Chapter 35
"That's me!" She grinned, floating up to where she was just inches from my face. "Oh my stars, I can't believe it actually worked!" She dropped the purple thread that was in her hands, and it returned to swirling and floating with the rest of them.
"Rosaria? But how–" I shook my head. "I thought you were..."
"Dead? I thought so too. After I had that accident, I woke up here."
I furrowed my brows. The circumstances surrounding Rosaria, when I woke up in her body, was that she'd been in a terrible accident and injured her head.
Confused, I took in the space around me.
It was a vast expanse, as if we were floating in the middle of the universe.
All around us and stretching as far as I could see, there were "halls" of floating images, and intertwined around them were little glowing threads.
"Where are we?" I said slowly.
Rosaria floated closer to me, so that we were eye to eye.
Her crimson eyes were like two curious, gentle flames.
"This is the ether... clever name, right?
I came up with it myself," She grinned. "Its the place people go when their life flashes before their eyes, right before they die.
" She said these words slowly and ominously, though with a hint of mirth, and then turned to me.
"I think. Well, I suppose I've had a lot of time to figure it out." She placed a finger on her chin.
The sudden realization hit me. I'd always wondered what happened to Rosaria after we switched. "You mean... you've been here, the whole time?" I gasped.
She nodded. "I've been for what, like 300 years by now? Feels like it," She shook her head then shrugged, placing her hands on my shoulders. "But that doesn't matter. What matters is that you're here now."
I shook my head. "How? How did we switch?"
Rosaria grinned, as if eager to tell another living being about all that she'd discovered.
"I'm not sure. I just... woke up here," She admitted.
"But, after wandering around for a while, I think these threads have something to do with it.
Here, let me show you," she grabbed my wrist, and we floated upwards and through one of the floating "hallways" until we came to an image.
It was a very familiar looking oak tree, though I couldn't quite place how I knew it.
Two little girls, one with blonde hair and one with brown hair, sat under it, but they were too far away for me to recognize.
A thread was coming out of it and weaved in with the threads coming from the other images, glowing faintly.
As we stood in front of the image, the girls started to move and I could see the wind blowing the branches. "Watch this," Rosaria grinned and looked back at me. She grabbed the thread, and pulled us through.
A flash of blinding light blocked my vision, and then we were there, in that very same scene.
Floating above the two girls, still grabbing Rosaria's hand, I turned to take in the scenery around me.
The oak tree sat on top of a large hill covered in grass, overlooking a playground and a large city park.
Instantly, the memories came flooding back, and I turned quickly to watch the two girls, who were crouched in front of the tree playing with sticks.
"You be the dragon!" The girl with blonde hair exclaimed, holding her stick up triumphantly.
"But I was the dragon last time!" The brown haired girl pouted. "You always get to be the knight!"
"That's because I'm better at being the knight!" the blonde exclaimed. Then, she puffed out her chest. "My name is Grace, I'm a knight, and today, I've come to slay you, mister dragon!"
"No fair! Julia! And why do I have to be a 'mister' dragon!?" The brown haired girl shouted, tackling the blonde. Effectively baiting her friend into being the dragon, the blonde, Julia, smiled, and parried her attack with the stick.
"Not so fast, mister dragon! I won't let you hurt the people any longer!" She rushed for the girl and hit her on the side lightly with the stick.
"My name is Tamera!" The brown-haired girl roared, pouncing on the other girl. As they tumbled on the ground, the blonde poked at her friend with the stick. She paused. "Now, you pretend I just cut off your leg."
The brown haired girl paused, furrowed her brow, then after a moment gasped, "Ahh, oww!!" She cried out, clutching her arm, and staggering. "Pretend... pretend I just breathed fire at you!"
"I dodged!" The blonde taunted, rolling out of the way. She brushed her wispy blonde hair out of her face.
"No fair, you can't do that every time!"
I watched the scene unfold fondly, as the two girls tousled in the grass.
Tears formed in my eyes. How could I ever forget?
This was a dear memory from my childhood.
One of many, when Julia and I would run up the hill at the park and play-act.
We would go on epic quests, make new characters, which, when we were older, eventually became what she wrote her books about.
Not knowing that those very ideas we'd come up with.
.. were actually remnants of another world.
At that point, I'd almost completely forgotten Rosaria was beside me, until she squeezed my hands.
"Eye opening, isn't it?" She smiled softly, her eyes taking on a more sad glow.
Then, she lightened her expression. "I believe that our bodies are somehow connected, Tamera.
The ether is full of memories, both yours and mine, intertwined together by these threads," She gestured around her.
I looked up, prying my eyes off the memory. "You mean..." I paused.
Rosaria nodded. "Yes. Somehow, I think that's how we were able to switch bodies." She tugged on the thread, and led us back into the ether. Rosaria paused for a moment, as if orienting herself.
At the same time as I did, she spotted a red thread, intertwining among others, and followed it.
It glowed an angry shade and pulsed faintly, but it was slightly more transparent than the rest. As we followed, the intensity of it only grew.
It led us up through another series of hallways until we came in front of another image.
I recognized it immediately. Rosaria's room.
"This is the present," Rosaria said, looking down at her body which was lying on the bed, deathly pale. The red thread curled around it. At her bedside, a girl, which I recognized as my handmaiden Beth, pressed a cloth to her forehead. My forehead, I realized.
"Wait... I'm... you're still alive?" I gasped.
Rosaria nodded. "Luckily, the poison didn't kill you, thank goodness. It just separated your soul from your body, and it ended up back in your original world. So right now... that body's just a shell without a soul to inhabit it."
"You knew it was poison?"
"Mhm," Rosaria said. "When I get bored, I watch the present. It's kind of fun watching yourself in the third person. I knew it was Clara that gave the maid that poison to slip in your drink. But, in the end, I couldn't do anything to warn you." She frowned.
As she said this, another person entered the room. Beth got up greeted him, they exchanged a few words that for some reason we couldn't hear, and then left. It was Rowan. He had dark circles under his eyes, his hair was ragged, and just looked like an all around mess.
"Ooh, he's cute!" Rosaria elbowed me in the side. "Not as cute as my Prince, of course," She grinned. I watched as he wandered over to my bedside to change the cloth, said a few things, and then wandered around the room like a caged lion.
The red thread floated around the room. I watched it, then grew concerned. Why is that thread different than the rest?
Suddenly Rosaria snapped her fingers, and a table with two chairs appeared in front of us, floating of course. My eyes widened, and she gestured for me to take a seat. Still without words, I could only look at her in awe. "How did you just do that?" I gasped.
"Oh this? I guess I just figured it out one day," she shrugged.
"This space is full of some kind of energy.
I like to call it 'essence.' I think it comes from those threads everywhere.
I just think of what I want, snap my fingers, as it appears!
" As a demonstration, a teacup appeared in her hands. "See, pretty cool, right?" she grinned.
"Well, now that you're here, I have a plan," she pulled me closer, so that I could see the red thread up close. "By my calculations, if we can manipulate this thing, and send you back!" She grinned.
"Send me back?" I gasped.
"I guess I've just had enough time watching you live my life better than I did to reflect on my actions," She smiled sheepishly.
Then, she looked more serious. "I saw it in your memories, Tamera.
My life, what I would do... I don't want to see that happen to myself.
And I don't want to betray my beloved prince. " she sighed.
"And what about you?"
She looked thoughtful. "I don't know. Maybe I'll find a way to move on from this place," she smiled. "After all I've done, this is the least I could do to atone for my actions."
"You're... different than what I expected," I said.
Rosaria only smiled. "I guess you could say I'm no longer blinded by the things I once was."
She grabbed the red thread, then inspected it. She showed it to me. "You see, this thread's red, and it has no essence flowing through it," She looked up. "The one connected to the present is usually purple. That's how I could bring you here."
I nodded, not really understanding. Getting up from her chair, Rosaria floated down to my bedside. I followed her. It was a weird experience—staring at my body from the third person. The red thread was denser here, and intertwined around my body's limbs.
When I grabbed it, it flickered slightly. "Woah," I gasped, jumping back, feeling a slight shock in my chest. "What was that?"
"It means it's still receptive to you," she said softly. "It wants to reconnect... it just doesn't have anything to hold onto."
She placed the thread in my hands, and wrapped it several times around my arms. Then, she did the same to herself. "What are you doing?" I asked.
"As I said, our souls are very similar," She pointed out. "That's why, they got tangled in the first place. In order to send you back, we're going to have to untangle them. And to do that, we need to use the 'essence,' or, at least, I think," she grinned.
"How do you do that?"
Rosaria closed her eyes, as if concentrating, and then her arm started to glow, and the red thread started to change colors. "Now, I don't know about this, so if we both get blasted into oblivion, I'm sorry, okay?"
I blinked.
She continued, "You need to close your eyes and focus. Think about your life the last few months, as you were living as me. All your favorite memories. And try to push that outwards... if that makes sense," She grinned.
"Kind of," I furrowed a brow, but tried as she asked. When I closed my eyes, I allowed my mind to wander. Over the course of the last several months. The ball. The garden. The manor. Edith. The town. Rowan. Father, Julian, and the knights. Everything that had happened thus far.
I clung to those memories, weaving the good and the bad into a single, golden tether. It had been a short few months, but they felt real.
"There, you've got it! Wow, we really are the same, aren't we? You're a natural!" Rosaria exclaimed, her voice a bright spark in the darkness of my mind.
As I opened my eyes, my arm was glowing, similar to hers. A faint purple light replaced the color of the thread winding around my arms.The physical thread winding around our limbs began to dissolve, replaced by a hum of pure energy. "Keep going!" she urged, though her face had gone pale.
A sharp, white-hot pain burst through my temples, like a needle threading through my brain. "It hurts—why does it hurt—?"
"Because it doesn't want to be separated," Rosaria said, her voice trembling with the effort. "Souls aren't meant to be torn in two."
She screamed then, a raw, guttural sound, as the violet light began to fray. I felt it in my own chest, a sensation of being unmade. On the bed, her, our body, twitched violently, like a puppet reacting to tangled strings. Rowan's head snapped toward it, his mouth moving in a frantic shout.
I gritted my teeth, forcing the memories of my life to act as a wedge. The electric glow grew blinding, smelling of ozone and ancient dust. With a final, agonizing snap that vibrated in my very marrow, the thread parted.
The pressure vanished instantly, replaced by a hollow, terrifying silence. The air felt thin, cold.
"What's happening? Why are you disappearing?" Fear gripped me as I reached out, but my hand passed through her shoulder like smoke.
"You're doing way better in that body than I ever had.
They love you, Rosaria. And you deserve to live that life more than I do.
" Rosaria smiled, a sad, beautiful expression that didn't belong to someone so young.
"I'm still part of you... but you're doing a much better job than I ever could. I think... it's time to let go."
"Wait, don't leave me!" I cried out. It literally felt like my soul had snapped in two.
"Hey," she whispered, her form becoming translucent, the edges of her spirit bleeding into the white light of the room.
"Do you think I'll see your friend, Julia?
If I see her, I'll tell her everything. I bet she would be so proud.
"Tears blurred my vision as her image flickered like a dying candle. "Thank you, Rosaria," I choked out.
She gave a small, ghostly wave, as her form began to fade. "Say hi to my prince for me!"
and then everything faded into an all-consuming white.
And I woke up.
___
The world around me was blurred.
I heard familiar voices calling me, urging me to wake up. Through the void, I saw them. All of my friends sat around my bedside, caring for me, urging me to wake up. And through it all, there was someone who never once left my side. It wasn't Father. It wasn't Julian. Rowan.
He grasped my hand, then felt my forehead, as if like some lost puppy dog he was waiting for me to come back.
Sometimes, he would get up, pace around the room like a caged lion, and lean near the window—only leaving when someone called for him.
And even then, when he left, someone else took his place.
I realized something then and there. I was cared for more in this world, a place I'd only been for a few months, in their relative who's body I'd stolen, by complete strangers that hardly knew me, than I ever had been in my old life.
Three months, and not one visitor. The stark realization hit me.
Not my sister, not my aunt and uncle... not even my grandparents or my old college friends. No one cared.
Tears welled up in my eyes as I reached out and touched my body. "Please, I want to go back. I belong there."
___
My eyes snapped open. I looked up. At flowing purple bed curtains.
Home. I realized. Somehow, I didn't know how, but I'd returned.
The ether, the threads, the essence, the original Rosaria, all of it was gone from my mind.
Everything felt like a blur, like a faint memory not quite within my reach. Groggily, I sat up.
Edith, who had head leaned on my covers, stroking my hand and humming a tune, sat up immediately. "Rosaria?" joy filled her voice. "Rosaria!"
"Ugh, how long was I out for?"
"You don't want to know..."
"What!? A whole month?!"
Edith nodded. "And, just in time... because there's a letter here for you."
Crown princess summons.