A Dyad in Time

by D. D. Prideaux

  “It helped that I had the basics I guess. I mean, it meant that I could find work and I was valuable to communities.” Eve looked up at Isabella knowingly.

  “You moved around a lot?” Isabella asked, knowing that the Naïve’s would find an ageless woman with special healing knowledge pretty off-putting.

  It was Eve’s turn to nod again, before she explained. “I realised I was different when I was in the first village. Women my age were married, or marrying, and I had no interest in doing the same…”

  “No eligible men available to you then?” Isabella sarcastically let out, interrupting Eve.

  “Isabella, come on. I was suddenly trapped in the Naïve world. With Naïve’s. Something in the darkest, untouchable parts of my brain told me that no man I met would be good enough. I didn’t know why I knew this, but you know what it’s like. Finding someone in our world is hard enough, let alone finding someone in a backwards society where poor hygiene was something to aspire to.” There was a definite air of superiority in her voice, but they both knew the Naïve world was slow to catch on. “I’d get that strange feeling, that I knew there was something else and yet, I had no idea what that something else was. Why would I feel out of place, when I assumed all I should know came from this filthy time I was trapped in?”

  “So you haven’t…” Isabella paused, taking the conversation somewhere else, eyebrows raising and a smile spreading across her face. “… You know.”

  Eve waited, not giving her the satisfaction of avoiding asking the question.

  “You haven’t had sex since you woke up?”

  Teasing her, Eve rolled her eyes as far back as she could, trying to embarrass her friend. “I’m not dead, Isabella.” A knowing and cheeky smile appearing on her face. “I just knew that love and commitment wasn't for me. I always held back, even after being with someone for a while. On the surface I gave and gave and gave but when it came to it, I was dead inside. Empty.” The cheekiness seeped away as she spoke, replaced by some regret and sadness.

  “Kai, you must have been lonely.” Isabella hugged Eve close for a moment, wanting her to feel that she would never be alone again if she could help it. Her skin burned but she bore the pain in order to comfort her friend, the pain a small price to pay for the years of loneliness Eve must have felt.

  “I was. Being Lucid is an incredible gift, but not knowing I was one, sucked. So hard. I had all these wonderful, idealistic beliefs and values from before I woke up, without any of the reasoning behind them. I constantly felt out of place in how I thought. It was like the Naïve’s were years behind me in their thinking, but I didn’t know it was what I was brought up to believe.”

  “Wow. Shit sex, shitty living conditions and even shittier morals.” Isabella got lost in herself trying to imagine what it was like. Eve trapped in a world she couldn’t escape and that didn’t understand her. She was trapped in her own body in the wrong life, with no idea why.

  “Do you have any idea what it was like being a Naïve woman back then?” Eve asked.

  “I’m trying to. It feels so alien.” She scrunched her face up, thankful she didn’t have to experience it, sad that her friend, had.

  “Right. Think what it was like a few years later when all your friends are getting older, talking about their frustrations. Their aches and pains that I didn’t get, the trouble their children were in, the struggles their husbands faced at work or in the wars.”

  “Plus, you’ll look as young as the day they met you.” Eve was so thankful Isabella was trying to understand and see what it was like for her, their friendship feeling renewed with each passing minute.

  “So yeah. I moved around a lot.” She shrugged, asking if anyone would do any different.

  “What was it like?” Isabella leaned a little closer, fascinated.

  “It was hard in the beginning. Then it got easier. I got better at finding ways to integrate into communities without attaching myself. You know, valuable enough to them that they weren’t too curious and keeping enough of a distance to keep that curiosity at bay.”

  “Can’t have helped with the loneliness.” Isabella asked, but didn’t.

  “The first few places ran me out of town with whispers of wytchcraft, but then I met a native Indian tribe.” Isabella’s eyebrows raised, questioning.

  “They were incredible Isabella. Welcoming, honest, grounded. They sensed I was different but accepted me nonetheless.” Warmth spread through Eve at remembering the faces of that tribe, vivid and calming all at once.

  “What magiks could they practice?” Isabella knew these particular Naïves possessed some kinds of magiks, each tribe practising different ones with varying results.

  “Not much, but enough that I wasn’t considered evil because of my gifts. Get this though. You remember the Sojela monks telling us about how the native Indians prayed to spirit animals for guidance?”

  “I always liked the Anteater.” Isabella chuckled, Eve joining in at the shared memory of them discussing the animals when they were young.

  “Well, they called me Nita. It means, bear.” Isabella almost fell off her chair from astonishment and laughter. The irony of the name spinning her around in giggling circles. When she finished embellishing her inner child she recovered herself enough to recap what she’d heard.

  “You woke up, wandered around healing people wherever you went, landed in a Native Indian tribe - the only Naïve’s able to practice some magiks - where they named you bear...” Eve nodded with an ironic smile, waiting for the punchline. “...The totem for healing in their culture and the animal that Tor turns into?” They both laughed again, enjoying the small coincidences that wove their way into their paths.

  “It was the most content I had been in a long time.” Eve continued as the quiet martialled them again, mediating their conversation so it flowed in the right direction. “A few generations of families passed by, each new one coming to know me as Grandmother Nita.” She smiled wide again, more faces swimming forward to greet her.

  “Like Grandmother moon?” Isabella couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  “Yep.” Another broad smile.

  “And just like Grandmother moon, life-giver and healer, the tribe felt that my light should shine on all tribes. So, for a time, I travelled them, passing on my healing knowledge and helping those I could.” Another face appeared, pushing all the others away. “I even took on an apprentice.”

  “What were they like?”

  “Two Feathers was very special. She had an energy unlike anyone I’d met since waking up. Playful, determined, passionate, fiery. I loved her from the moment she was introduced to me as a child. I imagined she was like the daughter I never had.” Her smile faded, as images of Two Feathers in pain took over.

  “What happened to her?” Isabella sensed the sadness in Eve’s voice.

  “She was killed by soldiers. Not long after she’d given birth to her own daughter, her village was attacked.” Tears filled up in Eve’s eyes. “They were looking for me.” She looked at Isabella, a few watery trails on her cheeks.

  “They can’t have been, Eve.” Isabella leapt to her friend’s defence, knowing the torturous thoughts that would have been going around her head for so long. “You can’t blame yourself for that.”

  Eve shook her head slowly, filled with sadness and knowing. “I found out later that the army had been searching for me because they’d heard I had magik.” Eve was looking at her best friend with defiance, upset she knew without doubt, that she was the reason Two Feathers had died.

  “I don’t believe it.” Isabella said stoically, wanting to support her friend.

  “The army was massacring villages across the country in an effort to find me. Death, destruction and disease came with them.” Eve was angry. “I could have helped. I could have stopped them!”

  Isabella moved to the bed and put an arm around sobbing shoulders, helpless in trying to ease her friends’ anguish at feeling helpless. “Maybe as Eve, but you weren�
�t her back then. Who knows what they’d have done to you if they’d found you.” Isabella knew the lengths that Naïves would go to back in those days when it came to the strange and unknown.

  “Decades of genocide, and I am responsible.” Eve muttered through choked breath.

  “You don’t know that.” Isabella said, rubbing Eve’s back gently, soothing the shudders of sorrow.

  Eve recovered enough to finish her story, wanting to get through her sadness, happy to finally have someone she could share the burden with. “Anyway, I was on the run for a while, drifting. Losing Two Feathers shut me down hard, taking me right back to the moment I woke up.”

  Isabella knew how that could feel, her own thoughts of similar things springing to mind.

  “I floated from place to place, travelling the world. Never participating. Never being. Just living on the fringes, doing what I could to survive and stay hidden.”

  “I can’t imagine what that must have been like.” Isabella admitted, feeling that she was out of her depth, and not for the first time in their conversation. “Finding some sort of peace and then having it ripped away like that.” She felt that simply acknowledging Eve’s pain would have to do for now.

  “Hard. Made harder by so much time.” Eve sagged a little more in Isabella’s arms, the slight burning sensation bearable for now.

  “You know what’s made better by time?” Some lightness appearing in Isabella’s voice. “Tea.” She answered her own question and grabbed Eve’s hand for her to follow. She led her to a small room, with a recessed part of the floor covered in exquisite cushions. The rest of the room was covered in dark wood and beautiful wall hangings that depicted wonderful stories of Chinese honour and love. Placing her to one side of the small table in the middle of the cushions she went to another room and returned a few minutes later with a stunning, traditional Chinese tea set. As the tea brewed, Eve took in the familiar smell and remembered the tea drinking rituals she learned so long ago. Breathing in that scent she was transported back to where she first tasted that tea. Her favourite tea. They performed the rituals with poise and respect before taking their first sips and falling away into their own memories of the first time they’d tried that warm, life-giving liquid.

  “How’d you know this was my favourite tea?” Eve asked to a surprised Isabella.

  “I didn’t.” They laughed again, struggling not to spill the rare and expensive drink. They laughed many more times too as they moved their conversation to lighter things, the quiet gently pushing and nudging them towards brighter times. They went back and forth on disastrous guys they’d dated, the gender stereotypes they suffered through, the silliness of countless Naïve and Lucid pursuits. Time passed quickly, marked by cold tea water and the setting sun through one of the windows. The quiet had had enough of mediating now, wanting them to leave and carry on their journey, so Eve used the time to unravel the frog skin from around her arm and reveal completely healed skin.

  “Good job Isabella.” She said absently before flexing her fingers without pain. She touched parts of her side, feeling stiff and uncomfortable in her own body but markedly better than she had felt earlier. “I feel like I have the flu or something.” She remarked before performing some hand movements and whispering the words that would heal her fully in a few moments.

  “There’s a lot of that going around in the Naïve world.” Isabella muttered as she carefully replaced the tea set and began to stand.

  Eve finished healing herself as she heard the comment, pausing in fear. “How much is going around?”

  “Worst flu they’ve had since records began apparently.” Isabella went to walk away, not reading Eve’s temperament.

  “There’s been worse.” Eve said darkly, standing up and casting her mind back to the last think fog of illness that blanketed the Naïve world and what it meant.

  “What do you mean?” Isabella asked, still holding the set and feeling like the slow kid in class.

  “Rosalind is behind this.” Eve started walking out of the room, purpose and determination in her movements. “I need to see what my earrings have to show me.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE - PUZZLES

  Khar stared at two blank faces after his grandiose show of effort to get to work and clapping his hands. Neither of which were able to say what they should do or where they should begin. Looking at them both now, he’d not seen it before or really had a chance to see it properly, but Xiang had a very kind face. Soft features were framed by stylish jet-black hair and complicated brown eyes. There was a severity and a softness in those brown pools that warmed him. He recognised the look of the man somehow, feeling like he’d known the man for years. Immediately, he was inexplicably drawn to him and an unsaid, unbreakable trust formed between them. A part of him said that this had happened before and that the man in front of him was an old friend and confident, but he knew that wasn’t possible. Even though he thought of them as blood-brothers of some kind, forged in the heat of purpose and crusade he knew the man was a stranger. Even so, at that moment of recognition and binding, he knew he’d made the right choice to reveal the histories, at least a potted version, to the homely Asian man.

  “What’s wrong?” Xiang asked, Khar realising that he was staring. Judgemental eyes were also on him, levelled squarely at his, by his love.

  “K'Chool, can you summon any readable records left in this place to our location?” He knew she could. To everyone else’s annoyance, but not his, all things came easily to K'Chool from fighting, to magiks, to cooking and socialising. No task was too much for this Sojela. Rolling eyes were the only answer he got before she turned away from them, dancing with the top half of her body and whispering nothings into the darkness. The final part of her act resulted in her gently lowering herself on the balls of her feet, almost into a starting running position and placing the palms of her hands flat on the floor.

  “I’d stand back if I were you.” She said over her shoulder, the two men obeying without question, clearing a wide space in the centre of the room they were in. They could hear rustling and rumbling from all around; papers moving, books shifting, broken beams giving way, ash, dust and charcoaled building parts making way for the tirade of records flying their way. From what The Archive had told them, this library was the oldest and largest that their order managed and even with all the damage from the fire there would be a large amount of information coming their way.

  Khar heard some grumbling noises from Xiang as a few bits of paper brushed his hair and ears, a book or two clipping him as they flew past him. He really liked the Naïve, and as with any good friend, you would find it hard not to laugh at a little misfortune here and there. Just as the noise escaped him, one of the larger tomes he had seen flying through the rooms caught him fully in the back of the head. Stars floating in front of him he caught both his companions laughing and pointing at him before they crouched and covered their own heads, library remains flying everywhere. When the rushing, whooshing noises of the tide of books and paper receded they looked into the middle of the room to see some extremely neat piles. Twinkling lights having finally faded from Khar’s sight, he peered over at K'Chool with surprise.

  “This is the most damaged.” She pointed at a combination of burned papers, files and books to Khar’s left. “This is less so.” She pointed to the middle pile. “And these are undamaged.” She waved casually at the pile to Khar’s right. Looking at them, Khar realised the piles were obviously and dramatically decreasing in size from left to right, indicating how difficult this was going to be.

  “One each?” Khar offered, facing his palms towards the ceiling and shrugging slightly.

  “What are we looking for?” Xiang asked towards the piles.

  “Any reference to The Last Word.” K'Chool answered, adding in the wytches other names to make sure Xiang knew what to keep an eye out for.

  “As well as anything on; the Dyad involving Tor and Eve, and spells for trapping wytches.” Khar finished. Xiang’s face was full
of questions.

  “Right.” Khar blinked both his eyes and shook his head, annoyed at himself. “Tor and Eve were the Dyad that stopped The Last Word. Although, they hadn’t completed the final ceremony to become a full Dyad and they sacrificed themselves to stop her. She was too strong for them to destroy so they trapped her soul somehow. It’s very unclear how they did it and from what Cleric Aitch told us, sealing her in Eve’s body was the only option they had at the time.” More questions formed on their new companion’s face. Instinctively, as an old friend would know, Khar knew what Xiang was asking for with his frown, so he went on. “Cleric Aitch is our master historian who sent us here to investigate. He is one of the ancients who remembers what happened at the time, even though there were no details to remember, so he specifically said we should look for soul binding spells.”

  Xiang seemed satisfied at this and with practised pragmatism, he gave himself a task. “I’ll take the left pile and sort through it for anything that’s readable. Then one of you can take a look to see what may or may not be of use. Yes?” Two nods met his suggestion and then K'Chool wandered to the smallest pile of almost pristine books.

  “Not fair.” Khar protested like a toddler, as she sat cross-legged at the smallest pile. The face she pulled at him was worth more than a thousand words. A very familiar one that he’d seen often. He started walking to the middle pile, muttering like a child who was admitting defeat, mocking himself and the situation. “You started this Khar. You had the vision. You wanted to see the crazy old man. You wouldn’t leave it alone. You should take the hardest pile.” Assessing the pile made his heart sink, even though it was the second largest of three. His joints ached at the prospect of combing through the mess, knowing that moving between standing up, sitting down, crawling around or crouching like a monkey for hours, would make his task worse. There was no avoiding it though, so he methodically began sorting through the pile in front of him.