3
Aoife sat frozen in the doorway. Niamh who was just about to give her a huge push out of the attic could now see what Aoife was seeing and said “Oh my God”.
The little hallway that used to be at the top of the wooden stairs was now a little hallway at the top of what appeared to be dark stone steps. Everything was different. There was no skylight window. There was no roof – what was in its place was straw – or what looked like straw.
Aoife looked up, turned to Niamh and said – “Look at that, it’s a thatched roof.” Niamh was still just sitting in the doorway unable to even speak. At last she said – “where are we Aoife – where is Dad’s cottage ?”
Aoife turned to her – and seeing a little girl with a mouth open wide and her jaw on the wooden floor, cupped her hand, raised her arm and gently pushed Niamh’s mouth closed.
“No idea” she said, “but this is much more interesting than a tin of old paint don’t you think?”
Niamh moved her head to the side and made a grimace – “yes well very funny Aoife but where the heck are we? “Where are my dominoes …. ”
Aoife snapped “Oh shut up about these dominoes, if I think I think where we are, they might not have been even invented yet.”
Niamh looked a little surprised at this and started to get herself out of the doorway.
Both girls managed to lift themselves up and came out into the hallway.
Opposite stood a door. Not the nice new wood panelled door of the bedroom in Dad’s cottage, but a dark wooden panel – the same kind as the attic doors – like floor boards with a large black metal handle on it.
The walls were all stone, the same stone as Dad’s cottage however and the staircase was made of stone too. This was more of a smooth dark stone with about ten steps but with no rickety banister.
They could hear some voices but were not sure where they were coming from. This cottage didn’t smell quite as nice as the one they had been in.
They reached out for the metal handle on the door in front of them and unlatched it. The door opened and felt heavy, very heavy – they both had to push it as it creaked open offering a lot of resistance.
Given the thatched roof and stone staircase, they certainly had not expected to find a modern bedroom with a computer, duvet cover and a little en-suite toilet.
They didn’t!
What they did find were four single beds all with big blankets on them. Aoife could not see a pillow though, more of a smaller blanket rolled up. At the end of the room was a little window – a wooden window frame with a very strange pane of glass in it. The window pane was rather knobbly and uneven and not at all easy to see out of.
There was barely room to move with these beds and when you looked up all you could see was straw forming the roof. It was indeed a strange situation for the girls as the bedroom they were standing in was almost the same size as Dads bedroom.
Niamh backed out of the room – she was starting to look worried. “Aoife, where are we she said? This is totally weird.”
Aoife walked past her and stood at the top of the stone stairs. “Come on Niamh; let’s find out what this is all about.”
They started down the stairs and could see that they were indeed in a stone cottage. However this stone cottage was more like the stony half of Dad’s cottage and where the other new half should have been, there was another wall with a door.
They went along the corridor into what should have been their own downstairs bedroom. It was the kitchen – or it looked like a kitchen. It had a wooden table and a cooker in the corner. There were some bags on the floor – they were big black cloth bags full of potatoes.
The potatoes spilled out onto the floor beside the cooker.
The window that was in their bedroom was still there and in the same position. It looked like the same kind of black wood. The glass was just as uneven as the one upstairs though.
Aoife said “There must be people here, we can find them and ask them.”
She went out of the kitchen and turned to go into the room next door. She was just about to reach for the handle when the door latch clicked and the door creaked open away from them.
Both Aoife and Niamh jumped when they saw the face of a little girl. She was about the same height as Niamh, with long blond curly hair and a slightly dirty face.
The little girl looked up, saw the girls and let out a short scream – she jumped back and shut the door again.
Slowly, she opened it again, Aoife and Niamh just stayed rooted to the spot.
“Who, who are you?” she said in a very shaky voice and strange accent.
Aoife recognised this accent – it was Scottish!
“Hello” she said – “my name is Aoife and this is my sister Niamh.”
“How did you get here, what are you doing in my house?” said the little girl with the slightly dirty face.
“We don’t know” said Aoife, “we were just playing upstairs and we ended up in your attic.”
The little girl stepped forward a small careful step – a friendly step – and Aoife felt a little more comfortable.
“My name is Lizzy” she said and smiled.
She stretched out her hand and Aoife took it and shook it gently.
Aoife moved closer to her and whispered. “We have no idea where we are or what we are supposed to be doing. This cottage looks like our Dads Cottage but it’s smaller and it looks a lot older. Can you tell us where we are Lizzy?”
Lizzy looked at them with thoughtful eyes. She looked at their long hair and their lovely clean clothes and those shoes, my goodness me, those shoes. She looked at those long blue pantaloons with sparkly pink belt and that lovely red skirt.
Then Lizzy said – “We be in a village called Castlerabbit. Do you know of it?”
Aoife almost jumped and said, “Yes, yes Castlerabbit, that’s where we live and that’s where our Dads cottage is. We must have found a secret passage or something.
Let’s go outside and we can find our way back.”
The little girl looked a little confused but she led them out of the big front door – which was like all the other doors the girls had seen so far. Like floorboards … with a big metal handle.
They went outside into the yard. The sun was shining here – the area looked the same – same hills and sky but everything else seemed different. The house across the way was gone – a small stone cottage was in its place and there was no road – it was a very dirty dirt track.
Aoife and Niamh put their hands up above their eyes and squinted into the sunlight. Niamh whispered, “Look at that, the garden has gone, it’s a huge field now and look, there are sheep and lambs in it.”
Now, Aoife always liked sheep and in that moment she forgot where she was and ran off into the field to have a look at one of the lambs that was sitting on the ground – presumably enjoying the sunshine.
Niamh ran after her. “Aoife, come back” she shouted.
Aoife was too busy heading for the lamb.
The mother sheep was looking a bit worried too and started to run towards the lamb. Aoife stopped in her tracks and turned to stare at the horse and cart that was moving slowly on her left.
“Wow” she thought – “I wonder where that came from.”
She forgot about the lamb, which was just as well because the mother sheep was looking a little angry and let out a big bahhhhh.
Niamh ran up beside her and she too was staring at the horse and cart. Lizzy came up beside them and started waving at the driver of the cart. He waved back and cracked a big which and the horses pulled up to stop.
The man jumped off the cart and came over towards them.
“Papa”, Lizzy shouted and ran to meet him. They met and hugged each other. Then they both walked over to where the girls were standing.
He was a tall man with thick black hair – he was thin but he had big muscles on his arms. His face was brown – well tanned and he had a big black moustache.
The man looked down at the girls and in a big booming voice said – “Well how be you young girls, where did you come from – where is your carriage? Be you visiting the manor farm? You have very fine clothes, so you must be visiting the squire yes?”
Aoife and Niamh were somewhat at a loss to answer as they were now starting to realise that although they seemed to be in the same place, everything had changed. This was not their Dad’s cottage but someone else’s cottage and Lizzy was living there instead, with her dad.
Aoife just stammered and said – “We don’t know, we were playing in our cottage and we went into the attic and and and … ” she stopped. What would she tell him?
None of this made any sense at all.
Aoife said “Hello my name is Aoife and this is my sister
Niamh.” Niamh quietly said “hello” and asked the man if she could have a drink of Fanta.
The man looked a little puzzled and said, well we have some beer – you can have that if you like. Niamh looked totally indignant and shocked- “Beer she said? I am not allowed to drink beer. .. ”
Aoife said – “do you know where we are? What is the place? It looks very similar to our Dad’s cottage but it’s all different – where are we?”
“You are in Castlerabbit” said the man “and this is my farmhouse. I am a farmer. Have you been here before then?”
Aoife was simply lost for words. “I don’t know, maybe” she said.
Aoife had a puzzling thought at the back of her mind.
She couldn’t quite let herself believe it – the horse and cart, the old style clothes – no roads – she recognised this from her school history books. How people travelled and lived before cars and buses and trains and video games.
What year is this she said with a little trepidation?
The man smiled and then laughed – “That is a strange question young lady – Do you not know of our year? It be six years past eighteen hundred.
Aoife paused and looked up into the sky – she worked out this strange way of saying a year and then her eyes began to open wide.
“Eighteen 0′ six?” she whispered to the man.
“Yes young lady that be the year and today be the fourteenth day of the month of May and it do be
Wednesday.”
Aoife’s puzzling thought began to make its way quite quickly to the very front of her mind and then to very quickly become the only thought in her mind. She turned to Niamh.
Now, Niamh was a little younger than Aoife and had not quite grasped the year thing just yet. “Its 1806” said
Aoife. “1806?” Said Niamh. “Does that mean its 6 o’clock?” (She had grasped the time thing)
“No, not exactly” whispered Aoife, “its 1806 – the year – and about 200 years ago.”
“200 years ago where” said Niamh.
Aoife paused and said patiently – “Niamh, we seem to be in Castlerabbit about 200 years ago. We seem to have gone back in time. I think there was something strange about that attic – we went in one door and came out the same door but 200 years earlier – it’s the only explanation, weird as it may sound.”
Niamh turned her head and started looking that the lamb and the mother sheep. She was a little cross. “I Don’t know what you mean Aoife!” she said.
Aoife grabbed her arm. In a slightly less patient voice she began … “Look Niamh, We have gone back in time; before we were both born; before Dad was born and probably before his dad and his dad’s dad.”
“This is what things used to be like Niamh.”
Niamh rolled her eyes and just bent down and stroked the lambs head. Mother sheep seemed to be a little wary but the lamb didn’t run away.
Aoife let her arm go and snapped back “Oh never mind, you will get it.”
Aoife turned to the man and said – “Mr, we are lost – we really don’t know how we got here.”
She was not too sure whether she should say any more because the man might get a bit cross or just not believe them.
“Gosh, she said, this is a lovely farm.”
“Lost did you say?” said the man.
“Where do you live and how did you get here young girls? ”
“We live in Kilkenny” said Aoife confidently – that bit was true. “We got lost while we were out playing” that bit was not so true – not quite.
“You be from Kilkenny,” said the man sounding astonished – “that be a good six miles from here. How did ye possibly get up here girls?”
Niamh was listening to this conversation not quite sure if she understood. She looked up from the sheep towards the man and said – “why by car of course Mr.”
Aoife quickly pretended to cough loudly. “Actually” she said, “we came up by horse and car. .. t” finishing the word a little better.
“We were visiting our Aunt eh Aunt eh Molly when we ‘em accidentally fell off the cart.”
The man looked a little puzzled and then looked a little disbelieving – Aoife could see him raising one of his big bushy eyebrows.
“Maybe you could help us get home said Aoife – maybe we could have a ride in your cart with the horse?”
The man looked at her – “Why did you want to know the year he asked, what year did you think it was? Have you been away to England?”
Without thinking Aoife said “Well I flew to Scotland with my Dad last month.”
The man was about to open his mouth in surprise at this fantastic claim that she could fly, but he stopped, gave a big smile and said, “Hello my name is Jeremiah and this is my daughter Lizzy.” Our families came across to Ireland from Scotland about 20 years ago. We wanted to farm in Ireland – we are both Scottish though. Come into our house he said and we can have some beer and some scones. Lizzy, go and call your mother and tell her we have guests.”
Lizzy ran off towards the house.
Aoife and Niamh followed her. Jeremiah followed them and he was a little concerned for them.