Chapter 13 Water Between Worlds #2
No wonder the spirit of Life was so easy to rebuild. Every altar and temple in this land had been built by these people, this society, and the capital must have known, at least some of them must. Maybe Crow had figured it out.
“You’re safe here,” Paris assured her. “You can stay here as long as it takes to settle in. Tomorrow, we can show you the town and consider having a home finished for you. We have a process to integrate people as they arrive here. It will begin to feel normal after a few days and we will talk more when you’re ready. ”
Ella stayed in the water, as if walking off felt like leaving Kay behind.
Would he come up on the other side and realize she was gone, or would a new version of her burst through the water, an illusion he’d happily live with until he was ready to cross over on his own?
She couldn’t help but feel like she was abandoning him.
Paris seemed to watch the struggle unfold, but did not push her.
“So I’m not losing my mind,” Ella concluded.
Paris laughed. “The transition feels that way. It’s the opposite, in fact. You’re coming to your senses.”
“Then I’m ready,” Ella said despite all appearances indicating otherwise.
“Whatever is left to tell me. Please, tell me now,” she said, swallowing.
Despite Paris’s response, Ella wasn’t comforted by the idea of her experiences being a transition.
So far it had been frightening and painful, and if she was able to choose, she wanted to suffer it all at once.
She couldn’t stand another second of thinking there was more to learn.
“You’ve noticed the prosperity here,” Paris said, “we’re a small civilization growing so quickly and with so many resources, people hardly know how to celebrate it.
No war and barely any crime. Everyone that finally makes it out of the curse and remembers the war just wants peace.
There is only one lasting threat to all of this.
Maybe by now you’ve guessed what that is. ”
“Peter,” Ella replied, remembering Jackson’s first words when she’d broken him out of his own curse, an incident that puzzled her even more now. She wondered why his had been different from the rest, why it had settled so imperfectly on him when the rest were locked unsuspectingly into its maze.
Paris nodded. “We’ve been waiting for someone like you to make it out,” she said. “You may not remember, not consciously, and not right now, but you knew Peter, and we think you know where he is.”
Adrift still in the cloud of her mind, Ella was beyond bewilderment or surprise.
“I don’t remember anything,” she said as if with such an admission they might relinquish her. This felt like a silly play and Ella could only try and imagine what words might let her leave the stage and sit in the dark of the audience. She felt like she’d taken on a part someone else had written.
“You’ve been trapped in the Eating Ocean for a decade. You’ll remember with time,” the Empress said. “They all do.”
The Eating Ocean. So that’s what they called it?
Ella stared down at the waters under her feet and waded out of them.
A guard walked in, returning from the errand Paris had sent him on with a towel. Ella took it and held it to her chest as the water dribbled out of her shoes and onto the floor.
Paris and Hollow inspected her reaction, or the lack thereof, Paris suggesting again that she get some rest in her room, and that a medical attendant would be in to address her wound again soon.
A guard guided her down the carpeted, marble halls, Ella still holding the towel in her arms. Her room wasn’t far from Paris’s, and Ella didn’t know if she should be flattered or suspicious. She wasn’t sure how she felt about any of it.
As she followed the guard, she stopped short and listened as Hollow said something to Paris from the pool. The acoustics of the pool chamber caused the words to carry just barely into the hall.
“You think she already knew it was an illusion?” Hollow asked, Ella watching her guard proceeding ahead and wondering how long it would be before he noticed she’d stopped.
“Some people have a sense that their world isn’t real,” Paris replied, “they just don’t think this one is either. She might have been content to live her life and die there regardless.”
“I guess it’s a good thing the embolism happened,” Hollow remarked.
“It’s a good thing Peter managed to save her,” Paris replied, and judging by the sound of her voice it was clear they were preparing to leave the room.
Ella started forward again just as her guard turned around, hearing the final line before she turned the corner.
“Otherwise she could have been torn apart like her friend. If we ever find Crow, I’ll be caught between thanking him and killing him myself for ever putting her in danger. She may be the only one that knows the truth about Peter.”
The phrases, along with a plethora of others, settled with Ella in the silence of her room.
She bathed in the white tile bathroom, dressed in a soft change of clothes laid out for her, and returned back to her window for the afternoon.
Her fingers settled on the glass panes as she watched the streets below for hours.
Children gathered in corners here and there, all ten or younger, Ella reminded that if any children had in fact survived the war, they would have aged ten years just as she had.
Humanity may very well have died in that curse without intervention.
Time passed, and someone came to dress her wounds. Someone else came to deliver a meal, leaving the tray balancing on the edge of the oak dresser across from her bed. Somehow every visit felt minutes apart as her mind wrestled with the changes.
Ella watched the moon begin to peek at the horizon as the sun settled behind the small palace, casting colorful light over the streets and cottages, the trees and mountains beyond. This town had no walls. This world seemed to have no walls.
Something settled peacefully inside Ella despite her losses. She turned into the room as the moon rose, the moonlight pushing through the window and washing across the surface of a white table.
It did not intrude this time. She invited it.
Jackson had warned about dabbling in memories of the past, but this memory had a message she needed to receive.
Easing down from the windowsill, she approached it, pulling out a chair and sitting.
There was another chair across from her, and looking into the space, she knew that some ancient force looked back.
Though her eyes did not capture a tangible presence, she knew that sitting in that chair was Death.
In all of its power, presence and finality it looked back at her and at last she did not run from it’s message. Words that may have felt stifled in front of anyone else, flowed easily now.
“You sat in the silence between me and the rest of the world,” she whispered knowing that it could hear her. There was no resolution, only the recognition of a deep and sobering truth. She’d avoided sitting in this chair, the chair which she now realized was a reality she’d tried to escape from.
The pieces came together at last as she sat there in the darkness.
Ella recognized that a reply to her statement would never come.
Not because it wasn’t there, but because she hadn’t come to The Quiet to just find Crow.
She’d come to The Quiet so that at last she could sit at this table, with Death at the other side and ask the question.
“What happened to you?” she whispered, as if the answer to that question held in it a piece of who she was, a piece she needed back.
There was no answer, but she knew the answer wouldn’t come. No. She’d have to find it.
This is why she’d come. She’d come to remember.
Samual, in his own way, had been right after all. Everyone had their reasons for what they wanted to do, but didn’t always understand them.
She spread her hands across the table surface, and stood up, feeling it for a final time before stepping back. A single blink and it was gone, Ella knowing now that the memory was done haunting her. It had gotten its message across.
Find me , it said. She could not rest until the task was done.
Exhausted, still feeling her losses, and yet somehow settled in a strange peace, she crawled into the comfort of her bed.
Sleep accepted her with surprising ease and so quickly that when she woke up several hours later, she was surprised that she’d fallen asleep at all.
The moon told her it was the dead of night, and Ella had the creeping sensation that something had woken her up.
Ella.
She sat up in bed, the voice echoing distantly but it was no longer from a far away realm or space. She eased out of bed and crept toward the door, peering into the firelit halls that burned quietly in the dead of night.
“Jackson?” she whispered, and thought she heard something down the hallway. She stalked barefoot through the halls, following the sound of what appeared to an object toppling. The guards were gone from Paris’s room. The door was cracked, candlelight flickering inside.
Furious whispering was followed by Paris’s even, cool voice, “What are you going to do? Slit my throat? This is the new world. Like it or not,” Paris said, “a world you largely helped create.”
There was a pause, Ella now slinking along the wall so that she could hear the response. She straightened at the sound of Jackson’s voice, and positioned herself near the crack in the door.
“We were better off with Peter,” Jackson hissed.
Ella held her breath as she peered past the door into the room. A chair had been toppled over, and she could see Jackson’s back now, Paris likely standing in front of him.
“I’m sorry for your pain, I really am,” Paris said, “we all owe you, Jackson. In many ways, I know you’ve sacrificed more than the rest of us, but you could also gain more than the rest of us too. The deal is done. There is no going back.”