With a moment’s worth of focus, he began to see obscure, foreign symbols and glyphs traced in dark colors along the uneven, hewn surfaces. Emmett ran a finger along the rough rock walls, tracing a symbol with his finger. He followed the symbols with his eyes as they traveled from the floor up to the ceiling, from which in the shadows stirred some motion. Emmett focused on the motion and finally saw the outlines of hundreds of dark shadows hanging, some crawling over each other. Bats. Hundreds of bats.
It would be bats.
“The Underdweller has marked you. The Rot will continue spreading until it consumes you,” Amala said. She wore a dark sleeveless shirt tucked into fitted black slacks. In the soft light from the candles strewn throughout the vault, Emmett could see that her waves of long brown hair were bound tightly back in several overlapping braids that draped down over a developed chest that slowly rose and fell.
In the darkness, her glowing eyes were like stardust. Emmett could not help but be mesmerized by how they drew any light around them and reflected it with an untamed brilliance. Just as they had in his dreams; a fact Emmett was uncertain if he had the energy left to attempt unraveling in his mind.
The woman of your dreams. Try not to make an ass of yourself.
Amala stepped down into the depression in the floor in the room’s center.
“The Archivist is not like other Elders. She is often struck with wanderlust, traveling far outside her Grove and away from civilization for many years. She requires that we seek her out, proving ourselves capable in the search. We will make contact with her today, and when she responds, Keiran and I will escort you to her.”
“I don’t mean to offend you,” Emmett began, glancing up once with frustration at the scratching sounds, “but there has to be a quicker method for dealing with this. I mean, what do you do with all of the people who must have this Rot?”
Amala stared directly at him without a hint of anything but total seriousness in her expression. “Most don’t survive the initial attack, Emmett.”
She knelt with a single, fluid motion at a point in the center of the chamber where nine irregular symbols danced around a ring of concentric circles. Placing the backs of her hands on each knee, she closed her eyes.
“Come and sit with me. This cave is a sacred place.”
Of course it’s a magic cave. He took a step forward and awkwardly knelt.
Emmett fell back onto the ground clumsily and crossed his legs. Compared to Amala’s liquid movements, Emmett was aware of how ungainly his body was: tall, lanky, and often at odds with any center of gravity.
“Take my hands and close your eyes.”
Embarrassed, he wiped his clammy hands on his jeans. Reluctantly, he took her delicate hands into his. They were soft and yielding to the touch, but held his own firmly with determination.
He sighed pointedly, bobbing his head. “What’s next? Peyote and heavy sweating?”
“Close your eyes and focus on your breathing,” she began with a measured tone, her volume lowered with each word. “Too often we focus on the external world, both hurried and harried outside of our core beings. The noise of living drowns our ears, and we grow deaf to silence.”
There’s truth in that.
“I want you to withdraw from the world and fold into your body. With each breath, exhale the world’s noise. Release the chaos from your mind. Inhale the clarity that comes from the silence within.”
His mind was pulled in a dozen directions, from the faint trickle of water to the itch along his arm. Yet with each breath, the sounds grew smaller, farther away. The sensations nagging at his consciousness quieted as if mollified solely by his breathing. Thoughts about his situation, the Rot, and each individual narrative withdrew until they were distant echoes. Without sensation or feeling, the world melted away around him.
“Our minds are letting go of the false world,” Amala’s soft voice began, seemingly timed to the rhythm of Emmett’s breathing. “We give ourselves permission to leave everything behind and enter a quieter place. Call to her in the quiet place.”
Emmett felt his lips murmur the name. His breathing slowed, drawing calm into his body and releasing disorder with each deliberate breath. He saw nothing in his mind’s eye, felt no change in his presence, and so he called out to her again.
As his lips formed soundless words, he felt a hint of a breeze stroke the back of his neck. It was feathery like a whisper in his ear. In the darkness, his awareness focused on each individual hair that stood aloft along his arms, the tingling attentiveness of another presence near him.
He felt himself slipping back. It was the only way he could describe the sensation of leaving his body without having actually left it before. His consciousness eased out of his body and backward into a void empty of sensation. Emmett no longer felt Amala’s hands, no longer heard her quiet yet persistent urgings. He did not feel the cave’s warmth or closeness. Time passed without counting, and Emmett soon was unaware of his own limbs. His mind sharpened, focused without the burdens or boundaries of his body, concentrating on each minute detail as it manifested.
In the emptiness, Emmett did not have eyes, and yet his mind stretched beyond the limits of normal vision. Colors differentiated themselves from the blackness, birthing substance. Shapes took form. Sensation returned to his mind like tingling along the skin of his consciousness. Sound soon found ears that he no longer had.
An image of a woman took form, twice his age and petite with black hair. She held her hand underneath her stomach, the slight bump of pregnancy just beginning to appear on her small body. She exited from a bus onto a busy sidewalk and walked past a storefront owner unlocking his doors. Emmett felt the image expand into three dimensions, and he felt himself moving along the street behind her. He watched the images of cars and people pass, clouds sweeping across a bright sky in the early afternoon. The images gained depth and richness. He felt the brush of dry wind sweep through his being, heard the calls of children playing in the schoolyard she walked by.
The vision suddenly altered, the street and cars replaced by rows of books along high shelves. The sun’s afternoon warmth became cool, and the dry breeze transformed into a stale, musty stillness. She was still walking, though her clothes had changed from a brown walking coat to a tweed sweater and dress. The silence of the surrounding library enveloped his senses, focused his awareness on her. She stopped to identify a book. When she would stop, Emmett’s consciousness stopped as well, and when she would resume, he would feel himself drawn forward with her.
The scene morphed again, a wash of colors and senses rushing past and through his awareness. She was sitting in a corner chair in an apartment now, an apartment that was immediately familiar to Emmett. As fading sunlight filtered in through the drawn curtains of the lone window, she nodded to herself with a turn of the page of her art history book.
The familiar sights of his life’s dreams filled his consciousness. The mirrors. The nesting dolls. The painting on the wall. Only this painting was absent the words above the king’s head. Emmett looked deeply into the woman’s eyes and saw her passion for the art she lovingly read. The baroque masters. The impressionists. The perfect swirls of oil on canvas.
The image of the apartment shifted again. The woman’s pregnancy was more visible now. Her face was sunken and anxiety filled. She paced the apartment, weeping and shaking her head. She was begging someone to get out, yet there was no one else in the apartment with her. She was repeating the same words over and over, weeping as she did so. Gritting her teeth and covering her ears from some unseen noise, she finally grabbed a pen from the nightstand and began writing words onto her painting, words that Emmett immediately recognized.
Silence consumed the hollow sounds within the apartment, and once again the images merged and colors changed with the morphing of shapes and contours. Emmett felt a sharp, jolting rush of sensation as he was hurtled down a harsh, white hallway behind a rushing group of nurses and doctors.
Screaming
pierced his consciousness. Hysterical, throttled fury. Amid the group of harried nurses, the woman strained vainly against her restraints, spitting and cursing. She frothed with rage. Large orderlies held her bucking fists and legs down as her mania stormed through her slim body.
Heavy perspiration matted her black hair to her face. Straining to hold her head up to see over the nurses, she looked directly at the dark corner in the room where two walls were joined. She wept hysterically. She gestured to the room’s bare corner, pleading with the nurses to see what she saw. But they saw nothing, and in her despair she wailed. Emmett felt her sobbing tear into the depths of his soul.
The images shifted again. The room was empty now. The woman was lying in a hospital bed staring mutely into the dark corner of her room, her glassy eyes transfixed as if waiting for the shadows to stir into form. Her smooth face had sunken, and in her eyes it appeared that a lifetime had passed.
She felt her flat stomach, and looking down at where once a child grew within her, she wept. Taking a used, crumpled tissue from her lap and bringing it to her mouth, she heaved again, her curved, frail body retching forward with each gurgling cough.
Her breathing was increasingly labored. Her thin arms pushed herself up from her bed, and with effort she lurched forward with arms outstretched for balance. She reached for the call button on her nightstand, her coughing continuing with frightening intensity. Her face registered panic, her eyes welling with tears.
Emmett was filled with pain, as if his consciousness were being suffocated. He wanted to cry out, but he found that he had no mouth; he wanted to reach out for her, yet he found that he had no arms or body. His awareness could not be changed, nor could his eyes be closed or turned away.
She fumbled with the call button, and a feeble, weak arm grabbed at her shoulder. The air was filled with the pungent odor of urine. She collapsed against the nightstand and off the bed, falling to the linoleum floor. With his acute awareness, Emmett could hear every grotesque, minute sound of her skull crashing against the edge of the nightstand. Crimson blood pooled beneath her head, her small body contorted in an unnatural posture.
When he thought his mind might shatter into a thousand discordant pieces, the images faded, each color returning to the empty void of his inner consciousness. Emmett felt his awareness returning to his body with the tingling of awakened limbs. He felt his essence drawn forward, anchored suddenly in substance. Emmett began to feel the fullness of his body—the contours of his limbs and the boundaries of his flesh.
“Everything that takes place has a beginning and an end,” an ageless, genderless voice said. It was like a soft wind caressing the back of his neck.
“Summer and winter, clouds and dews and rain.”
Beyond the voice, Emmett’s awareness extended to a chorus of sounds that seemed to have been present the entire time, and yet only now with this voice did he become aware of them: a baby’s joyous laughter; water splashing along river stones; the flutter of wings as a bird takes flight; the call of cicadas in the twilight; the roll of thunder across the edge of an approaching storm.
“The trees shed their leaves; the trees crown themselves in greenery and fruit.”
There were millions of individual voices, calls, and sounds layered and woven into a brilliant, pure tapestry. They produced the most perfect, sustained melody Emmett had ever heard. It suffused his entire being, stretching every space within his mind.
“All this from year to year forever and ever and ever.”
And with this pure sound of life and the voice that repeated the words on the mysterious painting, he heard another voice calling out to him. It continued to echo in his mind as the brilliant melody faded away to the periphery of his consciousness before it grew silent altogether, and only the insistent, repeating voice could be heard.
“Emmett, come back to me.”
It was Amala.
“Emmett, come back to me.”
Her voice was soft and delicate.
“Emmett, come back to me.”
He realized that she was repeating herself, insistent and yet patient with a reverence for the experience.
Emmett could feel his body again, and with trepidation he opened his eyes, feeling the world rush in around him as if his head had just emerged from the fathomless ocean depths. The quiet trickling of water deep in the cave tunnels was thunderous. The warm, unmoving air in the room was sweltering. In the near-total darkness of the cave, Emmett’s opened eyes felt blinded by what little light illuminated the surrounding area.
Amala was staring up. He lifted his neck, feeling his muscles respond to his command. Emmett gasped in wonder. A swarm of bats glided in a uniform flock above their heads, circling around the room with the natural grace borne of flight.
“Call to her,” Amala instructed, this time with urgency in her voice.
“Archivist,” Emmett said. He did not know if he felt foolish or afraid—perhaps both—but something felt too bare, too exposed. Had Amala seen what he had seen?
“Call out to her,” Amala repeated.
“Archivist,” Emmett said her name again. He felt his voice growing as Amala’s grip tightened, urging him.
“Give her name meaning, Emmett. With faith that there is a release from the pain of this life, call out to her!”
Something in the pleading of her voice and the warmth of her hands told him that she needed him to feel the calling as much as say it. He had to bare himself even more—surrender to the experience and to the vision itself.
He saw the image again in his mind: the woman who had studied art history and smiled over the life growing inside her; the woman who wept for her missing child; the woman who collapsed and died alone with no one to love or comfort her. Emmett knew who that pregnant woman was. He knew who she wept for in the final moments of her life. He felt the agony rushing through him, coursing through every acute sense in his body, and centering in the dull ache where the Rot was consuming him.
“Archivist!” Emmett cried out, feeling tears he could not remember crying rolling down his cheeks. The air itself seemed to shift with an unseen energy, and the bats responded, turning as one with startling speed and diving down and through their arms. Amala held him firmly and unblinking, her amber eyes sparkling with the countless shapes thundering past her face.
Emmett watched with a mixture of wonder and terror as the swarm flew around and through them, tumbling and swirling over in a maelstrom of synchronized movement. He clung to Amala’s hands, not wanting to ever let go.
Finally, the swarm shifted like a river tumbling over a waterfall. As one, the swarm of bats veered out the tunnel and into the world somewhere beyond.
After a moment’s stunned silence, Emmett felt Amala releasing his hands. At first, he could not will himself to let go. Had she seen what he had seen?
Amala must have sensed Emmett’s hesitation for she waited in the silence for him. He finally released her hands. The conflicting sensations and demands of the world returned as a flood into an already crowded mind.
“They will carry your message to the Archivist,” Amala whispered.
Emmett’s mind unfolded, his awareness focusing increasingly on his surroundings. “That was …” unworthy of words? He ran a hand across his face to wipe away his tears, stifling a sniffle with an exaggerated cough. He felt embarrassed to be so exposed in front of Amala.
“Whatever vision the Archivist offered you, that is for you and you alone.”
He felt immediately relieved to hear that the vision had been only his. When she stood, her soft manners were replaced with a brisk, practical expression void of closeness that Emmett felt jarring after the intimate encounter they seemed to share. She offered a hand to help him up, and he was surprised by her strength.
They were suddenly standing only an inch away from each other. Emmett was aware that he was holding his breath, and when finally he breathed, he tasted rose water and sweet cardamom in her presence. He could see Amala’s eyes widenin
g, and when he looked down at the curve of her neckline, he could see her heightened pulse beating visibly through her skin.
Emmett’s lips slightly parted, and he knew he wanted to say something. Countless things ran through his mind.
He knew there was a reason Amala had been in his dreams. She was watching him, waiting for him to ask her.
The words began to form in the bottom of his throat. And just as Emmett summoned what courage he was certain he did not possess to utter them, a voice called down the cave’s tunnel.
“Oi! You lot done in there? I’m famished!”
Amala blinked and stepped back from Emmett, turning her head away for a moment. “Keiran will look after you while I attend to other matters,” she said abruptly, her voice suddenly distant. “I will see you soon.” And turning away from Emmett, Amala did not see the wounded, confused look in his eyes.
CHAPTER 7
“Record time, mate!” Keiran exclaimed, bounding excitedly up to meet Emmett as he emerged from the cave. His giddiness only added to Emmett’s irritation with his interruption.
“Yeah, well, bats love me,” Emmett shrugged, squinting in the sunlight.
“So we have time for a spot of lunch, then?” Keiran asked Amala.
“I cannot go, but I will see you both later.”
“Right, well, let’s get you sorted, Emmett!”
Amala turned without comment and walked off in the opposite direction. Watching her disappear into the tree line, he shook his head and followed Keiran.
“What, she just hangs out in the trees?”
“It’s her way,” Keiran answered with a knowing smile. “How are you?”
Emmett felt his heart surge into his throat. His expression must have registered some change, because Keiran looked away from him out of some shared recognition of the experience’s intimacy.
“You don’t need to tell me the particulars, mate. It’s a private matter.”
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