Begin Again | ongoing - Chapter 12: Chapter 12
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After the third time Sunny changes, she's finally comfortable. It looks like it's going to be a warm day so she changes into frayed denim shorts and a tank top, a thin flannel shirt stuffed into the bag over her shoulder in case the clouds come out, and the moment she steps onto the street, the bus is coming towards her. It hisses to a stop when she holds out her hand, and she's prepared this time, 70p in her hand. The number 19 always seems to turn up right when Sunny needs it.
The journey is one she has taken hundreds of times before, the same route to and from work five days a week, and yet this time there's a bud of anxiety waiting to blossom in the pit of her belly, its petals slowly unfurling the closer they get to the centre of Black Sands – the closer they get to the place where it all happened. Sunny hasn't been back since and when she's two stops away, she starts to wonder if this is actually a terrible idea, if she should stay on the bus until it circles back to Jupiter Court and she can get stuck into tidying.
But then she spots the line of grand terraced townhouses, each set back from the pavement with a railed-off rectangle of garden. Most have laid down slabs and use the space for storing their wheelie bins and bikes. Some grow flowers, a burst of brightness amidst the browns and greys. Only one of these rectangles has a well, the exact kind of wishing well that crops up in fairytales: old bricks arranged in a two-foot-high circle, wildflower weeds sprouting between each one, and a little moss-spotted tiled roof sitting atop wooden beams that would have once held a bucket.
The bud of anxiety is now a flower in full bloom, its stamen and stigma scratching Sunny's stomach as she trips off the bus and slows her pace as she nears the house. The house looks different to all the others. It isn't so neatly kempt and yet it looks so much more inviting. The wooden window frames are a little scuffed, the paint peeling, and the front gate doesn't latch properly. The hinges squeak on Sunny's approach as though welcoming her, and the anxious bouquet in her gut disintegrates in a flood of acid that tears the petals to shreds and sends a rush of regret shooting up to her throat.
A hard swallow does little to alleviate the feeling. Her footsteps waver when she's close enough that she could reach over the rusted iron fence and touch the cursed well that has given her so much grief. But she can't bring herself to do it. Even though there's a handful of coins weighing down the pocket of her shorts, she doesn't reach for them, telling herself that she can't bear the disappointment.
Bypassing the well, she heads straight for the door and she doesn't let her brain engage when her hand raises and her fingers grab the knocker, a moon-shaped crescent that hangs from a flaming sun. The sharp rap of metal on metal is louder than Sunny expects it to be and she jumps at her own noise, and instant regret joins the churning nerves to concoct a powerful potion roiling in her gut as she stands in the dip of the doorstep where so many have stood before.
It takes her a moment to register the quiet. It isn't for a lack of noise, because cars and buses were rumbling past her mere feet away when she walked from the bus stop, but in this spot, staring straight into the mystical face of the sun on the door, every noise is dampened so hard it sounds like it's coming from worlds away.
It makes her shiver. Every hair on her arms stands on end. But she doesn't move. Her feet stay rooted to the spot and she isn't sure if it's because she wants to stay, or if the universe has taken that choice away from her. When it comes to this slice of land, Sunny doesn't know what to think. Her entire belief system has already been turned on its head – never before did she think it was possible to jump time and mess with the physics of the world, but here she is. So, whatever goes, really. It's not so much that she's prepared to believe more easily now, but that she is more reluctant to be sure about anything she thinks she knows.
Time yawns. She teeters on its lip and almost tips into its maw as she waits for the door to open, seconds and minutes and hours stretching ahead of her like piano keys, and yet when she twists her neck to look over her shoulder, the number 19 is only just going past. Which means she has been here no longer than a handful of seconds. Barely long enough for sand to slip through a timer.
A shudder seizes her bones.
There is something not quite right about this place. And yet, despite the way her skin prickles, Sunny isn't scared. That whirlpool of feelings in her gut has subsided and now all she feels is peace. Like every moment of her life has led to this one. To standing on the doorstep of a couple of elderly women, the rumoured Witches of Black Sands, hoping they understand what has happened to her.
There's a noise on the other side of the door. A lock clicks, and then a second, and then there's a whine of old metal as the door opens a crack. Sunny's standing too close to see anything, until she drops her gaze and comes face to face with a fat woman several inches shorter.
"Hi," Sunny says. "I, uh, this is going to sound a bit weird but I need to ask you some questions about your well?"
The woman nods. She opens the door wider and Sunny recognises her as Astrid, the pale Norwegian whose voice she has never heard.
"Come in, dear," she says. It's a softer, sweeter lilt than Sunny thought to expect. "We've been wondering if you would show up."
That stops her in her tracks, hand over her heart. "You were expecting me?"
"We were hoping for a visit from whoever caused that ripple." Astrid looks her up and down. "I have a feeling that was you. Am I correct?"
Sunny nods, any words caught in her throat.
"Do you want to come inside?"
She nods again. Astrid smiles and steps back, and Sunny follows her in.
As dishevelled as the house looks on the outside, inside is nothing but warmth and homely spirit radiating off the oak-panelled walls. The ceilings are high and a modest chandelier hangs in the hallway, light catching on the drops of glass and bouncing off the picture frames that fill the walls. Paintings in every style are mixed with photographs in black and white and gleaming colour. Sunny's caught off guard by the luminosity. This is nothing of the witches' lair people gossip about, nothing of the darkness she expected based on the way the owners of this house dress.
Astrid could win a Miriam Margolyes lookalike contest with ease. She can't be more than five one, with a mass of bushy white hair and a loose grey tunic over black tights, her feet otherwise bare. Hammered silver bracelets climb up her wrists and old rings clink together on her fingers, a pair of silver moon earrings hanging from her lobes. There is barely a scrap of colour in her entire ensemble, except for the hazel of her eyes and the peachy pink of her unpainted lips. She is a study in greyscale, even down to the black cat that meows as it wends its way down the stairs to wind itself around Astrid's feet. It doesn't help the whole witch rumour. Even without the moggy, Astrid is only missing a pointy hat to be the epitome of a storybook witch.
"The kettle's just boiled," she says, leading Sunny through to the kitchen.
Only once the front door is shut does she think that it might've been a good idea to tell someone where she was going. Yes, she told Fenfen, but that girl takes nothing seriously, and she certainly didn't believe Sunny when she told her what she was doing. If this is how she dies, how long will it be before one of her friends puts the pieces together and figures that she might have gone looking for answers?
If she dies, will it even matter if there are multiple universes and multiple Sunnys and she is alive in every other one? If this is how she dies, she thinks, then maybe her soul will leap across space and time and find another of her bodies. Maybe that's how this happened in the first place. Perhaps original Sunny died that night after making the wish. Slipped away in her sleep. Maybe she can't go back. Maybe there's nothing to go back to.
The thought makes her feel a bit queasy so she stuffs it right to the back of her mind, her tried and tested method for forgetting about stuff that bothers her.
I'm not dead, she thinks to herself. I think I'd know if I was dead.
That would be cruel, for fate to put her through all of this only for the big reveal to be ... death.
"Tea?" Astrid holds up the steaming kettle. Accepting drinks from strangers is a sure-fire way to be poisoned, but Sunny nods, naively reassuring herself that these women have lived in Black Sands since before she was born; people would probably know if they were murderers.
"What's your poison?" Astrid asks as she opens a cupboard door that reveals a tea drinker's paradise. Sunny laughs at her wording and hopes it isn't literal, and tries to cover the laugh with a cough.
"Um, just normal tea?" she says, overwhelmed by the choice.
"I'm afraid that's probably the only one we don't stock." An arthritic finger taps the bottom row and she reels off every option. "We have peppermint; green – both matcha and sencha; chamomile; lemon and ginger – that's Celeste's favourite, with a little honey; cranberry and raspberry; spiced apple and cinnamon, which is just divine in the winter."
Sunny could interject at any point and say that she doesn't really mind, but Astrid's voice is a lullaby and she doesn't want to interrupt her.
"There's also three mint, which I find a tad strong, or pomegranate, which is rather weak but delicious with a little manuka." Astrid purses her lips, reaching higher and sorting through the boxes. "Let's see ... turmeric; vanilla chai; Earl Grey and Lady Grey – I can't taste the difference, to be honest – and Lapsang Souchong. Assam; elderberry and echinacea; masala chai; ashwagandha." She chuckles to herself, stretching up on her tiptoes. "Goodness, I didn't realise just how many options we had. What's up here? Hmm ... hibiscus; rooibos; rosehip." To herself, she murmurs, "I think these must be from when Apollo and Cassie were last here. Aha!" She pulls out the final box on the top of the shelf. "Here we go. PG Tips. Would you like that?"
"Actually, I think the vanilla chai sounds nice," Sunny says. Astrid's inspecting the box, pulling out a teabag and sniffing it.
"A wise decision. This is best before 1989," she says, and pops the box back in its place on the top shelf.
"You're keeping it?"
"Tea never really expires, dear. Loses a little flavour, perhaps, but don't we all?" She opens the box of vanilla chai and the sweet aroma hits Sunny instantly, the kind of scent that brings warmth and comfort before the leaves have even brewed. "What did you say your name was, again?"
"I didn't. I'm Sunny."
"Sunny? How sweet." Astrid's lips lift into a smile as she makes three cups of tea, steam curling up and fogging her glasses. "Short for something?"
"Tennyson."
Her eyebrows raise but she doesn't look up. "How unusual. Are your parents poets?"
"Not quite. My mum's an English professor, though."
"And your father?"
If Sunny had a pound for every time someone asked that, she'd be very fucking rich. "Not applicable," she says, a smile twitching at the corners of her lips. "My other mother, though, was a neurosurgeon. She's retired now."
One point to me for remembering, she thinks. It's not much, but it's a tiny step towards finding her place in this new world.
"Oh." Astrid's expression brightens. The change knocks years off her age, which must be somewhere in her eighties. "How wonderful. I knew I had a good feeling about you, Sunny." With a tut and a shake of her head, she says, "One must be careful; you know how some people can be when confronted with queer women."
"Oh, yeah, I know. Don't worry, I'm a lesbian too," Sunny says, taking the mug that Astrid holds out to her. "I come from a long line of gay women."
"Is that so?"
Not really. It's just something Sunny says, though her late grandmother, Wilma, did give off certain vibes – she never remarried after the death of her husband when she was in her thirties, though she did move in with her close friend, Opal, the two of them banding together to raise Wilma's four children.
Astrid loads up a tray with two bone china cups and an assortment of biscuits. "Come through. Celeste is in the sunroom. I know she'll be fascinated to meet you, and I look forward to hearing about what brought you here."
The journey is one she has taken hundreds of times before, the same route to and from work five days a week, and yet this time there's a bud of anxiety waiting to blossom in the pit of her belly, its petals slowly unfurling the closer they get to the centre of Black Sands – the closer they get to the place where it all happened. Sunny hasn't been back since and when she's two stops away, she starts to wonder if this is actually a terrible idea, if she should stay on the bus until it circles back to Jupiter Court and she can get stuck into tidying.
But then she spots the line of grand terraced townhouses, each set back from the pavement with a railed-off rectangle of garden. Most have laid down slabs and use the space for storing their wheelie bins and bikes. Some grow flowers, a burst of brightness amidst the browns and greys. Only one of these rectangles has a well, the exact kind of wishing well that crops up in fairytales: old bricks arranged in a two-foot-high circle, wildflower weeds sprouting between each one, and a little moss-spotted tiled roof sitting atop wooden beams that would have once held a bucket.
The bud of anxiety is now a flower in full bloom, its stamen and stigma scratching Sunny's stomach as she trips off the bus and slows her pace as she nears the house. The house looks different to all the others. It isn't so neatly kempt and yet it looks so much more inviting. The wooden window frames are a little scuffed, the paint peeling, and the front gate doesn't latch properly. The hinges squeak on Sunny's approach as though welcoming her, and the anxious bouquet in her gut disintegrates in a flood of acid that tears the petals to shreds and sends a rush of regret shooting up to her throat.
A hard swallow does little to alleviate the feeling. Her footsteps waver when she's close enough that she could reach over the rusted iron fence and touch the cursed well that has given her so much grief. But she can't bring herself to do it. Even though there's a handful of coins weighing down the pocket of her shorts, she doesn't reach for them, telling herself that she can't bear the disappointment.
Bypassing the well, she heads straight for the door and she doesn't let her brain engage when her hand raises and her fingers grab the knocker, a moon-shaped crescent that hangs from a flaming sun. The sharp rap of metal on metal is louder than Sunny expects it to be and she jumps at her own noise, and instant regret joins the churning nerves to concoct a powerful potion roiling in her gut as she stands in the dip of the doorstep where so many have stood before.
It takes her a moment to register the quiet. It isn't for a lack of noise, because cars and buses were rumbling past her mere feet away when she walked from the bus stop, but in this spot, staring straight into the mystical face of the sun on the door, every noise is dampened so hard it sounds like it's coming from worlds away.
It makes her shiver. Every hair on her arms stands on end. But she doesn't move. Her feet stay rooted to the spot and she isn't sure if it's because she wants to stay, or if the universe has taken that choice away from her. When it comes to this slice of land, Sunny doesn't know what to think. Her entire belief system has already been turned on its head – never before did she think it was possible to jump time and mess with the physics of the world, but here she is. So, whatever goes, really. It's not so much that she's prepared to believe more easily now, but that she is more reluctant to be sure about anything she thinks she knows.
Time yawns. She teeters on its lip and almost tips into its maw as she waits for the door to open, seconds and minutes and hours stretching ahead of her like piano keys, and yet when she twists her neck to look over her shoulder, the number 19 is only just going past. Which means she has been here no longer than a handful of seconds. Barely long enough for sand to slip through a timer.
A shudder seizes her bones.
There is something not quite right about this place. And yet, despite the way her skin prickles, Sunny isn't scared. That whirlpool of feelings in her gut has subsided and now all she feels is peace. Like every moment of her life has led to this one. To standing on the doorstep of a couple of elderly women, the rumoured Witches of Black Sands, hoping they understand what has happened to her.
There's a noise on the other side of the door. A lock clicks, and then a second, and then there's a whine of old metal as the door opens a crack. Sunny's standing too close to see anything, until she drops her gaze and comes face to face with a fat woman several inches shorter.
"Hi," Sunny says. "I, uh, this is going to sound a bit weird but I need to ask you some questions about your well?"
The woman nods. She opens the door wider and Sunny recognises her as Astrid, the pale Norwegian whose voice she has never heard.
"Come in, dear," she says. It's a softer, sweeter lilt than Sunny thought to expect. "We've been wondering if you would show up."
That stops her in her tracks, hand over her heart. "You were expecting me?"
"We were hoping for a visit from whoever caused that ripple." Astrid looks her up and down. "I have a feeling that was you. Am I correct?"
Sunny nods, any words caught in her throat.
"Do you want to come inside?"
She nods again. Astrid smiles and steps back, and Sunny follows her in.
As dishevelled as the house looks on the outside, inside is nothing but warmth and homely spirit radiating off the oak-panelled walls. The ceilings are high and a modest chandelier hangs in the hallway, light catching on the drops of glass and bouncing off the picture frames that fill the walls. Paintings in every style are mixed with photographs in black and white and gleaming colour. Sunny's caught off guard by the luminosity. This is nothing of the witches' lair people gossip about, nothing of the darkness she expected based on the way the owners of this house dress.
Astrid could win a Miriam Margolyes lookalike contest with ease. She can't be more than five one, with a mass of bushy white hair and a loose grey tunic over black tights, her feet otherwise bare. Hammered silver bracelets climb up her wrists and old rings clink together on her fingers, a pair of silver moon earrings hanging from her lobes. There is barely a scrap of colour in her entire ensemble, except for the hazel of her eyes and the peachy pink of her unpainted lips. She is a study in greyscale, even down to the black cat that meows as it wends its way down the stairs to wind itself around Astrid's feet. It doesn't help the whole witch rumour. Even without the moggy, Astrid is only missing a pointy hat to be the epitome of a storybook witch.
"The kettle's just boiled," she says, leading Sunny through to the kitchen.
Only once the front door is shut does she think that it might've been a good idea to tell someone where she was going. Yes, she told Fenfen, but that girl takes nothing seriously, and she certainly didn't believe Sunny when she told her what she was doing. If this is how she dies, how long will it be before one of her friends puts the pieces together and figures that she might have gone looking for answers?
If she dies, will it even matter if there are multiple universes and multiple Sunnys and she is alive in every other one? If this is how she dies, she thinks, then maybe her soul will leap across space and time and find another of her bodies. Maybe that's how this happened in the first place. Perhaps original Sunny died that night after making the wish. Slipped away in her sleep. Maybe she can't go back. Maybe there's nothing to go back to.
The thought makes her feel a bit queasy so she stuffs it right to the back of her mind, her tried and tested method for forgetting about stuff that bothers her.
I'm not dead, she thinks to herself. I think I'd know if I was dead.
That would be cruel, for fate to put her through all of this only for the big reveal to be ... death.
"Tea?" Astrid holds up the steaming kettle. Accepting drinks from strangers is a sure-fire way to be poisoned, but Sunny nods, naively reassuring herself that these women have lived in Black Sands since before she was born; people would probably know if they were murderers.
"What's your poison?" Astrid asks as she opens a cupboard door that reveals a tea drinker's paradise. Sunny laughs at her wording and hopes it isn't literal, and tries to cover the laugh with a cough.
"Um, just normal tea?" she says, overwhelmed by the choice.
"I'm afraid that's probably the only one we don't stock." An arthritic finger taps the bottom row and she reels off every option. "We have peppermint; green – both matcha and sencha; chamomile; lemon and ginger – that's Celeste's favourite, with a little honey; cranberry and raspberry; spiced apple and cinnamon, which is just divine in the winter."
Sunny could interject at any point and say that she doesn't really mind, but Astrid's voice is a lullaby and she doesn't want to interrupt her.
"There's also three mint, which I find a tad strong, or pomegranate, which is rather weak but delicious with a little manuka." Astrid purses her lips, reaching higher and sorting through the boxes. "Let's see ... turmeric; vanilla chai; Earl Grey and Lady Grey – I can't taste the difference, to be honest – and Lapsang Souchong. Assam; elderberry and echinacea; masala chai; ashwagandha." She chuckles to herself, stretching up on her tiptoes. "Goodness, I didn't realise just how many options we had. What's up here? Hmm ... hibiscus; rooibos; rosehip." To herself, she murmurs, "I think these must be from when Apollo and Cassie were last here. Aha!" She pulls out the final box on the top of the shelf. "Here we go. PG Tips. Would you like that?"
"Actually, I think the vanilla chai sounds nice," Sunny says. Astrid's inspecting the box, pulling out a teabag and sniffing it.
"A wise decision. This is best before 1989," she says, and pops the box back in its place on the top shelf.
"You're keeping it?"
"Tea never really expires, dear. Loses a little flavour, perhaps, but don't we all?" She opens the box of vanilla chai and the sweet aroma hits Sunny instantly, the kind of scent that brings warmth and comfort before the leaves have even brewed. "What did you say your name was, again?"
"I didn't. I'm Sunny."
"Sunny? How sweet." Astrid's lips lift into a smile as she makes three cups of tea, steam curling up and fogging her glasses. "Short for something?"
"Tennyson."
Her eyebrows raise but she doesn't look up. "How unusual. Are your parents poets?"
"Not quite. My mum's an English professor, though."
"And your father?"
If Sunny had a pound for every time someone asked that, she'd be very fucking rich. "Not applicable," she says, a smile twitching at the corners of her lips. "My other mother, though, was a neurosurgeon. She's retired now."
One point to me for remembering, she thinks. It's not much, but it's a tiny step towards finding her place in this new world.
"Oh." Astrid's expression brightens. The change knocks years off her age, which must be somewhere in her eighties. "How wonderful. I knew I had a good feeling about you, Sunny." With a tut and a shake of her head, she says, "One must be careful; you know how some people can be when confronted with queer women."
"Oh, yeah, I know. Don't worry, I'm a lesbian too," Sunny says, taking the mug that Astrid holds out to her. "I come from a long line of gay women."
"Is that so?"
Not really. It's just something Sunny says, though her late grandmother, Wilma, did give off certain vibes – she never remarried after the death of her husband when she was in her thirties, though she did move in with her close friend, Opal, the two of them banding together to raise Wilma's four children.
Astrid loads up a tray with two bone china cups and an assortment of biscuits. "Come through. Celeste is in the sunroom. I know she'll be fascinated to meet you, and I look forward to hearing about what brought you here."
End of Begin Again | ongoing Chapter 12. Continue reading Chapter 13 or return to Begin Again | ongoing book page.