Lost in Time

Chapter 3: Tintin, the Boy Reporter, 1919-1

Chapter 3: Tintin, the Boy Reporter, 1919

When he came around again, it was surreal. He felt as if he was stuck in a silent film. Except it wasn’t black and white. Or silent. These people were as real as he was and he had no idea how he was going to deal with them. He supposed being taken in by a country doctor—that’s what he assumed had happened—was better than dying in a ditch. But he was all over the place, patches of bleary consciousness interspersed with long reaches of even more hazy semi-blackouts. He had been wondering for a while whether he had hit his head back in the alley, or whether the Pull had damaged him in some way. His vague recollection of the doctor’s examination was that he had a concussion—but they thought it was because he’d come off a bike, not been dumped backwards through time.

Whichever the cause, when he finally woke up properly he had a crushing headache and a lump the size of an egg on the back of his head.

He was in bed in an old-fashioned iron bedstead, heaped with sheets of soft, worn, well-washed cotton, scratchy grey blankets, and a lumpy feather quilt in pink silk. He thought he’d been here for a while—he had shimmery memories of people helping him to drink and to wash.

The room was medium-sized, with a large bay window glazed in old-fashioned, wavy glass panes. There were long, dark red curtains pulled back to let in the light and a red, brown, and blue patterned rug on the floor that was worn in patches. There was also a wardrobe with a mirror on the front and a tall chest of drawers with a green china ewer and pitcher resting on top. The furniture was oak or mahogany or some other dark wood. That was all, apart from a few generic watercolors on the walls.

He lay there and sorted through the flashes of memory as if they were filing cards. He remembered when he was—he was in 1919. He’d been Pulling to try to find Mira and he’d ended up travelling through time. He was still having a hard time getting his head round it.

He glanced out the window. Still raining. It seemed to have been raining constantly. Initially, of course, he hadn’t realized what had happened. His phone hadn’t worked…fuck, where was his phone? He wobbled out of bed and searched through the pockets of the coat chucked over a chair in the corner. He sighed with relief. It was still there.

He got back into the bed and tried to gather his thoughts.

He paused and breathed for a bit, clutching the iPhone, letting everything settle.

He concluded he needed to be extremely careful they didn’t think he was bonkers and lock him up. Perhaps the concussion would cover that up—it would be easier for them to interpret his confusion as the result of a head injury than as a symptom of inadvertent time travel. Then he could get away and try to track Mira.

Being warm and dry again was an enormous relief.