Unaccountable Journey by Joseph Smedley
Published 22 December 2011 as part of the Writing East Midlands and Lincolnshire Echo Short Story Competition
It seemed a crack-brained idea. The astronomer said a star had appeared, out of nowhere, and was prompting him to move. Something to do with pulses, a radiation, a bit beyond me, but people like him have a grasp of such things. My field is in other directions. We have corresponded in certain areas of common concern and get on well enough in general. The same for the third in our trio. He was a doctor of sorts: a kind of philosophic practitioner, interested in the body-mind relationship.
What, then, were we to make of this proposition? Most stars are fixed, so far as we know, except for the occasional shooting star, which darts about haphazardly, and certainly was not to be followed. This must be a comet, something special, but how was it concerned with us? And how could it move in some pre-arranged way towards a fixed destination, whilst yet retaining some strange autonomous pull in relation to any proposed journey which we might make?
These were imponderable questions, not to be answered in any abstract way: we either put them to the test by a practical undertaking, or abandon the thing as a quirky obsession by an observational scientist.
We assembled to consider. Yes, the star seemed to beckon, but in which direction to travel, and to what purpose? We were still at a loss, and retired in perplexity to our rooms. The night was disturbed. Half-asleep and half-awake, occurrences seemed to be afoot, apparitions to materialise out of the half-darkness. We did not know of immaterial things, of things unamenable to normal reasoning; of some unsubstantiated god, the general drift of whose nature was common among ordinary people, in a somewhat superficial way: such were not our concern. But certainly it seemed there was some connection between us and this remote star, unsettling and demanding of explanation before we could be allowed our peace and rest.
As I say, within this half-state of sleeping and waking, something occurred which happened simultaneously to all three of us in our separate rooms and our separate consciousness, as though we experienced the one happening and were all an indivisible part of it. It seemed some being, or not-being, stood before us, the like of which we had not seen before, as if we were seeing and yet not seeing; something that penetrated our consciousness, forcing us of a necessity to give it shape, and grasp its significance. It assumed the form of a man, for that is all we knew that could speak to us in human terms; but yet there was something about it that was more than man, magnified as it was out of our stupefaction into something substantially more. So much so that we all three decided, immediately and subconsciously, that this was not a man, but something para-normal.
It spoke, or perhaps communicated with us in some indefinable way, such that its message seemed imperative and incontrovertible: we were not at liberty to disobey or ignore it. We were to follow the star wherever it should lead us, carry with us certain gifts, and at the end of our journey, we should find a new-born babe, whose birth was of great significance. We were duly to recognise the child as of kingly status by proper homage and by the presentation of our gifts.
When we discovered the next morning that we had all had the same vivid dream or witnessed the same visitation we held it to be a more than ordinary occurrence, and so became convinced that we must take steps to implement the seeming order, however contrary this was to common-sense reasoning. Since our circumstances allowed us to do so, we therefore ordered our affairs, gathered together sufficient provisions, attendants and means of transport, and proceeded to put the star to the test in regard as to where it might direct us.
It did indeed seem to go before us, and as it was a comet, we were able to see it by day. By what strange chemistry there came to be this communication between us we could not tell but only marvel at. Sufficient that it seemed to lead, to stop when we stopped, and to go forward when we were ready to proceed again.
This we did for some days, staying clear of cities and conurbations as far as possible, until we came to a large populous city which we guessed must be the most important centre or capital of that area. Here we paused for consideration as to where we should look for the baby that was the object of our quest; and since it came into our minds that the child was said to be of kingly status, we therefore thought it proper to enquire where lived the king of that country?
We did this at a staging-point where we had decided to stay for the night. In return we received strange looks and heard murmurings among the bystanders. They were not unused to travellers, but our retinue, apparel, and singular request, caused them to marvel and conjecture about our coming.
The next morning, having acquired directions, we arrived at the palace gates to find that we were not unexpected. Evidently the king had received intelligence of us, and we were ushered immediately into his presence. He received us with some urbanity and seeming graciousness, but behind this show we sensed a wish to extract from us the real purpose of our mission and to gather information regarding our nature and background. He listened intently to what we said; at first I thought with a native cunning to elicit what might concern him nearly, but presently with a slight mystification, and finally with an inclination to dismiss our mission simply as a strange oddity which need not worry him. It might indeed be merely a matter of some amusement to him that grown men, apparently of good judgement, should have been drawn into such an undertaking.
He informed us that no child had recently been born into his house, and therefore we were mistaken in our choice of venue for investigation. ‘However,’ he said, with an air of pleasantry, ‘if you succeed in finding this baby, will you call in on your way homeward and inform me of the fact, so that I also may pay homage to someone you say is so important?’
I thought he said this in a somewhat tongue-in-the-cheek manner but took it then as merely surface affability. So we were dismissed, and after returning to the inn to pick up our belongings, we continued on our way, until the next night.
Then, as we slept, we were again visited by the apparition which had appeared to us at the start of this venture. As before, admonishing in his tone, he said, ‘By no means must you return and report to this man what you have found. His intentions are evil. Beware of this, and so continue your journey.’
This we did, another day or so’s travelling, until we arrived at a settlement not very large, but with one inn. Here the star hovered and seemed to bid us stay the night. The place, however, for some reason was crowded, and we seemed in danger of not receiving accommodation. It needed a display of money on our account to assure the innkeeper that we had adequate means to pay him above the odds and so induce him to give us preference when some guests appeared, imminent for departure, having completed their business. We were then able to secure accommodation.
It seemed that the reason for the crowding was a government census, for which a decree had been issued that all persons were to return to the place of their birth in order to register. There were grumblings about this among the guests as we sat at dinner, and the innkeeper’s wife, a not unkindly woman, mentioned that one poor couple had been unable to obtain accommodation in the house, and therefore, out of pity, since there was no other place for them to go, they had been given shelter in the stable. The good woman had been activated all the more into doing this by the observation that the young wife was obviously approaching the time when she should give birth to her child.
This, in fact, had happened the day before, and the hostess had been busied into doing what she could to help, though wishing she could do more. We took notice of what the woman said, and considered it in the light of our mission, but could not think that this was the baby we were looking for. After all, we had been promised an infant of regal status by our informant.
We therefore concluded that we should do nothing, and prepared to go to our rest. As we did so we became aware of a disturbance in the inn yard, with lights as though late travellers were arriving, due to be disappointed, we presumed.
‘But no,’ said the maid, ‘they are local men: shepherds from the fields. They must have deserted their flocks, and will certainly catch it if their master hears.’
We assumed they had dropped in for a surreptitious drink; but somehow they had heard of the birth in the stable, become excited by it, and wished to see for themselves. Rather odd, we thought, but still concluded it as a matter of passing interest, and not as something of higher significance, demanding our attention.
And so we passed to our rooms and retired for the night. The episode, however, although dismissed from our conscious thoughts, had somehow lodged in the back of our minds, and led to disturbed slumbers. We were each visited again by our previous ultramundane visitor, and again, it seemed, simultaneously.
‘Why do you hesitate?’ it said. ‘Have you not sign enough that this is the babe you must visit and mark with your attentions? Immediately it is proper you must do so in the morning. For now, sleep soundly.’
Accordingly, as soon as it appeared practicable in the morning, we spoke to the innkeeper’s wife and asked her to acquaint the mother with our desire to see her and the baby, and would she be happy with that? On her return we were straightaway taken into the stable. The mother was young, and of a good appearance, while the father was rather older but still of attractive social bearing, and recognisably a man of standing in the artisan community. We gathered he was a master carpenter by trade, although he claimed descent from some royal house which had its origin in that place, and to which he now returned, having been born there.
The baby was an ordinary, contented, few-days-old child, and all were totally unassuming, and without airs, as could hardly be otherwise in the circumstances, although the hostess had done what she could to make them comfortable. We expressed our great pleasure in seeing them and our hopes for their well-being, but could hardly be explicit about the reasons for our coming without appearing foolish. We gave them the gifts we had been instructed to bring, without really having any idea of their significance; and indeed, the parents seemed equally mystified as to why we came, who we were, and why we presented those particular items.
After making suitable complimentary remarks to them and their baby we left them, but before leaving the inn paid the landlord to let them occupy some of the rooms we were vacating until the mother was able to travel. We commenced then our homeward journey, but travelled, as we had been bidden, by another route.
These events happened nearly thirty years ago. We have heard nothing in the meantime about the family we were told to seek out, have received no more visitations in the night by unsettling messengers, and been made aware of no more comets. We are still as mystified by those events as ever we were, and presumably must allow them to take their place in the ineluctable mystery of happenings which human beings experience and which often form the basis of their lives.
