The Visitors Read Online Free PDF Page A

sentence so that they can say what they want. And what they want most of all is to talk about themselves. Or rather, one thing over and over. They do not discuss, only harp on this one thing. It is different for each. It may be a boat trip or a dog they once had, a fall from a tree or a scratch from a rose thorn. This one thing they are obsessed with, and they speak of it again and again. I try to ask them about other matters, who they are and what they are, where they come from and why they are here, but they do not seem to understand such metaphysical enquiry and instead tell me again about their obsession. It is as if they are stuck in a groove and cannot escape this one event. One is charming, telling me of a day spent building a dry-stone wall with his son. But another is angry, twisting his rage into knots while damning another man for spooking his horse, causing him to fall and crack his head. I ask this one to calm down and mostly he does. I do not like him. They were easier to live with before I learned language, before they could talk.
    I decide to tell Lottie about them. I know them and I am accustomed to them, but I fear she will find them strange. She has never mentioned them to me and neither has Father. I worry that they do not visit Father and Lottie, as they do me. And that is when I name them, the Visitors. I explain them to Lottie. At first she does not pass comment. I ask her if she hears the Visitors in her mind.
    She says, ‘No. Those are my thoughts. You can call them Visitors if you like.’
    ‘No,’ I say. ‘The Visitors are different. They were with me before you, before I learned words.’
    ‘They were your thoughts then too. You always had a mind. But no language. Now they talk with you because you know words.’
    I shake my head. I am sure she is wrong, but I fear she thinks I am touched, a little crazed due to my years of isolation. And I do not want there to be the least shadow between myself and Lottie. I ask her often, ‘Are you very fond of me?’ and she always answers, yes. I do not want her to think of me strangerly. So I stop talking about the Visitors. All I know is that I am different from Lottie, from Father, from everyone. Not just with my ruined ears and eyes, but in another way I cannot explain. I live in another country. With language, I bring dispatches from the abyss. I cannot say I am happy there. It has been my prison. But at least it is familiar. The area beyond my fingertips is bigger than me. It is marvellous yet frightening. I wonder if I will ever feel at home in that other world, your world.
    But then Lottie begins to teach me more than language. I learn the laws of nature by exploring the gardens, picking flowers and berries, peeling bark or digging for worms, making a rain-catcher and bringing snowballs inside to feel them melt in my warm hands. I understand that animals cannot talk with their fingers. I am hugely disappointed in this and think they must be very feeble-minded. I learn biology by finding a dead bird and lifting its wings to understand flight. Physics by climbing trees and dropping apples. Geography through placing a stick in the beck so that I can feel the flowing of water and understand currents. I know that the water on Father’s land runs into a river downstream which feeds into the great wide sea where the Crowe family live. Beyond there are other lands where many live and others have travelled. Our planet is made of land and sea, mountains and valleys, stretching forth from my little life across the globe and back in time for millennia and forward beyond my short span for ever. I cannot encompass how large the earth is.
    One day Lottie takes my hand and leads me to Father’s study. He has bought me something new. She lets me find it. It is half as tall as me, twice as fat. Round, curved, I am feeling over it, down it and below it. Upon its surface, peaks and troughs, rough terrain and smooth sea. I have guessed. It is the earth. It is a