A Prayer far the Dead

By Eric Brown

I

 made my farewells to the house, moving from room to open-plan room, standing in doorways and viewing in my mind’s eye scenes and incidents long gone. The house was grown from Tartarean wildwood, without doors or windows, and admitted the cooling northern breeze, great dancing butterflies and the mingled fragrances from the abundant flowers in the garden. I moved to the verandah and leaned against the rail, staring down across the vale to the shimmering blue lake and, in the distance, the lofty mountains of Mallarme. Now that the time had come for me to leave the playground of my youth, I felt compelled to stay a while longer, to linger, to bathe in the memories that flooded back like an incoming tide.

Two momentous events occurred that summer fifty years ago, when I was fourteen and life seemed a thing of limitless possibilities and boundless hope. I suffered a loss that affects me still, and for the first time I fell in love. So bound together were these incidents in my memory, as I looked back over the years at the shallow but honest boy I was then, that I could not recall one without being reminded of the other. My childhood was a halcyon period of endless summers, and it was the first time that real tragedy, and inexorable passion, had touched upon my life. The combination of events changed me - for better or for worse, I do not know, but changed me nevertheless - from the starry-eyed youth I was then to the man I am today.

Perhaps the beginning of the end was the first day of my holiday, when my father called me to say that he and my mother wished to speak with me. The summons, via the speaking-pipe beside my bed, awoke me to a brilliant, sunlit morning tempered by a cool breeze from the mountains. My room was a thoroughfare for all manner of iridescent flying insects, and flowers curled their inquisitive heads through the window-hole as if to witness my awakening. I had arrived home the night before from my boarding school in Mallarme city a thousand kilometres to the south, and I could think of no greater contrast than between the drab confines of my dormitory and my own room. I had been released from the prison sentence of school - the long months of the holidays seemed to stretch ahead without end - and my room was a symbol of all that was good in life.

After my father’s terse summons, I pulled on my shorts and shirt and, my feet bare to the warmth of the wildwood, made my leisurely way down the many stairs to the ground-floor. My parents’ possessions - the wooden carvings from Earth, the artwork from around the Thousand Worlds, the Tartarean rugs and tapestries - were familiar from my many summer and winter holidays here in the past, but at the same time new and exotic after the spartan furnishings of my school.

My parents, likewise, seemed to be creatures at once familiar and yet larger than life, like well-loved characters from a much-read novel. I could not say that I knew them well, nor could I claim to have loved them - they seemed to me to be stereotypical parents, offering safety and succour, and demanding in return only my attention and obedience, a contract that suited me, in my already semi-independent way, very well.

I had spoken only briefly to my father the night before, when he had met me at the vench-train station of Verlaine, and we had not broached the topic of my falling grades. I expected that this was what they wished to speak to me about this morning. I envisaged the dialogue as I knocked upon the archway to the study and entered: my father’s demand to know the reason for my lack of success, my usual excuses, my mother’s entreaties that I would do better next term, my earnest promises that I would. Already I was eager to be away from the house, to be with my friends in the tree beside the lake. They had been on holiday for the past week - I had been kept back to repeat an exam - and I was impatient to catch up with events, afraid of missing out on shared experiences that would subtly exclude me from the camaraderie of their company.

My father was seated behind his vast desk, a big man with a florid face and curling silver hair: he was cheerful and lenient by nature, only occasionally stipulating bounds that were not to be crossed, and never were. My mother stood before the arch that overlooked the garden and the lake. I had once overheard a guest at a house party describe her as beautiful, which had surprised me at the time, as one never thinks of one’s mother as being the object of such attention. She might have been beautiful, but she was also cool and distant. She seemed to me to go through the motions of being a mother, like an inadequate actress playing a part for which she was manifestly unsuited. They were both botanists who had come from Earth to study the flora of Tartarus, fallen in love with the province of Mallarme and decided to stay.

My mother moved from the arch and perched herself on the corner of the desk, while I sat on the facing chair, my feet dangling inches above the polished timber tiles.

My father tapped something before him, hidden from me by the elevation of the desk. ‘How much have they taught you at school about the supernova?’ he asked.

I was surprised and relieved that I was not to receive a lecture. ‘Well . . .’ I began. ‘We’ve studied all about the atomic processes—’

My mother gave a tolerant half-smile. ‘No,’ my father said, ‘I mean our supernova - the effects it will have on Tartarus?’

I frowned. I failed to see the reason for the question. ‘We were taught that one day the sun will blow and destroy the planet.’

‘In one or two hundred years from now?’

I nodded. I had never really stopped to think that the beauty I took for granted would one day be no more. To a child of fourteen, a century or two means the same as a million years.

My father said, ‘The scientists have revised their estimates. They’ve noticed increased activity in the sun itself.’

He smiled at my expression of blank incomprehension. ‘The scientists say that the sun will blow not in a hundred years, but in fifty or sixty.’

Now fifty years is a sum manageable to the mind of a young boy; fifty years was well within the expectancy of my life span, and my father’s words touched something deep, and until then unplumbed, within me. I felt a kind of awed appreciation of the fate that would befall Tartarus, my home and all I knew.

Beyond my mother and father, through the arch, I saw a group of kids running down the lane that led to the lake. I made out Gabby and Bobby, Satch and Rona. Then I saw the detestable Hulse, whose name seemed to suit him, and saw too that he had his arm about the shoulders of little Leah Reverdy, and that she seemed not at all bothered by this gross imposition - in fact, by her tinkling laugh that reached me on the wind, was rather enjoying his attention. The sudden surge of jealousy I felt then was overtaken by pique that they had not called upon me to join them - then I rationalised that they could not have known I was home.

I was impatient to join them, to impart the portentous news that within our lifetimes Tartarus would be destroyed. It seemed important that I share my discovery with them, so that perhaps I might judge from their reaction how I myself felt about the impending catastrophe.

‘The reason we’re telling you this,’ my father continued, ‘is that we want to know what you would like to do.’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘You were due to leave school next year,’ he said, ‘and work a year with us before starting college at Baudelaire.’

My mother took over. ‘If you did that, you might feel . . . shall I say, emotionally tied to Tartarus? You would be in your twenties before you graduated, and feel less like leaving the planet. By the time you are fifty, the evacuations will have begun, and it will be much more wrenching to leave then.’

‘The alternative,’ my father said, ‘is to attend college next year on Earth, break the link with Tartarus now.’

My mind was in confusion. For so long my future had been certain - study at Mallarme, then Baudelaire, with frequent visits home - and I could hardly conceive of this new plan.

‘No. No, I don’t want to leave.’ I thought of Leah, and the hopeless possibility that one day I might have her as my own - and it seemed that if I left Tartarus next year then my chances, even as slim as they were now, would be nil.

‘Perhaps you should have some time to think it over,’ my mother said. ‘It’s different for your father and I. By the time of the supernova, we’ll no longer be around.’

I could not bring myself to meet her gaze. If I indicated that I understood her I would seem heartless, while if I feigned ignorance I might appear foolish.

‘At least you know the situation now,’ my father said, bringing the subject to a close.

‘May I leave now?’

‘What about breakfast?’ my mother asked.

I told her that I’d grab some fruit on the way down to the lake - berries and citruses were bountiful in the hedges of the lane - and left the room. I could have gone around the desk and through the arch, but I felt that I would be impinging on my parents’ territory, and perhaps by doing so provoke more questions. I wanted nothing more than to rendezvous with my friends.

I left the house and sprinted down the track to the tall hollow-tree that over the years we had made our own. So impatient was I to tell my news that I failed to gather my breakfast on the way.

The entrance in the bole of the tree was concealed by ferns, which I brushed aside. Over the years, since first discovering the tree, we had worn the bark of the narrow defile to a lustrous glow with our continual passage back and forth. I slipped easily inside, found the footholds in the darkness and climbed. The tight chimney corkscrewed up the trunk of the tree, and I wondered how Hulse was finding the climb these days. He was a year older than me, and big for his age. I considered what might happen when he found he could no longer fit through the entrance: he was the nominal leader of our little gang, and knowing him as I did I guessed that he would call the hollow-tree out of bounds, a childish rendezvous anyway, and suggest that we meet at the cafe on the jetty instead.

My ascent was illuminated by the leaf-filtered sunlight that spilled through the exit hole in the trunk high above. I came to the oval slit, breathing hard, and paused before climbing through. The wide branch thrust from the tree at right angles, and over the centuries a great fungal growth had spread from this branch to the next, creating a triangular platform perhaps ten metres in length. Seated at the far end of this platform, their backs to me and their legs dangling over the edge as they stared down at the lake, were Rona, Gabby, Bobby - and Hulse, with his arm around Leah. I looked up to find Satch, and as expected detected his shape through the membrane of the dream-sac suspended from the branch above. For as long as I’d known him, he’d made every excuse to slope off and climb into the parasite plant and hallucinate the hours away.

Now that the time had come to tell my friends about the imminence of the supernova, I was overcome with an odd reluctance. Although we all, with the exception of Leah, attended boarding schools in Mallarme, these schools were different and we rarely saw each other during term. Only three times a year, during the holidays, did we renew our friendships: always the reunions were fraught and embarrassing affairs, for me at least, as I fought to overcome my shyness and regain the degree of intimacy attained during the last break.

Rona turned and saw me. ‘It’s Joe,’ she said, waving.

Gabby and Bobby both turned and waved in greeting, but, pointedly I thought, Hulse and Leah remained with their backs to me, absorbed in each other.

Forced to make an entry now, I waved and crawled on hands and knees from the tree trunk and across the fungal platform. Rona, Gabby and Bobby joined me and we exchanged the usual stilted greetings. We chattered about the past term, and I made a joke of my poor grades, only to be matched by Bobby who had failed all his major subjects and would be kept down next term. Of all of them, Bobby was my best friend, the one with whom the gap of months between meetings seemed like mere hours. He and Gabby were brother and sister, both tall and blindingly blonde, but whereas Gabby was all laughs and chatter, Bobby was quiet and self-absorbed, perhaps even a little slow. Rona was small and freckled and really quite ugly, but friendly and funny.

Gabby grabbed my hand to silence me, opened her eyes wide and leaned forward. She was about to divulge a secret, and I sensed that Rona and Bobby were far from happy.

‘Joe,’ said Gabby, prolonging the suspense, ‘guess what?’

‘What?’ I laughed, looking from Bobby to Rona.

‘Gabby . . .’ Bobby protested.

Gabby threw back her blonde head and laughed. ‘Rona and my brother,’ she declared in a primly theatrical voice, ‘are lovers!’

Oddly, it was me who reddened. The couple in question just looked at each other with that quiet complaisant smile of all newly joined couples.

Bobby then elbowed his sister in the ribs. ‘And who does it in the sac with Satch?’

Gabby bit her bottom lip and frowned up at where the dream-sac hung heavy with Satch’s weight above us. ‘Well, where else can we do it? He never comes out of there!’

Rona clasped her hands over her heart. ‘Can you even imagine it? Gabby and Satch in love!’

‘It’s not love,’ Gabby said with a frankness beyond her years, ‘just lust. How could I love someone who’s always so high?’

Rona, perhaps to make me feel less left out of the pairing off that had gone on in my absence, took my hand and hauled me to the edge of the fungal patio. ‘Just look at the view, Joe! I swear it gets better every year.’

We sat side by side, our legs dangling over the edge, and stared out across the lake. We were perhaps twenty metres above the scintillating blue expanse, and the aerial view of the long body of water wedged between the gentle green hills made me think, as always, that I must surely live in the most beautiful region on all Tartarus. In the middle of the lake was the Zillion’s island, but there was no sign of the creature today.

‘Joe bombed and had to resit his maths exam,’ Gabby told Hulse and Leah.

Hulse just grunted. ‘You never could count, kid,’ he said.

Beyond him, Leah leaned forwards, like a queen in a hand of cards. She pushed her lips to the side of her face in a too-bad grimace that sent my heart pounding. ‘Hi, Joe,’ she said, lazy and laconic, and in the same way waved her fingers at me, minimally.

I had purposefully not looked Leah’s way until now: I could no more acknowledge her liaison with Hulse than I could have faced the possibility that she might snub me. She was the youngest among our group, at least in terms of years, though she had about her the natural sophistication of a woman twice her age. I had worshipped her from afar since I was ten, and just a year ago a miracle occurred when she became Gabby’s best friend and, in consequence, a member of our group.

Not long after that she took up with Hulse, perhaps impressed by his bravado, his leadership skills; I should have hated her for it, but I could only feel sorry for her and wait until the day when she saw through his swaggering act.

She was as slim as a moonfern, brown as a coffee bean. When alone in her company I was almost always speechless. On one embarrassing occasion, which she either did not notice, or deigned to overlook, she had playfully grabbed my arm and asked me a question, and in a paroxysm of fright and delight I had lost control of my bladder.

I recalled what I had rushed here to tell them.

‘Have you heard about the supernova?’ I asked. ‘It’s due to blow in fifty years.’

Hulse turned to me, something like heroic forbearance in his attitude. ‘When did you find that out, kid?’

‘Just now. This morning. My father told me.’

Hulse flicked a fashionable lock of hair from his eyes. ‘Just what do they teach you at your school?’ he sneered at me. How I hated his heavy-featured face, with its expert appropriation, freakish in someone so young, of adult disdain.

I glanced around. Bobby and Rona and Gabby were silent, gazing down at the lake. Leah was concealed behind my tormentor; I could only see her bare legs, embraced by her equally bare, brown arms.

‘Supernova in fifty,’ Hulse reeled off, ‘evacuation plans begin in thirty, actual evacuation in forty. Citizens to be evacuated by provinces, to designated planets in the Thousand Worlds. Communities to be kept intact, unless individuals wish otherwise, in which case they pay their own way.’

I tried to hide my unease, but that was impossible. I had a face that flared as red as a beacon at the slightest perceived affront.

‘I had no idea ...’ I stammered. ‘Nobody told me.’

Hulse rolled his wrist in a haughty gesture. ‘Consider yourself told.’

‘Are ... are any of you leaving before . . .’ I stuttered. ‘That is, before the actual evacuation?’

Gabby glanced at her brother. ‘Daddy said he’s thinking about taking us back to Earth. But I hope he doesn’t.’

‘I’m leaving anyway when I graduate,’ Hulse said, ‘but I expect I’ll come back from time to time, for old time’s sake.’

I cleared my throat. ‘Leah?’

She leaned forward again, and her smile banished all my self-doubt. ‘I’m staying here until the evacuation,’ she said, and I was cheered by the thought that her declaration intimated her independence from Hulse. ‘What about you?’

Timorously, I returned her smile. ‘I’m staying too,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.’ Perhaps boldened by her attention, I went on. ‘It’s hard to believe that in fifty years this ... all this . . .’ I gestured in lieu of words.

Rona said in a whisper, ‘All destroyed in the ultimate firestorm.’

‘God,’ Bobby said, as if the thought had just struck him, ‘Mallarme, the mountains and the lake . . . even Baudelaire!’

I glanced across at Leah. Tears filmed her vast, brown eyes.

Hulse said, ‘Yeah, just think of it. Every last bird and beast burned to a cinder.’

I expected Leah to protest, to cry at least. Instead she laughed and hit out at Hulse with a tiny, ineffectual fist. ‘Oh, you . . . you typical man, Hulse!’ and there was something close to admiration in her tone.

I stared down past my feet at the wind-rilled water far below. A silence settled as we each considered our thoughts, or in Hulse’s case whatever passed for thoughts.

I wondered if the holiday would continue in this vein, or if Hulse would let up and treat me as a human being. He’d been affable enough in the past, to the point where I almost considered him a friend, but he had always spoiled himself with some barbed cruelty or malicious act - not always directed at myself. Bobby had been the butt of his arrogance in the past. Perhaps this was one of the reasons Bobby and I were close.

‘Talking about birds and beasts,’ Hulse said, ‘shall we tell him about the Zillion?’

I glanced around at my friends, but they looked uneasy and would not meet my gaze.

‘What about it?’ I asked Hulse.

‘While you were resitting your exams,’ he said, ‘we began a dare.’

I guessed what the dare was, and I understood then the unease of my friends. I felt my palms begin to sweat where I gripped the lip of the fungus.

‘What kind of dare?’

‘On the first day of the holiday, I swam over to the island at sunset, sat and waited until the Zillion came out, then stared him down.’

I looked across the lake to the green knoll of the island. In years gone by we had often dared each other to swim across to Zillion’s island and confront the creature. At nights, as we huddled around the fire that Hulse had expertly built on bricks carried up from the lane, we had tried to frighten each other with ever more terrible stories about the strange creature that made its home on the tiny island. We knew it for a rogue Arcturian gladiator, or a man-eater, or a telepath who could kill with a single thought. My parents laughed when I told them this, and said that he was an harmless alien hermit who had come to Verlaine to see out the rest of his days in peace. But then they would say that, I reasoned, to keep the dreadful truth from me.

So Hulse had finally summoned the courage to face the alien ... I would have been impressed if I had not disliked him so much.

‘What happened?’ I asked.

Hulse shrugged nonchalantly. ‘He just stared at me. I thought I felt a prickling in my head, as if he were trying to read my thoughts. Then he returned to his lair and I swam back.’

I stared at the island. It was perhaps a kilometre away. The swim alone would have been enough to tax my strength, but then to confront the alien . . .

Hulse went on, ‘Next day, Leah did the same. Then Bobby and Gabby and Rona. Even Satch stirred himself from his sac yesterday and paid the creature a visit.’

Hulse was looking at me, sidewise, assessing my reaction to the news. I glanced at my friends. They knew I was a poor swimmer, knew I would have difficulty reaching the island.

Like a torturer relishing the agony of his victim, Hulse let the silence stretch.

‘So . . .’ he said at last, ‘how about this evening at sunset?’

‘I . . .’ I cast about feebly for an excuse. ‘I can’t. Not tonight. I said I’d help my mother in the garden.’

Hulse’s stare combined disbelief with supreme disdain.

‘But,’ I went on, surprising myself, ‘I’m doing nothing tomorrow night. I’ll swim over to the island then.’ And I stared at him until he looked away.

‘You all heard that,’ he said to the others. ‘Joe’ll risk his life tomorrow.’

‘Don’t joke about it, Hulse.’ This was Leah. She leaned around Hulse and smiled at me. ‘Don’t worry ‘bout it, Joe. You know,’ she continued lazily, ‘nothing is ever as bad as you expect it to be.’

Shortly after this, the meeting broke up. Gabby stretched and yawned, staring up at Satch in his sac. ‘You’ve slept enough, boy. I think I’ll go and wake him up.’

Quietly, whispering to each other, Hulse and Leah slipped from the platform. I heard them climbing high up inside the trunk, caught a glimpse of Leah’s legs as she stepped out onto a more private platform high overhead.

Bobby and Rona were arguing beside the slit in the bole. Finally Rona flounced from view, and Bobby joined me on the edge. ‘Women!’ he complained, shrugging his shoulders. ‘How about a game of Out?’

He pulled a miniature set from the pocket of his jacket and we sprawled in the dappled sunlight and played the best of three. My mind was not on the game - a combination of trepidation at what I’d got myself into in agreeing to the swim, and some subtle realisation that Bobby would rather be with Rona, distracted me. I played badly and lost the first and third games.

I rolled onto my back and stared up through the dancing foliage. Above me, the canoe-shape of the dream-sac swayed and bulged as Gabby and Satch made love.

‘What was it like, when you swam across to the island?’ I asked Bobby.

I could not see him from where I lay looking up through the foliage, but I sensed his hesitation. I could imagine his reluctant shrug, his slow grimace. ‘Oh . . . you know. It’s easy, once you’re there. Don’t worry about it, Joe, okay?’

‘It’s easy, once you’re there,’ I repeated. ‘But it’s getting there that’s giving me the shits. And then there’s the bloody Zillion.’

He was silent. I closed my eyes. So much childhood experience is needlessly traumatic: I had often wished I could reassure the naive boy I was then that, as Leah had so wisely quoted, nothing was ever as bad as you expected it to be.

Perhaps an hour later, having got over her sulk, Rona appeared from the hollow-tree and smiled across at Bobby.

‘See you tomorrow, Joe,’ he murmured, and slipped away hand in hand with the short, ugly, red-headed girl. I lay there a while longer, contemplating how awful life could be, and then climbed down and made my way back home.

* * * *

So fresh were the memories that it was hard to credit that fifty years had elapsed since we had played in the tree beside the lake. For almost that long I had lived on Earth and Cymbaline, having followed my parents into the profession of xeno-botany. I had always intended to return to Tartarus some day, but the time had never been quite right - I was always busy or otherwise occupied. Then I heard on a newscast that the evacuation of the planet had begun. I took the fastest sailship to Tartarus and arrived at Verlaine on the day before Mallarme province was due to be evacuated. I had thought that perhaps I would need more time to reacquaint myself with the haunts of my youth, but in the event I found that my memories were too poignant and that one day was quite enough.

With two hours to go before the Thousand World Confederation carrier transported the remaining citizens to Baudelaire, I left the house for the very last time and walked down the hill to the lake.

Little had changed across the intervening years. The rolling green countryside was as I remembered it, fragrant and bedecked with flowers. So completely did the track to the lake - more a tunnel through thick, over-arching hedges - match my memory of it that I might have been transported back in time. Only the increased heat gave away the lie, and the dazzling, depthless white-hot sky. I passed familiar houses on my way, the open timber villas where Leah and the others had lived, empty and overgrown now like my own.

I arrived at the shore of the lake and noticed that a couple of the nearby hollow-trees had been felled - but not, I saw with a sudden start of relief, our own. I almost ran across to it. The ferns no longer concealed the entrance, and as I knelt and caressed the smooth, worn wood I marvelled that I had once been small enough to slip through the narrow gap. Now I could barely force my shoulder through the crevice. More than anything I wished I were able to climb up inside the tree, to renew my intimacy with the locale that had meant so much to me.

I stood and walked around the tree, to where its gnarled roots knuckled down towards the water’s edge. I shaded my eyes and gazed up the length of the trunk, at the branches that began ten metres above. With a thrill of recollection I made out the dark, triangular wedge of our fungal platform, and above it the small white shapes of the dream-sacs.

I sat down with my back against the bole and stared out across the lake. The water level had dropped with the increased temperature over the years, and the island seemed correspondingly larger. I stared at the dry, grassy hump and for a second imagined that I could make out the Zillion.

* * * *

On the eve of my encounter with the alien, I mooched around the house and garden, avoiding my parents and the inevitable questions they would ask. Why was I not outside, playing with my friends? The lie I had told Hulse earlier - that I had to help my mother in the garden - prevented my joining the others, but of course I realised that my friends would be occupied with other, more important things that evening, and would not welcome my presence.

I slept badly that night, dreaming of drowning in fathoms of water, of falling victim to the Zillion. I slept in till almost noon, then ate and read by turn until the sun lowered itself behind the distant hills and a beautiful, peach-wine light flooded the countryside. The Zillion would be climbing from its underground lair about this time, to sit in the twilight and contemplate who knew what.

I left the house and made my way down the track. I was so absorbed with my fear that I was only half-aware of Bobby as he stepped from the concealment of the hedge and barred my way. He looked as terrified as I felt.

‘Bobby? What’s wrong?’

He took me by the shoulder and pushed me into the hedge, as if he feared we might be seen. ‘I’ve been waiting here for hours,’ he said. ‘I thought you’d never come out.’

I shrugged, puzzled by his attitude. ‘I said I’d meet you at sunset . . . What’s the matter, Bobby?’

‘Look . . .’ He couldn’t bring himself to meet my gaze. ‘I wanted to tell you yesterday, but I couldn’t.’

‘Tell me what?’

He hesitated. ‘What Hulse told you then, that he swam across to the island...’

My heart banged in joyous reprieve. ‘What?’

‘He didn’t. He didn’t do it. He was lying.’

I stared at him.

‘And the other things he said, about me and the others swimming across . . . we didn’t do it, either.’

I was speechless for long seconds. Then I said, ‘You could have said something yesterday.’

‘You don’t understand. He said if we said anything, he’d tell my father about Rona and me, and Gabby and Satch. You know what my father would do if he found out.’ He reddened, then went on, ‘Last night Leah came and told me that we had to do something. I said I’d see you today.’

‘Leah?’ I asked, like an idiot. ‘Leah said you had to tell me?’

‘What’s so unusual about that?’ He regarded me. ‘Look, why do you think Hulse treats you like he does? It’s because Leah looks out for you, and Hulse doesn’t like that.’

I shook my head. The realisation that Leah thought about me - albeit in the same way a sister might think about her kid brother - was a strange and marvellous revelation.

‘So . . .’ Bobby went on, ‘all you have to say is that your father was out on his boat all last week, and didn’t see us swimming to the island. Tell Hulse he’s lying and that you’re not going to do the dare, okay?’

We continued down the track, through the dusk air filled with floating seed heads, and came to the lake that rippled at this time of day like molten gold. The others were beneath the tree, seated among the roots to gain a grandstand view of my swim. Even Satch was there, having vacated his sac especially for the event. He looked bleary-eyed and absent.

I noticed Leah and Rona glance edgily at Bobby, who nodded to them that everything was okay. Hulse had prepared a barbecue, a small fire roasting spitted spearback fish. Last year he’d found a valuable silver lighter in the main street, dubbed himself the Keeper of the Flame, and initiated a series of barbecues that he liked to think were the height of sophistication.

I stood hesitantly by the lake, watching them. Leah gave me a dazzling smile. I could only blush and look away. I told myself that it was better to be regarded by her as a little kid who needed her protection, than not to be regarded at all.

Hulse turned to me, waving a spitted spearback in the air. ‘Care for a last meal, kid?’

I was aware of all the eyes on me. ‘You don’t eat before swimming,’ I heard myself say. ‘Didn’t you know that?’

Hulse merely shrugged and turned away, while the others stared at me as if I’d taken leave of my senses. Perhaps I had. I had not planned to continue with the dare, but at Hulse’s ‘last meal’ jibe it had seemed the only thing to do. To confront Hulse with his lie and refuse the dare would be to admit my fear. To swim to the island, say good day to the alien, swim back and then confront Hulse - now that would be a supreme victory.

Hulse passed the cooked fish around. The others sat with the plates on their laps, reluctant to feast while I drowned. Hulse had stolen a bottle of wine from his father’s cellar. He poured himself a generous measure, enthroned himself among the roots, and gestured with his glass.

‘Your turn, kid,’ he said, gesturing towards the lake.

I began unbuttoning my shirt.

Leah opened her pretty mouth, goggling at me like a roast spearback. Gabby scowled at Bobby, who just shrugged. It was Rona who spoke up, ‘You don’t have to do it, Joe.’ She turned on Hulse. ‘This is silly and unfair anyway!’

But already I’d removed my shirt, kicked off my shoes and turned to face the lake. The island seemed kilometres away. There was no sign, at this distance, of its alien occupant. I took a hesitant step forward, feeling the mud squelch between my toes, then waded out through the shallow water. It was warm after the heat of the day, but it was still a shock when the water reached my crotch. I gasped and, too buoyant to walk any further, launched myself forward. The lake enveloped me and I began a hurried breast-stroke, aware that my feeble technique must have looked comical from the shore. It was then, when I had committed myself and knew that there was no turning back, that my bravado collapsed and I knew fear. I tried to channel my nervous energy into physical action, at the same time conscious that I must pace myself. I slipped into an easy rhythm, controlled my breathing and set my sights on the irregularity of the island ahead. I gained confidence the further I went, and even wondered at the thoughts of my spectators on the shore. I considered turning and waving back at them, to show that I was okay, then thought better of such hubris.

Halfway to the island I paused and trod water, giving my tired arms a rest. So far, though strenuous, the swim had been easier than I had imagined. The water seemed to buoy me along. I realised that a good part of my fear had been that of the swim itself. Now that I had gained confidence in my ability to reach the island alive, the thought of encountering the alien no longer seemed so terrible. Before I set off again, I turned and scanned the shore. My friends were no longer seated beneath the tree; they were standing now and watching me intently. I rolled over and pushed off again, breathing easily and focussing on the knoll of greenery that rose from the flat, shimmering gold expanse.

Perhaps five minutes later I reached the island. My spirits during the approach were lifted by the fact that I could not see the alien. The sandy crescent of the beach was deserted. It occurred to me that even if I reached the island and did not encounter the Zillion, at least I had achieved something that Hulse had been too cowardly to attempt.

My hand struck the lake bottom as it inclined to create the island. I stumbled upright, realising only then how exhausted I was, and forced my legs step by weighted step through the shallows. The lake gave up its grip on me and, abruptly lightened, I stepped ashore and sat down on the sand. Breathing hard, I looked around. It came to me where I was, the amazing fact of my geographical relocation. I stared back towards the shore and made out, tiny beneath the towering tree, the stick figures of my friends. I raised my hand in a lazy wave, and after a delay they signalled in return.

As the seconds elapsed I gained confidence, or perhaps it was nothing more than false bravery as I knew I was being watched by my friends. I climbed to my feet and walked around the island. It was small, and the circumnavigation took less than two minutes; other than the beach and a few rocks, it consisted of tough grass and gorse. When I passed from sight of my friends, I admit that a strange panic took me, an overwhelming need to be on the beach again. I hurried around the far side of the island, scrambling over a tumble of rocks, and breathed more easily when the familiar hollow-trees came into sight. I stood on the sand and waved across the water. I judged that I had given the Zillion sufficient time to emerge and attack me, and that I would not be shamed if I made the return crossing now.

Then some sixth sense - that frisson of awareness that comes when we know we are not alone - made me turn. The Zillion had climbed from his lair and stood watching me, perhaps five metres away. I could not move: a cold paralysis gripped me. We were a tableau that might have symbolised the very first meeting between alien and human, the representatives of different races stunned by fear and suspicion.

I had seen the alien through a telescope, of course. I was aware before the encounter of his general appearance, but at close quarters I was struck by his - its - reality, its animalness. It was bipedal, and squat, and brought to mind nothing so much as a toad, with its moss-green, reptilian skin and bulbous head. That much I had known. What was new to me was the sound of its breathing - long and laboured - and its peculiar stench, like fish that had been left out in the sun to dry.

I would have turned and dived into the lake, but for the thought that the Zillion would be an expert swimmer and would apprehend me with ease. So, instead of fleeing, I did the very opposite. I took a hesitant step forward and held forth my hand.

I was motivated by fear, not bravery - propelled more by the need to ingratiate myself, to abase myself before this monster, than to assume any kind of superiority. Bobby told me later that from the shore I appeared confident and composed, but the truth was that I was shaking and sick with fear.

The alien regarded me unblinkingly for what seemed like minutes, and then made its move. I had expected either that it would turn and flee, as would most animals, or attack me: it did neither, but stepped forward, its gait infirm with what I took to be age, and matched my gesture with its own long, stringy right arm.

I touched its ice-cold fingertips, and the next I recall I was sitting cross-legged before the Zillion who had dropped into an easy, splay-kneed squat.

He regarded me with bulging golden eyes, and then spoke.

His English was limited, and almost incomprehensible. ‘Your name?’

‘Joe, Joe Sanders,’ I replied before I could register amazement at his question.

He touched his chest, where his oiled green skin was marked with three wide golden chevrons. ‘Zur-zellian,’ he said. ‘Welcome.’

‘I ... I swam across. I wanted to see the island. I won’t stay long. My friends are waiting. They’ll be wondering what happened to me. I didn’t mean to disturb you. I’m sorry if I’m trespassing . . .’ I babbled on, a monologue born of equal parts relief and crazed disbelief.

I spluttered to a stop. Zur-zellian blinked his great eyes, once. His voice was a low throaty rumble, and in retrospect each pronouncement reminded me of a release of air, a surge of bubbles though water. ‘How old are you?’

‘I . . . I’m fourteen.’

I was sure that, had I been able to read his reptilian expression, I would have seen that nostalgic wonderment common the galaxy over when oldsters regard the fact of youth.

‘Fourteen. I . . .’ Again, his long, double-jointed fingers touched his chest. ‘I am four hundred of your years.’

I wondered if he was aware of my expression: it must have been exaggerated enough. ‘Four hundred years old! Four hundred?’

‘For two hundred, I have lived here . . .’ He gestured with both hands. ‘In . . .’ He closed his eyes, opened them again. ‘In retreat, meditating.’

Something about his great age, the enormity of his two-century seclusion, scared me. Perhaps I felt again that I was intruding. At any rate, I made my excuses to leave. ‘It’s . . . it’s been good to talk with you,’ I said, jumping up quickly. ‘I must go now. My friends . . . they’re waiting for me.’

He stood, slowly, and regarded me. I thought he said, ‘Come again,’ but I might have been mistaken. I backed off, sketching a hurried wave, and stumbled into the lake. I swam away from the island with irrational panic, as if, contrary to all logic, the alien might decide now to attack. As the minutes passed and I controlled my hurried strokes, I began to regret my hasty departure. I considered all the questions I should have asked him. Had he really invited me back to his island, and would I have the courage to accept his invitation?

Halfway to the shore I paused and, treading water, looked back at the island. The beach was deserted; the meeting might have been a figment of my imagination. I continued towards the stand of hollow-trees, and my friends awaiting my return.

Bobby, Rona and Gabby waded into the shallows and hauled me out, with Leah and Satch not far behind. ‘What happened?’ Gabby squealed. ‘We saw it come from its hole. It was right behind you!’

‘What did it say?’ Bobby asked, awe in his expression.

Leah gripped my arm, her small hands hot on my wet skin. ‘Thought you’d had it, didn’t we? Thought the alien’d got you, Joe.’

I laughed and spluttered explanations, a hurried description of my meeting with the being. I told them that he was called Zur-zellian, from which the name by which we knew him must have derived, and that he had been in retreat on the island for two hundred years.

I fielded other questions, unaccustomed to being the centre of attention, and then looked past my friends to where Hulse stood beneath the tree, glaring at me with homicide in his eyes.

The others saw the direction of my gaze and fell silent, then moved aside as I made my way across to Hulse. I stopped before him, aware of his clenched fists, his glare. At any other time I might have been fazed, but my encounter with the alien had bestowed me with strength, not to mention a righteous anger.

‘You liar!’ I spat at him. ‘You filthy, cowardly liar!’ And, though I had not intended to hit him, I lashed out with my fist and surprised myself when I connected with his cheek. He lost his balance, then his footing, and went slithering down the root system and fetched up in the lake.

A part of me felt like running, to save myself from the beating I knew I was about to receive. But I held my ground. Perhaps I realised that, even if he did beat me to a pulp now, the victory would still be mine.

But instead of attacking me he launched himself from the lake and, pressing his fingers to his cheek, ran past me up the bank and disappeared along the lane. The others watched him, slack-jawed to a person. I was so confused I could not meet their eyes, beset with the emotions of residual rage, elation, and maybe even shame at my outburst of violence and its consequences.

I hurried around the tree, slipped into the crevice, and climbed and climbed, corkscrewing up past our platform, past the first dream-sac that Satch had made his own, until I came to the narrow opening that gave access to the second sac.

So much had happened in the past hour that I needed to be alone for a while. I had taken refuge in the sac at traumatic times in the past - at least, what I considered traumatic times: when Hulse’s bullying had become too much, when I interpreted Leah’s silences as personal snubs - and I’d always emerged calm and renewed.

I crawled along the branch until I came to the great pendant polyp of the dream-sac, its entrance curling from beneath the branch like the horn of some great musical instrument, inviting animals to enter. I stripped off my sodden shorts, left them outside to dry, and squirmed naked down the narrow tunnel and into the sac. Sunlight struck through the diaphanous envelope, turning the air within a golden apricot hue. Immediately upon my entry, the sac began secreting its hallucinogenic gastric juices. The containing membranes ran with a sticky, sebaceous fluid, anointing my nakedness and filling the air with its heady, dream-inducing perfume. Smaller animals than myself would have been digested, but the only effect on humans was a sensuous, vision-filled slumber. I stretched out along the length of the sac, luxuriating in the sensation of the fluid washing over me, and closed my eyes.

A matter of seconds seemed to pass before the hallucinogen began its work; I heard a sharp rapping sound on the branch outside the sac, followed by a small voice. ‘Joe . . .’ I heard, as if from a million miles away. ‘Joe, can I come in?’

Sleepily aware that the sound had an external source, I opened my eyes. Leah’s head poked through the entrance, staring at me. ‘Joe,’ she smiled. ‘Coming in, okay?’

A part of me thought that my greatest wish was coming true, while another ascribed the vision to the effect of the drug. I stared up through the entrance as Leah removed her leggings, and then her blouse, folded them neatly and piled them beside my shorts. She wore only briefs and a halter top now, blindingly white against her brown skin. With a quick glance down at me, she choreographed two swift moves - a quick twist and a bend - and was suddenly and startlingly naked. Feet first she dropped into the sac and lay beside me, looking at me with a neutral expression on her perfect face.

Were it not for the sedative effect of the hallucinogen, I’m sure I would have had a heart attack. The confines of the sac ensured that we were pressed together, our bodies lubricated by the fluid. Leah moved on top of me, ran a hand through my hair and kissed my face perhaps a dozen times, as if experimenting. I held her to me, the feel of her small hot body enough to make me faint. I had never before been with a girl; in my fantasies, our liaisons had been swift and mechanical, bereft of tactile sensations, heft or pressure. What struck me then - or rather later, when I had time to dwell on what had happened - was how gloriously physical and lubricious our lovemaking was. I was ignorant of the moves to make, and could only lie in ecstasy while Leah moved, moaning, to an age-old rhythm.

Later I held onto her, loath to let her go, as I felt the drug take hold and drag me into unconsciousness. In my dreams I was flying through the stratosphere, with Leah by my side.

When I came to my senses, perhaps hours later, I was quite alone. I cried out in despair as it came to me that our tryst had been nothing but a dream. Though how, I asked myself, could something so traumatic and memorable be no more than hallucination? I struggled into a sitting position, then squirmed through the tunnel entrance and into the light of the stars.

Leah was sitting on the branch, her knees drawn up to her chest, watching me with a sleepy smile on her face. I was aware of my nakedness, of Leah’s, as I knelt on the branch before her. I was speechless, sick with apprehension and emotions I had never experienced until then. I reached out, and before I knew it I was holding her and - an indication of my confusion - sobbing against her shoulder.

She ran a hand through my hair, then drew back her head to look at me, and wiped the tears from my cheeks with her fingertips.

‘I didn’t know . . .’ I began, but couldn’t finish. I wanted to say that I didn’t know she cared.

Leah smiled and shook her head. ‘Always liked you, Joe. You just never realised.’

‘But ... but Hulse?’

She whispered, ‘What about him, Joe?’

She reached out, took my hand, and drew me back into the dream-sac.

We were inseparable, after that. Every day from dawn to dusk, and beyond, we spent in each other’s company. She would call at my house as dawn touched the sky, and my mother would find me and say, with a knowing pleased smile, ‘Your little friend’s here, Joe.’

We made love, but mostly we talked. I got to know her, and her me. My infatuation with her matured as I came to understand the person that Leah was; I grew to love her, to love her faults and inconsistencies as well as her attributes, her humour and consideration.

I once asked her about Hulse.

‘What did you see in him, Leah? Why did you like him?’

‘Was silly and stupid and vain,’ she replied with her usual lazy honesty. ‘He was older and strong and he showed an interest in me, and he was the first, and . . . oh, just wanted to be seen with him.’ She smiled at me. ‘Then, came to see what he was really like, how cruel he was. Then you paid him back, made him seem just this big—’ she pressed together her thumb and forefinger. ‘And it wasn’t, like, can’t be seen with him now - it was just, don’t want anything more to do with this creep.’

During that first magical week, I forever expected Hulse to show himself, to disrupt our idyll with threats of violence, or, worse, with violence itself. But he stayed away, and the six of us continued as if the incident beside the lake had never happened. We spent the mornings in the tree, playing games and talking and laughing, and then, with silent consent, we drifted away two by two and made love during the long, hot afternoons. Evenings, we met again and ate packed meals as the sun set and the moons sailed over the lake. We must have gone for walks from time to time, or swam in the lake, but if so I cannot recall these occasions. I remember only the hollow-tree, and the dream-sac, and Leah’s gentle, lazy laughter as we joked and traded secrets.

Hulse’s return to the fold was neither as dramatic or threatening as I had feared. We were gathered on the platform one quiet evening, watching the sun go down, when sounds echoing up through the tree indicated company. All eyes were turned to the crevice as Hulse, showing not the slightest sign of embarrassment or injured pride, emerged bearing bottles of wine.

I should have guessed that someone with Hulse’s vanity would have ulterior motives in rejoining our group. After depositing the wine, he turned to the crevice and held out his hand. From the trunk emerged a girl - no, a woman - several years our senior. She wore a long dress quite unsuited to the conditions, cosmetics in the latest style, and a smile that was as insincere as it was patronising. Hulse introduced her as Susanna, opened the wine and offered a toast. ‘To old friendships,’ he said. ‘May they continue for ever.’

We accommodated the reprobate in our group, made his superior girlfriend as welcome as we were able, and drank until the stars came out. Hulse was affable to me, as if our altercation was forgotten, and neutrally polite to Leah. She regarded him through slitted eyes and, though pleasant enough in his company, confided to me in private that she would never trust him until his last breath.

The following weeks passed in pleasant days spent in the tree or enjoying barbecues beside the lake. I never spoke with Hulse about his lie concerning the dare, and he for his part never stooped to his old barbs or bullying tactics. While I could not claim that we became friends, I was willing to forget old enmities, and we got along reasonably well. Even Susanna, the daughter of a rich businessman from Baudelaire, became one of the group. She exchanged her dress for more suitable clothing, dispensed with make-up and joined in with our juvenile games and jokes. Hulse seemed devoted to her; they too made their excuses, disappeared in the afternoon. I never had any reason to suspect that he was merely using her to his own ends.

There was a solar flare that summer, a great gout of flame that exploded from the bloated sun and illuminated the sky for a full week. We took to camping on the platform at night, watching the spectacular gold and magenta aurora flicker from horizon to horizon. For a month after the flare the temperature climbed day by day; the land was parched and seared, and the authorities declared Mallarme province a total fire ban area. We sunbathed beside the lake and went without our barbecues.

Later that summer Leah and I spent long days alone together, wandering through the hills, staying at rest-houses and hostels - playing, in other words, at being grown up. We spent evenings alone in the high meadows, watching the tiny shapes of the flying Messengers as they went about their business. It seemed inconceivable that the summer might end. I knew that in a month we would return to our respective schools, but a month was a long time, and anyway there would be all the years in the future that we would be able spend together. I was young, and in love, and it was entirely forgivable that I should give no thought to the possibility that we might ever be parted.

Fifty years . . .

As I sat with my back against the rearing hollow-tree, staring out across the sun-drenched lake, it seemed impossible that half a century had elapsed since those innocent children played and loved in the branches high above. If I listened hard enough, I convinced myself that I could hear their laughter, far away.

Tragedy, in retrospect, always seems so terribly arbitrary and accidental - the culminating consequence of so many smaller incidents and occurrences that we are as powerless to prevent at the time as we are after the event. How often down the years had I looked back and tried to discern, in vain, some obvious signal or pointer as to what was about to happen?

* * * *

The prelude to the finale came when Leah asked me about my encounter with Zur-zellian. We lay side by side on our stomachs, our chins hooked over the lips of the fungus, and stared down at the lake. The others had not yet arrived.

Leah lodged her chin on her fist and said, ‘Tell me ‘bout the Zillion again, Joe.’

I laughed and recounted the meeting. I must have gone over the events of the day a hundred times with her. She seemed fascinated with the story, and when I said as much she just gave the laziest of her smiles and drawled, ‘Might never have come to love you, Joe, but for the alien.’

She quizzed me about its coloration, the sound of its voice. She asked me what it had said, and seemed dissatisfied that I had not thought to ask it more about itself.

I dropped a twig over the edge, watched it fall for ages before hitting the water and creating an ever widening concentric ripple.

‘Look,’ I said at last, having made my decision, ‘why don’t we go over to the island and I’ll introduce you to Zur-zellian.’

She lifted her face from her fist and stared at me. ‘You would?’

‘Why not? He’s an old friend, after all. Zur-zellian, meet Miss Leah Reverdy. Leah, meet Mr Zur-zellian, the resident on the island for two hundred years.’

She laughed. ‘We can go today? This afternoon?’

I had prepared myself for a lazy day in the tree. ‘How about tomorrow afternoon?’ I suggested. ‘We can pick salafex pods and paddle over, okay?’

She hugged me. ‘Wonderful,’ she said. ‘Look forward to that.’

The others arrived, shortly after that. It was Susanna’s last day in Verlaine, as she was leaving for Baudelaire with her father in the morning. Hulse brought wine and a hamper and threw a farewell party. I recall little of the actual event, except that I felt a vague uneasiness. With Susanna around, Hulse had been tolerable, even - though I’m loath to admit it - friendly. I wondered what might happen when Susanna left. Would Hulse still seek our company, try to win Leah back? As if to confirm my fears, I caught him sneaking glances at her when he thought I wasn’t looking. Evidently, Leah noticed his attention, too. Later that afternoon, she pulled me to my feet in front of Hulse and suggested out loud that I take her to a dream-sac.

The following afternoon Leah called for me and we walked hand in hand to the lake. I climbed a salafex tree and threw two great seed pods down to her. We stripped to our shorts and kicked off our shoes, then waded into the water, clutching the pods which we used as floats. Now that the time had come for Leah to meet the alien, I could sense that she was as apprehensive as she was excited. Even I felt a tingle of nervousness as we set off from the shore and swam leisurely in the direction of the island.

With the rise in temperature since the solar flare, the water of the lake had warmed. With the seed pod to keep me afloat, this crossing was a luxury compared to the last. We took our time and arrived at the island within fifteen minutes. I held Leah’s hand as we stood on the beach, staring up at the grassy knoll as if expecting the alien to appear at any second. Exhibiting a bravery I would not have felt if I were alone, I squeezed Leah’s hand and led her up the beach to the centre of the island. The grass was tinder-dry and yellowed, rustling against our feet as we walked up the knoll.

Perhaps alerted by the sound of our footsteps, the alien appeared at the entrance to his subterranean lair - a circular hollow for all the world like a rabbit burrow, though larger. At the sight of his broad, green face in the shadows, his golden eyes staring out like beacons, Leah started and jumped back, clutching my hand. I reassured her that it was okay, and waved in greeting to Zur-zellian.

He emerged from the burrow, his arm outstretched in a repeat of the greeting we had exchanged weeks before. We sat down, Leah kneeling cautiously by my side, the alien bending into his familiar, wide-kneed crouch.

I made the introduction. ‘This is Leah,’ I said, ‘my friend.’

Hesitantly, she reached out and touched fingertips with the alien. ‘Welcome to my island, Leah,’ he said in his slow, bubbling voice.

‘Joe . . . Joe told me about meeting you,’ she said hesitantly. ‘Wanted to meet you, ask you questions, if you don’t mind?’

He turned his hand in a gesture that might have indicated acceptance. ‘I will answer what I can.’

Leah turned to me and smiled.

She shrugged and stared wide-eyed at the alien. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘where to begin . . . ?’ She paused, then spoke with exaggerated care, pronouncing each word separately. ‘Of course: where do you come from, which planet?’

Zur-zellian blinked. ‘From Zanthar, the small planet of a small sun beyond the star cluster you humans know as the Nilakantha Stardrift.’

‘Joe said you’ve been here two hundred years,’ she went on. ‘But why Tartarus? Why did you come here?’

‘Because ... I had to go somewhere. Tartarus was quiet, secluded. At that time, there was no community beside the lake. I needed to be alone to meditate, and the island was perfect.’

‘Meditate . . .’ Leah said, savouring the word. ‘Are you a philosopher?’

The alien blinked. ‘I am what humans would call a monk.’

Leah turned to me and made an exaggerated, drop-jawed expression of surprise. She returned her attention to Zur-zellian. ‘A monk? Do you believe in a God?’ We had discussed this between ourselves over the weeks, usually after making love in the evenings and staring up at the stars. Leah had confidently proclaimed herself an atheist, and I, having never really given the matter much thought, agreed that I was, too.

The alien replied, ‘I believe in gods, in many gods. Over the years I have come to know them.’

‘You have?’ Leah goggled. ‘You came to Tartarus to meet the gods?’

I could not tell from its facial features, but I wondered if the alien was smiling at her. ‘To meet the gods and my destiny.’

‘Destiny . . .’ she repeated the word in a whisper. ‘You’ll meet your destiny on Tartarus?’

‘I will remain here until the end,’ he said.

‘You’re staying here?’ Leah almost cried.

‘It is my destiny to go in flame.’

She was shaking her head. I could see her mind working, her disbelief reflected in her features. She was a young girl, and life seemed endless, and she could not comprehend how the alien could so stoically contemplate his death.

‘But you could leave with the evacuation,’ she said.

‘I have had a long life. I have achieved everything. I will follow my destiny.’

We remained on the island for perhaps an hour, Leah asking Zur-zellian all manner of questions. I delighted in watching her response, her exclamations of surprise, her frowns and grimaces, as much as I was interested in the alien’s answers.

At last, after a thoughtful silence, she said slowly, ‘If you’re a monk, a religious person, then can you marry people?’

I stared at her, but she would not meet my gaze.

Zur-zellian replied. ‘On my planet we have certain . . . bonding ceremonies, and I officiated at them, yes.’

‘Then, in that case ... I mean - could you marry Joe and me?’

Still looking at the alien, she found my hand and squeezed, forestalling my protests.

Zur-zellian was old and wise, and must have known that we were young and foolish. In his reply he showed great . . . humanity, if that is the right word to use. He turned his hand in an equable gesture. ‘My blessing would have no legality on Tartarus,’ he said, ‘but, if both of you are willing, I can bless you and so confirm your love in the eyes of the gods.’

By the time we left the island, clutching our seed pods and paddling for the far shore, Leah had arranged a date. We were to be ‘married’ in a week’s time, on her fourteenth birthday.

It remained our secret; we did not want our friends to know in case word got back to our parents. Leah glowed with the knowledge of what was to take place. She seemed radiant, her contented, lazy smile ever-present. The others noticed something changed about her - Gabby even asked her if she were pregnant, but Leah just smiled and shook her head and withdrew into silent communion with her thoughts.

My immediate fears concerning Hulse were unfounded. With Susanna departed, he did not bother us with his company, clearly unwilling to be seen as the odd one out in the group. A couple of times over the next day or two I did see him standing across the lane from the hollow-tree, staring at us with what I interpreted to be solitary longing. Not that his brooding presence overly bothered me: I had other things on my mind, and I no longer considered Hulse a threat.

When he made his move, I was quite unprepared.

We spent the day before our ‘wedding’ walking in the hills, and night was falling by the time we made our way back home. I had decided, since it was a special occasion, that Leah should spend the night with me in my room. I would sneak her in past my parents and for the first time we would make love in my bed.

We were walking up the track, our arms about each other, when Hulse appeared from nowhere and barred our way. He carried a wooden club, and before I could collect my wits and run, he attacked.

I recall only a hail of blows, and Leah’s screamed entreaties for him to stop, before I fell to the ground and tried to squirm away. He came after me, kicked me in the ribs so that I rolled gasping onto my back. Then he straddled my chest. He forced the club beneath my chin and pushed my head back, almost strangling me.

His head hung above me, silhouetted against the star field, and his long fringe fell across his face as he panted with the exertion of keeping me pinioned to the ground. I bucked like a landed fish, but he applied pressure to my neck. I spluttered that he was killing me.

‘I will kill you, you bastard! I’ll kill you if you don’t leave Leah!’

I tried my best to laugh. Then I swore and spat in his face. He grimaced down at me, and his expression, more than his assault, sent a surge of fear though me.

‘It was going so well . . . and then you came along, you bastard!’

And with the epithet he pressed down on the club, and I swear he would have killed me were it not for what Leah did then.

She had been silent for some seconds, and I had assumed she’d gone for help - but now she returned, staggering, burdened with some heavy object. She lifted the boulder above her head and brought it down with terrifying force. Hulse cried out in pain and rolled from me, holding his head and moaning. I sat up, alternately gagging and gasping down great breaths of air. Leah, not done with her attack, launched herself at Hulse and bundled him into the ditch. She leaned over him and hissed invective in his face, the words too rapid and impassioned for me to make out. He cried out in wounded pride at what she said, climbed to his feet and staggered off down the lane. Leah ran across to me and helped me to my feet.

‘Joe! You okay, Joe?’

‘I’ll live,’ I assured her, shaking now at the thought of the assault. ‘The maniac! The crazy, stinking maniac . . .’

‘Come on, we’ll get you home.’

We continued up the lane and into the garden. It was late, and the house was in darkness. Silently we crept though the entrance arch and up the stairs to my room. There Leah inspected me. But for a few minor scrapes and a bruise across my neck, I was fine.

She insisted on bathing my battered torso, and I basked in her concern.

That night we made love in my bed as the cooling breeze lapped over us, and at first light next morning Leah rose quickly and dressed.

‘Happy birthday,’ I said sleepily from the bed.

She came over and kissed me before she slipped away. ‘Meet you on the island at noon,’ she whispered.

‘Why not by the lake? We can swim over together.’

She pushed her fingers through my hair. ‘Don’t you know anything, Joe? Bride and groom don’t go to church together . . .’ And with that she hurried from the room.

I slept, then woke to the sunlight streaming through the window. I lay in bed and smelled Leah’s scent on the sheets, and the thought of what the day would bring was a physical thrill within my chest. An hour before noon I rose and dressed and crossed to the drawer where I’d concealed Leah’s birthday present, a silver necklace. It was then, standing beside the window-hole, that I glanced out and saw activity in the lake.

A moving divot of displaced water showed on the otherwise pristine azure expanse. As I stared, I saw others, five or six - swimmers, I realised with disbelief, heading out from the shore towards the island.

My heart hammering, I pocketed the necklace and ran from the house. I sprinted down the lane, angered that on this day of all days others should decide to go to the island. I emerged from the lane and came to a halt on the shore. I stared out across the water and saw that the first swimmer was Hulse, with the others in his wake; they seemed to be gesturing and shouting at him to turn back.

We had told no one about our marriage, and so his invasion could only be a terrible coincidence. Almost in tears, I cursed Hulse and swore that I would kill him. By the time I dived into the water, deciding not to waste time collecting a seed pod to aid my crossing, Hulse had reached the island.

I swam with all my might, intent only on doing grievous harm to my enemy. The others had gained the island and stood in knot on the beach, clearly remonstrating with Hulse. I was wondering what had happened to Leah, when I saw her. She appeared suddenly on the knoll atop the island, arms akimbo, and stared down at the invaders.

I could tell by her stance that she was furious. Hulse advanced up the beach, followed by the others. Gasping and swimming frantically, I watched as events unfolded in a terrible, inevitable slow-motion.

Hulse confronted Leah and for perhaps a minute they argued: Then he stepped forward and struck her. She staggered back, holding her cheek. At that second Zur-zellian appeared by her side. Hulse went for Leah again, hit her and knocked her down; she stumbled from sight, disappearing down the other side of the rise.

Then Hulse turned to the alien. I cried out in rage and frustration. The others, my friends, Bobby and Gabby, Rona and even the soporific Satch, surrounded Hulse. He pushed them away, ran to the top of the island and, instead of attacking the alien, which I had expected, knelt and seemed to reach into the grass. I saw something silver glint in his hand - his lighter! - and pure dread exploded in my head.

The island went up in a sheet of flame. One second it was an idyllic, grassy isle, and the next it was transformed into a blazing torch. Even Hulse, aware of what he intended, could do nothing to escape the conflagration. He turned and ran as the flames whipped about him, then fell as gouts of fire leapt at him like wild animals. The others stood no chance. Within seconds they were surrounded by a circle of fire, tiny, petrified figures huddling together on the knoll. I cried out for them to run, but, even as I yelled, the fire consumed them and they fell to the ground and rolled in a futile attempt to douse the raging flames. The furnace roar swept across the water, and seconds later I felt the full force of its heat in my face. I cried out Leah’s name. I could not believe that our special day had turned within seconds to tragedy.

I never made it to the island. I was floundering, perhaps a hundred metres from the beach, when I heard a sudden roar and a powerboat cut its engines nearby. Strong hands reached out and dragged me, protesting, to safety. The last I saw, as I grasped the gunnel and stared at the island, was Zur-zellian. He was kneeling on the knoll with his arms in the air, consumed by flame and reconciled to his destiny.

* * * *

I left the hollow-tree and walked along the road and up the hill to the grave-garden overlooking the lake.

The TWC transporter waited on the greensward beyond the cemetery. I judged that I had time to pay my last respects before it departed. I entered the garden and walked through the trees and the gravestones.

Other citizens had come to say their last farewells, too, but the glade that was my destination was empty. I paused on the incline, staring down at the gravestones side by side. Fighting back the tears, I stepped forward and made my way down the slope.

I paused before the first headstone, set proudly in the short, well-tended grass. I wiped my eyes and read the name. ‘Bobby,’ I said. I moved to the next stone. ‘Gabby.’ And the next two. ‘Rona, Satch . . .’ I paused before the next headstone, even now unable to suppress the bitterness that welled up within me. ‘Hulse Gabor,’ I read, and asked him, as I’d asked so many times before, why?

The last stone of all was set a little apart from the others. I crossed to it, knelt and bowed my head. We do these things, we follow well-worn protocol, even though the dead are dead and nothing we can do, no respect we pay, can ever alter that. We go through these meaningless rituals in order to help ourselves, but I knew that in my case it was no help.

I read the headstone: ‘Zur-zellian of Zanthar, an alien visitor to Tartarus, 1271? -1671.’

I closed my eyes and heard the songs of the birds in the trees, felt the heat of the sun on my face. I was almost ready to go, to leave the planet of my birth forever, when I heard a sound behind me.

* * * *

‘Joe . . . Joe Sanders?’ A woman’s voice. ‘Is it you, Joe?’

I turned and stared and was filled with a powerful emotion - that heart-wrenching ache we experience when confronted with a reminder of who we once were, of who we might have become.

‘Leah?’ I said.

She was small, and dark, and the passing years had been kind. She was as beautiful as I remembered her, with just a touch of grey in her short, dark hair.

‘Joe, it’s been so long.’

Instinctively we both reached out, and at arm’s length held hands, and with the physical contact the years seemed to fall away.

I was back aboard the powerboat as it edged around the island, and I felt again that sudden, heart-exploding joy when I saw Leah swimming away from the island. She had climbed aboard the boat and collapsed into my arms with tears of pain and relief, but it had never been the same again.

We had tried to renew our relationship after the tragedy - oh, how I had tried. We met every day during that last month before we returned to our respective schools, but something had happened to change the girl I loved. I tried to talk about what had occurred that day on the island, but Leah remained determinedly locked in the fastness of her silence. Our love had brought about, however indirectly, the deaths of our friends and the alien, and this knowledge was too much for Leah.

The summer holiday came to an end, and I returned to Mallarme city, and when next I came home I sought out Leah, but there was nothing between us, the spark had died. I told my parents that I wished to leave Tartarus after all, and sailed for Earth shortly after my fifteenth birthday.

Now I put my arms around Leah’s shoulders and walked her from the glade. We turned and stared down at the silent graves. At last she asked, ‘Did you ever find anyone, Joe?’

I shrugged. ‘There were one or two women . . . nothing lasting or serious.’ I glanced at her. ‘You?’

‘I met a fine man. We married, had children. You would have approved of him, Joe. He passed away five years ago.’

Unable to find a suitable response, I nodded. ‘You stayed here, on Tartarus?’

She shook her head. ‘After college I left for Earth, then settled on Mars.’

A silence descended as we stared down into the glade. Leah looked up at me, and I saw tears in her eyes.

‘Oh, Joe, I was so young and foolish ... I wanted to talk about what happened. I got your address from your parents, but by the time I reached Earth you’d left. I needed to find you, Joe, to talk to you.’ She drew a long breath and shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. It was all my fault.’

I squeezed her hand. ‘It was no one’s fault, Leah. No one’s. Hulse was unstable. He wanted revenge.’

‘But he would never have ... he would never have done what he did if it hadn’t been for me.’

I corrected her. ‘Leah, he resented Zur-zellian because it was the alien that brought us together. Don’t you remember? I called Hulse’s bluff and swam across to the island, and then you came to me in the dream-sac. Hulse had it in for Zur-zellian ever since then.’

‘It wasn’t that, Joe,’ she whispered in a voice as light as the breeze. ‘It was my fault. It was because of me that he did what he did!’

‘Leah . . .’ I remonstrated.

‘Listen to me, Joe.’ She stared up at me, determination in her large brown eyes. ‘That night, do you remember the night he attacked you, and I beat him off? Well, I told him that I never wanted to see him again, that I hoped he’d drop dead. And I told him we were to be married by Zur-zellian the following day.’

She was silent for long seconds, then went on, ‘Don’t you see, Joe? If I hadn’t told him that, then . . . then he wouldn’t have gone across to the island to disrupt the ceremony. And Bobby and Gabby and Rona and Satch and Zur-zellian . . . they’d all be alive, and you and me might have . . .’

I just stared at her as silver tears coursed down her cheeks, and I thought of our time together after the fire, her silence, her reluctance to talk about what had happened.

She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t bring myself to tell you during those last weeks, Joe, and for all these years I’ve lived with the guilt.’

There was nothing I could say; there are times when words are redundant. As I stared at the woman I had loved a long time ago, I realised that only gestures remained, now, to show her that I was sorry, and that I cared.

We stood by the glade, our arms about each other, as the transporter’s siren sounded that the time had come for us to leave.