Aliens In The Family

by Margaret Mahy

  "Jake!" said a voice beside her, and she looked around to find Bond staring at her. "Jake, you can't ride," he said bluntly. "They said you could ride well but you can't ride at all."

  Because he simply stated the facts, without asking for an explanation, Jake didn't bother to argue. She sat motionless, thinking that whether she could ride or not, she was still entitled to dress as if she did, because they were the clothes of adventure, and once you gave difficult or even sad things the name of adventure their meaning changed. Then Jake had a very strange experience. She felt Bond move, not in the outside world, but inside her mind. He began as a single light like a candle flame in a dark hall, investigating one side door then another, branching out and out again. She could trace his movement in the dark land behind her eyes as if he had taken root and grown there like a tree of fire. He divided and this division divided again and again, lighting up dark places, gently searching her memories. Then he was gone—she was alone again. Bond sat beside her on Scoot studying her with a kindly interest.

  "Fear is a sort of electricity and I can follow electrical traces," he told her. "I can make pictures of them when I untangle them. And now you know my secret too. I'm not supposed to tell anyone," he added. In reading her, in becoming a fiery tree, a river of fire flowing through her head, Bond had allowed Jake to discover something astounding about himself that she had not been able to see before.

  "You're not a real person—you're—you're—you're an alien!" Jake blurted out at last. "You come from outer space!"

  "What's 'outer space'?" asked Bond smiling. "A centimetre in front of your eyes—that's where it begins—half a centimetre, a millimetre! And what's an alien?" Bond continued, watching the others who were now riding towards them. "It's just a word for a person out of their own environment. I'm out of my place here, but you are out of yours too. You're a stranger here, just like me."

  "I haven't got a place," Jake said quietly.

  "Yes, you have," countered Bond. "I know you have to be the man of the family when you're at home with your mother, but here you can let yourself be a daughter."

  He turned his head, and Jake saw David drawing alongside them on his horse, a startled expression on his face as if only now was he really beginning to recognize her. He opened his mouth to speak then glanced at Bond and fell silent as the rest of the party trotted back towards them.

  "It was lovely," cried Dora, forgetting to worry about what Bond was thinking of her. "Why didn't you come, Jake? I suppose it's nothing very exciting for you."

  "I don't think that's quite the case," said David slowly. "But never mind. Let's just box on and enjoy the day's outing together."

  Jake looked back at Bond. Now that she had got over her shock she noticed him more clearly and thought he looked pale and sad and rather frightened. "Snakes in the head!" she whispered. "The sun stepped back in the sky! Are you being followed?"

  "I'm afraid so," said Bond. Lewis looked at him too but said nothing. For a brief instant a smile flashed across his face—a smile that was not altogether his own.

  Twelve - The Vanishing of Bond

  They rode on, following sheep tracks in a leisurely manner, up over gradual slopes of tussocky grass interspersed with the odd broom bush. As they moved, the slopes seemed to revolve around them very slowly, opening and closing like the pages of fold-out books, every now and then revealing long valleys of bush or—through long clefts, scars or erosion—bright turquoise triangular views of the sea. The group was able to spread out. Dora and Philippa trotted away once more, pleased to have the slow descent over and done with. Jake hung back and felt the pressure of David's curious stare. Bond gave her a gentle smile then rode on ahead with Lewis trailing along behind.

  Jake looked after them, contemplating something which had been happening since yesterday but which she had only just recognized. She was no longer alone. She was part of a group which had Bond as its focus. The family, which had seemed at first to consist of David, Philippa and her children, with Jake clumsily attached like the tail pinned to a party donkey, had shifted and divided into those who knew about Bond and those who didn't. Adults on one side and children on the other. Children might believe, as Jake now believed, that Bond was a boy from outer space who was being pursued by enemies. Adults could not believe such a thing. If they did, the world would be changed too much for them to bear. And if they were forced to believe it they would then become interested, not in Bond himself, but in what he might know. How did he come to be here, and why? She herself was suddenly anxious to know the strange things that Bond must know—she was burning to be told what sort of world he belonged to and what his purpose was in her world.

  David, also hanging back, had fixed Jake with his glittering eye like the ancient mariner, not wanting to tell her a story, but to hear the one she had to tell. She tried not to look at him but he drew alongside anyway, Enchanter snorting at Cooney as if even the horses had secrets to exchange:

  "If you watch me," her father said, "you'll see that you don't have to hold the reins as if you were Hercules strangling snakes. Hold them like this." Jake looked sideways at his hands. "You can't ride," he said. "I watched when you nearly fell off, but over and above that—you just can't ride."

  Jake looked up defiantly. "No," she said. "Mum's horses were all sold and she didn't bother to get any more. They take a lot of looking after, horses."

  "In your letters..." David began.

  "I was telling lies," Jake broke in stiffly.

  "Why?"

  Jake sighed deeply. "Why?" David asked again, but still she would not answer. "Are you unhappy at home? Is something wrong with Pet or your grandparents?" David persisted, looking more and more dismayed, while Jake glanced from side to side out beyond the hills as if searching for a way to escape. Her face expressed the impossibility of discussing such great and complicated imperfections whilst sitting astride a horse.

  Just then the others appeared, trotting back to meet them, laughing, having obviously enjoyed their small excursion.

  "You sounded so happy in your letters," said David, perplexed. "All the riding..." he drifted off. "Oh Jacqueline," he said and shook his head.

  "Mum reads my letters," said Jake, dropping her gaze to the reins lying limply in her hands. "She likes me to sound happy. I wanted you to think I was happy. I am sort of happy most of the time." She glanced fleetingly up at David as if she was frightened of his reaction to what she was telling him. "Nothing's ever perfect, is it?"

  "Jake?" called Dora across the clearing. "We're going to stop soon and have a rest," she said, her voice loaded with hidden meaning.

  "All right, off you go!" David said to Jake. "I'll catch up with you later. How is Pet, by the way?" he said suddenly, which wasn't quite fair. He was looking at Jake with his sad-monkey expression, as if she was the cause of his unhappiness—but after all, she thought, he was the one who had told her to go and live in a land of wonderful horses and had then gone off and got married without even asking her to the wedding.

  "She likes to be looked after," she said cautiously, and David sighed.

  "She always has," he said and turned away. By now the others had gathered around them, talking and patting their horses.

  "Is there any reason why we shouldn't take a break now?" asked David. "Don't we usually stop about here?"

  "We certainly do. There's a rail just up ahead where we can tether the horses," said Philippa.

  They rode on in silence, for they each had something to worry about. David worried about Jake and Philippa directed an occasional, puzzled glance at the back of Lewis's head, and they were all still ringing a little with the 'mild lightning'. Now her secret was out, Jake felt a bit better about her lack of riding skill and was determined to improve. She tried to make Cooney catch up with the others without actually trotting again. However her efforts to encourage him to go a little faster were so timid and uncertain that he ignored them contemptuously, even insisting on putting his head down every now and then
to snatch at some grass.

  "How come you can ride?" she hissed at Bond. "Do you ride in your... where you come from?"

  "I have a way with animals," he said. "I can control them... but we're not supposed to, and we must never, never control people. Not that I can do people. I'm only a student."

  "Even now if you're being followed?" asked Jake. "Couldn't you control the ones that are after you?"

  "I may be being followed but I can't feel anyone close and neither can—" he broke off and laid his hand on his transistor. "The world's quite empty."

  Dora came up beside them. "Bond says he's being followed," Jake told her. Dora gazed around. The line of the hills against the sky was entirely empty. Nothing moved on the track behind them.

  "There's nobody there," she said. "They couldn't be ahead of us."

  "I don't know what to do," Bond said. He was talking aloud, but not to Dora or Jake.

  "We'll look after you," Dora promised him.

  They rode out along a flattened ridge which fell away on either side into deep bush. The sound of water came faintly to their ears, for somewhere below them hidden among the trees was a stream that must, by the sound of it, be flowing over stones.

  "Webster's Bush," announced Philippa. "There are the tethering rails. We'll take a break here."

  "It does look haunted," Dora said, staring uneasily down the slope at the dense, green, uneven canopy of trees below them. They dismounted and Philippa went from one to the other checking that they put the stirrups up correctly.

  Lewis let Philippa do the task for him. "You know how to do this, Lewis!" she said. "Come on—shake out of it!"

  "I don't remember," said Lewis in a composed, but slightly childish voice.

  "You do!" Philippa exclaimed. "You must. What's wrong with you today?"

  "I'm fine," he replied. "Really I am. It isn't my fault if I forget. It's eagle weather. I'm looking with my eagle eyes and my eagle claws can't do up stirrups."

  "Aaah, I see," Philippa looked relieved. "Dream on, you old eagle you!"

  As soon as they stopped talking they were engulfed in a sunny silence, not hostile, but not exactly welcoming either. It was as if the hills did not mind them being there but would not mind if they went away. Jake thought it was very restful. Lewis, having been firmly summoned by Philippa, became quite interested in the tea, orange juice and biscuits that were being offered and forgot all about Bond for a few minutes. Dora jiggled from one foot to the other watching the tea being poured. She really preferred orange juice, but on the other hand, tea would be warm and comforting. She felt her stomach glow a little with anticipation.

  "Have some tea, Bond," she called as she turned around, looked once, looked again, and then immediately felt her stomach grow cold once more. There was only one person behind her... Jake, forlorn without her cowboy hat prop. Dora moved away from her chattering parents to Jake's side. "Bond's gone," she muttered. "I just turned around and he wasn't there anymore."

  Jake looked over her shoulder. She had imagined Bond would be standing with Lewis and Dora drinking some orange juice and being almost normal—but it was true, he was gone. She could see the horses tied to their rail, she could see the slope beyond rising up to touch a pale blue sky, but Dora was right. There was no Bond.

  "He might have gone off for a moment to... you know!" suggested Jake. Dora was horrified. Somehow she could never bring herself to believe that beautiful people might even actually need to go to the lavatory.

  "Do you think so?" she asked Jake trustingly. She had come to realize that because someone looked like the Lone Ranger it didn't mean they couldn't think carefully.

  "We'll wait a minute, just in case," advised Jake, "but I don't really think that's it. I think it might have something to do with the electric snakes."

  "The mild lightning," Dora corrected her, not relishing the thought of electric snakes. "Suppose he has gone? What will we do?"

  Jake did not answer at once. She did not know. She found herself thinking that Bond had become so strange and such a responsibility that there was a sort of temptation to let him simply vanish from their lives. But that was being cowardly again. She simply shrugged and said, "Perhaps Lewis has seen him."

  Philippa sipped her hot tea and glanced over at the two girls. "They seem to be getting on just fine," she said. David nodded hopefully. As parents they were so involved with their own various family difficulties that they did not notice that Bond was missing.

  Thirteen - Up the Creek

  "He's gone," Jake said. "Bond's gone."

  "Gone?" repeated Lewis looking very distressed. "Which way?"

  "He said he was being followed," said Dora, "but there's no-one else around."

  "At least he hasn't taken his horse," commented Jake. "Perhaps if he really wants to go, we should let. . ." She trailed off under Dora's reproachful stare.

  Webster's Bush, lapping like the tide below them, had swallowed up Bond. He must have simply got off his horse and walked off without the slightest hesitation into the shadows. Now there was only the bush looking back at them, dense and silent, not giving away any secrets. The clearing spread out behind them to the lip of the valley of ruined trees and made way for the sky. On either side of them it fell away into Webster's Valley.

  "He might be playing a joke," said Jake doubtfully, not believing it for a second. Bond didn't possess that sort of playfulness, and besides, he just didn't understand how impossible it was to walk away into thin air. Soon the time would come for them to ride on. There would be an empty horse and questions asked. There would be a search, confusion, and eventually tempers would be frayed. If he was still not found, perhaps a bigger search would be organized—helicopters, and policemen with dogs. There was no way that David and Philippa would just ride back home not bothering about where he had gone, leaving Bond forgotten and lost to the world.

  "I think he's gone down to the creek," said Dora decisively. "In the bush the creek would act as a sort of road. He'd go down till he reached the creek and then walk along it."

  Jake agreed that this was quite probable but just where had he gone into the bush? She looked from one side to the other, biting her thumbnail.

  "We have to look for him," hissed Lewis. "We must find him." He sounded extremely upset, almost hysterical, as if he was the one who would be blamed and punished for Bond's disappearance.

  Though he kept his voice low, his anxiety was felt by Philippa who looked over at them and called, "Is everything O.K., kids?"

  "Yeah—we're just going to explore the bush for a little while," said Dora quickly.

  "Don't go too far," said David, good-humouredly. "We'll have to move on shortly."

  Jake turned to the other two. "Let's try here," muttered Jake. "If I was going into the bush, I'd go down here."

  Following the sound of the creek they entered a strange, drifting, cobwebby world, but the cobwebs were actually lichen. The native beech and fuchsia were trimmed with a torn, grey-green lace so delicate that its edges appeared to vanish smokily into the air. Lichen smudged the firm edges of trunk and bough.

  "They're pleased we're being friendly," observed Dora.

  "Who are?" asked Jake.

  "Our parents. They were so busy watching how we were getting along, they didn't even notice Bond wasn't there!"

  "They would've soon enough," said Jake grimly.

  The three children slid down over banks heavy with fallen leaves, ferns and grasses. Branches extended like hands to touch them as they struggled by. There was no proper track, but the soft sound of the running stream was their guide.

  "This is hopeless," said Jake, looking into the forest which surrounded them. "Even if we were on the right track we could still easily miss him."

  "But we've got to try!" Lewis said, bouncing with anxiety. "I don't want Bond lost!"

  "I don't want him somewhere on his own where his enemies can get at him," added Dora.

  "We mightn't make much difference in that case," snorted
Jake, though she knew that they were so tied to Bond that they had to find him. She could imagine the police asking her: How long did you say you'd known this boy? Where did you meet him? She could visualize the headlines in the newspapers and imagine the endless questioning, even as she remembered Bond's mind moving through hers like a tree of fire.

  They slid down yet another bank. Dora landed on her feet,then stood motionless. "Listen!"she said. They each stopped and listened. There was a settling sound as the bush through which they had just scrambled quietened down again. But beyond that was a silence so huge that all the sounds they could hear—the voices of birds and of the stream below—accentuated it. In the city there was always a lot of noise; cars crossing and recrossing via roads and motorways, motorbikes leaping away as the lights turned green, dogs barking and radios blaring out music, while in the air planes droned like distant insects, and beyond all the noises which had names was another sound—a constant breathing made up of a thousand unnamed sounds which somehow ran together into a daylight hum, reassuring everyone that the city was still alive and working. But here, behind the bird call and the rustle of the leaves and the liquid voice of the creek below them, there was nothing but a crouching silence into which they were crashing in their search for Bond.