by Tara Lutz
“The less the five know about the gateway, the easier it will be to protect them. If the remaining four don’t know who they are, then how will the single souls that are looking for them? That’s what will secure the gateway in the future.”
“What about Peter? Or Sammy? Send them through your gateway!” Dex felt panic taking over his voice. He didn’t like how his father referred to the people he cared about, as numbers.
“They’re too young Dex. Neither of them have your soul’s experience. Another reason it needs to be you is we think you can keep the gateway hidden better than any voyager has before. You will take the risks, learn how to use it and teach other voyagers.” His father was having trouble meeting his eyes.
He wasn’t buying it. He didn’t want to be a voyager. He wanted to stay with Jessie. Would it be so bad if the gateway was closed? Souls didn’t know they had lived before, maybe that’s the way it should stay. He had made up his mind.
“Then Gerald can go.” Dex crossed his arms, stood up, paced to the end of the table, turned back to face his father. “Tell his father to explain realms, voyagers, souls and the rest of the gibberish you just told me and force him to go and save it. This is not my responsibility. The only people I have to look after and protect are myself and Jessie. This isn’t a debate, I won’t leave her.”
“It can’t be Gerald,” his father said patiently. “He needs to stay, he can protect Jessie. It’s important for her to be safe.”
“That’s my job! I’ll make sure she’s safe.” Dex screamed.
“It can’t be Gerald.” Benjamin repeated, looking directly into his enraged son’s eyes. “Gerald lives past twenty-one. You don’t.”
CHAPTER 20
Dex slowly lowered himself back into his chair; the color drained from his face. “That’s not true,” his voice was barely auditable.
“It is true, Dex.” His mother’s voice came from behind. “Your father and Jed have tried everything to make sure it wasn’t. Every event they have tried to change, every synopsis they have influenced, to try and fix your soul’s fate in this realm, hasn’t worked.”
He could hear in her voice that she had been crying, maybe she still was. His father took over.
“You want to protect Jessie? This is the way to do it. If you stay here, you will only have a few more years with her. The gateway will close and you will both lose the chance to live out another, possibly multiple lives, together.”
“We are telling you the truth, Dex.” His mother crouched down beside him and sandwiched one of his hands between her own. “I know a lot about parallel souls. I have found mine four times.”
He watched her look up at his father. They exchanged a smile; one meant just for them. It reminded him of the smile he reserved for Jessie and the one she gave him that melted his heart.
“But if we don’t tell Jessie, will she know me? How will she ever forgive me for leaving her?” Dex finally let the sob that was stuck in his throat, escape between his lips. “What if she forgets me and I never see her again? I wouldn’t know what to do. She means everything to me.”
“Oh honey,” his mother squeezed his hand. Dex was grateful she was there. His father was still searching for words and had become noticeably uncomfortable with his son’s show of emotion.
“She will always know who you are: no matter how many years separate the realms, no matter how different you both look. She will know as soon as she hears your voice, feels your touch, looks into your eyes. You have to trust us.”
He did. Before Jessie, the only two people he knew he could trust, with his whole being, were his parents.
“We can make Jessie forget about you in this realm. We have done it before and have both experienced it ourselves. She will be protected. None of us will let anything happen to her and when it is time for her soul to voyage, she will travel straight to you.”
“When?” He had trouble looking up at her. He shifted his eyes before the tears spilled down his cheeks. He blinked hard: once, twice, three times, then raised them to meet his mother’s. This has happened before, he thought.
“It needs to happen before Sammy’s birthday,” his father answered, finding his voice.
That was one week away; not enough time. There would never be enough time for him to say goodbye to Jessie.
“She can’t suspect I’m saying goodbye, but as soon as I’m gone, if I actually do decide to leave, you need to make her forget. Will you promise me that?” He didn’t want to know how they would do this, just that it would be done. Jessie would forget him and she would have a chance to be happy without him. The thought stabbed Dex straight through his pounding heart.
“If you do leave, Jessie will be made to forget you that same day.” His father promised.
Dex stood up, slowly. His mother was still holding his hand tightly, not wanting to let go.
“And Dex, as soon as you step through the gateway, you will find her. It will be like you never said goodbye.”
He smiled weakly. He hoped it was that easy, he held onto that hope as he dragged himself away from them, his head hung low. In his bedroom, bright from the mid-afternoon, Dex pushed his face roughly into his feather pillow and cried, until he passed out from exhaustion.
CHAPTER 21
The winter sun had started its fast descent from the sky, when Dex heard his mother enter his room, and sit softly on his bed. He hadn’t really been sleeping, instead his mind was still sorting through everything his father had told him. There were so many things he needed to know, to understand. Dex sat up on his bed, pushed his back against the wall and brought his knees up to his chest. He hugged his legs tightly, partly because the night chill had set in, mostly for comfort and to prevent himself from breaking apart. He made no motion to accept the mug his mother held out for him and she placed it softly on the table beside him.
“You have had some time to think and I suspect you have many questions that you need answered. Your father knows better, but if you think it is easier to talk to me right now, I will try to help.” She shuffled closer to him and patted his knee.
“So, it’s true? All of it? The gateway on the island?” He looked for more words but couldn’t find them. “What happens if my soul leaves and all of you and Jessie remain here? Won’t that make it difficult for me to find her again?” His eyes were dry. They had run out of tears.
“Everything your father told you is true. I remember the first time he tried to explain it to me. I thought it was just an extravagant lie to get me to go out with him.” She smiled, he stayed solemn. “The more he talked about the past lives our souls had already lived, the more I started to remember. It started out like I was recalling a dream I had years before, pin pricks in the back of my mind. The more he – I don’t like to use the word trained,” she said more to herself then her bewildered son, “the more details he gave me and taught me to search my mind, the more I could see things that had happened before.”
“By the fourth time we exited the gateway and found each other again, all it took was for him to look at me and say my name. That’s what it will be like for you and Jessie. It may take a few times, but even then, every time she will know deep in her soul, that you are telling her the truth and she will start to remember things she never knew existed inside her. As for you leaving, and all of us still staying here in this realm….” her voice waivered.
She stopped and looked away, for the first time trying to find the right words. “For you, it will feel instant, but your soul will stay suspended between the gateway and the next realm you select. You won’t remember this time. The earliest memory you will have, in the new realm, will be the one you choose to remember.”
Tension hung in the room like a giant weight pressing down from the ceiling. He felt like it could suffocate him.
Dex finally spoke. His mother exhaled the breath she had been holding since she stopped talking. “There have been things that have happened over the last few months, maybe years that I felt have happene
d before. Have I, my soul, been here before? In this realm? With all of you and Jessie?”
“You have, and so have Peter and Gerald,” she paused, “and Jessie. This is her second time. We didn’t have to ask you to go through the gateway the last time, because Sammy had never been born. But you did die, Dex, just after your twenty-first birthday. You and Jessie had been married for three years and it destroyed her. That is why both of your souls are here again. Jed and Benjamin thought that they could stop it this time; each of them blamed themselves for what had happened to you. It was an accident….” His mother’s voice trailed off. He could see the pain in her eyes. He didn’t need to hear anymore.
“But this time Sammy was born, wasn’t she.” It wasn’t a question, he needed to direct her away from the subject that was so difficult for her, in case it caused her to close the entire conversation. “And pa knew that he could use Jessie against me to fix their mistake.” Dex could feel his anger growing again.
“Their hearts were in the right place, Dex. We were wrong to think everything would stay the same as it did the first time your soul chose this realm. We didn’t predict Sammy’s soul would be manipulated into coming here. The voyagers are still learning. It is our hope that if you decide to enter the gateway, you can be a next generation of souls that can learn to use the passage more to your advantage, so something like this never happens again. Parallel souls should never be separated. That was what we were trying to do for you and Jessie. This is the only solution that we could figure out so that it will never happen again.”
Dex still didn’t fully understand. What were the voyagers? Time travelers?
“If I trust you, if I do this, how will it not ruin Jessie again? I will just be gone with no explanation! Why can’t I explain all of it to her? She’ll believe me.”
He wasn’t convinced they could erase him and all of their memories completely from her mind. He felt sick to his stomach just thinking about it, Jessie having no recollection of any of it. He knew what leaving her would do to him. He couldn’t bear for her to have that same feeling. He lifted the mug off the small bedside table. The tea had cooled, but felt good, when it hit his unsettled stomach.
“Jed and your father have found a way to erase you from her memory, but once Jessie’s soul passes through the gateway to find a new destination, all of those memories will be reinstated, for her to access when the time is right. All of them will be there, in her mind, making it easy for her to find her way back to you. They will just be hidden for a while. It worked this time, didn’t it?”
“You vanished me from her memory when I died the last time.” It wasn’t a question. How many times had he heard Jessie say, ‘we have done this before, why does this feel so familiar?’ And there were her stories, her unexplainable panic that something, someday might happen to him. It all made sense to him now. Deep down, somewhere in her subconscious, Jessie knew that all of this had happened before.
His mother nodded. “This is the second time your souls have found each other, even if the voyagers did help. It’s kismet, it will be like that again.” She could see his face starting to change, a realization dawning.
“Why would anyone want to close the gateway; to stop souls from travelling and finding one another over and over again?” Dex asked.
“They believe in different values than we do. They see it as unnatural and don’t think anyone should be allowed to manipulate time. Single souls see us as time travelers, but we refuse to use that term. We don’t live forever, exploring different times. We wait until our souls are finished in one realm, before traveling to the next. The voyagers have rules that they would never break.”
“If I leave now, won’t that go against that rule?” Dex asked.
“The voyagers think it’s a necessary risk. If one of the five doesn’t leave, the gateway could be destroyed. We know how dangerous the single souls can be. My original parents were single souls, the first parents I had, before I became a voyager with your father. They would’ve done anything to put an end to what the voyagers created.”
This brought up another question. He was so consumed with leaving Jessie that he forgot about all the other people he loved in his life. “What about you and pa? Or Peter? Will I see you again?”
His mother smiled at him, the same one he saw on his little brother’s face. “The parents of voyagers have always stayed the same, at least in our experience. We have heard of circumstances where parents have changed, but never in our travels. Your father and Jed have been appointed to protect the five. It will remain that way until they decide to enter the gateway for the final time. Voyagers always have that choice. I imagine even I will get tired of travelling at some point and curiosity will get the better of me. I will want to see what’s next. Parents are the ultimate boarding souls; sometimes they may even be their child’s parallel soul. They aren’t always like you and Jessie. Parallel souls could be sisters, friends, or cousins. In any form, they are just lucky to find each other. Most single souls never do. Some voyagers become impatient looking for their parallel in the form they usually take, and try something different. You will see what I mean, when you become more experienced, and learn to influence your soul’s decision, before it leaves the gateway.”
Dex got up from the spot he had been glued to, while his mother talked, and started to pace the small room. He needed more time alone to work out exactly what he was going to say to Jessie. She knew him so well that he had to be careful not to alert her that anything was wrong. She couldn’t even remotely suspect that he would be going away and never coming back. He didn’t know if he was strong enough to say a final goodbye, but he knew he didn’t have a choice. He had to take the risk, to save the chance to live his life over and over again with her, and to give all other souls, that wanted the same thing with their parallel souls, the same prospect. Dex turned back to his mother.
“I’ll do it.” She crossed the room and hugged him close to her. This time it was her eyes that were wet with tears.
*******
Dex left the warm house to help his father finish clearing a path, through the thick snow, to the barn. Benjamin left him alone to work steadily, but Dex could sense him watching him from the corner of his eye. He had given his mother permission to inform his father that he had made up his mind and that he planned on entering the gateway in two days’ time.
He was thankful that he didn’t fill Jessie in on his birthday surprise of taking her out to supper. He was disappointed enough for the both of them. The plan had blown away in the storm, the slow melting snow carrying the rest of his life with it. He still had her gift and even if she didn’t remember who had given it to her, he wanted her to have it.
His back burned and neck stared to ache, as he shoveled his way, through the massive amount of snow that had accumulated, towards the barn. The repetitive motion helped clear his shaken thoughts. He hoped that it would warm up a bit for Jessie’s visit the next day. The hay loft would be a good place to have his goodbye chat to her. His first vivid memory of Jessie was when he pulled her out of her hiding spot in the loft, maybe this would reinforce him more in her mind. Reassurances from his parents wasn’t enough to ease the fear that he could lose her forever. For hours his mother had sat with him in his room, answering his questions. She vowed that she wouldn’t let him leave if she wasn’t absolutely positive, not only that he would find Jessie again, but also the rest of his family.
She explained that even though some souls had managed to alter the vessels they had first been given, most remained the same. The changing appearances of different realms could make it more difficult for them to recognize each other, but the basics wouldn’t change: the color of hair, the slope of a nose. She advised him that if there was ever any doubt, it would be erased as soon as you looked into the eyes. The eyes are a looking glass to the soul. They would never change.
“Dex.” His father was standing beside him, his approaching footsteps muted by the packed down snow.
&nbs
p; “It’s ok to be scared, unsure. The first time I had to leave Ellie, no matter how many guarantees the voyagers gave me, I was convinced saying goodbye to her would be the last time I would see her. I was surprised, so happy, but surprised, when I discovered how easy it was to find her. You and Jessie have had years together, not just in this life, but also the one before. There are so many secret looks, jokes, and things you only know about each other. And we will take care of her. You have my word, we will get her through the gateway as soon as it’s time.” In a rare show of emotion, his father gave him a hug.
Dex didn’t need any more convincing, he was getting tired of their promises and confidence. He pulled away from his father. “I just need you to do one thing for me. I need Jessie to forget who I am before I leave. I need to know that it’s done, that she is safe from any pain. I need to be sure. There is only one person who will be able to tell I have truly been erased from her mind. Gerald needs to know.”
CHAPTER 22
The next afternoon, Jessie, with Sammy close behind, trudged out of the forest path through the fast dwindling snowbanks; Dex ran out to meet her. He had been watching for them, both anticipating and dreading their arrival. He invited Peter to join them, but his brother was still tired and sore after clearing most of the snow the day before, while Dex shirked his duties. When Peter complained, their mother told him that Dex was ill. They would have to erase Dex from his brother’s mind too. Peter was still too young for them to divulge any of the information they had given Dex about souls and voyagers. Most of it was still too complex, even for his older brother.
As part of the deal for Dex to enter the gateway, Jed had reluctantly agreed to tell Gerald. This was to happen when his sisters were with Dex during what would be, unbeknownst to them, the last time. Dex learned later that Jed had to discourage his son from volunteering to be the member of the five that entered the gateway. He convinced him that staying and helping to protect the remaining souls was just as important. Gerald did get his father to concede to one of his pleas. He wanted to be there when Dex entered the passage.
