbit with his hands, cook and eat it, but at the same time he would stop any other hunter who planned to do the same thing using a gun.
“Did the fox survive?”, I asked.
“Yes, he actually lived for several years with us”, Mr Tuniak said. “He didn't live in the villa, of course, but in the forest close by. He always came to us when he was hungry, especially during the winter time. Later, Mowgli bought a couple of dogs and they got along quite well with the fox.”
“What did the rest of you do?”, I asked.
“Sarina, Alice and I went to the university”, Mr Tuniak said. “Of course, that was only possible because my mothers supplied us with fake school reports. And it was a difficult adjustment for us. Lectures and the whole student life was very different from what we had known at Leviathan. Sarina also started to wear a bandanna. To hide her third eye. Many students thought she was a gypsy because of that and there was quite a bit of harassment because of that.”
“And Alice?”, I asked.
“She didn't stay long at the university”, Mr Tuniak said. “She tried to hide her hair as well as she could, but she didn't succeed. She said that she didn't want to hide who she was and spent most of her time at the villa. She had two friends who came to visit on a regular basis and she was the first one of us to get a job.”
“How?”
“I don't know exactly”, Mr Tuniak said. “But one day she came back to the villa and announced that she had got a job recording audio books. She had a good voice for that and a real talent. She is still recording the narration for TV documentaries from time to time.”
“And what did you do?”
“I'll tell you about that next time, but for now, there is another very important event that happened during that time and I want to tell you about that first. It was one of the most important things that happened in my life.”
Leaving the villa and entering the garden, Alexander was surprised to see the time machine of his mothers standing there. He hadn't expected them and was happy and curious about what had brought them here. He ran towards the time machine to greet them.
But Helen had apparently come alone.
“Hello, Alexander, do you have a moment?”, she asked with a smile. “Miriam and me, we've got something for you.”
She pointed with her hand. But Alexander could see nothing out of the ordinary. She was pointing at an empty piece of grass where...
A second time machine appeared. She was completely identical with the one Helen had arrived in. As the door opened on the side, Miriam exited.
“What...?”, Alexander started to ask, before comprehension dawned. His mothers had brought him his very own time machine. “When did you built that?”, he asked, after he had hugged both of them several times.
“When we were young”, Miriam said. “It's our time machine just... from a point in our future.”
“We won't be needing it forever after all”, Helen said. “And that's the good part about time travel: You don't have to wait so long for your inheritance.”
Alexander had often seen his mothers using their time machine, but for the next few days he spent a lot of time with them, learning how to control it perfectly. Then he invited Sarina, Alice and Mowgli to their first time travel alone with him. Their destination? The dinosaurs, of course.
NEXT WEEK:
Университет развивает все способности, в том числе — глупость.
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