by O. Rose
It was like she could see it. If she went after him she’d wrap herself around him from behind, a hug she’d never before received or given, and that would be saying, ‘I choose you’. If she stayed and did what he ordered then she wasn’t sure what would happen.
What did he mean to her now?
Chapter Seven
The shoes were going to be wasted.
To Emma, what was less than a second felt like forever as she stood in silent debate.
There was a single answer to give:
She would go after Levi.
He was still a stranger to her and she wasn’t naive enough to think life in this house, life with him, would be simple or easy, but there was no one else in the world like him. No matter how many people out there accepted her, he was still the first. He knew things about her past and told her truths, even when he knew she wouldn’t want to hear it.
She’d named him Levi.
She thought maybe it was a little like the wild animal warning, ‘don’t give it a name or you’ll get attached’, but what was the worst that could happen?
And that was a bad question to ask, famous last words and all that, yet she didn’t care.
He’d already disappeared when she got to the end of the foyer and the hallway was gone, but she wasn’t giving up.
She wished she could find him.
A door materialized immediately before her, in a space that was moments ago wall, and without hesitation she yanked it open. He was clearly startled, and shirtless because this was his bedroom and he was in the middle of changing, but Emma thrust the thought aside before embarrassment could overpower her, and did as she’d imagined about fifteen seconds ago.
His back was already to her so it was a matter of stumbling forward and glomming on.
He stood frozen, obviously didn’t know how to react to her sudden affection. She didn’t know what to do next either, this was the extent of her plan and suddenly she thought she should have taken at least a few moments more to consider what to say, but it was too late for that.
“Em-”
“I’m interrupting you this time,” she spoke quickly. Nerves were taking over. “I don’t know what I should say, I feel like there aren’t words for this, and I don’t know what all this means, but even though Olwen says there are other people who won’t be immediately repelled by me, she wasn’t, I still, I mean, I guess it’s like loyalty?” Her grip tightened as thoughts whirled; that wasn’t what she wanted to say. This made it sound like it was a ‘first come first served’ based choice. “I mean I don’t want anyone else, okay? I don’t need a bunch of strangers to be friends with me. I’m not planning to run off and see what the world has to offer, I never wanted anything like that. I wanted one person, one, and I gave up on that and now you’re here so-so this is enough!”
His hands were gentle as they pried hers off and he didn’t let them go when he turned.
“I don’t think you know what you’re saying,” his eyes blazed.
She couldn’t argue with that, he was right, but she still meant every word. “I know I don’t, but I said it anyway.”
The way he looked at her, it was like fire. He was trying to convey something and she knew it might be dangerous, but there was no going back from this. She wasn’t making some halfhearted, childish declaration. Even if this was leading her into treacherous territory, if he was there, she would keep going forward.
∞
Emma sort of thought he might kiss her.
But, he didn’t and she wasn’t sure if she should be disappointed or not when he hustled her out of the room and then reappeared a moment later, fully dressed, to haul her to the small dining room.
He held her by the upper arm and she felt like a toddler being pulled away from something unsafe. He couldn’t get mad at her for it, yet she had to be removed from the situation.
No explanation was offered. She didn’t know if he was angry or not, why he was disturbed by her words or what any of this meant.
Curiosity wasn’t what she felt though, she didn’t need an answer or feel the drive to understand. She’d never felt that sense of urgency about anything. It was more like resigned contentment. She couldn’t make anything happen or force a person to do something, so why try? She’d learned that knowing the answer wasn’t always helpful.
There were answers she did need to know, but most of them were things only time could expound upon.
She didn’t fight it when they entered the small dining room, though she did find herself asking, a little petulantly, about the stark difference in meals.
Levi’s was sophisticated, some kind of fish on a bed of salad greens and wine.
She was given sandwiches, grapes and juice.
He laughed at that, short but genuine and said, “If you want to be treated like an adult then prove you are one.”
“Who am I trying to prove that to?” And she wondered if she wanted to. There was nothing wrong with being a child, especially when you never had the opportunity to enjoy it.
“Hazel,” was his answer.
She waited for him to add more and when he didn’t a hint of irritation crept into her heart. There were a lot of things she could wait on, explanations she didn’t even want to hear, but it was irritating that he didn’t try at all.
She wanted to ignore it, tried to eat without thinking of the issue, but a few bites into the turkey and tomatoes she’d lost the will to keep going. All at once everything hit her, the impossibility of her own existence and the role he played, and she couldn’t take another bite. The thought alone made her feel sick.
He made no move to stop her as she stood and walked out the door, this time it led to her room and she collapsed on the floor.
She wondered where this was, where she was born the first time. It wasn’t a stone castle of Arthurian legend, full of tapestries and suits of armor. She remembered it was light and bright. The people were healthy; they thought she must be cursed because the queen died in childbirth, something that rarely happened. If it ever had.
She almost never considered that time, there was no reason to, but as she thought of it, it was strange. Where was that place and what was it’s history? Where was it now?
The longer she thought and tried to recall, the more odd little things came to mind. In all of history childbirth was one of the most dangerous endeavors a woman could face, but in her first home it was so uncommon they considered it a curse on the child. They really did. She remembered hearing them talk about it, some young women disparaging the dead queen, elders telling them not to invite a curse on themselves.
Who were those people?
She couldn’t remember the language to speak it, but if she concentrated she could understand what was said. She recalled written records as well, but nothing she could recollect with clarity.
Whether it mattered or not she couldn’t say, but looking around the bedroom made her think about it more deeply than ever before. The scenes in her mind were so idealistic and the room she now inhabited, once again, was airy and full of the smells of the blooming flowers scattered across the stunning lawn. The tall, glass doors framed a glorious view. She’d not questioned it upon arrival, but as she considered it, wasn’t that peculiar?
Emma thought of her education in both recent and ancient history and realized she’d not learned about a place like the one in her memory. It wasn’t Egypt or China. Not the English countryside or the wild wests in the United States. No matter where she tried to place her memory it didn’t fit.
And it felt long ago. Thousands upon thousands upon tens of thousands of years in the past, but she’d thought she lived and died numerous times to find it was just seven.
Perhaps her perspective was skewed?
Even so, she definitely didn’t remember learning about a place so free of suffering. There were no famines, no disease outbreaks, no flooding. People. They were advanced in, sort of, strange ways, but not others. It wasn’t a home for technological advancement, the
re weren’t any cars or televisions or cameras, and she couldn’t quite grasp the edges of certain memories. It was all in a haze.
She didn’t notice when Levi entered the room until he said, “If you want to remember, you’ll have to name yourself.”
She turned, looked up at him in confusion. “What?”
“Find a name close to what you had then. I doubt you’ll pull that one forward, but there are others close in meaning and that is what matters. Try to think of it.”
“How will I know when-”
“You’ll know,” he stepped around her, waved a hand to the outdoors. “Go out there, it’s better to be outside for this.”
She didn’t know what he was talking about. Name herself? How? What did that have to do with anything?
She stood anyway.
Chapter Eight
Emma braced herself for something, an onslaught of memory or the sounds of echoey flutes and harps, but nothing of the kind occurred. She just stepped outside into a place that shouldn’t exist.
Totally normal, she thought with a small, disbelieving chuckle. Then again, was her life ever normal compared to most?
No, it wasn’t.
Levi didn’t go with her, but he didn’t leave the room either.
“I can’t help you,” he said and left it at that before taking a seat on the bench at the foot of the bed.
She turned from him and looked around the garden. Low hedges, stone walkways. There was a wooden water feature, a smallish wheel pushed in circles by the constant stream. Seeing it all made her remember it, but how did it get there? How was it made to begin with?
She couldn’t recall seeing anyone build something with their hands.
She moved along the path, came to the end of it and a fog rose up before her. She knew she couldn’t go any further; the rest of this place was barred, if it existed at all. She listened, trying to hear distant sounds of life, but there was nothing.
Name yourself. That was his instruction. Remember her name if possible, and that wasn’t likely, so try to find something close in meaning.
The name she had now, ‘Emma’, wasn’t unique. It was the most popular three years running and she didn’t know what it meant, but she felt no affinity. ‘Emma’ was nowhere close.
‘Hazel’, the name he’d spoken earlier, without explanation, wasn’t right either, but it felt closer somehow. Nature. A nature name and the ‘h’ seemed right too, but she didn’t know why.
She decided to ignore the question of why, knowing wouldn’t help and she could easily get caught up on it. People always asked, “Why?” even when they knew the answer couldn’t be found. Even when they knew the answer and didn’t want to hear it. In her opinion, “Why?” was one of the most useful and useless questions ever.
Hazel.
Heather? No.
Hurricane?
Horizon?
Haven, Honey, Hyacinth.
It was frustrating! She didn’t know anything about names or their meanings and needed something to give her ideas, but Levi said he wouldn’t, couldn’t assist.
However, he said nothing about the internet.
She returned indoors, he was still there seated at the foot of the bed, and off the round table where she’d once eaten she took her newly returned phone. It wasn’t there before and her grasp was careful, but it was material in her hand.
Where it was when it was gone she might never know.
One tech accessory deemed absolutely necessary by the foster care system was a cell phone. Normally, she would have nothing more than the most basic of basic, but some generous soul held a charity drive for off-model phones; they were then distributed to high performance foster children. not the ones who made trouble.
So, she got a cell phone and hoped it would help her figure out the name Levi said she had.
He didn’t comment as she went back into the world he’d made for her, and she felt sure this was his doing, to make some kind of progress. She didn’t know what it would do for her, but it was important.
Phone in hand she made quick work of finding a website full of baby names, narrowed the search down to the letter ‘H’ and started scrolling through the list. It was tedious to say the least. She wasn’t even paying attention to the page numbers anymore when she found it.
‘Holly’.
The moment her eyes landed on it she knew that was the name. Her name. She’d never felt like an ‘Emma’, but ‘Holly’ gave her a prickling feeling in her veins and a moment later the fog at the edge of the lane dispersed.
She looked back and Levi was still there, at the end of the bed; he didn’t seem to notice the change. She considered saying something to him, but decided against it. He said she had to do this herself and she assumed this was part of it.
So, without asking for permission or direction, Holly walked ahead into clearing mist.
∞
It was like entering a dream. The lush green lawns, the flowers and pathways. Sunlight streaming through winding viridian branches. People moving to and fro, carrying, levitating?, water basins and baskets full of fruits and vegetables.
No one noticed her as she stared, baffled, at the sights. It was astonishing, yet at the same time felt undeniably familiar. Nothing she’d seen during her life as Emma came close to it. The modern world, with all it’s technology, did not see people moving items of weight around without help. The general populace used their hands, hurt their backs, or used robotic contraptions for assistance.
Things didn’t hover in mid-air; that was too taxing. Few were talented or strong enough.
Maybe this really was a dream; had she fallen asleep without realizing it?
But, there were no jumps in time or place. Her dreams were all over the place. She’d find herself in a school hallway, walk a few steps forward and suddenly be outside in some unknown field. She was one of those people who knew when they were dreaming. That didn’t give her any control, she wasn’t good at directing her subconscious, but she still knew the difference between dreams and reality most of the time.
This wasn’t a dream, but it wasn’t real either; there was a fog muffling the scene, as if everything was dulled around the edges. Blurred and dimming by the second.
In the blink of an eye it was gone and she was, once again, standing at the end of the walkway.
His presence was unmistakable. Hovering directly behind her; if she took a step back she would collide with him.
She wasn’t ready for that yet.
Instead she asked, “Where was that?”
“Somewhere between Arcadia and Utopia. I don’t recall the actual name or even the time frame,” he said. “Speaking of time, did you know it is a physical property? It isn’t constant, some claim the speed of light isn’t either.”
She turned, stared at him confused. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“What you want to learn requires that you understand things about the world, things you’ve never thought of.”
Her mind flashed to the hovering baskets.
“You need to accept that things you thought were true, aren’t. The world around you is not as solid as you think it is.” He bent down, put his hand to stone. “This is not solid. If I hold my hand here long enough it will, eventually, fall through. Even now I may be losing a skin cell to space interrupted. Why?” He paused a beat and continued, obviously not expecting an answer. “Because the molecules are moving and there are spaces between them.
“Things are constantly changing, they behave differently when you aren’t looking at them, and modern science is barely touching the surface of those implications. What I know, what Olwen and others know, is how to suspend disbelief.” He stood. “The people you saw lived knowing unalterable truths. It was why they were so afraid of you, why people shy away even now. They may determine to never believe in what they can’t see, but their spirits know when something is wrong.”
The implications of that, “You’re saying I’m wrong?”
&
nbsp; Dark eyes were clouded. “You can’t die, can’t go on one way or the other. That is not natural to this plane of existence and yes, it is wrong.” He held her gaze, even as she blinked in confusion. “It was perpetrated on you by a man lonely and weary. Tired of living with no way to die. The people he called friends all passed on, over and over and over again, while he kept breathing.
“He found a place unlike any other, where the people lived in seclusion. Isolated and Arcadian. Their lives were longer and he hoped to stay, but they would not have him. They could sense what he’d done and refused to entertain so damaged a person.”
Eyes were burning fire and words bitterly spoken. Holly, no longer Emma, still didn’t know so many things. Her own memory was spotty at best, but he seemed to remember much of the life he lived. It was a wonder he wasn’t driven as insane as the queen!
He continued, “It was desperation that drove the man by then, for relief. For a companion. In one moment he turned to unnatural ways again, after swearing them off because of what he’d done to himself, and a new life was made. One that would never be welcome in this world or the next. He was selfish and I still am. I’ve brought you here and we are bound by my actions and then your words. A foolish pledge! A child, who didn’t even know her own name.” His voice softened. “Who doesn’t understand the power of spoken language. Life and death reside on the tongue and it so often speaks what is in the deceitful heart. The uninformed mind is just as bad.”
She knew he was conveying something of great weight and she tried to hold onto the sound of his voice, but her eyes felt heavy. Her body swayed, vision swam.
“She is too weak for these words.”
He sounded so far away as she collapsed.
Chapter Nine
There were voices in her head. Murmuring, muttering, soft and then louder. She couldn’t make out what they said or who they were that spoke, so she turned her thoughts to introspection.
Who was Holly? Her name, she’d claimed it for herself, but who was Holly? Levi said she was a life forced into existence, her own broken memory testified to that much. Nature said, “No”, others said, “We will anyway.”
