“Good day,” I said. I stood for a moment watching her pull the yellowish roots shaped like men from the dirt.
“What is it you wish to ask me?” She stopped and looked up at me, her silver eyes like eternity. Herthe was second only to Father, but often seemed to have most of the say about what happened on the island. She could be stern and unyielding when necessary, but she was good-natured, and I often found comfort in her words.
“Father asked me to go journeying with him tomorrow.” I shifted on my feet a bit concerned about what it all meant.
Herthe raised an eyebrow. “And?”
“I don’t know. I was just wondering if you knew anything about it.”
Herthe smiled. “Eilim does what he wants. He does not consult with me first.” She picked up one of the roots and hit it against a large rock to knock off the dirt.
“Of course.” I paused. “I was just wondering if—”
“If you should be worried?”
I nodded.
“Why should you worry about journeying?”
“I don’t know. I’ve always gotten the impression that Father doesn’t like me much.”
“Because he’s hard on you?” She looked up at me again, her eyes glinting in the golden sunlight coming through the treetops.
“I never feel like he approves.”
She laughed. “You make predictions when it is not your place.”
“I’m often right.” I squared my shoulders.
“You’re also often wrong.” Herthe sat back on her heels. “You should never make predictions to the group without clearing it with us first. You know that, but you continue to do it. Why?”
“I get carried away in the moment.”
“There is no room for getting carried away here. You know that also. With great power comes great responsibility. We must be orderly and controlled at all times.” She picked up the small shovel at her side and began digging around a bright, leafy plant.
“Order and control have their places. As do passion and vision.”
“That may be true, but that place is not here.”
“Then what is to become of someone like me?”
“Whatever do you mean?” She continued to dig, exposing a round bulb at the base of the plant.
“What if being orderly and controlled goes against my nature?”
“Don’t worry. It does not. Your nature will change as you learn control. That’s probably what Eilim will teach you on the journey.” She pushed the shovel into the soil on the other side of the root and rocked it back and forth to loosen it.
“What if I am unwilling to change?”
Herthe grabbed the stem of the plant low down and leaned backward, pulling another yellow root from the dirt. “Then you will have more problems than are worth having.”
If you started early in the morning and walked from one end of the island to the other it would take you three days. It did not matter if one chose to go around the great mountain at its base or climb it if you were a good climber. If you were a slow climber it would, of course, take longer. We lived on the west side of the mountain in a clearing in the thick forest, a twenty-minute trek from the beach. Fine white-sand beaches curved around the southern side of the island. Sheer white cliffs rose from the waves on the northern side. Their porous white rock gleamed like bleached bones in the afternoon sun.
Stellan stood on the edge of one of those cliffs with his arms open wide, the wind whipping past him. The waves below thrashed the rocks like an angry boar. Even though the hike to this side of the island took longer he spent a lot of time on the cliffs. He said that the wind and the water helped him organize his thoughts.
“Stellan,” I called.
He put his arms down and turned to see me walking across the field toward him, lifting my legs awkwardly through the thick knee-high grass. “Amara.” He jumped down from the bleached boulder and embraced me as if we’d not seen one another in years. “What brings you to this side of the island?”
“You went with Father on his last journey, did you not?”
The wind blew his ebony hair in his face. He pushed it behind his ears. “Yes, I did.”
“What happened?”
“Why? Has he asked you to accompany him this year?” He smiled knowingly.
“Unfortunately.” The wind whipped around us.
“It is not unfortunate. It is a privilege that we all get at least once.”
“All right then. What was that privilege like for you?” I stepped a bit closer to him to be sure I could hear his answer.
“I cannot give you details because we must all have our own journeys. I will only say that it gave me the contentment I was searching for.”
“You, content?” I scoffed.
“I’m more content than I ever was before.” He smiled and motioned to the cliffs behind him. “Here I can take in the silence and prepare for what might be possible ahead of me.”
I nudged his arm and smiled. “You sound like Herthe.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“I guess it is.”
I looked to the sky and saw the dark clouds of a storm that normally sat beyond the barrier islands moving closer. Sometimes a storm would come ashore. Father always made sure it wasn’t as strong as the others off the coast. It wasn’t meant to destroy our homes, but was needed every now and again to cleanse the island. “A storm is coming.”
Stellan looked behind him. “That’s why I’m out here.”
“We should head back to the cover of the huts. It won’t be long before it reaches us.”
Stellan turned to look at the sky, the cliffs, the way the land dropped down to the foamy sea like it had given up. “I’ll stay here just a little while longer.” He turned away from me and walked back to where the grass ended and the terrain became rocky. The dirt turned a rusty red like a warning sign then got lighter and lighter just before dropping off into the sea below.
I followed him back to the edge. The expanse of blue did not inspire me. Instead it reminded me of how trapped I was. It reminded me that I was unable to go beyond this small patch of land in the middle of the sea.
“Do you think you’d ever actually leave?” I asked him.
“And go where?”
We stood side by side on the cliff, our shoulders touching.
“I hear that out there we are powerful,” I said.
He turned and looked at me. “I’ve heard the same.”
“Why not go out there and experience that power and see the world beyond this place?”
“That’s not what is meant to be.”
“This place drains our true power from us. We are small here when out there in the mortal world we could be so big,” I said.
“We are as big or as powerful as we think, Amara. It doesn’t matter where we are.”
“Did you learn that from journeying?” I joked. I turned to look at his earnest profile against the deep blue sky.
“Funnily enough, I did.”
“You don’t feel trapped?” I had felt caged for as long as I could remember which was practically since the beginning of time.
Stellan thought for a moment. “If I was honest …”
“Honesty is all I ever want from you.”
“I do feel trapped. I think most of us do, but that feeling will pass.”
“I feel trapped every day. Every second. I think about it all the time.”
“Think about something else,” he said as if it were that easy. “The wind will bring with it change.” He looked at me again. “You wouldn’t happen to have any new visions to share, would you?”
My heart leaped with joy. I loved sharing my visions, but because of Father and Herthe’s displeasure I was trying to only share them when asked. “I had a vision last night.”
Stellan turned to me, his face tense with anticipation. “Go on.”
“I’m not sure what it means, but in my vision large grasshoppers the color of molten earth came in a swarm fr
om the west. They covered the island, all of the trees and small plants. If they landed on my skin it burned like fire causing boils to rise up on my flesh. We all took cover in the huts and listened to them, their wings flapping together in such a large number that they made a thunderous noise. They were on the island for many days and when they finally left we all stepped outside to find the island stripped bare. There was no living vegetation anywhere. The dark soil of the valley was the whitest sand.”
A crease formed between Stellan’s eyebrows as he thought a moment. “What does it mean?”
“I’m not sure. It could mean a number of things. It could mean that we are on the edge of a terrible change. It could mean that life as we know it may soon be destroyed. It could simply be a dream.”
“I wish I could dream like you do,” Stellan said longingly.
Besides Father I was the only one who dreamed. The others all merely gained rest when they slept. They did not awake with visions of another world. They saw nothing but darkness in those unconscious moments behind their lowered eyelids. My dreams made me special, but for some reason they also made Father dislike me. I knew that more fully than anything else. I would find out more about what he required of me once the journey got underway.
Chapter 4
The storm that Stellan mentioned did come. It soaked the island the night before our journey. Father woke me early, rapping on the wall of my hut before the sun rose. “Amara, it is time,” he called through my door.
I scrambled around in the darkness unsure of what I needed to do to prepare. Finally, frustrated and confused, I stepped out into the crisp morning air empty handed. Father stood in the midst of our circle of huts looking at the sky. I noticed that he too had no provisions. He turned and looked me over with his dark, sunken eyes.
“I didn’t know what to bring.” I raised my empty hands.
“You made a good choice. Nothing is required of you here. The island always provides.” He headed toward the eastern trail cutting through the woods.
I followed him into the trees. The dusty light of the sun had just begun to show itself. The earth was spongy from the downpour the night before. The water oozed from the moss with each step, seeping into my sandals and wetting my feet. I liked the squishing sound, but the cold water on my toes made me feel as if this journey might be less than pleasant.
Father did not speak at first. He walked at a pace that was slightly too fast for me, his long lanky form covering more ground in one step than what was possible for my shorter legs. He wore the muted green robes he always wore journeying. Unlike the elders who liked to show off their authority by wearing red, Father wore the same ordinary cream smocks that most of us wore. Seeing him in something else was strange, but this burst of colored fabric was a welcome distraction to my eyes. I watched the rough hem of his robe that stopped just a few inches below the knee as it swung loosely around his muscular calves.
Because he was the first, each of us—mortal and immortal—could think of him as our father. That was why he alone prayed for all of us. He alone communed with the spirits. From the beginning of time he knew everything while we had to learn as needed. He decided when that was necessary and when it was not.
We walked for hours without resting. Just when I was wondering if we would walk the entire way without stopping he stopped at the edge of a clearing.
“This is a good place to rest,” he said.
I nodded knowing that what I thought was inconsequential. We would stop here whether or not I thought it was a good place to rest. I did agree with him though. I thought we’d passed plenty of other good places to rest along the way, but for now this would do. “But what will we eat?”
He walked across the clearing and lifted a large rock. “Amara, I told you the island would provide.”
I walked over to see a mass of fat white grubs writhing in the dirt as if they already knew their fate. “When you said the island would provide, I was hoping for fruit.”
“I’m sure there is fruit too.” He motioned with his hand to the low scraggly bushes growing a few feet from where we stood. Plump indigo berries hung from their branches. “You cannot live only on fruit. You’ll need plenty of energy for the hike ahead. These grubs will provide that.”
We built a fire and Father roasted the grubs on a flat rock. They tasted much better than I thought they would but I didn’t like the way they popped in my mouth. Father seemed to think we had enough food, but the berries and grubs weren’t very filling. I found myself wondering what we would eat for our evening meal before we even finished lunch.
At this time of year the sun stayed low in the sky, so we could sit comfortably in its rays even though it was warm. We ate in near silence, neither of us having much to say until our meal was over. Father put the last bit of food in his mouth and gazed at me for a few unnerving moments before saying, “You want to get off this island, don’t you?”
I was startled by the question because I hadn’t told anyone that I had been toying with the idea of leaving. Santali had done it years before and I missed her. My focus had more to do with being with her again than actually leaving this place. We were close until she left one day without warning. I went to the council meeting and she wasn’t there. Then Father announced to all of us that she’d left. Before that moment I didn’t even realize leaving was possible. I’d heard rumors. We all had, but no one had done it before.
“Why do you say that?” I asked, my face growing flushed. I felt like I’d been caught in a terrible scheme.
“I too have thought of leaving in the past.”
My mouth fell open in shock. “But this is all your creation. Aren’t you happy?”
“We all feel angst at times. I don’t want to leave now, but in the past—when this was all just beginning—I wanted to leave too.”
I let the idea churn in my head. “What was it like?”
A smile crept across his face. “I didn’t leave, Amara.”
“But what about the stories the mortals tell?”
“How do you know about the stories they tell?”
Maybe I was saying something I shouldn’t have, but I felt like I had to confess. “Stellan found a book the mortals wrote about us one day on the beach.”
“The Book of Gods,” he said.
“Yes. Sometimes we get together in his hut and read it.” Stellan, Variel, and I would huddle together in the dim evening light after a meal and read from the book aloud. It was fascinating to read what the mortals had written about us. Some were stories I remembered happening and I wondered how they knew. Others were completely made up.
“What do you think of the book?”
“I don’t know what to think of it.” I shrugged. “Why didn’t you leave when you wanted to?”
“Leaving is not an option. It would break certain fundamental laws that we must follow. Instead of leaving I went journeying like this. Communing with the spirits can help bring everything into focus.”
“Is that why you brought me with you this time?”
He nodded. “I thought this journey could help you find balance.”
“What if it doesn’t? What if all I want is to have the option to be somewhere else?”
“That is not all you want.”
He seemed so sure that I started wondering if he was right.
“You think you will find something out in the world that you cannot find here. You must stop thinking like that because everything you could possibly desire is here already.”
I tilted my head at him. “But you yourself wanted to leave.”
“That was before I knew that leaving would get me nothing.”
“I want to have choices. I want change.”
He stood up and kicked dirt on the smoldering sticks that had once been our fire. A cloud of dust and smoke rose into the air. “The problems that you have are with the rules. The laws of the universe will not suddenly change because you’ve gone somewhere else. The laws are constant. Whether you are here or s
omewhere out there doesn’t matter.” He motioned with his arm toward the trees.
“Sometimes one needs to see that for oneself.” I paused for a few moments before asking the next question, the one I wondered about daily. “You look into the mortal world all of the time with the seerstone. What’s it like there? How do mortals live?”
Father looked down at the ground, his eyes blinking, and then back at me. “Why do you ask me such questions?”
“Where is Santali? Is she safe?”
He rubbed the back of his neck and looked away from me. “One of your problems is that you ask too many questions.”
“Isn’t that how we learn?”
“Normally yes, but you ask far too many.”
“Does that mean you don’t know how Santali is?” I wanted answers and this was my chance to get them.
“There are rules. There are consequences to breaking those rules. There always have been. When an element enters a part of the world in which it does not belong it bends reality and threatens to rip the very fabric of existence itself. The mortal world like ours is ruled by laws. When an object is dropped it must fall, but their laws are weaker than our own. The fabric that holds time and objects in place for them is woven with a thinner thread, a thread that beings as strong as we are could easily break. That is why we cannot enter their world unless invited by one of them. The barrier keeps them safe.”
“From us? But we do not wish to harm them.”
“Sometimes harm is accidental.”
His explanation brought up so many questions. “Does that mean that Santali is harming them?”
“She probably doesn’t realize it is happening, but since she has entered their world new life has been much more complicated to create. Immortality can frustrate creation. If she continues to wander around in their world they will eventually die off.”
I gasped. “That’s possible? You must do something to fix it.”
“We are strong but we are not all powerful. I am the oldest on this island, but not the oldest who has ever lived. There is always another to be subject to. That is the nature of the world.”
I pushed myself to my feet. I was tired of talking and was ready to continue the hike. “I’m learning every day.”
Isle of Gods II: Amara Page 2
