by Kara Timmins
He waited. It had to be coming. Maybe he was in shock. Maybe what he was seeing was too much for a man to process at once.
There was nothing. No lightning sense of joy. He was alone in a room that no one else could get to, with a treasure that was too large to carry home, made valueless by its distance from the society he knew. He was alone. He turned his attention back to the place in his chest where he thought the happiness should be, but the more he waited for the feeling to come, the more another sense found its place there: emptiness, a hollow cavity where the elation was supposed to be, and the vacant space inside him was growing the more he paid attention to it. The more he reveled in its strangeness, the more painful it became.
He had promised all of this to Francena once, but what did that mean now? She was a world away, a lifetime behind him. Faces flashed through his mind: Neasa, Malatic, Midash, Kella, Evas . . . Goodwin.
A tether of fatigue and disappointment pulled down on his heart so strong that his legs no longer felt stable enough to support him. He walked to the edge of the stone path and stumbled down into a mound of soft fabric. He buried his face in it. The silky fibers smelled sweet, like berries in hot morning grain. He remembered that smell so strongly he felt sure that if he lifted his head and looked around he would be back in his little hut in the savanna again.
“Is it not what you were hoping for?” a voice asked.
Eloy didn’t lift his head right away. He hadn’t heard anyone walk up on him, but he knew Amicus’s voice well enough.
When he finally looked up, he felt the first pang of real shock. Amicus wasn’t in somebody else’s body. Eloy had only ever seen the man sitting opposite him once before, around a campfire in Kella’s memory.
“I should have known,” Eloy said. “All this time, it should have been obvious. Why did you even tell me your name was Amicus?”
“We all say we should have known when we finally learn the truth. It’s always obvious when it’s all done. In my defense, I never said my name was Amicus. I only said that you could call me that. Would you have believed me if I had said my name was Aerelion?”
Eloy sat up straighter and looked at Aerelion face to face. “I believed everything else you said. Why wouldn’t I have believed that?”
“Maybe,” Aerelion admitted. “But I needed you to believe a lot of things in a short span of time. I didn’t want you to focus on the wrong things.”
Eloy assessed Aerelion’s features. He looked almost the same as he had in Kella’s memory, maybe even a little bit younger, but there was something off about him, something too pristine. There were no shadows playing on creases around his mouth or forehead. The shimmer in his brown hair was almost as golden as the coins. But his brown eyes, so dark that they were almost flush with their black center, had the same hint of trouble Eloy had seen from Kella.
“Why?” Eloy asked, his voice tired and hushed.
“Why to which part?” Amicus asked. “May I?” He motioned toward a mound of fabric next to Eloy.
Eloy scooted aside to make room. “Go ahead.”
“There is a lot to explain, things I can tell you now that I couldn’t before. Is there somewhere specific you wanted to start?”
“Yes. Why me?”
Aerelion sat with his legs crossed, his knee almost touching Eloy’s. “Why you?” He looked down at the ground and rolled a coin between his fingers. “Funny that’s the first thing you ask.”
“Why is that funny?”
“Because it’s a question I’ve had to answer since the moment I chose you.”
“Chose me for what? You’ve got to start telling me what’s going on.” Eloy felt heat rise in his cheeks.
“Things were starting to get out of hand here in your world. There weren’t going to be any good outcomes to the fighting between Nicanor and Anso. We looked. Everything led to dead ends. Literally. And then there were the Vaylars.
“The Omnacom,” he sighed, “was wise, without a doubt, but he was young. I mean he was young for his kind. And you know how it is: when you’re young you get an idea to run and so you run, no hesitation. As soon as he started pushing people to go west and take land, it was beyond hope that things would right themselves without intervention. We needed someone to put things back on a . . . fruitful path.”
“Who is ‘we’?”
Aerelion smiled. “Others who have had their place in the past of this world and work for its future.”
Eloy sighed. “So you needed someone to defeat the Vaylars.”
“Defeat? No. The Vaylars are good people, just like the people you know. You just don’t know them. What you saw wasn’t the best representation, true, but they were just doing what they thought was the right thing. Their destruction would have been just as detrimental as that of the people and places you know.
“Still, they never should have gone west. It’s too far from their home, and they would have been spread too thin. The Omnacom wasn’t looking big or wide enough. He led his people to potential hardship. But then . . . there was you.” Aerelion smiled over at Eloy.
Eloy didn’t smile back.
“Every so often, there’s a need for a redirection. A little urging of occurrences. Someone chose me, that person was chosen by someone else, and I chose you.”
“Why me?” Eloy asked again.
“Right. Why you. Those before me usually chose people who had something they could use, an ability. So when I picked you, I fielded that question a lot. I saw you in that acacia tree. I saw how much watching those wildcats die affected you. You wanted to save them. Your pain for them was as bright as a wildfire, and I saw it, but you were smart too. You knew there wasn’t anything you could do. I knew that you would always care about the suffering of others and do your best for them. I knew you would be clever about it.
“There were so many ways your path could go wrong. We all saw it. But the ways that things could have gone right were so much better than anything I had seen before. You did everything right. You did better than I let myself hope.”
“And what about all of this?” Eloy asked, motioning toward the room.
“This was the cover, you could say. This was once promised to me too. Something tangible and desirable is so much easier to comprehend. Telling a child that he has to take on the warring force that was about to push him off of his homeland, along with two others he didn’t know about yet, doesn’t inspire movement. It inspires fear. But we can’t promise something and not deliver.”
Eloy’s face tightened in anger. “So you wanted me to be the one to put out the flames of war. And I did that. With help, I did that. So why am I here, a world away from where that happened? Why couldn’t you have put all of this in the wetlands, for that matter?”
Aerelion looked down at his lap. “Right. A few reasons. First, I had to leave this treasure somewhere safe. But in full honesty, there was a selfishness to me choosing this place. That choice was unfair to you, but it was a choice I felt certain you would make if you were in my position. Timyr doesn’t belong here. I’d hoped you would come here and find him. His parents want him home. Especially now that Midash is alone.”
Eloy dropped his head. “How long ago?”
“A few years now. She doesn’t want you to be sad for her. She lived longer than the rest of us. I selected this place for you for Timyr. Well, part of the reason, anyway. The other is that there is a very likely chance that you’ll need this land one day, when you’re in my position and you need to choose someone.”
Eloy snapped his head up and glared at Aerelion. “I’m not doing it.”
There was pity and sadness in Aerelion’s face. “You will. Of course you will. When have you ever been able to walk away when there was something you could do to help people who needed it?”
Eloy hung his head again. “I can’t do this to someone.”
“You don’t have to
think about that now. You don’t have to think about any of it for the rest of your life. And there are things that are now yours that you can’t see in this room.”
Eloy looked over at Aerelion. He felt exhausted, and he was sure he looked it. “What’s that?”
Aerelion smiled. “Close your eyes.”
Drooping his eyelids was easy to do. Eloy had never felt more exhausted.
“Think about that acacia tree,” Aerelion said.
Eloy thought about the rough branches and the yellow grasses rippling in the wind. The memory was so clear he could smell the sun-rich ground, hear the rustling of the stalks of wild grain, and feel the breeze.
“Open your eyes,” Aerelion said.
Eloy did. Everything around him was transformed. He could smell the savanna because he was next to that same acacia tree he used to climb as a child. He looked up at it in amazement. Even with years of growth, the tree looked so much smaller than he remembered it. But he knew it was the same one. He looked over his shoulder where his village had been. Little lines of hearth fires curled up toward the sky.
“How . . .” Emotion stopped the words in his throat.
“I thought this ability was a fitting one for you to have,” Aerelion said.
“Is it real?”
“How cruel do you think I am?” Aerelion laughed. “It’s real.”
Eloy stood up and grabbed a branch of the acacia tree with both hands. It felt real enough. He closed his eyes and breathed in the smell of sun-rich earth mixed with the light hint of smoke and evening meals. Being there, sensing all of it, he remembered. The memories were more than just vague abstractions of images or incidents. He could feel what it was like to be the young man who had grown up running out into these grasses.
Eloy opened his eyes again. “I can go anywhere?”
“Anywhere. Well, anywhere you know. We all get something, and that something is passed on to your children, and so on. But it gets weaker as it goes.”
“What did you get? When you finished, I mean.”
“Protection. I could make things and places untouchable. Like Midash’s land.”
Eloy remembered how he could feel the difference of the land, how it always provided everything they needed. “Too bad you couldn’t have used that with Nicanor, Anso, and the Vaylars. Could have saved me some trouble.”
“Don’t I wish it could have worked like that.”
“What did you have to do? What did you need to change?”
Aerelion laughed. “That’s a story too long to tell right now, and we’re out of time. It’s easier for me to be at the treasure room. Do you mind if we finish this talk there?”
Eloy closed his eyes and thought of the coins, jewels, books, and fabric. He smelled the spices, rainwater, and leather. He opened his eyes.
“You’ll need to have your hands on whatever or whomever you want to take with you,” Aerelion said. “You don’t have to do that with me because I’m . . . well, you know. And they need to close their eyes too. It will be easier for them that way.”
“I can take anyone with me?”
“Anyone.”
Eloy thought about Neasa and Malatic.
“And anything,” Aerelion said. “All of this is yours. You can do whatever you want with it, but it is more than enough to benefit the people and the land you care about. The books are filled with knowledge that can enrich and advance societies. The gold, textiles, and spices can work to connect and grow the world you know.”
The possibilities stretched in all directions in his mind. The swell he had waited for found its way. But he couldn’t think of all that now. There would be time, but now someone else needed him: Malatic.
“He’s still alive,” Aerelion said. “But you have to get him to Valia soon. The Omnacom had its hand in what happened, but the sickness was already in Malatic.”
Eloy was up and ready to move, energized in a way he hadn’t thought possible not long ago.
“Eloy.” Aerelion reached out and put his hands on Eloy’s shoulders. “I am so proud of you. I know there are things you wish I had done differently, and I wish that too, but I couldn’t have asked for a better outcome. I think that, with time, you’ll agree with me. You were a bright and brave young man when I met you, and you are a great man now. I hope you can find the peace you deserve.” He pulled Eloy toward him and wrapped his arms around him.
A part of Eloy wanted to hold on to the little bit of anger he had, but it slipped away. He returned the embrace and closed his eyes. Aerelion didn’t feel like flesh and blood, not fully, but no one would ever understand Eloy the way he did. He had been with Eloy since the beginning, longer and more consistently than anyone else.
Aerelion pulled away first and gave Eloy’s bearded cheeks a couple of gentle pats. “You can come here to talk whenever you want. I’ll be here. Now go live your life. There are no more doors to find or battles to fight. Rest. Take the adventures worth taking.”
Eloy watched as Aerelion walked down the path of the treasure room. “I’ll be seeing you.” And the more Aerelion moved away, the more his form started to blur, his edges becoming like shadow. Before he went, Eloy saw other shadows around him: a broad-shouldered man twirling a long-haired woman, two other men play fighting, another woman laughing.
There was someone else, someone not standing with the others: a smaller young man. He lifted his arm and waved emphatically at Eloy. Eloy would know that form anywhere, one that was burned by guilt into his memory.
Before Eloy could lift his hand and wave back, Goodwin and the others were gone.
65
“Timyr,” Eloy said.
Timyr was sitting against the black stone wall, his legs pulled into his chest and his forehead down against his knees.
“Ugh!” Timyr jumped up. “Scared me. I didn’t even hear you walk up.” He stood, a look of excitement on his face. “Did you get in? Did you find it?”
“I did,” Eloy said with a smile. “And I’ll tell you all about it, I promise. There’s a lot to catch you up on. But right now, we have to go. We have to hurry.”
“Okay. Why are we hurrying, though?”
“We have to get to Malatic.”
“Okay.” Timyr turned to the black rock wall and start focusing.
“Timyr.” Eloy put a hand on Timyr’s arm.
Timyr turned around. “Yeah?”
“Trust me, okay?”
Timyr looked suspicious. “Okay.”
“Close your eyes and keep them closed.”
“I feel like telling me to trust you before you tell me to close my eyes means you’re going to do something I might not like.”
“Will it help if I tell you that if you do, you don’t have to go back through the wall?”
“It makes a strong argument.”
“Do you have Vivene?”
Timyr patted the lump in the hammock over his chest, which wriggled under his touch. “Got her.”
“Okay, then. Close your eyes and keep them closed.”
Timyr sighed and closed his eyes.
Eloy put his hands on Timyr’s shoulders and closed his own eyes. He thought of the woods. He thought of Neasa and her golden hair, and how ribbons of brown wove together with wheat-stalk yellow in the braid that hung over her shoulder. He thought about Malatic and how dark his hair looked next to the paleness of his skin. Eloy thought about the way Malatic’s smile crept up the right side of his face when he told a joke.
And the sound of the heavy rain disappeared and chirping evening birds and bugs took its place.
“What the . . .” Timyr said.
Eloy opened his eyes and looked at his dazed friend.
“How . . . ?” Timyr started to ask.
Eloy looked around. “I promise I’ll explain.”
He didn’t see Neasa or Malatic. E
loy spun around. “Do you see them?”
“They’re here.” Timyr moved a few steps to his right and spread the dense vines and their leaves aside.
Malatic was on his back, his eyes closed and his skin grey. Neasa was curled up next to him, her head on his chest, her legs wrapped around his thigh.
Eloy dropped to his knees next to Neasa. “What’s wrong with her?”
“She’s exhausted,” Timyr said.
“Neas?” Eloy put his hand on her arm. She felt cold.
A fluttering hum came from deep in her throat, but she didn’t open her eyes.
“Timyr,” Eloy stood up. “We have to get them back to Valia. Are you ready to leave here and go back across the sea?”
Timyr looked confused. “I . . . I can’t believe this is happening. We’re going to go back? Just like that?”
Eloy nodded.
Timyr gulped and steadied himself. “Yeah, I’m ready.”
“And Vivene? Will she be able to survive in a new place?”
Timyr looked down at her little face looking up at him. “I think leaving her here without me would be more dangerous.” Timyr looked up, his eyes glossy. “I can’t do that.”
Eloy put a hand on Timyr’s shoulder. “I’m not asking you to. I’d never ask it. If you think she’ll be fine, I believe you. Whatever she needs, we can worry about later. But we have to get Neasa and Malatic to Valia. You ready?”
“I can’t believe this is happening,” Timyr said again. And then, “I’m ready.”
“Okay. Put your hand on my shoulder and keep your eyes closed.”
Eloy crouched down and put his right hand on Neasa’s arm and his left hand on Malatic’s shoulder.
“Ready when you are,” Eloy said.
Timyr exhaled and touched Eloy’s shoulder. “Ready.”
