by RAVENC JAMES
This Naia had a pair of yellow wings and gray eyes and a smile that looked sincere.
“Hello, Orieumber and Venir,” she said.
“I told Naia that you have fascinating information that may be worth a trade,” Tarain said, smiling while her lips were clenched. “So, since you all are green walkers and hoppers too.”
Greens? I threw a glance at Venir to see if he caught that. He responded with a furtive nod. Tarain continued talking, complete with hand gestures. “We’ve decided to offer you a worthy trade. Are you ready for this?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Oh, did he…know it too?” Tarain asked me, referring to Venir.
“Yes, he knows.”
“Okay, then this is our deal…oh, I’m so excited. Naia is going to show you how this magic water works in exchange for the name of the author of the book Navi,” she said, clapping her hands in excitement.
“We can easily learn that by merely observing them,” Venir answered, pointing at the angels who were working at the water fountain.
A frown marred Tarain’s smooth face. “I bet you my wings you won’t learn much by simply watching them.”
That’s a daring bet, but I wouldn’t want Tarain to lose her wings, so I said, “I accept.”
They all turned to me as though I’ve spoken in an ancient language.
“I meant…let’s have it. Let’s trade!”
“Oh, this is exciting!” Tarain said.
I noticed Tarain was flapping her wings in excitement, a gesture I surprisingly understood, for I could feel it, the urge to fly round and round. Holy crap. I supposed I was now adapting.
Naia led us closer to the fountain, and we intently listened to her as she explained it.
“The water contains bendable energy. It was placed in the first house for angels to widen their imaginations and to be aware of what is in store for them once they reach the higher houses.”
She then gave each of us a cup to fill up with water from the fountain. Then we watched.
Naia stared at the water inside the cup. Her eyes were focused, and, at the moment they glinted, the water surged out of its container and transformed into a mirror right in front of us.
My jaw dropped.
“Wow!” I said. “How do we do it?”
“Just establish a connection by talking to the water mentally and then tell it to turn into whatever the image is in your mind.”
Venir tried it first and then made a transparent bracelet out of the water. He gave it to me. I said, “Thanks.” But the moment the bracelet touched my skin, it returned to its water form and spilled to the ground.
“What happened?” Venir asked.
“The connection was broken. The transformation is not really permanent,” Tarain answered.
I then tried it myself, and they laughed when they saw what I created.
My image stared back at me.
“That’s very creative and imitative,” Venir said.
After the water lesson, Tarain led our group to a secluded area in the garden.
“We can’t risk others overhearing us,” she said. When she was sure that no one was eavesdropping, her gaze found mine. “Now tell us.”
I made a gesture for us to gather closer. Then in a clear yet whispered voice, I said: “The author’s name is Archangel Michael.”
CHAPTER 9
We all went back inside to resume our education or our quest, as Venir and I put it. We were determined to unravel the mystery of the darkness.
“They referred to us, the bottom readers, as green walkers and hoppers,” Venir said, taking another book from the shelf. “I called them floaters.”
I laughed with him and told him that I would have to join the floaters now.
“For our cause,” he said as I flew up back to the Min, the yellow sphere.
I randomly picked a book from the first wall and started reading it. Then when I finished, I started another one. I advanced so fast that I moved on to the wall where Tarain was currently hovering. She gave me a curious look and then returned to her book.
When she finished her book, she started a new one and then put it back. I made my way to the book she skipped and started reading it. I finished it quickly and then picked up the next one. I made sure that I was reading the books that were close to her. I earned another curious look from her, and this time there was an added glare in her eyes.
The third wall was next, and voraciously I read the books, though I skipped some. It would take you an eternity to finish reading all of the books, but I was trying to prove something. So I kept on reading until Tarain came to me and understood what I was trying to do.
“What do you want?” she said.
“Darkness. Do you know anything about it? Tell me, and I’ll answer any of your questions about a book you skipped.”
She took a deep breath and then winced as though it hurt her to say it. “I don’t really know anything about it. I’m really trying to get information too.” Her eyes gleamed, and there was a slight tremble in her lips. “Orieumber, what if it comes back before I find anything out about it?” And then she moved closer to me. “There are others too who are in the hunt for the answer. Some of them turn it into a game.”
“Have you joined this game?” I asked.
“No. I just want to know what it is so that I know what to do when it happens.”
“Then we can work together to figure this out. Do you know of anyone who might likely share information for whatever I can trade with them?”
She looked pensive for a moment. And then, her eyes glistened in excitement.
“I have an idea. But we need to wait for Naia to come. She is actually in Rebu.” Rebu, or Rebusphere, was the fourth level. In this sphere, the books were plated red. Tarain continued, “And she only comes here to visit me.”
And so, we waited. Our manner of waiting was, of course, reading some more books. I read two more books before Naia came by.
“Hi,” she said. She had dimples on either side of her mouth when she smiled.
“I have an idea how to get information about the darkness,” Tarain said.
Naia’s forehead creased. She glanced to my side. “And I assume it has something to do with her?”
“She might have information you can trade up there.”
“I used that information about the author of the Navi. And in exchange, they told me a little bit about it, at least what they so far knew.”
“So, what is it?” I asked.
“Up there, the darkness is called the Great Riddle. Everybody there was so scared that we’ve decided to work together to solve this riddle.”
“Why?” I said, then changed my words. “Ask me about a book in Min that you haven’t read yet in exchange for the reason why they are scared.”
Both Naia and Tarain laughed.
“Oriuember, you don’t make a trade every time you ask someone how they are feeling,” Tarain said.
Although embarrassed, I kept my focus on the main issue. “Tell me then.”
“Up there, there are five angels who disappeared after the darkness had passed.”
Five missing angels?
“Are you sure they’re missing?” I asked.
“Yes. Because they are friends of some angels and they couldn’t find them. We all speculated that the darkness has something to do with it.”
“So, the darkness made us go to sleep and then took some angels with it?” Tarain said.
Fear reflected in her glossy eyes.
“The voice,” I said. “I heard a singing voice when we were in the dark.”
If the intensity of their stares were any indication, then they were surely surprised about my revelation.
“I didn’t hear any singing,” Naia said.
“Neither did I,” Tarain agreed.
But I heard it.
“It must be Archangel Emerald trying to calm us all?” Naia explained.
“But the voice is male,” I said. “And it
said sleep, little angels…” And I told them the words in the song.
Flabbergasted, they said in chorus: “You understand archangel-tongue?”
I had not noticed it before. I could see the lines of worries on the angels’ foreheads as they focused on the books they read. I could see the fear, the hesitation, the doubt, the insecurity hidden beneath the small glances they threw my way. They knew I knew something but refrained themselves from making the trade because their knowledge may be unworthy, less valuable. Insecurity. Several of these angels were feeling like this. Not everyone was like Curi with a healthy dose of self-confidence.
As my gaze appraised them further, I had come to realize what the book called Guide meant when it described us as fledglings. Not angels yet. We were still growing our navi. We were still sucking on the knowledge the academy was feeding us. My gaze swept around, measuring the entire hall as far as my eyes could reach.
We were still babies. The knowledge was our milk. And this academy was our mother.
Strangely this realization comforted me. Or it must have been my desperate attempt to disprove the idea that angels were born motherless.
As my train of thought made a sharp turn to the corner of the maudlin and melancholy, I resumed my knowledge-milking with the book in my hand. This one talked about the hidden chambers in every house of the academy, places where the angels could go if they wanted to focus on their study. As I read further, I had come to learn that these hidden chambers called Focus Rooms were the safest place in the entire academy, for once inside, no one could find you unless you told them the doorway password. After I finished reading it, the author’s name appeared one letter at a time. It spelled out: Archibard.
I quickly hovered toward Tarain.
“When you’re done, come see me down on the Mash. And bring Naia with you.”
“Why not wait for her here?” Tarain asked, looking at me like I was not making any sense.
“Because I have to pay what I owed Venir.”
Venir was reading the book Navi when I found him. His forehead furrowed in concentration, eyes fixed on the page when I tried to surprise him from behind.
“You’re not that sneaky, Ori, even when you try to be,” he said without taking his eyes off the book.
“How did you know it was me?” I cringed a little at the whine I could hear in my own voice.
He turned around to face me. “You have this energy around you. Like this.” He made a grasping gesture in the air. “This is like a little thicker. I meant the air or whatever this is. If I stand several feet from you, I will feel normal air. But when you come closer, the air becomes different. It only happens when you’re around.”
Astonished. Shocked. Confused. Incredulous. These I felt all together as I stood there listening to what Venir said.
“But how come it’s just you who noticed it?” I asked, hoping there was some logic into this.
“Oh, others have noticed it too. Have you felt their gazes every time you pass them by?”
So that was what the glances were about. “I thought it was because of my wings.”
He smiled. “You do have beautiful wings.”
The sudden tinge of heat creeping into my face in response to the compliment caught me off-guard.
“Thank you,” I said anyway.
“This book, by the way, is hard,” he said, glancing back to the book as though he did not notice my sudden awkwardness. “I don’t know how you can read this.”
I peeked at the page he was reading. “What are you seeing?”
“Letters that don’t make sense. Sometimes when I stared harder and longer, some words would appear, but without the rest of the words, I might as well be reading a blank page.”
Curious, I asked, “How does it look to you?”
“It’s like this. I understand the word kalaskig, but then the words before and after it are like crisscrosses, lines inside the small circle.” He shook his head. “Gibberish.”
“Why don’t we take a break? Let’s go to the garden. I have something to tell you.”
“I have no knowledge to trade with you that you haven’t possessed yet. So don’t tell me,” he said even before I opened my mouth.
“If you were not here with me, if you had not offered your companionship, I would be so bored and lonely that I would start talking with the flowers in the garden, with the trees, and probably come up with an imaginary friend just to have someone to talk to. So, I owe it to you that I am not like that.”
“You made friends all by yourself. And you’re not a bad companion either. So, no, you owe me nothing.”
I crossed my arms against my chest and stared at him. “You’re telling me that I don’t owe you anything for the companionship you’ve been providing me, even when in here...” I pointed at where my heart should be. “And in every fiber of my being, I feel this sense of gratitude for it. I’m happy that I can enjoy exploring this world of Ether with you. I’m indebted to you. And when I said that, I meant that, so don’t tell me otherwise. Just don’t!”
There was this little sense of guilt nagging at me as I watched him absorb my overblown dramatic speech. He was looking at me with his eyes getting narrower and narrower.
“I’m glad I came back to wait for you in the Garden,” he finally said. “You’re so chatty. Now that I think about it. You’re like the rumble in my stomach when I get hungry.”
“What?” I said incredulously. After everything I said?
Then he continued. “You’re like the noise my heart makes, reminding me that I’m here, alive…and that I exist.”
That actually sounded better than mine. My heart did some rejoicing with the way it beat louder and faster.
“So, I can tell you now?’
A smile broke out on his face. “If you insist.”
We were floating a few inches from the ground, cross-legged, as I told him about the existence of the Focus Rooms and what I thought the academy to be—a mother.
“Then she is not doing an excellent job at protecting her children if we are missing five angels,” Venir said. “Unless they figured out how to summon a Focus Room, and they hid in there when the darkness came.”
“So they may not actually be missing. Only, the book does not teach us how to summon a Focus Room,” I replied. Or else I should have summoned one already.
When Tarain and Naia arrived, I traded them the knowledge about Focus Room with Naia’s information about the archangels in Ether. A book about archangels was one of the easier to read in Mash, but the book itself did not provide an in-depth discussion about them.
First and foremost, there was Michael the Archangel, the firstborn, chief of all archangels. Then there was his brother Gabriel. Then the other archangels were Emerald, Sapphire, Jopiel, Ariel, and Metatron; then the brothers Uriel and Raphael. There were many more archangels, but their names were not included because they wished it that way.
“Each archangel is capable of summoning dark energy,” Naia explained.
I glanced over at Venir, and he looked uncertain about it. “You think the darkness is dark energy?” he asked.
“That’s what most of us in Rebu believe,” Naia answered.
“So the darkness could have been summoned by an archangel?” Tarain asked.
“Yes,” Naia agreed. “A line of thinking that most of us in Rebu subscribe to. Would you blame an archangel for the missing angels? Maybe. It also means that they must be safe.”
“Why would you think that?” I said. “Have all archangels proven not to harm an angel?”
They all turned to me when their incredulous eyes. What now?
“How can you doubt the creators of the academy themselves?” Tarain said with a bit of reprimand in her voice.
“And thanks to your information about the Focus Room, Orieumber, I am now certain that the angels were not taken by the archangels but are actually in the Focus Rooms,” Naia said.
“Well, then, case closed!” Tarain said, looking plea
sed.
“That’s it? We solved the case?” I said.
“We all did,” Naia said. “The entire team, including the angels in Rebu. Now I’m going back there to trade your information with theirs. I’m sure they’ll all be happy to learn about this Focus Room.”
Venir and I went back inside after both Naia and Tarain left. There was this little nugget of doubt lingering in my mind. What was the darkness about then? A trial? A riddle to solve? Did we solve it? If we did, what then?
“So, do you agree with them?” I asked Venir as he leaned against the fifth wall.
“Look, I only know probably point-zero-zero-zero-zero-one of everything there is to learn in here. So I have no idea what to think about it,” he replied.
Then something clicked in my angelic brain. “You know what? I think our quest has just presented itself to us.” I watched his face change from resignation to bemusement.
“What now?” he asked.
“We’ll have to investigate what really happened to those angels. If they are, indeed, in the Focus Rooms, then let’s find them there.”
With his brows raised, he tilted his head to the side. “How are you going to find out if you don’t know their password? We don’t even know how to summon one!”
“Watch me learn how to summon one.”
“Oh, I’ll certainly watch it,” he said, actually looking sincerely excited.
“These angels were in Rebu when they went missing, right? So that means, in Rebusphere, there is a book that can teach us how to summon a Focus Room.”
“Okay, that’s a good plan. So what are you waiting for? Let’s go.”
“Wait, what? Let’s go? You’re coming with me?”
His smirk looked enchanting on his face. “I think I’m ready for the next sphere.”
CHAPTER 10
Venir and I were witnesses when Tarain made her first flight toward the third level called Salsusphere. And when her first attempt turned out successful, we cheered. She glanced down at us from above and made a funny face before moving upward.
