‘Tell me about the Faraway Planet where you used to live before I was born,’ Nesta would say, all those years ago, when her mother came to tuck her up in bed. It was one of her favourite bedtime stories. Alison had been instructed to plant it there, alongside ‘The Goose Girl’, ‘Rapunzel’, and ‘Little Tom Thumb’.
‘Long, long ago,’ she would begin, ‘Daddy and I lived with our friends and our families in a sort of castle – or that is what this world would probably call it. The outer walls of the castle rose up in curves and spirals to a sky that by day was pale blue and sometimes golden, but never too bright and never too dull, never grey, and never cloudy. No stones formed these walls, nothing so hard. And there were no sharp corners anywhere for you to bump yourself on.’
‘A bouncy castle,’ Nesta said once, after they had been to the fête on the playing field.
Alison laughed and said, ‘Bigger by far, and not at all bouncy. Just think how uncomfortable that would be!’
‘And the walls inside,’ Nesta prompted, ready for the next bit of the story.
‘The walls inside the castle had a pearly glow that gave light by night or by day, even after our twin suns had set. Just as well, for night and day were more topsy-turvy there than here. Our planet took a course like a figure eight, turning first round one sun then the next. And it still does, you know, even though we are not there to see it.’
‘Draw it,’ said Nesta. And when her mother had drawn the planet’s orbit, in crayon on a large sheet of sugar paper, one loop much larger than the other, Nesta would trace her finger round and round it, enjoying the neverendingness. It was a shape that she would always find pleasing, even after she had forgotten why. The wax of the crayon and the roughness of the paper sustained the memory.
‘Now tell me what the planet is called,’ Nesta would demand after the figure-of-eight game palled. Alison’s dark eyes would glisten when this demand was made. The name of the planet was on the tip of her tongue and she longed to say it. But that was strictly against the rules.
‘I can’t,’ she said, holding both of Nesta’s hands in hers, ‘not yet. It is a very secret name and you, my darling, are much too little to be told. When you are very big and very wise, then I will be able to whisper the name in your ear and you will be as thrilled to hear it as I shall be to tell.’
‘Tell me about the doors,’ said Nesta, accepting the answer that her mother always gave. She drew her knees up to her chin expectantly. The doors were a very good part of the story, much easier to follow and understand.
Nesta would look at her mother’s dark, curly hair and smiling face, and wait for all the actions that went with this description. Alison would spread her hands in a sort of swirl, as if she were a magician. Past became present as she invoked this castle in the air.
‘The doors are like no doors you have ever seen. They are set in huge, curved arches and when we leave or enter they roll aside like magic mist, and in them are all the colours of the rainbow – and a few more shades that do not even exist here on Earth. They have no purpose other than to shut out the breeze and to mark the outside from the in. There are no bad people anywhere on the planet; so there is no need to lock anyone out. No one there would ever hurt anyone else. Every single thing is share and share alike, though of these things they share, I cannot tell you. There are no Earth words to describe them and there is nothing on Earth to which they bear any real likeness.’
‘Say something not Earth word,’ said Nesta, snuggling down into her bed again. She knew what the answer would be, but she always asked because that was part of the ritual. And there was always the faint possibility that some day the answer might different.
‘Not yet,’ said her mother with a laugh. ‘The language of the Other Place does not belong here. It would sound too strange: the atmosphere on Earth is all wrong for it.’
Nesta let that go – it was what she had been told many times before in many different ways. She had a child’s wise way with things she did not understand. She simply skipped over them.
‘And the people there? What do they look like?’ she said eagerly, waiting for the smallest addition to words she had already heard.
Alison looked down at her little daughter, the light brown hair spread on her pillow, the grey-blue eyes returning her gaze earnestly.
‘Beautiful,’ she said. ‘In their own special way, they are more beautiful than the fairest of mankind. At home – for it is our home – we have our own bodies. These that we have here are just garments we must wear for our time on Earth. They are pretty nice garments, but not as good as the real thing!’
‘Me too?’ said the child, already aware that there was a flaw in this story somewhere. She had been born here in the city of York. She had never known anywhere else. She knew that she more closely resembled her father but that people said she had her mother’s smile. Sometimes she wished her hair were thick and curly like Mom’s. Sometimes she wondered how a smile could be separated from the rest of the face!
‘Can I take off my fingers?’ Nesta asked one night, finding a new question for the old story when her mother came again to the part about their Earth bodies being garments. Her left hand tugged tentatively at the fingers on her right. After all, clothes were things to wear and they could be removed. People wear nothing at all in the bath!
Alison smiled. But secretly she felt sad. Once Nesta began asking difficult questions, the storytelling would have to stop. It must not continue into the age of reason. To let a child know too much is to risk betrayal.
‘It doesn’t work like that,’ said Alison carefully. ‘It is much more complicated. Some day you will know all about it. Then you will understand.’
‘But I wasn’t born in that place you came from,’ Nesta said.
‘No,’ said her mother. ‘When we left home, we had no idea what a wonder we had in store for us. You were a sort of bonus, a lovely, smiley, cuddly bonus. You didn’t “go with the job”! Daddy and I still marvel that you are ours.’
Nesta caught the work ‘job’ and said, ‘Daddy works in the bank. That is his job.’
‘Yes,’ said Alison, content to leave it at that. ‘Daddy works at the bank.’
‘Now tell about how you got here,’ said Nesta. ‘Tell about the spaceship.’
‘Our spaceship was no bigger than a baseball. It was crystalline and shimmering blue, yet changing constantly as if it were a living thing. To go inside it we diminished – you know that word by now. We became so small that the inside of the ship seemed to us bigger than a house. That is where we lived for three years, travelling through space, learning things, and preparing for our stay here on Earth.’
The story was sometimes embroidered with other snippets. Like the time Alison went on to say, ‘And we arrived in the exact spot prepared for us. That was a rare and wonderful thing! To come so far, and to arrive spot-on, in the right place, is not easy. We were warned about that. The spaceship could have veered off course and landed miles away. Then we would have had to set out and find this house in this fair city, where it was all ready and waiting for us!’
‘Who got it ready?’ said Nesta.
‘Others from the Faraway Planet, secret workers. We never see them – but we know that they are there, like the elves who help the shoemaker!’
‘Where is the spaceship now?’ said Nesta. ‘When are you going to tell me where it is?’
‘Not yet,’ said her mother. ‘Some day, when you are older. For now, I can only say that it is safe, buried deep in the earth but ready to leave when the time comes, ready to take us all home.’
That was where the story always ended. And the game finished.
Nesta yawned, lids drooping over the blue-grey eyes. Before entering the Land of Nod, she said sleepily, wanting to be reassured that this was just a story after all, ‘But we’re really Americans, aren’t we? And you and Daddy came from Boston.’
‘Americans of Welsh descent,’ said Alison softly. ‘The Gwynns are a very old family and that, for now at least, is who we are.’
So the story of ‘The Faraway Planet’ could safely take its place alongside, ‘The Little Matchgirl’, ‘The Tin Soldier’ and ‘Cinderella’. There were so many different stories, but none of them was really, really true. Young as she was, she already knew that. Children are born knowing that stories are safe.
Nesta’s eyes shut tight. She was fast asleep.
Alison bent over and kissed her, stroking the soft hair back from her forehead.
‘Nallytan, Neshayla ban,’ she said very softly in tones not of this Earth, and in a language that was definitely not English, and not even Welsh.