The World Walker Series Box Set

by Ian W. Sainsbury

  She waved her hands to stop Seb interrupting.

  “You knew someone had called to you. But you didn’t know who that was. You had no idea. When you got back to the island, you took this cottage so you could get your shit together before coming to me. I get that. I’m amazed you can even feed yourself or take a dump without help after what you’ve been through. But listen, don’t you dare beat yourself up about what happened. You knew John was here, healthy and happy. You knew I was around because I took a pair of binoculars and spied on you. You gonna tell me you didn’t know I was watching you?”

  Seb smiled a little at the memory.

  “It was the first contact with you,” he said. “I could feel you out there, but I didn’t dare show you that I knew you were watching me. I wasn’t ready. But I was prepared to walk up and down that beach all day just as long as you were there.”

  Mee smiled too.

  “Just so you know, Sebby, you start agonizing over what you should, or could, have done when that evil murderous shitbag showed up, and we are going to fall out. You did everything you could, okay? Drop it.”

  Seb knew the sound of Mee making up her mind.

  Joni coughed.

  “Sorry. It’s just…well. You still didn’t say how you knew to come and save me.”

  “You’re right. You can thank Sym. I heard a plane flying low, and when I went to investigate, I saw a guy jump out into the sea, swim to shore and run toward the woods at about forty miles an hour. I followed him.”

  “Wow,” said Joni. “I would thank him again, but it’ll have to wait until I get onto the mainland. Sym is kind of an uncle too, you know? An uncle without a body who started life as a few lines of alien nanotechnology code. This is some weird family.”

  No one was willing to argue with that conclusion.

  Mee took charge.

  “Right. In summary, a whole lot of shite has happened which will probably take years to process fully. But we are here, we love each other, and we have a life together. Agreed?”

  Neither Seb nor Joni disagreed.

  “Fine. More tea, then.”

  Seb was beginning to wonder if the British approach to dealing with adversity, or a profound shock, by consuming tea, might have something to recommend it after all. On the face of it, pouring boiling water into a mug containing dried leaves from bushes grown on Indian hillsides, seemed an odd approach to ameliorating the effects of trauma. Mee’s ritual of tea making had little in common with the almost balletic dignity of the Japanese ceremony, but it followed a certain pattern, including the precise amount of time a teabag should be left in the cup, and the opaque logic of leaving the teabag to “rest” on the side of the sink for a few minutes before disposing of it in the trash. And there was no denying the efficacy of the ritual. Seb was sure that, given the choice between giving up marijuana or English breakfast tea, Mee would sacrifice the dope.

  While Mee began the precise dunking technique, Seb sat next to Joni.

  “What did you think happened that night? When I was inside the Egg. When I saw you.”

  Joni leaned against his shoulder. “I was hoping you might be able to answer that one.”

  Seb spread his hands. “Honey, I have no idea. Even Fypp thought it was impossible.”

  Joni smiled sadly. “Uncle John used to call me honey,” she said.

  “Wait.” Mee had flung herself onto the sofa. “You’ve seen Fypp since? I mean, I thought you came home when you walked into the fire.”

  “I did. Well, I ended up on the mainland first.”

  “But Fypp came here? To Earth?”

  “Yeah. She followed me. She was on the beach a few minutes after I woke up there. I was just getting to that part.”

  Mee wasn’t quite ready to drop it. “And she’s gone now? She’s sodded off back to Planet Walky and she’s going to leave us alone, right?”

  Seb hesitated.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” said Mee. “Where is she? I’ve had enough of this. I’ll kick her bony Buddhist arse back to where-the-fuck-ever she crawled out from.”

  It was almost worth making Mee angry to see her like this. Seb had forgotten how anger could light her up, especially when she was angry on behalf of others. It was a pretty wonderful sight.

  “She wants the Egg. I told her she could have it when I had talked to you, told you where I’d been. I needed you to see it, Mee.”

  “Well, great, I’ve seen it. Now she can piss off.”

  Seb stood up.

  “She’s at the cottage. She wants me to observe what’s happened in the Egg since I left. Since Cley died.”

  Mee went to the door and took a big winter coat from the back of it. She lifted another coat and tossed it to Joni.

  “Right, then. I’m not leaving you alone with that weirdo for a second. We’re all going. She can show the three of us what’s in the Egg.”

  37

  Bamburgh Beach - Three Months Earlier

  Sergeant Toby Lark was the only human witness to Seb Varden's return to earth. A pair of frolicking seals in the waves just off Bamburgh beach were the first to detect the sudden, strange change in the atmosphere, and they wisely decided to take their games a mile further south.

  It started with the sky. Sergeant Lark was an early riser. Always had been. At least twice a week, somebody, convinced they were the first to come up with an original piece of wit, would comment on his morning habits, referring to the phrase "you're up with the lark, then.” He had long since given up responding to such remarks, finding that a curt nod of the head generally discouraged any further inane conversation. Sergeant Lark was most definitely not what is commonly referred to as a people person.

  A long time insomniac, this was Sergeant Lark’s favorite part of the day, or night; he had never really decided which part of the solar cycle this half-lit scenario belonged to. Not that he cared much, so long as it kept its reliably unpopulated properties. It wasn't just the lack of people, it was the blurred outlines, the lack of definition of otherwise familiar landmarks, the hushed, almost reverential feel to buildings, trees and paths that would be drab, uninspiring and depressingly concrete once daylight took over.

  Still, there was always a backdrop of birdsong as he walked east, the castle at his back, toward the hiss of the North Sea. That was what struck him first that morning. The relative quiet that he enjoyed so much on his pre-dawn walks had suddenly turned to absolute silence. He stopped for a moment and listened. Over the course of the previous ten seconds or so, the nightingales, blackbirds, starlings, song thrushes, even the robins, dunnocks, and sparrows had all stopped singing. The resulting vacuum was unnerving. It was as if nature was listening for something —something that was about to happen. Sergeant Lark did not like the feeling of being unnerved. He was a solid, dependable man. He enjoyed fishing, doing the Times crossword, and listening to the musical stylings of the James Last Orchestra. He attended church on Sunday and slept in a pew at the back throughout every sermon. He thought a website was where one might find a spider. He was just over a year away from retirement and was looking forward to the uninterrupted tedium that giving up work would bring.

  He stopped and listened along with the birds. He stood quietly for a minute or two. Reassured by the distant roar of the sea, he rolled himself a cigarette, lit up, and continued on his way.

  The sky, when he noticed it, didn't worry him unduly at first. Sergeant Lark was not a particularly imaginative man, and a sky that rapidly turned from blue-gray to absolute blackness, with flashes and sparks and some kind of roiling tornado in its center provoked no more than a raised eyebrow and a muttered, “bloody weather.”

  The unusual meteorological phenomena did attract his eye, though, and he couldn't help but keep glancing up at it as he neared the beach. Then, as an unnaturally deep sound caused the ground to tremble slightly and the fillings in his teeth to buzz uncomfortably, he found he was unable to look away.

  The cigarette in his mouth dangled from his lower li
p as he gaped upward, burning a hole in his beard that took another six months to grow back fully. Sergeant Lark didn't notice it in the slightest. All his attention was focused on the figure which had just fallen from the sky.

  It was undoubtedly human. Sergeant Lark had once watched a suicide jump from a building and knew what a falling body looked like. This was different. Whereas the jumper had changed his mind a second after committing to his fatal leap, his arms flailing around and a thin scream reaching every onlooker, this body was slack, unconscious. There was no movement at all other than the effect of air currents plucking at the unresisting limbs.

  The sky suddenly cleared, returning to its more usual pre-dawn gray, seconds before the falling body hit the beach, with a loud, wet smack. Sergeant Lark turned away just before the moment of impact, remembering the awful sound and sight of the suicide victim as the frailty of skin muscle and bone met the unyielding solidity of set concrete. Hard-packed sand was unlikely to be more forgiving, especially considering the half mile he had watched the body fall.

  Lark finally became aware of the lit cigarette burning his beard, swore and flipped it away. He started walking toward the distant crater in the sand, knowing it was his responsibility to report the incident and save some unsuspecting dog walker the horror of happening across the grim scene.

  He took a few preparatory deep breaths. No point in rushing anything. Whatever was left of the body on the sand, it certainly wouldn’t be going anywhere in the next few minutes. Police training had emphasized the importance of not making assumptions, but Lark felt fairly confident about this one. Overconfident, as it turned out.

  The next few minutes were certainly the most unexpectedly bizarre of the sergeant’s life, even allowing for the Christmas party incident when Constable Molly Glenpike had abruptly admitted to harboring unprofessional feelings toward him, and had made certain lewd remarks about his truncheon. He had never been good with the ladies, but occasionally wondered if he had missed somewhat of an opportunity that night. Still, spilled milk and all that.

  Briefly, Lark wondered if this memory of Constable Glenpike was merely a way of his brain avoiding the facts that had just begun to unfold in front of him.

  If he’d had a cell phone on his person, he could have notified the County Constabulary immediately. Lark eschewed modern technology, however. He had to wear a radio while on duty, he didn’t see why he would want to make himself equally accessible to everyone during his leisure time.

  Even if he had been in possession of a mobile communication device, he wasn’t entirely sure what form his verbal report might have taken.

  I was proceeding in an easterly direction when a single storm cloud appeared, from which a falling body emerged. It hit the beach at terminal velocity, producing a sizable crater. Just as I decided to approach the scene, the corpse began to behave in a suspicious manner. Rather than, as is customary in a fall from thousands of feet, breaking apart at the moment of impact and spreading itself outwards in a puddle of liquefied organs, it took the unexpected action of standing up, looking around, and spitting out mouthfuls of sand. The body appeared to be that of a man in his thirties, wearing a pale T-shirt, blue denim legwear, and training shoes. He had a rucksack about his person, which he opened once, looking inside.

  As I was about to approach, a second figure appeared on the beach, seeming to walk out of the air about a foot above the sand, and step down onto it. I could not have been mistaken about the impossible way in which she appeared, as I was looking at the male at that point, and she appeared approximately three feet to his left. She was a female child aged between seven and nine. She had a shaven head and was wearing orange and red robes.

  I decided to remain where I was and observe. It was possible that I was witnessing some sort of criminal meeting. Drug smuggling is not unknown on this stretch of the coast, although using people who fall out the sky and magical children would represent quite a departure for the criminal gangs, who generally employ adults in boats for their nefarious activities.

  The female child spoke to the adult male for a few minutes, after which the male took a step toward the sea and vanished. The child sat on the beach for another few minutes, making sandcastles. Then she stood up, stretched and also vanished.

  Lark was a stickler for doing things by the book, but he could feel the first seeds of doubt enter his mind as he walked toward the spot from which the two individuals had disappeared. When he got close enough, the sun had lent enough light to the scene to allow him to see clearly the results of the child’s construction attempts.

  They weren’t sandcastles. It was just one, big sandcastle.

  He was looking at a perfect scale model of Bamburgh castle, down to the details of the cannons facing the sea. As he bent down to see more closely, Lark could make out tiny figures walking the battlements. There was even someone licking a minuscule ice-cream. Three birds—pigeons by the look of them—were flying across the castle toward the café. Lark leaned in still further. The pigeons were perfect in every detail, undoubtedly made of sand. They were hanging, unsupported, in mid-air.

  Sergeant Lark took off his shoes and socks and sat down, scrunching the tide-wet sand between dry, talcum-powdered toes. If he made a report, there would be an investigation. No evidence other than the crater and the sandcastle was left on the beach, and the tide would take care of that before anyone else arrived. Someone would be sure to leak any report he made, and then he would be a laughing stock. They might even force him to retire early, thereby reducing his pension. The tax-free lump sum he was due to receive would be smaller, meaning he would have to give up his dream of a bungalow nearer the allotment, where he could do the crossword every morning among his broad beans, chard, potatoes, and herbs.

  He took a quick look around him, then—satisfied that he was still alone—carefully kicked over every trace of the impossibly elaborate sandcastle. After brushing the sand from his feet, he put his socks and shoes back on and turned his back on the beach.

  No need for a report.

  Seb opened his eyes. There was no light at all. He felt pressure around his face and an oddly familiar taste in his mouth. He sniffed experimentally. No air. His nostrils were completely blocked. Unsure which way was up, or even if there was any gravity at all, he tried moving his limbs. Everything seemed to be functioning normally. A light breeze lifted the hair on the back of his head.

  His brain did the math. He was lying face down.

  Seb stood up and brought his hands to his face. He was covered in soil. No, not soil, sand. That was why it had tasted familiar. Every picnic Mee had ever taken him on involving a British beach had ended with food covered with sand. Or wasps and ants. Or all three. When, once, he had voiced his bewilderment at the idea of trying to consume food on a cold, windy day surrounded by trillions of tiny particles made up of dead fish, rocks, glass, and shit, she had passed him a gin bottle and said, “Drink up, you fussy Yank ponce. It’s traditional, innit.”

  He bent over and spat sand onto the beach and rubbed at his eyes, squinting at his surroundings. Then, as if remembering what he was, he closed his eyes again. All the sand on his body was instantly repelled from every square inch of his skin. His clothes returned to his default sneakers, jeans, and T-shirt. There was a backpack at his feet. He picked it up and looked inside, knowing before he did so what he would find there. It was the Gyeuk Egg. Sopharndi, Cochta, Laak, the Elders, the People, the Settlement, the meeting circle, the fire pit, the Parched Lands, the river, Canyon Plains, the entire planet with its three moons and its hot sun, its entire history and future, it was all here. In his backpack.

  He knew which planet he was on. At some semi-automated level in his consciousness, he was already picking up the chatter of the internet. For some reason, he took this moment to confirm something he had always suspected: someone, somewhere, is always watching Seinfeld. With enhanced vision, he scanned the pre-dawn darkness. He saw Sergeant Lark gaping at him, but his attention was captured
by the sight of Bamburgh Castle. Which meant…he turned and looked southeast, out to sea, quickly identifying the dark silhouette of Innisfarne.

  He felt Fypp arrive, his Manna alerting him to her presence just before the ancient child stepped out of nowhere onto the sand beside him. She stared up at him inquisitively for a moment.

  “How? How did you do that?”

  Even her arrival couldn’t detract from how alive he felt. He was Seb Varden again, and he wanted nothing other than to get back to Mee and find out what had woken him from his dream of another existence. Baiyaan’s fate had taken on a secondary importance for the moment. He would think about that once he had seen Mee. He grinned at the absurdity of prioritizing seeing a foul-mouthed, talented, pot-smoking, tough, beautiful East London singer over the fate of one of a handful of godlike aliens and the future of all intelligent species in the universe. It was fucked up, all right. He was definitely feeling more like himself.

  “Tell me. How?” Fypp had her hands on her hips and her voice sounded childishly petulant, but Seb’s Manna picked up a genuine puzzlement in her inquiry.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You were in the Gyeuk Egg. I looked in on you a couple of times.”

  “You what?”

  “How am I supposed to make up my mind otherwise? I couldn’t interfere, I wasn’t really there. Just like…” she searched for a helpful analogy and must have found one in Seb’s Manna. “Like television. You seemed to be doing fine.”

  “Fine? I had forgotten who I was. I was completely lost in there. I could have died, or gone insane like Bok warned me. I was lucky to get out at all. How did you find me here?”

  “Hmm.” Fypp rolled her eyes. “For the strong, silent type, Bok can be quite the chatterbox, can’t he?” She jabbed a finger into Seb’s midriff. “Never mind that. The body you left behind disintegrated, and the Egg vanished. This was the first place I tried, couldn’t think of anywhere else you might go. But I used the open route. You didn’t. How?”