They smiled. There were only so many threats a person could take before their fear broke them.
“Hey, girl, what you doin’?” Cherise said happily.
“I’m driving to Ohio, trying to locate my son. You got me worried. Why’d you call so many times?”
“You called me,” Cherise pointed out.
“Everything okay, Cherise?”
“I’m just chillin’ at yo’ apartment. Jerome goin’ be pissed I ain’t home. Jus’ wanted to make sure everythin’ was cool with my girl.”
Lydia had a moment of understanding, “I’m so sorry, Cherise.”
“I got you girl, I got you.”
While Cherise was being slapped in the face for her defiance, Lydia was calling Jerome.
“No time to explain. Get your kids out of there. Cherise is being held captive at my place. And Jerome? Bring your boys … and your faith. You’re going to need it.”
***
Hours later, Aliyah barreled past the “Welcome to Ohio” sign, her dashboard lighting up with the icon alerting her that she was about to run out of gas. She didn’t have any cash, had no idea what was in her bank account at the moment, and was reluctant to use her card. Danny was a police officer, or at least he had been. It’s how he’d gotten her into the car to begin with.
She’d been seven years old, standing at the curb of a school, awaiting her Mom to pick her up, as there had been something they were going to do that day. Instead of her Mom, however, a police cruiser had pulled up alongside her.
“Hey, sweetie, do you know who I am?”
“A police officer,” she’d responded.
“Do you know what police officers do?”
“They protect people and get the bad men and put them in jail.”
“That’s correct. That means you can trust me. I’m friends with your parents. They had a family emergency while you were in school and needed to leave. They asked that I pick you up from school and hold onto you for a few hours until they get back.”
“What kind of emergency? Did Grandma fall down the stairs again?”
“They had to take her to the hospital. It should only be a few hours. Why don’t you get in and get buckled up and we’ll stop at your favorite place to eat? Does that sound nice?”
“Is Grandma going to die? Last time she went to the hospital, she stayed there a long time.”
“I don’t think it’s that serious. Your parents didn’t really have time to explain it to me, because they needed to leave as quickly as they could. Come on, we can talk more about it while I’m driving. I still have to patrol the streets and make sure all the bad guys are gone.”
They’d driven for hours, and while she’d been staring out the window, worrying about Grandma, dozing in and out of sleep after having filled up on a chocolate milkshake and a Happy Meal, she saw the sign.
“Hey, I know Ohio. It’s a different state,” she’d commented. “We learned about that in school.”
“That’s right, little girl, it is a different state. One far, far away from your home.”
“Then how will my parents find me? You said they’d come and get me in a few hours.”
“You see this?” he held up a police scanner. “When they’re ready, the call will come through here. Would you like to hold onto to it and listen to it?”
She nodded her head and listened to all the bad things happening in the world. A robbery. People breaking the law. A heart attack. Domestic disturbance. And the reports just kept rolling in as she listened intently for her parents.
“It’s time to come inside now, sweety,” she was told after they pulled into a driveway with a yellow doublewide and overgrown grass.
“But what if we miss their call?”
“I’ve got another one of those inside the house. It’s past your bedtime. I’m sure they’ll call soon. Right now they need to focus their attention on your Grandma and they can’t have you getting in the way.”
Once inside the house, she’d met Dwayne. He had an afro of black hair all around his head and his face. The house was smoky and stinky from the cigar he was smoking. There were food dishes, to-go containers, pizza boxes, and beer cans sprawled all over the place.
“This her?” he’d belched.
“I told you she was coming. Couldn’t you have picked up a little bit? Jesus, this place is a mess,” Danny had commented.
“That’s what she’s for,” he’d laughed. From the moment she heard that laugh, she hadn’t liked him.
“You said you had another one of those phones?” she had asked of the police officer.
“Yep, let’s get you tucked into bed. I know you’re tired. I’ll put it in the room with you.” She’d followed him into the small bedroom, the only room in the house that was clean. It was a child’s room with an old bunk bed, crayons marking the walls, and a few toys.”
“You have another child?”
“We did, but she’s gone now.”
“What was her name?”
“Aliyah.”
“Where did she go to?”
“She died. Broke my and Dwayne’s heart. That’s why he acts a little strange and why the house is so messy. He’s still grieving.”
“That’s so sad,” she had said. “Maybe he will have another little girl.”
“Sooner than you think, little girl, and it’ll make him the happiest man in the world.”
He’d turned the lights off, but for leaving the door cracked open to the dark hallway. She’d always had a night light at her home, so she laid there, eyes wide open, listening to the steady stream of all the bad things in the world.
It was the next morning when she was eating dried cereal, because the milk was stale, when the call had come through talking about a five-car pileup, eight dead, three in critical condition. Danny looked at her, she looked at Danny. He immediately shut the scanner off and left the room, where she could hear him speaking on his phone.
Time had seemed suspended while she waited for him to come back. When he did, there were tears in his eyes. “They must have been rushing back to come get you. They probably didn’t even sleep. They shouldn’t have been driving. I’m so sorry, honey.”
“They’re – they’re …,” she’d begun to cry, huge droplets of tears welling in her eyes.
“You heard it yourself on the scanner. Eight dead. Two of them were your parents.”
And Dwayne, with his funny hair, and his weird smell, just kept smiling at her.
Aliyah continued driving through Woodrow Ohio, recognizing the streets, the homes, the school where she’d grown up. She could not remember where she’d lived prior to that, the names or faces of her parents, or her original name.
Dwayne became her guardian and began calling her Aliyah, and that’s what all the teachers and everyone else called her as well, so that’s who she’d become. During the day, a little girl who’d had the misfortune of losing both her parents, who went to school, made friends, did her schoolwork, came home, and did chores. At night, Aliyah, the warrior princess.
When she’d first stumbled upon Otherland and learned of its non-human habitants, she’d thought she might be able to find her parents. So every night, she’d gone in search of them. The Light knight had been the first human, like herself, that she’d found.
She became quickly attached to him. First, like that of an older brother, as she’d never had a sibling before. As she grew older and older, it turned into more. She’d fallen in love with him.
He’d told her one day that she could no longer travel to Otherland, as the Bylaws had been changed to forbid humans from freely coming and going, due to causing some type of disruption, so he’d found a place in between for them to meet, a place that gradually, over the years, over time, began crumbling into the Nothingness, because the Lost souls could sense those living and full of life and energy.
This is where he’d told her that they could no longer meet there, denying both her wishes for him to come with her or for she to go wit
h him.
So she’d jumped into the Nothingness to keep them from further destroying the only place remaining where she might find the Light knight again. She had known she would become lost, but the Light knight had left her no choice. If he ever wanted to find her again, he’d be the only one to be able to recover all that had already been lost.
But still, their pasts and presents intertwined, he chose his duty. She now knew only she could recover all that had been lost, and there was but one other that would choose love. She’d known it the first moment she felt him move inside her womb.
She’d been young, far too young, but it was a motivation to escape her situation more powerful than anything she’d ever had. For herself, she couldn’t do it alone, but for her child, she could do anything. So she ran.
… and ran … and hid … and ran again.
Danny’s work as a police officer had enabled him to track her easily. It’s how they must have found her when she’d gone to the hospital to give birth. So short-lived was the moment, holding her dearest treasure in her arms, staring into his beautiful green eyes and pink face with the small patch of blonde hair on his head, feeling the most profound love she’d ever felt before.
Aliyah’s car ran out of gas a couple miles before she got to the cemetery. She’d need a new car anyway if Danny was still a police officer. He’d easily be able to track her license plates. All things she’d had to learn the hard way throughout decades of being on the run.
She knew exactly where to go, like it’d been just yesterday she’d had to bury her only son. She hadn’t buried him six feet under, only just enough to cover the box that she’d made sure had plenty of tiny holes in it, no bigger than a needle point. Hurriedly, she removed the dirt, cutting her hands on stone and tearing her nails. She removed the box frantically and attempted to open it, but it would not open.
“No,” she cried. “No, no, no.” She pressed her ear to the box to listen for life and heard nothing. She could only hold the box curled in her arms, rocking, and crying.
“Aliyah,” she suddenly heard called out to her.
“Jacob? How did you - ?” There was a shimmering beside him, hardly seen in the day light. “Is that - ?”
“Yes, I went after you, found him trying to get through. He apparently doesn’t have your abilities. He needed to be let in. He led me here.”
“I didn’t hear any sounds,” she cried. “I thought he was – he was – I couldn’t bear the thought of losing him again. I can’t open the box, Jacob.”
He put his hand on her arm. “Are you sure this is the best time for this, Aliyah, what with you being hunted, the darkened soul having gone AWOL and refusing to return? His body has been preserved at the age he was brought to Otherland. Can you care for and keep a baby safe right now?”
“What choice do I have? You said it yourself, I kept returning to Otherland in search of him. Now that I have him, I will no longer need to return there until it’s my natural time. They’ll stop hunting me. They’ll eventually capture Dwayne and return him to imprisonment, and then I can finally, finally have my life the way it should have been all this time.”
The Light knight looked at her with a pained look and opened his mouth to say something, but didn’t. Instead, he reached around his neck, and pulled off a necklace with a heart-shaped pendant, the exact replica of her own. “Let me see yours.”
She gave it to him. They weren’t exactly alike, as the back of her hers had the small hole, and his had a bump that fit perfectly into the hole, breaking the seal. It opened to a small key made of stone, which fit into the lock on the box.
There lay her beautiful baby, lying as peacefully as though he resting, 13 human years later. They heard the soft cries of the shimmering Light soul peering into the box.
“Are you ready for this, Jasper?” Aliyah said softly. “Is this what you want? The choice is ultimately yours,” but her voice pitched in desperation.
“It’s all I’ve ever wanted,” he whispered tearfully. “To live in the place I belong with the mother I’ve never forgotten.”
Seconds later, the newborn baby’s eyes opened, and his mouth began making suckling noises and little grunts, as the most innocent of all creatures stared up at her.
“Oh, Jacob, he’s beautiful,” she crooned.
“He is an adorable little squirt as a baby, isn’t he? I wonder how much he remembers.” Jacob held him up in front of him and said, “And to think, Jasper, those baby lips won’t be able to ask any more questions for a few years now.”
And at that, the baby belted out a piercing mewling wail.
“Well I guess we know how he feels about that,” the Light knight chuckled.
He returned the baby to Aliyah’s reaching arms, sat down beside her, and wrapped his arm around her shoulder. There were very few perfect moments in life, but they usually came in the midst of chaos, and this was one of them.
CHAPTER 19
The Light knight was summoned while Aliyah drove the vehicle he’d confiscated. He’d hardly arrived before he was being restrained by the Dark prison guardians in the presence of just one Dark elder, the menacing one with glowing, grey eyes.
“What is this meaning of this?” he demanded.
“You had one mission, Light knight, and that was to return the human girl. You brought her here to the child, the one you stated was not the one she was looking for, and aided and abetted in their escape. You let the child back into the human world against the Bylaws. Then you returned with neither one of the humans, against direct orders to do so. You will be stripped of your knighthood, and are to be imprisoned in the darkness to await your own Ceremony trial.”
“My duty, as provided to me in a unanimous decision of the elders was to first return the AWOL Dark soul criminal who has since done exactly what we feared, and now walks the human world freely in the possession of another body, continuing to pursue Aliyah’s body with the intent of causing harm to her. Since it is she he is targeting, the only way I am to capture him and return him here is by staying by her side and waiting for him to find her. Only after returning the Dark soul criminal am I to bring the humans here to await their own Ceremony trial before the High master, who is all-knowing, something of which, you are not. The only one not abiding by their duty is you, Dark elder, in acting alone. All the elders are supposed to be here when such decisions are made.”
“Sometimes it is in the best interests of all things to act alone when the Light elders continue to disregard the threat of humans in this world. All the years you have served, yet the moment you return to the human world, you begin acting of your own accord and forgetting your duty and loyalty to the High master, out of seeing a pretty face. Do you deny letting the human child back into the human world?”
“I could not leave him there with all the threats of the Lost souls,” the Light knight excused.
“You could have returned him,” the Dark elder yelled.
“So that you could have him imprisoned in the darkness, Dark elder, simply for the fact that he is human and you still believe in the old way of things before peace was made between the Lights and Darks?”
“Blasphemy!” he barked.
“The High master will know of this, Dark elder. You cannot hide the truth of your thoughts from him, and the true motivations behind your actions. Five against One, Dark elder. Unanimity isn’t required when there is a betrayal of an elder.”
“Let us be happy, then, that those aren’t the odds,” he said maliciously, as the two other Dark elders came to float beside him.
“Would you so easily destroy the peace that we’ve maintained for all this time? Do you not remember what happened the last time the Darks went against the Lights?” the Light knight cried.
“We are stronger now, stronger than we have ever been before. This time, we won’t be defeated. While you’ve been catering to your pretty human girl, we’ve been busy. Go ahead, call out for the Light elders, call out for your High master. They won’t hear
you. We are in the New Darkness now, now allied with the Lost souls, and the Nothing-ness.”
“You – you crossed the Forbidden and brought the Nothingness to Otherland? All our work, everything we’ve been fighting against to keep it from spreading, and you brought it here?” the Light knight shouted.
The Dark elder chuckled. “Not just here. We now have a Dark army working for us in the human world that can let us in. It has taken us human-world-centuries releasing an occasional AWOL Dark soul into Otherworld that the Light elders would just as easily disregard as they would the occasional humans that found their way into this world. That’s the greatest disadvantage of your being Light. All of you believe in the greater good. All of you trust. All of you believe in the best of things, even believing in the best of those who are dark. Only something good would attempt to make peace with all that is dark. You are the last human in this world to be eternally trapped in the Darkness. We’ve found all of you, and of course, knew you would come as summoned, like the devoted dutiful knight you are.
“Now we can finally destroy Aliyah in the way that should have been done long ago, so she can never again run free between our worlds, and she will be the last human threat.”
“If you kill her, she will come here as a Light soul to be reckoned with,” the Light knight warned.
“Not if she becomes lost and never finds her way back here, again. She’s spent her entire human life lost, not knowing where she belongs. It’s only fitting that she spend eternity that way. That is, after all, what happens to lost humans when they die. Why do you think there are so many Lost souls? And there will be many, many more with all we have planned for the human world.”
The Light knight fought needlessly against his restraints. He, like no one else, could break free from them. Except for Aliyah. But as he already knew, the one thing she wasn’t immune to, the magic she did not have, was to resist the Nothingness and the Lost souls from becoming lost herself.
***
Aliyah called Jerome while waiting for the Light knight to return. He’d been out for many hours, but she knew that time was different between the worlds. Sometimes minutes, sometimes days, sometimes months, and occasionally years.
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