Chichester Greenway

by Alton Saunders

  Chapter 25:

  VESTRE LILLESUND

  Vill, Yask, Toln and Tamor were playing tootak when Akkri and Vonn returned from the atoll.

  “Want to join in?” asked Vill.

  “We’ll just watch,” Akkri replied. He was tired from the long day and he knew Vonn would be feeling the same.

  “Last round. My turn to start,” said Tamor. “Stoom.”

  “Kroom,” said Yask.

  “Vokak,” said Toln.

  “Mokak,” said Vill, then after a little pause, “Sab.”

  “Drab,” said Tamor.

  “That’s a real word! You’re out!” said Vill.

  The game went on until only Yask had not accidentally said a word that was actually a real word – he had won. In a burst of laughter they got up and went through to the hall of mirrors and chandeliers where the others were just arriving and an evening meal was laid out ready for them.

  When they had finished eating, they all moved to the other end of the hall where a circle of chairs awaited them. They had become so attuned to one another by now that no one had needed to mention the idea of a meeting. For each of them it was simply the next thing after the meal.

  “I’ve never seen chairs like these before,” said Viney.

  “I have,” said Ky. “They come from a country called Finland. They look a bit strange but I think you’ll find they’re comfortable.”

  The Vikans had become used to the way Earth was divided into different countries, though they could still not see why it was necessary. “Earth people are like us in so many ways,” Bavilan had said at a previous meeting, “and then suddenly there’s something they say or something they do that we just can’t understand.”

  “I think it’s like the way they can’t see ultra or infra. However hard they tried they would still not be able to do so,” Annilex replied. “And however hard we try I don’t think we will ever be able to understand why they keep things for themselves instead of sharing them or why they care who wins a game or a race or why they spend hours watching images on a screen when Earth itself is so beautiful.”

  They chose their places and a long friendly silence followed. The chairs were comfortable. The silence was broken by Toln. “I want to make an announcement,” he said. “I’ve decided to stay here on Earth when the rest of you go back to Vika.”

  Vonn felt a shock go right through her and through the others, too – shock, and a feeling of loss which she recognised. Losing a member of the group which had become like her own family – it was terrible!

  Toln was clearly waiting for some sort of response but no one knew what to say. Finally, very gently, Korriott said, “Are you quite sure, dear?”

  “We’re just here as visitors,” Toln replied. “I want to know what it’s like to live on Earth and I’ve found the right place to do so. And yes, I am sure. Quite, quite sure.”

  They all knew that Toln’s circumstances were rather different from most Vikans’. It was very unusual for both parents to die young but this was Toln’s lot in life and he had accepted it stoically. He had no other close relations and for several years he had lived in a comfortable house with three other children on the outskirts of the City of Silver and Gold. An elderly couple lived there too and it was a family of sorts, though Toln had never had the feeling of completely belonging. Always there was a sense of something else that he had not discovered yet. And then came that first meeting in Library Seven and he knew that this was what he had been waiting for.

  On the day after their arrival, while Akkri and Vonn were meeting Andrew and Vicky for the first time, Toln had climbed to the top of a turret in The Golden Palace and stood in a bracing wind, looking down through gaps in the clouds at the city below. He had a great urge to go off somewhere and do some exploring on his own. A skimmer nudged up to the balustrade and he climbed in and let it take him wherever it would.

  It swooped down to the river below, following its course to a wide estuary and a grey and stormy sea, out across the waves to a low-lying land of meadows and ploughed fields, then across that land to a sea scattered with islands, some large, some small. The sun came out as the skimmer glided up a narrow waterway and settled on a sandy beach.

  Toln got out. There was a lovely soft feel to the air and a lovely smell, too, a mixture of wood smoke and heather and sea weed. Tiny waves lapped onto the beach and somewhere doves were cooing.

  Toln thought he had never seen a place so beautiful, yet it seemed familiar, like coming home to a place he had known long ago.

  “There I was, walking along the beach, all on my own on a new planet! It was so exciting, but peaceful, too. On the other side of the water, quite close really, there’s another, bigger island. I could hear children playing over there. I wanted to go and meet them but even more I wanted to explore the island I was on. I could see some red-painted cottages among the trees. A woman came out of one of them, wearing an apron. She was shooing along some big white birds that were making a sort of hissing sound. She saw me and waved. I waved back, then I walked to the tip of the island where there’s a cluster of rocks. I climbed up onto them and I could see some other islands in the distance. There was a flagpole on the rocks with a red flag with a white cross on it. It was the same shape as those other crosses we’ve seen, but sideways on.

  “There was a beach all the way along the other side of the island, too, but I decided to go back through the woods towards the cottages. I was hoping to meet somebody. The lady I saw earlier was sitting on a wooden bench having a hot drink called chocolate. She went indoors and got me one, too. It was delicious. She told me her children would be back from school soon – they only go for the morning. I’ll be starting at that school in a few days’ time.”

  Vonn again felt the shock go through her. Yes, Toln, really was going to leave them.

  “I’ve been back there every day, in between the other things we’ve been doing. The lady’s called Birgit. She’s very kind. She has two children of her own but she says I can stay with them as long as I like. Her husband was drowned at sea. He was a fisherman. They had hoped to have another child and she feels as though I would be making that come true and that Anders, her husband, would have been happy about it.”

  “What are the two children like?” Viney asked.

  “They’re called Mogens and Greta. Mogens is twelve and Greta’s nine. They showed me how to work the raft they use to go across the water to Lillesund. That’s the name of the island where their school is. Their own island is called Vestre Lillesund. You pull on a loop of rope that’s fastened to the raft. It goes round a wheel on their side of the water and round another wheel on the other side. It’s great fun! When the water’s choppy the raft bounces up and down and if there’s a storm it gets too rough and they can’t go to school. Mogens showed me his collection of orange stones called amber. When there’s a storm they get washed up on the beach.

  “The beds in the cottage are made out of planks from birch trees that Anders cut down himself. There’s a spare one and that’s going to be mine. And Birgit makes lovely curly biscuits with almond in them. I was there one evening and we all had almond biscuits and hot chocolate, sitting at the big wooden table. It felt as though I was part of the family.” He paused. “A proper family at last.”

  There was another long silence. Vonn felt sad through and through. She realised she had become very fond of Toln with his bold, decisive opinions. She felt almost angry that he was going to leave them, as if he thought they were not good enough for him. She knew that was silly and she knew that the sadness was mixed up with other things, too. When Toln had mentioned the cluster of cottages, she had thought of her grandmother’s village up in the hills with the mountains close by. She had lost her grandmother and now they were going to lose Toln. “I hope you’ll be very, very happy with your new family,” she said. She really meant it but there were tears in her eyes.

  “Tha
nk you, Vonn,” said Toln. He went over and gave her a hug. He was feeling a little sad, too. He would miss these friends. They had been through so much together, but the little sandy island was where his heart was, with kind Birgit who was like a mother to him, and Mogens and Greta who were like his brother and sister. He smiled. “You don’t need to worry. I’m going to be very happy. In the middle of winter they have a festival called Christmas. Birgit makes seven different kinds of biscuits for it. She’s going to let me help her.”

  Vonn laughed and her mood lightened. Yes, she knew Toln would be happy in his new life and with that knowledge came the understanding that if this decision was right for Toln then it was right for all of them, even if they were losing him, for all life was one. Annilex, her mentor in times past, looked across at her and smiled. She seemed to know what Vonn was feeling. Vonn raised her little finger in the Vikan sign of acknowledgement and smiled back at her.

  “What else do we have to discuss?” Bavilan asked, after another long pause. He had grown in confidence during their expedition and did not mind taking the lead from time to time.

  “We all feel we are near the end of our time here, don’t we?” said Eedo. “I want to know if we’ve done all that we should have done. Have we missed the point somehow? I don’t really feel I’ve done anything except visit some wonderful new places and get more and more puzzled by the Earth people themselves.”

  “Changes have started to happen here on Earth during the time we’ve been here,” said Sumar. “I was watching a boy lighting a bonfire. Yask and Vill had come with me to the south west corner of this island, a place called Cornwall. The boy tucked pieces of paper with writing on them all round a pile of leaves and pieces of wood. I don’t know if the writing had anything to do with it, but he made a flame on a little piece of wood and went round and lit all the pieces of paper. For a time nothing much happened. There was quite a lot of smoke and then some flames. Some of the flames went out after a while but others kept on burning and then quite suddenly the whole bonfire was blazing.

  “I think our visit is like that. New things seem to be happening since we’ve arrived, things the Earth people didn’t expect and that we didn’t expect, either. I think these things are like the little flames the boy made round his bonfire pile. I think we’ve been going round getting things started without even realising we were doing so and after we’ve gone, real big changes will start to happen, like when the bonfire suddenly blazed up.”

  “And we’ve been changing, too,” said Bavilan. “What you have just said is a sort of understanding that none of us could have reached when we were back on Vika. It’s something really big, an understanding about the future of this planet Earth that we only arrived at as visitors a short while ago. We feel Sumar is right, don’t we?” He looked round at the others. No words were necessary. The silence was the familiar silence of harmonious agreement.

  “And it’s exactly one half of the story,” said Korriott. “As Bavilan said, all sorts of changes have been happening for us, too. We’ve felt feelings we’ve never felt before in our lives and what we have experienced will have become the shared experience of all our people back on Vika. It must be a difficult and challenging time for them just as it has been for us. We felt our worlds collide even before we set out on our journey to Earth. Big changes are building up here on Earth. What big changes are building up for us, I wonder?”

  As she finished speaking, she found she was looking at Akkri and then at Vonn. “Akkri and Vonn took the first steps on Earth and first made contact with people here on Earth. I have a feeling that Akkri and Vonn will be the ones to show us the way to something new, something we need, the real reason we came here.”

  She had the look that the others knew so well, as if she was listening to some far-off voice that they themselves could not hear. Akkri felt very quiet inside. He knew there was no way he or Vonn could find out in advance what they had to do but he was sure Korriott was right and that when the time came it would all be clear and simple.

  There was another long, peaceful silence, then suddenly, “What did that Cornwall place look like?” Bavilan asked.

  “It was different from anything I’ve seen on Vika,” said Yask. “We went to a place called Land’s End. It was wonderful.”

  “Let’s go and have a look,” said Vonn. She was feeling calmer now and was eager to see what Yask was so enthusiastic about.

  And so it was that while they sat in the comfortable chairs from Finland, the whole group travelled back into the shared experience of Vill, Yask and Sumar and stood on the cliff top looking out over the Atlantic. Great waves pounded against the rocks, sending up clouds of white spray that were caught in the sunshine and transformed into flashing rainbows. Seagulls screamed overhead and the smell of seaweed blew up around them in the cold Atlantic air.

  “I’m glad I’m staying here on Earth,” said Toln.

  * * *