by Jeremy Marr
“We are done here Jago, get up,” Coleena’s voice infiltrated his slumber. He opened his eyes and rolled over to the edge of the bed, belly down. He stubbed the toes of his leading foot as it hit the ground, but did not comprehend why until after he stood up to his full height. The bed was much lower now than it had been when he and Coleena climbed into it for their nap. He turned his head toward Coleena and a wave of dizziness overcame him. He sank to the floor as the room spun in circles. After it slowed, he looked up and quickly back down to give Coleena some privacy as she finished buttoning up her dress.
“I said we are done here. The gift has been passed. I now hold it within me to pass to the OneWhoComes.
You did your part well, Jago, holding it for this day, but your burden of it is over. You may feel dizzy now, but it will pass. You will grow used to living without that which you did not know you were living with.
“Stand up and get dressed. The time grows short and we still have things yet to be done, my husband.”
“My husband?” he thought. Blurry visions came to life, though he could not make sense of most of them. As he stood back up from the ground, picked his robe up off the floor, and started pulling it over his thin frame, his wedding vows whispered themselves inside his head. He looked at Coleena, standing tall and proud as she rubbed her belly with both hands. Her eyes were shut, and a smile was on her lips. “I have truly made her a happy woman,” Jogo thought. “Not just any woman,” he corrected himself, “my wife.”
Coleena started up the ladder and Jago’s world was plunged into darkness. He still felt his feet firmly pressed to the ground, with Christina DeBold’s pressure holding him fast, but on the inside he was free-floating and …
“You may come up now,” she said.
He felt his hands lift away from his eyes and he was once again within the light of a thousand candles.
“I hope you don't mind that I take precautions against my virtue. Just because you are my husband now, does not mean you can gawk at me as I climb the ladder. Hurry up now, time is passing.
“Lights out,” she finished.
He was once again thrown into darkness, but this time his eyes were not being covered by his hands. Hurrying over to the spot underneath the trap door, he fumbled to find the ladder. After he climbed out of the basement bedroom, he shut the trap door, making a hollow thud that vibrated throughout the living quarters. Jago spun around in search of his soul mate and took in his surroundings. They made him slightly bewildered, the things he saw held within the four walls. His last memory of inside the house told him that it should be completely empty. The door was shut, with the bolt drawn to keep it that way. A chair stood in front of a single window, which was an odd place for a chair to be. The curtain, opened slightly, rippled softly as a warm evening breeze filtered through shutters not completely closed together. There was now a deep redwood table occupying space on the wall his eyes brushed as he circled around. Then he saw her. She was standing in front of a redwood writing desk that matched the table. She again was rubbing her belly with both hands and her face remained the owner of a wide, glowing smile. She was looking at some kind of decoration that had been splashed on the wall behind the desk. He took his place behind her, on her right side, and wanted to do no more than stand patiently, awaiting further instructions.
She opened her eyes and turned her head while her left hand gestured to the wall in back of the writing desk. “I don't have an abundance of time to waste explaining everything to you here and now, and I'm still thinking about how much of your daily memories you will keep,” she started as she dropped her hand back to her belly. She took a breath and noticed the way Jago still slightly quivered with it. “These are your ancestors, and mine, written on the wall since the first OneWhoMustRemember and the first OneTrueDaughter.”
He wanted to ask what a “OneWhoMustRemember” was, as well as a “OneTrueDaughter”, since he could not recall anything on either subject, but he dared not to be the one to waste his loving wife's time. All his memories had her in the center, “and that is the way it should be,” he finished to himself.
“The first line, though red, was written with the same black ink from this well,” she preached and pointed to the wooden vial that sat upon its writing desk throne. “They were husband and wife when they made their journey here with the OneWhoBroughtUs.
“Upon arriving to this land, after dictating to ThoseThatCame of the things he wanted done and how things were going to be, the OneWhoBroughtUs took her away from him in order to take her as his own wife. They both lived here, while the first OneWhoMustRemember and his Son Bringer, although it has been called ‘wife’ more and more, lived in the very house you do now, Jago. The OneWhoBroughtUs and Jodeen GoldSpawn lived here. They had two children, one son and one daughter.
“The son was given to the first OneWhoMustRemember, Brendon GoldSpawn, to raise as his own. The daughter went to Jodeen to raise as the first OneTrueDaughter. No one complained about the new arrangement, for the all-powerful, OneWhoBroughtUs, commanded it to be so.
“Within the next few years all the books of prophecy and commands were written and the OneWhoBroughtUs simply disappeared. We, the OneTrueDaughters, have held the key to the next coming from that point forward.
“The OneTrueDaughter has to convince the current OneWhoMustRemember to kill his firstborn son by throwing him off the Cliffs of Offering. That is needed to break the Cycle of Light, thus causing the Coming to happen. If it is not done by the lad's tenth birthday, the cycle remains and the next OneWhoMustRemember’s firstborn son and the OneTrueDaughter’s firstborn daughter would then be faced with the same task. It is a task that seems very hard to accomplish, as many generations of OneTrueDaughters have come and gone, and so far none have seen the prophecy come true.”
As she drew another breath, Jago thought about how exciting this “Coming” sounded. He did not really know why those before had not broken the Cycle by now, if something glamorous sounding as the Coming was waiting to happen.
“If I am right, as I usually am, the Coming is very close, Jago, and I will take nothing to chance on its success.” She turned back to the wall and pointed to the first set of names, drawn blood red, and recited what she knew from memory:
“Brendon GoldSpawn 3m12y Jodeen GoldSpawn
We honor the first of each station by carrying on their name.”
She continued reading the first few names under those two lines, after reminding Jago that the red names and words were written in the same ink as the black ones that followed:
Brendon-Johnson 3m 18y Jodeen-Carolina
Brendon-Hannni 3m 27y Jodeen-Natalia
Brendon-Anson 3m 38y Jodeen-Helena
As she was reading those next few names, Jago jumped ahead of her and skimmed down until that column ended, where the top of the desk met the wall. None of the names were in the same handwriting and letter spacing patterns, but the first name on the left was always Brendon, just like the repeating name of Jodeen. Constant as well, in each line, was the 3M.
“These columns of names and dates are a journal of sorts that give a time-frame of when each OneWhoMustRemember was given the key to the Coming by the current OneTrueDaughter. For whatever reason, the third month has been the birth month of all OneWhoMustRemembers. In that month, during the listed Year of the Endless Light, the OneTrueDaughter wrote down this information after the tenth year since birth of the OneWhoMustRemember’s son. The task was then handed down to her daughter to take up. The key has to yet to be used in breaking the Cycle, so the list has grown and grown.” Coleena pointed to the last name in the second column, all the way down by the floor. “That person was your father, Jago. My mother wrote that very last entry.
“Brendon-Geoffy 3m 948y Jodeen-Sanseen
“I can tell you it was a sad day for her, for me as well. The same day you asked me to marry you. You have forgotten it because
I decided to allow you the gift of having a memory free of that horrible man. He sent me away from you and then took you way up to his cave to keep you safe. He thought my mother was crazy it seems. She fell through the same crack all the other OneTrueDaughters have.
“That day was the first day my birthmark tingled and turned ever so darker. I knew it was something special. I am different Jago, my love, and I certainly will not fall through any crack, nor shall I fall short of my goal.
“I have realized, as well, that all of these names have been written wrong, but we will correct that tonight. The name that has been carried down has been the first one, instead of the last.” Coleena started to snicker. “After the OneWhoBroughtUs suddenly disappeared, Jodeen extracted a little revenge for the way her and her true husband was treated. It seems that she had an extreme dislike for the OneWhoBroughtUs. The point is she taught her daughter, Carolina, that it was the first name that was passed down, hoping to blotch up the rest of the prophecy out of spite. She never forgave the OneWhoBroughtUs for first taking her husband away from her, and then taking her first born son, as well. But that is another tale, for another time
“I figured that out by reading the personal journal of Jodeen Goldspawn. Oh, the interesting things she wrote about, like how life was back “before the move”, as she put it.
“So, my love, you see that the names have been written wrong, and you must realize that no OneWhoMustRemember and OneTrueDaughter have ever been married since the beginning. I believe that was a mistake of sorts or maybe the originals were married and then broken up and now, with us, that has been fixed. I don’t know which, but we must continue,” she said. She reached down, picked up the bottle of black ink, and carefully unstopped it before setting it down again. She then picked up the writing quill. “Jago, you do remember vowing to me that you would ‘break the Cycle’, right?” she asked him.
“I remember like it was just a few hours gone by,” Jago stated.
“Though you may have been talking about the cycle of violence that has plagued your family for generations, you did vow to break the Cycle, and you will have your opportunity to do so,” she said. Without another word, Coleena dipped the quill into the ink bottle. She then stepped over to the right side of the last column of names that stretched down to the floor ending with Jago’s father. She did not write at the top of the wall, like the other two columns, but instead wrote in big letters, chest high:
JAGO GOLDSPAWN 3M 980Y COLEENA GOLDSPAWN
As she set the writing stick back down on the desk, Jago watched as a drop of black ink dripped from the pen onto the desktop where it just sort of melted into the floating black wood grain just under the surface. His eyes went from the desk to the hand that set it down. It was suspended, still open from its release on the quill, a few inches from the top of the desk. He followed her hand up to her forearm, then past her elbow and up to her shoulder. He traced the outline of her neck and throat and stopped, horrified, when he saw her face.
It was frozen in a look of complete shock. Her eyes were as wide as they could be without splitting the skin around them. Her mouth mirrored her eyes and was frozen like the rest of her. He followed her gaze to the wall and discovered the reason. The words, just written in black, had somehow turned the same blood red that the very beginning of the makeshift journal had.
Coleena regained her composure and straightened out her dress, though it was too snug to her body to become out of place. She then turned to look at Jago.
“I was right,” she said with a smug grin. “Do you see?” she asked him. “I was right!
“Now, there is one other little problem, Jago, which must be taken care of. It is time for the Cycle to be broken, and that is up to you.”
“Coleena, I cannot break the Cycle because we do not have a child in which to break it with. How am I to do it?” Jago questioned. He tried not to sound baffled as he asked; a task made hard due to the lack of any memory that excluded Coleena.
“There is a way,” she whispered. “There is a child waiting at the house across the path. He has already been taught some of what the son of the OneWhoMustRemember must be taught. He would certainly be able to break the Cycle.”
“Yes!” Jago screamed to himself. He started to smile, knowing that he did indeed have a way to give his beautiful wife that which she said she desired most in the world. He saw Coleena smile back at him. “Ahhh,” his thoughts continued, “what is one unknown child when I am prepared to give the world for a smile like that?” His mind was made up.
“I will do it for your love, that you have kindly showered upon me since the earliest of my memories,” he said, which earned him another one of those secrete smiles that he thought was full of love and understanding.
“You will need to leave soon, husband,” she said as she turned her back on Jago and walked to the empty table where she took a seat. She heard his feet as he made his way to stand at her side. “The boy already knows his part in all of this, and will not cause any problems. Simply escort him up the path, past the cave, to the section of the cliff where two large boulders rest five paces apart. That is your destination, the Cliff of Offering. You will wait there with the child until I arrive. I must see him be thrown over with my own eyes.
“Do you understand these commands?”
“Yes,” Jago replied. “I hear and so shall it be done.”
“You do this willingly?” she asked, raising one eye brow while shifting her gaze to Jago. Without pausing to allow him the option of response, she continued, “I do not want you to do this because of how much this means to me, or because I am asking you to do it. I do not want you to do this even because I would think of you as my Knight in Blackened Armor.
“I need to know if you want to do this because you feel it to be right and just, down to your soul.”
Jago paused for a moment and shut his eyes. He pictured his soul, a sliver of electricity running from his neck to his midsection, radiating a silver light. Coleena’s face was in the middle of that light source, surrounded by everything good in his life. If he could not do this for her, he would do it for the love that bathed her face within him, and that felt right to him. “Yes, I see it clearly inside of me that it is the right thing to do. I wish to leave now, if the time is right, to hasten the time before your happiness.
“Would you care for me to wait until you are ready to depart?” he asked, hoping she would say “yes”. It would make for a pleasant stroll along the path if she were there by his side.
“No, I have to freshen up and prepare myself. Leave now, and remember, do not break the Cycle until I am there to witness it,” Coleena said as she stood up and started to make her way over to the trap door to her sleeping quarters. When she got there, she stopped and turned to face Jago, who had made his way to the closed outside door. She watched as he drew the bolt and started to open it.
He blinked when he heard his name called and turned around. He felt Coleena’s body press up against his as she wrapped her arms lovingly around his neck. Her sweat breath filled his nose.
“You truly are the best friend and husband any OneTrueDaughter has ever had,” he heard her say before he felt her soft lips touch his. He closed his eyes and lost himself in her love.
How long he stood there, he did not know. The sound of the trap door closing brought him back to reality. He finished opening the door and walked out into the weak evening light. He spotted the boy, not where she had told him he would be, but a short distance up the path, sitting on a large boulder. Jago would not hold that against his wife though. She loved him, and nothing else mattered. Time, places, or things to do, they all did not matter. When his task was through, he was sure that if she could, she would love him even more. He smiled brightly as he closed the door behind himself. Jago Goldspawn then started to make his way up the path towards the boy.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
GUILTY
OR NO
