by Andra Leigh
It happened as suddenly as it had done in the past. One moment Jinx was kissing her, the next second someone else was.
Someone she didn’t know.
Someone she desperately wanted to kiss.
The man kissed her deeply, warmth spreading between them wherever they touched. She replied eagerly to his lips.
The scent of fresh grass and foliage clung to his skin. It was a musk she wanted to bury in and rub all over her skin. The hand that held the back of her neck was gentle and caring despite the calluses she could feel on it. Pressing her own hands to his chest, she found his broad shoulders framing a sturdy, hard body. She curved her own body into his, fitting nicely. His hand moved from her neck to stroke her cheekbone, smooth skin against smooth skin –
Something was wrong.
His hands were too smooth.
Eliscity pulled away suddenly. Jinx froze, clearly confused as to why she had stopped their kiss. Her hallucination receded completely, taking with it the scent of leaves and rough skin.
She was stunned and horrified all at the same time. Had Jinx just kissed her, all the while she kissed her unbalanced imagination?
Great… She’d become so familiar with her hallucinations that she was making out with them now. The worst part was, her imagination was a damn good kisser.
What was wrong with her?
She was mad. Unhinged. In desperate need of therapy.
How the Bloods was she going to explain to Jinx that while she had kissed him, she hadn’t necessarily been kissing him?
It had felt so real. The man, his lips, even his scent had been so real.
‘Look back, but don’t come back.’
She had always assumed Juliette had meant the Clinic. ‘But don’t come back.’ They’d been kneeling between the rocks and sand of the Cityel, the Clinic in the distance. The meaning of her words had been obvious.
But…
‘Look back.’
Maybe that bit had been about something else.
“There’s someone…” Eliscity frowned deeply, trying to put a face to the man she had just kissed. Jinx’s soft hand fell from where it held her face.
Someone what? She held onto the question, adamant to not let the idea slip away.
Someone else, she realised.
Someone on the edge of her memory, that she hadn’t quite let go of. It was an idea she had never been brave enough to entertain, even when the thought of insanity had terrified her. To be wrong, would break her. She knew that. But now Eliscity felt a spark of hope ignite in her chest.
Perhaps she wasn’t mad.
One thing was sure, it was time to find out.
●
The next day Eliscity found Laleita in the cosy library. This was one room where she didn’t mind the lack of windows. Every inch of the walls were covered in shelves, laden with books. Books regaling history and the War, encyclopaedias detailing plants, poisons and people, philosophising texts, even weighty volumes of dry mathematics (used by Neith to press herbs). There was no lack of subject matter. The soft golden light of the elemental flames perching between titles gave the room a peaceful, romantic glow.
She hadn’t purposefully set her sights on tracking the seer down, intent on aimlessly wandering the floors trying to summon up a hallucination. But now, seeing Laleita studying the titles on the shelf, she realised the seer was the obvious person to help her.
She stepped further into the room, unsure how to broach the subject.
Laleita pulled a book with an emerald spine off the shelf and held it with delicate fingers.
“Hello, Eliscity,” Laleita said in her soft voice. She looked up at Eliscity with her pale eyes. “What can I do for you?”
Eliscity got the distinct impression that the slender woman already knew why she was there. There was something about the way her eyes, so absent of bold colour, pierced the world around her. It was obvious the Clinic had awoken a gift in her that was already so close to the surface. Perhaps, like Juliette, she had shown signs of sensitivity before they had gotten their hands on her. Eliscity felt a surge of anger at the people who had been cruel enough to hurt someone so delicate and perfect.
“There’s someone…” Eliscity begun. “On the edge of my memory – I think,” she added hastily, as she stepped further into the room. Jinx had not mentioned their kiss, treating her like nothing had happened at their morning training session. While she was happy to follow this example, she couldn’t forget the kiss she had gotten from her hallucination. “They’re there. I can reach out and grab them, but then they’re gone and it turns out they were never there. And I’m left to discover I’ve been ki– never mind. They’re smoke. Less than that. But more. At the same time.” She wasn’t explaining this very well. She decided to cut straight to the point. “I want to know if they’re real, if they’re something to me. Or if I’m just going mad.” She didn’t add how much she feared it may be the latter.
Laleita set the emerald book back in its place on the shelf. Eliscity held her breath.
“Very few people have the ability to live in the present. We are all either too consumed with the future or haunted by the past.”
Eliscity didn’t have to ask which of the two categories she fell into. The Clinic had taken all recollection of her family from her. Her home, her friends, her pets. They were the reason she couldn’t remember where she came from and why she didn’t know the way home. But there was something they couldn’t take from her. They couldn’t make her forget that there was something – a life – before the Clinic that she was supposed to know. Maybe that life had been haunting her in a literal sense.
“Is it a bad thing?” Eliscity said. “Being consumed. Haunted.”
Laleita pulled another book from the shelf – a crimson cover this time – and leafed through its pages. “No. It’s an understandable thing.”
“But you don’t like that?” Eliscity guessed. She found she wanted to understand this woman. There was pure wisdom beneath her quiet demeanour and Eliscity wasn’t the type to ignore something like that.
Laleita gave a kind smile. “You’re very perceptive.” With a slow, careful sigh – everything the woman did seemed thoroughly thought out – she continued. “We lose too much when we don’t give the present the attention it rightly deserves.”
Eliscity nodded once. Even if she didn’t necessarily agree with Laleita’s words, she could appreciate them all the same. Did this mean she wouldn’t help her? Oh well, Eliscity thought defiantly, she would find another way. After all, how was she supposed to enjoy her present when her past was a giant black smudge? She couldn’t begin to understand who she was at this very moment without knowing the things that made her that way.
Eliscity gave Laleita an understanding smile and begun to turn away.
“That doesn’t mean I won’t try to help you, Eliscity.”
Eliscity looked back at the woman.
“You’re lucky,” Laleita said. “The past can be left behind if closure is found. However those who dwell on the future often cannot stop.” The seer’s lip pulled into a sad smile.
“You wish you could see the future.” Eliscity had figured out as much from their brief conversation about Juliette the other night. “Why?”
“I’d like to know what choices would take me where.”
“I don’t think that’s how it works.”
“What’s the point in being sensitive if I can’t tell whether or not I’ll have a chance at a future I want? But my gift does not touch on the future. Nor does it, technically, touch the past. It works with the present.”
Eliscity’s heart sank. Laleita’s dark hair fell across her face as she looked down at the crimson book in her hands.
“Here, it’s the book I was talking about last night. And,” she chose another off the shelf, “I’d recommend this one.”
Taking the offerings, she ignored the crimson volume entitled The Bloods Encyclopaedia and turned the new book over in her hands. It was small
and non-descript, bound in old brown hide. There was no title. Opening it she found that rather than the stamp pressed texts or meticulous penmanship of the other books, this one was written in an untidy scrawl. She cocked an eyebrow at the seer.
“It’s the journal of Icah Wrethic.”
“As in the city of Wrethic’s namesake?”
Laleita nodded once.
“Why would I care what a frontline man in the War against our ancestors thought?” She held it out from her, between thumb and finger, like it was something unpleasant.
Laleita smiled, clearly finding something amusing. “Just read it, I think it’ll surprise you.”
She shrugged, piling it onto the larger crimson book. “So, you’ll help me? With my hallucinations.”
“Yes. But something to ponder, especially if I’m unable to help you find answers, or if the answers aren’t what you want – is this life you have now truly so terrible?”
Eliscity opened her mouth to respond, but stopped herself. Calling Laleita out of her hope to find answers to her future wouldn’t help her right now. How did she really know? She didn’t have anything to compare it to except flashes of an unfamiliar man. She thought carefully about her next words, not wanting to come off as hasty to the careful Laleita.
“Nonetheless, I would still like to try.”
Laleita wasn’t surprised by this. Instead she moved over to the reading sofa set in the centre of the room and perched on its edge. “You’re life before isn’t gone, Eliscity. It’s just locked away somewhere in your mind.”
“Great,” she muttered, joining Laleita on the sofa, sinking into the cushions.
A caramel hand covered her own ivy-veined one. “What I can do, when someone is open to it, is influence the mind to navigate itself.”
“Navigate itself?”
“I’m afraid I don’t have a better explanation than that.” She frowned. “Also… I want you to understand. I haven’t had outstanding success with my regressions. It’s not a sure thing. I can’t personally sift through your mind to see what’s hidden there. I can only offer you a door. I have no power to open it for you. Your mind is your own, Eliscity. I have no control over it.”
“So in other words, it comes down to me. Whether or not I can navigate my own mind.”
Laleita inclined her head.
Eliscity chewed on her bottom lip, thinking for a moment. Laleita couldn’t pull up memories before her or open her mind like a floodgate. She could only guide her to the beginning and hold her on her path. Truthfully, it was less than Eliscity had hoped for. But what had she expected? For Laleita to wiggle her fingers once and have her miraculously remember her entire life? No, she hadn’t expected it, but she had been daft enough to daydream of it briefly. Eliscity blinked away her foolishness and focused back on the seer. She wasn’t offering Eliscity her past to read like one of the books from the library they sat in. But she was presenting her with a chance to get a glimpse at one of the pages. Was Eliscity really going to throw that chance back in Laleita’s face just because it wasn’t as spectacular as she had dared to hope?
No.
In the end, it came down to Eliscity. Everything she learnt or didn’t learn would be due to her own ability to dig through her mind. That’s if there was even anything to find.
Eliscity looked up into Laleita’s transparent eyes. She saw an insurmountable amount of gentle patience in them. She was in no rush. She was taking this time to ensure Eliscity understood she wasn’t promising answers.
Then she realised the truth.
Laleita was afraid she would be disappointed in her gifts.
Eliscity gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. “If you can only offer me a door, that’s still more than I have found by myself. And I would be eternally grateful to you for just that.”
Tension Eliscity had failed to notice eased out of Laleita’s shoulders.
“How do we begin?”
Laleita had Eliscity lie back on the sofa. She had said the quiet of the room was quite fitting for the process, thus they need not move.
Shifting and wiggling on the cushions, Eliscity looked for a comfortable position. Her skin was suddenly humming with nerves – which was not particularly conducive to settling into a peaceful slumber.
What if she didn’t like what she found out? Or worse still, what if she found out nothing and had simply wasted Laleita’s time and energy?
With a sudden thought, Eliscity asked, “Does this hurt you at all?”
Laleita settled herself at Eliscity’s head. “No. Regression can only be powered by its subject. Therefore, little of it touches me. You, on the other hand, may find yourself taxed by the experience.”
Eliscity nodded, her hair rubbing into the cushions. Good, she thought, this was her battle. She didn’t want Laleita to bear any repercussions because of her selfish quest.
“Okay.” Laleita pressed the tips of her fingers to Eliscity’s temples. Her hands were warm, but nothing else, and for a moment Eliscity had the sense she was being ridiculous. She shoved the thought away. Best not add negative connotations to the situation.
“I cannot follow you on your journey, Eliscity. In your mind, I am merely a safety line. An anchor, if you will, to the real world.”
“What happens if the line breaks?” she asked quietly.
“It would be like being lost in a maze, your map home gone. But that won’t happen. I can pull you out faster than the line can snap.”
Despite her sudden awareness that she could become trapped in her own mind, should something go wrong, she wasn’t afraid. She trusted the shy caramel skinned woman with pale eyes. She wouldn’t let anything go wrong. She was stronger than she looked.
“Ready?” Laleita asked in a whisper.
“Yes,” Eliscity answered simply, closing her eyes.
It happened immediately. One moment Eliscity was lying on the sofa, pins and needles creeping into her arms, the next the soft resistance holding her body where she lay shifted and she could have sworn she were standing.
She blinked her eyes open.
The library had gone. Laleita had gone.
Before her stood a wall. It wasn’t made from brick or marble, but trees. A row of trees grew alongside one another, so close their branches wove themselves together, plaiting and twirling into a solid wall. There was not a single gap.
She looked left, then right. It seemed to go on forever. It didn’t stop or reach a corner. Looking up, it disappeared into the night sky.
So much for a door…
How was she supposed to get through a wall of nature? She assumed she was supposed to get through it. After all, there were no answers on this side of the blockade. There was a doorway to be found here somewhere. She was sure of it. All she had to do was find it.
She stepped between two thick trunks, their limbs entwining with one another. She rested her hand against a branch. Real. It felt so real beneath her skin that she wondered how this could possibly be all in her mind.
Perhaps she had to cut her way through. Studying the robust branches she doubted she could do so with only her bare hands. To confirm this she closed her hand around one of the smaller knotted limbs and dragged her weight down on it. It creaked, the wood cracking under the pressure. Finally it snapped, a few layers still tethered to its body. Eliscity could see a thicker branch growing behind it.
No, it didn’t look like she would be getting through that way.
Frustrated, she worked the broken limb from the wall. It came away with a tear, its splintered edges scraping at her hand. She tossed it aside, alerted to her scratched skin when a sharp tingling sliced along her palm. Small drops of blood welled along the thin lines. This wasn’t real, so how was she bleeding right now? Carefully, she touched the edge of the scratch and was rewarded by a very real sting.
“Hmph,” Eliscity exhaled. Surely it must be her imagination.
Wiping her hand across her leg, she turned her attention back to the wall of trees. Eliscity k
new it was a commonly thought concept that people put up walls to protect themselves. But she wondered if it were normal for that wall to be formed out of trees.
Eliscity touched the edges of the broken branch, deep in thought. There had to be a reason the wall was trees. Not crystal or clay. It was wood. Her wall was alive. It grew. Each moment it grew. The roots, so strong they broke through the ground in places at her feet, were proof of that.
Eliscity stepped back slightly, pondering the wall. It grew in her mind, from her imagination. It shaped itself to protect her. So surely she could reshape it. She didn’t need force or strength, just thought. Laleita had promised her a door, so she would make herself a door.
She inhaled deeply and breathed out slowly. She did this again. And again. With each breath she felt the trees awaken. Their glossy leaves rippled with an imaginary breeze and gnarled limbs began to snake away from one another. Initially it was a jumble of branches moving in no one particular direction, until it became obvious they were curling, vine-like, away from each other to form a large opening.
As the final limb twisted itself into the archway Eliscity saw an overgrown garden on the other side. She stepped through the archway and felt it, rather than saw it, dissolve behind her.
The garden was immense. Pathways spread out from her in all directions, forking and turning too many times to count. Each pathway was paved with something different. She could see brick, lawn, dirt and stone. No matter the material of the paths, the plants of the garden had interrupted them. Everything was overgrown, spilling over dirt and peeking up through stone. All the seasons seemed to intersect; willows wept with small drops of frost, autumn colours cuddled into new spring buds from tree to tree and ivy crept high into shady canopies.
The garden was taking over. And it was beautiful.
Spinning around, she decided this wasn’t a real place. Like the wall of trees, it too seemed to go on forever. As she ceased turning, her eyes fell on a familiar face. A girl sat crossed legged in the grass before her. Dark ringlets tumbled haphazardly past her shoulders, her button nose crinkled in greeting, big round hazel eyes smiling above her high cheekbones. She looked happier and healthier than Eliscity had ever seen her.
