Ari had been contemplative and uncharacteristically quiet the entire time walking back to their cabin. He lay down on the floor and used an extra towel for a pillow. “No, of that I’m certain, but I can’t prove it to you. It’s a gut thing.”
Kelsey grunted. Her brother was so damned stubborn.
Chapter 17
The Emperor in Xanadu gazed out across the valley towards the monastery in the distance. The golden stupa glowed brightly as the rays of the setting sun hit it. He could just make out the monks on the front pavilion readying for their evening prayers. He glanced up when he heard the familiar flapping of wings. A herd of fedelias soared past, flying across the blue and green ribbons which stretched across the sky this particular evening. The animals were returning to the fields in the far northwestern corner of the kingdom where they’d lay their heads for the night.
The Emperor glanced down and to his right and addressed the monk standing beside him. “Abbott, what about my request? You haven’t answered me yet.”
The Abbott bowed his head low. “Your holiness, I’m not sure we can do what you ask. We told her that we would not interfere with her dreams any longer. We made a promise to her and we can’t break it.”
The Emperor pursed his lips. “I know of your promise, for I told you to make it myself, remember? But there is no other choice. She is, yet again, at a precipice on her path and if we don’t teach her, other lives will hang in the balance this time. Not just her own.”
The Abbott creased his brow. “Perhaps it is the journey of these others in this continuum to be at risk and we should not intervene with their fate.”
The Emperor turned his steely gaze to the monk and the Abbott shrank back. “Abbott, it is not for you to determine anyone’s journey--in any lifetime. Kelsey’s path or the paths of others. You are a servant of the Buddha and that is your role in this lifetime. Don’t forget that.”
“Of course, Emperor. I will do as you bid, but I don’t understand.”
The Emperor considered his next words. “Abbott, because Kelsey survived in this lifetime, we were able to groom her for the day she would finally fight against her spiritual father in order to save Xanadu. We have been waiting for this particular continuum for centuries. Yes, she was used by us and taught by us and influenced by us in this lifetime, but she was also saved. By you, by me, by everyone that she met on her journey in this lifetime or she would have been dead at the hands of Raul Salazar and his men long ago. Her life would have ended at the age of ten in the mountains of Tibet, lying cradled in the arms of her dead mother. So yes, we intervened in a sense, and as a result, she survived. We need to continue to allow her path to develop and reach its full potential. Her skills and powers are great, yet she has no idea of how strong she really is and what she can still accomplish. She hasn’t even reached her full capabilities. It is our job to help her develop her skills further in this continuum and not waste them over a simple promise.”
“Will you tell her of her powers?”
The Emperor shook his head. “We can influence, but not directly intervene. There is a subtle difference and one where we walk a fine line.”
The Abbott still appeared troubled and the Emperor turned to him. “Look at me, Abbott Dapka Bakula of Abora.”
The Abbott glanced up at him and trembled.
“You have no need to be frightened or worried. This path is dictated and we are simply allowing it to weave its own journey. We must act now, though. There is simply no more time to wait for Kelsey to be reborn to try this effort again. If we do not end this now, this persistent cycle of devastation will continue into the next millennium and then it will be too late to fix it. All worlds will forever be changed if we don’t act now in this continuum.”
The Abbott seemed bewildered. The Emperor seldom spoke so bluntly to him. “Great one, I don’t understand.”
The Emperor’s expression softened. “You don’t need to. Just trust in me that your path in this lifetime is to aide Kelsey in becoming as powerful as she can be, no matter the consequences or promises made. There are evil forces at work within the thirty-three planes of existence, and if we do not do something soon, if we don’t act, the fragile ties between all the realms will forever break down. Even as we speak, there are fissures in the barriers between the dimensions. The portals are already compromised. Creatures pass through them that should never have been allowed. This cannot continue. The open paths between the realms must be closed.”
As soon as he ceased speaking, a child suddenly materialized at his feet, out of thin air. A little girl of no more than three, with pigtails and pink bows and a matching pink top and shorts with strawberry designs on them. She sat on the ground, seemingly stunned, and then started to cry. The Emperor swooped her up in his enormous arms and cradled her.
“We must close the portals now, Abbott, or the atrocities will continue to happen. Like this one here. She should never have come to Xanadu so soon. She should have still been playing in her grandmother’s backyard and instead she was used as a pawn in a war that only Kelsey can fight.” He gently rocked the child and she calmed quickly.
The Abbott stared at the toddler and shuddered. “Can’t you close the portals, Sire?”
The Emperor shook his head. “I can only guide and protect, like we will now do for this wee one here until she moves on. I cannot intervene. You know this. I am not of the physical world any longer. I am a servant and only exist in Xanadu. That is where I have chosen for my soul to reside. This is my path and my burden. This child is another of the victims of this continuum. A continuum that is intersecting with Kelsey’s timeline. All of their timelines. We must put an end to it, now.”
The Abbott watched the child fall asleep in the Emperor’s arms. “What is it you wish me to do?”
“I need you to teach Kelsey to read the language of Aihika. And quickly.” With a flourish of his hand, the Abbott disappeared, returned to the Bodhidharma Monastery, back in the Human Earth Realm of Tibet.
The Emperor rocked the toddler for a bit longer and then heard a familiar grunt. He turned towards the woods. The male Yeti with the scarred face and mutilated torso stood there, watching him.
The Emperor nodded to the creature. “We will care for her until she passes and moves on. She will be safe here.”
The Yeti didn’t move.
The Emperor knew what the creature waited for. “When this war ends, I will deliver on my promise. You keep your end of the bargain, and I’ll keep mine.”
With that, the Emperor and the sleeping child mounted the Emperor’s fedelia and he readied himself to make his way across the skies back to the temple in Xanadu. Before he took off, he noticed a serpent slithering at the feet of the Yeti. The creature raised its head and neck until it stood nearly the height of his companion. There was a shimmer in the air and the serpent transformed into another Yeti. This one was white and female. She was injured as well. The female took the hand of her mate, and after making a high-pitched whistle in three parts, they vanished.
With that, the Emperor took to the sky and made his way back to the temple at the center of Xanadu.
Chapter 18
Kelsey woke up with a gasp and shot out of bed. She tumbled to the ground on top of her brother, who had been fast asleep on the area rug. She scrambled to the table lamp and flicked it on, then rummaged frantically in her bag. Her heart hammered.
Ari opened his eyes and groggily raised himself up on one elbow. “What the hell's got into you?”
Kelsey didn’t answer at first, throwing her clothing out of the backpack and onto the floor. “Ugh, where is it?” She turned her entire knapsack upside down and dumped out her toiletries. “Where is the photo I took from Sitaula’s cabin? The one of the guy with the Voynich code messages scribbled all over it?” Her gaze darted around the cabin and finally settled on the small table that stood in the corner. The picture rested there.
She leapt over, grabbed it and then sat back down on the edge of the bed.
She poured over it greedily. Ari crawled over and slid up next to her to take a look.
“Kelsey, you’re trembling. What is it?”
She turned to him and blinked back tears. “This man is Desmond, Ari. Look.”
Ari peered at the drawing and then his eyes widened in recognition.
“The brown hair, the blue-green tint to his eyes. His height. I know it’s him. But that’s not all. I can read these symbols on the page now. I can read all of the letters, too. They’re part of an alphabet.” She leaned over and grabbed a piece of paper and a pen from her knapsack and began writing frantically.
He appeared unconvinced. “You can suddenly, out of the blue, read a series of text that has so far stumped the best code breakers and linguists from all over the world? In one night? How?”
“I had a dream last night that I was with the monks in Tibet and they were teaching me the language of Tedanalee. But what they were really teaching me was this!” She made a long line of the English Alphabet and matched the symbols from the Voynich Manuscript to the letters so she could decipher it phonetically. “Some of these don’t have matches,” she mused. “Wait a second, that’s not it. This is strange. Are these symbols actually backwards?”
Ari studied them and then cocked his head. “They’re not just backwards, but some of them are reversed as well. It could be the same symbol if you switch it around. Try that.”
Kelsey made the adjustments.
“I thought the monks promised you that they wouldn't intrude on your life any longer?” Ari said. “Are you sure it was them? Maybe you just had a dream.”
“I guess we’ll find out in a second, won’t we? If it translates to gibberish, we’ll know. If it doesn’t, well, I’m going to be pissed, because they obviously know exactly what is going on and have refused to tell me until the last minute. Just like always.” Kelsey turned back to the picture and painstakingly assigned codes and letters the monks had taught her to the sentences written both above and under the image of Desmond. Word for word, like a child’s game, she phonetically spelled it out until she made two complete sentences in the language of Xanadu. The language of Aihika.
Kelsey turned to Ari, her eyes wide.
Ari could do nothing but stare back as well, his mouth ajar.
The translation above Desmond said, “Beware of the Asuras.”
The translation below said, “Come now, Kelsey, or we will all die.”
Desmond…
Chapter 19
Early the next morning Kelsey and Ari hiked into town for a free buffet breakfast being held in Charlie’s honor at the local diner. He’d eaten his breakfast there every morning for the past ten years. The owners considered him their honorary grandfather and were so heartbroken by his violent death that they hosted the meal for the entire town in his memory.
By seven in the morning, the restaurant was already crowded. There was an undertow of fear prevalent as everyone was keenly aware that they had not yet caught the killer. Kelsey could hear people contemplating whether anyone in the town was capable of doing this and if they were possibly in the restaurant among them, right now.
While Kelsey and Ari searched for a table, Flora sidled right up to them. Today she had her hair pinned into two braids and wore a long buckskin jacket. “The two of you are still here?” she asked in her high-pitched whine. “I would have thought you’d have been long gone by now after what nearly happened to you yesterday. Guess you don’t frighten easily, or are you both just too stupid to know better? You could be dead just as much as our dear Charlie.” She swiped at her eyes with a lace handkerchief.
Kelsey bit her lip. “Maybe we’re a little of both. We couldn’t just leave with his killer not being caught. We have to help if we can. But more importantly, what are you doing out of bed? Rajiv Sitaula told us you fell and hurt your leg and he’d been tending to you yesterday.”
Flora raised one crooked eyebrow and looked at her askance. “Fell? I did no such thing. Don’t you go thinking I’m so old I can’t walk on my own two feet, young lady. As for Mr. Sitaula, I haven’t seen him since that morning you left with him to search for Bobby.”
Ari gave Kelsey a smug, “I told you so” look.
Kelsey turned to Flora. “Are you telling me he wasn’t with you last night?”
Flora’s eyes widened. “With me?” She waggled her finger in Kelsey’s face, nearly touching the tip of her nose. “Now you listen here, Missy. Don’t you go spreading rumors when there’s no rumors to be spreading. I don’t care how old I am, a lady needs respect. I can’t have people saying lewd things about me and that sweetheart of a man. He’s a good person and I will not besmirch either of our good names because of hearsay and gossip!”
Ari squeezed Kelsey’s elbow. “Come on, we need to get out of here right now and find him.”
They made a beeline back to the temple, but Sitaula was nowhere to be found. They tried his cabin and he wasn’t there. Ari heaved his weight against the front door. The weak lock broke easily and they went inside.
Ari fumed and paced the room. “I told you, Kelsey. The man is dirty and now he’s fled.” He began to ransack the cabin, moving the furniture and throwing the bedsheets on the floor.
“What are you doing? Will you calm down?” Kelsey asked.
“Calm down? I’m doing what we should have done in the beginning. I told you he’s hiding something.” He flipped over the bed, not caring that Sitaula would find his cabin in disarray. Under the cot lay the suitcase. He pushed it aside and then pulled away the area rug that lay beneath it. There was the outline of a trapdoor in the wooden planks below. Ari gave Kelsey a snotty look, his expression brimming with condescension. “What did I tell you?”
He unhooked the latch and hoisted it up. It revealed a cubbyhole, three feet by three feet. Ari let out a loud breath. “You still think he’s an innocent, gentle monk who just got a bad rap?”
The bin nearly overflowed with articles of clothing. Ari bent down and held them up, one by one. Children’s t-shirts, babies’ blankets. Trousers. A clean cloth diaper. Kelsey leaned down next to him and held up a pair of pink sneakers with yellow laces. She tapped against the soles and the red lights on the side lit up. Her anger boiled as she recalled the missing person flier from the Juneau airport about little Evie Thornton. The three year-old who’d disappeared outside her grandma’s mobile home. She’d been wearing pink clothes with strawberry designs and a pair of pink sneakers with yellow laces and lights when she disappeared. Just like these.
Sitaula, you bastard, what did you do with her?
Ari sucked in his breath. He reached down and rummaged in the bottom of the bin. He removed a small object and held it in his hand. His chest heaved and Kelsey could see him pale quickly under his heavy tan.
“What is it?”
He held out his shaking palm and his face registered stunned disbelief. “I always knew he was responsible, but I thought maybe I’d been wrong. I mean, even after everything I believed, I figured he wouldn’t really do anything to his own daughter.” He held up an onyx pendant. “I gave this to Bianca after we’d been dating for a few months. She’d been nervous over a math test we had coming up. It was a gift to help ease her anxiety.”
Kelsey eyeballed him. “You gave her a gemstone? Since when did you ever believe in their powers? You’ve always called them baubles for the ignorant.”
He shrugged helplessly. “I don’t, but she… well, she did. Onyx is supposed to alleviate worries, or so the spell books say. I just gave it to her to make her feel better and now, it’s here, sitting within the other mementos of his victims. He’s a serial killer, Kelsey. A psychopathic serial killer who even murdered his own daughter. We have to stop him.” Ari pocketed it the pendant.
Kelsey went cold. Never had she underestimated someone so badly. She closed her eyes, trying not to recall her own attack when she was ten, but when situations like this arose, she couldn’t help it. The memories flooded back quickly. She groaned. “You we
re right all along. I’m sorry for doubting you.”
Ari clicked his tongue. “Took you long enough to come around. And now the bastard is on the run. We have to find him before he leaves town or this will never end.”
Kelsey couldn’t agree more. She removed the golden nugget she kept in her pocket and rolled it around in her hand. “You know, they say gold has ancient powers. Its significance is all over Buddhism. Buddha statues are covered in it. So are stupas and talismans. In the Western Paradise, they say the houses and flowers and trees are all golden.”
“The Western Paradise,” Ari mused. “I’ve heard of that before, but what does it have to do with any of this?”
“I think it might be connected, but it’s complicated.”
“Try me. I think I can handle it,” Ari said sarcastically.
“I didn’t mean it that way, you idiot. God, you’re so sensitive! The Western Paradise, or Sukhavati, is another word for Pure Land. There are Pure Land teachings in Buddhism that say if you invoke the mantras at death, and utter the name Amitabha, you will be ensured to go there when you die. It’s supposed to be a wonderful world filled with music and joy and everything is covered with gold. You are supposed to be completely purified when you enter this land and gain enlightenment.”
She thought about Sitaula’s odd repetitive prayers. Why was he repeating them over and over? Was he possibly trying to keep that thought with him at all times? Was he trying to dictate where his next incarnation would be? Did he think he was going to die and was preparing?
“Ari, there are some practitioners, usually advanced bodhisattvas, who supposedly can choose their next rebirth.”
“How would they do that and why?”
“It’s so that they can determine where their next incarnation would be. There’s this thought that what dictates rebirth is one’s last thought before death. The Pure Land practitioners believe that if you chant a certain mantra or hymn all day long, your mind is trained to think of that last thought before you die. I have consistently heard Sitaula reciting a prayer about Asuras.” Her eyes widened. “Wait a second. What if he’s actually trying to become an Asura Deva?”
The Call of Mount Sumeru Page 15
