Lillith

by Kate Gallwey

  I went through to another world and found the same. It was on the third world that I came across the Eaters in action and to my horror found them to be beautiful, like flying jewels of light. They were all colours of the rainbow and had fairy wings faceted light, only in their actions were they shown to be the incarnations of destruction that I had seen.

  I saw four of them rip a large whale like creature apart as it thrashed about in a shallow ocean and then others lay on the surface on the water and sucked the water clean of Essence. The total unstoppable force of these creatures was repelling and quite awesome if you could distract yourself from the sheer horror of it all.

  I wondered what would happen if they met my Creators? The theory of the unstoppable force meeting an unmovable object came to mind. I think I would not want to be in the vicinity if this was to occur.

  I could become lifeless by concealing my Essence and they passed right by me as if they couldn’t see me. Which gave me an adrenalin rush for a second or two, sometimes I am not the most intelligent of creatures and I really did not want to fight these tiny fairy monsters. But the moment of stupidity paid off and when I had a chat with Gaia she cast a spell of no Life Essence around Earth and it seemed to have worked, well, they haven’t invaded yet.

  I also went through to another four worlds in the same region and taught the World Spirits the spell to keep the invaders at bay. They were a bit wary of me as they too knew of my Creators and wanted to stay alive but they listened. All had developing sentient life, all knew of their brothers and sisters deaths and had assumed that it was my Creators.

  A World Spirit is the soul and Essence of everyone born on a planet. Life evolves and first there is the Spirit then it evolves into a world or maybe it is the other way round but it is a ‘chicken and egg’ argument, but the World Spirit is the one that develops all life on his or her planet. Humans share the Life Essence of Gaia and so do Lucian and I which is why my Creators can’t find us or summon us back, Gaia kind of adopted us energetically. They are the natural pray of my Creators, so they are a nervous bunch and I found them to be very envious of Gaia and her shield. They considered her to be very daring. I also learnt that others had made agreements with or had caught the curiosity of my Creators and had been passed by. All that I spoke with had levels of desperation that they tried to hide but all were looking for a way to survive. I hope my spell helped.

  CHA

  PTER SIXTEEN

  in the Dark

  After about ten years or so the excitement died down and I moved to Florence an amazing large town in Italy. The quality and quantity of art that was rolling out of that place was amazing the wave of architect magic and sheer creativity had turn a quaint little rather backward mountain village by the sea into a thriving modern town. All right, it was on the scale as the modern cities but for its day it was charming and hectic. I befriend the artist community and donated large amounts of gold to keep them going. Since gold is a natural mineral I can create as much of it as I like. I lived quietly for a few years in a beautiful villa just outside the town. I set myself up a wealthy widow and had a lively following of artists, musicians, poets, architects, magicians and sculptures. It was a feisty and spirited group; we discussed the politics of the day, recent styles of art, religions, morals, and spirituality. We gained in popularity and night after night the debates raged until dawn. Plays were performed, music sung to and danced to, I was immortalized in poetry, painted and sculpted.

  I had a small tower bedroom that was about three stories high and looked out over the town and out to sea. Sometimes it reminded me of Atlantis. I planted a night garden and the scents of jasmine and honeysuckle filled the air, as did the rich scents of lavender and sage. There were four interlinking courtyards and I had a small fountain installed in one of them, and the sound of running water added to the atmosphere, comfortable couches and chairs and flowing white linen curtains gave a very bohemian air. This during the hot summer nights was filled with voices raised in sweet song accompanied by the lute, harp and pianoforte.

  There was no one I really remember from this time, they were mostly humans though I did bring through some part human artists from Shambala that blended in and instructed certain young men and women who showed promise.

  When Lucian arrived in the heat of the midday sun there was luckily not many people about and those that were there left rather rapidly.

  He ranted and raved about me being his wife and that I belong with him. I don’t really remember much of the conversation only that I lost my temper and did something monumentally stupid and drew my sword on him. I really don’t learn sometimes and I attacked him with it.

  I started to loose quite badly and I turned and ran up the stairs to the small tower bedroom and he followed. I got lucky or my training in martial arts paid off and I knocked him out of the window and he crashed into the courtyard below and shattered my fountain. When he came back up he was pissed. He showed no quarter and laid into me with a ferocity that I had not seen for eons and he broke my blade with a powerful blow of his inky black sword. As it shattered I felt part of me fragment into hundreds of pieces. I collapsed to my knees before him gaping and the severed blade of my sword.

  I may have mentioned it before that when you use magic and cast immense spells that when they are broken the shock is like a smack in the face. I had poured a lot of myself into my sword and it hurt like hell when it all returned with a solid punch. To say I was winded was an understatement.

  Once again I knelt at the point of his sword and was at his mercy. I looked up defiantly and raised my chin. He stuck me with the flat of his blade and was plunged into darkness.

  When I awoke he was standing over me pouring water over my head. His eyes were as enraged as I have ever seen them and his lips were pulled back over clenched teeth. He radiated total anger and I noticed he had built a fire in the tiny fireplace of the tower room. He reached over and pulled his sword from the roaring blaze, the tip of the blade glowed white hot. I made a move to get away; he pushed and held me down.

  “You will come back to me,” he growled between clenched teeth. “You will beg me to take you back.” And he brought the glowing tip of the blade to my face. I shrank back as the white hot metal filled my vision, I felt everything I am shrink into the focus of the tip his sword and flinched away from what was happening, trying frantically to deny the situation and thinking fast about what to say or do to change it.

  The pain as it burnt out my left eye filled me with agony and he said something else which I missed for I was riding the tidal wave of torment. The smell of my own eyes boiling was bitter and repugnant. When he burnt out my right one I must have fainted for when I awoke he was gone.

  He had left me blinded in unspeakable agony in my little tower room in Florence.

  I could not heal it so the pain never eased up or left me. An endless darkness of boiling hot pain that rolled around me in never ending waves. A human would heal after time but for me it was a ceaseless scream of anguish that never faded or went away.

  I eventually called for Lisele and she took me back to Shambala , where I just sat in my rooms and felt the pain. They tried many ways to ease the pain and just let me sleep but nothing helped. Lisele read to me for hours and even had a blind demon lady teach me to give a massage using scented oils and creams.

  When I slept or fell over from pure exhaustion I would wake screaming it was not a good time for me.

  I would go over past times with Seth and our son. I remembered old conversations and situations. He even took the ability to cry from me.

  CHA

  PTER SEVENTEEN

  WOunDs that never heal

  I have been tortured by the best but this was probably the worst pain I have ever known for it never ended. I love and revere all life, yet then I wanted to die.

  I spent about ten years in the dark pain at Shambala when finally I realised that this was going to be forever. I played with many fantastic ideas of blowing the Cast
le of the Moon into dust until Lucian made me better and gave me the light again.

  But the ability to do magic depends of will and visualisation and in the constant pain my will had eroded to nothing and to visualise I needed the light. Also I could not ‘port anywhere and even standing upright was hard, the healers said that I had no ‘inner ear’ balance and depended on line of sight to keep me upright, it comes from having been born in space I guess. I had Lisele take me to my Island Paradise and told her to just leave me alone, I think I’m glad she didn’t.

  I sat for many weeks on the beach feeling the waves was over my feet, the breezes on my skin and listened to the tropical birds chatter away to each other. When one of your senses is down, it is amazing how the others jump in to compensate.

  I could actually see a little no light but fuzzy blues and reds of the life forms around me; they also left happy trails of green and purple. Even blinded I am a hunter of life.

  I staggered towards my tumble down little home on the edge of the forest and was entranced by the roughness of the door frame (and by the fact that I had actually found it in the dark). I also found a small knife that I had made centuries ago and rebound the rotten hilt with some old clothing and went to work on the door frame. I carved faces and people; I carved the alien cat people I had met and helped grow into a space faring race, my Creators with their naked hunger on their bland faces, the Eaters with their jewel like wings of terror and World Spirits in their pain and fear.

  I quickly ran out of door frame so I moved onto the walls, the window frame and then the surrounding trees. Luckily it was a good knife but not that good, when Lisele came to visit I asked her to bring me another, she also brought a couple of stone carving tools and a large supply of cut wood and stone. She kept me well supplied throughout the next forty years of carving.

  I carved images of everyone I could remember Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, Arial even Metatron. I carved many many images of my son, riding, with his sword, with his wife, holding his first daughter. Then I remembered and carved Seth, carrying me off like a sack of potatoes, holding our son and then his granddaughter. Good memories and then the bad of their deaths and the great sorrows that followed.

  I carved Lemùria and great capital Mù the great temple of healing and magic, I carved Atlantis in stone and also the great designer Drew that put Atlantis together and the magnificent trap that it was. I reluctantly start on the many images of Lucian and the many facets of our relationship, I carved him war and in humour, in love and in anger.

  I carved out all my fantasies and dreams, I carved things that never happened, things that I am thankful did happen and of the many possible futures.

  I also carved out a lot of old nonsense, I guess you could call them my mad period as there are many odd bits and pieces. I looked on these pieces later and thought ‘Huh! What is that?’ Present day art dealers might call them modern art I call them weird, I was not really sane in those times and some of the carvings prove it.

  I lost myself in the images not caring what I looked like or how clean the rags were that I was wearing. I must have looked like a deranged hag with my hair unclean and dishevelled muttering to myself and waving my hands around, spending my days stroking, caressing then carving stone or wood.

  I think in took about fifty years or so to complete and when it was finished so was I. I was empty and felt I could go now.

  I staggered and crawled up to the top of the waterfall and went to where the water was shallow slow and sat by the edge of the river and got in. I crawled to about the middle of the flowing river and lay back, finding a sloping stone to use as a comfortable back rest. I could feel the warm sun light on my injured face and in was a wonderful contrast to the pleasant chill of the water.

  Birds chirped and chattered all around me and I thought about how I loved this world and I used the blade I had been using to carve wood and cut both wrists vertically and also as an after thought cut the veins on my ankles, as I have said before I am built the same as humans but with different materials, and the effect was also the same.

  The extra pain involved felt quite nice all things considered. It is rather like the pain of giving birth after a long labour, you know that this is the last of the pain and soon it would be all over.

  I lay back against the sun warmed stone and sighed with total contentment, at peace as my blood drained away in the cool waters.

  CHA

  PTER EIGHTEEN

  tears Of BlOOD

  I must have drifted away, to sleep or maybe further, but Lisele was there lifting me out of the water and binding my wrists and ankles with fabric from her dress. She had been infected with vampyre blood and I shared with her some of my blood long ago so she has no thirst and is far stronger than she looks. She carried me easily; I was frail and just a bundle of skin and bones.

  She was also shouting and berating me about what I had done .

  I didn’t stop the bleeding and she couldn’t heal me, I started slipping away again, away from her noise and interfering.

  Gaia was there shouting and shaking me and she was harder to ignore but I mumbled something about not living in so much pain anymore. I said as clearly as I could “No more pain.” Then I lost consciousness again and was free of pain and at peace.

  Lucian was there as was Tuvak and Tuvak was shouting wonderful things at Lucian. Calling him names and inflicting great wounds of true words I agreed with all of them. I found that everything was far away and happening to someone else.

  I found out later that Lisele had called Gaia who had in turn brought me to Lucian at the Castle of the Moon. He had been summoned with earth quakes and firestorms and had came running. Gaia had given him a hard time and then Tuvak, who hadn’t known what Lucian had done, had taken over.

  I felt the seeming never ending pain being lifted from me and then a wave of boiling light washed through my awareness. I could see again and the light was just as painful as the dark. Lucian had healed me and my eyes were whole again.

  Tuvak was calling me and gently rocking me in his arms. He had felt my awareness and the pain return through our bond and had cut his own wrist and held it close against my nearly bled out wounds. I felt the fire of his blood flow through mine and it was too much, I whimpered and fought him, trying to return to that peace.

  Tuvak’s blood and will bound me to my body and I had no will left to resist him. He reached in and took over and it was he that closed the wounds on my ankles and when he had given all he could of himself he closed the cuts on my wrists. He quelled every attempt I made of just slipping away by binding himself to me just as surely as I was bound to him.

  His brother did the same sort of thing .

  I did as I was told and stayed, awaking every now and then to semi consciousness and then fading back to the safe place of sleep. Tuvak was always close and many times I felt his blood rage through my system filling me with his vitality and Life Essence again and again.

  I didn’t want to but I started coming back further and further into this shared place you call reality. I was lying on a large soft bed it smelt fresh and I noticed that so did I. I tried to look around and then I became aware of the absence of pain, tears swelled up and just poured. For days I could not move or even open my eyes, I just cried.

  Tuvak bathed me and washed my hair, he made me drink water and a kind of herbal tea. He talked to me and was kind and gentle. He wrapped a cloth around my eyes and it helped to soak up my tears and it kept out some of the bright light that stabbed unkindly every time I was thoughtless enough to try and open them. He would carry me down to the edge of the lake and place me on the sand with my feet in the water and I began to heal and gradually felt my body come back to me again.

  When his patience and gentleness began to irritate and the tears started to slow I knew I was nearly whole again.

  It takes time for my spirit to mend it’s like a slow drip of a tap that when it reaches critical mass there is a rush and I am back.

  I r
eached up and removed the cloth from around my eyes. I looked at my hands and they were stiff, scared and withered like they had been drained of life. I guess they had been. Like an old human woman’s hands, arms and as I looked down through the white cotton night dress, saw that the rest of me was withered and drawn as well. I directed my thought and will within and watched as my skin became young and firm again, I clenched my fists and felt the renewed strength there, stronger than before. My hair became glossy and full of life again and I looked up at the watching Tuvak.

  I owed him nothing, in a lot of ways he had no right bringing me back from that peaceful place that people call death, no right at all. I got out of bed and swayed a little as I felt myself stand upright for the first time in over fifty years. I had survived that I would survive everything. I walked past him and through the door out into the garden; there I found a wealth of colour.

  Roses of all colours spreading with a riotous swirl of harmonious beauty, lush trees of all shades of green lined the view of the distant waterfall and the midnight blue of the lake. I took it all in and ‘ported back to the familiar rooms at Shambala.

  I didn’t speak to anyone just acknowledged Lisele and gruffly told her I was fine. I changed clothes into something warm and black, like my mood and left by the northern most Shambala exit.

  I walked north through the mountains into deserts and up into what is now North America.

  I stopped briefly to help heal some of the tribal humans that roamed the plains. I delivered a few babies and healed wounds and felt like it was just like old times. I walked through the massive forests that had trees the size of a small human town. I spent seasons crossing those beautiful forests and I found places that made me want to cry with such beauty. But I was done with tears for a long while.

  CHA

  PTER NINETEEN

  raPeD earth