The Best of World SF by Lavie Tidhar (children's ebooks free online .txt) 📕

at one side of the bridge and he came to me. He put one boot on my box so I began to shine. He did not smile as much as before so I did not look at him. When I was almost finished he asked, ‘Do you know a man called Abdi Langara?’

I said I knew a lot of men called Abdi and that they could be found in the Millicent Street Boarding House. I told him how to get there. I asked if Abdi was a soldier because many people were missing since the war ended, and often strangers would come into town looking for people nobody had heard of. Mother said some people were hiding and had run away from their old life. I did not know what she meant by that. How could a person leave their life behind?

The shining man said Abdi was not a soldier, but they were supposed to meet. He could not find the right street. He asked me how much I earned a day and I told him. I did not think that he wanted to rob me. I have been robbed before by a gang of boys. I did fight them even though they were older than me. I do know how to fight, but not when there are more boys than me.

The shining man said he would pay me twice as much if I would take him around the town to find Abdi. I said I had to ask my mother.

[Thumbprint here as Master Carter has no signature]

My mother said it wasn’t Christian to be paid for showing a stranger around. I went back out and told this to the shining man. I took him to the house on Millicent Street and this was lucky because I shined many shoes of the Somali men there. I made a lot of money, more than usual. This was my first time of being in that house, and it was not like any other. There were more books than I had ever seen in a Negro house. They had paintings which showed Africa. People played musical instruments, but I do not know the names of the instruments. People gathered together and one man talked to them. I think he was teaching them. I wanted to stay and listen, but there were many boots to shine, many coins to earn. I do not know if the shining man found Abdi, but he was very happy. Before I took him back to the bridge, I showed him around Tiger Bay.

He said he owed me a favour. He asked if there was anything we needed in the house. I said I did not know, but food was sometimes a problem. He said he could not help with that. He asked if we had any machines.

That evening my parents were talking about fighting between blacks and whites in other parts of Wales. I do not know why the fights started. I testify that I was not in any fight with whites. Not really. My mother said it had something to do with white women married to black men, but my father said it was about jobs and the war and the docks. I could not understand. When they had gone to bed the shining man came into the house. He said he had repaired what he could. He said he liked my father’s service pistol and he had fixed it. I did not know it was broken.

[Thumbprint here as Master Carter has no signature]

I wanted to know about the shining man’s machine so I went to the riverbank and beat around the bush looking for his machine that he used. I did not find it. But it was early and I waited as the day got brighter. The morning breeze changed into a wind that whipped my clothes and pulled me and the sticks and leaves in one direction and then there was a bright light like the kind I saw when the shining man first appeared. There he was, shining clothes, shining. It was the first and only time I saw him surprised. The wind blew me past him, and I fell into the light. I was afraid. The light went out and it was dark, then bright, then dark. I just kept falling. The wind stopped, and I spun round and round. Sometimes there would be a burst of light like a rainbow, sometimes I would hear screaming, like seagulls fighting over food. I thought I was dying. I prayed to God and promised never to disobey my mother if only I could get home safe or be alive again and God heard me, but not too soon. Sometimes it was hot, then cold, and when I was numb and could not breathe right, it became so bright that I closed my eyes.

I heard voices. Languages I could not understand, and English and other sounds, noises, whistles. Then I heard my name. Not my name, but the one the shining man called me.

‘Master Carter, you are truly insane.’

I opened my eyes and there he was.

‘Give me your hand, you nutter.’

He pulled me back to Cardiff, back to the Taff, but just before we came back to the world I felt something else. I looked back into the swirling colours and the cold and the heat. There were eyes. It felt like we had been seen. I felt like a chicken when there was a hawk overhead.

Then we were back and the shining man laughed. We landed in the mud and had to clean ourselves and then I cleaned and shined his shoes, but only after he took them off. He lay on the grass drying himself. I was still wet, but I wanted his boots clean. While I cleaned he talked, sometimes to me, but sometimes to himself. I am not sure.

He said there was a lot to learn from wars. He said war was strange. He said there was no such thing as giving