Peter thought the meals of corn flatbread were alright. Qhawana filled them with whatever he had gathered or caught that day. But since they ate barbecue for every meal, the novelty had long worn off. And Qhawana had become withdrawn and quiet. They had hardly seen him that day.

‘I couldn’t do what Qhawana has done,’ Peter said. ‘Years… here on this island.’

The island had plenty of food. Dried and ground corn from the field in the valley, fruit and vegetables in the garden. The lagoon provided fish and birds — creatures easy to catch and collect. The old man and the manisaur had had years to get themselves comfortable.

‘When this all ends…’ Maggie said. ‘I have plans for a life…’

‘I do too. But plans change.’ Peter sighed and then said in a low voice — ‘But have you ever thought what that means?’

‘Find the way out of this… dream or whatever it is? If we came here there must be a way…’

‘A portal,’ Peter said.

Maggie stared at him, then shrugged. ‘A portal then. But like Qhawana said… Do people return to Earth at all? Or do they end up… somewhere else?’

‘We have to try to get home… don’t we?’ Peter said.

‘To our own times,’ Maggie said.

‘Yeah. But there’s no such thing as time travel.’

‘We did it. I’m from 1943, and you’re from 2030 or something.’

‘Sure… in some ways we’re all time travelers. I started travelling in 2009, when I was born. And I left in 2024. I travelled forward in time as I lived.’

‘You could see it that way.’

‘But… we’re together now. Either I went back to 1943, or you’ve come forward to 2024.’

‘So?’

‘But if we all travel forwards in time… all the time… is it possible to go backwards? The thing is… I think you travelled forward… not that I went backwards.’

‘Oh.’ Maggie fell quiet. Then took a breath. ‘You mean… I might not be able to go home… to 1943?’

‘You might end up in 2024.’

‘Or we’ll both end up in 2224…’

‘Maybe that too. If it had just been me, or if we’d both come from the same time then this would all make more sense.’

‘Why?’ Maggie said. ‘How can travelling to a different planet make sense? I think I prefer to think I’m dreaming and can just wake up.’

‘I said it made more sense… it’s still bonkers-crazy. There must be some scientific reason for all of this. Some strange physics we don’t know about yet.’

Both fell silent, Maggie looked as worried as he felt.

‘If… Then we’re not just travelling in time,’ Maggie said. ‘We travel in space too.’

‘Yeah. To Earth from Eoth.’

‘No I mean... the Earth spins on its axis every day, and the Earth orbits the sun every year.’

‘And the sun orbits the centre of the galaxy.’

‘Oh my goodness,’ Maggie said her eyes wide. ‘So if we could track over time a single point on the Earth’s surface it would be like a crazy corkscrew shape.’

‘I know right! For you and me to both come from almost the same place near Christchurch, from different times, means that we travelled millions of kilometers between different parts of that spiral in a trail across the universe.’

They stared at each other.

‘Boom.’ Peter waved his fingers either side of his head. ’Imagining infinity will do that.’

‘What? Explode your brain?’

‘Expand it at least,’ Peter laughed. ‘That’s why it’s a wake up call.’

‘But how will we ever get home?’ Maggie said. Her voice broke as the realization hit home. ’This is a nightmare.’

A chill brushed Peter’s heart as he understood Maggie’s fear. Perhaps home lay close, a dimension away, next to them but untouchable. Or it might be lightyears, and decades away. In any case they were as isolated from home as if on an interstellar spaceship.

‘I’m scared,’ said Maggie.

‘Yeah. Sorry. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said.’

‘I guess I sort of knew, but didn’t want to think too much about it,’ Maggie said. She stood and turned her back to the fire.

They had built up hopes for days now. He sniffed.

It’s the smoke, he thought.

Qhawana stepped up to the brazier with a wooden platter of sliced fruit. The never-ending array of different fruits and nuts amazed him. If this was Earth then it a very different history and evolution had changed it utterly. Some fruit seemed almost familiar to Peter but most were new. If, for Maggie, even the bananas and melons were exotic, then it was more impressive how she had got used to the strangeness. That bananas looked and tasted like those from home meant something. Had nuvra brought them?

They put on a brave face and ate some of the fruit. Not all the new stuff had been good.

If only he could get the outrigger working. Maggie eyes flashed as she nodded at him over the fire. But he saw her rueful smile too.

‘Plans change,’ she said.

A shrieking warble erupted from the stone house, and Breeze streaked out the door. A blue glowing thing bounced once as it chased him, then rose high into the tree tops.

‘My disk.’ Peter jumped up to run after it.

‘Breeze gets into everything,’ Maggie said following him. ‘The other day he…’

She was interrupted by cry from Qhawana who stood stock still staring in the direction the disk had flown. The blue glow lit part of the distant forest, Breeze’s calls echoed in the distance.

Maggie and Peter found it wobbling in the air near the ground amongst some ferns as its spin slowed. Then as it touched ground the last of the rotation made it roll towards them. Breeze warbled in excitement but still clung to the back of Peter’s legs.

‘That’s one more strange dream-like thing,’ Maggie said.

‘Yeah. I’d forgotten just how strange.’ Peter picked up the wheel and carried it back towards Qhawana’s stone house.

As they entered the light of the brazier Qhawana stood and crossed his arms over his chest.

‘What magic is this?’ the old man said.

‘I thought you might be able to tell me,’ Peter said.

‘What is it? Where did you get it?’

‘Washed up on the beach… sort of. Some manisaurs, slavers… blackbirders had killed a sea creature. A manta I think. I found this amongst the bones. I cleaned it up.’

‘Killing of the mantas is abhorrent to some…’ Qhawana said. His voice trailed away and Peter wondered what more he had to say on that. ‘But not for Nezhnakhevo — blackbirders perhaps.’ The old man stared into the wheel. ’It glows a blue so very bright,’ Qhawana said.

‘Oh that. That’s just egg goop,’ Peter said.

Qhawana froze and took a step forward. ‘Egg?…’

‘Goop. You know. The inside of one of those glowing blue eggs.’

‘Not possible,’ Qhawana said.

‘Yes. Moby… a manta,’ Maggie said. ‘He gave them to us.’

‘You had naqovarava — a manta ovoid? And you…’

‘We had lots…’ Maggie said. ‘I must have eaten twelve or more.’

‘Me too,’ said Peter. ‘Not so many as Maggie though.’

Qhawana went white and sat down. ‘Nakharavi — mantas? How many?’

‘Fifteen or twenty I guess,’ said Maggie.

‘You ate…? Inconceivable. Do you know how rare and precious… and impossible…?’

‘No…’ Maggie said. ‘We’d have starved… didn’t know,’

‘So that’s how…’ Peter began.

‘You say you’ve been here for?…’

‘A week…’ Maggie said. ‘Ten days maybe…’

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‘And yet you… Ah…’ Qhawana sighed. ‘Something… makes sense. But not as well. And the wheel? It has lushvra — the aether… the blue substance… within?’

‘Yeah. An animal, a bird-thing, had broken an egg open and it leaked onto the wheel. I had sort of been… well. It always glowed a little, and when it faded I dripped a little of the umm… egg goop… onto it… each time I ate one. But I never meant to lose a whole egg. It was an accident.’

‘An accident. Indeed.’ Qhawana took a deep breath. ‘The naqovaravi — ovoids are incredibly rare and valuable. I have never known of anyone eating one, at least apart from legend… but to eat several!’

‘Ten,’ Peter said.

‘Or twelve. Would they hurt us?’ Maggie said.

‘So many?’ Qhawana was distracted. ‘It astounds me… I have no idea…’

‘What are they?’ Peter said.

‘On very rare occasions a naqovarava might be found, but they are offered to the priests for favors. They command incredible prices. One naqovarava alone would make you rich.’

‘We didn’t know…’ said Maggie. ‘We were given them.’

‘By whom?’

‘Moby. A manta.’

Qhawana shook his head. ‘Nakharavi — mantas? Legends say ovoids come as gifts from the sea. From a mythical goddess.’

‘Yeah. Maybe,’ Peter said. ‘Moby gave us the eggs, but who gave them to Moby?’

‘Mobee?’ Qhawana said the name with slow deliberation.

‘The manta,’ Maggie said. ‘You see him jumping in the lagoon sometimes.’

‘There are seldom those creatures here. But we did see one, these past few weeks. So that is your Mobee?’

‘Maybe you saw the bones on the beach… where the blackbirders cut it up?’

‘Not Mobee manta… this perhaps comes from a related sea creature,’ said Qhawana. ‘Not the Nezhnakhevi’s — blackbirder’s usual catch but instead Shamakharavi — golden manta. Some call them more… Samavati — ocean goddess.’

‘Rare?’

‘Very. There used to be many more.’

‘What’s the glowing stuff?’ Peter said as he stared into the depths of the wheel. Its many small holes between holes between holes were mesmerizing in their complexity.

‘Lushvra — Aether,’ said Qhawana.

‘And it’s valuable?’ said Maggie.

‘Lushvra is everywhere, it surrounds us. It is in the food we eat, the water we drink.’ Qhawana stood and waved his arms as if swimming. ‘And yet in nature, Lushvra is almost never found so concentrated that it glows. Harvested seaweeds, and the bodies of some animals, are distilled to concentrate the aether. The rare naqovaravi glow with Lushvra… so it is said… and now by you. But never is it used to give an object such light as your disk. To glow so much… it must contain an uncanny amount of Lushvra aether.’

‘And it levitates,’ said Maggie.

‘There is another substance used for the Skyships. A catalyst — zharaqsa… that raises the skyships to flight. And yet the catalyst too is a huge wealth. Lushvra — Aether is both rare beyond measure, yet everywhere beyond counting.’

Qhawana walked away, his head hung low. He retired to the stone house but the others did not notice. Their eyes reflected the blue glow of the wheel, their teeth flashed grins against their tanned faces.

‘So somehow this wheel works the same trick as the Skyships,’ said Peter.

‘Exactly.’ Maggie slipped next to Peter and together they studied the wheel. ‘But can we use it?’

‘Just what I was thinking,’ said Peter. ‘You saw… when it spins it’s like the wheel of a bike, stable… The same principle works for the wheel. Conservation of rotational momentum…’

‘Gyroscopic effect?’ said Maggie.

‘I’m just guessing… perhaps the gyroscopic effect is the same, but this Lushvra aether stuff also creates a floating effect.’

‘We’re not on Earth are we?’

‘Yeah no. Aether… Lushvra… we don’t have it on Earth.’ Peter stood up. ‘Aether was an old idea that Einstein and others disproved.’ He placed the wheel on the ground. When rolled forward it acted like a wheel would… at first. Peter pushed it faster until he ran. The wheel bounced higher and fell slower until it spun suspended through the air. By stopping the forward motion, but keeping the wheel spinning, Peter made it hang in the air.

He pushed and to his surprise found that he could move it forward and back with ease, but not side to side. Or he could but not very much, it seemed to resist his push, as if it moved through a thick liquid. It rose and fell with a change of the rotation speed — up to a point. It did not keep rising the faster it spun — as if once it got to some speed, faster did not make it rise more. It was also a little sluggish to push up and down, but not so hard. But along the plane of its spin, horizontal to the ground, it glided like on ice.

‘That’s very strange,’ said Maggie.

‘I know, right?’ Maybe it’s like a bicycle wheel, but it works in two dimensions.’

‘Bikes work in two dimensions,’ Maggie said.

‘No. I mean. Bikes work to stabilize in one dimension… this does the same in two dimensions. Like a bike… stopping tilting. But also by stopping sideways movement, like it’s grabbing hold of something. Yet movement forward and back is easy.’

‘Something we can’t see,’ Maggie said. ‘And it floats in it. That gives it buoyancy in the invisible stuff.’

‘Aether,’ Peter said. ‘This really must be a parallel dimension. A universe where physics works almost the same, but not quite.’

‘We’re still just guessing where we are,’ said Maggie. ‘If we’re going to get home we have to work out… we need to find out more.’

Just then Breeze jumped on the glowing wheel, it stopped spinning, flipped sideways, shot to the side, and then dropped to the ground.

Fun… Happy… Jump…

‘I’m sure it was.’

Again… Again… Again…

‘Fun. Happy. Fly,’ said Peter in return.

‘Breeze… If you fly us home,’ said Maggie. ‘Then I would be very happy.’

‘Yeah.’ Peter laughed. ‘Me too. And totally fun.’

The next day Peter took the spinning disk with him to work on the outrigger. Maggie followed

‘This wheel thing does some very strange stuff,’ Peter said. ‘It floats, defies gravity. It works like a bike wheel but also stops sideways movement… somehow.’

Understanding came to Maggie’s face. ‘You mean you want to cross the outrigger with a bicycle. You’re mad.’

‘Yeah. Totally.’

Peter had no idea how the wheel-disk floated when it spun up, but he wanted to try. He bent to examine it in detail.

The wheel-disk weighed little. Made of holes more than anything. The hard white bone-like substance just the thinnest material around the smallest holes, which seemed to have holes around them until he could not see anything smaller. But he knew there were more still. The holes had filled with egg goop and even in the daylight he could see a blue glow deep within. It made the white appear whiter in the bright of the sun.

‘But how to connect it to the boat?’ Peter said. ‘We need a hub and a fork and…’

‘But it’s not a bicycle wheel… is it?’

Peter shook his head. An axle was the obvious solution. But he had no intention of cutting a hole. ‘There’s no way of knowing which part of the disk is important.’

He found one of Qhawana’s old baskets and lashed the disk inside with cord made from coconut twine. Then cut out the bottom, pulled out the woven material and drew it all into a gathering either side of the disk-wheel then lashed two rods to either side so the wheel looked like it had an axle. Breeze took an interest but Peter pushed him away.

With the disk in the basket and spun up, the blue glow still flashed bright through the basket weave. He hung things from the axles and it lifted them. But once any uneven weight went on them they flopped about, the wheel wobbled, and it flipped sideways and fell to the ground.

‘Who would have thought that inventing the wheel would be so hard?’ Maggie said.

Peter glared at her. He held one of the axles in his hand positioned over the centre and tried to think of a better way to fix it tighter. Maggie squatted next to him and gave his shoulder a bump.

‘It was a nice idea. There’s just no practical way to use it,’ Maggie said. ‘Come on. I helped Qhawana prepare dinner. It must be almost ready.’

‘Must be a way,’ Peter said. ‘If I was back home I could make up…’

‘If we were back home there’d be no need.’ Maggie walked towards the fire where Qhawana crouched cooking flatbread. A pot steamed with more choclo-corn.

Peter sighed. ‘Neither of them are really helping. We’ll never get away from here like this.’

‘Where’s Breeze?’ said Maggie. ‘He’s always scrounging for something while we eat.’ She warmed some food over the brazier.

‘Where’s Qhawana?’ Peter looked about. ‘He’s late. Leftovers again… no offense Maggs.’

Even in the heat at the end of the day the embers of the fire still drew them together when they ate.

‘And it’s not like we don’t feed Breeze as much as he likes,’ Peter said. He balanced his board piled with fruit and leftover flatbread on his knee and tucked in. Breeze was not the only one eating well.

‘Where did he get to?’ Maggie said.

‘Good riddance.’ Qhawana stepped into the light of the fire and sat.

‘But imps can be good friends too?’ Maggie smiled.

‘More likely dangerous enemies.’ Qhawana sat and absently picked at his food. ‘Friends become enemies become…’

‘I reckon he’s not so much dangerous as impossible to control,’ said Peter.

‘What? You mean like a cross between a monkey, and a…’

‘Tasmanian Devil,’ Peter said laughing.

Qhawana listened with a quizzical look that turned to surprise when his eyes flicked beyond the fire towards the outrigger canoe.

Peter turned. ‘Breeze. No!’ They jumped up. ‘Not again.’

The imp waved the wheel-disk in the air, and when it moved the blue glowed stronger. He tossed it to send the wheel-disk rolling towards the beach. Faster it spun as it headed downslope. Breeze racing after as it bounced up and down, glowing bright. He slapped it into a blur of blue, then with a leap, grasped the two sides of Peter’s makeshift axle. Beneath the flying wheel Breeze rose higher, until he reached the height of the coconut trees. Squawking in excitement, the imp let go of one side of the axle, the wheel tilted, turned, then twisting like a crazy leaf, it fell towards the ground.

‘He’s going to crash,’ wailed Maggie.

Hearing her warning Breeze scrambled onto the wheel as it fell towards the ground. With hands and feet tight upon the axle he clung on as the wheel hit right onto a large black rock. Breeze bounced high in the air. Blue sparks erupted from the wheel in trails like a firework. The three rushed to Breeze’s aid and blinked back the after-image of the explosion.

The imp flipped and landed in an acrobatic roll across the sand. With a chitter of excitement, he warbled as if he had done a wondrous thing.

‘He’s a devil alright,’ said Maggie racing up to him.

‘And he’s broken the wheel. Look at all the goop and shell.’ Peter picked up the small glowing pieces strewn on the rock. Then walked to where the basket lay, fearful of what he would find. Blue goop leaked over the rock. Peter turned towards Qhawana and the despair he felt was mirrored in the old man’s face. The precious rarity now broken.

‘The creature is a menace,’ said Qhawana. ‘I’ve told you time and again to drive it away.’

Peter picked the disk up by the axle driven into the centre of the basket. He slicked the blue glowing stuff from the axle and watched it wick into his skin. The strangeness of the aether goop struck him again. How did he even think to eat the stuff?

‘We were hungry,’ said Maggie.

She put her arm around Peter. Had he said anything aloud or had Maggie read his thoughts?

He picked up the basket and peered inside. Next to him Breeze bounced up and down, irrepressible as ever and Peter did not have the heart to scold him. After all, he himself had been doing much the same with the wheel the past few days. Breeze had just copied…

‘Hey. It sort of looks…’

‘What? Destroyed?’

‘No. It’s… the axle has punched through the centre.’

By firelight Peter unlashed the basket. Qhawana placed a bowl under the wheel as if scared more aether would fall. As Peter worked the stuff dissolved into his skin until the surface glow disappeared. If anything the remaining wheel glowed all the brighter. One axle fell away with the basket weaving but the other had now pierced tight through the center of the wheel.

Peter lifted and spun the wheel-disk by the axle. He could almost imagine it pushed back as it spun. Did it become lighter? He spun the disk faster and swung it back and forth. The wooden axle had become fixed into the disk… almost welded to the hard structure of the wheel. The circles of circles had been compressed around the smooth surface of the rod.

‘It’s holding on good and strong now. Almost as if the axle has fused and become part of the wheel.’

‘But will it still…’

‘Fly?’

Maggie nodded.

‘I’m almost too scared to try, but it’s like it was never broken. Or it repaired itself… Somehow.’ Peter shot a sideways look at Breeze. ‘You are an evil creature, but…’

Breeze stopped bouncing and caught Peter’s attention.

Wheel… Fly… Fun…

‘Yeah. I’m sure it was.’

Wheel… Fixed… Fly…

‘Maybe,’ Peter said. He was unsure what the imp meant. Was it a statement or a question?

‘I’ll need to even up the axle either side… Then…’ He imagined a hole drilled in the wooden axle, then a quick release hub from his mountain bike, and then spinning it with a chain and pedals.

‘It could make my mountain bike fly. Except…’ But the mechanics would not work. Everything would rotate and end up upside down.

Peter's wry smile grew as he returned to his meal. ‘You did warn us Qhawana. Imps are chaos. A force of nature almost.’

‘Indeed Peter. He is no friend. He is Aramqhami — an agent of fate.’

Peter wondered at that last statement as they finished their meal of leftovers. He was not sure the translation was right or not — but he was getting used to that.

‘Yeah. And no point getting upset with him.’

The imp now gnawed on yet another corn cob. Peter had to grin at that. Imps were crazy messed up creatures but he could not help but like Breeze…even if this one caused constant mayhem.

Peter hoped Breeze would be less crazy in the future, but somehow knew the madness had just begun.