40. Raya
RAYA
“Are we going to talk about that?”
- JODIE TO HER SISTER, ERIN
“If I’d known how annoying he was, I don’t think I would’ve rushed to help save him,” Khol huffed as Jameson began the song again from the start.
“There once was a girl who always looked her best. The village thought her beautiful, especially her br?—”
“Enough!” Erin stated. “I can’t listen to this again,” she cried.
My eyes had adjusted to the dark well enough to see the wide grin on Jodie’s face. We had been floating in the unyielding darkness for a lifetime, tension keeping almost everyone quiet. Almost.
“I’m trying to lift the mood, Erin,” Jameson stated, elongating the sounds in Erin’s name. “I’m the one who’s been locked up for the last one hundred years,” he mumbled under his breath.
“I think a hundred years is possibly a bit of a stretch,” Rafael spoke from beside Khol, who had not looked at me once during our journey. I could feel the anger radiating from him.
The seven of us sat in silence for a moment, still unsure whether to trust the people we had embarked on this journey with.
“How much longer?” Joy asked, wrapping her arm around Jameson. Khol lifted a hand and plunged it in the water.
“The river is warming; we should find the light soon,” he stated quietly.
“Are you going to talk to me?” I whispered for only the two of us to hear.
“Raya, please,” he said gruffly. Raising my eyebrows, I turned to him, my body language a warning for others to stay clear.
“I did not send the letter, Khol,” I stated in a hushed whisper.
“Are we really going to do this now?” he countered, staring at the other people on the boat, all of them pretending not to be listening.
“I believe this is the only time we will have,” I sighed. “Who knows what awaits us at the other end of the tunnel?” I paused.
I thought back to a sweet training session we had a few weeks prior. Khol was instructing me on throwing knifes and I was pretending not to know anything about it, pretending I hadn’t learned to throw knifes before I’d learned to count to ten.
One slipped from his grasp as he looked upon me, a slash cut deep into his palm, a well of crimson forming. He cursed and I had laughed, taking his hand between my own and dabbing away the blood. Soon he began to laugh with me as I knitted his skin back together with my touch.
It had felt so natural, so lovely. Kind of like a habit, that we would get battered and bruised every day in training, but we would come together and heal together. Like something we’d do every day for the rest of our lives.
Khol’s scoff brought me back to reality.
“So, again I say, I did not send the letter.” My words were tired and frayed.
“But you wrote it,” Khol argued, clearly not willing to yield.
“So that’s it then? You can never forgive me?” I huffed, sick and tired of an argument that was going nowhere.
“Raya, you have given me no time to forgive you,” his voice mirrored the exasperation of my own.
“Nothing is certain, Khol, nothing at all.” My voice was barely a whimper. “And I don’t want to die with this hate between us. So, know this, Khol, I am truly sorry,” I whispered before turning away.
“Are you alright?” Rafael asked his brother, noticing the tension between us.
“How is everyone coping so easily?” He finally caved and whispered to his brother. “I feel like my insides are turning upside down. My supposed dead brother has come back to life,” he gestured Rafael. “We just broke you out of jail, for Goddess’s sake! I’ve left The Temple, my home, knowing I can never return, and now we’ve just decided we can trust these people we met only an hour ago?” His whispers were becoming louder as he became more vexed. “This is crazy!” He dragged his hands through his hair in the way he always does.
“Not to intrude on your… conversation,” Jodie interrupted softly. “But this is a really small boat,” she looked from Rafael to Khol, “and we can hear everything you’re saying.” She smiled awkwardly in the dark. “Just to let you know,” she finished, looking down at her hands.
“If it makes you feel better,” Jameson added. “I literally have no idea what’s going on or who half the people in this boat are,” he shrugged.
Laughter sprouted from Khol’s mouth loudly, before he clamped a hand over his lips as though he was surprised the sound came from him.
Laughter erupted around the boat, all of us clutching our stomachs and the ridiculousness of what our lives had suddenly become.
Abruptly light spilled into the tunnel.
Finally,I thought to myself finally we are in the light.
But the tunnel didn’t open, the light wasn’t coming from the moon, it was coming from me. From my hands. Light bloomed in my palms softly, the brightness not daring to burn me.
Hello old friend.
Warmth laced through my entire body.
“You’re a FireBringer,” Rafael breathed. I looked up at him through the light, my eyes now a deep burnt orange.
“Yes,” I stated, almost unsure how to explain the full scope of my power.
“And a MindWonderer, and a SkyChanger, and an EarthShaker,” Khol said, running his fingers through the flames, absentmindedly, before pulling them away, remembering what was happening between us.
“It’s beautiful,” Joy whispered. “The Goddess has blessed you, Raya.” Her eyes shone with awe. Once again, I felt something connecting us pulled tight.
The cave like tunnel surrounding us, lit up softly. Carvings and paintings marked all the walls. Bats hid their faces beneath their wings, and spiders slid back into the cracks.
With our heads tilted up to the ceiling we stared at the images on the walls.
“It’s the Prophesy,” Rafael spoke finally, after long minutes of silence. Khol nodded, before glancing quickly in my direction.
Paintings of two women, their hands clasped, covered the walls. Words in languages long dead told story after story. With their arms extended, the women changed the winds, broke the earth, and enflamed their enemies.
They became one and other.
“It’s you, isn’t it?” Joy whispered, staring at me. I swallowed against my dry throat.
Her words were so simple and clear, like they did not hold the future of every realm in their hands.
“If it is me,” the light guttered slightly in my palms before reforming, “then I believe it is you too.” My words were almost a whisper. Joy nodded slowly, absorbing the knowledge.
How was she coping so well?
“I think my mother knows; I think she has known all along.” Khol spoke quietly. “I believe this is why she wanted you dead.”
Silence filled the boat.
We did not speak as the tunnel ceiling finally became illuminated by the full moon.
“I hate the Northern Continent,” Jodie mumbled under her breath as the rain began to fall. Drops stuck to eyelashes and soaked through cloaks as the truth settled around us.
I had known he was right, when Khol had mentioned The Prophesy all those months ago. I just hadn’t wanted to believe it.
I still didn’t.
Pressure fell onto my chest.
I was an orphan, a girl swept up in accidental missions and long slumbered power.
“When we touched earlier,” Joy’s now timid voice cracked through the silence, “I saw images, memories. Either yours or someone else’s.”
Silence found its home on our boat again.
“Or ours,” my voice was hoarse, as though I had spent hours screaming. I rubbed my wrists instinctively.
“They can’t be, the memories… I lived with my parents until they died, the memories couldn’t have belonged to me. I’m not, I wasn’t…”
“An orphan?” I whispered, glancing up at the crying sky.
“I saw the memories too, ones I had long forgotten.” I picked at the split ends of my damp hair.
“My village burned, my mother murdered. I was slung into a carriage. Kept like a prisoner…” my words seemed to fail me.
“My memories are hazy, I don’t really remember where I was or who had taken me or where I was going, but I remember the chains, and I remember the little girl who was taken with me. Her deep brown skin and braided hair.” Grabbing Khol’s hand instinctively, I searched for the words to tell my story. He stared at me momentarily, somehow knowing I needed his touch.
He did not pull away.
“The only memories I can truly recall are the ones I made at Matron’s house. The rest,” I looked up and met Joy’s stare, “the ones from before, they feel like they’ve been dipped in water. The harder I try to reach them, the further away they feel.” Wetness coated my cheeks as the rain fell harder.
“When we touched, it was the most I’d ever seen about my past.” I wiped the rain from my cheeks quickly. “I barely even remember my own mother.” I laughed at the ugliness of life, at the unfairness at everything each of us have had to endure. Part of the truth had finally revealed itself, but so much was still veiled, so much was uncertain.
Land bumped itself against the edge of our canal boat, but none of us moved. We knew that we couldn’t go back but we weren’t quite ready to move forward, so we sat for a moment. Each of us trying to comprehend how we moved forward in a world that seemed to be moving in every direction.