thirty-four #3
“Who is that woman?” As they progressed through the Temple to an uncertain end, Mira knew this was her last chance to glean a few answers. Especially if her mother felt like sharing. “Rahara, the Dreamwalker. Is she who she really claims to be?”
Joiya tightened her hold on Mira’s arm, the two of them descending a flight of stairs in perfect sync. The entire Temple was eerily quiet, save for a slight hum in the back of Mira’s head—soon, the hum acquired a beat that threatened to give her a headache.
“Rahara bah Ascillia,” Joiya softly said once they reached the bottom of the stairs. “Yes. I know her. Today, we would know her as Rahara Marlow, the foundress of House Marlow.”
I knew it. Always on the tip of Mira’s tongue.
“The greatest sorceress of her day. A revered priestess here in this very Temple, where she was Keeper and a powerful liaison to the people of Garlahza.”
Joiya’s sigh could have come from now—it could have come from an epoch ago.
“Beloved by all. A soul-seer. A prophetess. A Master Healer. She was bound for untold greatness until I arrived and ruined her life.”
“She said that you… that She… stole her soulmate from her.”
“I suppose she would see it that way. The avatar of back then was na?ve and idealistic to a fault. She thought that love should be freely shared by all. When it came to matters of the heart and flesh, she beguiled whom she wanted, and she seduced away Rahara’s betrothed.
Had their names survived to the Second Epoch, there would be great plays and operas about it.”
“Does Ramaron know about her?”
“No, my heart. These things I know I have never shared with anyone but you until now. And only because Rahara has been sent to guide you from across time.”
“Who sent her?”
Joiya stopped her daughter in front of the altar, where the voya-yantrak loomed above them like a guillotine about to drop.
“I did.”
“But you banished her…”
“The woman before you did not send her, but I did it, all the same.”
“Because you are Her.”
“Yes, darling. I denied the call of the Ascension, but since then, I have been punished for wickedness—the memories of those times, of all my past incarnations, play in my head over and over. When I held you as a baby,
nursing you in the room your father and I meticulously built for you in our new home together, I saw the stillborn I had begotten from the man I stole away from Rahara. My punishment for the wickedness of then. Even the divine must follow the same ethics as mortals, should we incarnate.”
“There are more of you?”
“Now. Then. In every iteration. I hear them sometimes… the mes of the other worlds.”
Joiya turned toward the voya-yantrak, with its circular design that depicted the endless loop of life from the Void, an incomprehensible nature attempting to be known.
Now Mira gazed at it with newfound revelation.
The one end consuming the other merely told the tale of every world devouring another to stay afloat.
This unstable world was but one of countless.
“There was one world, surely,” Mira said after a moment. “The first one. The original. That we all echo from.”
“Yes. The fight is great there. They might win the war where the others have not.”
“Is it always depicted? Is there no world where the Void isn’t in peril?”
“Perhaps, my heart, there are worlds where I never heard the call of the Ascension. Where I incarnated as this Joiya so I could reap everything I’ve dreamed of from a mortal life.”
Mira looked back down at her mother’s gentle, nurturing smile. In that moment, despite everything else, all Mira saw was maternal love.
“Is this really the end?” Mira didn’t want to follow as her mother continued through the rear door. “What’s gonna happen, Ma? I…” The reality of the situation, of the potential Joiya courted, suddenly struck Mira like a blow to the chest. “I don’t wanna lose you.”
There they were in that long hallway that told stories that had survived.
The Founders did not have names. There was a time when all were depicted as men, for society had become more paternalistic over time.
Because the High Priest must be a man? To avoid calamity?
Mira wondered if women could become High Priests in the First Epoch, before the prophecies.
“I will do everything in my power to give you another life,” Joiya said as they reached the antechamber.
Before either touched the door, the hum in the back of Mira’s head intensified and dared to drown out her mother’s words.
“After all you have endured due to my selfishness, it’s only right. I don’t…”
She choked up a little, taking Mira’s hand one last time.
“I don’t know what will happen. But I know what I have prayed for. Whatever mercy the whole of me has in the Void, may it bless you, Mira. I will do my best.”
“Ma!”
The door blew open. From within the Sanctuary came the ringing of bells, the pounding of drums, and the holy hum of the Harmony raining upon them. Mira attempted to hold on to her mother’s hand, but her fingers slipped through Joiya’s flesh as she stepped into the Sanctuary.
“Ma! Please!”
“Mira…”
She couldn’t hear anything her mother said, for the voice in her head screamed in time to the beat of the drums she couldn’t see.
COMEHOMECOMEHOMECOMEHOME
Mira was meant to be asleep like the rest of the universe. She was meant to be dead.
Instead, she beheld one of the holiest moments of her epoch.
“Mira…” Joiya was hardly recognizable in the miasma of stars, blood, and breath that swallowed her in the Sanctuary, where she passed through the veil and straight into the Void that breached the mortal world. “Just know… that I loved nothing more than being your mother.”
It wasn’t in Julah. It wasn’t in Basic. The language was as old as the stars, blood, and breath, swallowing Mira as well, casting her into a web of strangulating darkness that broke her body and snuffed her aura.
The remnants of her soul hurtled forward, following her mother deep into the wells of the primordial sea that once gave birth to the universe.
Like a shooting star, like a golden butterfly on a mission to return to the Void, Mira cast off the shackles of her body and Ascended with the woman who would never leave her behind.
For a moment, for millennia, she danced in the cosmos, experiencing everything at once.
Her own birth. Her many deaths. The love and loss each iteration of her had ever acknowledged.
And while she briefly followed her father, her friends, and her fellow souls through the Void, there was one that she attached to and danced with until she forgot their Harmonic names.
I’m sorry I kept you waiting, Sulim.
For a moment, for millennia, they enjoyed each other’s company.
Then Mira awoke in a strange place.