In World City by I. F. Godsland Page B

hear me say this again.” She paused to give weight to her command, then, “You go from one day to the next and you think this world goin’ to carry you along just the way it always done. Might be some good days, might be some bad days, but most days is going to be much like the day before. But after you start listening to an old witch like me, young Dion, you can’t be so sure no more. After you start listening to me, something might happen. You just might find yourself stepping into a different world.
    â€œNow you don’t know when you goin’ to step into a different world. No way you got of knowing that. Could be you find yourself in a different world when you stepping out the lavatory first thing. Could be when you pick up the phone. Could be anytime. Now listen. What ordinary peoples do when they step into a different world is get excited. They go running around shouting about how they just stepped into a different world. They shout about how great it is, or they shout about how bad it is. Stuff like that. But that way they miss everything and they don’t function proper. Suppose you stepped out the front door one morning and started mouthing on about the dirt and the paving and the street and the dog shit, all that, when what you need is to be seeing where the street’s going to be taking you that day. That’s what you need to do when you step into a different world – deal with it, like you deal with every new moment that livin’ puts you through. You got that? Good. Now, shut your eyes and count to ten.”
    Dion had learned not to ask her for reasons. He shut his eyes and after ten he opened them again. He looked around for his grandmother. There was no sign of her.
    Dion stood very still. He knew without the slightest doubt he would never see her again. He had a momentary image of himself running up and down, shouting wildly for her. But he stayed very still and thought about what she had said.
    There was no doubt about it; he was in a different world. It was a world without his grandmother. He thought some more about what she had said. She’d said he needed to see where the track he was on was taking him that day. He was on a track, the same one he had gone stumbling along looking for the place where he would live forever. ‘Maybe I help you find that place,’ his grandmother had once said. She was gone now, so he would have to find it himself. He set off along the track.
    *
    When he had first headed out into the wilderness of jungle that clothed the mountain, Dion had been looking for the place he had seen when his grandmother had killed the cock up on the Cabrits: Dion’s Place, where he was absolutely himself and would live forever. There had been a picture of the place in his mind and he’d been looking for places that looked like that picture. And obviously the more places he could get to see the more chance he would have of finding his place. So he had rushed around, exhausted himself and found nothing.
    But now Dion simply continued along the track, thinking about where he wanted to be, but lightly, so lightly he hardly noticed the picture fade to just one more memory shadowing the back of his mind. What mattered were the impressions: the leaves and rocks around him, the changing scents of the different trees and plants that he moved past, the shifts in the air in the close, hot undergrowth. He continued like this, purposeless, for some miles. Then into the purposelessness he let build an awareness of having decided he was simply going to find his place. Not day nor night, nor sleep, nor hunger, nor any thought of returning home, was going to distract him. He was going to find his place. That was all.
    Abruptly, he turned off the track into dense jungle, heading down the slope of the mountainside. He moved quickly but carefully through the thick undergrowth. A voice in his head was telling him there was no way he would find his place by taking