Aliens In The Family

by Margaret Mahy

  Lewis listened for a few seconds then pushed on anxiously. The girls could see him a few metres further down the slope, no longer as a whole boy, merely as patches of colour amidst the leaves.

  "Suppose there was a spirit in the bush that would help us?" said Dora hopefully.

  "There probably is," replied Jake, "but how do we make it notice us? At home it's quiet all around just like this, and I like it most of the time, but it couldn't care less about me. Oh well. Bond can't have much of a start on us."

  They pressed on, following what they could see of Lewis. The babble of the creek grew louder and louder, until at last they could actually detect the movement of water. A little further on, they scrambled down another little slope to find themselves suddenly confronted by a narrow, stony stream. Lewis was slightly ahead, looking back at them.

  "Here's a footprint!" he shouted excitedly, as though he had traced a clue in a birthday party treasure hunt. "Lots of them! They're full of water." He did not wait for the girls to catch up with him but moved quickly on, stalking Bond. Moments later, Dora and Jake reached the same spot, cast a cursory glance over the footprints in the flat, muddy sand on one side of the creek, and set off after Lewis. Once around the bend the bush closed in more snugly about them and they saw a series of bush pools, turned to clouded amber by the shafts of sunlight filtering down through the trees.

  Entranced, the two girls picked their way carefully, pushed together by the narrowness of the creek bed, sometimes going one after the other, sometimes pressed shoulder to shoulder. Here in this deep, silent, lonely place Dora looked at Jake and found herself able to ask the questions that she had long dreamed of asking, since that time when Jake was still a long-haired promise in a photograph.

  "Were you sorry when David and your mother split up?" she asked, and though she had tried to speak in a low voice, her question came out with a rough edge to it that immediately made her feel shy in that old bush silence. But Dora badly wanted to know the answer, for she understood her own life best when she compared it with other people's lives. She had always been curious about Jacqueline-in-the-photograph, whose life seemed as if it might be an unknown reflection of her own. Looking sideways she saw Jake look startled, nervous and then sort of far away, as if she was trying to remember.

  "They said it had to be," she answered at last. "They said it'd be for the best—for all of us. I think David's happier but my mother isn't."

  "David told Philippa your mother was the one who wanted to leave," said Dora, timid but persistent.

  "I don't remember how it all happened. I was only a little kid—nine years old—and they didn't tell me a lot, or else I don't remember it if they did. They didn't get on too badly or anything, I don't think, but the happiest time for my mother was before I was born. She didn't really want ever to grow up, or become a mother and have to do all the things mothers do. But when she broke up with Dad she found out that going home to her parents was different from what she thought it would be."

  "In what way?" asked Dora with trepidation, feeling water seep into her sneakers as she trod carelessly in soft sand. Although she was afraid Jake might become angry at her questions, she couldn't contain her curiosity.

  "Well, she was an only child and my gran and granddad thought she was wonderful. She was pretty too... she still is, in an old sort of way."

  "Like my mother," interjected Dora, "except my mother doesn't try to make the best of herself."

  "My mother's called 'Pet'. She likes that name, probably because that's what she wants to be—someone's darling pet." Jake began to speak more fiercely. "I think my Dad might have been like the man in the Curly Locks rhyme, but promised her wrongly. Anyway, she says he did."

  "How does it go?" asked Dora, frowning as she tried to remember the rhyme.

  "Curly Locks, Curly Locks, will you be mine?

  You shall not wash dishes nor yet feed the swine," quoted Jake.

  Dora remembered, and joined in with the last two lines triumphantly.

  "But sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam.

  And feed upon strawberries, sugar and cream."

  "Tracks! More tracks!" called Lewis from a point not far ahead. Dora discovered that she had completely forgotten that they were supposed to be finding Bond. The rhyme had given her a very good idea of what Jake's mother must be like.

  "When I was little," continued Jake, "she used to recite that rhyme to me and she'd say, 'That's what your Daddy promised me'." Jake shrugged. "Anyhow, 1 don't think anyone should ever promise that—a lovely life of strawberries!"

  "Only rich people could do that," said Dora, patting her own hair to feel if it was curly enough. "Mind you, it works."

  "What works?" asked Jake, bewildered.

  "Curly hair! The man in the poem wouldn't have promised her strawberries and cream if her hair had been straight," said Dora as if it was beyond all doubt. "Well, not unless she had a good cut."

  They had almost caught up to Lewis, but now they paused to study the footprints in the mud. "It is hard to tell—suppose they're not Bond's?" said Dora uncertainly.

  "Who else would be walking here? We haven't seen or heard anybody else all day. Webster's ghosts? They don't leave prints. Ghosts don't have weight." Lewis was just a couple of metres ahead of them now and they followed on, picking their way cautiously.

  "My granddad had a stroke," Jake went on after a moment. "He's not exactly crippled but he can't move around very well. He's the one who needs looking after. And my gran isn't too well either. So you see, neither of them can look after themselves properly, let alone look after Mum. Every now and then she talks as if she came home to look after them but I know she didn't. Even now she doesn't do much around the place."

  Dora thought Jake's mother sounded awful, and thought how nice it must be for David to be free of her and living with Philippa and two nice children. Then she felt that since Jake was confiding in her, she should reciprocate with a confidence of her own. "My father met someone really pretty and went off with her," she offered. "He just left home one weekend."

  "My mother was dreadfully upset when David married again," Jake answered. "I think she always thought he'd be there for her to go back to if things didn't work out. She cried a lot. But anyhow—not to worry! It's all over and done with now."

  There was a new sound in the air. Dora thought she could hear a big truck being driven slowly over distant hills, a soft monotonous murmur that seemed to echo. "Where are we going? How far do we follow?" she asked, looking around as if she had suddenly woken up and was surprised to find herself still walking through the forest. "How can he have got so far ahead?"

  "He might be around the next corner," said Jake. "Lewis, can you see anything?" she called.

  "There's a waterfall over here!" Lewis called back. He looked over his shoulder, a worried frown on his face. "Come on! I don't want Bond to get lost."

  "We've come quite a long way," said Dora fretfully. "David and Mum will be wondering where we are." They turned the bend and saw the stream grow flatter and wider. High above them narrow, silver streaks of water bracketed the upper rocks then flowed together, foaming, down into the wrinkling pool in front of them. "How will we get up there?" asked Dora despairingly.

  "There are plenty of rocks sticking out the side. We'll be able to climb up easily," said Jake confidently.

  Lewis stood at the base of the waterfall gazing upwards, his hand resting on a mossy branch as if it was the back of some green, furry animal. Then he began to climb sure-footedly, as if he had climbed up those rocks many times before. He seemed to know instinctively where to put his feet and hands. Jake and Dora followed, one on either side of the waterfall. Suddenly Bond's voice rang out from the air above them. He was actually standing on the lip of the waterfall, looking down at them.

  "Don't follow me!" he cried desperately. "Let me go away and don't follow me. I am followed by too many already. I should never have let you help me. Don't follow!"

  "Who is fol
lowing you?" asked Dora. "You said that before but no-one was following you. I looked everywhere. There was no-one there."

  "Remember the jump?" he asked mysteriously. "You felt them move closer. They made time shrug." He looked at their blank faces. "Never mind. You don't understand."

  "You don't understand either," Jake threw back at him. "If you go away now, people will search for you—our people, that is—and they won't stop looking until they find some trace of you." As she spoke she stopped climbing, growing rigid with amazement and fear. Behind Bond, but still on the rock lip over which the water plunged, turning white then silver and then clear as glass as it flowed through a long patch of sunlight, three black patches were forming in mid-air, taking on the rough shape of men. They were flat and black, like figures in a shadow theatre, but they seemed to be filling out somehow. It was as though something was rushing into them from somewhere and Jake felt that in a moment they would have texture and substance. Right now, however, they looked as if they had been burnt into the air, and that anything poured into them could also gush out through them and flood onlookers with blackness. A quivering began, not only in the air but in the actual rocks under their hands and feet. It was not quite an earthquake—living as they did in an area prone to earthquakes, Jake and Dora were both familiar with the sensation and were vaguely aware that this movement was too mathematical to be an earthquake. It was as if someone had plucked an invisible string in the very heart of all matter, and now the entire world was vibrating to a single note. The figures moved and stretched out black shapes that were not quite real hands. They could not seize anything yet, but were getting ready to do so. They were preparing to take Bond, Lewis said nothing, but Dora screamed in horror.

  "Bond! Watch out!"

  "Where?" he asked.

  "Behind you! Behind you!" Dora cried.

  Bond turned, saw them, and spoke in a different voice and a different language while at the same time desperately dragging at the box under his arm, fumbling with the transistor switches. In an instant there came a sound as penetrating as a needle thrust in at the ear, dissolving into the blood, and coursing like a thousand little needles around the body. The black figures suddenly broke up into black rags and then to a swarm of swirling fragments before vanishing completely. Jake stared at this scene in terror. Dora, looking up towards Lewis, saw his hands grow limp and begin to slide away from the stone. She cried out as she felt him fall like a heavy bundle past her, down the rocky outcrop at the side of the waterfall, crashing to the ground below.

  Fourteen - A Jump into the Past

  Back on the ridge David and Philippa, angry and puzzled at the lengthy disappearance of their patchwork family, felt the world flicker and then for a terrifying moment they felt completely disoriented.

  "What on earth..." David began, but Philippa interrupted.

  "David, don't try and think about it. Don't try and work it out. Let's just concentrate on what to do next."

  "The horses..." David said. "Oh, no!"

  "The children..." said Philippa, her face pale and stricken.

  In spite of their concern they did nothing immediately except fling their arms about each other and bury their faces in each other's shoulder, giving them a much-needed moment of darkness and closeness in which to get used to the fantastic alteration of their environment.

  "Electric snakes!" breathed David faintly at last, followed by "Good Heavens!" Philippa felt for his hand and twisted her fingers into his before opening her eyes.

  They were still at their picnic place and it was open to the sky, but the whole forest had somehow crept up from below. The rail to which the horses had been tied had disappeared, and the horses themselves stood oddly among the trees of a forest that had never known horses. Enchanter and Scoot, who had fallen onto their sides, scrambled clumsily to their feet. It was no longer possible to look down onto the bush and see it as something over which people had control, for it now towered above them, as if in a single second they had slept for a hundred years and had woken to find seeds had sprouted into huge, old trees. There was evidence of man's habitation as someone had been working on the ridge, clearing a space—the wood of several tree stumps was still white and clean, unweathered by the elements. Every fern, every leaf and every twig seemed to stand out as though it was outlined with a thread of silver. There was a crashing sound—Cooney, contrary as ever, plunged away into the imposing forest that surrounded them.

  "It's impossible," Philippa said. Her teeth chattered as she spoke but she was not cold. David said nothing for a moment. When he spoke at last, he was shivering too.

  "Something very strange has happened," he muttered. "I don't think we can afford to think about it too much, i mean—we could go mad just trying to understand it. We'll just do what we've got to do... look for the kids."

  "Yes," agreed Philippa. She smiled weakly and added, "I'm so frightened my legs have stopped working!"

  "Mine too!" replied David. "Hug me and make me strong." They embraced once more.

  As David and Philippa embraced, down by the waterfall the quivering stopped. Jake still clung steadfastly to the rocks, her eyes squeezed firmly shut. When she opened them again she saw that her eight fingertips were yellowish-white and her nails were almost white too. Their usual pinkness had shrunk to a patch in the middle of each nail because she had been hanging on so tightly. Next she found to her surprise and disgust that she had been a little sick, and her mouth tasted of the orange drink she had drunk only a short time before, now sour and bitter. Someone seized her wrists. It was Bond. There were actual tears on his cheeks, tears so recently wept they were still moving.

  "I'm sorry," he sobbed. "I didn't want this to happen. I'm so confused, I..." he stopped talking as he felt her come alive again and take control of her hands, grasping the rock anew, though still blinking and dazed.

  "Dora!" she called. "Dora! Are you all right?"

  "I slid down a bit," wailed Dora. "My knees will be all scraped. What did you do?" She directed herself at Bond. "Where's Lewis?"

  "I'm all right now," said Jake as Bond climbed down past her towards Dora. She began to climb back down herself, and a moment later stood at the foot of the waterfall beside the immobile form of Lewis, while Bond helped Dora down the last little bit of the rock face.

  Jake could see at once that Lewis was alive, though she was reminded in a horrid way of a broken toy. He was breathing deeply and evenly. Dora burst into tears and wailed aloud. Jake now realized that Dora's noisy cries were because she need to talk, squeal, whimper—anything to keep herself on the move. Dora's own sound was like a drum for her to march to. So Dora cried loudly, and Jake was silent, but each in their own way was trying to cope with the difficult circumstances.

  "Is it all right to move Lewis?" Jake asked Bond. "He might have broken bones. Can you tell?"

  "Solita?" Bond looked into the air questioningly. Jake thought he was swearing in his alien language.

  "He is alive and well," replied Solita, but neither Jake nor Dora could hear her. "It is very strange. He must have been unusually susceptible. We have driven them off but not very far. I can still feel them hovering but now I need to recharge. So will they, I think, unless they have a great reserve of power on which to draw."

  "He's all right—just stunned," Bond reported to the two girls. "Help me lift him out of the mud." Jake hesitated. "I promise it won't hurt him," Bond assured her. Together they gently laid Lewis on the carpet of dried leaves and grass to the side of the stream.

  "He's fainted," said Dora. "Mum'll know what to do. We'll make a stretcher with our coats like we learned in First Aid, and carry him home." She pictured herself, frail but brave, caring only for her little brother, her hair wonderfully curly in spite of the single smudge of dirt on her flower-like cheek.

  Jake noticed Dora was dreaming again. "Wakey, wakey!" she said gently. Jake's breathing had altered, and she was now panting slightly. She was afraid. "We don't even know where we are anymore."
r />   From the few glimpses of the world she had had as she stumbled to Lewis's side, Dora already knew things had changed but that was something she could not bear to think about. Now there was no choice. She had to listen, lift her head and look around at a world which knew nothing of pretty hair or heroic friends and sisters. Perhaps, she reflected, it knew nothing of people. Somehow the whole bank on the west side of the creek had tilted. Just for a moment Dora was convinced she must be standing side on to everything. The stream chattered more loudly than before, not because the surroundings were any quieter or because it was excited by the adventures people were having on its banks, but because it was deeper and swifter than it had been. The waterfall had grown higher and more narrow. There were still trees but no longer the same trees. The silence beyond the sound of the stream was the same silence however, ancient and enchanted. Their voices crawled in it like little insects in the silence of an endless, shadowy hall. They were all aliens together now in a place that belonged to none of them. Dora noticed that the trees, the leaves and the ferns appeared as though someone had scratched around them with a pin of light. Jake's teeth chattered slightly as if she was cold but it was fear she was struggling to keep clenched behind her teeth, not chilliness.

  Jake turned to Bond who, to her eyes, stood in this world like the very spirit of the change. "What have you done to us?" she asked him accusingly. She wanted to say 'What have you got us into?' but she knew they had no-one to blame but themselves on that score—they had got themselves into it, wishing to be adventurous in the fight against evil. They had wanted to help Bond, to be daring and brave... but had ended up unsure and afraid.

  "We've gone back in time," stated Bond. "I can't tell how far. The Wirdegen made a big jump and time jumped back too."

  "Gone back in time!" cried Dora and Jake together.

  "I tried to warn you without actually telling you what I suspected might happen, but you wouldn't give up!" Bond said, a note of anguish in his voice. "I should have just walked away from you when I first met you, because when I did try to leave you it was already too late. Solita warned me that there was a Wirdegen presence but she couldn't tell me where. Then I felt the jump." A moment before Bond had seemed bright as a star in the shadows of the bush. Now he seemed more human—he was unhappy and that was easy to recognize even in a changed world. "All the same, he added, "I think it was fated that we should meet because of the stone."