by Ron Glick
Because he lacked faith. Because he was not the true Avatar.
But the young man was. Or he would be, once Nathaniel Goodsmith drew breath no more. The young man had been the one destined to be the Avatar, not this Nathaniel Goodsmith. Malik had trained him for this purpose, imbued in him the skills that only a God could. Perhaps at one point in time, Nathaniel Goodsmith might have been the man to sculpt the young man's future, but Malik had intervened, sent the young man upon his true path.
Yes, Nathaniel Goodsmith might have been the young man's father by birth, but it was Malik who was his father in all other rights. And Geoffrey Goodsmith would slay the pretender in his true father's name, restoring the purpose to what it meant to be the Pantheon's Avatar.
Chapter 4
The last three weeks had been the most confusing of Alisia's short thirteen years. True, she did not have a wealth of life experiences to draw upon, but she was fairly certain that no one else alive had ever lived through what she just had.
It had all started... Well, that might not be entirely accurate, she chastised herself. How can something have started if it had not really happened yet? So how did one say something had already happened if it had not? Not yet, at least?
This confusion was only the smallest fraction of what Alisia was dealing with though. Being uncertain how to frame simple passage of time was so small compared to the concept that she was out of her natural time in the first place. And no matter how hard she tried, she could not seem to get back to where she started.
And that's really all she has really wanted at one time - what she still secretly wanted, even if it had proven impossible - to go back to when she had found this damnable sword and put it back in the hole. Maybe then the disaster her life had become - would become? - would not have happened.
Three weeks ago by her own passage of time - in twice that length of time in the future that had not yet come - Alisia had found the sword, the one that called itself Three.
Yes, called itself! The sword had actually told the girl its own name! The fact this was not the strangest of things to have happened to her in these last several weeks simply helped her put the whole affair into greater perspective. When a talking sword is not the strangest thing for you to encounter, something is definitely wrong with your life!
Alisia had come across the sword in her parents' pasture. One of the horses had nearly broken a leg when its foot had sunken into a hole, and it had been Alisia's job to fill it in. This kind of thing happened pretty routinely - wild animals were always digging holes, and water eroded away other areas. But the hollows could not be left or one her family's animal could cripple itself. So whenever a new hole was discovered, it would be Alisia's job to fill it.
It was not a complicated process. Alisia would retrieve some rocks from the nearby stream bed and fill the hole before covering it with sand from the stream bed. She did not even need to have her father oversee her work - she just did it without asking.
The only thing different about this particular labor was not even the work itself - it was the life surrounding it. Not three days prior, Alisia had lost her mother. It had been a senseless, random thing - she had not fallen ill, nor been struck by some traveling cart, nor even fallen off one of the mares she so loved to ride.
No, nothing like that. Alisia's mother had simply not woken up one day. The local hedge witch had said her brain had simply burst during the night, evidenced, had said the old woman, by the blood in the woman's eye. No sickness, no need to burn the body, she had said.
And yet, the simple matter-of-fact way in which the hedge witch had delivered the news had been worse than if Alisia had been forced to watch her mother dismembered right in front of her. This had been her mother, and the old woman had dismissed her death as easily as she might have discussed a visitor coming to stay for a time. There was no great turmoil, no tragedy - not for the old woman, at any rate. But for Alisia, it had been devastating.
Alisia's father was a stout man, and he only became more gruff with his wife's passing. He only shrugged at her death, then picked up the shovel to go out back to dig a grave. Alisia had seen no tears in the large man's eyes, nor even a single emotion. He could have been planting seeds in the back of their cabin for all the care he showed for what he was burying. And once the deed had been done, he simply went about his daily chores as though nothing had happened at all. The only comment the man had made before walking out to tend to the animals was that it was Alisia's job to fix the meals now.
That was it. No remorse, no comfort for his teen daughter. Just a simple, “You'll be fixing the meals from now on,” and then the man had walked out the door.
Three days later, Alisia had cried all the tears she could manage. She had tried all morning to summon more, but the well spring had dried up. All that had been left behind had been a numbness that consumed and devoured every other emotion in the young girl's heart. Her father could not be concerned with so terrible a loss, but Alisia had been overwhelmed by it - even moreso by her father's complete apathy about it.
There had simply never been enough time, and certainly no time to plan for her mother's abrupt passing. Alisia's father had transitioned without losing a step, but Alisia was fumbling. All her mind could imagine were the promises undelivered. The spring trip into Wellington for supplies where her mother would always come home with a new dress - and this year, Alisia was to have had one, as well. The new mare who would finally be old enough this summer to ride, and her mother's promise that Alisia would get to break the steed. All the crafts Alisia's mother did in the evenings that had always held the inherent promise of being passed to her daughter one day. All of it gone. All of that, and so much more.
On the day when she went to the field to fill the hole, this was all the girl's mind could imagine. She knew the steps, did not really have to think about what she did. She saw the horse stumble, discovered the soft spot in the ground where the horse's hoof had descended and mechanically went to the barn to collect the buckets. She had woodenly walked to the stream without a thought, sorted rocks into one bucket, shoveled sand into the other with her hands, then simply turned back to carry her load to where it needed to be.
Arriving at the softened turf, Alisia had knelt and pulled away the grass that still covered the hole. As she peeled away the covering, she thought briefly that it had the appearance of an old fox's den - it was certainly large enough. But it had been covered over long ago, so there would not be anything within the crevice now.
Still, the thought of possibly burying something living gave her pause. Even in her disheartened state, she cared about things like that. And so she had bent low to look into the hole - and seen something long and black shine back at her.
At first, the girl had jerked back, thinking she had discovered some snake's lair. But when nothing moved in the hole, she looked again. The black, shiny surface had not been a snake's hide after all - it had been a smoothly polished piece of leather. And the leather was shaped like...
A sword! Even now, Alisia remembered the thrill of seeing an actual weapon of war. These only existed in faery tales for the girl. She was a rancher's daughter - she had never seen an actual sword in her life. Only in the picture books. Only in the illustrations that told of legends she did not possess the knowledge to actually read about. But a picture of a sword was all she needed to recognize this for what it was, and the thrill of finding such a thing in her own field was exhilarating.
For the briefest moment as she reached into the hollow to pull the long object free, she forgot her grief. She forgot that her mother was gone, but thoughts of sharing her new-found treasure with her mother brought the pain back in an onslaught.
If only I had found this a few days ago, the girl had thought. If only Mother had more time with us so she could have seen. If only I could show this to her.
Touching the sword's hilt had sent a jolt through the girl's arm, a fire of electricity as it seemed to reach into her very soul. Without unders
tanding why, she drew the steel from its casing. Thoughts of lost time filled her mind while electricity filled her body, but she could not release her hold upon the sword's hilt.
And in a moment, Alisia had no longer been where she was. Oh, she was still in the field, kneeling where the hole had been - but the hole was no longer visible, and it was now night. Daylight had fled, leaving her alone in the field. Of course, at the time she had not known she was not where she had been. She thought she had somehow lost track of time, not that she had moved in any way. She was, after all, in the same physical place she had been before.
Panic had filled the teen's heart, believing she had somehow lost the day. Her father would be upset with her - how could he not be? She had not been home to fix the evening meal.
With the cool of the night on her skin, she had picked up her new prize and rushed home. She looked about for the horses, thinking that if she had passed out in the field, no one would have been there to corral the horses into their stalls. But the field was empty, their animals gone. Had her father corralled the horses but left her undiscovered in the tall grass?
As Alisia had approached the cabin, light had streamed from the uncovered window, showing her the interior readily enough. But her race to the door came to an abrupt halt along with her heart. For moving about the front room of the cabin was...
Mother!
Alisia's mother moved about, carrying something further into the room, her back to the window. Possibly she was retrieving the cooking kettle from the fireplace, but Alisia could not tell with the woman's back to her. It did not matter - none of it did. Her mother was alive - and all Alisia had to do was run through the door to hold her mater once more.
But the girl only took a single step before stopping again - for another figure had stepped into the light, coming up behind her mother. Someone shorter than the older woman. Shorter even than Alisia herself. Yet the girl recognized the other child in an instant.
Alisia was looking at herself. She was looking at herself as she had looked years ago. The girl was actually looking at her younger self. A younger self moving about with the energy of youth around a mother who had not yet abandoned her daughter.
Hot tears fell down Alisia's face as she felt her knees strike the ground. And then she was no longer staring at the lit window - she was looking on the exterior of her home in the light of day.
Some inner sense, something Alisia could not specifically identify, told her she had moved. Not across any distance, but across time. She knew instinctively that she had returned to the time she had left behind, that her former trip to the past was just that - a movement across time itself.
The dullness in the girl's heart returned, but it felt different now. It was not the absence of emotion from grief now - it was the uncertainty of precisely how to feel. No emotion seemed appropriate for what had just happened. Disbelief mixed with utter confusion, neither emotion able to gain purchase upon her.
Numbly, Alisia looked down at the sword in her hand. Her right hand gripped the hilt of the sword while her left held tightly to the sheath. Her hand shook as she willed it to open, seeing for the first time the three raised white pips stretching in a diagonal line against a small black square inset into the hilt.
Three.
The word came unbidden to her mind, and the girl knew this for what it was. It was the sword's name. The sword had just told her it had a name, and its name was Three. No thoughts of why it would have such a name crossed her mind, only the incomprehension of why a sword even needed a name.
The next few days had been a whirlwind. Alisia instinctively knew the sword had been responsible for her journey across time, for the chance to see her mother again. It had been a miraculous gift, and the thoughts of it filled her with exhilaration.
For days, that was all the girl did - used the sword to move back and forth across time, to catch glimpses of her mother. She hid herself away, where her father could not find her and used the sword. She saw her mother in times before she was born and at various points along the path of her own young life. It was glorious, seeing her mother live again. And it consumed the girl absolutely.
Alisia did not eat. She did not sleep. She just went back and forth - letting the sword keep her in the past for as long as it could, before the sword instinctively returned her to her own time. There were times when she saw no one at all around their homestead, and times when she saw only herself or her father. But the times she saw her mother were the real treasure.
It all came to an end when her father found the girl. Not her father in the present - her father of the past. To the man of that time - a point where Alisia was barely a toddler - the girl from across time had only been an intruder upon their family land, one holding a weapon. Her father had come at her wielding a large hammer, one he used for driving fenceposts, demanding to know who she was and why she had come there. He surely perceived the stranger with the drawn sword as a threat.
In hindsight, the girl realized she could have explained, told her father about who she was and why she had come into her own past. But fear had gripped her and Three had released its hold on the past, returning her to the present.
Her heart racing, Alisia had fallen upon the straw of the barn where she hid. She gasped for breath, her own weakened body finally surrendering to the fatigue of the last several days.
When she had woken, the girl had been in her own bed, the sword gone from her hand. Panic filled her, desperation to have back the focal point of her obsession. She had risen, pushing aside her bedding and searching about the room with her eyes desperately. Her legs shook and her eyes burned, but all she could think of was getting her hands upon the sword - to go back. To go back again.
Her father had entered then, Three held in his over-sized fist. A cold anger burned in the man's eyes as he looked upon his daughter. He only stared as the girl's strength failed her and she collapsed upon the floor.
“You think I would not recognize the sword? That it would not make sense when I saw the two of you together?”
Alisia had only been able to stare in disbelief, her eyes darting between the towering figure of her father and the sword that even now called to her. Three wanted her, needed her as she needed it. How else could she ever see her mother again without it?
“You play with witchcraft, girl,” had growled the large man. “Devilry! I don't pretend to know such things, but I know what I saw. I saw you - as you are now - and I saw this... thing!” The man's hand had gripped harder upon the leather of the scabbard. “You are no daughter of mine! I'll not have a demon under my roof!”
Alisia would never be able to explain where her sudden burst of strength had come from, but without a thought, she had found herself on her feet, shoving her father back and away. The large man had been stunned by his daughter's ferocity, letting go of the sword as he tried to grab hold of something more secure in his fall.
And that was all the girl had needed. Her hand found the hilt, and in an instant, she had drawn the blade and found herself in a time as far away as she could imagine. She found herself upon an open field, and she somehow knew she had gone so far into the past this time that even her home did not yet exist. She was further in the past than she had ever gone - all because she had wanted to be as far away from the threat that her father had posed as possible.
And with that recognition, the girl had known there was no home to return to. Her father considered her a witch of some kind, had been all but ready to smash in her head with her own sword. There was no going home - and she could no longer dwell here, either.
First Alisia had lost her mother. And now she had just as surely lost her father, as well.
There had been only one solution in the young girl's mind - she had to return the sword to the ground, find a way back to the time when she had first found the sword and make certain her younger self had left it where it lay. If her younger self had buried the sword instead of pulling it free, at least she could still have her life with h
er father. She would lose the chance to see her mother again, but perhaps that was better in the end if the cost was her father, as well.
From that point, all Alisia wished for was to return to the time when she had found the sword. It consumed her as much as had the desire to see her mother. She walked to where she had found the sword and made many attempts to find her way back to that day. By now, there was some kind of instinct she had developed. She could sense how far from her own natural time she was - she could even control how far she went if she concentrated. But somehow, there were points where she could not move to. And no matter how she tried, Alisia could not move to the point in time after she had discovered Three.
Frustration gave way to anger, and anger to rage as the girl thrust herself into attempt after attempt. But no amount of trial and error could overcome this obstacle. In the end, her young mind came to accept the truth of it: she could not travel where she and the sword had already been. And in accepting this limitation, the young woman gave into the inevitable.
Alisia was now alone in the world. Alone, with only Three as her companion.
Some five days had been lost in Alisia's earliest pursuits. In her young mind, loss of her family filled the girl with a desire to be away from any people, and so she had set out into the forests which lined her family's land. She saw herself becoming a hermit, or perhaps a wandering wild-woman. But hunger quickly quelled her juvenile dreaming and she quickly abandoned thoughts of being alone for longing to find people - if for no other reason than for food.
Somehow, Alisia knew that the sword was sustaining her, even without food. The girl did not begin to comprehend it, but she knew on some subliminal level that Three would keep her strong, that no matter how much her stomach might ache from being empty, she would not starve. It kept her sustained for the next two weeks, her body somehow feeding itself off the power of the sword and the measly amounts of berries and fruits she could find in her journey. Had it been closer to winter, she might not have even had that. Spring was not the bountiful season for fruits, but at least it did not leave the countryside entirely barren.
