“Then I will sweeten the deal for you. Whether you win or lose, the whelp goes free. If I win, I go free along with your human pupil. If I lose, she still goes free.”
Brighid was quiet. I couldn’t believe she was actually thinking about taking him up on his offer. I wanted to live, of course, and I wanted more than anything to be home. But she was right. If I had to stay there or die to ensure that Ciardha never went free, then that was the right thing to do. It was required. I could make the sacrifice, just as my ancestor Saorla had.
“Goddess, do not take his wager. I’ll stay here – die if I have to – but don’t make this deal with him. We can’t risk unleashing him.”
Brighid stood silent, making no response to either Ciardha or myself.
“What say you, sister dear? You have already weakened me to near the point of returning once again to the toddler you left here all those millennia ago. You may well make short work of me. You can even take my dear little Macha and my companion, Dorcha. Leave me all alone here, and your Priestess will go free.”
“I will accept your proposal, Ciardha. With conditions.”
All of us gasped. Why would she play Ciardha’s game? He’s a sneaky, lying son-of-a-jackal. He just had to have something up his sleeve. Why would she trust him?
“I can’t believe she’d bargain with him,” Fanny whispered into my ear.
I agreed with Fanny, but I didn’t say it. Somehow it seemed wrong for me, a Priestess of Brighid, to question her. She must have a reason, right?
“By all means, state your proposals,” Ciardha said.
“Regardless of who prevails, Emily and my children of Lucent Energy will be returned to their proper time and place, unharmed. And you will restore Jake Stevens fully and return him as well, unharmed, to his proper time and place.”
“Agreed.”
Agreed? First, Brighid agreed to play Ciardha’s game, then he agreed to her terms? I didn’t understand the minds of these gods. But Jake restored. Relief filled me. I’d get to see Jake again – the real Jake – and maybe, just maybe, if we got out of the damned place alive, I’d have a chance to tell Jake how I feel. Maybe I’d have a chance to taste Jake’s lips and to feel his arms around me. Maybe we’d have a chance to fuel the fire in each other’s hearts.
And if Ciardha agreed to those terms, maybe I could get one more thing. Something I needed to undo another mistake I’d made.
“What about Owen?” I asked. “Goddess, what about Owen Breen? Please, can you include that Owen’s life will be restored as well?”
The Goddess looked at me then, as if fully noticing me for the first time since she arrived in the Umbra Perdita. Her face swiftly changed, and I saw before me the countenance of my mother speaking to me.
“It is not possible to restore Owen,” she said.
“But you’re the Goddess,” I pled. “You can do anything, can’t you?”
“Once life has ebbed, and the Anam is one with the Web of All Things, it is up to the individual whether he wants to return. I cannot force a life to be restored if the owner of that life would prefer to stay where he is.”
“Are you saying that Owen … Owen has joined Akasha permanently?”
“You know it to be true.”
“And he doesn’t want to come back?”
“Is that so hard to believe? I recall that a certain young lady herself did not want to return when she had the opportunity to fully experience Akasha.”
It was true. Once I experienced the indescribable beauty of the Web of All Things, it was so hard to make the choice to return to my comparatively mundane body. I had chosen to return because I had an important mission – to save Fanny and Jake and my dad, and everyone else in our world, from annihilation. Owen didn’t have a divine mandate pulling him back. Who knows, maybe he didn’t like his life particularly well? Maybe being the most desired boy in the school wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be.
“I understand.”
I understood, but I didn’t like it. There would be no easy way out – no redemption for me – of this mistake. I’d have to live the rest of my life knowing that Owen Breen died because of me.
Brighid turned her full attention back to Ciardha, and as she turned, I saw that her face change to that of Madame Wong.
“The conditions are set. The Great Web of All Things is witness. As from the beginning, so shall it always be. When Lucent Energy and Dark Energy create an accord, there is no force in the Universe that can resist the enforcement of the pact.
“Ciardha, do you agree that if I win our contest, you will remain here, in the Umbra Perdita, alone and restored to your state when you were first banished to this realm and that you will have no influence on any realm beyond this one, will have no knowledge of any realm beyond this one and that you will live out your eternity alone, without the companionship of Dorcha and Macha?”
“I do.”
When she said these words, I saw for the first time why she’d even consider playing along with Ciardha’s game. If she had the ability to sever him once and for all – and completely – from our world, then Lucent Energy would rule without even the competing influence of Dark Energy. The hearts of all sentient beings would be filled with only the pure light of Lucent Energy. Without dark thoughts – fears, anger, revenge, hatred – what a world that would be! I felt my inner fire kindle warmly at the thought. I can’t see my own aura, but I could practically feel it swell and brighten at the thought. She must win. She has to win.
“And do you further agree that regardless of whether you win or lose, my human children of Lucent Energy, Emily, Fanny, Greta and Jake, will be restored to their prior physical and mental condition and sent back to their proper place and time?
“I do.”
“Not that I don’t trust you, brother, but before we complete this accord, I want to see proof that you have fulfilled the condition of restoration of the full mental and physical capacity of Jake Stevens. Bring him here now.”
Ciardha looked annoyed. He looked like a child that thought he’d gotten away with something but was then caught. Brighid knew him well.
With a clap of thunder and some shaking of the ground, Jake fell from a rip in the air around us and landed with a thud in the dust of the arena. A cloud of dust billowed up around him. At first, he lay motionless. I was so fearful that Ciardha hadn’t kept his word – or simply didn’t have the ability to undo what he had set into motion in his game of nightmares.
But then Jake sat up and coughed. All three of us ran to him, and we all hugged him as he stood up.
“Wow, three hot girls hugging me! I thought I was in the land of nightmares.”
Fanny playfully smacked him in the back of the head.
“Same old Fanny.”
“I’m glad you’re not a veg anymore, dweeb,” Greta said.
“Same old Greta.”
I stood in front of Jake, my eyes filled with tears. I thought he was lost to me forever. Now he stood there, whole and real. I rushed in and hugged him tightly to me.
“Not the same old Emily!”
“Jake,” I cried as I held him. His arms went around me, and I felt the warm, tingly feeling I’d felt before when Jake touched me.
I stood back and looked at him. It was like I was seeing him for the first time. As he looked at me through his broken glasses, his cheeks stained with the red dust of the Umbra Perdita, his hair more tousled and messy than I’d ever seen it, I knew I loved him. Maybe I’d always loved him. But right then I knew that I wanted to experience what it would feel like to have his soft, round lips press gently against mine.
“I think I love you,” I said.
You could have heard a pin drop. Even the two deities in the arena seemed to listen to our conversation. Jake looked like he had been punched in the stomach. All of the blood had drained from his face, leaving him even more pale than usual, his mouth hanging open.
But his eyes were soft and warm, like two pools of glistening sea glass.
I could see his eyes water, threatening to spill tears. As I held his hands in mine, the tingling electrical feeling I’d had before traveled from his fingers to mine, then up my arms and through my whole body. The warmth spread with it and filled me to the core with a molten, hot passion unlike anything I’d ever felt before. It made the flippity-floppity butterfly stomach Owen had induced in me pale in comparison.
Can he feel it too? I didn’t know if Jake felt the same thing I did when we touched, but I saw his aura brighten, most of the black spots in it gone in an instant. He loves me.
“Oh, that’s rich,” Greta cut in. “You chose Owen over Jake. You threw your so-called friend under the bus so you could make out with the cool guy, then when that one bites the dust, you profess love for the one you rejected, just so you won’t be alone? God, you’re a piece of work, Adams.”
“No, Greta, you’ve got it all wrong.”
“What’s she talking about, Emily? What does she mean about you choosing Owen over me?”
“It was Ciardha’s game, Jake. He forced me to choose. I couldn’t pick you both …” I stammered through the tears choking me.
“You mean you chose … Owen over me?”
“I know it sounds awful, but it’s not what you think. Fanny, you know that’s not how it went down.”
“I think that’s exactly how it went down,” Fanny said.
Fanny’s eyes were dark and wide, filled with anger. Her aura was again filled with black spots, and it was beginning to smudge.
“No, Fanny, you know it’s not true.”
“I’m asking her,” Jake said. “I’m asking anybody that can explain to tell me what the hell happened while I lost my mind.”
“It’s easy, Jake. When given a choice between going to save you and saving The O, Emily chose to go save The O. Only it didn’t quite work out as planned because she was too lame to save him, and he died,” Greta answered.
“Owen’s dead?” Jake asked.
“Yes,” Greta said. “She brought his body back, but he died not long after. She let him die in her arms.”
What’s going on here? Greta’s turning them against me. She’s spinning it out of control. I was certain that they were being affected by Dark Energy and that it influenced them to hate me. If I could just get them out of the Umbra Perdita, maybe things would return to normal. But until we got out, it seemed that their bad feelings toward me would only grow.
“You liars, I didn’t let him die. I tried to save him. I worked on him, you know I did.”
“I don’t know anything of the kind,” Greta said. “What I saw was you sitting there watching him die. You didn’t even do mouth-to-mouth or chest compressions or anything.”
“That’s because I was using my telekinesis to heal his wounds. And it was working, but it was too late. I didn’t have the power to save him.”
“Whatever. Tell us a tale, and make it something you can’t prove,” Greta said.
Greta stood with her arms crossed in front of her chest, her lips set in a defiant sneer. Fanny’s brown eyes just glared at me.
“Emily, I want to know one thing. Is it true that you chose to save Owen instead of me?”
“Yes. But that’s not the whole story …”
Jake just put his hand up to me in a talk to the hand motion.
“Please, Jake, listen to me.”
Jake’s aura now wavered, filled with tiny spots of black. He too had smudges around his body. I’m losing him.
“I’m done listening to you. Done saving you. Done helping you with math homework and drooling after you when you weren’t going to give me the time of day. Done being the one waiting in the wings – waiting for you to figure out that the one who loves you – who always loved you – was standing right there in front of you.”
“But that’s just it – I did figure it out. And I know my true feelings now. And I know that I love you. And you’re here – and you’re okay – and I’m here, and soon, no matter what happens, we’ll all be back to the way it was. And you and I can …”
“No, it won’t be back to the way it was. It will never be back to the way it was. You’ve gone too far, Em. You’ve busted it all up. We’re through being friends.”
“But you said you loved me.”
“I did.”
“I know you love me. I feel it.”
“I do love you … But it’s not good for me to love you. After all we’ve been through here, I’m not going to waste one more day pining after you or trying to fix you, to make you whole. I’m through with you.”
Of all the nightmares I’d been through since we entered the portal into hell, none compared to the real nightmare I was living then. When I thought I had lost Jake to Ciardha’s game, it was a pain of guilt and grief that I thought was unbearable. But to hear Jake, fully alive, fully himself, reject me to my face – totally and unconditionally – that was a pain I wasn’t sure my soul could bear. From the time we were three, I had relied on Jake, almost daily, to be there for me. To pick me up when I was down. To tell me it was okay. Without Jake, I wasn’t sure there was anything to Emily.
“Please, Jake. Fanny.”
Jake walked over to Fanny and took her hand, and Greta stepped up and took Fanny’s other hand. The three of them stood glaring at me, a trio I had never imagined in a million years would be united against me.
As they stood there glaring at me, I noticed that their auras were almost perfectly faded to black. If they spent much more time in the Umbra Perdita, they would probably lose their auras completely. I wasn’t sure how the whole aura thing worked, but having your aura disappear altogether seemed like a bad thing. Maybe once it was lost, you couldn’t get it back.
I turned my back to them so I wouldn’t have to see them glare at me anymore. The tears welled in my eyes and then flooded my face. I hiccupped great sobs of emotion.
“If the children have completed their melodrama, may we proceed with binding our accord.”
“Yes, go on,” Brighid said.
“Brighid, do you agree that if I win our contest that I, Ciardha, will be released from my imprisonment in the Umbra Perdita, to enjoy the same freedom in the whole of the universe that you have experienced since my imprisonment here?”
“I do.”
Both thundered in unison, “Let it be so.”
The two deities stood, their eyes locked, neither making a move.
A cold wave hit me. My flesh got goose pimply, and a shiver ran up and down my spine. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen, but in that moment, I knew that something was terribly wrong.
24
There was suddenly a tremendous quaking of the ground all around us. It felt like the foundation would open, and the insubstantial layers of dust on which we sat would simply disappear, shaken to the far winds by the trembling.
The sky was suddenly ablaze with lightning bolts larger than I’d ever seen before. It was like a summer lightning storm on steroids. The entire dome of the sky around us was lit up, blazing white light. The conflagration went from the ground up and from the sky to the ground. It went sideways and diagonally, stretching across every inch of the red, misty sky, turning it from rusty red to a blinding white.
While my eyes were assaulted by the blinding white light and my ears pounded from the roar filling the air, Brighid grew to many times her normal size. As she grew, her face changed from person to person so rapidly that it looked like her visage was melting. Her head became like a watery pool of molten mercury, the glimpse of a face now and again amongst the silvery liquid.
Then the human visage she had worn exploded entirely off of her head, and the humanoid body she’d appeared in melted away in a pool of liquid silver. The shimmering blue-green of her liquid metal robes – gone.
Her true form was revealed.
Blazing in the center of the arena was an entity of pure light energy, an amorphic being that moved and floated and spread wide then condensed in on itself again. There were no arms, no legs, no neck
or middle. Only a shimmering blob of liquid light.
It’s hard for me, even now, to describe in words the nearly indescribably beauty of Brighid once she had shed her humanoid form. I had to hide my eyes behind my arm and peek through my fingers to get a glimpse, the light of her was so bright that it hurt my eyes, especially after being so long in the darkness of the Umbra Perdita.
Before us was a vast mass of what looked like electrified silver, shining as bright as a small star from within the center of her amorphous form. The light of her spread throughout the arena, lighting it up even brighter than the sunniest summer day at high noon on the equator.
The only feature that remained from her humanoid shape was a single eye in the center. It was like a pool of liquid mercury shimmering the way sunlight plays off of a pool of water. And at the very center of the watery pool of an eye was a small dot of the most intense light you can even imagine. It was like ten suns were concentrated into that small ball of light.
It was as if she had inhaled, and all at once, her form brightened even more. The bolts of lightning dancing across the sky gathered into her, then shot out of her eyes in one concentrated beam of pure Lucent Energy, right at Ciardha. The energy beam knocked him backward about twenty feet.
For a moment, his form lay still. I felt sure that Brighid had done him in with only one move. But then he got up, a nasty sneer plastered on his face.
“Such theatrics, my sister.” He laughed. “You’ve always enjoyed drama, putting on a show. Lightning, fire, quakes and fury. How you love to show off for your precious humanoids.”
“Are you going to continue to challenge me, Ciardha, or do you concede? It’s not too late for you to go back to the way things were,” her voice bellowed across the arena, bouncing around until it became a rumbling thunder.
As if to illustrate her goodwill, she spread a beam of light over Dorcha. The beast’s form rose from the ground. Dorcha shook herself and once again sat on her haunches near Ciardha. Dorcha had previously been surrounded by a halo of black smudge, like Ciardha. But after Brighid invigorated her, Dorcha’s aura had changed to a twinkling, bright red light.
The Akasha Chronicles Trilogy Boxed Set: The Complete Emily Adams Series Page 43
