Percy Dale walked home from Killara Station. He was eleven, and it had been some months since he had spent an enjoyable Christmas holiday period of his life with Jennifer Winters, the twelve year old girl who lived in the house behind Ordinairy Man Manor. He had been ten when he had met that girl when he was ten, and had since turned eleven.
On this particular day, he just come home from Waverton Boys Preparatory School, located two streets from Waverton Station. It was a Wednesday afternoon. Percy made himself a hastily prepared afternoon tea consisting of chocolate wafer biscuits and fruit juice. He then turned his attention to his homework.
Mathematics was easy for him. If he learnt the new rule or formula for the lesson at school, he could complete a number of homework questions in very little time. English grammar was similar, although compositions required and extra degree of thought. Social studies was the problem. Percy did not lend himself graciously to the task of exploring an atlas, and he had equal difficulty in writing an essay about a portion of world history. In time, Percy would move up into Waverton Boys High School, which was around the corner from its preparatory counterpart. There, Percy would discover, social studies was replaced by two subjects: history and geography. Fortunately, he would be able to abandon geography in pursuit of a foreign language subject in school year eight, also referred to as second year in high school. The foreign languages he studied in high school would prove useful in his adult Sneaky Spy adventures overseas.
After making a reasonable effort at his homework, Percy found other ways to amuse himself, until it was time for dinner. He then read a chapter of a novel before lying down, switching off his reading light and preparing to go to sleep. He could never drop off to sleep immediately after dinner.
Having decided that dinner was the most counterproductive meal of the day, Percy would spend up to an hour reading in his bedroom between dinner and sleep, in order that the revitalising effects of the food would be somewhat negated.
Now it was time to relax and enter the world which was different in many ways, each time one went to visit it. To Percy, the world of dreams would alter at least once every twenty-four hours, depending on how many dreams he would have in one night.
Percy was soon sound asleep. The weeks and weeks of sixth class that he had, in reality endured that year had been replaced by the end of those Christmas holidays. He was still ten years old, and he was about to commence his first day of sixth class. He wondered about his teacher. Would learning be fun? It had been enjoyable in the previous year, if he ignored certain unpleasant events.
He arrived at school at half past eight, which gave him about half an hour to spend in the playground, before the school bell announced the unwritten instruction to move into the classrooms. One of the teachers had left the school at the end of fifth class, Percy remembered, and there had been some talk of rearranging the remaining teachers' classes, and leaving one free for the replacement teacher. Percy wondered about the likelihood of sixth class being taught by the new teacher. Sometimes new teachers were easier to get to know, because they were politely feeling their way around an unfamiliar system in a previously un-encountered area of educational territory.
"What did you do in the holidays, Percy?" asked one of the boys.
The question rang like a fire alarm in Percy's ears.
"Oh no," he thought, "I cannot tell people about Jenny. She was my little secret. Now she's gone. How would these boys understand about the cubby house in the bushes, the Christmas party we had, the chasings and the hide and seek in the gardens at night, the adventures as Sir Percival Knight and Princess Jentil, and worst of all how much it made me feel so sad to say goodbye to her?"
He thought about it and eventually replied, "Oh nothing much. I just did a few things at home."
"You never go away, do you? How boring. Good one, Percy."
Time rolled on in the dream world, and then the bell rang. Percy walked into the classroom and sat down in the front row. He would be close to the door at recess, lunch and at the end of the day. He would also have easy access to the garbage bin, and would have less distance to walk, if he needed to bring a question out to the teacher's desk in order to ask for help. There was one more reason for sitting almost in front of the teacher. Percy would be able to get on with his work, because any attempts to harrass him would be more readily seen by a teacher if he sat in the front row.
"I wonder if we'll get old Wacky," said one of the boys. The origin of the nickname of the teacher concerned had never been publicly declared. Percy had guessed at three possible reasons. Firstly, linguistic corruption could be responsible for converting Mister Jackson's name to Jacky and then Wacky. Secondly, the word Wacky could refer to the suspicions held by numerous people, that Mister Jackson was becoming senile in his later years of life. Finally, Mister Jackson's nickname could act as an alternate adjective, pertaining to Jackson's reputation with a long thin stick. He was known, in the educational circles at Waverton Boys Preparatory School as being "the hardest caner in the prep."
"Well I hope we don't," said Percy, turning his head around to look back at the boy who had first mentioned Mr Jackson.
"Don't you have any respect for the school rules?"
The voice came from the doorway into the classroom.
It was not Jackson's.
Percy turned his head back to face the front of the classroom, feeling most unfortunate about the likelihood of the teacher arriving as soon as he had turned his back.
The voice sounded vaguely familiar, as it continued: "Yes, you. Turn around, face the front and stop talking. You should be quietly waiting for the first class of the year to start. Your behaviour is absolutely shameful for somebody in the first few minutes of sixth class."
"So we do have the new teacher, and all of the good things about that may not happen now," he thought, "I've gotten off to a bad start with a brand new teacher, and now all my hopes about a fresh new year have gone to waste. Why oh why did I have to turn my back and talk? It's just not like me to do that, but somehow I did."
Such is the confusion of events which occur in a dream, where a person can act in a manner which is highly inconsistent with his character, then recognise the fact and face the humiliating scarcity of explanations for such an apparently incongruous act of misbehaviour.
He felt a strange mixture of emotions revolving in his mind. This new teacher had been a surprise to him, a shock which had taken him into an unexpected round of embarrassment. Despite the surprise, Percy had the confused suspicion that he knew this teacher in some distant way.
He racked his brains and shovelled into the soil of his memory, searching for the chronological location of any clue which may serve to remind him of a possible previous encounter with this teacher.
"Well now that you're all quiet," said the teacher, "You can write my name in your home lesson books, and then copy down the class timetable as I write it on the blackboard. My name is Miss Winters."
"That's it," thought Percy, "but how? Jenny Winters didn't have a sister, and this lady doesn't look like Jenny's mother. She looks and sounds like an older Jenny. It makes no sense. Jenny should be twelve, and with her hair up in a ponytail. It's crazy. She's too different from Jenny to be Jenny; but she's also too much like Jenny for her not to be Jenny. I cannot be making it up. She had a voice I remembered even before I turned around to see her walking angrily into the room. She must be Jenny Winters. I've got to understand all this somehow."
Percy realised that he had been lost in thought. Miss Winters rubbed Monday's timetable off the board, in order to make room for Wednesday's.
She looked at least as pretty as young Jenny Winters had been, probably even prettier, Percy decided. Percy turned to look at the timetable for Monday on the desk adjacent to his. The boy let Percy copy it.
"You again!" snapped Miss Winters, "What's your name?"
"You already know," thought Percy, before he almost made the mistake of saying it out aloud.
"It's Percy Dale, Miss Winters."
"Well Percy, why can't you copy from the blackboard like all the other boys?"
"I didn't get all of Monday's stuff written down, Miss Winters."
In truth, the brain has two sides, one that dreams and one that reads, making it impossible to read anything in a dream.
"Let's see what you're missing," she said as she approached his desk, "What? You haven't even started it! You naughty little boy! You can stay in at recess and I'll dictate the timetable to you then. I'll teach you to sit in my classes doing nothing."
Percy was almost in tears from the surprise. She did not remember him. There was no sense in attempting to relate the story of their Christmas holidays adventures to her. She would probably punish him further. There was nothing to do except try to find proof that she was Jenny Winters. Then and only then could he attempt to tell her the truth and ask her some questions.
"Well maybe it's good that I have to stay in at recess," he decided, "It will be just her and me. Maybe I can find out something then."
They finished copying the timetable, and then started the first lesson. It was social studies, and Percy found it unusually interesting, enjoyable, and for reasons only possible in a dream, he was able to do it well. He even scored full marks in the quiz at the end of the lesson.
"Jenny had a better way of teaching it just now than my old teacher had last year," he thought, and then he realised that he had called her Jenny without thinking, "but Jenny Winters and I used to be equals and friends and in love, like on television. Now this Miss Winters thinks that I am a trouble causer, and she's my teacher. She is older and looks down on me and doesn't like me. If only I could know it was really her and things could be happy again."
An idea suddenly came to Percy as he was putting his social studies quiz into his desk, leaving the desktop free to receive the mathematics exercises being handed out as Miss Winters paced the rows of the classroom. Jenny had been taller than Percy, and Miss Winters, a lady apparently in her mid twenties towered over these sixth class schoolboys. She was one of the tallest ladies Percy had seen. How had she managed to be so similar to Jennifer Winters, and yet so different?
"I know," thought Percy, "There is one way to make any teacher like me. I'll work very well, better than all the other boys. If I can do this well in social studies, the maths and English will be so easy. Then she will like me enough to believe that I used to know her, or someone very much like her. Then she can perhaps be like Jenny Winters again, sort of. I can see her every day at school. Imagine that. Instead of school being awful because I never see the girl I missed, I will be able to look forward to going to school for five days a week, and that will make the weekends worse than school instead, because school will be better. Maybe I can even see Miss Winters on weekends too. That would be something."
"Alright boys," said Miss Winters, "You won't be able to get your books from the school shop until after lunch. So these are just some more exercises to keep you all thinking until later. If you get stuck, go onto the next ones, and we'll go through it all in about twenty minutes."
Percy began to work through the mathematics exercise, until his train of thought was interrupted again by the voice of Miss Winters:
"Well I think you're all doing a good job at social studies. I've just worked out that Benjamin got the second highest mark, and the top mark was one hundred per cent in social studies, so someone else did even better."
Why had Miss Winters read out Benjamin's name and mark and ignored Percy's name?
"I got higher than Ben. Well I'll do even better in maths anyway," thought Percy.
To exceed a score of full marks is hardly a plausible feat. However, Percy's intention to improve on his social studies performance when he did mathematics was based on his hopes of achieving full marks while all other boys in the class achieved considerably less than Benjamin's social studies score, when their marks were totalled up for the mathematics quiz.
* * * *
Percy achieved his goal, but he was still unable to comprehend why Miss Winters again declined to mention his name. He put his hand in the air and waited until Miss Winters noticed him and said "Yes Percy."
"Who got full marks each time in maths and social studies, Miss-"
"How do you know it was the same person each time?" asked Miss Winters.
"Well I don't, but I just meant whichever two people it was. I mean, I'd like to know."
"Why don't you mind your own business and think about your own marks?"
"Yes Miss Winters."
"You can all go to recess now, except for Percy Dale," said Miss Winters.
The other boys left the classroom, and Miss Winters began to dictate the timetable. Percy wrote it down in his book and wondered if she would say anything about the Jennifer Winters girl whom Percy could not forget.
"After all, we're alone now. Maybe Miss Winters was keeping it secret, and she does remember me," thought Percy.
"That's better. Now why can't you copy it off the board like everyone else in the class?"
"Well I'm sorry. I was just daydreaming by accident."
"Why do you daydream in class time? Are my lessons supposed to be too boring for you?"
"No, they're good. I was just thinking about a friend I used to know."
"Well please do your daydreaming at home. Any more of it in class, and you can do detentions after school to make up for the work that you miss out on while you're thinking about your friends."
"I won't do it again, Miss Winters."
"I'm a new teacher here, Percy, but that doesn't mean that I don't know what little schoolboys get up to. If you want to misbehave, then you'll be punished for it. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Miss Winters."
"I hope so, because if I have any more trouble from you, then you will have a lot of trouble from me. I'm here to make you all work hard for the whole term. You're in sixth class now, not kindergarten or pre-school. I just won't put up with all the antics that silly little boys get up to."
Percy put his home lesson book in his desk, and Miss Winters allowed him to venture out into the playground for the remaining five minutes of recess.
"Would you like me to carry your bag to the teachers' room, Miss Winters?"
"I'll carry it myself, thank you, and you just be seated at your desk quietly when class resumes in five minutes."
Percy was avoiding fact and fiction with equally definite prejudice. He had copied from another boy, and come top of the class. He faced a losing battle. If he worked his hardest, he would avoid trouble, but receive no mention of Miss Winters' apparent counterpart Jenny.
Percy had no problems with the double period of recess between recess and lunch. At lunch time, Percy decided to put his suspicions to the test.
"All I need to do is to climb into the teachers' room while the teachers are out supervising the playground. Then I can look for some way of checking to see if Miss Winters is called Jenny."
Percy stole around behind the school building and located the teachers' room. The room was empty and the window was open.
"Hooray for summer," thought Percy as he climbed through the open window. He found Miss Winters' pigeon hole, and then her books. All he could see in the inside covers of her books was the same unintelligible group of letters, which his mind could not read in the dream.
"Another failure," thought Percy. It had been merely enough to whet his appetite, without giving him any certainties. He still had to find another way to determine whether or not the J definitely stood for Jenny.
"And what do you think you're doing?"
It was the voice of Miss Winters.
Percy rapidly turned away from her books, and composed a lie.
"Well I was playing hide and seek, Miss Winters, and I was really sure that nobody would think to look for me in here."
"Hide and seek! What nonsense! You were going to steal my books, weren't you? Why don't you eat your lunch at lunchtime, like everyone else does?"
"I was going to eat it."
"When? Where is your lunch now?"
"In my schoolbag in the classroom."
"Well fetch it at once and bring it back here. It's a good thing I remembered to come back for my tuckshop money, or I would never have caught you in here."
Percy soon returned with his lunch.
"Now Percy, I have to buy my lunch, but from now on I won't bother. Since you're too busy hiding in teachers' rooms to eat your lunch, you're going to secretly give it to me, as well as your recess food every day. If you don't bring me all of it every day, I'll tell the rest of the school that I caught you trying to steal things in here, and then you will be expelled from the school."
He could only sit and watch her gobble down his lunch, knowing that he would now have to surrender all of his food to her on a daily basis in order to escape being punished for a nonesuch theft, when he had actually been attempting to conceal a minor act of espionage.
As she finished off his sandwiches, Percy had an idea. If he could see her wearing her hair in a ponytail, he would know a little more about the similarities between Miss Winters and Jenny Winters.
"Miss Winters, could you do something to help me? I could bring you extra food if you do. I was writing a poem called 'Going to the Barber's' for a hobby at home. I found a word that rhymes well with ponytail, but I don't know what a ponytail looks like, because I have never seen anybody wear their hair that way. Could you hold your hair in a ponytail with your hand, just for a minute?"
"Percy Dale, I'm not about to do a favour for a boy who won't stop breaking the school rules. Now you go out into the playground and don't forget to bring me your lunch, and your recess food too, every day; and if I catch you eating anything yourself in this school, I'll have you expelled for coming in here."
* * * *
"Alright, we've got two periods left. I can't give you any more maths or social studies work until you've got your books, so I think you had better all write a composition in this period, and I'll mark them next period while you go and get the new books."
Percy decided that he was too shy a boy to confront Miss Winters with the truth.
"I've had two chances alone with her today and I couldn't do it. I'll use this composition to tell her about Jenny and myself, only I'll disguise it a bit," thought Percy. He began to write (not in words, but in his mind):
There was once a girl called Jean Wilkie who lived in
a nice house. One day she met a boy called Presley,
who invited her over to his house to play chasings and
hidings. One day they couldn't see each other anymore.
So Presley missed her, but when he thought he
recognised her somewhere else one day, she couldn't
remember him.
He bought her some lunch, but she still didn't
remember him. He knew that he had to solve the
mystery. So he tried all sorts of ideas, but they only
got him into trouble. Eventually, he felt so sad that he
just sat down and wished that Jean Wilkie would
remember him. He wasn't even sure that it was Jean
Wilkie, but he was pretty close to sure. She seemed the
same, and also different. He decided that it would have
to stay a mystery, until she proved who she really was.
THE END.
* * * *
"Well I did some marking while you were all getting your books. I don't know where some of you get your ideas from, but they're all very well written, for sixth class boys anyway. You can all go home now, and remember to look at your timetables each day and get out the correct books to start first period."
Percy absorbed the fact that his composition had failed to invoke a reaction from Miss Winters.
"She caught me when I stole into the teachers' room at lunchtime," thought Percy, "but I'm sure I know her. I don't know how old she is now, and I don't know how she got that way in less than a month, but I am going to find out. She won't catch me creeping into her house, until it is too late."
"But how can you find her house?" said the silent mentally questioning voice which represented the cynical side of his young mind.
"That will be so easy," thought Percy, "because I will just let her show me the way."
He used his chemistry set to invent a shrinking formula, took it and reduced his size unnoticed in the empty teachers’ room, and then hid himself inside Miss Winters’ handbag. He would now be taken to her home by Miss Winters herself.
Now Miss Winters could not drive, and this would be the logical inability of a person who would be the age of young Jennifer Winters. Instead, she walked to a house located in Wollstonecraft, two small suburbs away. He was finally doing something for a lengthy period of time, and managing to avoid being caught in the act. Everything he had attempted had resulted in his own humiliation. He was finally able to outwit the lady who bore the surname and initial of his friend Jennifer Winters.
He waited until he heard her entering the house and putting down the handbag, and leaving the room. Then he crept out of the bag and heard her on the telephone. He found himself listening to an unhappy mixture of tears and words. It had been intended for the recipient of her telephone call, but its volume had no trouble penetrating a closed window. It reached the ears of Percy Dale in time to inform him that Miss Winters was speaking to-
"Laura, it's been an awful day. You're the only one who knows all of this. I couldn't believe myself at school, but it was the only thing I could think of to do."
"Laura," remembered Percy, "the name of Jennifer Winters' eleven year old cousin."
"Laura, how can I give the boy good or bad marks for a composition like that?"
"Yeah, figures," thought Percy.
"Laura, it's too much to cope with right now. I'm going to lie out the back on the hammock and sleep until whenever. If I had the energy, I'd prepare myself some dinner, and with daylight saving going on, I could eat out in the garden, but all I want to do now is sleep."
Percy waited for her to say goodbye, after which she put down the receiver and was soon settled in the hammock.
"Well that's good," thought Percy, "She left me an open back door."
With Miss Winters asleep in the hammock, Percy was able to walk through the back door, discarding his need to use the side boundary bushes for cover. He made his way towards the sleeping woman, enjoying the realisation of his giantess fantasy.
We do not know if, and if so what type of dreams were being encountered by Miss Winters. However, we know that she awoke to see a tiny boy standing beside the hammock.
"Percy! How did you find me and get here so small?"
He explained.
Miss Winters had broken her pattern of belittling his every word and action.
"Miss Winters, can I ask you a question?"
"Sure, I guess."
"And you'll answer truthfully?"
"I'll try... if I think it's something you have a right to know about."
"And you won't punish me again?"
"Of course not."
"Then who are you really?"
"I'm Jennifer Winters, formerly of Burns Road Wahroonga," said Miss Winters.
"Jenny, you are Jenny! I've always suspected it, but how did you become a teacher, a lady over twice my young age? Why did you pretend not to know me, and be so unfriendly to me at school?"
"I wanted to tell you when I caught you, looking for what J stood for, I suppose. Then I wanted to show you a ponytail like this."
She held her hair up in a ponytail. She looked just like the Jenny that Percy knew well.
"So why not?"
"Because I'm older now. I was afraid you wouldn't understand, that you wouldn't want to be my handsome young boyfriend any more. I'm an adult, Percy, and you're a handsome young boy. We used to be neighbours of neighbouring ages. I was hoping to frighten you away to a new school, so we'd never see each other, until I could work out how to fix myself. I could only get a job at Waverton Boys Preparatory School, because they happened to have a job that didn't need experience. How can I have experience and prove it, when I was twelve only a month ago? Now I must be twenty-four. Oh Percy, you just wouldn't understand."
"Tell me, and of course I'll understand. I recognised you, didn't I? That was before you wanted me to find out."
"I just woke up the day after you left your grandmother's house, and I was a grown adult. I told Laura about it on the telephone, and then felt a strange urge to come here, where I found an empty house with a key in the door lock. I found furniture, but no people in the house. I knew I could stay here, and that's why I knew that I had to take the job offer from your school. They both came to me in the same area, the house and the job."
"Maybe it happened so that we could be together. It's actually easier for us now than it was when you were a twelve year old girl living in Wahroonga and going to a girls school."
"I don't know how I changed, but I'm sure Laura would love to be a girlfriend of yours if
you-"
"I don't want to be Laura's boyfriend."
"But she'd be your own age."
"I love you Jenny. I'm young and I don't understand love the way some people do, but if you really still love me, then we could be special friends at school."
"But look at your size, and I thought I’d changed! Percy, I’ve just had an amazing idea! You look so nice and small that I can eat you for my dinner!”
It was in that moment that the young boy understood why he had been dreaming about being shrunken and chased by giant ladies and girls for years. The focus had always been on the smiles and laughter of their mouths. He had subconsciously wanted to be shrunken, chased and EATEN by a beautiful woman. And this Jenny wanted to do it.
"Well it's more useful than an apple for the teacher," said Percy.
Jenny giggled adorably.
“No, really, I mean it, Percy. You’ll go down whole in a few gulps!”
"Oh Jenny, this is what I hoped for all the time."
"Even though you seemed to know I was older?"
"And you must stop worrying about that. The problem wasn't that you were older. The thing that upset me was the way you made the worst of everything at school. I've seen movies about boys falling in love with their teachers, but this time the teacher and the boy were both already in love, and I’d love you to eat me."
"And in love in the strangest of circumstances," said Jenny, "I guess it would be silly for a lady my age to be in love with a ten year old boy, but I remember you and the way I felt about you last month, when I was only twelve. We mustn't let anyone find out about us. I shall swallow you down this very night."
"Nobody will, Jenny," said Percy, "Oh do I still have to call you Miss Winters?"
"No."
"I nearly called you Jenny today at first."
"Well don't worry. You fooling me today was the hard part, and you've already proved you can do that. The two of us together fooling everybody else will be easy."
"So long as I don't have to read out my compositions to the class."
"Well you won't have to read today's little effort, which was not bad by the way," said Miss Winters.
"Thanks Miss... Jenny."
Then he was amazed as Jenny lifted him up and began moving him towards her mouth.
* * * *
The real world Percy Dale awoke.
"She... it all seemed like it really happened," he thought, "She had a strange feeling telling her to go to live in Wollstonecraft. Maybe if I have a look around the streets of Wollstonecraft after school, I can at least find a young Jenny, which would be everything to me right now. I can be as devoted to my search as I was in the dream. Maybe I’ll at least find someone who wants to shrink me and eat me. I thought it was possible at last, but it was a dream. Now I know I don’t just want to be tiny. I want to be eaten.”
* * * *
Percy did manage to locate a house in Wollstonecraft. He had never seen the house before. He had never even entered the street wherein the house was located, prior to this Thursday afternoon, the day after his dream. He did not dare to approach or enter the property, but it looked extremely similar - in fact unmistakably similar - to the house in the dream. He waited until he saw a family drive in and step out of their car. None of them bore any resemblance to either Jenny aged 12 or the Miss Winters of his dream. Detouring home through Wollstonecraft would still see him at a station covered by his student's free rail pass, but a trip to Wahroonga would not be possible. He would not be able to see Jenny again.
"All I can do is call it an incredible coincidence," he thought, "and I might as well head home to Killara."
His teacher had been Mr Jackson that year, and he was still unable to perform well in social studies. Perhaps he would never meet Jennifer Winters again. How she would giggle at the dream if her met her and told it to her!
In reality, time is a confusing dimension of life. In a dream, time is impossible to account for, because a dream allows time to break its own rules, and to demolish its own barriers. There are as many numbers between zero and one as there are between one and infinity, and there is as much likelihood of Percy recapturing his dream about Miss Winters as there was of that Miss Winters recapturing her mysteriously vanished youth.
Consider the following facts:
(1) It is impossible to make - in the sense of command and force - a dream to come true
in the future.
(2) It is equally impossible to hold onto a past reality in the future. It can be copied and
repeated, but the original experience cannot be maintained.
Thus there may be no resulting implications from a decision about whether an event was a reality or a dream. If neither can be seized, captured, manipulated, stored and withheld; then is there any internal value in asserting the status of the event?
The author does not seek to answer these questions, but rather to present them as an answer to the apparent void left in the mind of a person who is unable to differentiate between his dreams and his realities.
A dream is also a means of satisfying the callers of both heads and tails, with merely one toss of a coin. The mind can rest, free of controlled thinking, and yet it is subject to the extraordinary level of erratic thought, which is able to equip the brain of the sleeper with a mental experience of certain facts that are not true facts. A dream enables a sleeping mind to traverse the boundaries of reality and exceed the constraints of physics, biology, geography and history. A dream can redefine these studies, as new concepts.
It was the May school holidays, one full term after the summer holiday period that Percy Dale had spent with the twelve year old girl called Jennifer Winters. Percy was ten years old, and was to spend two nights and three days at 66 Burnseid Street Wahroonga. This was the home of his grandparents.
Having arrived at 66 Burnseid Street, Percy farewelled his family, and was anxious to explore the bushes which led to the tennis court fence of a special house with a Burns Rd address. That was the home where Jenny Winters had lived. For fourteen weeks, these two had been separated. Now, perhaps, Percy would see Jenny again, and they might even be able to plan a way to visit each other during the school terms in the future. Jenny was two years older than himself. In less than a year, she would be a teenage girl. Maybe she would be able to find a way to see more of him.
He gave the football a hard kick, aiming it straight for the bushes. He then walked into the bushes, as if to pursue the football. The cubby house was still undisturbed in the bushes. It had obviously remained undetected. He would have heard something said about it, had it been discovered by one of his grandparents.
Then the surprising news was discovered by the young Percy Dale. A young boy about eight years old, wandered onto the tennis court, put down a model car and directed its movements around the tennis court, using a remote control device.
"Hello," called Percy, "Does Jenny Winters still live here?"
"No," said the boy, "We moved in here, about a few weeks ago. We live here now."
Life just did not seem fair sometimes, thought Percy, as he retrieved the football and went back indoors to see whether his grandmother had finished her chores.
They spent the day relaxing, watching television, building with toy modelling dough, and feasting on the results of his grandmother's cooking.
However, by the time Percy had climbed into bed, he was still thinking about Jennifer Winters. There was something different about having been special friends with a GIRL. If he was kept from seeing his male friends in the past, he had soon found new friends and forgotten about it.
However, it had now been fifteen weeks, and he still could not forget Jennifer Winters.
"Now I will never know where she is," thought Percy, as he lay in bed with tears forming in his young eyes. He had exhausted himself both physically and emotionally that day. His grandmother had sat, watched and talked to him, which was enough for a boy who merely wanted some company while he ran around doing things to wear off his pre-adolescent excess energy.
Percy thought back to other previous visits to 66 Burnseid Street Wahroonga.
"What else do I remember?" he asked himself, "Oh well, there was that time I snuck out at night and found that group of people in very historically old clothes in Wahroonga Park."
Percy remembered their top hats, tails, old white shirts, the jewellery in the hair of the girls, their lovely dresses, and the fact that he had discovered them eating and drinking and talking away in the park in the early hours of the morning. Having discovered him and temporarily confused him with a spy - because he had been crouching in the bushes observing them -they then permitted him to partake of their activities. He had only been seven years old at the time, or was it eight? He was not entirely sure.
"Eight, no, seven, no it couldn't be eight. I was definitely seven, because it was in third class, and I turned eight later on that year."
With the memories of the Wanderers of Wahroonga Park, and the girl called Jennifer Winters floating about in his mind along with his growing desire to be shrunken and eaten, Percy Dale sat up in his bed and looked out into the night. Below the stars were some tops of trees, a rose garden, then the driveway, the hedge, the lawn strip (not the one where Percy had kicked the football), the downstairs roof outside, and the window.
What would happen if he went out there right now?
He decided to lie down for about half an hour. This would revive his energy, as well as allowing his grandmother some time to get to bed and fall asleep herself.
"It's funny how I often have fun and adventures with special people at night, when I'm up here for a visit to my grandmother's house," thought Percy, and then he did something which had not been incorporated into the plans which he had just made. Instead of lying in bed for half an hour, prior to creeping out of the house, the young Percy Dale fell into a deep sleep and began to dream.
The first part of the dream was merely a repeat of the events which had transpired in
the reality of the days just gone past. Percy's dream self was to spend some time at 66
Burnseid Street Wahroonga. His family had driven him to Wahroonga, dropped him
off, shared a few welcome words of conversation with his grandmother and departed.
Percy collected the football from the cupboard in the upstairs guest bedroom (where
his real self was currently located in deep sleep), and kicked it around the large lawn
for a while, until it sailed into the air and landed somewhere in the distant bushes.
Percy walked over to the bushes, and began to search for the football.
After a fruitless effort of crawling, lifting small branches out of his line of sight, and
failing to find the football, Percy decided to lie down for a short rest in the cubby
house, which was called, but not labelled, Jentil Manor.
Percy climbed through the doorway, having opened the unhinged block of wood
that had often served as a door during the Christmas holidays of Percy's real life.
Seated in the cubby house, cuddling the football as though it were a teddy bear was
a smiling Jennifer Winters.
"Percy boy, I have missed you," she said, "I hope you didn't mind my little prank,
but I thought you would never look in here. I was about to come out and surprise
you."
"I'm so glad you are here too," said Percy, "School was just no fun at all after
spending the summer holidays with you."
"Summer holidays, yes. But Percy, in five days, it will be well into winter. You know
how the second week of the May holidays always gets colder than the first, much
colder. I would love to sneak out with you again at nights, but how can we play
chasings in trees when the branches feel so cold and hard on my hands?"
"We'll go for a walk around Wahroonga instead," said Percy, "and we can wear
plenty of warm clothes. But let's have a cuddle."
Percy and Jenny embraced, until a voice sounded in the gardens of his grandmother's
house.
"Percy, where are you?"
"Oh, that will be your grandmother. Can I meet you here at eleven o'clock tonight?"
"I'll get here as soon as I can sneak out. Will you wait for me?"
"Sure. I will just come out early and have a rest in Jentil Manor, right here. It's easy to
trick my parents."
Percy kissed her cheek and ran out from the bushes, clutching the football.
"Sorry, Nan. I kicked it hard, and it went into the bushes. I have been looking for it
for a while. Then I found it. Then soon after that, you called me."
"Well you'll want to kick it the other way from now on, won't you? Then you can
bounce it off the wall," said Percy's grandmother, "You don't need to be ratting
around in all those bushes every time you kick it hard. You might get yourself lost
in there, and I don't want to have to come in and find you. I don't like going in dark
and creepy places like those bushes and trees. I never go where you have just been."
"That's lucky," thought Percy.
Percy, in reality, usually demanded a fairly active grandmother. He enjoyed lengthy walks, outdoor games, wild card games of snap, and plenty of mischief to go with it.
However, having in this dream planned a meeting with Jennifer Winters, Percy made
a conscious decision to choose activities which would conserve his physical and
mental energy, without arousing suspicion. So he replaced the morning walks and
outdoor activities with a long session of card games, which pleased his grandmother
to no end.
By nine o'clock he was lying in bed wearing his winter pyjamas.
Percy decided to put on a black pair of long trousers, some white socks and sandshoes, and wear a white shirt under his black jumper, which had a long neck.
"I'll wait until quarter to ten and then start putting those things on," thought Percy.
To amuse himself, he imagined what sort of clothing would be worn by Jennifer
Winters.
"Oh she will look lovely no matter what she chooses for clothes," thought Percy,
"She always looks very lovely. It's like she's too special for anyone else but me to know about. That's why I don't tell the boys at school about her. They would
probably think that I was becoming a cissy."
To the real Percy Dale, the concept of being called a cissy sounded rather stupid. His interpretation of the word "cissy" was "a boy who is interested in the hobbies and interests of girls." So what was wrong with that? It was unusual, but the word "cissy" was always used
in a derogatory tone. Percy was less than pleased about it. However, in his dreams, he could put the realities of school aside and see Jenny again:
"I'll bet she would tell them not to call me a "cissy," he thought, "but it wouldn't
matter anyway, because right now they're not going to get another chance."
The grandfather clock at the far end of the house, on the ground floor actually, struck
a quarter to ten, which meant that it released the same combination of chimes that it
gave out after every third quarter of the hour.
However, the clock was not heard by the young Percy Dale, who was in fact
relying on his watch. He slipped out of bed and dug deep into his suitcase. His hands soon emerged with the items of clothing required for his visit to Jentil Manor and
beyond.
"Just what I need to look dark in the dark," thought Percy, "And I found the lot in the
dark. Oh, oh. That's Nan coming up the stairs. Well I will jump into bed and pretend
I am asleep. She'll never know that I've got all this on."
He soon had his black necked black jumper completely covered by an eiderdown
that reached his chin with ease and still enveloped his feet. He soon heard his door
being opened.
"Are you awake?"
He lay there motionless until his grandmother had decided that it would be absurd to
expect him to say 'no', after which she closed the door and retired to her own bedroom
for the night. Percy knew that the wooden steps of the eastern staircase would creak
loudly.
"It would actually be less risky if I walk along the hall carpets, past Nan's bedroom,
and go down the other stairs. Then I can get one of the distant downstairs doors open
and make it to Jentil Manor secretly."
He chose to leave the house via the billiard room, opening one of its side doors and
stepping out onto the terrace. He then walked along the terrace, looking up at the
vines and the wooden framework above him, until he reached the large lawn.
A short and silent sprint brought him to the bushes, and he soon found Jenny waiting
for him in Jentil Manor; waiting, but fast asleep.
The prowl through his grandparents' house had been slow, in order to ensure that its
total degree of silence had been maintained. She must have dropped off while waiting
for him. He pressed the light button on his watch. The time was a quarter past ten.
"Well the whole thing took half an hour," he thought, "but it would have been longer
if Nan hadn't gone to bed early. She gave me a chance to sneak out now instead of at
eleven. Jenny does look so sweet and delicate like that, sleeping with her forehead
up this end. If it weren't for the moonlight, I wouldn't be able to see her at all."
In reality, Jentil Manor was dark enough in the daytime, because of the surrounding plant life around and above its wooden structure. At night, it would be pitch black, but this was a dream:
Percy gently lowered his hand onto her forehead and stroked her hair backwards,
until he reached the start of the ponytail.
She opened her eyes suddenly, and then smiled as she recognised him.
"Percy, what time is it?"
"About quarter past ten, my darling."
Jenny sat up and put her arms around Percy as he sat in the doorway of Jentil Manor.
"Isn't it nice to have all of those trees above us?" said Percy, as he looked out at the
surrounding environment which had served as a concealment for Jentil Manor in
the daytime for fifteen weeks.
"Percy, I could almost make a picture of your face, right now. You look like a
handsome young adventurer in your black and white clothes with those lovely eyes
looking up at an angle."
Percy looked at Jenny. She was wearing black sandshoes, a white dress with a black
jumper on over its top half, and transparent stockings kept her legs warm.
"I think you look so lovely that I wish that the whole world would leave us alone for
a long time, so that we could be together instead of at schools far apart," said Percy.
"I wish something like that too," said Jenny.
"Well why don't we go off and have an adventure now?" asked Percy.
"Okay, let's go for a walk. Shall we go out your way to the street?"
"I've never been out your way. We could climb over the tennis court fence quietly
and..."
* * * *
Percy and Jenny had soon made their way through Jenny's garden and down the sleep
but short driveway to Burns Road.
They walked along Burns Road, arm in arm, passing its most productive landmark,
Larmont Orphanage, which was also addressed in Water Street, the next street
along. They eventually navigated the remaining streets to Wahroonga Park, and
found the fountain empty.
"That's funny. It's usually full of water," said Jenny.
"Listen, I hear voices near the swings," said Percy.
"Let's hide in the fountain and see who they are," suggested Jenny, "We won't be
seen if they don't come this way."
"Alright," Percy agreed, and the two of them watched a crowd of strangely dressed
people walking past the swings with large picnic baskets. The group of some twenty
or thirty odd people sat down on the grass, having lowered some rugs to absorb the
dew, and began to conduct a nocturnal picnic.
"Their clothes must be from the early twentieth century," said Jenny, "because they
look like the people in my history book pictures, well sort of anyway."
"You're right, Jenny, and I have a strange feeling that I have actually met these people
once before... That's it! They're a group that I called the Wanderers of Wahroonga."
"Let's join in with them," said Jenny.
"No wait; I've got another idea. Last time they let me join in, but sent me home to bed
when they were ready to pack up. This time, why don't we wait until they pack up?
Then we can follow them out of here and see where they go?"
"Well we could do that, but I'd rather meet them. I won't let them send us home. You
wait and see."
"Alright then, let's go," said Percy.
Then they simply strolled over and introduced themselves. Percy and the Wanderers
remembered each other, but Jenny was new to all of them. The two young children
joined in with the unusual evening festivities, and then came the familiar
instruction from the man called Aygin.
"It's very late. Don't you two need to be going home to your beds?"
"But some of you are young children like us," said Jenny.
"Now why didn't I think of saying that last time?" thought Percy.
Jenny continued: "We were really hoping to learn more about you. We're outsiders,
and my school English books say outsiders are a little different to most people.
Shouldn't we stick together?"
"I guess you can see why we're out here in the first place," said Percy.
"Alright then, perhaps I should be honest," said Aygin, "It is not easy for us to trust
people outside of our extraordinary group. We are called the Ninthstar Nomads, but
your calling us 'the Wanderers of Wahroonga' is also clever. We were actually born
in the late nineteenth century, but every so many years, a strange star called the
Ninthstar appears over earth, where we are and then vanishes. We will then be
transported nine years into the future. Hence the name Ninthstar. It's not always nine,
actually. Sometimes it's eighteen or twenty-seven, but always multiples of nine. Then
we will live in that time period until the Ninthstar comes again. This time we have
been here for four years. We usually avoid people, but you're one of the few who has
ever seen us twice, Percy. We all have the strange properties in our bodies, which
make us susceptible to the time spanning properties of the Ninthstar."
"Well I hope you're here for a little longer," said Jenny.
"We cannot remain here indefinitely," said Aygin, "but we have wandered in many
places which are in fact all the same Wahroonga, but in different time periods. Our
powers are confusing to most people, but we are aware of your problem. Percy
cannot be in Killara and Wahroonga at the same time, which has the effect of
separating you two during school terms. However, we have one last gift for you,
before we depart from this time period. Even now I can feel the Ninthstar
approaching the earth, but you must remember the jewels in the hair of the ladies
and girls in our group. Each jewel has a different power according to its colour. We
shall give you a green jewel, which can teleport its holder to any place on earth.
Either of you can hold onto it and visit the other from Wahroonga or Killara. You
have only to exchange what your time period's people refer to as telephone
numbers in order to arrange your engagements for the future. The Ninthstar is
coming. We must leave you for now."
"Thank you, all of you," said Percy, as Aygin handed him a green jewel.
"Percy look, they're glowing grey somehow," said Jenny, and then the Wanderers
of Wahroonga were gone.
"We'll be years older if we see them again," said Percy, "but they've done something
wonderful for both of us."
"Let's try using it together," said Jenny, "Do you think that it could take us back to
Jentil Manor?"
"We could try touching hands with the jewel in between our palms."
"Like this," said Jenny, "Yes I can feel that it will work. Percy, you think us back to
Jentil Manor."
"Alright stand by. I'm going to teleport us back."
They both glowed a green colour, and then they were standing on the roof of Jentil Manor.
"Smart stone," said Percy, "It moved us up a bit so we wouldn't bump our heads on
the roof. We were standing up when we left the park."
"Now we can be together often," said Jenny.
* * * *
The real Percy Dale awoke. It was morning. He felt robbed by reality, but he was not to
know of his future with an adult Jenny Winters. To the young Percy Dale, reality and the dream world had stolen from each other. The reality of his being awake in his room that morning had stolen the experiences (with Jenny and the Wanderers) away from him; and the irony was that the time spent unwittingly on those dreams themselves had robbed him of the reality, that he had intended to pursue in the form of a night prowl. He also felt disappointed that the dream had not allowed him to indulge his giantess vore fantasy.
The concepts of dreams and reality are not two separate and distinct entities. They are capable of overlapping, interaction with each other; and a thought or experience in either one of their worlds can stimulate a thought or experience in the other.