The Forever Journey

by Paul F Gwyn

  Charlotte did not answer immediately. Instead she allowed a silence to sit comfortably between them, their thoughts their own, while they both watched Felicity continue dancing among the trees.

  “Perhaps,” Charlotte finally said. “Although not as you or I have ever understood the idea. But listen with your heart. Can you not feel his presence here?”

  “How does one listen with one’s heart?”

  Charlotte moved onto her knees and drew closer to her husband. She reached out and placed the palm of her right hand against his chest. “Remember when we first met, Jacob? We looked at each other and we knew. Our hearts heard each other’s.” She closed her eyes. “It’s the same thing.”

  Folkard was sceptical, but he could not deny the truth of that moment. From the first it had been as if some force had bound him and Charlotte together—like their souls were made of the same thing. He closed his eyes and allowed his heart to feel. To listen.

  4.

  HE HAD BEEN walking in the garden for what felt like weeks. Nathanial did not mind so much; he rather enjoyed the peace and quiet, being alone with only his thoughts. Occasionally he was joined by a young boy, who wanted to go and fish for tiddlers in the river that ran the length of the garden. From the first moment he was certain he recognised the boy; at first he thought it was him, back in the innocent days of his youth when he would pal around with Josiah Hawksworth on Putney Common, but the more the boy joined him, each time seeming a little older than before, Nathanial came to realise it was, in fact, Edwin.

  He assumed he was dead, although he did remember dying. Unless he was dreaming. But it did not feel like a dream. Not like those strange dreams he had been having recently. This was more real, in a somewhat surreal sense.

  Nathanial laughed at the nonsense he was thinking.

  He stopped and turned, acutely aware of the presence before he saw it. Behind, where it could not have been before, was a gravestone. Curious, he walked over to it, reminded of his previous dream. Sure enough, the words engraved on the stone were the same. Only now the date of his death had changed. No longer was it September 28th 1899, but instead it read, And taken on the Second day of August, in the year of Our Lord 1893. Only three years away!

  What balderdash! This was no dream, of that he certain. He was dead already, and if there was one thing of which he was certain, one did not return from Heaven.

  “Unless one knows how, Nate,” said a young voice behind him.

  Nathanial turned and found himself looking at Edwin, now looking as he did when he had been twelve. Nathanial indicated the headstone. “What is the meaning of this?”

  “How do I know? I’m only a boy.”

  Nathanial narrowed his eyes. A boy, yes, but when Edwin had died in that house fire he had been a young man. “This is absurd. Am I to be haunted in Heaven?”

  “Only the guilty are haunted,” said another voice.

  Nathanial turned again. The headstone was gone. Now a very familiar figure stood there—it was he! Nathanial looked at himself with polite interest. Was that really how he looked to the world? Gangly, in grimy clothes, his ginger hair unkempt, his face covered in dirt and sweat. Or was that how he looked when he died?

  Edwin stepped closer to Nathanial and took his older brother’s hand. “Don’t trust him, Nate. He’s not what he appears to be.”

  Nathanial shrugged. “If there is one thing I have learned in my travels, Edwin, it is that no one is who they appear to be. Not even me.”

  The other Nathaniel clapped his hands. “Well said. You came out into the aether to find only one answer, but instead you have found others to questions you did not even know you had.”

  “Is this death?” Nathanial asked bluntly.

  “This is…I believe you would call it paradise. Although it does have many names. Eden, Plypolyplon, Elysium…” The other Nathaniel shrugged. “Where it all began, and where it all ends.” He started walking towards Nathanial. “I have often wondered what happened, and so I have finally been able to take a look and see. Thanks to this.” He opened his left hand and the Mercurian plate appeared upon it. “It took a while to communicate with you all; your minds are more complicated than I remember. Or perhaps I am just out of practice?” He shrugged again. “Either way. At first it was while you slept, I pricked at your unconscious, tried to talk to in your sleep. But as you neared the doorway, it became easier. I was able to talk to you through visions.”

  Nathanial remembered the story Annabelle had told him. Of the little girl. And then was… “Sébastien. That was you?”

  “Of course. Monsieur Fontaine’s father is a most clever man, but I doubt he is able to transport himself to an aether flyer without aid.” He stopped directly in front of Nathanial, barely inches between them. “It was so hard to reach you… Each of you have so many contradictory thoughts and feelings. Especially you. You are the most interesting among them. You are constantly fighting with yourself. I do not understand why.”

  Nathanial wasn’t sure what this other him meant by that. He just wanted to know one thing. “Are you God?”

  The other Nathaniel laughed. It was a strange sound to Nathanial’s ears. He had never heard his own laugh outside of himself before. It was most disconcerting. “What is God but an abstract concept, created by people who need to feel there is a purpose to their lives?”

  “I shall take that as a no.”

  “If you wish.”

  “My father would love you,” Nathanial, more to give his mind time to think over what the other him had said. “To deny God’s existence; a construct created by man? Oh yes, I can see how well that would go down.”

  “But father is somewhat blinkered in his adherence to ‘God’s Law’. What would he think of the conflict in you?”

  Nathanial looked down at Edwin. Not sure his brother should be privy to this conversation. Edwin was gone, even though up until that moment Nathanial had felt his brother’s hand in his. Had Edwin been an illusion? Perhaps all of this was. Maybe he had been wrong, and this was just a dream. His mind trying to work through his feelings for Arnaud, sort through the conflict in him.

  He was probably lying in the cot in the lab on Esmeralda, Arnaud tinkering around him, while Folkard and Annabelle sat on the control deck and Fenn awaited Nathanial to relieve him.

  He turned away from his other self. “This is nonsense. I can believe in many things, and I have seen much that has challenged my beliefs in this past year, but I will not accept that God is a mere construct of man’s desire for purpose.”

  “You may believe as you will. We have much time to work through these beliefs of yours.”

  Nathanial began to walk away, no longer caring for talking to himself. His thoughts had been much easier to understand than an actual conversation.

  “You can walk away,” his voice said behind him. “But I have use for you. For you and your friends. Much I must understand. It is not only you who seeks understanding, Nathanial Stone.”

  For a moment Nathanial stopped, and turned slightly. “Then seek your answers without me. I am dead, finally. Or I am sleeping. Either way, you will not find what you seek with me.”

  The other Nathaniel smiled. There was something beneath that smile, something that put Nathanial on his guard. “As you wish. Keep walking, but you will not find your friends here. They have their own answers, and are no longer needed here. You will be alone.”

  This time it was Nathanial’s turn to shrug. “At the end of the day, are we not all alone?”

  5.

  THREE DAYS TO Mars-fall. Since escaping the pull of the aether tear very few words had been spoken, each of them had kept their own counsel on the events. Arnaud noticed that both Annabelle and Folkard carried themselves with a sense of contentment he had not seen in either before. It was as if they had made their peace.

  No one talked of it, how they had escaped the tear. But he could tell they all remembered it well. There was a certain look in their eyes from time to time, as if th
ey were remembering their own deaths. For his own part Arnaud remembered it clearly. The lab being torn apart around as the aether tear sucked him towards the porthole, Nathaniel and he clinging fiercely to each other.

  And he remembered what happened after. Meeting his mother outside the Café Procope, and the discussion that followed. As much as it jarred with his beliefs, he knew he had experienced a taste of the afterlife. Not Heaven, but some other existence. A place where loved ones were reunited. Where his mother continued to live, and waited for him.

  He looked up from Nathaniel’s diary. Speaking of loved ones. Nathaniel was currently in the engine room with Fenn, preparing the propeller governor for aeronautic manoeuvres when they entered the Martian atmosphere. Ever since their return from the afterlife, Nathaniel had been a little bit distance. He, like the others, did not wish to talk about the mystery of their survival, but when Arnaud has pressed him, Nathaniel had said; “If there is one thing I have learned in my travels, mon toujours, it is that nothing is as it appears to be. Not even our survival.”

  As answers went it did not explain much. Perhaps one day they would all sit down and talk about it. Arnaud doubted it, though. Some mysteries remained unsolved.

  Like Nathaniel’s journal. It was now full up to this morning, every day of their journey from Earth accounted for, including a poem. Arnaud did not know how it found its way into the journal, or indeed how Nathaniel even knew it. It was the poem Arnaud himself had recited when he thought Nathaniel was sacrificing himself for his friends. And it had not been in the journal then.

  To his knowledge, Nathaniel had no idea Arnaud had sneaked a peek at the journal, yet Arnaud could not help but feel that the poem was a message from Nathaniel to him…

  Do not write—I am sad and just wish to expire. Lovely summers without you are but a dark night. I have closed up my arms, which can no more reach you, And to strike at my heart is to strike at the grave. Do not write!

  Do not write—Let us learn for ourselves how to die. Ask only God…and to yourself if I loved you! In your absence’s depth to hear that you love me Is to hear heaven without ever getting there. Do not write!

  Do not write—I fear you, and too my memory; It keeps the voice that calls often to me. Do not show one running water who cannot drink. A dear handwritten word is like a live portrait. Do not write!

  Do not write me sweet words I no longer dare read. It seems your voice spreads them upon my heart And that I see them searing through your smile, It seems a kiss imprints them on my heart. Do not write!

  Epilogue

  “Leaving Mars”

  No one had spoken of their experiences since arriving on Mars, although Folkard found himself watching his crew more closely. Annabelle seemed more content, and he could only imagine that she, too, had found some kind of peace in Heaven. Every so often Folkard would catch a distant look on her face, one, he’d wager, he often wore himself, and he felt that she, too, had visited Heaven when Esmeralda 2 had been pulled apart by the aether tear.

  As to the others? Mister Fenn, taken into custody upon their arrival on Mars, and shipped back to Earth before they had returned from Phobos, did not protest. He simply looked at his captain with a serene acceptance; no doubt he had also found his own peace. Folkard intended to speak in Fenn’s defence once he returned to Earth—the lad had served the mission well, without a single blemish on his service record since joining Sovereign for its maiden voyage to Luna. Folkard was well versed in the brutality the Russians could engage in when they needed information; Fenn had seen little combat, although he had acquitted himself admirably during the fracas at Messor Base on Ceres. And, of course, the Russians had threatened Fenn’s family. Folkard could understand the need to protect one’s family.

  Fontaine had not been much changed by their experience, and continued to be his usual buoyant self, and his experiences had proven invaluable on Phobos. But Stone… There Folkard paused. The man had undergone some kind of change during the journey from Earth to Mars, although he would not discuss it, but Folkard felt that Stone had become a bit more…not adversarial, but he seemed to be prodding people more, as if he wanted to see how they’d respond to certain things. Yes, that was it, like when they had been trying to destroy the Mercurian plate, Stone seemed to be observing people. Folkard wasn’t sure why this bothered him so, but something about it did not sit right with him.

  In return, he decided, he would have to pay more careful attention to Stone, too.

  For himself, though, he knew he had definitely been affected by his short visit to Heaven. Seeing Charlotte again, and finally meeting his daughter… For the first time in years Folkard felt a certainty about his future. He did not know where his career would take him after his current mission was over, but he did know one thing. Charlotte and Felicity awaited him.

  “I will see you both soon,” he muttered, looking out to the stars around him, as Esmeralda 2 left Mars and began its final journey back to Earth.

  To Be Continued…

  in

  Horizons of Deceit, Book I