Chapter 13 Water Between Worlds
WATER BETWEEN WORLDS
ELLA WAS CAUGHT in a dream, drifting in space, overlooking a quaint, bustling village.
There was so much life there, so many houses with flagpoles suspending a symbol similar to the sun depicted on the Imperia’s flag.
Of course, in the Imperia the flags were yellow, and these rippled with a deep, royal blue, with a single silver stripe at the end that flickered like a fish tail when the sun caught it through the water.
The scouts who had found them guided them through the terrain, speaking little of the spirit of Life.
Ella briefly overheard chatter indicating that plans to rebuild it were already under way.
There was no emotion in the statement, no shock, no resentment, as if they’d knocked over a pile of blocks.
Little else was said, the scouts reminding them again that they shouldn’t ask too many questions if they wanted to return home.
The war didn’t end how you think it did. The words lingered like they’d been painted on the doorframe of her mind, branding every new thought that walked through.
“Ella,” she heard, and turned from the window to the people waiting in the room around her.
An unconscious Jade was hoisted up on Kay’s shoulder.
Ella was surprised by Jade’s presence, having to remind herself for what felt like the hundredth time that her friend was, in fact, alive.
Kay was watching her face even now, so attentive to the lover he thought he’d lost. Ella had to continue to remind herself about several things that had happened in the last few hours, including where they were now.
They stood, miraculously, in front of a pool that would take them back to the Imperia.
Despite it all, Ella felt distant from herself and everything else.
Why did the moment feel like a tragedy? One so reminiscent of the one she’d experienced just days before that had cost her her friends–which she now realized had only been Alex.
Other scouts belonging to this small, and well kept empire, had found Jade in The Quiet and had brought her to this palace. The palace was a fortress, ornate and beautiful but at best like a mansion in size, and not the only thing bestowed with a grand title.
Paris, or the Empress, as they called her, waited near the doorway, with Hollow, the scout who had found them, leaning against the wall by her side.
Paris had freely shared that she knew Crow had entered The Quiet but had no information on his whereabouts.
Jade had grabbed Crow as he’d leapt through the embolism, thinking she was saving him and apparently now knew just as little as anyone else.
Paris did not appear to share any connections or alliances with the Imperia. Ella thought back on the fortified walls of the Imperia camp they’d escaped from and assumed it could be the opposite, but she didn’t ask. She couldn’t ask. And where was Jackson?
Paris watched her with secretive, brown eyes that represented all of those unanswered questions.
She was dressed in long, beautiful azure robes, her illustrious, black hair woven through ornate, diamond threaded string.
Though she couldn’t rule more than a few smaller territories, she seemed to be adorned for things to come.
This entire world brimmed with swollen anticipation. Ella almost dared to call it hope.
While she questioned, Kay’s busy intellect had been silenced by Jade’s existence and the need to return to the Imperia.
Paris assured them that Jade would wake up promptly after returning to the other side.
Many minds could only tolerate The Quiet for so long, and Jade wasn’t the only one that needed medical attention.
Despite the throbbing pain in her arm, Ella looked back out at the bustling town, in hopes that she might catch some lingering glimpse of Crow.
The night before she’d found herself staring out of the window to her room as if he might simply appear.
She’d been relieved to sleep in a bed, her wound medicated at last, but some sense of longing had kept her close to the glass panes for much of the night.
Kay was already in the water up to his knees, the ripples from his movements casting dancing light across the marble walls.
After a passionate argument yesterday, they’d agreed to depart together today and return to the Imperia with convictions of coming back and trying again.
The woods in Tunedyl were no longer haunted, after all, and only they knew it.
After her arm healed, she would come back, but right now she was unable to leave Kay and Jade to depart on their own.
“Ella,” Kay repeated, voice echoing through the pool chamber.
She followed him, sinking her shoes into the water, deeper as it filled her boots and waded up her pants.
Kay whispered something in Jade’s ear as if she were awake. Jade looked so peaceful now. She was clean and well taken care of. Ella couldn’t resist that she yearned to see her friend wake up again on the other side.
Kay nodded to Ella, doubtlessly sharing that longing, and then he walked into the water. Jade’s hair dipped and swam like paint strewn across a canvas before being swallowed beneath the surface.
Ella followed suit, repeating in her mind that she would return. The cool water enveloped her bandaged arm, her head, her hair.
Kay was already gone. She swam deeper, closer to the darkness at the bottom, knowing any moment she’d see the light streaming in from the surface of a different pool on the other side.
She would return.
She kept swimming, but the light did not appear. She felt her lungs strain for oxygen as she stared into a wall of dead blackness. For a moment, she thought she witnessed the faintest glint but something pulled her back and she struggled in limbo before pushing hard back up toward the surface.
She burst up through the water and gathered her breath. No one said anything behind her as she swam in place.
The silence lingered as Ella stared at the wall ahead, backing up to where she could find her footing. She dove down a second time, reaching for her other life.
The deeper she swam, the heavier and darker the pressure felt around her. It was stifling, like swimming into a wall. She burst back up to the surface, lungs grabbing at the air.
With a strange mixture of fear and relief in her chest, Ella looked back at Hollow and Paris and said, “I can’t go back.”
For the briefest moment Paris looked proud, Hollow glancing over at her as if he’d been waiting for her reaction before glancing down and smiling to himself.
Ella wondered what joke she was missing, standing by herself in the water as the answers sunk into her thoughts in an irretrievable way.
“Was this a test?” It sounded like a preposterous thing to say out loud, but Ella still said it, wondering if the next moment would make her feel like a fool.
Hollow and Paris watched her now, side by side, Paris leaning back toward the hallway and whispering something that sent the guards off.
She folded her hands in front of her stomach as if holding something precious between her palms, and in this poised way, she shared a truth that it seemed she’d imparted many times before.
“Every now and again,” she began, “the disillusioned find their way to our side. Their bodies are free, but their minds are still arrested by Peter’s cursed illusion like fish floundering out of the water. It’s always best to throw them back in until they outgrow the water.”
Silence lingered, the water dripping off of Ella’s clothes into the pool in an almost melodic fashion.
“The other world.” Ella felt her assumptions about the world fall loose like books freed from their bookcase. “An illusion? Peter’s illusion?”
“We’ve done our best to guide people out of it through the religion of the Spirits,” Paris explained, “building up great altars to Spirits that they can see murkily from the other side. If in good faith, their prayers and actions, guided by our religion, will bring them closer to The Quiet. It draws them through that maze of their fragmented lives and back to reality again. Peter’s curse was rich, ornate, and powerful.
No power yet exists that could unravel what could arguably be his masterpiece and so we could only build a system to counter it. ”
“Peter did this,” Ella processed the revelation aloud, “Why?”
“To save his herd from the Burning of the Strike.”
Ella’s mind began skipping thoughts, portions of the revelation sinking in while others did not. “Why not flood the city?” Ella asked as she resisted the ideas and all of their implications. “Why not put out the fire? Why not–”
“He did, in a way, but not all fires are hot, and not all that burns is fire. The flames were not what was killing his people,” Paris replied, “ideologies were.” There was a long pause, permission perhaps for Ella to think before the explanation continued.
“But we haven’t solved all of the mysteries of what happened.
These are our theories from the outside and that’s all.
We’ve been waiting for answers, waiting for the right people to wake up who might have them. ”
“The Spirits are all an illusion,” Ella repeated, remembering how faithfully so many of her friends and family followed them through prayers, statutes, paintings, ceremonies, holidays.
“Meant to guide people to the truth,” Paris replied, “The sun blinds just as it guides. The full truth would be incomprehensible to them. Our doctrine makes it digestible as they are ready to digest it, and nothing else. Those that look for the truth in it will be the ones that find it. If you look for lies in it, you’ll find those too. ”
Ella looked back out at the windows, noticing the flags again with the emblem of the sun on them, much like they were in the Imperia. The symbol represented a path to truth in both lands, only the people were on opposite sides of it.