Isle of Gods II: Amara

by H. Lovelyn Bettison

  She nodded shyly and then looked at the floor.

  “Twee has brought light and life to this island. Her laughter fills the air. Her sweet spirit has touched the hearts of many. From the moment I first saw her I knew she would be our salvation. She is the bridge that will usher in the new age. She is the vehicle through which the vessel of light will pass.” He raised his arms high in the air as if welcoming new light into the world himself and the crowd cheered.

  We had all been waiting for a change. Even though we still weren’t sure what that change might be our hearts leaped with joy. I was especially eager to see a different future, but I knew by looking at Twee’s drawn face that she was not excited. She was afraid.

  “I have counseled with the Elders.” Father nodded toward the elders dressed in red. “We have prayed and fasted and all have come to the same conclusion. Twee, the gift to this island, will carry the vessel of light until it is time.”

  “How long will that be?” someone yelled from the crowd.

  “A mortal woman carries a child in her womb for nine months. This is but a small time and I estimate will be the amount of time needed for the vessel of light to properly germinate.”

  Father had occasionally told us about the vessel of light in the evenings when we all gathered around the fire after eating. A vessel of light was needed in every world to open the eyes of the mortals and shield the immortals. It is a light that would unite every soul with a common purpose. Until that moment I always thought of the vessel of light as an object, possibly another seerstone like the one Father used to watch over the mortals, but knowing that Twee must carry it in her womb caused me to wonder if the vessel were a living soul, possibly a hybrid both immortal and mortal at once, but how could that ever be possible?

  Variel sat in front of me, her small head moving up and down. Though usually quite quiet she spoke out. “But won’t the vessel of light kill Twee? She is after all mortal.”

  Father put his arm around Twee’s shoulder and pulled her into him. “She has been informed of the risks. If there were any other way I would take it. Twee has affected my heart maybe more than any one ever has. I do not wish to risk her life. I do not want any harm to come to her, but this is the only way. If it is meant to be she will survive. If not, we will remember her always for her sacrifice. In the future her name will be added to the Book of Gods.”

  A woman sitting next to Variel starting clapping slowly and the applause spread throughout the room. Some cheered. I kept my eyes on Twee who raised her head to the thunderous applause, her face solemn as a mortal who knew she might soon meet death.

  Chapter 10

  I wanted to talk to her alone, but as soon as Father brought the meeting to a close a throng of souls surrounded her thanking her for her sacrifice. I watched patiently from a distance as she nodded and accepted the gratitude of the others. Hugs and congratulations filled the space, but Twee avoided making eye contact. I stood on my toes trying to see her. When she finally looked at me I motioned to the door of the hut hoping that she would know to follow me out.

  It wasn’t long before she emerged. Two elders joined her, their arms linked in hers on either side. Their faces exploding with delight, they spoke quickly despite Twee’s dour expression.

  “Pardon me,” I said to the the short, pucker-faced elder on Twee’s left, “but I need to talk to Twee alone.”

  She eyed me suspiciously. “We must ready her for her duties,” she said.

  “Her duties begin now?” I asked.

  The other on Twee’s right shook her head. “No, but we would like to discuss with her what to expect. It will only take a short time.”

  I was not in a position to contradict the elders so I only nodded my head and told Twee that I would talk to her when she was finished. Then I watched them disappear into a hut.

  Father and Herthe came out of the meeting hut a short time later. I joined them, walking across the clearing.

  “It wasn’t long ago that you worked so hard to save Twee’s life and now you are so willing to put it in danger? It doesn’t make sense to me. She brings both of you such joy,” I said, sidling up to Herthe.

  “That she does,” Father agreed. “I do not know for sure that I am putting her in danger. This has not been tried before in this world, so we do not know the outcome.”

  “But it has been tried somewhere else?” I asked.

  Father nodded.

  “But isn’t this world all there is? Where else could it have been tried?” I asked.

  Herthe laughed. “Have you not realized yet that we are not the only ones? You’ve gone on the journeying. You’ve witnessed the communion and you do not know what each of us learn.”

  Father put his arm around Herthe’s back. “Don’t be hard on her. She slumbered during the communion.”

  “What?” The skin between Herthe’s eyebrows drew together creating a series of quizzical lines. “You consider yourself so much higher than the rest of us. You talk of visions and want to pretend that you are equal to Eilim and you fell asleep during the communion? You had the opportunity to have the mysteries of this place opened to you and you decided to catch up on your rest?” The contempt in her voice was like a slap across the face.

  “I know that in the communion Father talks to spirits, but I did not know that those spirits reside in other worlds like our own,” I said. I looked to Father for more of an explanation.

  “The communion is my time to commune with immortals from other worlds. We counsel. We compare notes. We learn from each others’ experiences. Then we commune with the spirit that created us all.”

  We’d all stopped walking and stood in a small circle in the midst of the clearing.

  “If you had stayed awake,” Herthe said, “you would’ve witnessed that communion and seen that we are not alone in this universe. There are many like us. Our world may differ slightly because when dealing with souls there is always variation, but there are far more similarities than differences.”

  “But I thought we were special. When I look at the stars in the sky we seem so alone in the universe. How could the other glowing objects around us sustain life?”

  “You ask this question, Amara, as if you have not yet learned that all things are possible,” Father said.

  “I guess I have not.”

  “That is a pity,” Father said.

  Herthe smirked. “You think you know so much and your visions have not even shown you the basics.” She grabbed hold of Eilim’s hand and they walked off leaving me to stand there and consider all I still did not know.

  Later that evening I found Twee in her hut, a line of clean white seashells laid out in a row before her.

  “What are the shells for?” I asked.

  “I just like them,” she said.

  “Variel collects shells too.” I sat down next to her without being invited to do so.

  “I know. Sometimes we collect them together.” She laid a piece of cloth out next to her and stacked the shells on it, then gathered up the corners of the fabric to contain them.

  “What you’ve agreed to do is very brave.” I watched her place the shells on a shelf.

  “Is it?”

  “Yes, sacrificing yourself for the rest of us. I don’t know if I could do such a thing.”

  Twee sighed. “You act as if I have a choice.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “How could I? If I do not agree I am sacrificing the good of every soul that lives for my own life. How selfish and short-sighted would that be? Eilim says that the new age will make everyone’s lives better. You will no longer be forced to stay on the island and everyone else will be able to know eternal life like all of you. Eilim told me all wars will end and people will no longer hurt each other. How could I say no to all of that? Even though I don’t live with my family I want them to have a better life. I want us all to have better lives. Maybe if this pregnancy goes badly the new age will be able to bring me back to life. That might be wishful thinking,
but I’m willing to put my faith in that.” She looked at me. “What would you do, Amara?”

  “I guess I would do what you are doing.”

  “It is not brave. It is necessary. I wish it were not because I am afraid of what might happen to me. I get chills every time I think about it. They only asked me a day ago and when I say ask I use that loosely because really what they did is tell me. They said, ‘Twee, you will save all of humanity. It will be hard, but you can do it.’ I still was not even sure what that might entail. I only knew that if mortals were all in danger that meant that my family, if they are still alive, was in danger too. If I could do something to save them, to prevent them from experiencing any more pain than they have already, I should do that, right?”

  I nodded. “You should do what you feel is most right.”

  “If I could I would leave this place. I would find my family and go back to living a normal life. Instead I will need to carry the vessel of light. Amara, what is a vessel of light? I’m still unsure.”

  “I do not know.”

  “I thought I was the only one.”

  “I think only Herthe and Father really know.”

  “And they aren’t exactly forthcoming.” She laughed. “They never have been.” She looked down at the ground for a moment then back up at me. “Even Eilim doesn’t know if I will live.”

  “I know.”

  “I figure I’ve narrowly escaped death once before, maybe I can do it again.” She smiled, deep dimples forming in her soft fleshy cheeks.

  “You probably will.”

  “Herthe said that being on this island so long may have made me immortal like the rest of you. I don’t believe her though because why do I continue to age?”

  I found myself hoping that Twee was immortal too, but she was right. The likelihood that she was indeed still mortal was high. She had grown up and developed from childhood to womanhood here. If she were immortal she would remain ageless like all of us who have maintained the same form since we were created. “Father loves you. He would not ask you to do this if it wasn’t necessary.”

  “That’s what he tells me,” Twee said.

  “Do you believe him?”

  She looked off into the distance as if replaying scenes from her life before finally answering. “Yes.”

  Chapter 11

  Herthe wasted no time preparing for the ceremony, which was set to take place when the moon hung full and round in the night sky. She busied us gathering herbs and weaving grasses into long ropes. As the evening of the ceremony approached Twee seemed less and less herself. She’d started talking to me regularly, asking me what I thought about the new age and the vessel they were about to have placed inside of her. Angry one day, I snapped at her. “It doesn’t matter what I think,” I said. “What do you think?”

  “Variel told me that you have visions. When you found me did you already know it would happen like this?” We stood in the woods for she had pulled me into the trees to talk in secret.

  “I knew that everything would change, but I knew not how.”

  Her eyes brightened as if I’d revealed a key secret to her. “You had a vision about me.”

  “I had a vision about a fish. That fish may or may not have been you. Do you feel like a fish?” I laughed at my own question.

  Twee shook her head. “No. But I feel like I’ve lost control. I feel slippery and like I should swim away before it is too late for me. You know that feeling don’t you? What were you doing so far out in the water the other day?”

  “Thinking,” I said.

  “Thinking or planning?” She smiled. “Or maybe a little bit of both?”

  “Are we finished here?” I started walking away.

  “You’re planning on leaving. I know it. Take me with you.”

  I turned around. “I can’t do that. Soon you will be carrying the vessel. You must stay here.”

  “Do you really think I have to? Shouldn’t it work no matter where it is?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t like it here. I think about leaving all the time now,” she said.

  “But Father and Herthe love you so much. They treat you like gold. Why wouldn’t you like it here?”

  “I still long to be with my own kind. It is lonely here. There is no future for me. No mortal future.”

  I turned. I had never thought of Twee’s life in this way. I’d never considered that she would miss the life of a mortal. That she would long to be in the land of rotting flesh where each passing second meant spent life that could never be reclaimed. Mortals had to live their fullest life because it didn’t last. Nothing there lasted. “But don’t you want to be like us?”

  She shook her head.

  “Don’t all mortals want to be like us?”

  “Some do,” Twee said. “But some are angry at you for everything that has gone wrong in the world and in their lives.”

  “I have no control over that.”

  “But that isn’t what we are taught.”

  I nodded.

  “Some have it all wrong and think there are many more of you or many less. Some don’t believe you exist at all.”

  “Of course we exist,” I said.

  “If we never see you how are we to know? No one has visions anymore.”

  “No one?” I asked. “I thought Father used the seerstone to communicate with the mortals every day.”

  “I don’t know what Eilim does with that stone, but I do know that when I was still in the mortal world people used to talk about how the gods had gone strangely silent. There was a time when there were visionaries who shared the words of the gods all of the time. My parents told me that we used to get instructions from the gods that were clear and concise. Life was easier when they didn’t have to depend on interpretations of the Book of Gods to know what they should do. The visions stopped before I was born.”

  “Why did they stop?” I asked.

  “How am I to know?” Twee said. “I should be asking you that.”

  I looked skyward to think. The leaves danced in the treetops. Songbirds flitted from one branch to the next. I was sure that everyone thought Father was still communicating with the mortals. There was no reason for him not to. I wondered if Herthe knew what had been happening. “I don’t know.” I looked at Twee again. “Even without the visions is life so much better there than here that you would want to go back?”

  “I don’t know. I was so young when I came here that it feels like a lifetime ago, but I know that out there people get ill, they die, people fight terrible battles. We are taught that life is precious, but then no one acts like it really is at all. I remember being scared sometimes, being really scared.”

  “But you would go back to that?” I asked.

  “In order to be truly alive? Yes, but you know that already. I see the way you look longing out at the sea. You want to see what is beyond this island too. You want to live. You want choices.”

  She was right. I wanted all of that and I was at the point of beginning to see that it was all possible for me. I was starting to put together the plan that got me on that boat headed away from this island for good.

  I wasn’t invited to the ceremony. That was Herthe’s doing. Neither was I to attend the celebration afterward. That was my doing. I lay in my hut alone during the ceremony as the elder women took over the meeting hut. I watched the ceiling and listened to the wind. Hours passed before the noises of celebration started in the center of camp. The bonfire crackled and popped. The gods sang and danced, their joyous voices thundering through the clay walls of my hut. When the noise became more than I could stand I retreated to the beach. Passing the jumping bodies gyrating in jubilation, I followed the dark path through the trees down to the beach. I lay in the sand looking at the stars, pinpricks in the dark sky. The wheels were officially in motion. Soon everything in this whole world would change.

  I woke up cold. The sun rose out of the distant water.

  “You didn’t join
the celebration.” Variel stood over me, her thin arms wrapped in a green woven blanket.

  “I wasn’t invited.”

  “We were all invited.”

  Oranges and golds streaked the morning sky then faded as the sun made its climb higher and higher. “The vision you told me about is finally happening.”

  “I guess it is,” I said.

  “What will you do when it is all over?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Haven’t you been planning this for decades?”

  I sat up and wiped the sand from my arms and face. “No. I don’t plan. I live. I just want to live.”

  “Herthe would like to see you.”

  “Of course.” I stood up and raised my arms over my head in a stretch. “Did she say why?”

  Variel shook her head. “She just asked me to find you.”

  Herthe sat on a straw mat in the meeting hut using the sharp edge of a stone to sharpen the ends of straight sticks. When I entered she looked up at me briefly before returning her gaze to her work. “Good, you’re here,” she said.

  “Variel told me that you wanted to see me.”

  “That is correct,” she said. Large splinters of wood flew out in front of her, covering the smooth floor.

  I looked at the scattering of white wood on the dark floor and asked, “Don’t you normally do this outside?”

  She stopped her work and looked up at me, her face tense. “I needed to talk to you in private, but still I would like to finish this.” She tested the sharpness of the stick in her hand with her finger. “You don’t approve of what is happening with Twee.”