I.
Shudders bit into the mechanism as the stars slipped away from under our feet. Clicks and hisses resounded throughout the vast depths of space. The globe spun before us in patches of emerald and azure and swirls of white, and we sliced into its unfurled atmosphere, gripping the edges of our seats as we made planetfall.
II.
And this is how we come to red-brick earth with its dusk-skinned people, he tells me in the language of hands and soft sounds, as we sit cross-legged on the rocky outcrop. His own skin gleams pale silver in the moonlight. Below us, the plains stretch away, dotted with the orange glow of cooking fires in my village, their ghostly plumes of smoke curling into the chill night air. In the distance I can see the great hulking shadow of the vessel in which he and four others had arrived, many moons ago.
Great-grandfather told me about men from the stars, I sign to him, but they were the colour of fresh grass and they spoke in the tongue of insects, low gurgles and gentle chirps.
He shakes his head. Not us. From somewhere else. The universe is large.
It is strange that we understand so much of each other, whereas my people have difficulty communicating with the tribes that are too far west. Perhaps his race can open the pathways of the mind and the soul. It is a neat trick.
When we came here before, he says, there were tall buildings and the people had lily-white skin. They sailed the ocean on large ships. He looks around, at the rugged expanse of cracked ground. But there is no ocean here.
I consider this. I consider “ocean” and the way it rolls off the tongue, and in my mind’s eye there is water, water everywhere, too vast and too deep for the heart to hold. Perhaps that was another place, I suggest.
No. It was here. Same coordinates. Different side.
Side?
The world is round, he tells me, and he digs his hands into the soil, scooping up enough rust-flecked earth to shape into a little ball between his palms. Holding it up for my inspection, he tilts his head at the stars that spread out over us like a blanket of spangled silver. “Home,” he says out loud, lips and tongue forming the language of my people, rough and parched, yet coherent. He strokes one side of the ball with an elegantly tapered fingertip. “Side of ships and white people.” He turns it slightly and makes another mark on its grainy surface. “Here, us, now.”
III.
I had always hated Mexico in the summer. It was too hot, too garish. The tires of our truck whirled into the earth, sending up static clouds of dust and heat. To top it all off, there was a strange ringing noise in my ears.
When I complained about this phenomenon to my guide, he nodded sagely. “The Taos Hum,” he said in his liquid accent. “People hear it in this area. No one knows where it comes from. Some think it’s electromagnetic waves, while others think it’s an alien signal from long ago, beckoning to outer space.”
“Aliens. Right.” I grinned in spite of my bad mood. “You get a lot of those here, it seems.”
He shot me a sly glance. “They found a skull near this spot. Centuries old. Small, like a child’s. It looked human except for some... differences.”
“An alien skull?” I said, my interest piqued.
“Maybe. Or something else.” He shrugged. “They studied it and found human DNA. Perhaps it is a hybrid.”
“You’re saying that, centuries ago, an alien came to Earth and had an affair with one of the locals?”
“I am saying,” he replied calmly, “that the world is full of mysteries.”
*
It’s a bad idea to wander off into the desert alone, especially at night, but the Hum was driving me crazy. When we set up camp I couldn’t sleep, so I decided to go for a brisk stroll. I walked off with my flashlight and emergency kit, leaving my guide snoring peacefully in his tent.
It’s never truly dark in Mexico. The moon lights your way. Its silver glow settled on the dusty plains like a fine mist as I walked on, surrounded from all sides by the soft thrills and gentle murmurs of unseen nocturnal animals. Perhaps it was the veiled unearthliness of the moment that prevented me from being surprised when I saw the alien.
His skin was the colour and translucence of pearls, and his large eyes contained the night sky in them. He spoke haltingly in guttural tones that I recognized as the language of the Otomi Indians, which my guide was fluent in .
“No,” I began to tell him, “I’m not Otomi. I’m from the States---”
I stopped abruptly, because it felt like a cool silver voice had just slipped inside my head, even though his own lips were still.
I have heard your tongue before, but that was on the other side of the ocean.
My forehead creased. “Do you mean Britain? Well, we did come from there, but that was such a long time ago.”
How long?
“Um.” History was never my strong suit, so I took a shot in the dark. “Hundreds and hundreds of years?”
The starlight in his eyes flickered as he absorbed this information. I shifted my weight from one foot to another, wondering why I wasn’t freaking the hell out. Maybe he was manipulating my emotions. He seemed to be hacking into my mind well enough.
I am too late, then. It was almost a sigh.
“For what?”
For her, he replied simply. I tried. I came back as soon as I could.
There wasn’t even a loud bang or a flash of light. He was just suddenly gone, vanished into thin air. It wasn’t until a few heartbeats later that I realized the ringing in my ears had stopped.
IV.
Sometimes in the willowy haze of sleepy afternoons, we play a game--- I speak in his language, and he speaks in mine. There’s no clear winner, but that’s never the point.
“What is planetfall?” I ask him as the sun begins its slow descent, casting the plains in red-gold light and shadows.
“When you enter world,” he says, stroking my hair. “When there is a shaking. A blur at the edges. The stars disappear.”
“It hurts?”
He makes the sign for laughter. “All things hurt.”
♥ i love this thea :) 