World Walker 2: The Unmaking Engine

by Ian W. Sainsbury

  ***

  John Varden arrived on Innisfarne two days after he’d received the letter from Mee. He used one of the passports Mason had created in a variety of different names, should he ever need to travel on a commercial flight. John’s name change to Varden was, as yet, unofficial, but he’d filed the papers. He wanted the same surname as his brother, even though he knew Seb’s last name had been chosen by one of the sisters at St Benet’s, after the newborn had been left on their doorstep.

  The journey to Innisfarne was long and tiring. John was still trying to get used to how quickly he became exhausted, with no Manna reserves to restore his energy. He fell asleep as the gently rocking fishing boat brought him to the island.

  Mee met him at the jetty. He didn’t know what to say to her. She held up her hands. For a few seconds, he was puzzled, then he realized what she was showing him. All of her fingers were intact.

  “I left one hand with four fingers as a reminder you were still out there,” she said. “But I don’t need reminding any more. When Seb came back, I asked him to heal it.”

  John nodded. Her letter had said she knew it wasn’t him, that she understood about the tumor that had given Mason life. But reading a letter was different to looking into the eyes of someone who’d encountered Mason, someone he’d hurt. She held his gaze. He felt a lightness, a burst of unexpected happiness as he realized she not only forgave him, but she didn’t believe there was anything to forgive. She’d looked at him and seen only John. Not Mason. It was another big step toward him being able to fully forgive himself.

  They had breakfast together and talked about Seb. Then she took him to his brother.

  Seb was walking on the beach again, his pace slow, picking a path through the slippery rocks. Mee had to call him three times before he finally responded, lifting his head, then waving at them.

  They met by the water, the gulls wheeling and diving for scraps in the sun-flecked water.

  Mee hadn’t told Seb that she’d invited John. She wanted to see his reaction up close. At first, she thought this might be the breakthrough she was hoping for. Seb looked amazed, then pleased, even hugging the older man. After a few minutes, she smiled at John, kissed Seb on the cheek and left them.

  Over the next few days, Seb and John spent every morning together, walking. Mee left them to their own company. Growing up as an orphan and then discovering you have a sibling must have been a shock even for a guy who could eat breakfast in a parallel universe. She gave them their space.

  In the afternoons, John volunteered to help repair some of the dry stone walls on the far side of the island. It was fairly physical work, and by the time he’d had supper, he was wiped out. Mee managed to speak to him a few times. He’d been telling Seb everything he could remember about his parents. Finding out his father was a vicious bully couldn’t have been easy, but Seb’s mother sounded like a warm, intelligent woman who’d made the best of a terrible situation. Mee couldn’t help but wonder why she hadn’t just smacked the guy on the head with a skillet. She could only assume she’d thought she was protecting her son by staying put.

  For a few days, Seb seemed to engage with the idea of having a family. He told Mee about his mother, how he wished he could have met her. He’d grown up with the usual fantasies dreamed up by orphans—that his parents were actually rich, or famous, and there had been some kind of mistake. That they’d be coming to claim him any day. Then, when he was a little older, the feelings of betrayal—how could a mother abandon her own flesh and blood? Next, in adolescence, the crushing self-pity of feeling unwanted. Hard to shift that particular feeling when your mother had left you on the doorstep of an orphanage. But Seb had eventually outgrown these feelings and had become a good man. And now he knew, finally, that his mother had abandoned him for heartbreakingly understandable reasons. He seemed to have found some sort of peace. Knowledge—even when it hurt—was better than ignorance.

  There were a few signs of the old Seb. He picked up a guitar one night and strummed a few chords. Then he carefully replaced the instrument in the corner of the room and didn’t touch it again.

  Then his long conversations with John stopped and he started walking alone. John was sanguine about it.

  “His life has been thrown into chaos,” he said to Mee at dinner one night. “Anyone would take time to adjust.” He speared a carrot, grown in the community’s vegetable garden. The island was pretty much self-sufficient. “I know all about that, trust me. But—”. He stopped talking.

  “But what?” said Mee. John looked a little uncomfortable. Mee pressed him. “What were you going to say?”

  John put his fork down and looked at Mee.

  “I was going to say that there’s something about him that scares me a little.”

  Mee shivered. This was a little too close to something she’d been feeling herself. Something she didn’t want to admit.

  “I don’t mean scared of him, exactly,” said John. It’s kinda hard to explain. It reminds me of something that happened when I was about ten years old.”

  He stopped again. Mee waited as he tried to find the right words. Her throat felt suddenly dry, but she didn’t want to move, even to reach for her glass.

  “I was in the forest on my own,” he said. “I’d taken a book with me, climbed a tree and spent hours perched there, reading. Got lost in the book, to tell the truth. At first, when the atmosphere changed, I didn’t notice. Then it got darker suddenly. I could hardly see the page I was trying to read. I climbed down the tree. The clouds were real low and they were a kind of sick, yellow color. But the weirdest part was the noise. There wasn’t any. Nothing. Now this was the middle of a forest—birds, animals, insects scurrying about. The sound was usually so constant you forgot it was there. Until it wasn’t. It was—what’s the word?—unnerving. I felt the hairs on my neck go up. It was like everything around me knew something was about to happen. Something big. I panicked and ran. Halfway home, the biggest clap of thunder I’d ever heard in my life sounded right over my head, followed by lightning so bright I’d swear I could see my bones through my skin. I was about twenty yards from shelter when the rain came. It was like someone was emptying a swimming pool over my head. Soaked to the skin in two seconds.”

  “You must have been terrified,” said Mee.

  “Damn near crapped my pants,” said John, smiling ruefully. Then his smile slipped. He shook his head. “It was just the sheer power of nature,” he said. “I felt—no, I knew that we humans were insignificant. Nature could brush us aside, swat us like bugs, any time.”

  He pushed the plate away, leaving half of his food untouched.

  “And that’s how Seb makes me feel,” he said. “There’s an atmosphere around him. I feel like I’m back in that tree, just before the storm broke.”

  Chapter 48

  Four nights after her conversation with John, Mee woke up to find Seb’s side of the bed empty and cold. He wasn’t standing by the window. The door to their room squealed like an outraged cat every time it opened, so she knew he must have Walked. Without telling her. Which was a first. Not a precedent she liked at all.

  When he wasn’t back by 5am, Mee, unable to sleep, decided an early morning walk would be better than sitting up in bed, her thoughts whirling in an unhelpful spiral of speculation and uneasiness.

  The approaching dawn was just beginning to lend some definition to the buildings, trees, and paths as she set out. She could hear the hooting of owls, and the scurrying of small mammals hoping to avoid predators. In places, the grass was long, and the dew had soon soaked the ends of her pants. After a few minutes, she realized she’d been mentally humming four bars of a song she’d written with Seb. They hadn’t written lyrics yet, so it was just a melody—a haunting, wispy line that sounded like it was written centuries ago. It had just that hint of darkness that Mee always tried for. The grit in the pearl. She’d always distrusted music without that suggestion of fracture, melancholy or pain.

  She shook her hea
d and tried to change her internal soundtrack to something else, despite knowing it was a next-to-impossible task.

  She almost walked past Seb without seeing him at first. A person standing still is never completely motionless. The human body just isn’t built for it. Buckingham Palace’s red-jacketed guards, world famous for standing still with furry microphone pop shields on their heads for hours at a time, still have to breathe. But Seb was so uncannily still, Mee’s conscious mind dismissed the statue-like figure, until her sub-conscious pulled her up and made her look again.

  When she realized what she was looking at, she didn’t run. It was that unnatural posture that made her slowly and carefully make her way across the rocky beach. Part of her was reluctant to get close. She acknowledged her fear, and firmly decided to ignore it.

  Up close, it became even more obvious something strange was happening. Seb looked normal at first. Then she realized he wasn’t breathing—or possibly, was breathing so slowly that nothing was outwardly discernible. His eyes were open. Light fell on his face, but the sun was still down and the night had been moonless. Mee reached out a hand and put it between the moon and Seb’s face. Impossibly, no shadow appeared on his features.

  Mee reached for Seb’s hand. As soon as she touched his skin, she pulled back her hand with a hiss. It was like touching cold, hard metal. She reached out again, more slowly this time. She tried not to flinch when her fingertips touched his skin, although her lips twitched. It felt exactly like a cold beer can. She pushed. There was resistance. Not quite like human skin, more that of an under-ripe avocado.

  Mee took a step backward and looked carefully at Seb. Neither his hair or his clothes were moving in the breeze that was constantly flicking Mee’s bangs in front of her eyes.

  Steeling herself, she stepped forward again and put a hand on his shoulder. She silently counted to three, then gave him a hard push. She wasn’t sure what to expect. He might rock backward, fall over, or—hopefully—wake up, look at her, and come back to reality. None of those possibilities occurred. What did happen was so unexpected that Mee stumbled backward and sat down heavily in the sand.

  Her hand penetrated his T-shirt and skin, went through his shoulder. She actually saw her fingers emerging just outside Seb’s right shoulder blade. It felt like her hand was pushing through very thick oatmeal. It was even slightly warm. Mee felt like throwing up.

  Instead, she stood again, stamped her feet on the shingle to force some warmth into them and remind herself she was awake, then stood in front of Seb and looked into his eyes.

  “Seb?” she said. “Can you hear me? Seb?”

  His eyes were definitely seeing something, but it wasn’t Meera Patel. She had heard that expression: he had a faraway look in his eye. Yep. Far away. It was just that far away couldn’t even begin to cover the sense of distance she saw in Seb’s eyes. A better fit might be: he had that ‘seeing another galaxy possibly in a parallel universe’ look in his eye. Yep. That was more accurate.

  Mee didn’t cry on her way back to the main house to tell Kate, but she did swear. Loudly.

  ***

  Two weeks later

  For the first thirty-six hours, only Mee and Kate had known what was going on, but within a few days the entire community was whispering about it. A meeting was called, Kate told them what little they knew, suggestions were made, and a plan of sorts was approved.

  “Better than doing nothing,” said Mee, but she didn’t sound convinced.

  The two women made their way down to the beach at midnight. Mee hadn’t slept at all the first two nights, so Kate had organized shifts of volunteers to make sure nothing happened without Mee knowing about it. Kate and Mee were going to cover the 12-4am shift.

  Two men stood up as they approached. A temporary camp had been set up under a tree overlooking the beach. It was little more than some folding chairs and a two-person tent containing a camping stove.

  As she got closer, Mee realized one of the men was John, drinking from a tin cup.

  “It’s no good,” he said. “I want to like tea, especially now that I’m in Britain, but I guess I’m too old to change.”

  Mee forced a smile at his attempt to keep the atmosphere light.

  “You, of all people, know you’re never too old to change.”

  “Good point,” said John, grimacing as he took another sip. “You don’t suppose coffee beans would grow here, do you?”

  Mee and Kate stood alongside the two men and looked down the slope to the beach. The tide was going out, exposing the wet rocks dotting the sand and shingle. The moon hung big and low in the clear sky.

  Seb still hadn’t moved. He stood with his back to them, looking straight ahead. At night, the temperatures plummeted, but he was only wearing a T-shirt, jeans and sneakers. Fifteen days into his silent vigil, the only things that changed were the light, the weather, the observers and the unceasing wash of the tide as it came in and receded. Seb stayed exactly the same.

  “Even the bloody gulls won’t perch on his head,” said Mee, finishing the tea John hadn’t quite managed to bring himself to drink.

  Kate and Mee watched Seb for their allotted four hours. During the day, many of the community had taken to making their way one by one to the silent figure and talking to him. Not expecting a response perhaps, but letting him know they were there. At night, it was just the rota of watchers and the bats that flickered in and out of the branches above them.

  ***

  Ten days later

  Mee had experienced bad shit before. She knew that prevailing wisdom claimed things got bad before they got better, that the night was always darkest before the dawn, but—in her experience—things were just as likely to get worse as get better. And what kind of idiot thought the darkest part of the night was just before dawn? The darkest part of the night was hours before that.

  On this particular night, the darkest part was at 3:40am.

  Mee sat bolt upright in bed and was fully awake instantly, which had never happened before. Ever. She’d taken to sleeping in one of Seb’s T-shirts since he’d been gone. The principle of which half-comforted and half-horrified her. In the end, she mentally justified her action by describing it as, “giving my inner militant feminist a cuddle,” and left it at that.

  She grabbed a pair of jeans, a jacket and her sneakers and half-ran, half-hopped through the sleeping house, getting dressed as she went.

  Outside, everything was quiet. It was so dark, she almost ran headlong into Sarah, one of the women covering the 12-4am shift that night. The other woman gasped in surprise as Mee rushed past. She called something after her, but Mee wasn’t listening.

  When she got to the tent overlooking the beach, no one else was there. Breathing heavily, Mee looked down to the beach. It was a starlit night, but hard to see exactly was going on. There was definitely a figure down there.

  Mee scrambled down to the shore.

  The figure was Kate.

  “I saw it,” she said quietly as Mee came closer. She took the younger woman’s hand and they both looked at the spot where Seb had been standing for nearly a month.

  “What happened?” said Mee.

  “There was nothing dramatic about it,” said Kate. “He took a couple of steps forward. I stood up, called Sarah—she was sleeping in the tent. By the time she’d come out, he’d gone. He took one more step. Halfway through it he disappeared. As if he’d walked through a door.”

  Kate looked at Mee’s face for a few seconds. “I’ll wait up there for you,” she said, and walked back toward the watcher’s station.

  Mee could still see Seb’s footprints. She knew the tide, which had washed around his feet every day for a few hours, would soon wash them away forever. She carefully put her own feet where his had been. Stood where he had stood. Looked out toward the sky the way he had been doing for the last twenty-five days.

  Mee tried to see what Seb had seen. Tried to think like him. And finally, admitted to herself that she didn’t know how to do
that anymore. She couldn’t think, or see, what he saw. The Seb she’d known had changed beyond recognition. Not in a bad way, perhaps. Maybe from a caterpillar to a butterfly. Which was all very lovely, but not so great if you were the caterpillar’s girlfriend. The thought made her laugh. The laugh turned into sobs, and she allowed herself a cathartic ten minutes of howling. Then she wiped the tears from her face with the bottom of Seb’s T-shirt and made her way back up the slope.

  She allowed herself one last look back. She slowly scanned the empty beach, then raised her eyes and gazed at the night sky. For most of her life, the stars had seemed friendly, exciting and mysterious. Tonight, they were cold, distant, and unknowable.

  She put one hand on her stomach and wondered if he had known. He seemed to know everything else. Could he have missed what was going on right in front of him? She knew the anger she was feeling was misplaced and unfair, but she couldn’t help it.

  “If it’s a boy,” she whispered, “I’m definitely not calling him Seb.”

  THE END

  Author's note

  The World Walker series will continue…

  Thanks for reading The Unmaking Engine. If you enjoyed it, please consider leaving a review on Amazon USA or UK (apologies to all other nationalities who bought the first book—but please leave a review on your country’s Amazon page!)

  You can join my mailing list here - http://bit.ly/1VSg2tT, and I'll send you a free copy of the unpublished prologue to The World Walker. I blog very occasionally here - https://ianwsainsbury.com/ and you can email me on ianwsainsbury@gmail.com. I'm on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IanWSainsbury/