by Luca Rossi
If Irene was really a witch, wouldn't she at least make herself a more fashionable wardrobe?
And what if this house wasn't hers?
Where am I going? And why?
The questions continue to spin through my mind.
“Alia fas no sdreil imas catel biron.”
Oh my god, I know that voice: it's Anna, my wife.
“You can still do it. There's no time for explanations, but you can still save yourself. You need to have faith. Open the window and jump out. Don't be afraid, I'll save you.”
The voice seems to be coming from the fog. I rush to open the window, which lets out an unpleasant squeak.
The freezing air immediately gives me goose bumps. Outside of the house, in the fog, the temperature seems to be plunging dozens of degrees below zero. I turn towards the bed, take a sheet and wrap it around my body. Even now I feel like I'm freezing.
I turn back to the window. I hang outside of it. Where is her voice coming from?
“Don't wait. There's no time to spare, you can't go back anymore,” my wife's voice continues.
“Anna, where are you? Why can't I see you?”
“Antelmo, don't dilly-dally. You'll be lost forever in just a few seconds. I won't be able to do anything for you. Climb out the window. Come back to me. I need you.”
“Anna, please, answer me. Where are you?”
“Do it now. You're almost out of time.”
I lift my right leg over the windowsill. I try to see if I can make anything out beyond the window, but it's all fog. And cold.
Holding on to the sill, I lift my left leg. I'm terrorized by the idea of falling into the void.
“Stop!”
It's Irene's voice. Her figure appears in the doorway of the bedroom.
“There's nothing outside there. If you do, you die.”
I feel entirely hopeless. I'm terrorized by the idea of letting myself fall into the void, but I can't stay in this house any longer.
“Come here, Antelmo. There's no sense in sacrificing your life. You've already given too much to Cloradil,” Irene says.
“Antelmo, my love, there's no time left. Do it for me. Do it for us. Come back to your wife. I'm here, waiting for you.”
Again, it's my wife's voice, it's Anna. All I want is to be back in her arms. She's right. I've always trusted her.
In the meantime, Irene has moved closer to me.
I lift my left leg over the sill. I'm outside of the window. I hang onto the outer edge of the sill for just a moment and then let myself go.
A tight grip grasps me and starts to lift me. With my head just barely beyond the sill, I notice that it's Irene's hand. But how can she be so strong?
She pulls me up inside the window and I let her. I want to resist but I'm still not completely convinced that jumping into the void was the right thing to do. I'm afraid.
“Antelmo, my love...”
Anna's voice is even further away.
“That's an echo-voice,” Irene seems to be reading my mind. “She launched it with the mistrofal of the Earth once she understood where we were headed. That's why she didn't answer you. Those were just words chasing after you. She couldn't hear you. And if you fell into the void, you would simply have died.”
Rage rises up inside of me.
“I don't believe you! I don't know who or what you are, but that was my wife! Why are you doing this to me? How could you have kidnapped me and made me prisoner in this house?”
“You were the one who entered this house out of your own free will. It was your choice. Perhaps Turlis came into your heart and showed you the right way.”
While she talks, I hear the last echo of Anna's voice.
“Antelmooo...”
With a sudden twitch I lunge towards the window and leap outside. Just before my body is completely outside of the house, a very strong flash blinds me and forces me to close my eyelids. I feel my face hit the wet ground.
I open my eyes. The house is still in front of me, but now it is pure white and splendid. The walls are made of white marble. Inside the bedroom, the closet, dresser and bed are now encrusted and embellished with gems.
Irene is covered in white veils. Her hair is pulled back into a braid that wraps around her head, like a crown.
I look around. I'm on a small lawn, sprinkled with flowers of every color and type. Just a little further from me there's a bubbling brook, beyond which the forest begins. I see lots of little hills in the distance. There are many other gleaming little houses. The sky is astoundingly bright.
Something attracts my curiosity in the soft shadow of a house near me. The sun is shining right at me. There shouldn't be a shadow pointing towards the star. I turn around. Behind me I see three other suns, one similar to the first, the other two much smaller.
I have no idea where I am. But this is definitely not Earth.
5
“We need to get moving. Unfortunately we couldn't land closer to the Palace. We still have a little ways to go here. Enondil should be here any minute.”
I'm still on the ground, admiring the enchanting landscape that spreads out before my eyes.
Irene talks to me from inside the bedroom. I think she's doing something in the closet, which is shining with a thousand colors of light.
“What is this house, Irene?”
“It's my house. You knew that, right?”
“Yes, sure, but usually women's houses don't serve as means of transport between a forest and another planet.”
“In fact it took a lot of time to prepare this transport. We've spent decades scanning thousands of planets looking for you and, once we found you, the operation took years to prepare.”
“The operation? What kind of...?”
“Here's Enondil. Come on, let's go, we don't have a moment to waste.”
I turn around and see a man inside of a gigantic bubble coming towards me, full speed ahead. The man is comfortably lying on a couch created from the same material as the bubble and suspended in the middle of it. When he's just a few yards away, I recognize him and instinctively get up to run and hide.
“No, no Antelmo, don't run away. It's Enondil. He'll come with us.”
“Enondil? It's the policeman who wanted to shoot me!” I protest, rather exasperated.
Enondil jumps down from the bubble and heads towards me.
“He still doesn't remember anything?” he asks, turning towards Irene.
“No, nothing. Less than nothing. Cloradil knew what she was doing,” Irene answers.
“Cloradil, you mean Anna, my wife. Where is she? Is she coming with us too? When can I see her?”
Irene and Enondil exchange a knowing smile.
Enondil says: “Let's leave now, or we could be too late. Come on,” he continues, turning towards me.
We enter the strange bubble. Our bodies pass through the walls, as if they were only made of light. The sofa, on the other hand, is elastic and bears our weight. The bubble rises into the sky.
“What is this...vehicle? How did you build it?” I ask.
Irene smiles: “We didn't build it. We manifested it.”
“Another illusion?” I ask, not very convinced.
“Ois midal musri gan,” Enondil recites.
The bubble becomes a pyramid and the walls take on a light blue glow.
“The bubble is better, a little more aerodynamic, but the pyramid will work,” Irene explains.
An immense noise rips through the air. We instinctively bring our hands up to our ears and look towards where the deafening noise is coming from.
“It's her. Bring Antelmo to safety. I'm going to...” Irene says.
I don't hear the end of her sentence. A beam of dim light, from a point in the sky above us, shines towards us and pushes me down.
Falling from this height, impact with the ground will surely kill me. It's over. Instead I find myself in the water of the bubbling brook I saw in front of Irene's house.
The beam disappears. I
try to go up to the surface. A powerful force magnetizes me downwards. I look down to find out what it is. I see that a luminous surface has opened between two rocks. It seems as if the magnetizing force is coming from there.
When I'm almost near the light, I try to resist. I brace my knees and elbows against the rocks.
“Come on, come home. You can't keep the portal open much longer. It's me, Anna, your wife. Look for yourself: this is our home.”
It's like a TV screen: inside the light I see the image of Anna. She's standing in our living room. I even see my smartphone on the table. She's wearing the same clothes she had on when I left. Near the kitchen, the table is set with the pasta already on the plates.
I still don't understand what kind of strange nightmare I've gotten into, but what I see in front of my eyes is truly my home. It's over. But this time I'm asking Anna for explanations.
“Come on, now! Careful, they're coming!”
I jump feet-first into the light source while I look to see who's following me. Irene, right behind me, is swimming with a rock in her hand. I try to take shelter and see out of the corner of my eye that Enondil has almost caught up with me. The rock bashes heavily into my head. Two hands grab my wrists. I pass out.
6
“If she was able to send out a space-time signal, she must have grown much more stronger than we had thought.”
“Impossible! Ibril never let her out of his sight! She couldn't have absorbed all that power in just thirty-three years.”
Enondil and Irene seem rather excited.
I open my eyes. I'm lying face-down on the transparent sofa. The landscape flies by underneath me.
“What powers? Who is Ibril?” I stammer.
A few seconds of silence pass. I imagine they're exchanging their usual knowing look. I sit up. I look at their faces, first his, then hers.
“Tell me!” The commanding tone of my voice seems to rattle them.
“Ibril is Costantino Valenti,” Irene says in a low voice, as if apologizing.
“Valenti, the nosy neighbor? Are you joking? What does that obnoxious old man have to do with all of this?”
“How dare you call him that! He's been so faithful to you!” Enodil starts, enraged.
“Enough!” Irene interrupts. “Everything in due time.”
“No,” I say. “I want to know everything, right now!”
“When we found you, some of us had already been transferred to Earth to find out what Cloradil's plans were and to prepare for your removal. Enondil and Ibril were among these people.”
“Why? Who are you? What do you want from me?” I ask again, exasperated.
“Antelmo, you already have the answers to your own questions,” Irene tells me gently, “but you still refuse to recognize this inside you. You have to accept all of this within yourself first, otherwise there's no explanation that could possibly manage to convince you.”
“Deep down inside I can't find any answers.”
“That's what we were afraid of. Cloradil picked a primitive planet like the Earth just so you wouldn't make any contacts.”
“Primitive? Earth isn't primitive at all!”
“Antelmo,” Irene's tone is almost maternal, “how much time do Earthlings spend on issues that have nothing to do with eating, sex, arguing, war and vanity?”
“What does that have to do with anything? Sure, maybe a lot of people only care about those kinds of things, but we also have scientists, philosophers, doctors and a lot of people who do good on Earth. And...”
“Yes,” Irene interrupts, “but do you let these people guide you or govern you? Or do you willingly follow whoever puts out smiling advertisements, beautiful little faces and tempting promises? Evolved planets are guided by love of knowledge, research and spiritual growth. Cloradil chose Earth because it's about as far as you can get from the Kingdom of Turlis!”
“Chose? When?”
Enondil and Irene exchange glances, then lower their eyes. They remain silent, their faces lost in some painful memory.
We're flying over a house surrounded by fountains and waterways that spill into a little lake. In the middle, there's an island with dozens of kids standing around a woman.
“That's a school. And she is a magic teacher. You can recognize her from the braid circling her head, like a crown,” Irene explains, turning off the motor of the pyramid.
“Like...” I start to ask.
“Yes, like mine!”
“So, you teach magic?”
“Not just magic.”
“Magic,” I repeat, absorbed in my own thoughts. I look down. One boy is standing up. He brings both of his hands in front of him and turns his palms towards one another. A point of orange light starts to take shape between his hands, growing larger every second.
“It's a memory sphere. He can put his memories inside, as well as his feelings and fears,” Irene explains.
There seem to be images in the sphere. From this high up, I can't really make them out.
“Magic is the principal method to examine the laws of the universe and the laws of the soul,” Irene articulates her words carefully, as if it was especially important that I understand what she's telling me.
“Magic for what's inside and outside of us,” my words seem to be evoking distant memories.
“Exactly!”
“There are a lot of ancient texts that deal with magic on Earth. Every once in a while there's an interesting movie on TV or in the theaters on wizards. But I never believed in all of that.”
“Why not?” Irene asks.
“Because I always thought it was a load of crap! And Anna always agreed with me. I can't imagine what she has to do with all of this.”
“When did you two meet?”
“We went to the same kindergarten and have stayed together ever since.”
“And what was she like?”
I smile. Anna's personality is a little difficult to explain.
“Anna is a little bossy. She has the personality of a leader and likes to do things her own way.”
“So she always had a certain level of influence over you?”
“She was the stronger of us two. Between a man and a woman, there's always one who's in charge. It's usually the woman. But she always gave me my own space.”
“Your space for what?”
“Tennis games, Friday nights with my friends, games at the stadium on Sundays.”
“And you two never had any arguments?”
“We always talked about everything. It's normal, when you're together!”
“But who decided what you did, where you went, what you watched on TV?”
“I'd say...maybe...she did a little more often. But she always listened to me and considered my point of view.”
“Did she ever tell you her opinions on your career or other important choices in life?”
“Yes, of course. But a lot of the time I was the one asking for her advice!”
“Why did you think you couldn't make those choices alone?”
“No, that's not it at all. It's normal to confide in the people around you.”
“Was she the only person who told you what to do, or were there others?”
“She was my girlfriend for a long time and then became my wife. It's only natural that she'd be the most important person in my life.”
“Did she think the same thing?”
“Of course!”
I don't want to admit it, but Anna had always been very authoritarian. In fact, she had been a real dictator with me since we were little. We never did anything that she didn't want to do. Every once in a while I would complain and get angry, but everything would work out in the end.
7
The pyramid starts flying again.
“Here we are. We'll start to see it,” Enondil announces.
My eyes look towards where he's pointing. The outline of an impressive building stands out against the horizon. We slowly come closer and the contours appear more clearly. My
jaw drops.
It's not just a palace. It's a fairy-tale construction, which seems to defy every law of physics. It's several stories tall, floating in the air, surrounded by infinite islands connected by rainbow bridges. On each island there are buildings, some of which have solid walls, others which seem to be made of pure energy.
Trees, flowers, lawns and ponds are everywhere, inside and outside of the houses. The water courses form stupendous waterfalls that go from one island to the other. I've never seen anything so marvelous.
Enondil and Irene are staring at me. I don't understand why they're scrutinizing me so closely. Are they hoping that this place will remind me of something?
“It's too dangerous. We can't bring him to the Well when he's like this,” Enondil, visibly worried, tells Irene.
“There's no other choice. Even I hoped something would reawaken in him. But if it hasn't happened, then the Well is the only place that can help,” she replies.
“But she'll see him in the Well and try to contact him!”
“Not necessarily. Maybe she'll be looking somewhere else at that moment. Anyway, I have faith in him.”
“Sorry for the interruption, but what's the Well? And who's going to see me? Anna? My wife?”
They look at each other, exasperated. Maybe they don't like the fact that I keep calling her my wife. Maybe they thought they could mess up my mind with all of their babble, but I know who I am.
They didn't need to tell me when we were near the Well. On an island right in the middle of the palace, higher than all the others, there's a hole about twenty yards in diameter that creates a beam of soft light, which descends thousands of feet into the ground below.
“It goes down to the middle of the planet. Down there, you can connect to many other worlds through other dimensions,” Irene explains.
“Through other dimensions?” I ask.
“Yes, a lot of energy is transmitted through dimensions. But even physical bodies can travel through dimensions, even though it's extremely onerous. To go to the Earth from here, for example, we had to cross through another dimension.”
“The fog?”
“Exactly. We weren't in a physical universe.”
“But...?”
“Wait. I'm afraid we don't have any time left. You need to go into the Well.”
