thirty-four #2
Yet if the murals in the hallway leading to the antechamber could tell new tales, they would have shown a holy avatar being worshipped here in Garlahza, her barefooted steps leaving a sloping trail of saudade wherever she went.
The Birth of Humans. The Founding of the First Sixteen. The End of the First Epoch.
There was that dancing woman, with her lithe feet, her blazing smile, and her effervescent aura that tickled those around her—they worshipped her, and despite her looking like a young woman, called her Mother.
The Prophecy of the High Priestess.
As Mira continued to stare into that giant eye, she saw it. The moments Rahara spoke of as she wrapped her arms around Mira’s shoulders, claiming her for another epoch.
“She took my soulmate as her own. She made me feel like it was an honor. I resented Her every day. I loved Her. I could not stop loving Her, nor him. I gave my dreams for them. I turned in my mortality, the very thing She cherished, to do Her bidding.”
Mira’s jaw dropped. Her neck ached from craning back so far, staring into the visceral maw of an eye that she was never meant to behold.
The Expansion of Humans. The Founding of the Federation. The Terraforming of the Moons. The Founding of the Academy. Time, time, time.
She almost choked up when she realized the eye showed her the present moment.
The Birth of a New Avatar. The Tribulation of the Void. The Second Coming of the Prophetess. The Ascension.
Except the Ascension did not happen. Instead, Mira was born.
The Birth of Mira Dunsman, Tainted Soul.
Everything, from the further destabilization of the Void to her own soulmate ending up on a place like Arrah, was because Mira Dunsman was born.
“You were not meant to live this life.” The serpent from Rahara’s aura slithered down Mira’s shoulder, wrapping around her limb like an armlet.
Only then did she realize that it had squeezed until the blood cut off from the rest of her arm.
Piece by piece, her mortal coil would be unfurled—destroyed.
If only she could look away from that mesmerizing eye that promised her the answers of eternity.
The very meaning of life itself. “It’s not your fault. It’s Hers.”
Mira’s arm was almost finished when a thunderous voice broke through.
“Mira!”
Joiya stood before them, doing her best to distract her daughter’s attention from the eye above them. Rahara held Mira closer, the breath of a woman millions of years old fluttering against her ear. Was she real? Corporeal? Could she affect what happened here in the Sanctuary?
Was she here because of the Sanctuary?
“Mira!”
Joiya grabbed her by the arms, shaking Mira until her eyes were forced to close and she lost contact with the eye swirling above them. Rahara fell away, laughing. When Mira finally regained her sense of self, she saw her mother standing before her, panic holding its lament in her dark complexion.
“Mira…”
Hannu now stood on the other side of the altar, watching. Mira fell against her mother before sliding down to the floor, unconsciousness claiming her before her mother could teleport her out of there.
The Dreamwalker was still banished from her slumber. So Mira dreamed of Sulim, the only woman welcomed into her mind.
“I wish you were real,” Mira told the vision before her, as they sat in some busy, human-based café that cared more about turnover than enjoying a cup of tea for the whole afternoon. “I wish you could come home with me.”
Sulim pursed her lips. There was something different about her, but it was her, wasn’t it?
That damnably soft hair. Those taut lips.
The muscular form that surprised anyone who touched her.
Sulim’s dark jacket and baggy shirt beneath did not match the future Lady Gardiah that Mira had met, but it was her. It was her soul. Mira’s soulmate.
“You make it sound like that’s impossible,” Sulim said.
“You’re dead,” Mira responded. “Sent back to the Void before it was your time.”
“I’ve heard that one. About ninety-eight times.”
Something about that made sense, yet not at all.
“You know, a wise woman once said that there is no going back to the Void before one’s time,” Sulim said.
“There is no time. There is always something more we wish we could have done. One more plan we had. One more person to speak with. One more gift to receive in this mortal world. Yet we all have to go back. Some more than others.”
“I would follow you if I could. Forever.”
“Stay alive as long as you can. The battle isn’t over. The war has just begun.”
Sulim leaned in to kiss her. Mira was about to touch their lips together when her own mind conspired to bring her out of her dream world and back into her own reality—the one where her mother kept a bedside vigil.
“My precious heart,” she said when she realized Mira was awake. “It’s time.”
Mira could barely reclaim the use of her limbs as she struggled to come out of that deep slumber. “Ma, I… the eye… that Dreamwalker… what did you do to them?”
Joiya shook her head, eyes downcast and hands useless in her lap. “The Dreamwalker was poisoning your soul. As for the eye…” She did not continue. Only to say, “It’s time.”
“Time for what?”
Slowly, Joiya raised her chin, meeting Mira’s gaze. By now, she had finally pushed herself up and met her mother face-to-face.
“Time to do what I should have done hundreds of years ago.”
“Ma…”
Joiya took her daughter’s hand, squeezing it until warmth passed between them.
A tear fell atop Mira’s skin. Then another.
Her mother’s silent cry reverberated through the High Temple.
We’re alone, aren’t we? Her father was probably catatonic.
Any guards, the Premiers… they were also out. That was Joiya’s simple power.
Yet Mira was allowed to awaken. She could be here in this moment when Yahzen slept.
“What was that eye, Ma? It terrified me, but… it was beautiful.”
“The eye that sees all. Even our sins. Ah, no amount of prayers will save me, Mira. You must know what I am by now.”
“Ma…”
“It’s a folly to pray to oneself. Even though I don’t think of it that way. I’m just… me. I always have been. So, why must it be me?”
Mira put her hand atop her mother’s. “What’s really going on?”
Her earnest request must have been heard, for the first time in Mira’s life, her mother did not speak cryptically.
Nor did she evade the question. “I was selfish. When the Void called to me all those years ago, I did everything in my meager, mortal power to fight it. Yet I wasn’t above summoning your father and the others to protect me from myself. The way I used them that morning…
I couldn’t bear the thought of going like that. Of dy—” She stopped. “Of dying.”
Mira held her breath.
“I wanted it so badly, my heart. There was nothing else more important in this world than being your mother. You were inside of me, and this time… I knew it. You would be born. You would be perfect. I would love you more than my own freedom. I saw the other destinies set before your soul.
They were abhorrent. Death, decay, destruction—misery in the face of enlightenment. I would have done anything to avoid that fate for you. So I condemned this unstable world. By rejecting the call, I have doomed everyone. Everywhere I turn, the Void had marked another for misery.
It is my punishment for evading my true nature. Yet I did this to myself, my heart. I’m the one who came to this world to save it. Did I really let mortal feelings sway me? Did I fall for my own grand design?”
Although quiet, the desperation in her voice fretted Mira.
“Yes. I was strong in my weakness. I rejected the call. Now I must rectify it all.”
“Ma.”
“I pray and pray, looking for an answer. I wanted to save you, if no one else. And when your soulmate was snuffed from this world like that… oh, it’s time, isn’t it?”
More tears welled in Joiya’s eyes. “The veil is shattering. Soon, this world will be absorbed into the Void’s limitless expanse. It’s not even a true apocalypse. It’s a whimper, my heart. No glory. No gain. No chance to right our wrongs. It’s just… my fault.”
Mira lifted her mother’s hand and held it to her cheek. Mortal warmth… How could her mother be anything but?
“Come with me.”
As stiff as the dead, Joiya rose from her seat, refusing to let go of Mira’s hand.
Although she wished to know where they were going, deep down, Mira knew.
She walked hand-in-hand with her mother as they left the High Priest’s apartment and retraced the fabled steps of a faraway night that had not been allowed to come to pass.
“There are other versions of me and you out there.”
Joiya spoke as if she would not have the chance to impart her esoteric knowledge to her daughter again.
“I don’t truly know who you are, my heart. You are the soul the Void chose for me to bear. Just like I am a part of a bigger whole. Like your father is a part of that whole. And your soulmate… she must be strong, for her to be chosen for you.”
“Wouldn’t you… I mean… some divine being be able to pick these things?”
“Ah, I barely understand it in this mortal shell, my heart. Until I rejoin the Void, I will not fathom my own failures and fears. If I will even still have them.”
“There are other versions of us, though?”
“The Void ripples and echoes forever and ever. Every world is connected in some way, but we are never meant to entwine. You know of Crossing, yes?”
“Yeah. The concept of fusing two parallel worlds.”
“An act of love and defiance to save one’s existence. An act of selfless desire to seal humanity’s outcome. Yes, there are worlds where they properly fight that battle. In this one… I resigned us all to giving up. I was supposed to be that stabilizing beacon of hope, yet…”
The way her mother spoke was frank, yet the contents of her words were something beyond the scope of most julah knowledge, never mind what Mira had learned in the Academy.
If anyone there knew this about my parents, they never told me.
They barely let her be a nepotism darling, especially when she became prone to causing mild trouble.
There was nothing there that could have prepared her for this.