Joni stopped at Uncle John’s grave on the way to the cottage, laying snowdrops on the barely discernible mound, their green stems set in sharp relief by the white carpet beneath.
“We love you,” she said. She was echoing the words they had decided on for John’s funeral. The only words they felt were necessary, or appropriate. They would never forget him, never stop talking about him. And their love for him continued, although he had gone. When most needed, language was often revealed to be a profoundly flawed way of communicating life’s most important experiences. Words, laid bare before the pitiless reality of death and grief, withered or died like snowflakes in an oven. But even a community bonded by silence needed to mark the moment they lost one of their own. In the end, they had simply used as few words as possible. In the final reckoning, the three words chosen were the most honest possible. What else was necessary?
“We love you,” Joni repeated, then turned toward the bitter north wind, and walked slowly away.
There was smoke rising from the chimney of the crofter’s cottage, and, as she stamped the snow from her boots on the stone step, Seb opened the door to reveal a well-established fire roaring in the grate.
“You know it shouldn’t even be called a crofter’s cottage?” said Joni, as she took off an overcoat, hat, scarf, mittens and gloves, followed by a fleece and a sweater. Seb smiled as he watched the pile of discarded clothing grow.
“Really?” he said. “Why’s that?”
“We’re not in Scotland,” said Joni, gratefully accepting a large mug of hot chocolate that had just spontaneously grown out of Seb’s fingers.
“And you have to be Scottish to own a croft?”
“Yes. It’s their word. And you know how much they love their language.”
“What should we call it, then?”
“A smallholding.” Joni sipped at the rich, sweet liquid. “Hardly romantic, is it?”
“Hardly,” agreed Seb. “I can see why you call it a crofter’s cottage.”
“We don’t call it that because we prefer it, it’s because of George.”
“Who?”
“George McInnery. He built it. Long before the Order set up shop here. Kate told me about him. When he died, nearly two hundred years ago, the cottage was the only building on the island. And George was a proud Scot. So when he’d gone, the name stayed.”
Joni curled her legs under her on the slightly incongruous, but wonderfully comfortable, wing-backed chair that Seb provided whenever she visited. She watched her father pick up a poker and prod at a piece of wood, turning it so that the flames rose higher. She liked the fact that he did this, despite the fact that he needed no external heat himself and could have kept her body temperature equally comfortable with just a thought. It felt more normal this way.
“And might your little story about George have a moral for me?” asked Seb as he sat on a plain wooden chair opposite Joni.
“Well,” she said, “maybe. He died at eighty-seven, by which time he’d lived outside of Scotland for more than fifty years. But, to him, this would always be a croft. He was a Scot. His identity came with him to Innisfarne.”
Seb looked at her, smiling. She still hadn’t got used to that smile. It was the smile of a man who had seen wonders beyond comprehension, but counted them as nothing compared to the fact that he had a daughter and he could see her, now, right in front of him.
It was taking time to bring her dad back. He had physically returned, so he told them, months back, but had not known how he should let Mee know he was back. He’d even wondered—in his darker moments—if he should let her know. His own mental state had been confused, his sense of time warped. Finally, he decided to come to the island, but keep his distance. Get the lay of her land. She might, he had pointed out, have been in a relationship. She had every right.
“And don’t you forget it,” Mee had said. “Was that what the disguise was all about? The full Ten Commandments look?”
“I was thinking more along the lines of Odysseus coming home at the end of The Odyssey. But Cecil B. DeMille never made that into a movie. Not that I remember, anyhow.”
“So Charlton Heston’s hairy face had to do, then?”
Mee had insisted Seb return to a more recognizable form, so it was quite a different man who sat across from Joni now. Given that he could appear in any guise he chose, Joni could only assume the lines around his eyes and mouth were an attempt to prevent Mum feeling like she was the only one who had aged. But Dad’s eyes were the same eyes she’d seen in photographs. His smile was the same, too. When he laughed, which was still too rarely, Joni could never resist joining in, because his laugh was almost identical to hers.
She had a father. Here. Now. And yet, in some ways, Joni felt like the parent as she talked and talked, teaching Dad what it was to be human, bringing him back, as he put it, to his true self. She told him about her life, her childhood, her dreams. About learning to swim in the shallows of Innisfarne. The time she had tried to eat a starfish. The herbs she’d learnt to grow in the sheltered garden behind the workshop. How McGee had eaten every herb she’d planted until Stuart had brought an old glass house across from the mainland, much to the goat’s disgust. About the fall from the tree, that did and didn’t happen. About Odd. Both Odds. The one from the writing course and the one who had visited for Christmas and whom she was going to visit next month. About her ability, the way she could reset.
Seb had been very curious about the resetting. Joni had been conceived when—as far as he could know—Seb’s body was still a mixture of nanotechnology and biology. That had changed shortly afterwards. He was sure no natural reproduction would be possible now. So Joni’s abilities, and her vulnerabilities, were of great interest to him. Particularly as Seb himself couldn’t do what Joni could. He couldn’t reset.
“I don’t know what it means,” he’d said. “I have the feeling it’s unprecedented.” Then he’d gone silent for a very long time and seemed reluctant to be drawn back to the subject.
Eventually, they’d spoken about Joni’s dream. Seb had confirmed it was real, that she had—somehow—found him across an unimaginable distance. He hadn’t known who she was, but he’d suddenly remembered who he was.
Both Mum and Dad had admitted they weren’t quite ready to live under the same roof. Yet. This had been the hardest thing for Joni to take after Seb’s return, but she could see how important it was to both of her parents to tread carefully as they negotiated the path leading back to a normal relationship. They loved each other. Time would do the rest. The fact that Joni wanted nothing more than to have the both of them together all the time so she could throw her arms around them whenever she felt the need was, she knew, a little selfish. Understandable, yes, but selfish all the same.
The fire was dying and, when she looked at Dad, he seemed lost, staring into the glowing embers, not really seeing them. She was gradually becoming attuned to his moods, to those scary moments when he barely seemed present at all, which were slowly becoming less frequent.
He stood and walked over to the only piece of furniture in the room - an old oak chest, the wood cracked and warped with age. He opened it and took something out, cradling it carefully in his hands. Whatever it was, it was wrapped in a piece of soft gray cloth. He put it in Joni’s lap.
“Be very, very careful,” he said. Joni tensed slightly. It seemed to weigh nothing at all - she could swear the only weight she felt was that of the cloth.
Seb squatted in front of her chair.
“You’ve heard me describe what I am as a World Walker.”
He fell silent again.
“Yes,” Joni said, prompting him.
“The real word—or the closest a human voice can get to saying it—is T’hn’uuth. At least, that’s what the Gyeuk call us.”
Silence again. Joni’s eyes widened as she considered what he had just said.
‘Us?’ Dad and the alien he called Billy Joe…or are there are more of them? And what was that other
word?
“The who?”
“The Gyeuk.”
Seb nodded at the cloth in her lap. “Take a look,” he said.
Joni carefully sat a little more upright. She lifted one corner of the cloth, then another, pulling the material aside. What was revealed was stranger than she’d imagined.
It was same shape as a goose egg, but slightly bigger. It was hard to look at. Not because it was ugly, or painfully bright. Quite the reverse. Joni found it beautiful and slightly hypnotic. But her gaze seemed to slide away whenever she tried to look directly at it. It was dark in color. At first, Joni thought it was black, then she changed her mind, thinking it was more like a midnight blue. Looking again, she decided black was closer, after all. It was solid, yet, somehow, gave the illusion of being gaseous, or liquid, possibly depending on how you saw it. Joni couldn’t be sure. What she was sure of was the effect it had on her mind. She felt like she was in the presence of a miracle, some kind of holy object. She felt a sense of awe, an impression of Mystery. A feeling of vastness, emptiness, yet somehow fullness. Static, yet evolving. Such artifice in its design…or was it alive?
Joni suddenly felt afraid, adrift, like she was losing sight of herself. Seb leaned over and gently rewrapped the object, returning it to the chest. Her fear faded, the sense of awe disappeared, and within seconds she was beginning to wonder if she had imagined the feelings she’d experienced.
“What is it?” she asked, her voice only shaking slightly.
Seb remained standing, his smile gone.
“It’s a Gyeuk Egg,” he said. He didn’t elaborate.
“Oh,” said Joni, wondering what the correct response might be. “What does it do?”
Her father took a few deep breaths. Joni was glad to see him do it. She knew he didn’t have to breathe, but he said it helped him remember who he was, where he came from. It certainly allowed those around him to relax a bit more.
“For one thing, it helps explain where I was for the last seventeen years,” he said. “And it may explain how such a thing as a T’hn’uuth is possible. And,” he said, taking her hand and finally smiling again, “it might just explain everything about reality.”
“Everything?” said Joni.
“Everything,” said Seb. “Perhaps you should go fetch your mother. I think she’ll want to hear this.”
THE END
Author’s Note
Join my (very occasional) mailing list, and I’ll send you the unpublished prologue for The World Walker: http://eepurl.com/bQ_zJ9
Email me with encouragement, accusations of heresy or offers of single malt whisky at [email protected].
A confession
Twelve months ago, I was finishing my first novel - The World Walker. Publishing on Amazon was a leap in the dark. I really had no idea what to expect. I liked the book. My friend Neal liked the book. Hardly the basis for a new career. And yet, the sensation of sitting down at my desk and finding this alternative existence springing into being quickly became addictive.
Six weeks later, a slow but steady build up of sales and—best of all—positive reviews from people I’d never met, and I had the confidence to start on my second book, The Unmaking Engine. I’d allowed my imagination to bring in some bigger ideas in book two, and, as I hit the publish button, I got scared. What if no one liked the new ideas? I knew I couldn’t just write The World Walker, Part Two, as a straightforward continuation because these new ideas wouldn’t leave me alone. Another leap in the dark…
Now The Unmaking Engine has been out there for nearly four months, and it’s been really well received. This time, I didn’t wait. I got back to writing a week after publication.
Well, that’s not quite true…
What actually happened is that I spent six weeks making notes about book three, intending that this would bring the series to a close. The notes outlined two big ideas, and my plan was to knit them together into one big book. Only, I just couldn’t make it work. I loved both stories, both of them needed to be told, but I couldn’t find a way to make it work in one novel. Finally, I took the decision to tell the two stories in two books.
Everything suddenly got easier.
“That’s what I told you to do four weeks ago,” said my wife. Wise woman. But I—the writer—had been too busy flouncing about in my dressing gown, unshaven, wild-eyed, clutching my fifth cup of coffee, to pay any attention.
Ten weeks later, I finished writing The Seventeenth Year.
The confession bit. I knew Seb wouldn’t make an appearance until the end of this book. It had to be that way. Joni’s story only makes sense without her dad being around. And that leads me nicely to my biggest worry: until I got an early copy of this book into the hands of some readers, I was scared shitless that people would hate it because of Seb’s absence. And I’m still nervous. My brother emailed that, in his opinion, The Seventeenth Year is the best book yet. I replied, You have gone some way to alleviating the blind panic, self-doubt, and sick feeling I seem to be doomed to suffer on the completion of each book.
Just so that we’re clear:
Book four is pretty much ALL Seb, and it dovetails with the end of The Seventeenth Year.
Back to Joni. After the weeks of confusion, I started telling her story and everything became clear. I lost myself in her world. She had lived a protected existence, far from the chaos of the cities, where—ever since Manna users came out of the shadows and the authorities cracked down on them—it was a dangerous place to be. Naturally, any daughter of Seb Varden was hardly going to be your average teenager. Good job, really, considering the amount of crap she was going to have to deal with in her seventeenth year.
I know I’m talking about them as if they’re real, but I’ve seen this from both sides now: as a reader and a writer. I’ve read books where the characters seemed so well-rounded, they lived on in my head during the time I wasn’t reading (we all have to work, sleep, eat and interact with other humans sometimes). I’ve found myself deliberately slowing the pace at which I read when the end of a novel is approaching because I don’t want to leave a particular cast of characters behind. Well, it’s even worse as a writer. These people are real.
As I write this, book four is underway, and I’m hoping to get it into your hands before summer 2017. Then I plan on delving into the notebook and writing something completely new. I have lots of ideas waiting to be developed further. How to choose?
I was itching to bring Sym into the story. Sym is far less powerful than Seb, but he is also unhampered by Seb’s strong moral center. In other words, he can have more fun. Sym is such a presence in this book, I found myself wondering what he’s been up to during the previous seventeen years. I even started wondering if I might tell his story in another book (or series of books) sometime. If you like the idea, let me know - leave a comment on my blog at https://ianwsainsbury.com/ or at Ian W. Sainsbury on Facebook. Or email me [email protected].
And so my first year as an author is coming to a close. I’m one of the lucky ones. So far, readers (that’s you) have wanted to read the stories that I write. Not only that - you’re leaving reviews, you’re spreading the word. You’re making it possible for me to keep writing. Thank you!
Let’s make a deal. Since I owe everything to my readers, I’ll keep writing as long as you keep reading.
Deal?
Ian W. Sainsbury
Norwich
February 9th, 2017
Also by Ian W. Sainsbury
The World Walker (The World Walker Series 1)
The Unmaking Engine (The World Walker Series 2)
The Unnamed Way (The World Walker Series 4)
Children Of The Deterrent (Halfhero Series 1)
The Unnamed Way
Copyright © 2017 by Ian W. Sainsbury
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permiss
ion from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover design by Hristo Kovatliev
For Mum (always reading)
and Dad (Bertrand Roy)
Previously in The World Walker series…
Join my (very occasional) mailing list, and I’ll send you the unpublished prologue for The World Walker: http://eepurl.com/bQ_zJ9
Previously…(contains spoilers for books one, two, and three)
Musician Seb Varden has been dragged into a world he never knew existed. Alien nanotechnology indistinguishable from magic has been used—consciously or not— by individuals and organizations throughout the history of our planet. The nanotechnology, accessed by visiting sites called Thin Places, is known as Manna. In The World Walker, Seb learns how to cope with the new powers he has been given by an alien benefactor and avoid those who wish to use him or see him dead, notably a very powerful Manna user known as Mason.
In The Unmaking Engine, now living anonymously with girlfriend Meera Patel in Mexico City, he is initially powerless to stop himself being summoned and questioned by the Rozzers, an alien race on their way to Earth to destroy their failed experiment—humanity—and try again. The Rozzers are scientists who carefully control the evolution of new species in the universe by seeding planets with Manna before introducing cellular matter with the potential to develop into intelligent life. Seb prevents them by reprogramming The Unmaking Engine. Instead of wiping out humanity, Seb’s intervention means the Engine rewires humanity’s DNA so that future generations will no longer be able to use Manna. The Rozzers are appeased, but his actions come at a huge personal cost for Seb: he has to allow his entire body and brain to evolve and become, fully, a World Walker (or T’hn’uuth.) In the process, he again fends off Mason, discovering that he is, in fact, his brother. After Seb removes the brain tumor that caused his personality to warp so thoroughly, Mason takes the name John and joins his brother and Mee on the small island of Innisfarne, off the east coast of Britain. What should be a time of relief and celebration turns sour as Seb becomes increasingly distant with Mee, finally disappearing from Innisfarne entirely, possibly against his will. Mee has just discovered she is pregnant.
The World Walker Series Box Set Page 95