The Power of Five Oblivion

and present himself – which he did, quite nervously. I’d have been nervous myself. There was one of him and three hundred of us, staring at him with a mixture of fear, curiosity and disbelief. The one thing about life in the village was nothing new ever happened, nobody new ever came. Jamie’s sudden appearance was totally unexpected, as if the clouds had turned green or the pigs had begun to talk. It was completely shocking. And it didn’t matter that he was just a scrawny kid with long hair and a scar on the side of his head. He was a threat to everything the village stood for.
    But the Council had agreed and although there was a lot of muttering, nobody was outright hostile. Jamie made a short speech. He thanked everyone for accepting him (although they hadn’t, really) and promised to work hard in the village. I was looking at him as he spoke. Then I glanced sideways and noticed George, who was watching me while I was staring at Jamie. He didn’t look pleased and when I heard that Jamie was going to work at the bakery, helping fuel and clean the ovens, I had a feeling it wasn’t a good idea.
    That wasn’t quite the end of it. We all milled out of the church, people still talking to each other in low voices and more or less ignoring Jamie, who was now on his own, near the door. I was about to go over to him when suddenly I found the Traveller at my side. I don’t think he’d spoken to me more than a few times in all the years he’d been here, but he spoke to me now.
    “The boy is staying with you.”
    “That’s right.”
    “Of course. You were the one who found him.” The Traveller glanced in Jamie’s direction. “Did he come through the door?” he asked.
    I hesitated. “What do you mean?”
    “You heard me.”
    “He was near the door – but I don’t think he came through it.” Why was I lying to the man? Why was I even having this conversation?
    The Traveller looked at me curiously. I’d never been quite so close to him before and now saw that he was younger than I had thought – about thirty, and that if he had shaved properly and took a bit more care of himself, he might even have been handsome.
    “Are you his friend?” he asked me.
    The question took me aback. “Yes. I suppose so,” I said.
    “Then look after him, Holly. Watch out for him. He’s important.”
    And then he turned and went, leaving me more confused than ever.
    I tried to get to know Jamie a little better in the next couple of weeks but that wasn’t easy. He was allowed to leave the house now. He could mingle with the other villagers. But that meant I saw less of him than I had before and somehow he was never on his own. We were both working so we were apart for most of the day, and he always seemed to come home earlier or later than me so we never got the chance to walk together. If I hadn’t been so stupid, I’d have realized that he was doing it on purpose, that he didn’t want to be alone with me. I was the only person who knew that he was lying … about the amnesia anyway. Jamie was avoiding me because he didn’t want me asking him questions. He didn’t want to tell me the truth.
    And that made me think of the Traveller and the weird conversation we’d had outside the church. The Traveller knew about the door, which meant he must know something about Jamie too. I was half-tempted to run down to the Lady Jane after work and confront him. But I had never been on that old canal boat. I don’t think anyone had. It wasn’t really part of the village … it was outside. And if I did show up, I doubted that the Traveller would make me welcome.
    I saw Jamie every night at supper and I tried to let him know that I was on his side, sitting next to him, being nice to him, whatever. To be honest, supper was never very easy. Once there had been television and newspapers and things you could talk about. Now there was just the village. I still had a PlayStation in my room and how I wished I could plug it in, turn it on and plug myself into it, but with no electricity it was just a useless piece of junk and I don’t even know why I kept it. There was an electrical generator in the storeroom next to the town hall but it was only used in emergencies – like when Dr Robinson got sick and had to be nursed day and night … although Miss Keyland had also been allowed to show it to us in class. The fact was that in my whole life I had only seen an electric light half a dozen times.
    I was nice to Jamie. That’s all.