They Who from the Heavens Came (The Wisdom, #1)

They landed in a sloped ditch at the edge of a vast green field, which was wet with rain and studded with large sandstone blocks. Their robes fell gracefully over them, covering them like shimmering eggs in the grass. Then the eggs hatched, revealing the golden giants.

They flew out of the ditch and landed between two stones, each even taller than they were. A herd of sheep marked with red Xs bleated in terror and ran the other direction, past an old cobbled church, while a ram, bestowed with massive spiralled horns, dared to approach Horace and bellowed at him as best it could. Horace took one step and sent a tremor through the ground. The ram rushed in the direction of its fleeing herd. Horace shot it a look of disgust and briskly wiped the dewy blades from his cloak.

‘I thought they couldn’t see us,’ Horace said. Every syllable dripped with disdain for the planet they had been sent to.

Quetzal was busy fingering the black cube he’d brought from Nibiru. ‘They can’t,’ he said. ‘At least, not now. I’ve surrounded us in a sort of invisible bubble. We can see out but they can’t see in.’

It was a good thing, too, because they didn’t exactly blend in with the landscape.

Horace turned in a circle and took in his surroundings. ‘Is this Avebury?’ he asked in disbelief.

‘Mm.’ Quetzal passed a hand over the cube and stared into it like a fortune teller. Horace only saw black on the cube’s face, but Quetzal looked dazzled by it, as if images danced up into his private vision.

‘What happened to this place?’ Horace wondered. It looked nothing like he remembered.

He approached a stone he estimated weighed about 80 tonnes and ran one of his broad hands over its surface. It was cool to the touch and sparked with residual energy. This was Horace’s talent, what had landed him a place on the Council. The energy pooled in his fingertips and flowed through him, filling him with the memory of the people who had built the ancient megalith. A moment longer and he could –

‘We’re approximately 86 miles from our target,’ Quetzal interrupted his thoughts.

Horace drew away from the stone. ‘Your target, you mean. How do you know this child of yours has really found the Wisdom?’

The other giant looked up, at last. ‘I don’t. But I’ve been tracking the child for years and there’s never been any movement – until a few Earth months ago. I’ve just located it in a town called Ealing, a bit east of here.’

Horace chewed over this information. ‘That means nothing,’ he decided. A sheep bleated somewhere in the distance, and another sheep responded.

‘In itself, that’s true,’ Quetzal conceded. ‘But there are other signals coming from around the same area. They seem to be converging. That can’t be coincidence. Even if the Wisdom hasn’t been found…something is happening.’

Horace grumbled. He hated when Quetzal had a point. ‘Where do we begin, then?’ he moved on. ‘With the human, or the other signals?’

‘He’s not entirely human,’ his companion reminded him.

‘Fine – but my question stands.’

Quetzal gazed back at the cube, as if it might provide him with the answer. Finally, he said, ‘I’m unsure.’ He looked up and around, as if he’d only just noticed their surroundings. ‘The energy levels here are low.’

‘Trace energy,’ Horace agreed. ‘As if the place hasn’t been used for centuries. Which I’d assume it hasn’t, based on the state of disrepair. Weren’t these stones once cuboid?’

Quetzal took in the triangular peaks of the sarsen blocks, jaggedly rising skyward. There were hundreds of them, forming two concentric circles that could only be seen from the air, surrounded by the circular ditch into which the giants had first landed. A village had been built within and around the megalith. That hadn’t been there during Quetzal and Horace’s time on Earth. It was unclear whether the village demonstrated reverence or disregard for the work of the Ancients.

‘Much time has passed,’ said Quetzal. ‘The world is not as we knew it. No doubt, humans are not as we knew them.’

Horace gave an involuntary shudder. He’d never been fond of humans.

‘My original point,’ Quetzal continued, ‘is that there was a time when the energy readings in Avebury would have been incomparably high, but now they hardly register on my sensor. And yet….’ He paused to stare into the cube, once more. ‘Yes,’ he murmured. ‘There can be no mistake. The readings in this town – Ealing – they’re like nothing I’ve ever seen before. They’re too high not to investigate.’

Horace dusted his hands on his thighs and straightened to his full height. His long black mane slapped his face in the English summer wind. ‘Well, then. Let’s start there. Perhaps that’s where your human – apologies, part human – was leading us, anyway.’

Quetzal pursed his lips. ‘Perhaps. We could fly there. It wouldn’t take long.’

‘No,’ said Horace. ‘Enough travelling for one day. Take us there now.’

Quetzal gave him a look, as if to say, Have it your way.

He pressed the cube and the field disappeared. In its place was a long street lined with repetitive conjoined houses. The only way one could see the divisions between them was to look at the paint jobs. Most of the houses were an aged white, but every so often one stood out in bright blue, or salmon.

Horace turned left, and then right. ‘Which one is it? They all look the same. How can people live like this?’

He couldn’t imagine being crammed into tiny boxes the way these people were. His was a world of grandeur, historically of pyramids and presently of glass and translucence – of buildings built for a purpose, to map out the stars, to send messages across the universe. By contrast, the narrow English road struck him as claustrophobic and soulless.

Quetzal pointed to a small sky blue mid-terraced house, surrounded by a short white fence. ‘There’s a very strong signal coming from in there. Ground floor.’

‘Are we still invisible?’

Quetzal nodded.

‘And they can’t hear us?’

‘They can’t.’

‘Then let’s get this over with.’

Horace stomped loudly down the road, in the direction of the house. Quetzal shook his head and followed after. They stopped outside a broad window to the right of the front door. The late sunshine meant the curtains were open. Inside was a human boy with fair hair. He appeared to be in the middle of some sort of dance. His right arm made deliberate strokes through the air, as if he were drawing something, but without a canvas.

A moment later, the movement stopped and he held out both his hands, palm up, to catch something that dropped right out of the air. He leaned down to set it on the floor and a cat hurried over. The boy had apparently made cat food materialise out of nothing.

Horace’s mouth fell open. It was astonishing. They had lived for millennia and somehow a pathetic human child had managed to do –

‘Magic!’ Horace cried in horror. He whirled on Quetzal, feeling ready to hit him for no clear reason. His body flooded with adrenaline and his black eyes bulged out of their lined slits. ‘How can he do that?’ he demanded of Quetzal, as though it were somehow his fault.

Quetzal stood very still, watching the boy and his cat. ‘Why would I know?’ he asked.

‘Because that’s why you’re here: to know everything,’ said Horace. He grunted in irritation and paced up and down the walkway to the house. ‘It’s not right. No human should be able to do what that boy just did, Quetzal. It’s unnatural.’

To Horace’s annoyance, Quetzal hardly looked up at him. He was gazing at that black cube again. He ran his hands over its smooth shining surface, searching for something.

Horace stopped pacing and snapped his head at Quetzal. ‘Are you even listening to me?’ he asked, his voice shrill with rage.

‘Mm,’ said Quetzal, his eyes still on the cube. ‘Sort of.’ His cloak, invisible to anyone else who could see them, but not to Horace, fluttered slightly in the breeze that was overtaking them. It made the ancient symbols fold in on themselves, forming new meanings.

‘What are you doing?’ Horace demanded. He glanced over the other giant’s shoulder. All he saw was something like a sheet of obsidian that had been polished to reflective perfection. If he looked really closely, he could almost see it ripple, like water in darkness, but nothing more. ‘What do you see?’

Quetzal took his time in replying. His golden face was strained with concentration, absorbed with whatever miracles were being performed just for him.

‘He’s part Sirian,’ he said finally, a strange note creeping into his voice. He looked up at the other giant, whose eyes were large with surprise. ‘I don’t know how or why…but the Halflings have evolved.’