Toyosi in time.

Photo by Brooke Campbell on Unsplash.

Toyosi was apparently 12 years old when she figured out how to travel through time.

Now, mind you, the available research indicates that Toyosi was average by all accounts.

She hadn’t been struck by lightning. Her parents weren’t divine, magical, royal or even wealthy, and neither was anyone in her ancestry as far back as we could trace. She never happened upon a ring or any other piece of jewelry that would’ve gifted her with the ability, and she didn’t inherit one either as far as we could tell.

She wasn’t even terribly clever. Or smart.

From what it appears, she – somehow – figured out how to travel through time.

Toyosi not being very smart might’ve had something to do with it because she may never have discovered this ability if she hadn’t failed her mid-terms, which was why she’d been studying at the time.

She wouldn’t ever have opened a text book unless her parents forced her or there was money hidden in it. And after her abysmal mid-term performance, her mother had committed her to studying three hours a day in three one hour intervals after school (and six hours a day in a similar format on the weekends), as well as a ban on TV, which seemed the most unfair.

Ordinarily, Toyosi would’ve argued against these arrangements, but her mother was in a slipper-wielding mood, and her father was far from a diplomat.

So in defeat, she marched straight to her room and began to practice problems from a remarkably dull Maths textbook.

That was at five p.m., not long after she’d come in from school. Ten minutes later, she was still

on page three and already bored to tears. If there was monetary compensation in any of the other pages, she would never find it at the rate she was going.

“It’s not fair!” Toyosi groaned. But as fun as groaning can be, it rarely ever solves problems.

It is, however, suitable enough when one has no idea how to solve their problem, and usually, it’s the first thing one can think of in the middle of any problem. This is why the world is so full of groaning and unsolved problems.

Our heroine turned to page four and checked the clock – an old-fashioned miniature grandfather clock her aunt had accidentally abandoned in her room before leaving in a hurry, and subsequently, getting run over by a bus.

It was 5:13 p.m.

She wanted to hope the clock was wrong, but there was no point. Unlike her aunt, and certain models of bus, the gears in this clock were built to last.

She leaned back on her desk chair and let out a long, hoarse groan, which she hoped her mother could hear. Predictably, her mother did not burst into the room apologizing for her tyranny and offering ice cream and the latest gadgets.

But for what it was worth, the clock turned 5:14 not long after.

It’s hard to pin down what drove Toyosi to do the things she did in the next few moments – kick starting our story being one of them – and that’s really because the accounts vary between source, writer and unscrupulous editor.

She either figured out the technique through calm meditation, sheer force of will or out of intense desperation. You could say it was an act of God, unless you don’t believe in that kind of thing. In which case, I don’t know what to tell you.

By cause of whatever theory you choose to believe, Toyosi looked at the Algebra problems in front of her, turned to the clock and thought, “Maybe if I concentrate hard enough, six will come sooner.”

Even she didn’t think her proposed method was all that sophisticated. Nevertheless, she was starved for entertainment and willing to try anything.

It was 5:15 p.m.

She looked at the clock, committing to her mind as many details of it as she could. Then she closed her eyes and sat still, picturing the old clock at 5:16 and imagining the two hands moving forward.

“Six o’ clock,” she thought, straining her brain. “Six o’clock! Six o’clock! Six o’clock!”

Maybe it was part of her imagination, but her head started to throb and a tingle crawled over her skin.

The two hands turned in her head, but only slowly, inching second by second as if they weren’t moving at all. Her body started to heat up.

Six o’ clock! Six o’clock! Six o’clock!

Some liquid ran down her nostrils.

Six o’clock! Six o’clock!

She managed to picture 5:25 before giving up. She could barely open her eyes when she was done.

Her head ached terribly, like a bunch of hammers pounding on her brain all day. Her nose was warm, throbbing and still runny; and she felt sicker than she did when she spun around for too long.

But she was excited all the same because when she turned to the clock, it was 5:26 p.m.

Her plan had worked… somehow. And she was determined to make it work properly.

“Okay, so I made it to 5:26,” she said to herself as the clock struck 5:27. Her nose was still runny, so she wiped it with her wrist. “If I do it for a bit longer, it will be six o’ clock.” And with that resolve, she closed her eyes and resumed her mantra.

Six o’clock! Six o’clock!

It was no less difficult the second time around; it felt even worse since she was already out of sorts. But she managed despite the prickles on her skin and the throbbing in her head.

The hands moved slowly, and when it felt like she was losing her grip, she held on.

Her perseverance paid off. It was 5:48 when her brain’s fingers slipped and her eyes were forced open.

It was their turn to throb, too.

I’ve asked the best linguists from across the world — and one particularly irritable six-year-old— and no one could come up with a word to properly describe the event our heroine had just lived through. And she seemed, or claimed to seem, to think nothing of it.

She shook in her chair, barely able to move, to see the Maths textbook before her –a win in her opinion – or the miniature clock she’d been concentrating on.

She was willing to do it all again.

Few heroes were as willing to go out on the adventure that made them legendary. Change, no matter how small, is hard to accept. And that’s why I write, with increasing uneasiness, that Toyosi – as naïve as she was – stared at the face of her own adventure, the pain it caused her, and was eager to go deeper.

She sat still, too tired to try again, even though she wanted to. It was 5:59 when she got the strength to look up at the clock, entering a coughing fit from moving so much.

Her nose was still runny. She wiped it with the same wrist, which was still wet and sticky from before. When she looked down at it, expecting to see phlegm, she saw blood.

“Well,” she thought with a cough. “It’s still better than algebra”.

And so she sat and waited for the old trusty clock to strike six.