Chapter 8 – Reach Beyond
Days blended into weeks, and weeks into months.
Routine became rhythm.
Wake up. Help Sister Mary with the younger children. Guide Daisy when she spilled her cereal, distract Johnny before he climbed the curtains again, gather toys after playtime. The other children adored Thomas—not because he was the oldest, but because he listened. Because he cared.
But beyond that, he was always watching. Always thinking.
In the quiet hours between the chaos, he slipped away to the old storage shed or hid behind the hedgerows. He blinked from rock to tree, from shade to sun, from rooftop to garden wall. His body grew stronger, his control sharper. Every jump made the next one easier. Every failure taught him more.
Space bent for him. It answered him.
Yet, magic wasn't his only pursuit.
It began one afternoon in the orphanage's tiny library.
It was hardly more than a closet with two short shelves and a window, but to Thomas, it might as well have been a vault of treasure.
He ran his fingers over the spines of books—thin paperbacks, cloth-bound hardcovers, picture books with creased pages. What struck him first was the lettering.
English. But not the English he once knew.
In his previous world, the written language had curves and flowing glyphs. Magical scripts intertwined with phonetic lines. This was blocky, square. Roman. At first, it made little sense.
But the sounds were the same.
"Thomas?" Sister Mary had peeked in that day, surprised to find him staring so intently at a book with only three words on its cover.
"I want to read," he said simply.
She blinked, then smiled. "Of course you do."
So she taught him.
A few letters a day. A few words each week.
And Thomas devoured it.
Within months, he was reading on his own.
Within a year, he was running through books. Not just fairy tales, but encyclopedias. Children's science books. History volumes with faded maps. He loved the diagrams—gears, stars, atoms.
Language unlocked a new dimension of thought.
And in that new dimension, he thrived.
He didn't just read—he learned. And remembered. Fast.
By the time two years had passed since his arrival at St. Theresia, Thomas was fluent in written and spoken English, comfortable with mathematics far beyond what a child his age should know, and endlessly curious about the way this world worked.
Electricity fascinated him.
Planes. Telescopes. Microscopes.
So much of this world's technology mirrored, in strange and clever ways, the magic of his old world. It was beautiful.
But his own magic… it had not slept either.
Blink had become second nature.
He no longer needed to see his destination—just know it. The garden wall. The courtyard fountain. The old oak tree by the edge of the street.
If he had been there before, he could go again.
His range had stretched with effort. Two hundred meters. Then two-fifty. Now, with strain, three hundred.
He could Blink from one end of the orphanage to the other without breaking a sweat.
The motion had refined, too. His body no longer jerked or stumbled on arrival. His landings were quiet, his control perfect. He had mastered reappearing in a crouch, in a roll, even mid-step. Like walking between moments.
He had tried to name it, as he had once heard it called in his old world.
Blink.
And so it was.
He kept a notebook hidden beneath a loose floorboard in the shed, where he documented every test. Every failure. Every refinement.
One page held a rough diagram: circles marking jump distances. Another page listed variables—"mental clarity," "destination familiarity," "momentum transfer."
He treated his training like science.
Because to Thomas, Space Magic was a science—just one this world didn't yet understand.
But one evening, in the library again, something shifted.
Thomas reached for a book on astronomy, his latest obsession. Sister Mary had placed it on the top shelf, out of reach for the younger children.
He stood on tiptoe. Stretched.
Too high.
He looked around for a stool, but the only one had been used earlier in the dining hall.
He frowned and stared up at the book—its faded cover just barely visible under the dim light.
Then he raised his hand and whispered, not out loud but in thought: Come to me.
Of course, nothing happened.
But the idea rooted in his mind like a seed.
What if… Blink wasn't just about moving himself?
What if he could reverse it?
Not travel to an object—but bring the object to him?
His thoughts raced.
He'd never tried that.
He always moved his body, his presence, through space. What if he adjusted the intent? Anchored himself as the fixed point, and reached out?
He returned to the shed that night with shaking hands.
He placed a pebble on the far side of the floor.
Stared at it.
Reached out with his mind.
Nothing.
He tried again.
Focused.
Still nothing.
He gritted his teeth, trying to recall what it felt like to Blink—to connect two points in space.
Then he inverted it.
From there… to here.
He whispered a word, unsure if it helped but needing something to focus his will: "Reach."
Nothing happened.
But he didn't give up.
He would try again tomorrow.
And the next day.
And the day after.
Because he had to know—was this possible?
Was he truly a master of space?
Or just a lucky child with a single trick?
The fire in his chest refused to fade.
He stared at the pebble once more, then whispered into the dark,
"I will make you come to me."
Chapter 8 ends.