by Ross Welford
‘Sometimes,’ he says, ‘facts are overrated.’
Moments later, we are strapped in and heading for home.
It is a smooth landing, without splashes. Philip takes us to the jetty and we step out as if we’re getting off a ferry. The snow is thick on the jetty’s boards and crunches beneath our feet as we get out.
‘Philip,’ I say, ‘are you going to be all right?’
‘In what sense do you mean “all right”, Ethan?’
I think for a moment and realise that I do not really know.
‘Have you forgotten,’ he goes on, ‘that I am just a bunch of data? I am not real.’
‘Oh, but you are,’ protests Tammy. ‘You are to us!’
‘That’s what I love about you humans. You can believe anything is real if you use your imaginations.’
There is a thing that has been bugging me, and I guess now is my last chance. ‘Philip,’ I say, ‘did you ever sing ‘The Chicken Hop’ song with Hellyann? Only, she knew it and, well …’
‘No, Ethan. That is not a song I am familiar with at all. Is it any good?’
I say nothing. I am thinking about what Gran said. Somewhere out there in the I-don’t-know-what there’s a connection …
‘One more thing, Philip,’ says Iggy, interrupting my thoughts. ‘There are still humans on Anthalla. What about Carlo? Will he be coming back?’
‘And that’s another thing about humans: you care. I guess it all kind of depends on Kallan, and what else has happened when I get back. Wish me luck!’
I smile. ‘You don’t believe in luck!’
‘After the last few days, I may have changed my mind.’
I feel like I want to give Philip a hug, but I have to settle for patting the side of a spaceship that I can’t even see. And with that, there’s a loud whining and a column of steam rises off the evening-blue reservoir.
We wait till the steam has dispersed, then we turn and start the walk back along the jetty towards the village, Suzy flapping her charred wings, and Iggy striding ahead, his hands deep in his shorts pockets, his eyes squinting because he never recovered his glasses.
We are silent for a bit, then Iggy stops and says, ‘Are you thinking about her as well?’
Hellyann.
Tammy and I look at each other and we both nod. It feels like a ‘twin thing’, both of us thinking alike. Then she links arms with me.
‘She did her best,’ I say.
‘So did you,’ says Tammy, squeezing my arm, and that feels good – as though I really have my sister back now.
There’s a bit of a ‘moment’ between Tammy and me as she looks at me and says, ‘Thank you’, and poor Iggy watches us, looking a bit embarrassed.
We walk on through the snow. After a while, ahead of us, we see the forecourt of the Stargazer crammed with vehicles and lights and TV cameras, and we stop.
‘Are we going to tell them everything?’ says Iggy eventually.
‘I dunno,’ I say through a grin. I unlock my eyes from Tammy’s and add, ‘What do you reckon?’
She doesn’t say anything, but hugs me again, and that’s when I feel something hard inside her jacket. It surprises her as well. Frowning in puzzlement, she brings out Hellyann’s healing stick.
‘Well,’ she says. ‘I guess if we do decide to tell them, we’ve got proof.’
Walking back up the pub driveway towards the lights and the gathered reporters and onlookers is the sort of thing that would normally be terrifying.
‘You OK, Ig?’ I ask.
Iggy pulls his cap down low, straightens his shoulders and says, ‘Once you’ve set fire to a human zoo a gazillion-illion miles from home, Tait, nothing is as scary as it used to be. Come along, Suzy: be a good chicken.’
And then he strides off up the driveway with Suzy following him, while Tammy and I laugh and we run as fast as my sore foot will allow to catch him up.
I hear someone shout, ‘Oh my God! It’s them! It’s them!’
The lights swivel round and dazzle us, and after that, the next few minutes are a blur of people, and shouts, and hands reaching out to touch us, and camera flashes, and more shouts, and then I can’t see properly because my vision is misted with tears.
I hear Tammy saying, ‘Come on, Gran, get up’, because Gran has sunk to her knees on the hard-packed snow, and then they are weeping and laughing and hugging.
Everyone seems to be shouting. Someone calls to Gran, ‘I knew it wasn’t you, Christine!’ and she gives a satisfied little nod of her white head. Then there’s more shouting.
‘Tammy, over here!’
‘Ethan, will you talk to us?’
‘Iggy, where have you been?’
I also hear someone say, ‘Cor, what’s that smell?’
Somehow we make it through the doors of the pub and Gran manages to slam them behind us and shove the bolt across, shutting everyone else out. The shouted questions are suddenly muffled, the camera flashes are still going off outside, and Gran’s eyes are alight with urgency. She doesn’t even hug us.
Instead she leans in towards us and whispers, ‘No one knows anything! I didn’t say a word.’ She glances back at a police officer who is staring through the glass of the door. ‘And believe me, there were lots of questions.’
I’m amazed, and stammer, ‘B-but how? I-I mean, why?’
She grins and winks. ‘I trusted you. I trusted that Helly-whats-her-name. I knew you’d be back.’
‘Like a twin thing?’ I say, and she nods.
‘Call it a gran thing. Come on – come through to the bar.’
We don’t get a chance because the double doors to the bar burst open and Mam and Dad are there and they swallow us up in more hugs and Mam can’t even speak apart from, ‘Oh my babies, oh my babies,’ over and over. For a moment, poor Iggy is kind of isolated, just watching with an empty smile, his eyes flicking round for his mum, Suzy at his heels.
Dad’s gaze follows mine, and when he sees Iggy, his face freezes. It’s hard to tell what he’s thinking but a chill seems to blow over us, like a draught from a window. Now, I know that Dad never liked Iggy, but this seems a bit harsh.
‘Dad,’ I say, ‘it’s not Iggy’s fault. We’d never have got her back without him—’
But Mam interrupts me. ‘Iggy,’ she says, jerking her head towards the open doors of the bar. ‘There’s someone to see you.’
Iggy’s gaze follows hers, and we all look too, and there is a gaunt, bespectacled man standing next to the pool table. It’s the mass of curly red hair that gives it away – I know immediately who it is.
Iggy doesn’t say a word. Instead he runs forward and throws his arms around his father. Then Cora steps forward and Iggy hugs her too, and even though his mum and dad don’t hug each other, I catch a little smile pass between them, and I hear Iggy’s dad say, ‘I’m sorry, Iggy. I’m sorry, Cora.’ And that seems to make everything OK. He bends down and scratches Suzy’s singed head-feathers.
I hear Dad come up behind me and Tammy – we still haven’t let go of each other.
He says, ‘He’s all right, that lad.’
NEW YEAR JOY AT KIELDER KIDS’ RETURN
KIELDER, NORTHUMBERLAND
31 DECEMBER
Filthy, bloody, and smelling of smoke, sweat and blocked drains, the three missing ‘Kids of Kielder’ staggered into their home village yesterday amid scenes of jubilation and tears.
Tamara ‘Tammy’ Tait, twelve, her twin brother, Ethan, and their best friend, Ignatius Fox-Templeton, thirteen, sparked Europe-wide searches since Tammy’s disappearance on Christmas Eve, and the boys’ subsequent disappearance two days ago.
Both they and their parents declined requests for interviews.
Dr Bet Taylor, a physician for Northumbria Police, issued a statement confirming that the children were in ‘reasonable’ health, although hungry. She said that, apart from minor bumps and a bad burn, they had no serious injuries. ‘A good sleep and a good meal and they should be fine,’ she said,
although she declined to comment on their mental state. ‘That is a matter for police counsellors.’
Melanie and Adam Tait, the twins’ parents and landlords of the Stargazer pub in Kielder, were said to be ‘over the moon’ at the return of the children, while their grandmother, Christine Tait, seventy-two, declared she would be running a marathon in aid of Northumberland National Park Mountain Rescue.
Derek Fox-Templeton, Ignatius’s father, had arrived in the UK yesterday from his home in New York as the search for his son intensified. Hugging his son, he told waiting reporters: ‘Iggy wants to talk to me and his mum first.’ He went on to thank search-and-rescue teams who have made the Stargazer their base for the past seven days.
And so it goes on – for pages. We are in all the newspapers, and on every website, and the TV news is reporting it, and still we have said nothing yet. Only those closest to us know the whole truth.
As you’d expect, Geoff and Geoff McKay ended up telling anyone who cared to listen that we had all been abducted by an invisible alien spaceship.
Their story appeared on www.NorthumbrianNews.com under the headline Father and son say Martians took Kielder Kids in spaceship.
Below were dozens of readers’ comments all mocking the story and saying they should be ashamed of themselves for spreading ridiculous rumours – that sort of thing. They have no proof, and until they do, no one will believe them.
The RAF issued a statement denying any knowledge of the claims, while Jamie Bates, the news reporter, has said nothing.
It’s the morning before the start of term, and the three of us – Iggy, Tammy and me – are sitting in the empty bar of the Stargazer.
Dad turns the healing stick over and over in his hands, examining the strange symbols carved into the side, and running his finger along its smooth surface. Then he takes out his phone.
‘Geoff Mackay? Adam Tait from the Stargazer here. I’ve got that, erm … thing you wanted.’
Twenty minutes later, the two Geoffs walk in. Young Geoff holds a long wooden case, the sort you might keep a musical instrument in. Old Geoff curls his lip in our direction but says nothing, while his son hoists the case on to the pool table and clicks the two catches.
Inside the fabric-lined lid there’s a label saying, Boss & Co., and below it is the shotgun in two pieces, the wooden stock and the barrel lying next to each other, plus some other bits and pieces, all arranged neatly.
‘There you go,’ says Geoff Senior. ‘Antique Boss and Co. shotgun, carved, over-under, twelve gauge, twenty-eight-inch double barrel. Last valued four years ago at sixty thousand pounds. Slight rusting on barrel.’
Dad nods slowly and withdraws the healing rod from his back pocket. ‘Careful,’ he says, handing it over. ‘It’s pretty delicate.’
Geoff Jr takes it with both hands and strokes it, then smirks at his dad, who says, ‘A pleasure doing business with you, Adam.’
He holds out his hand but Dad ignores it. Instead Dad clicks the lid of the gun case shut and lifts it off the pool table. He gives it to me.
‘Put that in the boot of the car, pal. I’ll be there in a second. As for you two,’ he says, fixing the two Geoffs with a hard gaze, ‘if I never see you again, it’ll be too soon. I suggest you find another pub to drink in, because you’re no longer welcome here.’ He pauses then growls, ‘Get out of my pub.’
And they go, clutching the rod and looking very pleased with themselves.
‘This is what I call proof,’ Geoff Jr mutters to his dad.
Gran is waiting for us with Suzy at the end of the jetty in her warmest tracksuit, clouds of breath swirling around her head.
Dad has stayed in the car at the top of the path. ‘Do it yourself, kids,’ he said. ‘It’s all down to you.’
‘Did it work?’ says Gran.
We all nod and she grins.
Tammy reaches into her puffer jacket and pulls out the healing rod.
‘Hang on,’ says Iggy. ‘Are we all quite sure about this?’
‘Yes,’ says Tammy. ‘Hellyann said we are too primitive to cope with the technology.’
‘She was right,’ I say. ‘And you?’
Iggy pushes his new glasses up and bends down to pick up Suzy, who is already looking a lot better. ‘Yes. I just wish I could be there when the Geoffs discover they’ve swapped a sixty-thousand-pound antique for a replica made from the handle of my canoe paddle.’
‘A good replica, mind you,’ I say. ‘My dad took hours over it!’
‘That shotgun was never theirs in the first place,’ says Gran, and she chuckles throatily. ‘It’s going back to its rightful owner today. It’ll be the first bit of good fortune poor Maureen’s had in years.’
I look out across Kielder Water, which is perfectly flat and winter blue: just right for playing ‘Stones in the Lake’. It seems like quite a moment.
‘Someone should say something,’ I say.
‘OK,’ says Tammy, ‘how about this?’ She takes a breath. ‘We’ve come a long way together, but there’s still a long way to go!’ She pauses, drawing her arm back in readiness. ‘Three, two, one …’
Suzy ruffles her feathers and watches with us as the rod arcs into the blue sky. Then it disappears with a tiny splash, exactly where Hellyann’s spaceship first landed.
I feel very lucky because my publishers let me get on with my stuff with minimal interference. Key to this is my excellent editor at HarperCollins, Nick Lake. He is brilliantly supported by a dedicated and hardworking team, including Samantha Stewart and Madeleine Stevens, and my heartfelt thanks are owed to them all.
I’ll also take this chance to thank Geraldine Stroud, Jessica Dean and the rest of the wonderful publicity outfit at HarperCollins who do so much year-round to make my books visible (and to get me to events on time!).
And a huge shout-out is owed to the cover designers and cover artist, Tom Clohosy Cole. It is they who are responsible for the distinctive look of all my books.
Thank you, all!
R. W.
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Books by Ross Welford
THE DOG WHO SAVED THE WORLD
THE KID WHO C
AME FROM SPACE
THE 1,000-YEAR-OLD BOY
TIME TRAVELLING WITH A HAMSTER
WHAT NOT TO DO IF YOU TURN INVISIBLE
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