by Lynn Mann
She decided that our communities were organised well, although our tendency to elect village Elders, rather than instinctively know who they were, was lacking. She knew of the Skills and largely approved of their use, but was astonished that we had only recently realised that they were basically all the same, and that anyone with a throat construction that allowed the creation of the range of sounds necessary could perform any of them. She disapproved of weather-singing, since creating the desired weather in one location would have ramifications for those in surrounding areas. She was surprised by the need for many of our Trades – Tailors, Heralds, Chandlers, Bakers and Carpenters were, in her view, superfluous – but she wanted to know everything we could tell her about the work of our Farmers, Charcoal Burners and Potters.
She had known that humans of The New allowed themselves to be guided by horses but her first encounter with Infinity and me had stunned her. As a result of everything that she had witnessed and felt from us and the rest of our group since then, she had developed a rapidly growing fascination with our horses. Sometimes she was slow to guard her thoughts before giving away that of all the horses, it was Flame who took her interest the most. On one such occasion, I felt the tiniest of tendrils reach out from Fitt to Flame. The tendril was tentative but knew its way. As soon as I was Aware of it though, Fitt pulled it back into herself so fast that I almost thought I’d imagined it. I pushed the episode immediately to one side and spoke of something else. It wasn’t until I was on my own with Infinity that I allowed myself to mull over what exactly it was that I’d sensed. I smiled as understanding dawned.
Everything happens as it should, Infinity echoed my thoughts.
It took me a while to believe you when you first told me that. It used to only make sense when used in combination with hindsight, but now those words seem to come to me constantly, I told her.
It is a difficult concept to understand whilst believing that the dream is real. Now that you are able to observe the dream whilst living within it you are able to appreciate the simplicity of reality. There is no right and no wrong. No good and no bad. We are all parts of All That Is. We are All That Is. We always have been and we always will be. When we incarnate we choose to be part of a system that strives towards balance as a mechanism for remembering who we really are. When something is out of balance it will seek to right itself. Everything happens as it should.
Suddenly, nothing seemed as complicated as it had.
Marvel came back triumphant from meeting Fitt one day. He had taken a spare bow and arrow set with him from our supplies and had offered to teach Fitt to use them to hunt, as she seemed to struggle so much with bringing down prey bodily. Apparently, she had leapt at his offer, enthused by the idea of being able to be sure of killing prey outright with no suffering involved. She had been an avid student and was immensely grateful to Marvel for teaching her and for leaving the bow and arrows with her as a gift. She assured him earnestly that she would practise her archery until she could be sure of hitting her mark every time and only then would she use her new skill to hunt for herself.
The only one who avoided going to meet Fitt was Aleks. I tried to convince him of how Fitt felt about the horses, so that he might feel it was safe for him to take Nexus to go to meet her, but he refused even to consider going. ‘Any encounters with Kindred will be too soon for me, so there’s no way on earth I’ll go seeking one intentionally,’ he replied on one occasion. He had found a certain level of comfort in our daily routine and he had no intention of disrupting it, but each and every time any of us went to meet Fitt, we invited him along anyway.
We came across villages from time to time, occasionally because they lay in our path but usually because those of us who were Aware would sense the presence of human thought processes concentrated in an area, and we would divert from our path to find them.
The first few times we came across villages, Infinity and I and Rowena and Oak camped a short distance away with Flame. She experienced the visits to the villages through the other horses and by the fourth village we came across, she was happy to join in, so we were all able to enjoy the warm hospitality provided by the villagers – grazing for the horses and soft beds, baths and meals for ourselves.
While it was usually tempting to stay for longer, we always moved on after a couple of nights after helping as many people as possible; we passed on our horses’ counsel when it was requested and although Vickery took on the largest share, all of us except Aleks helped as many people to multiskill as we could. When it came time to leave, we advised anyone still wanting help to multiskill to travel to Jack and Katonia’s centre in Rockwood. Aleks’s job was to gather and pack the supplies that were always freely offered by the villagers in return for our help and for the most part, we ate well as we travelled, with Marvel’s and Vickery’s hunting efforts supplementing what we and the horses could carry.
Infinity and I, with Flame alongside us, still led our group as we travelled, although as time went on, any of the others who were Aware could have taken over. All four of them were familiar with the Kindred Elder’s essence and they knew in which direction we needed to travel, but we had reached an unspoken agreement that since it was my mind she chose to touch from time to time, I would continue to lead the group towards her, if only to keep everything as constant and unthreatening to her as we could.
Between us, we developed mental exercises to do to keep us focused in the physical world, like finding something within view that began with each letter of the alphabet in sequence or counting the number of strides our horses took in a straight line. We would take it in turns to do the exercises while being prompted by the others to explain exactly on what the bird of prey in the nearest tree was focused, how old the crooked tree was, whether the bee that buzzed along in front of us was returning to or departing from its hive, in which direction was the nearest village, what colour underpants Justin was wearing that day – getting that information from him while performing the mental exercises at the same time had proven the most difficult test to date – or any other detail that required use of our Awareness. We pushed each other relentlessly to remain centred, however difficult the combination of tasks given to us by our fellows and as a result, each of us was getting better and better at it. I became able to hold non-verbal conversations with no outward signs, as did Rowena and Sonja. Marvel only muttered when communicating with Justin, and Sonja only whispered occasionally, when she was tired.
We travelled steadily north-east as spring turned into summer. Occasionally, we would sense the essence of a Kindred nearby but as soon as we were sensed in return, the Kindred would very definitely turn his or her attention away from us. We knew Fitt’s essence well enough to sense her imprint on the phenomenon and we were confused. All of us except for Aleks would have welcomed meeting more of the Kindred, yet Fitt appeared to be of the opinion that it would be unwise. We sensed her unease but she kept any further thoughts on the matter closely guarded and refused to discuss it or even to acknowledge that it was happening when any of us asked her, so we agreed between ourselves to let it be.
The further we travelled, the fewer and further between were the villages. As the pattern became apparent, we took on more and more food supplies at each village, to see us to the next. Our horses carried their extra saddlebags without complaint but we monitored them closely during the day and stopped for the night as soon as any of them began to show signs of weariness.
Flame let it be known that she was prepared to take a share of the supplies that we humans deemed so important, but none of us were happy for her to do that until she was completely sound. She was coming on in leaps and bounds; her pelvis was now correctly aligned and she had begun to face the fear that she held in her stifle joint as she and I slowly corrected its arrangement. Every time she made the smallest change, I relived with her the terror that she had felt when the Kindred had wrenched her leg out to the side so violently and so horribly. I had to concentrate hard to step aside from the fe
ar and the pain that Flame’s memories tried to convince her were still so real and so justified, so that I could heal her as she changed.
Aleks became more and more agitated as we travelled. The thought that at some point we may cease to come across any villages altogether became larger and more frightening in his mind until it threatened to take him over completely. Nothing that any of us, including Nexus, did or said could shake his terror that he might die of thirst or hunger, leaving Nexus at the mercy of the Kindred or the large wild cats of which Marvel and Vickery were now catching regular glimpses as they hunted.
Vickery complained numerous times to the rest of us about our refusals to batter at Aleks’s fear with our light until we got through to him as we had done before. We were Aware, however, that uncomfortable as Aleks was, we wouldn’t be helping him by shielding him from his insecurity any longer. We would look out for him as he suffered and we would support him as best we could, but now it was up to him to find his way to achieve the potential he had seen for himself when he bonded with Nexus.
Aleks looked awful. He was losing weight and neglecting his personal hygiene, convinced that there was no point in looking after himself when he would likely die soon. Nexus didn’t look much better. She too was thinner than she had been, despite the lush grazing that had been plentiful on our journey so far, and her coat had lost its shine. She was putting everything she had into her attempts to reach her Bond-Partner, but his fear was blocking her out.
When the forests and scrubland through which we had travelled for the majority of our journey gave way to massive expanses of grassy plain, we hoped that Aleks might be able to let go of the portion of his fear that was associated with the Kindred, since in the absence of the woodland which was their preferred habitat, we were unlikely to meet any. Sadly, he was almost beyond rational thought by that point and merely convinced himself that we and the horses were even more likely to be attacked by the wild cats that surely roamed in huge hunting groups in the absence of any Kindred to keep their numbers down.
None of us thought it wise to mention that there was at least one Kindred in the vicinity; Fitt was absenting herself from convention yet again by leaving the trees in which she had so far managed to stay as she tailed us and in which she could move comfortably and easily, and was following us on foot. She still kept at a distance that ensured Flame’s comfort, and so wasn’t close enough to be spotted by Aleks. I was concerned for her, as her body had been engineered to scale buildings, meaning that climbing trees and swinging through branches were as natural to her as walking on the ground was not. I was Aware that she was constantly stiff and sore but aside from leaving her herbal preparations along with the small amounts of food that we left to supplement her rapidly improving hunting, there wasn’t much we could do to help; she was sufficiently far behind that asking the horses to take any of us back to her each night to offer healing would have left them too tired to carry us and all of our supplies the following day.
I was glad of the distance Fitt was keeping when I and my friends sensed wild horses. We had struck up camp by a small stand of trees that offered both shade and firewood, and we were waiting for our campfire to burn hot enough to cook the brace of rabbits that Vickery had hunted as we travelled that day. Our horses were dozing in the shade as we moved about in our well-practised routines – Marvel attending to the fire, Vickery and Rowena preparing the food and Holly, Sonja and I gathering firewood, arranging bedding ready for later and securing waterproof sheeting over our bags and the horses’ saddles and bridles.
Aleks’s job had been to fetch water until fairly recently, but now even that was too much for him to cope with, as he fought his constant battle for sanity. He knelt by the fire, appearing to watch Marvel as he fanned the flames with a large sheet of bark, but actually caught up with the images that flashed through his mind of himself and Nexus dying in all manner of horrific circumstances. He rocked back and forth on his heels, his dark, curly hair damp against his head and neck and his eyes almost insignificant in the middle of the black shadows that surrounded them. He was suffering badly, we all knew that, and the temptation to send him the light that would break through the barrier of fear that prevented him from hearing his horse was almost overwhelming at times, but we knew that if we did that for him, we would merely be delaying the process rather than halting it for him.
As I held a waterproof sheet down so that Sonja could tap a peg into the ground at its corner, I was Aware of a group of essences all touching my mind at the same time, initially dismissing me as not being of concern and moving on and then returning to me. Not just to me, I realised, but to me, my friends and our horses. Sonja looked over at Bright at the same time that I looked to Infinity. All of our horses were now alert and looking off to the west. Then, all of them except for Flame relaxed again and went back to their dozing. Flame focused on the essences briefly, before joining the rest of our herd at peace.
‘Horses!’ Rowena’s voice carried across the campsite.
‘But not like ours,’ I murmured, fascinated.
Aleks jumped and looked around himself, frantically. ‘Horses? Where? I don’t see any horses,’ he said. ‘Where are they? We have to warn them of the danger they’re in.’ He got to his feet and squinted as he tried to see into the distance.
Marvel put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Aleks, sit down,’ he said, kindly. ‘They’re not close, they were just checking to see if they could sense any predators in the area before stopping to graze, and they found us instead. Neither they, nor we, are in any danger.’
Aleks lifted his hands up into the air and stamped his foot as he flung them down by his sides again. ‘YES, WE ARE!! THIS MISSION HAS MOVED FROM DANGEROUS TO COMPLETELY HOPELESS, WHY AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN SEE THAT?’
‘Because you’re the only one who has stopped listening to his horse and is currently having a meltdown,’ said Rowena, simply. ‘I’ve been in the exact same position you’re in, Aleks, and I know how scary it is, as I’ve already told you numerous times, but I know you can’t really hear me. Your fear has blocked Nexus out of your mind and has made you irrational. The only way you can begin to feel better is to look around you, take comfort from the fact that none of us are concerned for either our or our horse’s safety and relax enough to let Nexus back into your mind.’
‘Relax?... Relax?’ Aleks laughed a horrible, manic laugh. ‘I’ll relax when you all come to your senses, turn around and lead me and Nexus home.’ His voice changed to a whine. ‘Please? Rowena? Amarilla? Please, take us home?’
Rowena went to stand in front of Aleks. She put her hands on his shoulders and looked into his eyes. ‘Aleks, we’re trying to take you home, you just can’t find a way to believe it. Sit down here by the fire. We’ll be cooking dinner soon and I want you to eat well, so that Nexus will have one less thing to worry about. Will you do that for me? For her?’
Aleks glanced at each of us frantically and then his shoulders slumped and a look of hopelessness stole over his face. He allowed Rowena to sit him down and then he sat staring listlessly into the fire. Rowena jerked her head at Marvel, indicating for him to follow her over to where the rest of us stood.
‘He’s getting even worse,’ she said to us, ‘and Vic, before you suggest it for the millionth time, no, giving him our light won’t help him, not in the long run. All that will happen is that he’ll allow Nexus to help him stay calm for a while, then his discomfort at travelling, camping, not knowing for sure when we’ll find water and food supplies next, not knowing what we’ll face with the Kindred and these wild cats we’re coming across, all of it will weigh him down again until he ends up exactly where he is now. We all know that things have to reach a level of discomfort that’s unbearable before we tend to try and do something about it, well this is Aleks having reached that level of discomfort. The problem we’ve got, is that Nexus is getting weaker.’
Holly nodded. ‘She’s putting everything of herself into trying to reach Aleks. She’s not goin
g to be able to carry him for much longer and he’s going to be in an even worse state if he has to walk. It’s not going to be long before we’ll have to stop travelling altogether so that she can conserve what little strength she’ll have to keep herself alive.’
‘It shames me that we’re allowing Nexus to come to this,’ said Vickery.
Nexus was with all of us who were Aware, instantly.
‘Vic, Nexus is adamant that we allow Aleks the freedom to address his own issues in his own time,’ Holly said, gently.
‘Even if it kills her? Aleks is so obsessed with keeping her safe that his fear is killing both of them!’ Vickery spat. ‘You all seem to forget that I’ve been in his position and I know how he feels. The light knows where I’d be now if you guys hadn’t sent your light to me until I could see things more clearly, are you really willing to see him and Nexus die, rather than give them the same help?’
‘The difference in this case, is that Aleks needs to be in the position he’s in, in order to achieve the potential he saw for himself. Nexus knows that and is a willing participant in this whole process,’ I said. ‘It’s not easy for any of us to witness this and it’s a lot harder for you, because you only have the evidence of what you’re seeing to go on, but please, Vic, trust us when we tell you that helping Aleks in the way you want to won’t be helping him, or Nexus.’
Vickery glared at each of us in turn and then looked to the skies and sighed. ‘I do trust you all,’ she said, ‘and Verve confirms all you’ve said, but I can’t find a way to find this comfortable.’
Marvel drew her into a warm hug. ‘You wouldn’t be the friend we all love if you could,’ he said.
Vickery hugged him back slightly awkwardly and then withdrew from him. ‘Anyway, what’s all this about horses?’ she said.
