Jelly Cooper: Alien

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…

Mr. Fletcher lies motionless, strapped in his cocoon, but his eyes are open and he is very much awake. Agatha yelps.

“Oh great, evil dead is awake.” Humphrey grumbles.

I step toward the captive. “No, you’re not what?”

Blue eyes hold mine. He’s totally calm and his voice doesn’t waver.

“The Hunter. I’m not the Hunter.”

It’s a good voice. He should be a hypnotist with that voice.

“Shut up.”

Mr. Fletcher struggles with his bonds. With a sigh, he gives up. Looking at me and me alone, he starts to speak.

“My name is Gregory Thorn. I’m part of a monitor group that gathers and evaluates paranormal and extra-terrestrial activities on earth. We –

“SHUT UP!” I scream, startling everybody in the room.

“We call ourselves Kavalrion,” he goes on in the same calm voice. If he’s not careful, that voice is going to get him dead. “The group was formed in 1896 by a Javorian called Cal Kavalrion Sakiiri.”

“Sakiiri?”

Your name is Kamile Sakiiri and you’re from a planet called Javoria.

Foggy memories, nothing but snatches from dreams. It doesn’t mean anything. But Fletcher nods.

“We continue the legacy of Sakiiri and catalogue accounts of paranormal experiences here on Earth.”

His eyes are begging me to believe him and I hesitate. Fletcher grabs his chance.

“When he landed on Earth, Cal was lost, confused, and close to death. He was taken in by a local Innkeeper and nursed back to health, but it was a slow process. During his fever, he rambled about a purple planet with yellow skies. He chanted foreign, alien words, which scared the Inn-keeper half to death, and tossed and turned at night muttering about a hunter following him, tracking him. Fearing a witch-hunt, the Inn-keeper, Maurice Emanuel Thorn, nursed his patient in secrecy and kept his fears to himself.”

Thorn.

He stops, waiting for a sign that I believe him.

“Go on.”

Humphrey jumps up. “No way, Jel. This is a trick.”

I pat his hand and turn back to Fletcher.

“I’m not letting him go, Humph, I’m just letting him talk. That’s all.”

Grumbling, Humphrey backs off, taking a seat on the bed next to Rhiannon.

“Fine,” he growls. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Rhiannon leans in to Humphrey and pats his knee and nods her head in an ‘I’m with you, kiddo’ kind of way. It makes me realised how much my world has turned in such a short space of time.

I reluctantly nod to Fletcher. “You’ve got five minutes.”

He doesn’t waste time.

“Cal made a slow recovery. He was grateful to the Innkeeper; indebted to him for his kindness until death, but he didn’t trust him. He couldn’t understand why Maurice had put himself in such danger for a stranger. He plotted to escape once his strength was back. He would have run but something happened.”

“Three minutes.”

Fletcher’s left eye starts to twitch.

“Maurice took Cal his breakfast every morning while it was still too dark for anyone else to be awake and left it at the side of his bed. He couldn’t risk taking it any later for fear of bumping into other guests staying at the Inn. He hid the foreigner in the attic room. One morning, Cal woke early. Hearing approaching footsteps, he drooped his eyelids and pretended to sleep. What happened next would change the course of both their lives.”

Fletcher hesitates.

Humphrey points at him but looks at me. “He’s making it up Jel! Can’t you see?”

Fletcher starts talking quickly.

“The door swung open and Maurice entered the room carrying a tray. The door closed without him touching it. Maurice bent forward and placed the tray on the bedside cabinet. As he turned away, he caught the rim of a glass with his elbow, pitching it clean off the edge of the tray. The glass fell towards the floorboards. On impulse, Cal sat up in bed and reached out to catch it, but the glass stopped mid-flight and placed itself back on the tray, in its original place.

Maurice had kept Cal’s secret so diligently because he had been keeping one of his own. The Inn-keeper was telekinetic; he could levitate objects and move them with nothing more than his thoughts. On that day, an alliance was formed between the two men that lasted the rest of their lives and beyond. They would strive to understand the mysteries of this planet until Cal had gathered enough knowledge to get him home to his own, to Javoria. You’re home, Kamile.”

I jump and turn away.

“I don’t know that your story is true and, even if it is, any Hunter would have that information.” I know that my voice sounds strange, but it won’t gain strength. I walk to the window and stare at the avenue below. I hug myself, feeling tired, afraid and responsible: responsible for getting my friends involved in this madness and responsible for keeping them alive.

“You haven’t convinced me that you’re not the Hunter.”

“Are you so convinced that I am?”

Agatha appears my elbow. She murmurs in my ear.

“He’s bleeding, Jay. That knock on the head you gave him might have done real damage. Should we do something? I mean,” she glances back at the man pinned to the ground. “What if he is telling the truth and he dies or something? We’ll have killed a teacher.”

“He’s not a teacher, either way, is he? He’s been lying all along, why should I believe him now?” I stamp my foot. “No. There is no way I’m letting him go until he gives us some concrete evidence of who he is.”

I stomp over to Fletcher. Using my powers, I bring him upright.

“Convince me that you’re not the Hunter. I want proof.”

He throws me a smile so oddly familiar that it freaks me out.

“Take off my glasses.”

I blink. “Huh?”

“My glasses. Take them off. You’ve got me pinned, so you’ll have to do it yourself. Go ahead, take them off.”

I lift his glasses free. Blue eyes stare back at me. Confused, I can’t look away.

“Take out my contact lenses.”

Something uncurls itself in my stomach.

“No.”

Fletcher curses under his breath.

“Come on, Jelly. Take out my contact lenses.”

My hair swings as I shake my head.

“Oh for Heaven’s sake,” Rhiannon leaps off the bed. “You lot are so squeamish.” She pushes me out of the way. “Here, let me do it.” She leans forward and opens his eyelid with her finger and thumb. With her other hand, she carefully pinches the lens away from Thorn’s eye.

I turn away.

Agatha screws up her face. “Yuk, that’s gross.”

Rhiannon ignores her. “Hey! They’re tinted! Cool.”

Fletcher blinks. “Good, now the other one.”

Rhiannon repeats the procedure with the other eye and flounces back to take her seat on the bed, the contact lenses collected in the palm of her hand.

“The glasses aren’t magnified,” he says in his low, even voice. “Neither are the contacts, but both were necessary for two reasons. I didn’t want to alert the Hunter if he saw me and I had to disguise my real identity from the descendent of Cal Sakiiri until it was safe to reveal myself.” He pauses. “Jelly. Turn around.”

Unable to do anything else, I turn.

A brilliant image explodes in front of my eyes and I stagger as the moons of Javoria appear. My vision fills with the pale yellow sky and craggy mountains. Home.

As suddenly as it appears, the image fades. My eyes fly to Fletcher’s.

“Where…?”

The question dies in my throat.

Staring back at me are two crystal clear, deep green eyes. Burning in their depths is a pale flickering flame.

“That’s not possible,” I whisper.

Staring back at me are my eyes – my eyes. In every fibre of my being, I know that I’m looking at one of my planet’s descendants. Somehow, he and I are connected, and there is no way on Javoria that Fletcher is the Hunter. I feel that with a certainty that goes right to my core.

I retract the bonds and launch myself into his arms.

“What the..?”

Humphrey is on his feet in a heartbeat.

“Sit down, Sir Lancelot and let me explain.” Gregory Thorn smiles as he holds me, my head buried in his shoulder. “Does it look like I’m hurting her?”

Humphrey lets Agatha pull him back and settle him on the bed. He doesn’t take his eyes off Thorn.

“You can put me down now.”

Embarrassed, I ease myself away.

“Is it just me, or has Jelly lost the plot?” Rhiannon looks from face to face in utter confusion. “Have I just bashed myself black and blue for nothing?”

Thorn winces, seeing her bruises. “I’m sorry about that. You were choking the life out of me. I shouldn’t have panicked and flailed around; I’m sorry. This whole thing did not go as planned and, believe me, I have sat and imagined this day more often than you could ever imagine.”

“But you acted so…weird,” I say.

Gregory Thorn shakes his head and blushes. “I know, I’m so sorry. I was so worried when you didn’t come to school and so excited to meet you, finally. Then I tracked you here, the last place I thought to find you. I thought something had happened to you”, his eyes flick to Rhiannion, “I panicked and I guess I got carried away.”

Abruptly, Agatha leaves the room. Concerned, I follow her.

“What’s up? Where are you going?”

She systematically opens the doors on the landing and smiles as she finds what she’s looking for. “He’s still bleeding,” she disappears into the bathroom. Her voice floats out of the door, “You go back in, I’ll be with you in a minute.”

Agatha is something else.

Returning to the bedroom, I pause in the doorway. Gregory Thorn looks up at me and smiles. Relief so raw it leaves me breathless runs through the entire length of my body. I’m not alone in this fight anymore. There are others.

Sing hallelujah.

Once Agatha finishes bathing his head, we sit in the kitchen. The food strewn across the table, untouched. Thorn sits and tells us his story.

“Cal and Maurice began travelling around the country searching for people like them: extraordinary people, people with hidden gifts. Cal told Maurice about Javoria and the battle between his people and the Hunters. He fled Javoria in a life pod. The Bashrak were rising.”

The Bashrak. The Hunters. The enemy of my people..

“They attacked his village, drove out the families; killed whoever they found. He almost lost his life in the fight to escape. The pods were hidden in one of the deep caves. He scrambled into one and took off. He saw the base blow up from the air. He lost everything. As the pod flew through space, Cal swore that he would return to Javoria one day and rid his home of bashrak.”

He was sad. Righteous, but sad.

“He never made it back, did he?”

Thorn looks at me. With his hair tangled and his clothes rumpled, he looks young and old at the same time. He looks worn down.

“No, he never made it back to Javoria. He tried until his death in 1979, but he never found a way back. His pod crashed off the coast of Scotland and sank without a trace. Cal was lucky to survive the landing at all in his weakened state. He was washed up on the beach and the pod vanished into the sea. He never gave up hope, though. He became convinced that somewhere on Earth there was someone who could help him. He often said that nothing in this universe happened without a reason and that fate had brought him to Earth and had delivered him into the hands of Maurice.”

“Sorry to burst the bubble, but isn’t this all a bit too fortunate? I mean, what are the chances of both Cal and Jelly landing here on Earth?”

“Humphrey –

“Oh, come on Jel! You aren’t actually buying this are you?”

“Humphrey! Stop it!”

“No,” Thorn holds up his palm. “It’s a good question. There are probably hundreds of thousands of Javorian refugees scattered throughout the galaxies. Cal had to leave because of the war; he had no other choice than to leave. Fate brought him to Earth, but there are sure to be descendants from his time on other planets. It’s probably the same with Jelly. For some reason, fourteen years ago, Kamile’s parents feared a threat of some kind and sent her from Javoria to Earth. The fact that Cal had landed here almost a hundred years ago is just a coincidence.”

“Satisfied?” I ask Humphrey, raising my eyebrow in a silent challenge.

“I suppose.”

Thorn grins. “OK for me to go on, Mr. Goddard, or would you like to get the thumbscrews out?”

Humphrey unwraps a chocolate chip muffin and ignores him.

Thorn’s grin grows wider. He leans towards me and nods his head at Humphrey.

“Don’t worry, he’ll come round.”

He leans back in his chair and smiles at Agatha.

“Yes Agatha. Can I help you with something?”

Agatha’s mouth drops open. Thrown, she stammers,

“I was just, erm, wondering how you figure in all of this. I’ve worked out that you’re a descendent of Maurice Thorn, but I haven’t got any further than that. And, um, I was also wondering; how did you find Jelly?”

“Yes, how did you find me?”

Thorn looks to the window and rubs his face.

“Jelly, I know how much this means to you and how much you want to hear more, and I know how selfish this is going to make me sound, but I’m drained. I’m not pure blood Javorian and I’ve exhausted myself today. I haven’t had to draw on my powers like that before and it’s left me weak. Can you wait until tomorrow?”

“No,” I say, “but I think I’ll have to. You look like a man who’s had a bump to the head and is about to keel over.”

He pushes the heel of his hands into his eyes and whispers a thank you.

“That’s right,” Humphrey says, spraying the table with muffin. “Make good your escape and leave us hanging.” He swallows and clears his throat. “Questions get too hard?”

Sometimes Humphrey can be a real dick.

Thorn rises to leave and I walk him to the front door.

“I’m sorry about Humphrey. He’s worried about me. He’s over-protective.”

“Then you should never apologise for him.”

The lump in my throat won’t be swallowed away.

Thorn takes my hand and gives it a squeeze. “I’ll see you tomorrow at school. Come to my classroom at lunch. We’ll take it from there. Get some sleep tonight; you look like you need it.”

“You too,” I smile, squeezing back. He leans around me and calls back to Humphrey,

“The group set up by Cal and Maurice. Its name is Kavalrion. Google it.”

“I will,” Humphrey manages around another mouthful of muffin.

Thorn chuckles and lets himself out.

I watch him until the front door closes and he’s gone.