A Way (The Voyagers Book 1)

by Tara Lutz

  He could practically see his father nod his head, a resigned look on his face. “I will tell him tomorrow. You’re right; we’re out of time.”

  Dread enveloped Dex. The hairs on the back of his neck stood at attention. Whatever they wanted him to do, if it didn’t include Jessie, he wasn’t agreeing to anything.

  Dex left his spot in the hall and went deeper into the house. Every instinct in his body screamed at him to find Jessie and run, prove his father right and hers wrong. Where would they go? He almost lost her to the storm. He couldn’t take her out in it again. He leaned his back against the wall and slowly slid down to the floor. He needed time to think and to put what he had just overheard into some sort of perspective.

  Why would anyone think that his relationship with Jessie was dangerous? It was true that sometimes they could be a bit careless, but they protected each other. He would never let anything happen to her. He would die before he let something hurt her. He remembered back to the conversation his father started with him earlier that evening, before Gerald busted through their front door. Dex decided he would let his father explain to him why he thought marrying Jessie was a bad idea. He used the words ‘destroy her’. He could yell, threaten and protest as much as he wanted, but nothing he said would ever make Dex leave Jessie. There was a better chance of him cutting out his own heart; he was sure that would hurt less.

  Dex picked himself up off the floor, choosing not to mention any of this to Jessie until he knew exactly what their fathers were discussing. He already knew his answer, having no idea what the question would be.

  CHAPTER 18

  The snow stopped assaulting the landscape overnight, and Dex woke to a morning as bright as what he imagined the surface of the sun might be. The light streamed into the room where he and his father slept and the rest of the house slowly came to life. He could hear, who he assumed to be Jessie’s mother, Mary, downstairs in the kitchen trying noiselessly to make breakfast for her family and their houseguests. He listened for any voices, but was met with only the gurgling of boiling water and the shuffling of one pair of feet. Dex swung his long legs out of the bed where he had slept soundly, stretched his arms over his head, and yawned. His father turned over in the bed, opened his eyes and gave his son a gruff good morning greeting. Dex stopped himself from demanding an explanation for the thoughts that had swarmed his mind until he fell asleep. They were only silenced while he slept.

  He reached for his shirt, curled up in an untidy ball on the floor, and groggily pushed his head, then his arms, through its holes. He splashed his face, lightly dotted with fresh stubble, with the water resting in a basin on the table that stood on the far side of the room, by the closed closet door. Grabbing a towel from the same table he rubbed the dampness off his skin, sleep out of his eyes, and ran his fingers through his hair.

  Leaving his father to do the same, Dex headed towards the smell of baking that was wafting up the stairs. Just as he approached the outside of Jessie’s bedroom the door flung open and she appeared. Her hair was pulled off her face; a few random curls, that she missed, sticking out of the bun knotted at the nape of her neck. She was wearing a homemade sweater Dex recognized as one his mother had knit and given her last Christmas. Her feet were covered in socks that had already been darned more than once. She noticed him survey her toes, with a crooked grin, and advanced towards him.

  “What?” She playfully punched his arm. “They’re warm and my favorite.”

  “They look it.” He pulled her forward, catching her around the waist. “You look adorable in the morning.” He kissed her nose, the fabric of her sweater tickling the palms of his hands. She smelled like fresh sheets and soap.

  She tilted her head and kissed his lips. “Just in the morning? Wow you are two for two, and so early in the day.”

  His eyes had a faraway look in them. He couldn’t help thinking about the words he had unintentionally overheard. He tried to refocus them by looking into hers, but she had already noticed.

  “What’s wrong?” She studied his eyes, blue flicking back and forth over brown.

  A door behind them squeaked opened, saving Dex from coming up with an explanation and having to a lie. Gerald was coming towards them, rubbing his face like he was trying to get blood flowing to his cheeks.

  “Hey you two,” he greeted them and to Jessie, “nice socks.”

  They followed her older brother and his best friend downstairs where they found Sammy standing on a chair in the kitchen, helping her mother, by stirring something in a pot on top of the stove. The scent of whatever it was made Dex’s mouth water. Jessie poured them both a tea: his black, hers with honey, and joined him and Gerald around the small kitchen table.

  “How did you sleep, Dex?” Jessie’s mother asked, as she placed a plate layered with eggs, ham and bread in front of him. “You weren’t too cold were you?”

  “Thank you, and no ma’am, it was good.” He picked up his fork, stabbing a thick slice of meat.

  “Good. And, for the last time, it’s Mary.”

  She returned to her place in front of the stove and grabbed a plate, just as Sammy lost her grip on it. With her children and their overnight guest served, she heaped two more plates with food and took them out to her husband and Dex’s father. With no room for them to sit in the kitchen, they spilled over into the sitting room at the back of the house.

  Probably discussing more ways to ruin my life, Dex thought nervously. He wondered what he could do to prolong this breakfast and stay with Jessie for a few more hours. He knew his father would make them head home sooner, rather than later. He felt her hand on his arm and shifted in his chair, to look at her.

  “We’re both going to have to help dig out from the storm. Maybe we can take Sammy sledding tomorrow? I don’t have to be back at the store until next week.”

  He liked that idea, besides he hadn’t had a chance to give her the birthday gift.

  “Sounds perfect,” Dex said. He finished the last bite of bread on his plate, wiped his mouth and leaned over to kiss her cheek. “I have something for you,” he whispered in her ear.

  “You do?” She smiled widely. She had every birthday gift he had given her since she turned six, tucked away in a chest in her room.

  “Alex!” His father’s voice boomed from the other room, “time to head home.”

  “Using your real name. Must be in trouble, Dex,” Gerald teased. “I’m surprised he didn’t use Jessie’s, last night, when we found her in Dickson’s barn.”

  “Ugh. I hate that name.” Her mouth puckered as if she had just bit into a lemon.

  Jessie made everyone promise to forget that her given name was Jessamae. She had done such a good job that even Dex hadn’t known her full name until her mother had screeched it at her one day when she was being stubborn. Her cheeks deepened into shade of pink that he had never seen before. She didn’t explain to him why she hated it, just that she did. That was enough for him. With this information, he did learn that Jessie’s parents hadn’t burdened their girls with boy’s names; their girls just preferred them.

  Preparing for his hike home, Dex gathered his coat and boats and slowly started to get dressed. He couldn’t explain the feeling he had when he kissed Jessie good bye, hugged her tighter than usual, and watched her wave through the window. He felt like the next time he saw her, that one long day away, everything would be different. He couldn’t shake the notion that he had been here before and the next decision he made could change everything. He hoped he was wrong. Of course he was.

  Dex lifted his hand to wave back to her. Jessie blew him a kiss, her face was barely visible, behind the frost her breath created on the glass.

  CHAPTER 19

  The pristine snow drifts reflected the brilliant daylight, forcing Dex and his father to squint against it, as they took the familiar route back to their house. How many times I’ve taken this path to Jessie’s house? Too many to count.

  Sitting beside his father in the wagon, Dex didn’t
broach the subject of the conversation he had been privy to and his father didn’t volunteer to acknowledge that it occurred. There was a tension between them that had started bubbling up prior to their search for Jessie. It was sitting just below the surface, waiting in anticipation and trepidation.

  They arrived home, cold and ice covered. His father retreated to the house and left him to take the sleigh into the barn. He was given no indication when, or if, they would finish their discussion. When he thought he couldn’t take it any longer and had made the decision to bring up every query he had as soon as he was finished with the horses, his father called him in from the barn. The heavy, wet snow tried to slow Dex down as he hurried towards the house.

  “Dex. We need to discuss something,” his father started, “I need you to listen to me, with an open mind. I promise I will answer any questions you have, the best I can, but you have to let me finish.”

  Dex stood just inside their front door, hunched over, removing his soggy boots. Where were Peter and ma? He wondered.

  Reading his son’s expression, his searching eyes, Benjamin Sharpe answered the first of many questions he would be asked that morning. “They’re upstairs, this time is just for us.”

  He pulled a chair out from the table, inviting Dex to sit. He accepted, with only slight hesitation. Dex was prepared for anything his father was going to tell him, having no idea how wrong he was about to be. His father straightened up, leaned to put his hand on Dex’s shoulder, and changed his mind. It remained tense at his side.

  “You have lived this life before Dex; we all have,” he paused, waiting for a reaction from Dex. When he gave none, his father kept going, “except for Sammy. She’s a young soul, the youngest. This is the problem the voyagers are having; we need help.”

  Dex was positive his father was having a medical emergency and would have understood more, if he was speaking a foreign language. When Dex didn’t say anything except impatiently start to jiggle his leg, his father continued.

  “There are five of you. You were chosen by the people who believe in single souls only; souls that think they should have only one chance at life; to be happy and content, without knowing what it’s like to have second or third or even fourth chances. They knew that closing the gateway, a passage for the souls, would take this chance away from the voyagers. That is what we are, what you are, a voyager.”

  “Hundreds of years ago, to avoid any conflict, the two groups reached a compromise. The single souls decided to choose five souls who did not yet exist. If the souls they picked ever entered the same realm together, the location of the gateway would be revealed to all souls, not just the voyagers. The single souls would have a chance to destroy it forever. The voyagers stipulated that not only would they have to exist in the same time, they would have to know each other, grow up together; they had to be boarding souls. The voyagers thought this would make it more difficult. They were wrong.”

  “Boarding souls?” Dex asked. His mind picked up on the last few words his father had spoken, the only ones he could process.

  His father cleared his throat. “Boarding souls are every soul you love in a lifetime. You often reconnect in a next life. They could appear as your brother, sister, best friend.”

  Dex felt the ice creeping back. This time it threatened to surround his heart.

  “When the voyagers and single souls agreed to the five, I was picked to protect two of the souls and Jessie’s father was picked to protect the other three. We agreed that when we passed through the gateway to enter a different realm, if we mistakenly entered the same one, we would keep the souls separate. What we didn’t know or anticipate was that two of you would turn out to be parallel souls. At first everything was fine. Only four of the souls we had been tasked to protect, entered this realm. The gateway remained safe. Then Sammy was born. We hoped she wouldn’t turn out to be the fifth soul. This had never happened before; we were always so careful. Only three of the souls had passed through the gateway before.”

  Dex tried to interrupt his father, who put up his hand to stop him so he could finish.

  “Now, on Sammy’s birthday, not only will the gateway be at risk of being discovered, but the five could be in danger. If the single souls discover we have figured out a way to prevent them from finding the location of the gateway, they will do anything to stop that from happening. We don’t know how to protect you. We don’t know who could be single souls, claiming to be voyagers. The only solution we could think of, is for one of the five to pass back through the gateway, to a different realm, as soon as possible. The gateway would be safe and the voyagers, the ones who have always looked out for you, would be able to live over and over again.”

  His father placed his hand back on his son’s shoulder, this time leaving it there. “We need your help, Dex. It has to be you.”

  Dex tried to process what he just heard. Souls, a gateway, the chance to relive your life over and over again; to be given a chance to right past mistakes and always be with Jessie. Wait, what would happen with Jessie? Of course, she would come with him. All of this played out loudly in his mind. He tried to relay it back to his father.

  “So, I can save souls, these voyagers, from only living one life, the only thing I have believed to be true, what I still believe, by passing through a gate before Sammy turns seven?” He was seconds away from yelling upstairs to his mother to have her fetch the doctor. “And where is this passage, this gateway anyway? And who exactly are the boarding souls? The parallel souls? Is this the first time my soul has lived or I have done all this before?” Dex stopped to catch his breath and felt his eyes fill with liquid, in spite of himself. The best case scenario was that his father was having a stroke. He was terrified of what the worst one could be.

  “We thought we could keep you hidden, but there are too many single souls, and they are closer than we originally thought. They have already started to do what they can, to make sure you are all together, even though they aren’t completely sure that Sammy is the fifth soul. They don’t know where the gateway is, but will on her birthday, when it is able to show itself to all souls, not just the voyagers. Jed and I can easily locate it in every realm we enter; every soul that is considered a voyager can. We knew the day Sammy was born that we had made a terrible mistake by allowing four of the five chosen souls to live so close together. That’s where we went that day. Jed went through the gateway to a time just after her seventh birthday. The gateway was visible and the single souls were on their way to destroy it. Since then, we have searched through our experience as voyagers and asked advice from others, trying to come up with a solution. The only answer for saving the gateway, is for you to enter it. We need to separate the five again, to make up for our mistake.”

  His father took a sip from the cup that Dex just noticed sitting on the table between them, assuming correctly that it contained something much stronger than the tea his mother always made him drink.

  “It’s on the island, isn’t it?” Dex wasn’t sure how he knew this, he just did. He recalled the anxious feeling that had encompassed him the day he had taken Jessie to their tree.

  His father nodded. “If you haven’t already figured it out, you and Jessie are the parallel souls. This isn’t the first realm you have existed in, together. You are connected, you will always be together. You will always be able to find a way back to her.” This was the first thing that he had said that made complete sense to Dex.

  “And yes Dex, this is the second time your soul has exited the gateway. Jessie has passed through it once, Peter and Gerald twice and Sammy, like I just explained, this is her first time. She picked the wrong time to appear, but because she is a young voyager, she wasn’t able to control it. Her protector was supposed to do that and he thought he had. Her soul was tricked into coming here.”

  They sat for a long time without speaking. The fire crackling was the only sound in that section of the house. The sun moved from the front window to one in the back.

  “If
I believe you,” it surprised Dex that he found himself starting to do just that, “then we can explain this to Jessie and we can leave together.”

  His father’s face paled. The coldness, gripping Dex’s heart, tightened, as it slowly spread to the rest of his body.

  “That’s not how it works, Dex. You can find her in the next life your soul chooses, but no two souls have ever entered the gateway together.”

  “Well, we’re going to try,” he shrugged. “I’m not leaving her.”

  “Dex, you could end up in different times and the more you jump, trying to find her, might push you so far away from one another that you may never find her again. You could both die. We don’t know, and I am not going to let you risk your soul, or Jessie’s to find out. If you go without her, the next realm you choose, Jessie will be there. That is one hundred percent guaranteed. After they find each other, parallel souls are never apart again in any realm. If you jump with her there are no guarantees. You could lose her forever.”

  Benjamin could tell he was starting to convince Dex. Jed was right. The warning of losing Jessie forever, was the tool he needed to convince his son to save the gateway that all the voyagers had worked so hard to defend.

  Dex looked defiant. “So what happens to Jessie? She will just wake up one day and I will be gone? No, we have to tell her. I won’t leave her like that. If she’s one of the five souls, she should know.”

  “In order to protect Jessie, her siblings, and your brother, none of them can be told. We don’t know yet, if we are risking their exposure, by telling you.”

  “Then I’m not doing it. And why can’t they?” He wished he didn’t know, that he could erase all the words his father had just spoken from his memory. It gnawed at him, the sense that he had heard the same words before, like a dream re-entering his mind after being awake for a few hours.