Earthborn

by Sylvia Waugh

  On Tuesday the twelfth of January, the postman arrived just as Matthew was getting ready to go out. He rang the doorbell and Matthew hurried to answer him. Alison was upstairs.

  ‘Parcel,’ said the postman.

  ‘To sign for?’ said Matthew.

  ‘No,’ said the postman. ‘It was just too big to go through the letterbox.’

  He handed it over. It was a large floppy package wrapped in soft brown paper.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Matthew, taking it with both hands and wondering what it could be. A sender address would have helped, but there was none.

  Matthew tore open the wrapping on the kitchen table and out fell a whole bundle of newspapers. There was no note to say who had sent them or why. Matthew spread them out on the table and leafed through them one by one. There was a fair assortment of national papers; there were even two editions of a little local paper from Casselton, one that would not normally be seen as far south as York. Whoever had sent them had not troubled to cut out or even mark any relevant stories, just crammed the whole lot into the package so that at first it looked meaningless.

  Matthew went back over the bundle and read the headline story. It seemed the obvious thing to do. And it was the right thing! The story that had attracted so many journalists was not just mysterious; for Matthew it was very, very important.

  ‘I just don’t know what will come of this,’ he said to his wife when she came downstairs. He gestured to the pile of newspapers. ‘It’s a good job they came after Nesta went to school.’

  Their daughter knew nothing about the terrible problem Matthew was about to discuss. She knew very little about her own background at all. Her parents were meant to tell her later, when she had reached maturity. Then would be the time. That was what had been agreed.

  Like everyone else in the country, Alison had seen on TV the reports of the disappearance of the man and his son – it had been quite a prominent news item for a day or two, but she had not connected it with herself at all. It was just another odd story. It was only when Matthew showed her the newspaper articles that she realized the full implication.

  ‘Why so many newspapers?’ she had asked at first when she saw them strewn over the kitchen table.

  ‘They carry different versions of a story that is of concern to us. Or maybe it would be better to say that they tell the story from different angles. They don’t actually contradict one another as regards the facts. You’ll see,’ said Matthew. ‘Read this one first.’

  He passed her last Thursday’s Courier. This was the local Casselton paper but its headline was the most intriguing. The article beneath it filled a whole page. For this, and for other reasons, it seemed to Matthew to be more dangerous than the others. ‘Starlight, Perhaps’ was all about the two people who had disappeared in Casselton.

  It was a long article, much longer than any of the reports in the national press. It bore the by-line Shaun Trevelyan. His London editor, who favoured the succinct and factual, had dumped Shaun’s article. A friend on the Courier had been more obliging. It was, after all, a good piece of local news.

  Shaun had interviewed practically everyone involved in the affair: the tanker driver and his mate who had been in the road accident that had started it all; nurses and doctors in the hospital where the boy, whose name was given as Thomas Derwent, had been placed when he was in a state of shock after seeing the crash; the villagers in Belthorp where Thomas and his father, Patrick, had lived. And finally, he had approached their friend and neighbour, Stella Dalrymple. She it was who, when asked if she could throw any light on the mystery, had replied with the words that gave the reporter his headline: ‘Starlight, perhaps . . .’ She had closed the door on the young reporter, telling him nothing more. But those two words were quite enough. Shaun Trevelyan had an ear for the music. He was ready to believe that this really was the tale of an alien presence on the planet Earth.

  Thomas Derwent had appeared on the local TV channel before his disappearance, a little boy lost whose father was missing. In that interview, the boy had screeched some strange, sound-distorting words at the microphone. These were never repeated on national television because they were not transmittable. Gerry Potterton, the local television reporter, had given Shaun a tape of the ‘foreign’ words the boy had screamed at him, in a voice so strange that the sound system had collapsed under the strain of it. Vateelin Tonitheen Ormingat. That was all the boy had said, just those three words, over and over again, growing louder each time he said them. To decide on their orthography had taken over an hour of listening to the flawed recording. There was no way of conveying the tone and the accent: ‘Vateelin’, ‘Tonitheen’ and ‘Ormingat’ were the best they could manage.

  ‘There’s worse,’ said Matthew, putting aside the earlier papers and turning to the copy of the previous day’s Courier. ‘Read this letter.’

  He put the paper into Alison’s hands.

  Dear Sir,

  With reference to the story about the boy who went missing from Casselton General Hospital in the middle of the night – I met him. He was in the next bed to me. He spoke to me in his own language. It was hard to understand. But I think the words in the article mean who he is and where he comes from. He told me his name was Tonitheen and that he came from Ormingat. His voice was very, very strange, but he used some English words. I was the only one there who could hear him properly. I have very good hearing. He said ‘I am’ but it sounded odd. And he said ‘and I come from’. So what he really said was ‘I am Tonitheen and I come from Ormingat.’ I thought he said ‘Organmat’ but could be wrong. He never mentioned ‘Vateelin’ to me.

  I believe he is an alien and that he comes from another planet in outer space. I offered to help him. If he reads this, I want him to know that I will help him any time he needs me. I liked him. But he might have gone home to his own planet now. Maybe Vateelin is his father and took him away.

  Yours truly,

  James Martin (aged 10)

  Hedley Crescent, Casselton

  Alison gasped as she read it.

  ‘How could he get so close to the truth? And what was that child Tonitheen doing telling everyone his name? It is obvious that he and his father are, like us, visitors to Earth. But we are meant never to be known or recognized. They must surely have known that!’

  All it needed now was for the UFO enthusiasts to get on the trail!

  ‘There’ll be trouble,’ said Alison after she had finished reading. It was clear that even if the police were no longer actively interested, it was not a matter that would be totally forgotten. The boy’s father had disappeared into thin air at the moment when the tanker driver and his mate were sure that they had run him over. All that he left behind was a strip of sheepskin torn from his overcoat. And it was this coat that had been found on the hospital bed after the boy vanished.

  ‘Nothing like this has ever happened before,’ said Matthew, looking anxiously from one paper to the next. ‘I don’t know what sort of danger it puts us in, but there will be repercussions, that’s for sure – especially for us. Casselton is less than a hundred miles away. Our people are clearly concerned. Why else would we have been sent these papers?’

  Alison raised her eyebrows, as much as to say, How do you know who sent them?

  ‘Who else would be sending us newspapers like this?’ said Matthew. He had already looked at the postmark on the package but it was too blurred to read.

  Matthew’s next home contact was not due till the first of June. For fourteen years, he had followed the strictly laid down routine. His annual holiday was always arranged around it. Now he felt sure that there would be some earlier communication.

  He looked up at the kitchen clock.

  ‘I’ll have to go to work now,’ he said, ‘but I’ll arrange to have the rest of the week as holiday. This is an emergency.’

  Alison went with him to the front door.

  ‘What about Nesta?’ she said. ‘Will she need to know?’

  ‘I think so,
’ he said, looking at his wife quite vaguely as if he weren’t quite sure of anything yet. ‘I don’t see any other way. There’ll be a follow-up to those newspapers. You must see that.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Alison. ‘It might all blow over. We could leave it a week or two.’

  ‘Common sense tells me that it won’t,’ said her husband. ‘Those newspapers tell us that it won’t. Besides, it is only bringing forward what would have happened in any case six years from now.’

  ‘You think we’ll be recalled?’ said his wife, startled at the thought of the upheaval. She was loyal to Ormingat. There was no question about that, but Earth had been her home for so long now. And it wasn’t such a bad place after all, especially not England, and, most especially, not York.

  ‘I feel sure we will,’ said Matthew. ‘All this publicity makes our recall inevitable. You know how careful they are. They will not jeopardize two hundred and fifty years of quiet research.’

  He put one arm around her shoulders.

  ‘And look at it this way,’ he added. ‘We do love our real home. Our time here has often felt like exile. And as for Nesta, you did as you were told. Somewhere in the back of her mind is the story of the Faraway Planet. She will easily relate it to the truth you tell her now. She is a very intelligent girl.’

  As the door closed behind her husband, Alison thought to herself how simple life would be if everything were as black and white as Matthew managed to paint it. The psychologists of Ormingat might be right: it might work as they had said it would. But there was the possibility that they could be wrong.

  My poor Nesta, she thought, this is the wrong time and the wrong way for you to learn the truth!

  The story of the Faraway Planet that Nesta had been told in her baby years had been deliberately made to sound like a fairytale. Even the real name of the planet had been left unspoken.

  How well her mother remembered telling her daughter that bedtime story!

  CHAPTER 4

  * * *

  The Faraway Planet

  ‘Tell me about the Faraway Planet where you used to live before I was born,’ Nesta would say, all those years ago, when her mother came to tuck her up in bed. It was one of her favourite bedtime stories. Alison had been instructed to plant it there, alongside ‘The Goose Girl’, ‘Rapunzel’, and ‘Little Tom Thumb’.

  ‘Long, long ago,’ she would begin, ‘Daddy and I lived with our friends and our families in a sort of castle – or that is what this world would probably call it. The outer walls of the castle rose up in curves and spirals to a sky that by day was pale blue and sometimes golden, but never too bright and never too dull, never grey, and never cloudy. No stones formed these walls, nothing so hard. And there were no sharp corners anywhere for you to bump yourself on.’

  ‘A bouncy castle,’ Nesta said once, after they had been to the fête on the playing field.

  Alison laughed and said, ‘Bigger by far, and not at all bouncy. Just think how uncomfortable that would be!’

  ‘And the walls inside,’ Nesta prompted, ready for the next bit of the story.

  ‘The walls inside the castle had a pearly glow that gave light by night or by day, even after our twin suns had set. Just as well, for night and day were more topsy-turvy there than here. Our planet took a course like a figure eight, turning first round one sun then the next. And it still does, you know, even though we are not there to see it.’

  ‘Draw it,’ said Nesta. And when her mother had drawn the planet’s orbit, in crayon on a large sheet of sugar paper, one loop much larger than the other, Nesta would trace her finger round and round it, enjoying the neverendingness. It was a shape that she would always find pleasing, even after she had forgotten why. The wax of the crayon and the roughness of the paper sustained the memory.

  ‘Now tell me what the planet is called,’ Nesta would demand after the figure-of-eight game palled. Alison’s dark eyes would glisten when this demand was made. The name of the planet was on the tip of her tongue and she longed to say it. But that was strictly against the rules.

  ‘I can’t,’ she said, holding both of Nesta’s hands in hers, ‘not yet. It is a very secret name and you, my darling, are much too little to be told. When you are very big and very wise, then I will be able to whisper the name in your ear and you will be as thrilled to hear it as I shall be to tell.’

  ‘Tell me about the doors,’ said Nesta, accepting the answer that her mother always gave. She drew her knees up to her chin expectantly. The doors were a very good part of the story, much easier to follow and understand.

  Nesta would look at her mother’s dark, curly hair and smiling face, and wait for all the actions that went with this description. Alison would spread her hands in a sort of swirl, as if she were a magician. Past became present as she invoked this castle in the air.

  ‘The doors are like no doors you have ever seen. They are set in huge, curved arches and when we leave or enter they roll aside like magic mist, and in them are all the colours of the rainbow – and a few more shades that do not even exist here on Earth. They have no purpose other than to shut out the breeze and to mark the outside from the in. There are no bad people anywhere on the planet; so there is no need to lock anyone out. No one there would ever hurt anyone else. Every single thing is share and share alike, though of these things they share, I cannot tell you. There are no Earth words to describe them and there is nothing on Earth to which they bear any real likeness.’

  ‘Say something not Earth word,’ said Nesta, snuggling down into her bed again. She knew what the answer would be, but she always asked because that was part of the ritual. And there was always the faint possibility that some day the answer might different.

  ‘Not yet,’ said her mother with a laugh. ‘The language of the Other Place does not belong here. It would sound too strange: the atmosphere on Earth is all wrong for it.’

  Nesta let that go – it was what she had been told many times before in many different ways. She had a child’s wise way with things she did not understand. She simply skipped over them.

  ‘And the people there? What do they look like?’ she said eagerly, waiting for the smallest addition to words she had already heard.

  Alison looked down at her little daughter, the light brown hair spread on her pillow, the grey-blue eyes returning her gaze earnestly.

  ‘Beautiful,’ she said. ‘In their own special way, they are more beautiful than the fairest of mankind. At home – for it is our home – we have our own bodies. These that we have here are just garments we must wear for our time on Earth. They are pretty nice garments, but not as good as the real thing!’

  ‘Me too?’ said the child, already aware that there was a flaw in this story somewhere. She had been born here in the city of York. She had never known anywhere else. She knew that she more closely resembled her father but that people said she had her mother’s smile. Sometimes she wished her hair were thick and curly like Mom’s. Sometimes she wondered how a smile could be separated from the rest of the face!

  ‘Can I take off my fingers?’ Nesta asked one night, finding a new question for the old story when her mother came again to the part about their Earth bodies being garments. Her left hand tugged tentatively at the fingers on her right. After all, clothes were things to wear and they could be removed. People wear nothing at all in the bath!

  Alison smiled. But secretly she felt sad. Once Nesta began asking difficult questions, the storytelling would have to stop. It must not continue into the age of reason. To let a child know too much is to risk betrayal.

  ‘It doesn’t work like that,’ said Alison carefully. ‘It is much more complicated. Some day you will know all about it. Then you will understand.’

  ‘But I wasn’t born in that place you came from,’ Nesta said.

  ‘No,’ said her mother. ‘When we left home, we had no idea what a wonder we had in store for us. You were a sort of bonus, a lovely, smiley, cuddly bonus. You didn’t “go with the job”! Daddy and I s
till marvel that you are ours.’

  Nesta caught the work ‘job’ and said, ‘Daddy works in the bank. That is his job.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Alison, content to leave it at that. ‘Daddy works at the bank.’

  ‘Now tell about how you got here,’ said Nesta. ‘Tell about the spaceship.’

  ‘Our spaceship was no bigger than a baseball. It was crystalline and shimmering blue, yet changing constantly as if it were a living thing. To go inside it we diminished – you know that word by now. We became so small that the inside of the ship seemed to us bigger than a house. That is where we lived for three years, travelling through space, learning things, and preparing for our stay here on Earth.’

  The story was sometimes embroidered with other snippets. Like the time Alison went on to say, ‘And we arrived in the exact spot prepared for us. That was a rare and wonderful thing! To come so far, and to arrive spot-on, in the right place, is not easy. We were warned about that. The spaceship could have veered off course and landed miles away. Then we would have had to set out and find this house in this fair city, where it was all ready and waiting for us!’

  ‘Who got it ready?’ said Nesta.

  ‘Others from the Faraway Planet, secret workers. We never see them – but we know that they are there, like the elves who help the shoemaker!’

  ‘Where is the spaceship now?’ said Nesta. ‘When are you going to tell me where it is?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said her mother. ‘Some day, when you are older. For now, I can only say that it is safe, buried deep in the earth but ready to leave when the time comes, ready to take us all home.’

  That was where the story always ended. And the game finished.

  Nesta yawned, lids drooping over the blue-grey eyes. Before entering the Land of Nod, she said sleepily, wanting to be reassured that this was just a story after all, ‘But we’re really Americans, aren’t we? And you and Daddy came from Boston.’