by Carmen Caine
“Time’s running out,” I said to no one in particular. “What kind of choice is this? I don’t even know what it is! How am I supposed to help you? Why did you choose me?”
I rose to pound on the glass again, but it was useless. It was just growing thicker. I wondered if Rafael and Jareth were still there, or if the growing darkness had swept them away.
That thought made me collapse back to the floor, more hysterical than ever before.
Jerry moved and I glanced down.
The egg-casing had grown thicker, but I could still see his little dark eyes locked on mine. The expression in them seemed ancient, wise.
“What is it, Jerry?” I sobbed. “What are you trying to tell me?”
And then the last strands of light closed over, obscuring him from view.
I screamed. My knees buckled and I fell to the bottle’s floor. I don’t know how long I stayed there. It could have been seconds. It could have been hours before I realized it was getting really hot. Sweat poured down my forehead.
The darkness outside had almost entirely consumed the light, only a few inches were left to form a beam that illuminated Jerry’s egg at my feet like a flashlight.
The egg didn’t look very healthy. It was gray.
I was obviously failing.
Drawing a deep, shaking breath, I forced myself to concentrate. I had to at least try to understand my Blue Thread before it was too late. I couldn’t just give up before I’d even started.
Al wouldn’t have. At the very least, he would have gotten out his little pocket notebook and documented the facts.
Thinking of Al gave me strength. And trying to mimic what he would do, I analyzed my surroundings.
The Coke bottle had grown much smaller. I couldn’t really maneuver in it myself anymore. Everything had turned black, including my clothes. I was now dressed in the black lace of mourning. I guess it was fitting for the death of the dimensions.
I focused on Jerry’s egg.
“So, you’re some kind of seed trapped in an egg of threads,” I said in a quivering voice. Forcing my thoughts to calm, I recalled TopHat’s last words. “And you picked me to help you. So how do I help a seed?”
I drew a blank.
I knew I couldn’t force it open. I mean, I’d tried and it hadn’t helped. And everyone knew if you forced a seed open, that you’d kill it. People watered and planted seeds, but there was nothing here like soil or water.
As I searched my thoughts for an answer, part of Jerry’s egg-casing turned black. Only a few strands of light spanned it now, or maybe they only reflected the weak light of the beam outside that still managed to penetrate the bottle’s thick glass.
There wasn’t much time left. If the seed sprouted now inside its casing, it would no doubt be a monstrous creation, a twisted tree of fear, darkness, and depression. That was if it sprouted at all.
Looking at the egg, it kind of looked like it was already too late.
Petrified, I jabbed it with my finger.
It didn’t respond.
“Jerry? Jerry?” I shouted. “Jeeerrrrry?” My voice ended in a screech.
There was no response.
It was over.
The egg and the seed within, my Jerry, was dead.
I was so devastated I didn’t really know what to feel. I’d thought things had gotten as horrible as they possibly could, but each passing event had only proved me wrong.
Looking at Jerry’s lifeless form inside the egg of black threads, I picked it up and hugged it as hard as I could.
“I’m so sorry, Jerry. I’m so sorry I’m not good enough. I’m too ordinary. I’m not smart enough to figure this all out,” my voice broke.
Anger filled me.
The entire scenario was unfair. It had been unfair for Rafael. He’d made the choice to protect me and Jareth. He’d used his heritage as Cor’s heir to protect us from the Queens’ fear. How could that have been wrong?
And Jareth. Jareth had walked away from a brotherhood of evil. He’d chosen to bond with his own brother instead.
And me. I’d been told I was the most ordinary of the ordinary and then given the task to help the seed sprout without any hint on how it might be done. It was quite possibly the hardest IQ test ever given to anyone. Right now, I was willing to bet that even Einstein couldn’t figure it out in the allotted time.
It was almost pure black outside, only the thinnest thread of light remained and it was feebly flickering.
The cards were stacked against us. I was beyond furious. But then looking at Jerry’s blackened egg, none of it really mattered.
It was all just too late.
Cradling the lifeless thing to my cheek, I whispered in a cracked voice, “Forgive me, Jerry. I failed. You were the first thing that I ever loved.”
Any light that had remained dimmed, and I was suddenly blanketed by darkness.
But then, the egg in my hands fluttered.
It was so faint at first that I was afraid that I had imagined it. But then it happened again, and I was filled with the tiniest glimmer of hope.
He wasn’t dead yet.
Had he responded to what I’d said? What I’d felt?
I’d told him that I loved him.
Love?
“Love?” I gasped. “Is it love?”
Love had defeated the Mutant Tulpa. Was this a repeat? A version of the same lesson? Could love open the seed? Like Rafael had said, the many shades of love were an unending source of power.
Half-choking on tears, I thought of Betty. “Love, Jerry,” I said. “The love of a mother.”
It didn’t take long. Jerry definitely responded. I felt him kick inside the egg and it filled me with hope.
Al’s face swam across my mind. It broke my heart that I’d never see him again. Through my tears, I whispered, “The love of a father.”
The egg began to glow.
I laughed through my tears. It was working. I was on the right path.
“The many shades of love,” I sobbed, thinking of Rafael. “The love of a lover. Jareth, a brother. Grace, a sister.”
The egg vibrated.
The glass of the Coke bottle had suddenly grown thinner, and I could see out of it again. I was horrified at the darkness surrounding me. It was complete. There was no sign of light. I couldn’t see Rafael or Jareth at all.
Terrified, I turned back to Jerry’s egg.
It was glowing, a tiny candle in the darkness of the vast universe.
But it wasn’t opening.
I could see that the egg’s light strands had formed petals, but they were still tightly shut at the top like they were never going to budge.
I closed my eyes, racking my brain for more types of love.
“Love of a mentor, Samantha,” I cried. “Ellison, the love of a friend. And Maya, a compassionate love. Ajax, Tigger, the love of loyal companions!”
The bottle’s glass was thinner. Jerry’s egg was brighter.
But the petals were tightly sealed shut.
I burst into horrible sobs. I was going to fail. I didn’t know any more loves to be had other than generic ones. “Mrs. Patton. The customers. Neelu,” I rattled off desperately. “The general love of humanity.”
The petals vibrated and opened a crack.
But it wasn’t because Jerry was sprouting.
Already, I could see darkness eating at the edge where the egg had split.
He was dying.
I’d failed.
My eyes were red, almost swollen shut with all of the tears that I’d been shedding almost nonstop. I peered inside the egg to see the tiny mouse crouched there. He looked up at me anxiously.
His pink nose was already turning gray.
“No!” I shrieked.
Jerry stood on his little hind legs, his tiny hand stretched out to me. I leaned forward to kiss him one last time. And then his delicate fingers slipped out of the egg’s crack to touch my nose.
It was a moment of clarity, and I knew.
I just knew.
This was my Blue Thread.
This was my choice, my inner demon.
Everything else had been merely been leading up to this moment, a moment that made me stand in the face of an impossible love. The hardest of loves. A love I didn’t know anything about.
It was a love I didn’t even really understand.
The love of self.
“I can’t feel that. I don’t even really know what that is, Jerry,” I confessed in an uneven voice. “I’m going to fail.”
He just looked at me with his whiskers twitching frantically. He didn’t have much time.
I owed him the attempt. I had to at least try.
I drew a long shaky breath.
I understood the other shades of love and the parts they played in my life. But what did loving myself even mean? I’d always thought that loving myself was … well, selfish.
The ground beneath my feet heaved. I panicked. Was this the beginning of the end?
Jerry’s egg dimmed a little more. His tiny body shuddered, but his ageless and wise eyes were still locked on mine.
I swallowed and valiantly tried again.
“Loving myself,” I said aloud, hoping that it would help me to focus.
I’d never actively tried to love myself. In fact, the Second Dimension had opened my eyes a bit. My negative thoughts were more powerful than my positive ones. I’d had to run away from my dark thoughts here. And I was standing in a Coke bottle now because I habitually never let myself feel anything. And last but not least, I was all but paralyzed into inaction by the constant litany of criticism and self-doubt running through my head.
I didn’t treat anyone else that I loved in my life that badly.
I bowed my head and cringed.
The light in Jerry’s egg—the last spark of light left that I could see in every direction—faded even more.
“I’m doing it again, aren’t I, Jerry?” I asked him in a strangled whisper. “I’m too ordinary for this.”
I was far too unworthy for such a task.
“You picked the wrong human,” I wailed.
The beginnings, the tiniest beginnings of a thought formed in my mind. What if Jerry had picked someone else and they were standing here, facing this same struggle. What would I say to them?
I stood a little straighter and licked my dry lips.
“I’d tell them that they should stop beating themselves up,” I said in a quavering voice and I really meant it. “I’d tell them that they were just as valuable, smart, and worthy of love as anyone else around them. And I’d make sure they knew that being happy and loving yourself isn’t being selfish. It’s actually the only thing that stops you wallowing in negativity and helps you to keep moving forward.”
It all started clicking into place.
It made so much more sense when applied to someone else.
Loving yourself wasn’t selfish.
“Loving yourself means forgiving yourself for the mistakes that you’ve made,” I said, as a sudden jumble of ideas rose within me. “It means you shouldn’t continually relive your failures in your head and drag yourself down.”
I forgave Maya repeatedly. Why didn’t I do the same for myself? I was just as worthy.
Looking at the Coke bottle, I realized that loving myself also meant letting myself really feel my emotions instead of bottling them all away like they weren’t important. I was important and what I felt actually mattered.
Loving myself didn’t mean I was selfish and trying to get my way all the time. It didn’t mean that I was excused from behaving or striving to make myself better. It had nothing to do with that. It meant realizing that I was of value. It meant sticking up for what is right for everyone, including myself.
It was acceptance. It was standing in front of the mirror and not seeing only the imperfections but the many wonderful good things that were there as well.
Slowly, I said, “I do love myself, and that means I accept and forgive myself for the mistakes I’ve made, and from now on I’ll try to focus on the happy things that surround me, because I—we all, have the right to be happy.”
The petals on Jerry’s egg were vibrating.
They fell back as Jerry turned into a star, and the glass Coke bottle shattered.
Chapter Fourteen – The Tesla Coil
I stumbled out of the broken Coke bottle, falling onto my hands and knees as the darkness fled. The ground around the bottle had cracked away, leaving me stranded on a tall pinnacle of black stone scarcely thirty feet across and surrounded by a deep, bottomless abyss in every direction.
There was no escape.
Rafael and Jareth lay still, just a few yards away. With my heart in my throat, I crawled over to them, but by the time I got there, they’d already begun to stir. I didn’t say anything, I just grabbed their hands and squeezed their fingers as hard as I could. They sat up, clearly confused—who could blame them?
Above our heads, light exploded in a shower of sparks, falling down like fireworks around us. It was so bright I had to squint. Tipping my head back, I could barely catch a glimpse of Jerry’s star still ascending into the dark sky, growing brighter and bigger with each passing second. Beneath my feet, I could see trails of light falling into the darkness below, looking like thin, shimmering waterfalls.
It was so beautiful, it made me cry.
Rafael didn’t speak, he just pulled me close into his strong arms.
“What—” Jareth began.
But he cut himself short as a long dark string dropped in front of us to expand into the Man in the Top Hat.
TopHat stood there, viewing us with paternal pride. “You made the right choices,” he said. “All three of you. Well done.”
We just stared at him.
Finally, I gasped, “What?”
TopHat’s bright eyes lit with amusement. “The answer was always love, Sydney. And all three of you chose love. And as you can see,” he turned, sweeping his hand in a broad gesture to Jerry’s star still shooting into the heavens. “There is no greater power. The new Tree of Life has been born of love. And it will be a tree that can never again be corrupted through fear and hatred.”
As we watched, the light around us began to merge, growing thicker to form the trunk of the new tree.
Rafael rose slowly to his feet, wonder written upon his face. “I thought … that we’d ….”
“Failed,” Jareth supplied for him when he didn’t finish.
TopHat laughed. “Quite the opposite,” he said. “The old tree had to die before it corrupted the dimensions beyond recovery. And the two of you had to be here, to help Sydney truly understand the various shades of love. Rafael, Jareth, the only mistake the two of you made was simply to think you’d made one.”
Both Rafael and Jareth swallowed, stunned.
“And you, Sydney.” TopHat’s smile grew in warmth as he turned his eyes upon me. “Do you see now just how powerful an ordinary human can be? The power of ordinary loved a mouse. That simple act changed the world. It opened your eyes which ultimately gave birth to the new Tree of Life, a tree made of love. Ordinary is capable of quite extraordinary things. Never underestimate the power of a single, most ordinary human. As you see, an ordinary human can truly change the world.”
My heart filled with so much emotion that I couldn’t respond.
I didn’t have to. Everyone understood.
As I looked at the beauty surrounding me, a rainbow of color lit the sky. I couldn’t see Jerry’s star anymore, but the trunk of the tree was expanding rapidly, filling with a light beyond beautiful to see.
The ground beneath us cracked, and we were rocked back by the impact.
TopHat glanced up at the tree and then back at us swiftly.
“It is time for you to go,” he said in a suddenly urgent tone. “The power you have unleashed will soon obliterate this place.”
We stared at him numbly. There really wasn’t any place to go to. We were surrounded by bottomless
pits in every direction.
But then, even as I thought it, a white staircase ascended from below, leading out from our pinnacle of rock, across the chasm, and to the lands of the Shadows of Death beyond.
The Man in the Top Hat pointed. “Run, children, run!” he urged as the pinnacle of rock upon which he stood teetered dangerously to one side.
I was going to ask him if he was safe, but he’d already begun to fade away and then Rafael was pulling me down the stairs.
I ran, even though I didn’t really understand why I was running.
I mean, I was still trapped in the Second Dimension without water or food. Jerry was a tree now. Jareth couldn’t shift out because of his lizard DNA. And Rafael couldn’t shift because he was a Fae trapped in the wrong dimension. We were doomed, anyway. So, why run?
But Rafael dragged me along at such a rapid pace that I couldn’t spare the breath to share my thoughts.
Behind us, the light of the new tree grew brighter and brighter, making our shadows smaller and smaller as we hurtled down the white staircase to the ground below. Several times, I tripped, but Rafael was there, yanking me upright and carrying me forward.
The stairs seemed endless.
My muscles were aching and my lungs burning for air as the tree grew even brighter behind us. I could feel the heat of the light on my back, and I could smell smoke in the air.
House-sized chunks of the dead tree began falling around us as the new one rose in all its glory to take its place. It was like running through a war zone. We tripped, sliding down the last steps when a sudden blast from behind overtook us. The force knocked us off our feet, robbing the very air of oxygen as the wind rushed over our heads.
We hugged the ground, gasping for air as light and debris fell around us.
Rafael struggled to his feet.
“Run!” he coughed, grabbing me by the back of the neck as he tried to heave me forward.
In the gathering dust, I could see Jareth attempting to rise, but he was having a hard time breathing too.
I looked behind me.
The new Tree of Life was brighter than the sun and it was still growing, tossing great shelves of rock and huge chunks of the old tree out of its way as if they weighed nothing. I could see a huge tidal wave of debris heading towards us.
