Humpty's bones

soil split open with the ease of breaking apart freshly baked pies… oh, but what kind of fruit lay inside… what fillings… what flavours? Did the First Man really feed those notions into her head? Was he truly responsible for changing how she perceived the world? Had he reached out a mysterious, unseen hand and touched her soul? Eden gasped — a sense of wonder that merged with utter terror erupted inside of her.

Eden didn’t realise when it first happened but she’d fallen. She lay sprawling amongst thick grass that swarmed over her like vines. Her heart pounded. The water in the dyke rose. In that dark liquidity were shapes. Panting, she stared at what drifted there by the dozen. They were pear-shaped vessels… no, it’s more than that… they were like inflated balloons. Completely transparent. A liquid as black as gloss paint filled those sacs. Through the membrane she glimpsed moving things. I’ve seen those before. Back when I had that attack of vertigo in the excavation pit. Even then the First Man must have been showing me visions of the future. He needs me…

And when she looked, from where she lay at the edge of the watercourse, looked while the storm winds tore and rippled the grass, looked as her mind spun wildly on twin streams of horror and fascination, she saw what moved and twisted and pulsated and lived inside the tightly stretched membrane. Inside the transparent eggs, each the size of a beach ball, were figures. The glossy, black liquid washed over the naked bodies, but she discerned baby-like forms, with small arms and legs, yet possessing heads with adult faces. From smeared faces pairs of bright, intelligent eyes gazed through the membrane at her. The current in the dyke carried the shapes downstream. More rose to the surface to present their homunculus cargo to the light of that stormy day before slipping away. The urge gripped her to leap into the water to retrieve those inflated balloons. In her mind’s eye, she saw herself swimming to the bank with one, then tearing open the sac — the black liquid would gush out over her hands — that done, she’d draw out the tiny figure, wipe the black stuff from its face with handfuls of grass then -

‘Miss!’

An iron grip prevented her from leaping into the dyke. Dazed, she turned to see the man there. His prominent nose almost touched hers as he eased her from the water’s edge.

‘Don’t go in. The banks are too steep. You’d never climb out again.’

‘But I’ve got to save them… they’re being washed away… ’

‘Save what, Miss?’ Mr Hezzle kept a grip on her arm.

‘The First Man must have made them… they’re like babies, but have the faces of fully grown adults… ’

‘Remember, what I told you, Miss? Back at the house? About what he can do? He has strange thoughts. Somehow he makes them come out of objects; for instance, sometimes it’s from out of a tree, or the ruins of that church over there. It can seem as if the trees or the walls talk to you, or they look like other things; it can make you feel as if your heart will burst with excitement. Or terror.’

‘I saw them. Little men in transparent bags with something like black oil; as if they were in wombs… they floated down that… ’ She regarded the dyke. ‘They were there.’

Water reflected a grey sky. The stream tugged at strands of green weed; nothing else.

‘He made me see them?’ she asked.

‘He does that to others, too. And me. I heard a call come from your aunt’s house… from those bones… but they’re dead like any bones found in the earth. There’s nothing special about them, any more than the bones of a dead king or a scientist or an artist are any more special than the bones inside us both. But he made me hear the bones call my name. I lay awake at night… all the time I could hear them crying. It gets so you’re excited by the sound — as well as scared.’

She began walking. The shadow figure was far away now. ‘I want to talk to him.’

‘No.’

‘But we’ll lose him.’

Mr Hezzle sighed. ‘You’re a brave one, I’ll give you that. You’ve got guts. Nearly everyone I’ve ever seen, who got anywhere near him, turned and fled. They couldn’t cope with his effect on them. They panicked. I’ve seen grown men jump into that dyke just to get away. More than one poor wretch has drowned doing that.’

‘I’m not frightened of him,’ Eden said with conviction. ‘I’ve been reading about the First Man. What’s more, he’s reached out to me. Mind to mind. Just as you say he can. I figured out what he is. The Gift will transform our lives.’

‘I was right. You are intelligent. But you don’t know everything about him.’

‘He belongs to a different race of humans?’

‘Yes.’

‘He’s the last of his kind?’

‘That, too.’ Mr Hezzle released her arm as he realised she’d regained her senses.

‘So, I need to talk to him.’

‘He won’t talk, Miss. He can’t.’

This gave her pause. ‘Why?’

‘Eighteen hundred years ago: there were just two of the First Men left. Brothers. That’s the elder of the pair.’ He nodded at the part-burned bone in her hand. ‘The younger brother knew he’d be the last one. He knew other things, too… ’ Raindrops hit the grass. ‘Miss, we’re going to get soaked if we stand out here. Come back to your aunt’s house. I’ll explain there.’

‘No. Tell me now.’

He shrugged. ‘If that’s what you wish.’ Thunder rumbled. Across the fields a blue vein of lightning burned bright against black cloud. ‘But you’ll get only the basics of it. It’s not safe to be outdoors. When the land is flat like it is here it turns people into targets for lighting. Not many trees, you see.’

She cast yearning eyes along the path; the shadow figure had gone. Eden ached to meet him. ‘The figure we saw today, was that the younger brother?’

‘That it is. Eighteen centuries ago, both knew that their time was nearly up. They lived in a thatched hut just where Dog Star House is now. Inside their bodies was the seed that would transform us Homo sapiens, into a species that would be as wise as them. The things they could do. They could heal the sick. They drained marshes. They knew how to farm the land better than anyone. And to smelt new kinds of metals that never rusted.’

‘What else?’

Lightning flashed closer, and a crack of thunder broke overhead. ‘I said that you’d get the short history. You might not fear this kind of weather.’ He turned up his collar. ‘I do. See that? Lying in the field over there?’ He nodded at a pale blob in a far-off meadow. ‘A cow. Just this minute she got struck by lightning. She’ll have been dead before she hit the muck.’ Rain fell harder. ‘Come back to the house, miss.’

‘No.’

‘Don’t think of trying to find him. You won’t. Unless he wants to be found, then you’ll wish you hadn’t.’

‘Something happened to him, didn’t it?’

He nodded. ‘This is it. The short version. Then I’m going whether you come or not. The two brothers were the last of their species. They lived long lives. Longer than any of us. But then the older of the brothers started to fail. He might have been a hundred years old or a thousand years old. Nobody really knew. So he decided his younger brother must be the keeper of the Gift. They worked together to change the brother’s biology. Whether it was through thought, or by drugs they concocted, nobody knows. To all intents, however, he became immortal. He’d live for as long as it took for human beings to understand his teachings and for him to father enough children to start a new race of human beings.’ He shuddered as the storm grew closer. ‘You know, we might assume that if the body doesn’t age the mind wouldn’t age with it. But when the brother died, and my ancestors buried him, the last of the First Men suffered the solitude. He spoke to us, but didn’t relate to us in the same way as he could with his brother. So although his body never aged, his mind did. Ultimately, he was flesh and blood. Imagine his life: He’d find love with a woman; there were children. I’m one of the descendents. Of course, he would live forever. The human woman inevitably grew old and died. He took other wives. But each time, of course, they aged… they died… they were mortal. The First Man grieved. It reached a point where he couldn’t bring himself to make friends or to take another wife. Although his children were long-lived eventually sheer old age took them. He and only he was immortal. For some reason, he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, repeat the process on others that gave him such longevity. He didn’t age. He didn’t get ill. Generations in this village came and went; he retreated from life. How long it took I don’t know. It might have been a thousand years after he watched the first Romans approach his house and