Seb looked in the direction of the sound, and saw a male cradling a child, trying to soothe it. It was a small female, and Seb could see its arm had been broken during the earthquake. He walked toward the pair, and saw the male’s face freeze with confusion and fear as he got closer. Seb said nothing, but slowly squatted in front of them, keeping his movements slow and unthreatening.
When he reached toward the crying child, the male flinched and held her closer, producing a small scream as the broken bone moved. Seb held his outstretched hand still until the male relaxed a little, then very slowly placed his hand on the damaged limb. The crying ceased immediately and, a few seconds later, the child moved her arm back and forth with an amazed smile on her face. The male, and those around him, saw clearly what had happened, and Seb had no doubt that the story would spread quickly.
He stood and moved back to the center of the clearing, the fire now beginning to subside behind him.
Seb knew that he would be walking a tightrope from this moment on. He had to preserve his sense of who he was internally, but to lead these people, he couldn’t be Seb Varden. To bring them along with him, he had to be Cley. But a Cley the People had never imagined possible.
Sopharndi’s son took a few steps forward, his face calm, relaxed and peaceful despite the violence of the past few minutes. No one knew whether he had caused the earthquake, but no one was in any doubt that he had quelled it. A Blank who could speak, a Blank who could subdue Nature. Around the clearing, individuals remembered occasions when they had been dismissive, unkind, or even cruel to the youth who now stood before them. They felt fear wriggle into their guts, at the thought of how a being of such power might repay their thoughtless acts.
He smiled, then spoke, in a voice which carried easily, and yet seemed as intimate as a lover’s whisper.
“Since the Singer first came to Aleiteh, the People have waited for her to Sing again. Our bards sing the old songs, and we live by the laws inspired by them. Now, our long wait is over.”
They looked at Cley’s open expression, his eyes soft, his brow unfurrowed by anger, and they dared to hope that he might have forgotten, or even forgiven, their transgressions. All present knew everything had changed. They waited for his final words and—when they had heard them—they returned to their dwellings in shock and confusion, but also with hope and a sense of a larger purpose unfurling within, and around, them.
Cley’s words were these:
“The Last Song is begun. I am the Last Song.”
Chapter 24
Innisfarne
Seb looked warily at the expression on Mee’s face. She was sober. After her first couple of spliffs, Mee had decided Seb’s story was too fucked up to listen to stoned.
“How long had you been away for at this point?”
Seb moved over to the window and looked out into the snow. Great fat flakes were still slowly falling, giving the impression that the entire Keep was slowly rising into the sky, drifting upward to some far off land in the clouds.
He tried to answer, but his throat felt constricted. He remembered the moment he had discovered how long he had been away. For a second, he felt the same sense of a spiraling nothingness, a mental retreat from the truth.
Seb turned and looked at Mee and Joni. After traveling unimaginable distances, meeting other World Walkers who had evolved from a variety of alien species, and spending time on a simulated planet constructed by an artificially intelligent hive mind, it was this seemingly commonplace scene of domesticity that was threatening to undo him. The feelings swelling within him were so profound and deep-rooted that he could find no way to even begin to express them.
He raised shaking hands to his face, unsurprised to find tears on his cheeks again.
Mee got up and came to him, taking his hands in hers and looking into his eyes.
“Don’t answer that. I want to say something.”
Joni stirred behind her.
“Um, do you two need some privacy? Because I could, you know…?”
Mee continued to look into Seb’s eyes. Seb Varden, immortal and beyond the limitations of his species, felt utterly powerless when he looked at this woman. He tried to speak, but she put a finger on his lips.
“I’ve watched you the past few weeks. I’ve watched you with Joni and, even when you’ve been with me, there’s been a part of me holding back, still watching you.”
Seb knew better than to say a word.
“I guess, now that we’ve been apart for nearly two decades, you think it’s going to take a very long time for us to begin to rebuild some kind of relationship, right?”
Seb cautiously raised an eyebrow.
“Permission to nod,” said Mee. He nodded.
“Well, it’s a funny thing, because that’s exactly what I thought, too. But I’ve realized I was wrong.”
She turned to Joni. “And don’t you say a sodding word, Jones. I’m still your mother, which gives me a better record on infallibility than the pope. And when it comes to you, I’m always right.”
“Yes, Mum,” said Joni, beaming. This was a side of her mother she’d never seen.
Mee squeezed Seb’s hands before continuing.
“Oh, bollocking hell, I can’t find the words. I just thought if I let you carry on, tell the whole story, then I forgive you and we start to make a go of things again, it’ll always feel—maybe not to you, but to me—as if I had to weigh things up, decide if your reasons for not being here were good enough for me to accept. As if my wanting to be with you was about what you did, or didn’t, do, rather than who you are. And the thing is—”
She stopped and took a few quick breaths. Then she giggled. She followed that with a kind of growling sound while stamping her feet. Joni watched, transfixed. Seb knew better than to move an inch.
“Right. Seb. This is what I’m trying to say. I know you. Ever since I met you, I knew it was you I wanted to be with for the rest of my life. And listen, Sebby, not for one moment before then did I ever believe in that pile of fairytale toss about there being one special somebody. I always thought Prince Charming was a poncey twat. I was fully prepared to go through life meeting a reasonable number of special someones and never getting too serious about any of them. At the very least, it would keep the sex fresh.”
“Mum!” protested Joni, but Mee carried on as if she wasn’t there.
“But I’m too old to pretend now. So know this, Sebastian Varden. As of right now, we are together. And when I say together, I mean in the sense of forsaking all others and ’til death do us part together, okay? Although we might have to have a little talk about exactly what that means in your case, but never mind. What I’m saying is, when Kate gets back from the mainland, you and I are going to go stand in that meditation hall, she can say a few words of our choosing, and that’ll be that.”
Seb was still looking into her eyes. Joni got up from her chair and stood beside them.
“Did that really just happen?” she said. “Did you just propose?”
Mee didn’t look away.
“In a very clumsy way, yeah, I guess I did. But it’s not quite a done deal yet. How about it, Seb? Marry me?”
Seb’s smile appeared first, then he went to speak, but Mee placed her finger on his lips again.
“Permission to nod,” she said.
Seb nodded.
The subsequent kiss was—possibly—not the most romantic moment in all of recorded history, but Joni suspected it would easily make the top five. She pretended to find something interesting to look at in the fireplace until they finally broke apart. Then they all hugged for a while, and Joni briefly wondered why—in a species so utterly dependent on language—so many of the most precious moments were beyond the reach of words. If she was going to be a writer, she guessed she was going to have to try harder.
“Okay,” she said, when they finally sat down, “just give me a second.”
She looked at her mum and dad.
Seb looked at her quizzically.
“You going to…reset?”
“Yup. Well, I’m going to create a reset point. I might want to come back and see the expressions on your faces as they are right now one more time at least.”
She looked at them for a few more seconds.
“Here goes,” she said, and—
Unchapter 25
—smiled broadly at the expression on their faces. They looked exactly like she felt whenever someone asked her to pose for a photograph. Awkward.
“And…relax. That’s one for the family album.”
Mee broke the slightly charged atmosphere by farting, then blaming the dog.
“We don’t have a dog, Mum.”
“Who’d have guessed we would have produced such a pedantic child, eh?”
Seb laughed. “It’s okay for me,” he said. “I don’t have to smell your farts unless I choose to.”
Mee looked at him in mock-amazement.
“You mean you might choose to smell my farts? Now, if that isn’t true love, what is?”
Seb hadn’t been aware of the huge weight he’d been carrying around until the moment Mee had removed it. He looked at his lover and his daughter with fresh eyes, completely believing, for the first time, that his future with them was real, secure. Well, as secure as anything could be in a world he had come to know as far more mysterious than he’d ever imagined. He could live with that.
“You wanted to know how long,” he began. “How long I’d been away by the time I entered the Gyeuk Egg.”
“Can we call it something else?” Mee pushed him down into his chair and sat on his lap. Joni rolled her eyes in mock horror.
“What?”
“It’s just that you sound like you’re clearing your throat every time you say it. I keep wanting to get you a glass of water.”
Unsurprised that Mee thought this important enough to address, Seb considered her request.
“Um…”
“Sopharndi’s World?” suggested Joni.
“Sounds like a philosophy book,” said Mee. “How about Eggville?”
Seb frowned. “Not quite sure it effectively captures the fact that it contains an entire ecosystem, intelligent life, and a solar system.”
Mee nodded. “I see your point. Humpty Dumptyland?”
Joni spat out a mouthful of coffee.
Seb gave Mee a look. “I’ll just call it the Egg. Okay?”
Mee bit his nose playfully. “Wow. The Egg. What an imagination. So, come on. How long were you in this Egg of yours?”
Seb sighed. “This is going to be one of those answers you won’t like.”
Mee jabbed him in the ribs. “Hey, Walkyboy, I just proposed to you after waiting seventeen years without a postcard, a phone call, a letter. Not even a text.”
“No signal on Innisfarne,” said Joni, smiling.
“Funny. What I’m trying to tell your father is that I got past the stage where he could piss me off more than I already was about a decade-and-a-half ago. Spill, Sebby.”
First Walkyboy, now Sebby. He had definitely been forgiven.
“I think I was probably inside the Egg for about four months subjectively. Outside the Egg, seconds, minutes - possibly no time at all. Fypp says it’s possible to observe any point in the timeline of the simulation. It was only impossible to do that while I was inside.”
Mee nodded a few times. “Uh-huh,” she said, “yep, right, mmm, got it, okay.”
She stopped talking and looked over at Joni. “Well, I haven’t got a fucking clue what he’s talking about. What about you? You reset the multiverse in your spare time. Any of this sinking in?”
Joni shook her head. “Maybe homeschooling was a mistake after all, Mum.”
Seb smiled at that. “You’re in good company. I don’t understand it either, I just know I wasn’t in the Egg for long.”
“So,” prompted Mee, “the seventeen years..?”
Seb closed his eyes briefly, remembering the moment he had discovered how long he had been away. At the time, he had wondered if he was even mentally equipped to handle the information, and his sanity had teetered on a knife’s edge.
“I didn’t find out about that until I washed up on the beach near Bamburgh.”
Mee held up a hand. “No. You’re better off telling this in order. I’m having enough trouble keeping up as it is. Tell us what happened in Humpty Dumpty—in the Egg, first.”
Seb picked up his knapsack. He knelt in front of the open fire, where a sheepskin rug was laid. Carefully, he took the Gyeuk Egg and placed it on the rug. It was wrapped in the same cloth as when he’d shown Joni.
“Mee, I want you to take a look at it. Just for a minute. It would be dangerous to look for too long, I think.”
Mee came and knelt alongside him on the rug. She looked questioningly at Joni.
“Seen it before. Gave me the willies.”
Seb laughed. Joni was very much her own person, but sometimes her choice of words was so like Mee’s, it was uncanny.
He pulled the corners of the cloth, and they fell away from the object beneath.
Mee sniffed dismissively as she leaned forward to get a better look.
“Is that it? I was expecting something more…”
She fell silent as her brain started the attempt to create a manageable object out of the Gyeuk Egg, to reduce it to something able to be held and categorized by a human brain. The attempt failed.
Mee had stood on the edge of the Grand Canyon shortly after first moving to America, and had found herself lost for words for a record three seconds, before finally muttering, “Now that is one big fucking hole.” This time, it was all her brain could do to keep her body upright, without diverting precious resources to coming up with a pithy, amusing quip.
Seb watched her reaction, and was ready, after ten seconds, to throw the cloth back over the Egg. Mee’s expression had gone through curiosity, incredulity, awe, and fear before heading toward a kind of vacuous acceptance of that which it could never grasp. He shook her gently by the shoulder. It took another three shakes before she responded, followed by two strong cups of tea and a giant spliff before she was ready to speak. When she finally did, it was pure Meera Patel.
“Cockfosters,” she said.
Chapter 25
Sopharndi and Cley stood in the Meeting Circle, facing the Elders. Laak, Gron and Hesta had spoken privately for nearly an hour in the dwelling beyond the Circle, while Sopharndi and Cley waited to see what the leaders of their tribe would decide.
The moons lit the scene brightly, casting sharp-edged shadows onto the hard dirt.
Sopharndi was silent for a few minutes, looking at her son. All his life, his body had been in constant motion. Only when sleeping was he still. In every waking moment, whether sitting or standing, he had kept a slight rocking movement going, his head nodding forward and back an inch or two as if he was listening to music no one else could hear. That, and the near-constant humming meant that his presence was obvious to Sopharndi even when she was concentrating on something else, training warriors, exercising, listening to the bards, eating - she always knew he was there. Any absence had been accompanied by a silence and stillness she found distinctly uncomfortable.
Now he was both silent and still, and she couldn’t stop the same thought running around her mind.
He’s not here. He’s not here. He’s not here.
The evidence of her senses suggested otherwise. He looked, felt and smelled like Cley. Only now, he spoke. He looked right at her, not off to one side. The tiny, crazy hope she’d always entertained—that there was a mind lost somewhere inside him that might, somehow, be persuaded to emerge—had turned out not to be crazy at all. It had happened. Cley had a mind. There was more to him than anyone had ever suspected.
So why did it feel more like he wasn’t here at all?
He’s not here. He’s not here.
“This must be hard for you.”
Sopharndi flinched at the gentle voice that had interrupted her
thoughts. Cley was looking at her again, his eyes full of intelligence and concern. She met his eyes briefly and immediately looked away, Taking a long, slow, breath, she forced herself to look back and hold his gaze.
“Cley?”
It was all she could bring herself to say. As a warrior, and now, First, Sopharndi had trained herself to intercept strong emotions and—unless they could be usefully channeled—push them firmly aside. Since early adolescence, she had excelled at this aspect of her training. Where other strong females in her group allowed themselves to be angered, shamed, or distracted by the taunts, insinuations, and insults of their instructors, Sopharndi had let the words fall into ready-made mental slots. She heard them just fine, but, with practice, she found she could absorb them as if they were directed at someone else. Occasionally, she would hear something that might provoke anger. If she felt she could channel that anger without letting it cloud her judgment in a fight, she would do so. If not, she would push it away and bring her focus back to the here and now.
She realized now, as she looked at her son, that she was using the same techniques to avoid dealing with the onslaught of emotion which his return had provoked. He was alive, healthy, intelligent, and able to speak. Not only that, he exuded a charisma stronger than any she had come across before.
He smiled at her, and her heart lurched crazily.
“It’s me,” he said. “This is hard for you, I know. A Blank cannot speak. A Blank cannot think. A Blank can bring misfortune on a tribe, as well as good luck.”
“The People have prospered since your birth,” she said, her words seeming to come from far away.
“If they had not, they may have sacrificed me to the Singer in an attempt to appease her.”
Sopharndi nodded. Such sacrifices were rare these days, but they still happened. If the dry season was dangerously long, if the animals gave birth to dead, or deformed offspring. If the trees didn’t fruit. Animal sacrifices at the edge of the Parched Land had been performed at the change of the seasons since Aleiteh heard the songs, but in more desperate times, the ha’zek, craint, or nuffle whose blood would be spilled to appease the Singer would be replaced by a person. A Blank was always the first choice in these circumstances as they would be the least missed, and they were, most likely in the tribe’s view, responsible for the problem in the first place.
The Unnamed Way (The World Walker Series Book 4) Page 14